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but there was no way that he would tell his mother that Broady was actually to blame for most of what had happened. Junior’s body felt hot, and his healing gunshot wound began to throb from the adrenaline pulsing through his body. His head pounded with a migraine-caliber headache at the base of his skull. He squeezed his eyes shut and let the silence in the room settle around him—the calm before the storm.
    Phil, the leader of the uptown crew of drug dealers, had crossed the line when he touched Junior’s mother. Junior and Phil had called a truce years ago. It was agreed that Junior would run the Brooklyn street empire, and Phil would remain Uptown. They were supposed to be peers in the game, on the same level, but Phil had reached down too far. Junior would never have thought to touch any member of Phil’s family. Junior had even told Phil that it was Junior’s hotheaded brother, Broady, who had harmed Phil’s little brother, Carmelo. Junior thought Phil understood, but now he knew different.
    Junior’s eyes were ablaze, and his nostrils were flared. He felt the strong desire to grab his mother into his arms and comfort her with a hug. He hadn’t hugged his mother since he was a small child. Betty was never real big on affection. It was a wall that her children simply acknowledged as insurmountable. Though she never told them with words or actions that she loved them, they knew she did in her own way. But perhaps this urge to comfort his mother was merely an excuse to receive it in return. Obviously, sorting out the truth with his mother about his real father was a conversation Junior would have to have another day and time. He couldn’t wait to get back to the streets. He had tried his best to prevent a war from happening, but Phil and his crew had pushed Junior to his limit.
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    â€œI’ve told you all that I know!” Avon Tucker screamed, clenching his fists so tight his knuckles paled. He looked around at all of the accusatory faces and bit down into his jaw. This was some bullshit. It had been two weeks since the shootings that had claimed his partner’s life, and he was still being interrogated as if he were the bad guy.
    The DEA, NYPD and, of course, the FBI had converged on the scene, each wanna-be-in-charge acronym vying for jurisdiction over the scene. Avon had raised his hands like a suspect, his street clothes, obligatory diamond Jesus piece and long chain not helping him make the case that he was actually an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agent.
    Immediately following the shooting, Avon was treated like a victim. At first, he was given time to “think things over.” He was taken under the wing of the Employee Assistance Program. This was called the “get your story together” time among law enforcement officers—a week’s worth of meetings with EAP shrinks, and strict isolation from the media and the U.S. Attorney’s Office investigators. In fact, this was his first “on the record” interview regarding the incident, and everyone wanted a piece of it.
    Avon’s role as “victim” somehow blurred into “suspect” as probing, accusatory questions seemed to become the order of the day. Where was Tucker when Brubaker had been shot? Had he identified himself as a DEA agent? How long had he been undercover? Wasn’t it true he had committed violations of the undercover rule, and only Brubaker had knowledge of this? Did he blame Brubaker for the first shooting incident of his career?
    That question had struck a raw nerve with Avon. He didn’t like anyone mentioning the accident he’d been involved in that resulted in a fifteen-year-old unarmed boy dying during an early-morning drug raid, early in his career. It was a memory he couldn’t shake anytime someone brought it up. It had been a highly dangerous and high-profile drug raid on the home of a well-known drug dealer that had