Little Layer's Arc

Chapter 7 of 7

The corner ran clean now. Layer spoke, the crew moved. Jason ran the war two blocks over, and Layer held the block. But a right hand answers for the man above him. So when Jason called Layer to the lot behind his apartment block, Layer went. A soldier had crossed a line, and Jason wanted it handled where the crew could watch. The soldier was one of Dreads Washington's old street contacts, a man with long dreadlocks who ran product on loan. He stood in the lot with a bundle of bills in his fist. Layer knew the face. This was the man they called Marcus Dread, small-time, loud, and behind on what he owed. He had spent the week telling anyone who listened that Jason was soft, that the Knee brothers borrowed their power from Big L's ghost. Jason walked into the lot slow. His boots crushed broken glass. He did not raise his voice. That was the part that scared people. "You been talking," Jason said. Dread lifted the cash. "I got your money right here. We square." "Keep it." Jason stopped close. "Money don't fix a mouth." Layer read the lot. The crew stood in a loose ring, watching. He saw what Jason saw. If Dread walked, every man here learned that disrespect cost nothing. Fear would leak out of the block like air from a tire. Dread must have felt it too. He turned to go. He laughed, short and mean, and threw the words over his shoulder. "Nobody tells me how to run my crew." Jason drew and fired. One shot. Dread dropped in the glass, the bundle of bills spilling loose across the dirt. The sound bounced off the apartment walls and died. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. The cash lay there in the open, and not one soldier reached for it. Layer stood still. He had killed men. He knew the weight of it. But this was Jason's hand, in front of Layer's crew, on Layer's ground. The line they had drawn blurred. Jason ran the war. Jason had just run the corner. Jason holstered the gun and looked at the crew. "That's the price," he said. Then he looked at Layer. "Clean it up." Across the street, a big man stood in the shadow of a doorway. Long dreadlocks. Hard face. Dreads Washington had come hunting, as he always did, working back through the men who let his son get set up. He watched the body, watched Jason walk off, watched Layer left standing over the mess. Dreads crossed the street. He did not look at the dead man. He looked at Layer. "He kills on your block," Dreads said. "Your name on it now. Not his." He did not say it twice. He walked on toward his own hunt. Layer looked down at the spilled cash and the body cooling in the glass. The chain of command he had built held one way on paper. In the dirt, it had just broken. Jason took the shot. Layer would answer for it.