“Dirty is for suckers,” I answered. “I want his sin to be his own. I’ll supply him a crowd.”
Jinx tapped ash, eyes on nothing. “He bleeds in public; the block gets loud. Loud gets messy. Messy attracts the wrong jobs.”
“You want it clean?” I tilted my head. “Let me show you a mop.”
Jinx stared a heartbeat longer, then nodded once. He ain’t mine. He ain’t theirs. He’s physics; he does what the room tells him, but I know these rooms around here.
Mouse hustled over, timid like a fly that learned to whisper. “Inspection date landed,” he confirmed. “Kitchen. Monday. They gave us courtesy and by ‘us’ I mean them.”
I raised a finger, and Mouse handed me the paper before I could ask. Good boy. Lani will get a fresh copy under the door by morning. She’ll boil the kettle and think hard. Cruz will snarl and shake a hand nobody can see. This is how you move people without touching them.
“You ever wonder if Ro knows?” Mouse asked, curious enough to die young.
“Knows what?”
“That you… touched Sal’s last run.”
The room turned to a pin. I could bury this kid under the floor in two steps. Instead, I let the question sit because I wanted to hear it bounce off the walls.
I leaned back until the chair complained. “Touched?” my voice echoed around us. “I touch everything. That’s why we still got a roof.”
Mouse swallowed. I didn’t blink.
Sal’s last run. It sits in my throat sometimes, like a seed with a bad idea. He took a route I gave him and then ignored a call I didn’t. He was superstitious about two things: funerals and detours. I couldn’t detour him without announcing to men who count that I caused the detour. Sal died because he trusted that his old math still added. It didn’t. Not because of me. Because time played dice with men who brag about calendars.
Did I feel anything? Sure. I felt efficient. The club didn’t burn. The police didn’t get a ladder into our bedroom. The shippers kept shipping. We lost our president that night and I became a compass. Grief’s a luxury for children and poets. I ain’t either.
I stood to my feet, boots scuffling against the old warn floor. “Shut it down at two,” I told Tino. “No stragglers. I want Friday lean.”
“Trigger,” he stated, stopping me in my tracks.
I turned. He didn’t ask it. He doesn’t have to. The men wanted to know what I wanted them to chant.
“Friday ain’t a funeral,” I announced. “It’s a mirror. If you don’t like what you see, fix your hair.”
They laughed because the thought of hair on some of these heads is the funniest thing I’ve said all week.
“I’m out…” I voiced and headed out the door. The night was still young, but I couldn’t sit around like a duck waiting to be sized up. I needed to move around. Time would tell everything we needed to know.
The clubhouse heat stuck to my jacket as I stepped into rain that washed the air clean. Nights like this make a man restless, make him trace his own routes twice just to see if anyone else is tracing them too. My bike rumbled low, and the road pulled me like it always does—away from laughter that sounded too sharp and toward streets that remember every secret they’ve swallowed.
On the ride home I cut past Tino’s yard. The sagging string lights and mismatched chairs turned the space into a stage—just a palette and a couple of milk crates holding up the scene. It would look like a party until it looked like a crime. Good scenes do that. They don’t turn. They slip.
I pictured the night. Sheriffs at the gate, arms crossed just enough for the news camera to say “community.” Darius’s smirk under some father’s badge. Saint posted three houses down, umbrella for a prop, eyes for a living. Tony with his relic camcorder, red light taped over because he thought stealth was craft tape. Ro in the middle, trying to be a sentence when all he was, is a comma we forgot to need. Nova won’t be there. She’s smarter than the men who love her. That’s okay. I’ll make sure she hears it clear on a cheap speaker tomorrow.
My phone buzzed once: UNKNOWN. I don’t answer UNKNOWN unless UNKNOWN knows our shape. It buzzed again and I let it sing to the rain. We ain’t dancing. I’m riding.
Hours blurred into wet asphalt and headlight streaks until exhaustion set its hooks. The city felt calm but calmed a mask—it was what the streets wore before they bite. I parked the bike, boots heavy, body running on fumes. That kind of tired makes you think slower, but plan sharper. I let the silence settle, knowing morning was only a few hours away.
Morning bleeds in dull.I slept four hours because that was the amount my neck allowed before it started to talk. Coffee from the machine that lied to me and called itself breakfast. The news did its part—traffic, weather, a shooting in a city theypronounced wrong like it made it smaller. I turned it off and made some calls.
First, the fire inspector who forgot certain things for an envelope full of bills. I leaned back in my chair, the phone warm against my ear, rain tapping the window like it had something to confess. The line crackled.
“Inspection’s next week,” the fire inspector muttered, his voice dry as chalk. “No cash. Cameras on everything now.”
I smirked, slow. “Relax. Wasn’t cash. It’s a donation… for that league you’re so proud of. Kids still quitting by halftime?”
He chuckled nervously. “Quitting’s honest.”
