7. Tremaine “Trigger” Marks #2
I leaned forward until the cologne on his jacket thought about leaving.
“You’re in a bowling alley with a man you’d call a felon if a camera asked and another, you’d call a consultant.
We ain’t here for rhymes. We’re here because you don’t know how to lose without breaking your toy.
I’m the toy doctor. You cry again, and I smack your hand. ”
Saint’s mouth almost twitched. “Done with the lane?”
“Done,” I stated with finality. “Friday. You bring the sheriffs and light it up like your Christmas party. I’ll bring a reason for them to stand near the gate and look concerned. You’ll get your show. Maybe even a speech.”
Whit stood. “What about the camera boys on the block? I see one everywhere. Skinny, toothpick in his lip, thinking he Scorsese with EBT.”
“Toothpick Tony,” I confirmed. “He’s the soundtrack. He ain’t the movie. I’ll park him where he thinks he found everything on his own.”
We stepped back into the rain. It was thick now. God’s reminding the city who’s boss. I took my helmet, looked at Saint. “You talk to Nova tonight?”
He waited half a second. “I drop off groceries, not words.”
“You drop both,” I told him. “Just decide which one you want remembered when the door gets kicked in.”
His eyes didn’t blink. “Doors that get kicked in deserve it.”
I chuckled because I liked him. Not enough to trust him. Enough to plan with him.
Whit slid back into the SUV and the tinted glass ate his silhouette. Saint didn’t move until we were gone. He walked away without another word, umbrella closing like a mouth.
Paranoia crawled under my collar as I rode.
Every streetlight blinked felt like a signal, every set of headlights slowed just a hair too long.
Saint posted up in the shadows, Darius moving like a man who never dirtied his shoes—none of them were careless.
Which meant somebody else was. Nova’s face stayed sharp in my head.
That house. That baby. And me in the middle, playing chess on a board where every piece bleeds.
The Crest talked in whispers, but it screamed through patterns if you watched long enough.
I wasn’t just watching tonight. I was marking.
Testing. Leaving reminders that I could be quiet too.
I rode alone to her block because some errands don’t need an audience. Doesn’t take long. My bike knows the way to every door that matters. The rain on my visor made the streetlights smear like someone rubbed the truth out with their thumb.
Her windows were on the second floor, left of the cracked gutter.
Lamp low. Baby breathing a rhythm that leaks through drywall if you ever slept too close to noise.
I parked my bike two blocks down and walk because engines scare good sleep.
I brought a paper bag with nothing in it, so my hands look honest.
A truck sat idled across the street. Headlights off, engine rumbling. Flicker-flicker—two quick taps of brights. That was Saint. He doesn’t wave. I don’t either. Men who wave at each other in the dark ain’t men.
I go up the stairs. The third step creaked underneath my weight.
I put my heel where the nail sat. Habit.
I didn’t knock. I didn’t test locks. I placed a chalk crown on the door, waist high, where a child saw it before a woman does.
Soft chalk. White. Rain will take it in an hour.
That’s how you mark turf without getting charged for the graffiti.
Footsteps inside. Slow, careful. The chain slid. A shadow under the door breathes once. I step back so the peephole catches only the paper bag I ain’t carrying.
“Who?”
Her voice. Sober. No tremor. She learned quick.
“Wrong door,” I called back, and let the hall soak in the words. I go back down quiet, took the middle of each step so the wood groaned honest. People trusted squeaks more than silence.
Saint’s brights blinked once. He saw the crown and hated that he didn’t get to erase it himself. Good. Men like him need friction or they think their prayers are working too well.
At the corner I watched her blinds lift a thumb’s width. A fingertip wiped the chalk. Not scared. Offended. Better.
I turned the corner and caught the Ducati-white ghost sliding past the pharmacy that only believed in S’s and A’s.
D tapped two fingers off his temple in a salute he didn’t earn.
I didn’t tap back. He ain’t my flag. I trod toward the block I left my bike on, because for now…
I was finished with this block. I’d see Nova and little miss Aaliyah soon.
The chalk dust was still on my fingers when I hit the clubhouse. Same rain on my shoulders, same thoughts in my head. The kind of thoughts that rattle louder than pipes in winter. The kind of thoughts that make men drink faster just to drown the sound.
Inside, the boys were loud like sirens that forgot the whole city wasn’t a crime.
