“Yo, little man,” said Dewayne to the kid riding the pegs. “Move that shit out the head of the alley so we can roll on out of here.”

The kid nodded and gave directions to the one steering the bike. They rode to the T of the side street and moved some old tires and trash cans placed there to discourage the police from entering the alley. Then they rode back and continued to circle the car. Dewayne held out a five-dollar bill to the kid on the pegs as he made a pass. The kid refused the tip with a short shake of his head. Another thing Dewayne liked about this one: He was looking toward the future. He was smart.

“Better go see Ulysses,” said Dewayne, head-motioning Walker toward his car. “Told him we’d be out.”

Dewayne got under the wheel of the Benz, and Walker got in beside him. They drove slowly down the alley, the kids on the bikes following their path. Walker got PGC up on the radio. Soon he grew tired of the commercials and scanned down to KYS. They listened to the song, that Erick Sermon joint that sampled Marvin Gaye. Marvin was a D.C. boy originally, and anything had his voice in it was all right. Least they hadn’t played this cut out, the way they liked to do.

“You think Mario’s gonna fuck up?” said Walker after a while.

“Maybe he won’t this time.”

Dewayne kept his eyes on the road and tried not to show that sick feeling he’d been having inside his stomach these days. Running a business was easy. Dealing with family, that was hard.

HORACE McKinley stood in the back window of the house on Yuma and watched Dewayne Durham’s Benz roll out the alley. McKinley, large like Biggie, looked even heftier today in his warm-up suit. He wore a large crucifix on a platinum chain that hung outside his shirt. He wore the latest And Ones on his feet. A four-finger ring, spelling YUMA in small diamonds set in gold, was fitted on his right hand.

McKinley’s body filled the window’s frame. Kids around the way called him Candyman when he was coming up, not from that horror movie but from that big fat actor whose heart went and blew up in his chest. McKinley was fat then, and he was still fat, but no one called him Candyman anymore.

He had been watching Dewayne Durham talking to that sad-ass, no-job-havin’, retard-lookin’ brother of his across the alley. If Horace had a brother like that he wouldn’t claim him. But Dewayne was soft that way. That soft spot was gonna get him dead someday, he didn’t look out.

Truth was, Dewayne didn’t seem to have the fire no more to keep up what he’d got. McKinley’d seen the way Dewayne had cut his eyes away when one of the cousins, out on the back steps, had stared him down. It was cool not to look for trouble, but sometimes you had to give a little attitude just to wake up the troops. Bottom line was, these boys were in this shit to begin with for the drama, like the way boys used to be all eager and shit to go off to war. That’s what most folks didn’t understand. But Horace McKinley did. Once in a while you had to feed your boys some conflict, just to give them something to do.

A cell phone rang behind him. He heard his man Michael Montgomery, a.k.a. Monkey Mike, talk into the phone. Then Mike was beside him by the window, hitting the “end” button on the cell.

“That was Inez over at your hair shop,” said Montgomery.

“He came back?”

Montgomery nodded. “She say he looks like some kind of police. Drivin’ a police-lookin’ car, anyway. He’s been sittin’ in the parking lot waitin’ on Devra. Look like she’s fixin’ to meet up with him, sumshit like that.”

Horace looked over at Montgomery, his arms longer than shit, his hands hanging down around his knees. How he got the name Monkey, Horace suspected. But he never had asked Montgomery to confirm it. Didn’t serve no purpose, other than to rile his ass up. Monkey was loyal, but when he was fierce he was fiercer than a motherfucker, like someone went and crossed the wires and shit inside his head. At the same time, there was something soft behind his eyes, too. McKinley had never been able to figure that part of him out.

“Better keep an eye on her,” said McKinley.

“I’ll get a couple fellas from out back.”

“Get the cousins,” said McKinley, and Montgomery went to the back steps, where James and Jeremy Coates were with the others, getting high.

McKinley mopped the sweat off his forehead as he watched through the window. Montgomery was out there now, telling the Coateses to get up and come with him. The two of them, had the same last name ’cause their fathers were brothers, stood like they were on springs. That’s what McKinley liked, how ready those two always were. Course, they were a couple of stone ’Bamas, only having lived up here for the last two years. And they drove a ’Bama car, one of those Nissans, the 240SX, trying to be a Z but wasn’t even close. But you didn’t want your boys driving whips as nice as yours, anyway. They needed to see what you had and want it bad enough to work for it their own selves. Want it bad enough, up to a point.

Horace McKinley understood a lot of things about running a business. He had learned them, mostly, from Granville Oliver, and he had learned some from Phillip Wood. Granville Oliver wasn’t comin’ out, and maybe Phil wasn’t either, but if they put Oliver down with a needle, that left Phil alive.

So he’d put his chips in with Phil. Stayed in contact with him, got him cash and cigarettes, and passed him messages through the guards at the Correctional Treatment Facility, the ones who took money to look the other way. And he kept an eye out here for those who could undermine Phillip Wood with regard to his upcoming testimony.

McKinley believed in staying on the winning side. Like every leader who had come to terms with the long-range prospects of being in the life, he knew this was going to end for him in one of two ways. Either he’d be got by one of his rivals or he’d go to prison. He might be doing time his own self someday, and if he was, he might be lookin’ to Phil Wood for protection.

He had told all of this to Mike Montgomery when Mike had asked why they were going through all this trouble. Mike couldn’t really see why they were looking after Wood when it was damn near certain that he would be in forever. The way McKinley explained it, Mike almost seemed to believe it. Almost. Anyway, Mike followed orders. He always had.

There was a good reason for McKinley’s protection of Phil Wood, and it did have to do with McKinley’s well-being. But he’d been told not to give Montgomery, or anybody else, the full, true story. Just like he’d been told to track Phil Wood’s enemies while the Oliver trial was in effect. And you couldn’t fight the ones who was doin’ the tellin’. McKinley never did have much school, but he was smart enough to know that. Smart enough to do as he was told.

One thing he did know, and that was that Granville Oliver was as good as dead. So, regardless of his motivation, there wasn’t no upside to gettin’ behind Oliver. That was the other part about being a good businessman: You had to know who to stand with when things started to come apart.