Silence

by Zaire Crown

Genres: African American Urban; Noir

Synopsis

A gritty, intense novel set on Detroit’s mean streets, featuring a much-feared deaf killer known as “The Silent Assassin,” who’s fresh out of prison and on a mission to avenge the murder of the man who taught him to survive. Perfect for readers of K’wan and Ashley & JaQuavis.
 
Deaf since childhood, Silence can read body language like a book. His mentor, Doc, who
acted as his voice, taught him to navigate the streets. Silence put those skills together to
become the Motor City’s most lethal killer. But now he’s home after twelve years in
lockdown—and primed for revenge. His city is crumbling, and Doc has been shot dead, his empire divvied up between Silence’s former friends—and no one is talking. . . .
Until Silence starts rattling cages, from the town’s hottest strip joints to its icy centers of
political power.
 
Under pressure from a ruthless cop, Silence soon finds that the loyalty and friendship he
valued, the truths he lived by—even the man he looked up to—might just be deadly illusions. And when someone goes after his adopted family, Silence is on the clock to unravel a lethal conspiracy—and stake his life on one last impossible play . . .
 
Praise for Games Women Play

“Games Women Play goes in hard and heavy straight from the gate! Zaire Crown is a bold new voice in urban fiction!” —Noire

“An exciting, twisty thrill ride that'll keep you turning the pages to its jaw-dropping conclusion.” —De’nesha Diamond

Release date: June 27, 2023

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

She was a gangster chick.

In high-pressure situations, people can tell you their life stories with a gesture. She might have been born into money but wasn’t some sheltered suburban girl who had spent her childhood in books. She had a few brothers, had seen some things. We had no conversation or shared history. Her response to my presence told me everything I needed to know about her pedigree.

Most women would’ve screamed. To come out their bathroom and find my big black ass waiting on the other side of the door would’ve made a few men take a second shit—trust me, it had. But this chick didn’t panic. She didn’t even flinch when she met the eyes of an intruder.

Without hesitation, she stole me. She threw a stiff right jab that had decent form. Caught me in the nose. Stunned me. She put enough sting on it to water my eyes.

She sprinted for the dining room, where a red ostrich Chanel bag sat on a table of mirrored glass. We both knew what was in that bag, and had I not been so out of practice, I would’ve thought to search it while she was still on the toilet.

She was quick but couldn’t escape my reach. Grabbed her from the back, a fistful of shirt and good Malaysian weave. I didn’t hurt her, just manhandled her in a way to show how easily I could. Shook her up and bounced her off the wall a few times until the fire left her brown eyes.

I searched that purse to find a light-weight Glock 19 and a license to carry registered to Tyeisha Henley. I also found about eight hundred in cash. Both got donated to my revenge fund.

I left Tyeisha on the sofa wearing duct tape. I used her phone to leave Punchy a cryptic message saying: “Home now!” That was forty-five minutes ago.

I knew she was alone before I kicked in the back door but went through the house to double check.

I started with the master bedroom upstairs. The lady took her poundings on a king-sized pillow-top with a sturdy headboard in imitation marble. Nearly two hundred pairs of shoes lined the walls—his and hers retro sneakers, heels for all occasions. An avalanche of clothes spilled out the closet with leather, mink, and expensive denim balled up on the floor like it wasn’t shit to them. A few icy chains and watches sat on the dresser: the Submariner Rolex and a rose-gold Ulysse Nardin. Life was good.

One of the other two rooms was princess-themed: matching pink lace with flouncing on the drapes and a canopy twin bed. A dream house for the black Barbie dolls along with every pink accessory Mattel ever sold. On the wall, a 56-inch Vizio was connected to PlayStation and Xbox consoles.

I searched every floor, hitting all the likely stash spots, but didn’t turn up much. Other than the jewelry, there was a few hundred dollars more in the bedroom. I ran across paraphernalia under the kitchen sink: Saran Wrap, baggies, Ohaus triple-beam, but no dope. All I found in the basement were boxes stacked chest-high with candy bars, snack cakes, cases of canned soda like these people didn’t believe in diabetes.

A studio picture hung in the dining room of Punchy holding a girl about eight years old: the princess. She shared her parents’ features. Twelve-thirty on a Tuesday would place her at school. I was glad for her sake that she hadn’t been sick this day.

I was told that Punchy had come up. The ice upstairs, the Infiniti truck outside, and the eight-thousand square feet in Sherwood Forest offered sufficient proof. I studied the hardwood floors and the coffered ceilings twenty feet above, trying to appraise what the house would go for in a fair real estate market.

