“Frankie went in early this morning and found the front door kicked in. The whole place was wrecked, Suze. The bar stools, the chairs and tables, all smashed up. Smashed all the liquor too. They carved up the bar, and the kitchen … it was destroyed. The ovens, the grill, the dishwashing machine, all totaled. That’s where they found Gus, on the kitchen floor. He was covered in blood. Not all of it was his. They beat him with baseball bats and stuck a knife in his chest, missed his heart by a centimeter. Found a broken bat on the floor next to him, along with some teeth. Not his.”

In my mind I see Gus, about the size of a small grizzly, standing in my uncle’s bar, telling me my uncle was a tough old bird, that he would be okay. There must have been a dozen of them to take Gus on. My head starts buzzing, but this time it’s anger, a red pulse that’s going to get louder and louder and will need some sort of release, soon. “It’s the Sureños,” I say. “Whoever’s left after Bala.”

“That’s what Frankie thinks,” Ethan says.

“Anybody tell Johnny Shaw yet?”

Ethan nods. “He’s down at the bar with Frankie right now, talking to the insurance people.” He’s about to say something else when his cell rings. He answers. “Caesar? What’s up?” Ethan listens for a few seconds, then picks up the TV remote and turns on the flat-screen. “Which station?” he says into the phone, flipping through channels. He stops on the local NBC channel. On the screen, a news anchor is talking with the words GANG VIOLENCE in the upper right-hand corner. Ethan turns up the volume.

“… early morning hours in the English Avenue neighborhood, west of downtown,” the anchor says. “The gunfire resulted in two men dead and at least five injured. At the same time, a fire broke out in a local garage, and fire department officials say the cause is likely arson. Reporter Charlie Flint has the story.”

The screen cuts to video of Cargill’s garage in flames the night before, firefighters manning hoses and spraying the building with water. A reporter says no deaths or injuries were reported, then adds that the police have not yet publicly made any connections between the shootout in English Avenue and this fire, although sources have told the reporter that the Atlanta PD believes the two incidents are linked.

I hold out my hand for Ethan’s phone and he gives it to me. “This is retribution for yesterday,” I say into the phone.

“That’s what it looks like,” Caesar says.

My head buzz is rising in volume, a song of the damned. “I need you to find the Sureños for me.”

There’s a pause. “We’re not going to war with the Sureños,” Caesar says.