Jeremiah stepped forward, jaw tight. “Our mother gave you a chance to leave her neighborhood alone. You chose wrong.”
Evelyn Mercer had been dead three days. The story said she’d been caught in the crossfire of a convenience-store holdup. The police called it random. Her four sons knew better. Random didn’t happen to Evelyn Mercer. She was the kind of woman who’d fed half the block when the factories shut down, who’d pulled a shotgun on a drug dealer and told him, “You’re on my porch. That means you’re under my protection. Act like it.”
—the only one with a legitimate life, a wife, a mortgage, a conscience—paced the concrete floor. “We can’t just go to war over a feeling.” Four Brothers -2005-
Victor found him there an hour later. Big man. Gold rings. A smile like a razor.
Bobby pulled out a microcassette recorder and pressed play. Evelyn’s voice filled the garage: “Victor Sweet is using the old meatpacking plant on Ferry Street. Tell my boys. They’ll know what to do.” Jeremiah stepped forward, jaw tight
—the smooth one, the planner—sat on a toolbox, cleaning a revolver that wasn’t his. He hadn’t cried at the funeral. He’d just stared at the back of the head of a man named Victor Sweet, a local club owner who’d been expanding into Evelyn’s block. “She knew something,” Angel said. “And Victor knew she knew.”
Evelyn’s photo sat on the tool bench. In it, she was laughing, holding a spatula, wearing an apron that said “Kiss the Cook.” The story said she’d been caught in the
Victor himself? He woke up in the Mercer garage, tied to a chair, surrounded by four men who looked at him the way wolves look at a wounded deer.