Ash moved slow, his hands visible, his posture casual but confident. You didn’t strut in places like this. You showed youbelonged—because you used to. He stopped near a burn barrel where three men warmed their hands. One of them, a skinny guy with patchy facial hair and a blue knit cap, glanced up as Ash approached. His eyes were bloodshot, jittery.
“Yo,” Ash said, voice easy, tuned just right, a soft slur of street and sugar. “Know where I can score?”
The man blinked, his brain struggling to reconcile Ash’s presence with this place. Even cloaked in shadows, Ash still stood out, too clean, too luminous. The filth didn’t cling to him; it recoiled. When he smiled, a saint in black leather, the man’s thoughts scattered, roaches escaping the light. “What you need?”
“Black, maybe some crystal. Nothing stepped on.”
The man sniffed, nodded toward the door. “Not here. Not anymore. Cops been crawling since a guy OD’d few weeks back. Try by the tracks, couple blocks south. Roscoe Ventura is selling there.”
Ash nodded, slipping the guy a few tenners. “Appreciate it.”
He turned to go but paused, letting the weight of the place settle in his bones one more time. A chapel full of ghosts and gutter martyrs. He’d slept beneath that very altar once, arms wrapped around himself, dreaming of warm beds and someone’s hand in his hair, telling him he mattered. No one ever had.
Until one day, when Vinny drove by in his Chevy and offered him a lifeline.
Now he walked out straight-backed, jaw set. The rain had thickened to a drizzle, blurring the world into something slow and silver. He followed the directions, moving deeper into Little Tokyo, where the Yamaguchi cartel ran things with quiet knives and colder smiles. Past an old payphone crusted in stickers and grime. Past a brick wall covered in gang tags, symbols etched with blades, rage, and warnings.
The air changed here. You could feel the weight of territory, of old debts gone sour. Brick tenements loomed overhead, their fire escapes rusting like scars. The deeper he got, the fewer people he saw. Just flickers of motion in windows, the scurry of rats, the occasional wet cough from someone curled up in a doorway like a broken promise.
And then he saw him. A scarecrow of a man, thin and jittery, eyes darting beneath the hood of his windbreaker. He didn’t even glance at Ash as he slid past toward the overcrossing, hands buried in his pockets. Fast walk. No eye contact. A shadow melting into the fog.
Ash parked the Harley under a broken lamppost and locked the handlebar. He lit a cigarette with a flick of his thumb, following on foot, boots whispering across slick pavement. “Hey, man,” he called, voice low, pleasant, touched with sugar. “You got gear?”
The man stiffened but kept walking. “I don’t know you.”
“You don’t need to. I got dough.”
“You can score from someone else.”
Ash picked up his pace until he eased into step beside the man. The rumble of his voice curled close, intimate. “I don’t want someone else. I want you, Roscoe.”
That stopped him. Roscoe Ventura turned, wide-eyed, pupils like pinpricks. His mouth opened, closed. He glanced left and right, but the footbridge stretched empty in both directions—just the two of them suspended over the rain-blurred street.
Ash smiled. “Relax. I’m not a cop. If I were, you’d already be on the ground kissing concrete. I’ve got questions.”
“I don’t know nothing.”
“You’re gonna dig deeper.” Ash slipped the cigarette between his lips and pulled out his phone, holding the screen up to Ventura’s face. “You recognize them?”
Roscoe gave it a half-second glance before turning away. “Nah. Never seen ’em.”
“You looked too quick. Try again.”
Roscoe fidgeted. “Why you even care?”
Ash stepped closer, and the shift in the air was subtle but sharp. He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t flash a weapon. He simply held Roscoe’s gaze, let the silence burn for a beat, his eyes a glimmering amethyst, his mouth a soft, curved threat. “Tell me what you know.”
The effect was instant.
Roscoe swayed slightly, the change washing over him like warm bourbon. His shoulders slackened. He licked his lips and smiled, dreamy now. “Damn. All right, sugar. You got me. I hooked ’em up a few times. They’ve been coming steady.”
“When was the last time?”
Roscoe’s gaze drifted down Ash’s chest.
Ash nudged his shin lightly. “Focus.”
“Right, yeah... uh, maybe a week ago. But I saw the girl last night. She’s in deep, man.”
