PRL Serials

Previously on Old Man Young and the Bronx Avenger

In the Empire State

When Sonny first arrived in New York, he got off the bus at Penn Station. He had never been to the city before and he was excited to see it in person. The biggest city that he’d experienced to that point was Charlotte, NC and though the uptown has skyscrapers and even a light rail train, he was astounded by the view through his window as the bus drove into downtown Manhattan. Sure, he’d seen the city on tv before, but to see it in person was inspiring. He saw the huge buildings and bridges and thought of all the people that existed there, that he would exist among them and become one of the greatest of them. 

He gathered his things after the bus arrived and he was amazed at the inside of the underground bus terminal, all of the people swarming like ants. He got caught in the stream headed up towards the subway terminal and he was shocked that the crowd never seemed to cease. When he was in the subway terminal, he saw that the reception on his cell phone had returned and he called Corey, the guy he was to meet and take him to the home of his new boss, a man named Darker that friends of friends had introduced him to. Just as Sunny was dialing the number, a man ran into him and knocked the phone to the ground.

“Sorry about that, I wasn’t watching where I was going.” The man was obviously homeless, he smelled like he hadn’t showered in years, and Sonny was trying not to be too upset. The man bent and picked up Sonny’s phone, returned it to him and continued to apologize, inching closer and closer to Sonny who pulled away in disgust.

“It’s fine man. Be on your way, have a good one.”

“Can you spare some change or something?” The man asked.

Sonny rummaged his pockets and found some change that he threw behind the homeless man. “Sorry about that, go get it, it’s yours.” The man scrambled for it, thanking Sonny all the while and Sonny made his phone call. 

“I’ll be there in a sec, just hold tight,” Corey told him, and soon he emerged from the crowds of people underground. 

“I should’ve told you to meet me up on the street, I was just getting some food. You hungry?”

“No, I’m fine.” Sonny had packed plenty of food to avoid spending unnecessary money at restaurants on the bus ride up. 

“Cool, you ready then? My car’s parked close, you won’t have to worry about coming down here anymore.”

Sonny collected his bags and checked his pockets to be sure everything was in the proper place. He panicked when he realized his wallet was gone. “It was in my pocket. I hope I didn’t lose it on the bus.”

“Calm down,” Corey said, “did you take it out at any point?”

“No, I haven’t even bought anything. The last time I reached in my pocket was to throw money at that bum over there.”

Corey eyed the man. “I got you, man.”

Sonny watched as Corey approached the homeless man. They seemed to be talking normally until Corey grabbed his hand and the homeless man yelled in pain. Some people passing watched the scene with concern, most just kept walking. Sonny heard bones in the old man’s hand snap before he produced Sonny’s wallet, that Corey snatched quickly. “Everything better still be in here too,” Corey said as he walked away. “Check it, make sure you got everything. God, I hate the subway.”

This week, The Avenger under fire in the land of the longleaf pine…

Winston Salem feels like the same place that he left, though there are newer versions of restaurant buildings and some businesses that Sonny doesn’t recognize. He doesn’t feel that he has come to a foreign place though; the routes to the places he needs to go are unchanged and it is a welcomed change of scenery. Though NY has become his home, it is good to break the monotony of grey sidewalks and weathered brick and stone that are the tall buildings of the city. Winston Salem is green and it has lush trees and other vegetation in the balmy summer heat that makes sweat slowly trickle down behind his ears. He rides with his windows down and he can smell it all baking in the heat, the fresh scent of growth mostly untethered in patches of woods or overgrown areas beside the road. He decides to stop in and see his kids at the homes of their mothers and he isn’t surprised to see that both of the mothers are driving expensive cars and wearing nice clothing and jewelry. He figured that they use the support money he provides for things like that, but his kids are healthy and happy and have the things they need so he doesn’t complain. One of the mothers, Deshawna, tries to hold him up at her place and though she does look just as good as he remembers in her tight jeans that made her backside look perfectly round and squeezable, Sonny resists the temptation.

