Inspector Bruno sees the troubles as deeply rooted in the neighborhood. Generations ago, Irish and Italian teenagers brawled on these streets. The Africans, he said, are simply passing through.

“Ten, 15 years from now,” he said, “you might not have any Liberians living there, because they’ll start assimilating and moving up.”

Maybe this is true. But as fall edged toward winter, the neighborhood pushed out its tendrils. On a bench beside a basketball court, a pretty girl told Augustus that he reminded her of Kobe Bryant, then asked  in what he took to be a hopeful tone  whether he had gang connections. A Halloween outing with friends was interrupted by egg-throwing, which turned into rock-throwing and a headlong run from the police.

A friend asked a casual question: What would you do if I put a gun in your hand?

“He was just joking,” Augustus said, and a hint of bravado entered his voice. “I tell him to go ahead. You see my performance.”

A few days before Halloween, his manager called from the mall to fire him, saying he had had too many late arrivals and absences. Augustus tried to protest that his commute from Park Hill depended on two capricious bus lines, but it was no use. He told his mother he had soured on the mall.

“People think negative things about you,” he said.

So, five months after returning from Liberia, Augustus was back in Park Hill in the middle of the day, shades drawn, watching basketball and nursing his old dream of playing in the pros.

The boredom was oppressive. He respected his mother’s friends, the ones who line up at bus stops every morning in nurses’ uniforms, and deep down he hoped he would eventually join them. But for the moment he was drawn to the company of his own peers, young men in hooded sweatshirts and voluminous jeans who came and went from his apartment during the day. Most of them sell drugs, he said.