Punchy blew up his baby mama, but I had the phone and ignored his calls. I went through his kitchen like I paid bills there, even helped myself to a bowl of cereal. Then I joined the lady in the living room on a butter-soft cream-colored suede sectional with fourteen pieces.

To her credit, Tyeisha handled this like a G. She didn’t cry or whimper, just sat on the couch opposite me looking all evil and cute. I could tell she wanted to cuss me out but duct tape covered her juicy DSLs. Pretty doe eyes beamed hatred as I crushed her daughter’s Apple Jacks.

Nice little body, too. Petite. One hundred and fifteen pounds. Full C-cups that Punchy had probably cashed out for swelled under a Michigan State T-shirt. White yoga pants with a green splatter print complemented her outfit and toned thighs.

She smelled like hair conditioner and shea butter. The scent was fucking with me and for a moment had me curious as to what she might taste like. My sleeping beast started to stir.

I refocused and put away the temptations a weaker man might have acted on. That wasn’t my MO. If I had to kill Tyeisha Henley, she would be left with her dignity.

It took another hour before Punchy finally showed. He pulled up in a new BMW 760Li, burgundy over tan, but fucked it up with some big dumbass twenty-six-inch rims. Just like a nigga not used to having shit.

I watched from the window as three doors opened. Punchy jumped out in an all-white Gucci sweatsuit with the sneakers, chunky chain swinging from the motion.

The other two with him were off-brands. One was a slender dude in a black Nike shirt and scuffed up LeBrons. The second, thickset, wore a navy-blue Polo shirt and jeans way too tight for a big fella. Neither of them looked like they matched Punchy’s hustle, and neither looked threatening.

Punchy was the first through the door to see Wifey tied up on the sofa. She tried to warn him with her eyes, but dude ain’t never been too sharp.

The instant the third guy was in the room, I slammed the door shut from where I had hidden behind it. They reeked of a potent strand. All three turned to me with beet-red eyes, slack-jawed like they were waiting for me to explain what was happening.

I had been trained early to capitalize on that split second of surprise or indecision.

Polo Shirt was the closest to me, a full-sized black and stainless-steel Smith & Wesson SR40 tucked into his waistband. I snatched that gun and smashed his partner’s nose with the butt. A bloody discharge fired from the nostrils of Nike’s broken beak. My left caught his chin, sprawled him on the hallway stairs.

Polo Shirt wrapped me from behind, pinned my arms to neutralize the pistol. This fat muthafucka hid some power under his flab. He locked his arms at the wrists so I couldn’t muscle out of the hold.

He tried to lift me but couldn’t get my body high enough to leverage it for a slam. He was five-foot-ten, a sloppy-built two hundred and forty pounds. The advantages of my height and weight were due to genetics as much as discipline.

I would go to the ground but only on my own terms. Using my longer legs, I swept his foot, and while he was off-balance, I flopped backwards. Hard. The fall crushed him between the floor and my two hundred and seventy pounds. The impact unlocked his arms and probably knocked the wind out of him.

I scrambled to turn over then pistol-whipped him with his own .40. I thumped the top of fat boy’s skull a dozen times like a carpenter trying to hammer a stubborn nail. I left him barely conscious, bloody scalp leaking into his eyes.

By the time I got to one knee, Punchy already had his pistol aimed at my head. My angle caused the bore of his 9mm to loom as large as a battleship cannon.

I looked up to let him get a good view of my face, and watched his eyes swell with recognition. And fear.

He lowered the gun, retreated a few steps as I regained my full six-foot-five-inch height. The expression he wore could’ve revealed me as Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees.

He mouthed the word: “Silence!”

More than anything, I had been waiting to see Punchy’s reaction to me.

My intrusion made his fear plausible. Punchy knew who I was, knew what the church had done to me. Because of that, I forgave the way his whole body shook. How he looked like he was ready to run and dive straight through the glass of his picture window.

I wanted to know if he had any other cause to fear me.

The skinny one would need his nose reset, and fat boy might require some head staples. Both would be fine after a trip to the hospital. It just as easily could’ve been the morgue, and Punchy knew fucking with me, it still might be.

That’s why his trembling fingers surrendered that Taurus 9 when I held out my hand. I checked Nike Shirt for a weapon, the first one I dropped. He only had a cheap Android with a cracked screen.