“I hardly ever hear from you and when you finally show up, you in and out.” She complains.

“We ain’t been together for years, and when we was, all we did was fight,” Sonny says. “Anyway, you got what you want now, right? I ain’t never late with that money.”

She rolls her eyes. “Go on then if you think that. We only fought so much cause you made me worry all the time.”

Sonny leaves before she can draw him into an argument and his next stop is his mother’s home where he catches the same grief.

“I’m yo mama, boy. I appreciate that you help me out, but it would be nice to see you every once in awhile.”

Sonny doesn’t want to tell her that it’s best this way. That men who live his life are essentially on borrowed time before they are killed somehow, and the sooner his loved ones learned to cope with his not being around, the better it was for them. Sonny accepted that long ago when his father died. For all the rewards his lifestyle afforded, there were very clear dangers to his life and he couldn’t risk close proximity to people who could become innocent casualties. It is very possible that his mother has already learned this lesson but she is holding out hope that he will change his course and decide to live for the people who love him.

“Mama, I know what you saying and I’m sorry, but my work takes me where it takes me.”

She insists that he eats and she watches him with a proud smile in the kitchen he had paid to have renovated. She has a nice oven and marble countertops with hidden stovetop burners. His mother lives in the same house that Sonny had grown up in, but he has paid for significant improvements that made it the nicest home in the neighborhood. He could die happy knowing he’d been able to give it to her.

Of course his mother protests when he leaves her, she knows that he is headed into danger that he can avoid if he wants to. But she can’t keep him, Sonny is on a mission that he would see to whatever end.

In the projects not far from his mother’s home, Sonny slow rides the streets looking for familiar faces. Most of the houses are duplexes and there are kids playing in the tall grass outside many of them. If the man Smoke was right, he will find someone here who can lead him to Fire but none of the kids on the block who are obviously selling drugs look familiar. They do, but only because he recognizes himself in them, young and naive to the opportunities they ignore that could give them a different life. Maybe those opportunities are limited, but they are not nonexistent, Sonny knows that. The life of a dope pusher is just the easiest to navigate when you have nothing to start with, or when it is the inherited trade. Sonny decides to ask around for people he had known all those years ago before he left. He stops a boy on the corner who offers him drugs.

“Nah, I’m looking for somebody. You know Trey, or Deon?” The boy says that both are dead and Sonny feels a pang of guilt that two of his closest friends had died without his even realizing it.

“Them niggas was stupid, trying to fight Fire. When he took over, he killed everybody that acted stupid.” The boy says.

“What they do? You know?”

“I don’t know, man, they thought they could run they own shit. But ain’t nobody selling shit in NC if they don’t wanna pay Fire.”

“Anybody else still around that knew them? I used to sell out here, trying to reconnect.”

The boy sends him to the main stash house that he remembers well enough, and Sonny doesn’t see the boy make a call as he drives away. Sonny had lived there at one point and he would go days without showering because the place didn’t have indoor plumbing. It had pipes, but no one paid bills there. There was also no electricity and people used candles or flashlights at night. It wasn’t a safe place to live because dangerous men with guns and drug fiends came and went, but at the time, Sonny wore it as a badge of honor that he’d been able to survive it. It drove his mother crazy. 

At the stash house, Sonny is overcome with memories of his past and he stands beside his car looking at it. He’d only ever known hard times there, mostly fights and dirt and regret, but it was his and he didn’t realize that he missed it so much.

As he approaches the house, gun shots rip through the windows that are already mostly shattered glass and Sonny ducks instinctively. His first thought is that he just needs to get back to his car before the shooter gets lucky; obviously the shooter is a terrible shot if he couldn’t hit him on the first try. 

He manages to make it back inside where he pulls a gun from under his seat and he eyes the front of the house. Suddenly, the front door bursts off its hinges and an older man walks out with guns in both hands.

“I knew you was comin’, but I thought you would come better than this. You in over your head boy. Don’t play with Fire and think you won’t get burned.”

