Page 95 of Omar

He had a point. I didn't want him to have a point but he did.

"If something comes up," I said carefully, "if you hear something or see something that's connected to the operation or to Pops, you bring it to me. You don't act on it, you don't confront anyone, you don't start fights in bars. You bring it to me or Kadeem. That's the deal."

"Done."

"And if I tell you to stay somewhere or go somewhere during the operation, you do it. No arguments, no pushback. If I say stay at Ma's house, you stay at Ma's house."

"Fine."

"Rashid."

"I said fine, O. I hear you." He sat back on the couch. "But for the record, I been staying at Ma's house my whole life. I know how to do that."

Despite everything, I almost smiled. "You sound like Pops right now."

"Good." Rashid picked up one of his notebooks from the coffee table and turned it over in his hands. "Somebody should."

We sat there for a while. The apartment was quiet without the music playing, just the city noise coming through the windows, the traffic and the sirens and the baseline hum of Brooklyn at night. Rashid's notebook was open on his lap, pages covered in lyrics I couldn't read from where I was sitting.

"You scared?" he asked.

"Of what?"

"Of what happens when you go into Supreme's territory and try to take everything from him."

"Scared ain't the right word."

"Then what is?"

I thought about it. "Focused. There's a lot riding on this. If we get it wrong, people die. Our people."

"And if you get it right?"

"Supreme's done. TK loses his funding. The territory stabilizes. And maybe, if Devon can follow the money far enough, we find out what happened to Pops."

Rashid closed his notebook. "Then get it right."

"Planning on it."

"O."

"Yeah?"

"When this is over, when Supreme's handled and the territory's secure, I want in on the Pops thing. For real. I want to be at the table when you and Kadeem go through the evidence. I want to see the documents, hear the names, understand what we're looking at. I'm done being the little brother who gets told after the fact."

I looked at him across the small apartment. Pops' photo on the shelf behind him, Pops' eyes in his face, Pops' stubbornness in every word.

"When this is over," I said. "Yeah. You'll be at the table."

"Promise me."

"I promise."

He nodded once. Then he reached for the speakers, turned the music back on, and the apartment filled with a beat he'd been working on. Something heavy, something with weight. He picked up a pen and started writing in his notebook, his lips moving silently over words I couldn't hear.

I stayed for another twenty minutes. He didn't look up from his writing. He didn't need to. We'd said what needed saying and now he was turning it into music. That was Rashid. Everything went through the notebook eventually.

I let myself out. Took the stairs down to the street. Stood by my car for a minute looking up at the fourth-floor window where the light was on behind his black door.