I turned back to Punchy, seeing the changes twelve years had put into him. He wore his age in his eyes like most of us—too much liquor and weed, not enough water and sleep. He’d lost about half an inch on his hairline; a few gray strands grew at the temples of his tapered cut.

Punchy used to be the Omega dog in our pack. Every crew has a Punchy. The weak one everybody has to protect. The one who could never maintain his own hustle. On club night, you had to let him rock one of your outfits and might have to pay his cover. You loaned him money knowing you’d never see it back, fronted him dope knowing he’d only fuck up the sack.

I tried to reconcile that bum with the Punchy who stood in front of me dripping in white Gucci, buffalo-horn Cartiers with prescription lenses. The iced-out P hanging from his chain had some weight to it, and the stones had clarity. The same could be said about the platinum Audemar shining on his wrist. It threw me to see the same dude who used to beg to borrow my Regal pushing the flagship Beemer on blades.

And living with a chick who was bad enough to be in the same magazines I was just jacking off to. I saw in Tyeisha a new fear after witnessing the violence I unleashed, violence I kept restrained while we were alone.

I made Punchy join her on the couch while the guns I took from them both joined each other on my hip. Polo Shirt’s Ruger rested on my lap when I sat opposite the couple.

Punchy asked, “When the fuck you get out?”

I directed his attention to my attire. I wasn’t as fresh as he was. My tan pants were made from polyester so stiff they could stand up without me in them. The matching shirt was a simple V-neck pullover. My shoes were cheap black oxfords made mostly of plastic.

I could pinpoint the exact moment when Punchy realized how serious this visit was. My uniform was what the Michigan Department of Corrections sent prisoners home in when they had no one to pick them up or bring a change of clothes. The fact that I came straight to his house the second they opened the gates—before going to meet my P.O. or getting some ass—proved that I was not bullshitting.

Punchy scratched his cheek, a nervous habit. “Look, man, what happened to Doc was fucked-up. And everybody figured you was gone go ape shit when you got home.”

Everybody was right.

“But nigga, you here like I had something to do with that.”

My expression said he needed to convince me.

“I bumped into Doc ’bout a year ago at the casino, blowin’ stacks at the crap table. We caught up a little bit. That was the last time I saw him.”

I adjusted myself on his nice suede sofa, got more comfortable. A novelty wall clock hung in the kitchen with TIME TO EAT above the face, a spoon and fork for the hour and minute hands. My eyes lingered there.

Ninety percent of communication is nonverbal. Punchy had been a longtime friend who knew that a lot was spoken through my subtle gestures. He checked his own watch to confirm that it was after two p.m.

He mouthed, “Whole lotta shit done changed, Sy. It’s been about six or seven years since the crew been tight like that. I shook niggas off when I realized Doc, Prime, and Louie wasn’t trying to see me shine for real. So I put together my own team, dropped my first blow spot on Fenkell and Griggs—before I knew it, I had six more, along with a hundred of them little four-one hitters ready to shoot for me.”

Fenkell Avenue? It ain’t nothing but killers over there.

“I had that hood on lock and was ready to drop a rim and detail shop when I got put up on a better move. One that literally let me change the game.”

I warned Punchy with a glare that he didn’t have time for cap or talking in riddles.

He threw a nervous glance to his watch, then started speaking fast, making it hard for me to keep up. “Vending machines—pop, chips, Rice Krispie Treats. And all the change make it easy to clean up the money. I got twenty-three INF5s in office buildings throughout metro right now, and in two years, I’m gone have a few hundred.”

That explained all the candy in the basement.

“You know me, Sy. I wouldn’t have never threw rocks at the throne.”

Coming in, I already knew Punchy didn’t possess the mental or testicular fortitude to come for my dude. Had I thought him responsible, there wouldn’t have been any need for conversation. He would’ve come home to find his girl dead; then I would’ve clapped him and his mans the second they walked through the door.

I was there because Punchy could catch me up and hopefully put me on the right path.

“I ain’t even find out about Doc ’til two weeks after it happened. Bands posted something on The Book of her and all her girls wearing RIP T-shirts.”

Who the fuck was Bands? He read the question on my face.

Punchy looked at me like I’d been gone too long. “Quianna. She go by Q-Bands now.”

Q-Bands? I carried the mental picture of a scrawny twelve-year-old tomboy in braces and braids that the hood used to call Li’l Quay-Quay.

“I felt sick about missing his service,” Punchy said, referring to Doc. “Even though we lost touch, I still would’ve liked to pay my respects to a nigga I went back to elementary with.”

