on my sweatshirt and crossed the street. With my face shadowed and my strides long, I passed by numerous boarded-up vacant buildings and trash-strewn alleyways, walking with purpose. I didn’t slow my steps, and I didn’t look to the right or the left until I reached the top of the hill.
Glancing across the street, I gave the weed-infested vacant lot and the break in the chain-link fence a long look. I could shave off a lot of time by cutting through, but more than just one kind of weed grew in that lot. It was La Rasa Prima territory. Even with my rep, it would be too risky to travel through it alone.
I cursed under my breath, pissed about the inconvenience. The vulgarity lingered as a visible puff of air in the rapidly cooling night.
I continued to where the ground leveled off and stopped to catch my breath. After a moment, I headed for the abandoned factory on Phillips, then turned left when I reached Montclair.
Kyle’s apartment complex was worse than the public housing high-rise where Bryan had once lived. An abandoned bathtub added a strange element to the patch of ground in the middle of the quadrangle of graffiti-emblazoned buildings. Two guys were perched on the porcelain rim, bleeding a watchful vibe, their beady eyes following me as soon as I appeared.
“Kyle’s expecting you.” The guy in a Seattle Mariners ball cap jerked his head to the right, as if I didn’t know where a guy I’d known since middle school lived.
“Got it.” I yanked back my hood from my head and acknowledged the dumb-as-fuck sentry with a chin lift.
I untied the bandanna from my belt loop, then quickly wound it around my head instead. Avoiding the worst of the broken glass on the cracked sidewalk, I jogged up the concrete steps to Kyle’s unit.
“Hiya, War.” Missy Rivera was at the top. Already pretty wasted, she leaned heavily against the rusted iron railing. “Wanna do a bump with me?” She blinked her red-rimmed light blue eyes at me.
“Maybe later,” I said. She did oral for blow, and was good at it. With her, sex was a no-fuss, no-drama deal. “Lemme talk to Kyle first.”
“’Kay.” She settled back against the railing, crossing one ankle-high studded black boot over the other.
I turned the knob and opened the door without knocking. The door was always open.
This unit, and the entire complex, was under the dominion of Martin Skellin, Kyle’s boss. But like a lot of things in Southside, how things appeared to be wasn’t reality. Kids were more comfortable buying drugs from a guy they went to school with, so Martin didn’t want it bandied about that his name, not Kyle’s, was on the lease.
The interior was the wreck it always was. The air reeked of pot, body odor, urine, and jizz. The furniture was a hodgepodge of shit salvaged from street corners, and carpet that had once been burnt orange was now a dingy gray with lots of nasty black stains.
“He’s in his office, man.” Randy, the blond dude I’d shoved into the wall at school, hooked his thumb toward the stairs.
“Got it.” I took the stairs two at a time, avoiding the heroin junkies reclining on it with lax expressions and tourniquets either on or near their arms.
Upstairs, the stench was stronger, but I was accustomed to it. Kyle and I had been buds a long time, longer than Bryan and me.
“Hey, loser.” Kyle saw me in the hall and beckoned me into the bathroom. His other hand was fisted in a curvy brunette’s hair. She was giving him a blow job. “Your shit’s there.” His voice gruff, his gaze on the wallpapered wall in front of him, he inclined his head.
I noted the usual baggie with the vial of cocaine and a couple of joints. “I wanna change our arrangement after tonight.”
“How so?” He closed his eyes, grunted, and pulled the brunette off his dick.
She released him, swiped the back of her hand across her mouth, and snagged a goodie bag of her own from the counter. “Excuse me,” she said, scooting past me in the narrow space on her way out of the room.
“You want cash?” Kyle asked, focusing on me but not bothering to pull up his jeans.
“No, man. Trade only.” I didn’t want any traceable link between us.
“What do you want?”
“I’m getting a band together,” I said, needing to set up the request properly.
Kyle scoffed. “You’ve been getting a band together ever since I’ve known you,