“Thanks, TB.” Duke Ducane had appeared from around a corner. He was wearing a lavender suit, dark purple shirt and purple Puma Adreno soccer shoes. He may have been as old as the dirt on Jesus’s sandals, but he carried himself like an OG ready to pop at a nanosecond’s notice. “I got these assholes.”

“You’re sure, Mr. Ducane?” she said.

“Yeah, TB.” Duke stared unblinking at Tomás and me. “Maybe someday I’ll give you the go-ahead to unload on these wastes of time and space. But until then, just keep her locked and loaded.”

Duke nodded for us to walk with him. I had to slow Tomás down with a hand on his shoulder as we followed Duke down a studio hallway. In one of the studios was Detroit’s reigning white-boy king of rap spitting rhymes into a microphone. Me, I’m not much for rap, but the kid’s all right.

“Jesus, Duke,” I said. “Your new receptionist. What do your recruitment ads look like? ‘Must know Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Smith & Wesson’?”

Tomás—impatient and ready for a taste of blood—jerked my hand from his shoulder and grabbed Duke’s upper right arm. Shoving his massive chest against the one-time Black capo di tutti i capi, Tomás looked down at the shorter Ducane and said, “You sellin’ drugs in Mexicantown, pendejo?”

“I ain’t sold drugs in thirty years, pendejo,” Duke said, pushing back against Tomás’s chest with his own. “I’m a hundred percent legit. I do, however, take a lot of drugs: Metformin for type 2 diabetes. Lisinopril for my blood pressure. Prozac ’cause it’s depressing as mothafuckin’ hell living the life of a Black man in Ameri-KKK. And metoprolol for something called ‘essential tremors.’ Guess it’s karma’s way of getting back at me for all the drugs I did sell. Now, since yo breath smell like you been nursin’ on buffalo balls, back the fuck up off—”

“I just beat the living shit outta three punks claimin’ you supplied ’em,” Tomás snarled, undeterred.

“Like I said, ya big dumb wet mothafucka, I ain’t got the time, patience or inclination for that game no more,” Duke said. “Unreliable people. Margins too thin. Pharmaceutical companies got a thousand times more juice on the street than I ever had. If them punks said it was me, then they lyin’ they asses off.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that bullshit?”

“Onliest thing you supposed to do is take a bath every Saturday, go to church on Sunday, be brown and die,” Duke said. “Aside from that I don’t much give a shit what you want to, have to, supposed to or shoulda done. You believe me? Fine. You don’t believe me? Cool. Couldn’t care less.”

“You all right, boss?” I heard one of the Compton twins say in a subwoofer mountain-troll voice.