The shit had hit me like a gut-shot three months back when I got Mrs. P’s card in the mail: We lost Darius the other day. Try to keep it together. Those eleven words had been the hardest thing I dealt with on the inside.

The news came four days after my parole board hearing. I was still waiting on a decision: High-Probability on my score sheet and cuts to the state budget, making my release practically a guarantee.

It took everything I had in me not to lose my outdate. I walked around those last ninety days ready to kill anybody who made eye contact.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Nike Shirt’s legs start to move. His black LeBrons scraped back and forth across the floor as if trying to jog his way back to consciousness. I walked to the stairs and dropped a bomb on his chin that stilled his happy feet.

I stepped over fat boy in the Polo shirt to make sure he didn’t need a touch-up. He was still fetal, cradling his agony. He gripped his skull as if he feared it would shatter into pieces.

By this time, Tyeisha sat on the sofa squirming, shaking her head like a dog trying to be free of a muzzle. Punchy asked if he could remove her gag, and I nodded my permission. The lady was halfway through a torrent of curses before he peeled off the tape. I couldn’t make it all out but felt safe to assume I was the subject.

The spoon was past the two, and the fork was creeping up on the six, damn near two-thirty, almost time for a little girl to come home from school expecting nothing more than a snack and her favorite video game. They didn’t want me to meet their daughter.

I found a pen and some scrap paper. I scribbled something quick then passed it along. Punchy looked over the list I had written. He was smart enough to know this was not a request.

Doc was dead. I was home, and the streets was expecting me to go ape shit.

They would get King Kong on laxatives.

Michigan was so cheap that my state-issue pants didn’t even have pockets. After I took all the cash Punchy had on him and added that to what I already took from Tyeisha, my war chest totaled thirty-two hundred. The bills were stuffed down the front of my drawers.

My arsenal currently stood at three pistols. Polo Shirt’s SR40 rode on my hip. Punchy’s little Taurus 9 and his girl’s Glock 19 were stashed under the passenger seat.

My friend was even generous enough to let me borrow his old-school Chevy, told me to keep it as long as I wanted. A clean-ass donked-out ’84 Caprice: light-green candy like an apple Jolly Rancher with forest-green interior. I wasn’t up on the latest rims, but the thirty-inch chrome monstrosities resembled ninja stars. It looked wired for maximum bass, but the system mattered to me as much as an ashtray to a non-smoker. I did love whatever he had under the hood, because even while idling, the motor sent powerful vibrations through me.

I had been nice enough not to take the BMW or Wifey’s Infiniti truck. Punchy already knew that if I just happened to get pulled over by a cop claiming that the Caprice was reported stolen, I would pay another visit and introduce myself to the entire family.

I drove southbound on Livernois feeling like a tourist in my own city. A lot of new businesses, but a lot more closures. Too many graffiti-covered storefronts with boarded-over windows. The struggle was visible.

From inside, I watched the national news relegate Michigan to a cautionary tale about civic corruption. The proud Motor City, once the literal and figurative driving force behind America’s economy, bankrupt and on the verge of collapse. People in Flint drinking sewage when the state is surrounded by the five largest bodies of fresh water on the planet—make that make sense.

I rolled down the window and let air from the free world kiss my face. It was late April but unseasonably warm for the spring. Many of the ladies had already pulled their summer gear out of hibernation: crop tops and short-shorts making an early appearance.

My stomach grumbled a reminder that I had skipped breakfast—couldn’t see marching to the chow hall for cold oatmeal and dry toast on my last day. I hit the drive-thru of a KFC/Taco Bell, a restaurant suffering from bipolar disorder. I rejoined traffic with a breast and thigh combo with mashed potatoes and a biscuit. The smell had me unable to wait for a destination.

The very first bite damn near made me spit chicken out the window. I’d spent twelve years fiending for some Original Recipe, so I tried a second bite. That one made me want to gag.

My first thought was that the Colonel had fucked up the secret recipe until I remembered something told to me by one of my old cell mates. He was on his second bit after doing twenty for a body, and he had said that he wasn’t able to eat the food when he first got out. Everything on the prison menu is either baked, boiled, or steamed. Decades without fried food leaves us hypersensitive to grease, which explained why each bite seemed like I had just taken a spoonful of Crisco. I dropped the breast and used the biscuit to get the taste out my mouth.

I continued down Livernois, where liquor, cellphones, and fast food seemed to be the only hustles. I hung a right on Davidson Ave and another quick left on a street named Monica.