I let them, though. I wanted a certain kind of noise tonight, the kind that sounded like confidence and smelled like beer.
Jinx sat in the corner near the busted jukebox, hands quiet.
He’s the kind of quiet that makes rooms forget he’s there.
He’s the one I want to handle what needs to be handled with the mayor’s boy.
I slid into the shadow beside him. He doesn’t look up.
He knows me by the way the air moved around my boots.
“You carrying anything new?” I interrogated.
His mouth makes a line. “I carry what pays.”
“I’ll pay to not carry.”
He blew smoke into a slow coil. “That costs more.”
I grinned because I liked math when he spoke it. “Friday,” I affirmed. “I don’t want a jam. I want choreography. Folks must be where they need to be when the first siren gets boring.”
“You calling the siren?” he quizzed, which is the way a smart man askes you if your dumb. Everyone knows that you not supposed to alert anyone about anything in the hood.
“They’ll come for free,” I countered, with a sinister grin creeping across my face. “Cameras make cops itch.”
He nodded once. “What you want from me?”
“Ro,” I asserted. The name’s a tool. “Steer him to the gate, not the center. Make sure a mic lands when his mouth opens. His bike needs to idle too loud.”
“Dirty?”
“Dirty is for suckers,” I answered. “I want his sin to be his own. I’ll supply him a crowd.”
Jinx tapped ash, eyes on nothing. “He bleeds in public; the block gets loud. Loud gets messy. Messy attracts the wrong jobs.”
“You want it clean?” I tilted my head. “Let me show you a mop.”
Jinx stared a heartbeat longer, then nodded once. He ain’t mine. He ain’t theirs. He’s physics; he does what the room tells him, but I know these rooms around here.
Mouse hustled over, timid like a fly that learned to whisper. “Inspection date landed,” he confirmed. “Kitchen. Monday. They gave us courtesy and by ‘us’ I mean them.”
I raised a finger, and Mouse handed me the paper before I could ask. Good boy. Lani will get a fresh copy under the door by morning. She’ll boil the kettle and think hard. Cruz will snarl and shake a hand nobody can see. This is how you move people without touching them.
“You ever wonder if Ro knows?” Mouse asked, curious enough to die young.
“Knows what?”
“That you… touched Sal’s last run.”
The room turned to a pin. I could bury this kid under the floor in two steps. Instead, I let the question sit because I wanted to hear it bounce off the walls.
I leaned back until the chair complained. “Touched?” my voice echoed around us. “I touch everything. That’s why we still got a roof.”
Mouse swallowed. I didn’t blink.
Sal’s last run. It sits in my throat sometimes, like a seed with a bad idea.
He took a route I gave him and then ignored a call I didn’t.
He was superstitious about two things: funerals and detours.
I couldn’t detour him without announcing to men who count that I caused the detour.
Sal died because he trusted that his old math still added.
It didn’t. Not because of me. Because time played dice with men who brag about calendars.
Did I feel anything? Sure. I felt efficient. The club didn’t burn. The police didn’t get a ladder into our bedroom. The shippers kept shipping. We lost our president that night and I became a compass. Grief’s a luxury for children and poets. I ain’t either.
I stood to my feet, boots scuffling against the old warn floor. “Shut it down at two,” I told Tino. “No stragglers. I want Friday lean.”
“Trigger,” he stated, stopping me in my tracks.
I turned. He didn’t ask it. He doesn’t have to. The men wanted to know what I wanted them to chant.
“Friday ain’t a funeral,” I announced. “It’s a mirror. If you don’t like what you see, fix your hair.”
They laughed because the thought of hair on some of these heads is the funniest thing I’ve said all week.
“I’m out…” I voiced and headed out the door. The night was still young, but I couldn’t sit around like a duck waiting to be sized up. I needed to move around. Time would tell everything we needed to know.
The clubhouse heat stuck to my jacket as I stepped into rain that washed the air clean.
Nights like this make a man restless, make him trace his own routes twice just to see if anyone else is tracing them too.
My bike rumbled low, and the road pulled me like it always does—away from laughter that sounded too sharp and toward streets that remember every secret they’ve swallowed.
On the ride home I cut past Tino’s yard. The sagging string lights and mismatched chairs turned the space into a stage—just a palette and a couple of milk crates holding up the scene. It would look like a party until it looked like a crime. Good scenes do that. They don’t turn. They slip.