They rode up in an open freight elevator, Sykes wearing his dark glasses that he'd retrieved from the street, didn't want his black and bloodshot eyes freaking out a potential client. Patches of light passed over their faces as the lift rattled and swayed upward, past sprawling, empty, echoing spaces that once had people and machines in them that made something that probably seemed like it would be in demand forever. Or wouldn't be made cheaper overseas. Finally, the elevator jounced to a stop.

Janna led the way as they stepped off onto a concrete floor, dim light filtering through tall, sooty windows that ran the length of one side of the building. Sykes followed her past hulks of rusting machinery, toward the sound of raw-rock music.

She rounded a partition and led Sykes into Mavro's domain, a vast open space of creative mayhem. The walls were covered with murals in his energized style – a blend of grunge graphics and tribal art, in vibrant splashes of contrasting colors.

Pieces of junk – bicycle parts, kitchen appliances – were fashioned into freestanding sculptures.

Skateboards were propped on a cluttered workbench, embellished with Mavro's designs.

Mavro himself was at one end of the bench, replacing the broken wheel on his board.

Janna walked over with Sykes, reached to the paint-smeared radio and turned down the music.

"Mavro, this is Sykes," she said.

The two shook hands.

"Sorry for the confusion," Sykes said, thinking that this kid couldn't be more than eighteen, twenty at most – brown hair twisted into a topknot, sparse whiskers on a face that looked like it didn't smile much, underweight in the starving-artist tradition...

Mavro gave a dismissive shrug. "No problem."

"Mind if I look around?"

"Help yourself."

Sykes stepped around some tangled bedding on a mattress on the floor and went over to one of the big wall paintings – a panorama of naked human bodies with heads of beasts, the creatures frolicking and, in some cases, doing obscene things to one another.

Sykes looked over at Mavro. "Is this enamel?"

"Industrial strength, same as the skateboards."

"You do canvases?"

"Plywood, mostly." Mavro indicated a painting in what Sykes was beginning to think of as his tribal-grunge style, the piece leaning against a beat-up refrigerator. "I had more downstairs, but a pipe broke and trashed them."

Sykes checked out the plywood painting, the colors, the man/beast figures, nodded and said, "This could sell."

"So buy it."

"How much?"

Mavro shrugged. "Make me an offer."

Sykes turned to him and smiled. "That's just what I'm here for."

~~~~~~

The five-story townhouse on the Upper East Side had a wrought-iron fence across the front that was painted black, as were the secure gate and the electrified window trim and the imposing steel front door. Victor Sykes was in the den upstairs, trying to make a case for his new discovery.

"He can turn them out like that," Sykes said, snapping his fingers in front of the fireplace in the high-ceilinged, book-lined room. "And they're good. But that's not the point."

"What is the point?" said a gruff voice in the shadows.

Sykes tapped the exotic artwork at his side, Mavro's tribal-grunge painting on plywood. "The point is media mileage, the whole slum kid, hustler, skateboard thing. They'll eat it up. I mean, buzz."

He picked up the painting with both hands and placed it in a chair, jabbed his finger at one of the man/beast figures. "There's nothing in the market like it now. The timing's perfect."

He stood there letting his words sink in while a wisp of blue smoke curled past his bandaged nose.

"I'm telling you," he said, "I can make this happen. I can make this kid legend."

He looked expectantly with his blackened eyes at the one other person in the room.

Leaning back from his massive walnut desk, Rizza Zekov studied his smoldering cigar. He looked up at Sykes without expression. "Twenty-nine days."

~~~~~~

Late that afternoon, on the roof of Mavro's deserted factory building in Long Island City, two of the grunge crew from the Central Park operation were lowering one edge of a large plywood sheet onto the coaming that bordered the roof. They positioned it so that it made a rudimentary landing ramp, lining it up with a tall playground slide that had been positioned at the edge of the roof on the building next door.

Well, almost next door. Between the two buildings, a yawning chasm twenty feet wide loomed above a murky alley ten stories below.

Standing atop the slide was The Wiz, a dozen or so onlookers voicing their support as he lined up his skateboard with the slide's chute, which ended at the chasm. A kid with a video camera was positioned at the edge of the roof to shoot what was about to happen. With a nod to his audience, The Wiz, showing no concern, hopped on his board and sped down the chute.

He flew off the end and sailed high above the chasm, clasping his board to his feet, spinning himself around in a graceful pivot, landing perfectly on the waiting plywood ramp, did a kick-flip on the asphalt roof and waved casually to his cheering friends.

Watching it all from the landing-ramp side was Victor Sykes. Who the hell thinks this stuff up? He looked back across the chasm, to where his great artistic hope, Mavro, was now climbing up the slide with his skateboard - his hand-painted, tribal-grunge skateboard.

He positioned the board at the top of the chute, put one foot on it and stood with his eyes fixed on the chasm.

One of the onlookers shouted, "Don't wuss now, man."

Sykes turned to Janna, standing beside him. "He know what he's doing?"

Janna's dark eyes were fixed on the slide. "He thinks he does."

They watched Mavro gather himself and put one foot on his board. He took a deep breath and pushed off, speeding down the chute, just like The Wiz.

But just before the bottom he bailed out. Dove off the board and hit the roof and rolled hard against the coaming.

His board flew off into the abyss, his artwork spinning, down and down...

Sykes and Janna ran to the edge of the chasm.

"Mavro!" she yelled. Skidded to a stop and stared across.

The roof coaming on the other side blocked any view of Mavro. The onlookers had gathered at the foot of the slide, all looking down at what Janna couldn't see. Finally, a hand reached into view and grasped the coaming. A moment later Mavro's face appeared. He made eye contact and looked away.

He started to get to his feet. One of the onlookers tried to help, Mavro jerked his arm away. He stood up and pushed roughly through the group, face diverted in shame.

~~~~~~

At dusk Mavro was back at his own building, on the roof with Sykes, everyone else having left. The bummed-out boarder was sitting sullenly on a rusty air duct. Behind the two, across the East River, Manhattan's tall buildings were starting to turn on their lights.

Sykes said, "I'm not telling you to give it up." He could see puffs of fog from his breath, it had gotten chilly. "What I'm saying is pick your spots."

"You know how humiliating that was? And that jerk with the camera..."

"Maybe you were overreaching."

"Hey, man, I can do it!"

"What you can do is paint."

"Screw painting."

Sykes turned around and looked across the river. "Take a look over there." He glanced back at Mavro. "Go on, look."

Mavro turned reluctantly and looked at the glittering skyline – the Chrysler Building with its Deco spire, the Empire State lit up red, white and blue...

Sykes said, "There's a life over there that that crew of yours will never get near." He watched Mavro shift uneasily. "You, my friend, can have it all."

Mavro didn't respond.

Sykes added fuel. "You want Janna picking pockets all her life? Because let me tell you, she'll get caught. There'll be plenty more cops besides that one in the park." He let that register – then gestured toward the city. "Think about it. Think what could be."

He stayed still, letting the sound of a siren on the street below pass. Then he turned and started across the roof, giving a parting shot over his shoulder, "And let me know if you think you can cut it." He kept walking, was almost at the door to the fire stairs when Mavro called out.

"Sykes?"

Sykes stopped and looked back, could just make out the shadow on the duct.

"I can cut it," Mavro said

Sykes smiled. "Good. We'll start tomorrow."