Jah and Spooky walked fast, but didn’t run up Eighth Avenue. Over Jah’s shoulder, he held a laundry bag containing over two hundred thousand dollars in small bills, and the guns they had used to murder the St. Nick hustlers. Rel wasn’t shit in life, but he did turn out to be useful for something in the end.

When he tossed Rel off the roof, he and Spooky headed downstairs to finish Slick. Spooky suggested they do it another time, as the police were surely on the way, but Jah wouldn’t hear it. He was determined not to let another night go by with debts still to be paid.

The initial knock on the door was met by gunfire, as Jah suggested it might. Slick was so scared that he emptied the whole clip and didn’t kill anything but the apartment door. While he was preoccupied, Jah made his way around the back of the building and climbed the few feet to the bathroom window. Slick never even saw it coming when the youngster clocked him in the back of the head with his pistol, knocking him unconscious.

When Slick woke up, he was ass-naked and tied to his bed. Jah questioned him about the rape, but Slick insisted he didn’t know what Jah was talking about, which he didn’t. He continued to try and tell them that they were about to kill an innocent man, but Jah didn’t give a shit. Whether he took part in the rape or not wouldn’t have saved his life. His innocence in the rape didn’t change the fact that he had tried to murder Jah and he had to go. They didn’t toy with him like they did Rel, but his death was just as painful, if not more so, as it took him a few minutes to die even after Jah had blown his shithole out.

Jah felt weary after the hit. He had shot plenty of cats in his day, but it was never like this. The times he had killed before had been about survival or a dollar, but the murders of Slick and his crew were about something else. Jah had killed those men because he hated them. When he squeezed that trigger, he poured every bit of hate and selfloathing he could muster into the deed. Now that they were dead, the hate was gone, leaving a feeling of accomplishment and closure.

“How much you think we made off with?” Spooky asked.

“I don’t know, and we damn sure ain’t gonna stop to count it right now. We gotta get low,” Jah told him. “Check it, take this,” he said and handed Spooky the bag. “Stash the guns and we’ll dump them when the heat dies down.”

“You’re finally giving up that old forty-cal?”