Sonny doesn’t recognize the man. It could be Fire, but he had only ever seen him briefly and many years ago.

“That was a lame thing to say!” Sonny yells. “This ain’t no action movie, nigga!”

The man doesn’t seem to have back up and Sonny eases out of the car away from the man who approaches cautiously.

The man laughs. “That was good, stop hatin’. So, before you die, tell me what you want with Fire.”

“You talk in the third person? Double lame.” Sonny is doing his best to ensure that once he shoots, new players won’t emerge from the stash house, or from some other surprise location, but it seems that most everyone in the vicinity has fled the scene.

“Third person?” The man asks, he is close to the car and confirms that Sonny is no longer inside. He shoots from both guns, smashing windows and damaging the interior.

“And you dumb as fuck too? I gotta shut you up now.” When the man stops shooting, Sonny darts up and aims for the man’s arms, then his legs. The man screams out in pain as he falls to the ground. Sonny approaches quickly, kicking the man’s guns away.

“You Fire?” Sonny yells.

“Fuck nah,” the man manages through moans.

“Why you come shooting at me like that?”

“Cause you stank like New York and Fire paying a lot of money for dead Yankees.” The man is in real pain but he is doing his best not to show it. Sonny knows that he won’t survive without medical attention soon.

The man squints up at Sonny as he calls for help. And when he hangs up the phone, the man on the ground losing his life says, “Sonny? Is that you?”

Sonny doesn’t recognize him and he kneels closer. 

“I heard you was doing big shit,” the man is weaker and his voice is softer.

Sonny remembers, it’s Pot, one of the men who lived in the stash house when he came to live there. Pot got his name because he usually cooked for the dope boys who slept in the house, but it was always a soup of whatever edible things he could find that melded into a barely edible gruel in the one big pot in the run down kitchen where he started fires where the oven should be. Apparently Pot had graduated from cook.

“What you doing with a gun, Pot? That ain’t you.” Sonny is sad, he would cry if he remembered how.

“I was chasing big time like you.” Pot manages before his eyes close. Sonny doesn’t know if the man dies, but sirens are approaching and he runs off, taking the discrete path behind the stash house that he remembers will take him to his mother’s house. 

And lastly, in Knoxville, TN

Detective Young is scratching his head at the morgue. He stands with Ivan, the morgue assistant, outside the room where the body of a mangled person is being inspected carefully by men in hazmat suits.

“What the hell is going on in there?” Young had been called to the morgue to take a statement for the department. “And where the hell is your boss? Why is he never around?”

Ivan shakes his head mournfully. “There is so much going on nowadays. There were two drug related bodies down in Westover yesterday and he’s assisting. Seems like there’s some trouble brewing in the area.”

“Them dope boys. They can’t sell drugs for killing each other. I’m on it though, son, don’t you worry. Criminals think they can outsmart me just end rotting in cells.” Young is trying to be lighthearted, but Ivan is right about the rising number of shooting deaths in the area. It is disheartening and his investigations are moving at a snail’s pace without cooperation from the communities where the bodies turn up. And his undercover officers are hitting walls like the drug dealers know to keep them out of the loop. Every lead he gets comes up empty and his main target, Yuri, is lying lower than a bed without a frame.

“What on earth have we got here?” Young changes the subject. “This drug related? It’s like a quarantine in there.”

Ivan shakes his head again. “It’s definitely not drug related. Whatever they found, they had to call the CDC out. I haven’t been able to get near it detective, but I’m supposed to brief you when they finish their report. I’m sure they’re gonna take the body with them when they’re done; it’s all messed up from what I could get a glimpse of. Wish I had more to tell you.” But Ivan is not being completely truthful with the detective. He has seen bodies like the one in the room before and he had followed a trail of them all the way to Knoxville to put a stop to it.

“Well, meet me at the station when you know more, I’ll log it there. And when all this hoopla is done, I need you on something with me. These dope boys getting smarter so I’m gonna have to up my game. And I think you just the man to help me out.” Young pat’s Ivan hard on the back and heads back to the station.