“Why don’t you just run?” I asked. “Get out of town till you can raise the money?”

“I got family here,” Teddy said. “Besides, a Paris don’t ever run. You know that.”

“That’s bullshit,” I said. “Quit your posturing before you do get killed.”

“Ain’t no bullshit,” he said. “I leave and then he fuck with a member of my family? Man, I couldn’t live with myself.”

“Can’t you just sign over something to him? Just give him your house. You can stay with me.”

“I appreciate it, brother,” he said. “I really do. But there is only one thing this mad nigga want and he ain’t getting it.”

I looked at Teddy – out of breath, sweating like hell – as he turned into the housing projects. Two men on the corner with hard eyes and wearing heavy army coats watched us turn. Teddy lowered the stereo. The heat whooshed through the car, just making the silence between us more intense.

Teddy gritted his teeth as he passed the men. “ALIAS my boy and I ain’t neva losin’ that boy. Not again.”

I watched him. “I want y’all to meet,” he said.

4

“You gonna valet this thing in Calliope?” I asked. “Or are you trying to collect insurance?”

“You don’t know who I am,” Teddy said. “Respect everything around here.”

“Even for a Ninth Warder?”

“For Teddy Paris.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

He kissed a ruby pinkie ring on his fattened little finger and gave me a wink. “You’ll see.”

Calliope soon swallowed us into endless rows of four-story colorless brick buildings seeming to sag with exhaustion. Fire escapes lined each building in V patterns; some hung loose like broken limbs. In a commons that reminded me of a prison yard, Dumpsters spilled trash onto the wide dirt ground. Along the walls of project houses, signs read NO DOG FIGHTING.

We slowed and rolled into the commons.