CHAPTER 19
NEW ORLEANS
Their faces made it onto local news within days of the fire — grainy footage from a nearby traffic camera, enough to draw attention without quite confirming identity, though anyone who knew Varnell or Chucky J well enough would've recognized the outlines immediately.
No arrests followed, no direct leads connecting them formally to the scene, but the exposure alone was enough to make staying anywhere familiar feel like a countdown neither of them wanted to test.
Varnell called Demarcus first, voice low and controlled despite everything still churning underneath.
"I need you to hold something for me," Varnell said, arranging to meet him briefly at a gas station far enough from either of their usual spots to feel safe.
He handed over a folded envelope of cash along with careful directions — instructions for handling certain accounts, contacts to maintain, arrangements to keep the Florida and NYC operations running smooth even with him gone from the picture indefinitely.
"You scaring me," Demarcus said, studying his brother's face with open concern. "Tell me what happened."
"Can't. Not yet. Just need you to trust me and hold this down till I can come back proper."
Demarcus's jaw tightened, clearly unsatisfied with the lack of explanation, but something in Varnell's exhaustion, in the hollowed weight behind his eyes, kept him from pushing further than a brother's worry allowed. "Okay," he said finally. "I got you. Whatever you need."
"One more thing." Varnell hesitated, this part costing him more than the money had. "Take care of Ma. Don't let her worry more than she has to. And Angellisa — check on her too, if you can, without telling her where I'm at."
Demarcus nodded slow, filing away the weight of everything being asked of him without fully understanding the shape of the danger driving it. "I will. Just — come back to us, Varnell. Whatever this is."
? ? ?
The call to Larkin's office was more delicate, requiring a careful navigation of what could be said plainly and what needed to stay implied.
"I need a refill," Varnell told him, voice steady despite the exhaustion pressing down on him. "Enough to last me at least six months. I won't be able to make regular visits for a while."
A pause on Larkin's end, calculation audible even through the silence. "That's an unusual request. Is everything alright?"
"Just handling something. Need to know I'm covered while I do."
"I can arrange that," Larkin said carefully, "though I'll admit, going that long without proper monitoring carries risk, particularly given your specific situation."
"I know the risk. Need the medicine more than I need the check-ins right now."
Larkin agreed eventually, arranging a discreet handoff through an intermediary rather than risking a direct visit, the transaction completed with a professionalism that didn't fully mask the doctor's evident curiosity about what exactly had driven Varnell into hiding.
? ? ?
Chucky J handled the logistics of where to go, calling in yet another favor from his sprawling network of contacts, this one leading them south to New Orleans — far enough from Newark and New York and even Miami that neither of them expected familiar faces to find them easily, a city loud and chaotic enough to swallow two strangers whole without much notice.
"We stay quiet down there," Chucky J explained on the drive south, the two of them trading shifts behind the wheel through hours of empty highway. "No product, no operation, at least not at first. Just survive till the heat cools enough up north to figure our next move."
They arrived exhausted, the city's humid, sprawling energy a stark contrast to everything either of them had grown used to navigating, jazz and Spanish moss and a rhythm to daily life that felt almost foreign after years spent moving fast through concrete and static.
Before doing much else, they made the decision to change their appearances — a precaution against the lingering possibility that their faces, however grainy the footage, might still circulate somewhere they couldn't control.
Chucky J shaved his head clean, let his beard grow out rough and unfamiliar over the following weeks, transforming from the sharp, put-together operator Varnell had known into someone rougher around the edges, harder to place at a glance.
Varnell, for his part, let his hair grow out and started locking it, the curls that had marked him as different since childhood twisting slowly into something new, a version of himself that felt, oddly, more his own than anything he'd worn before.
"You look like a different person," Chucky J told him, studying the early progress with something like approval.
"Feel like one too," Varnell admitted, and meant it more than he expected to.
? ? ?
They found work where they could in those first weeks, cash jobs that asked no questions, staying under whatever radar existed for two young men without local roots or documentation anybody bothered checking too closely.
It was through one of those jobs — unloading crates behind a club on a street thick with music and noise most nights — that they crossed paths with a man everyone in the area seemed to know simply as Big Stable Steve.
He was a large man, easy laughter contrasting with sharp, assessing eyes, dressed sharp in a way that stood out even against the city's colorful backdrop, moving through the neighborhood with the comfortable authority of someone who owned more of it, in various unspoken ways, than most people realized.
"Y'all new," Steve said, approaching them one evening outside the club with an easy, unhurried confidence. "Ain't seen you round before, and I know everybody round here."
"Just passing through," Chucky J said, careful, giving away nothing.
Steve studied them both a long moment, something calculating behind his friendly demeanor, before breaking into an easy grin. "Passing through always end up staying a while down here, if the city like you. And I got a feeling it might like y'all."
He extended an invitation — a drink, a conversation, nothing pressuring in the moment beyond simple curiosity about two clearly capable young men who'd wandered into his territory.
Varnell and Chucky J exchanged a glance, some silent agreement passing between them that making an ally in unfamiliar territory couldn't hurt, whatever complications might come wrapped up inside that alliance later.
"Alright," Chucky J said. "One drink."
Steve's grin widened, already leading them toward a bar down the block, the beginning of an association neither of them yet understood the full weight of, in a city that had already started reshaping both of them into people they hadn't been before they arrived.