These were my old stomping grounds, but I barely recognized the area. This quiet little street used to be lined with big brick houses, most of them two-family flats, inherited from the Irish and Polish, who fled during the riotous sixties and maintained by the hardworking black families who still took pride in the properties well into the 2000s. Now over half of those homes were burned-out shells or empty lots the neighbors used for bulk trash. The hood looked like the government did a repeat of Black Wall Street when they flew over and bombed the niggas.

In the middle of the second block, Mrs. P had one of the few remaining structures. The grass was dead, and litter covered the front yard. The red brick façade was cracked, and the trim was paint-chipped. The windows were covered with ripped screens. Shingles slid from the roof. Other than a shiny black-on-black Charger in the driveway, nothing looked like money. I thought it was a trap house, because damn near twenty muthafuckas were out front—kids, hoodrats, and young fellas who look like they gangbang.

I had to park two houses down, but the Caprice had all of their attention by the time I jumped out. Even without the tan uniform, I looked like somebody fresh out the pen. They could see in my face that I ain’t had much to smile about the last few years, an animal who ain’t did shit but lift weights and brush his hair. My Caesar was low with waves on spin. My beard came down past my neck, full but neatly trimmed.

The adults were perched on stumps, on the steps, and on the concrete railing that lined the porch. A few blunts were in rotation, and nearly everyone sipped from a red plastic cup. The fellas and a butch lesbian all tried their best to intimidate me. I met everybody’s grim expression as my trained eyes quickly assessed which of them had pistols tucked.

They looked as if they expected me to acknowledge them. One of them might have asked who I was looking for. Fuck ’em. I breezed past everybody on the porch and walked straight into the lower flat like I lived there. Because I did once.

The same well-worn brown carpet in the living room was under the same faded leather three-piece sofa set we sat on back in the day. The walls and mantle above the fireplace were covered with old photos of Doc and Quay-Quay along with new flicks of kids I never met.

The smell of fried okra, onions, and Polish sausage told me she was in the kitchen. Nerves soured my stomach more than the KFC.

I cut through the dining room and found her at the stove using her step stool. Her hair was short in a silver bob with bangs. Her oversized gown would drag the floor when she walked.

After a few seconds of me watching her from the doorway, she must’ve felt my presence. She turned. We locked eyes.

I waved as if to say Hey! I even put on a smile for one of the few people in the world who could get that out of me.

She responded by throwing a bottle of vinegar at my head.

The vinegar came racing towards my head. The fact that she didn’t hesitate to throw it, or that I wasn’t surprised, should tell you something about what it was like living under Mrs. P’s roof. My reflexes were sharp enough for me to duck an instant before the bottle would have caught me in the face.

Before coming to her, I had been raised by savages; by the time I was nine, I knew eight different ways to kill an unarmed combatant with my bare hands. I am six-five, two-seventy, with less than four percent body fat. Yet I was still about to get my ass kicked by a sixty-three-year-old lady who stood five-foot-two and barely weighed ninety-five pounds.

She screwed her face up. “So that’s what’cha gone do? After all this muthafuckin’ time, you just gone walk in here like it ain’t shit, with yo’ big Sasquatch-looking ass?” Most of this came from her hands, but her lips added the curses.

I lowered my eyes and stepped forward to accept the punishment I had coming, punishment I deserved. Her small fists beat my chest. I actually had to stoop down to receive the slaps to my head.

“You go dark on my ass for three months, don’t write or shit. And you know what the hell we was going through.” Her hands were moving so fast that I could barely keep up with them.

Seeing her tears threatened my own. I used my closed right hand to circle my heart.

“Sorry?! You should be sorry, muthafucka.” She scanned the counter. “I need something hard enough to knock some sense into yo’ dumb ass.”

I handed her the cloth oven mitt hanging from the stove, and that made her smile through the tears. She hugged me, and even with the aid of her step stool, her head only reached my chest.

That I took Doc’s passing so hard was a bullshit excuse for shutting out the family. The pain from losing a son had to be ten times worse than the pain from losing a brother. She had every right to beat my ass. Part of me wished she could hit harder.

She pulled back from me and signed, “We tried to get you to the homegoing.”

I nodded my understanding. The Michigan Department of Corrections does permit prisoners to attend the funeral service for family members, but the request was denied when the state learned that I wasn’t technically related to the Petersons. Living in the same house and being raised as a son didn’t matter to the MDOC. I wasn’t blood.

Mrs. P looked over me, tugged at my beard. “Supposed to be a goddamned Viking now?”

