The boy had survived, but he had never had much of a chance until a year ago, when Revenge took him on as a confidential informant.

Revenge said, “I spoke to the arresting officer. He’s not going to show up in court.”

“You for sure?”

“I said I’d get the charges dropped.”

“You say so.”

Revenge gave the boy a paper bag. Inside were three meat-loaf sandwiches his wife had made for Traye, a bottle of chocolate milk, a bag of Chips Ahoy, twenty dollars, and a pack of smokes.

The boy opened the bag, unwrapped a sandwich with shaking hands, and said between bites, “I don’t got nothing for you.”

“It’s okay. Take your time.”

Revenge dialed up the volume on the radio. Car accident on Mansell. Domestic violence on Persia. Backup requested at the Stop ’n Save. It was a slow night.

The boy chugged down the milk, put the twenty inside his shoe, rolled up the mouth of the bag, and then put it under his shirt. He looked at Revenge.

It was thank-you enough.

“I gotta go.”

“Another time.”

Traye got out of the vehicle, crossed the street to the alley between the buildings, and went from there to a basement hole, where whatever was left in the bag would be commandeered or the kid would get hurt — or both.

The man known as Revenge worried about Traye, wondered how long he would survive. Another year? Another week?

Deafening so-called music grabbed Revenge’s attention, coming from a car heading up the avenue behind him. He checked the mirror, saw the black BMW with the death’s-head stencils on the chassis.

Okay.

Now things were getting interesting.

Revenge put the SUV in drive and when the BMW passed him, he pulled out into traffic behind it.

Chapter 33

REVENGE KNEW WHO was driving the BMW and who was going along for the ride.

Jace Winter, Bam Cox, and Little T Jackson were small-time drug dealers with long sheets for heavy crimes. They forced children into theft and females into prostitution; they broke down families; they caused destruction and desperation; and they sent young kids toward certain death.

They were, in a word, scum.

Revenge took a Boost phone from his glove compartment. He’d confiscated it during a bust and it couldn’t be traced to him. He dialed 911 as he drove up Sunnydale, the BMW’s taillights in view right up ahead.

The 911 operator asked him what his emergency was, and he put on a ghetto accent stained with panic.

“They’s a shooting going down right now. Oh God. They’s shooting at cops. They shot a cop!”

He gave an address three miles south of his current location, then clicked off and tossed the phone out the car window.

Revenge followed the BMW east on Sunnydale, and as the gangsters sped up, he followed them through the thick of the ghetto and out the other side to where the housing was single-family homes, flat fronts with garages and driveways on the street level.