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disappearing, it all went off clean and easy. When he didn’t show up afterwards at The Late Night nobody really gave it much thought. We all just figured he was off somewhere getting high. Like I said, we all knew Jamaica was off the chain with the heroin since Vickie died. He and Vickie were real close. They used to get high and hang out all the time. But, shit, hangin’ out was all Vickie ever wanted to do anyway. I laughed out loud.
    "What’s so funny?" Wanda asked.
    "Nothing really. Just thinking about Vickie."
    "Vickie? What brought that on?"
    "Been thinkin’ a lot about the old days. You know. How Vickie died and the effect it had on things."
    "It affected all of us."
    "Yeah, I guess, but not like it did Jamaica. How is he anyway?"
    "He says he’s all right, but the last time I talked to him, I don’t know, there was something funny about the way he was talking. Something about his tone brought me right back to when Vickie died."
    "Where is he?"
    "He’s in the Bahamas. Black says he has gotten himself into a few things down there. I just hope that whatever he’s into doesn’t involve drugs, is profitable, and doesn’t cause any of us any grief."
    "You think he’s back on?"
    "I don’t know, Nick. It would be a real shame, because he worked very hard to get himself clean," Wanda said and she paused. "But Jamaica wasn’t the only one who took Vickie’s death hard. The one who took it the worst was Mike."
    She was definitely right about that. And to be honest, I can’t say I would have been any better. After all, she died in his apartment. Overdosed on pure cocaine he had there. Black never did any caine, but those days he would always keep some around ’cause women would do all kinds of shit for it.
    That night we were hangin’ out; when Black saw André, he gave him some pure. Black didn’t get home until nine the next morning. He said he was getting ready to put a cut on it, but he was blasted and didn’t feel like it. So he threw the bag on the coffee table and crashed on the couch. He had been asleep a couple of hours when Vickie came in. She had a key to all of our apartments. They kicked it for a minute, and then Black passed out again. When he woke up again and decided to get in the bed, the door to his bedroom was locked. Black knocked on the door but Vickie didn’t answer. When Black noticed the bag was gone from the table, he kicked the door in and found her laying on the floor naked with the pipe still in her hand.
    After that it was like something snapped inside of him. You wouldn’t know it to see him or talk to him, but that was when he really earned the name, Vicious Black. The first time I really noticed it, he had called me and said, "Come scoop me up, I gotta make a run." Whenever he said that, we knew he was going to either collect money for André or hurt somebody for not paying. And you hated to see Black coming, ’cause you knew why he was there, and it was all bad. I picked Black up and we were on our way to see an old hustler named Wilson Goode.
    "So what’s up with good old Mr. Wilson?" I asked.
    "He owes André fifty large," Black replied.
    "For what? Wilson’s a pimp. How’d André get his hooks into him?"
    "Says Wilson came to him, wanting to borrow fifty grand. You know at twenty-five cents on the dollar André was more than happy to front it to him. When he couldn’t pay, André put that ass to work. But he’s been playin’ André off for a couple of weeks now. Cynt said that Wilson was at her spot late one night and he dropped ten grand playing poker. Said he had some young girl with him."
    "Young girl and a old man, cause of trouble since the world began," I said laughing.
    "I thought it was a two faced woman and a jealous man, that was the cause of trouble since the world began."
    "Whatever, Black." We both laughed.
    "I know the little honey he got himself hooked up with," Black said. "She’s a fine ass bitch."
    "Can I fuck her?"
    "Don’t waste your time. She