I stroked my chin hair and gave her a look that said, Don’t hate.

She frowned at noticing the blood streaked across my shirt, blowback from when I broke dude’s nose in the Nike shirt. I offered a guilty shrug.

“Boy, we just got you back. Don’t you go doin’ nothing stupid.”

My hands told lies, but the truth could be read on my face. I was about to fuck up some shit, and the old lady knew it. Convincing me to let it go wasn’t a fight neither of us wanted right then, so she just squeezed my arm in a way that said, Be careful.

Grief had probably aged her ten years in the last three months. The dark bags made her hazel eyes appear to sink into her skull, crow’s feet pinching them at the corners. Her skin was pale, like she hadn’t been outside much, and her dress suggested the same—three in the afternoon, and she was still in a nightgown.

I reached into my drawers to offer her some of the thirty-two hundred.

She lit a Newport off the gas stove. “Nigga, don’t nobody want none of yo’ sweaty dick-money!” It could have been pride or just her knowing I would need the cash to handle business.

We conversed for a while, her hands so fluid and fast that most of the time I had to cheat by reading her lips. My signing was sloppy, and my old teacher told me so. I was twelve years out of practice.

Then Mrs. P found a wicked smile. She pounded the ceiling with a broomstick, made up something about needing seasoning salt from the store. I was still trying to figure out the game when the old lady hid me in the pantry.

It took about a minute before she appeared in the kitchen. I only had a partial view of her back but could tell by the animated movements she was laying into her mother about not making that trip to the store. I crept up from behind and grabbed her shoulder.

She spun on me, fist raised, face twisted in anger until recognition kicked in. Then Quianna looked sick and stumbled a bit like she was about to faint. When I tried to catch her, she jumped up to wrap me with her arms and legs. She held me around the neck tight enough to choke me out. I felt her tears on my cheek.

I eased her down and looked over Li’l Quay-Quay, now in the form of a grown woman. She still had Doc’s light-brown complexion, the hazel eyes they both inherited from Mrs. P, along with the thick, coarse eyebrows I used to tease her about. Other than that, I saw no trace of the skinny tomboy who used to follow me around. Blond hair fell over her shoulder, her head shaved around the left side and back with a fret pattern skillfully cut into the stubble. A sleeve of tattoos covered her right arm that mostly had an Asian theme: Geishas, Kabuki masks, dragons, and Chinese lettering. She was fresh as hell wearing a denim romper over a Chanel T-shirt, gold-colored heels matching a belt with two big Cs on the buckle.

During the same time she was taking in the changes to me. “Look at you. Been in that bitch going hard on the workout.”

I wasn’t the only one who had added to my physique, but while I had put on muscle, Quianna had packed on those pounds that create feminine curves. She had to be five-foot-four, one fifty-five on the low end.

Then out of nowhere, she punched me in the chest hard as hell. “How the fuck you gone not holla’ at nobody nigga!”

Like mother, like daughter.

The three of us stood there for twenty minutes, offering apologies and belated condolences until one the young dudes from the porch intruded on us. He walked in the kitchen, yanked open the refrigerator, and grabbed a juice. He twisted the cap, then leaned against the counter like he had every right to be in the middle of our moment. About nineteen, tall enough to be around six-three but crackhead thin, rocking a bleached nappy afro.

I didn’t appreciate him game-tapping and wanted him to know. I mugged the youngster, ready to slap the Tropicana out of his mouth.

Quianna read my hostility. She said, “Silence, that’s Trayvion. Your godson.”

That immediately thawed my stare. Not until I searched did I see my friend Doc in his oldest boy. Trayvion had been about five or six when I left, so the math added up.

I patted my chest to say My bad, offered him a thin smile and my fist.

He dapped me up. “What’s up, Unc. I still remember you from back in the day. Never saw my old man unless you was right there with him. Used to think I had two pops.”

I recalled the lanky youngster as a toddler. Little Tray, barely able to walk, would stumble up to me and grab hold of my pants leg. This had amazed me, because most kids were afraid of me, like I was afraid of most kids. I never even held a baby before Trayvion. In the UOTA, women take care of the children until they are old enough to start training.

He wasn’t that same baby anymore. When I hugged Trayvion, I could smell the fear as much as I could feel it in his embrace. He was old enough to have heard the streets talk. To him I was just a reputation, a name attached to a series of violent stories.

The four of us stood in the kitchen for another hour, catching up as I tried to make my godson feel comfortable around me. In the next couple of days, I had every intention of adding . . .