That bitch! No doubt she was out fucking some sleazebag on the assumption the roses came from him, or whoever she had been banging last, or maybe the guy before that. A thousand or more! What a slut! He might have known. Christ, what an idiot he was! He gives his own mother a four-dollar bouquet from Dominick’s along with a “Sorry I’m late” birthday card, and he sends three dozen roses to a whore.

His mother, Christ. The last time she bailed him out he had promised to shovel her walk whenever it snowed. Clifford felt a pang of guilt over that one but not enough to make concessions or amends. Bridges were burning, but he was running nonstop on the hamster wheel of life. All of his pocket cash went for injections of testosterone and that fountain of youth—human growth hormone. To get the amphetamine rush from the stuff, he had to use more and more, until he was exceeding the recommended dosage two-hundred-fold. He couldn’t drop it cold turkey, and his efforts to wean himself were in vain. Shit, he was spending more on hormones than a junkie with the biggest habit on the South Side. One minute things were under control, and then suddenly the whole shithouse came down. He felt like a supersonic jet pulling ten Gs in an all-out screaming nosedive. Like a doomed rocket manned by Daffy Duck. He could feel himself smash through the earth’s crust, bore through layers of packed sediment and superheated rock until he came to a grinding halt at the planet’s core. Steroids. Juice.

Maura was not home the next night either. Sitting alone in the bridge house while she was out cheating on him was almost more than he could bear. Heartbroken, he scanned the third floor of Hudson & Swain. The bloods had DJ Screw going strong again. The door to the cutting room was wide open and so was the door of the safe. DJ Screw. The fucking shit was driving Clifford nuts.

It seemed like an out-of-body experience. He patted the blackjack he carried in his side pocket. From on high he watched himself stalk out of the bridge house determined to exact retribution. He crossed the street, and then it was up the cigarette-and-syringe-strewn stairway to the drug den. Ding-dong. He saw a shadow cast over the peephole. Big Boy asked, “What is it?”

“Your pizza,” Clifford said.

“We didn’t order no goddamn pizza. Plus, I don’t see no pizza in your hand, gray boy.”

“Okay, motherfucker, make that fried chicken.”

Big Boy opened the door with a gun in his hand. “I’ll pop a cap in your ass right now,” he said.

“Go ahead, do that. Every cop, SWAT team, and National Guard will burn you to the ground.”

“Get the fuck out of my face! I ain’t goin’ tell you twice. Get lost!”