Page 60 of Omar

I slid into the booth across from him. "Talk to me."

"It's nothing. I handled it."

"Your lip is split and your hand is busted. That ain't nothing." I took the napkin from him and looked at the cut. It was small, already clotting. His knuckles were worse. The skin was torn across two of them, the blood drying into the creases. He'd hit someone hard enough to open himself up.

"What happened?"

Rashid picked up his glass, took a sip, winced when the alcohol hit the cut on his lip. "I was here with Tre after the studio session. We were in this booth, just chilling. These two dudes at the bar were talking loud. One of them was telling a story. I wasn't listening at first but then I heard Pops' name."

My hands stopped moving.

"He was telling his boy about something he'd heard. Said his cousin or somebody had seen Malik Baptiste. Said they'd seen him on his knees with a chain around his neck being dragged into a building." Rashid's voice was steady but his eyes were burning. "He was laughing about it, O. Both of them were. Like it was a joke. Like Pops was some punchline."

"What'd you do?"

"What do you think I did?" Rashid looked at me. "I walked over there, asked him to repeat what he just said, and when he laughed in my face I hit him. His boy tried to grab me from behind. I caught him with my elbow and then the bartender jumped in between us before it went further."

"Where are they now?"

"Gone. Bartender kicked them out first. Then he told me to sit down and cool off." Rashid drained the rest of his drink. "I been sitting here waiting for my hands to stop shaking."

I looked at my brother's split lip, his torn knuckles, the adrenaline still running through him in waves that made his leg bounce under the table. Twenty-five years old. Twenty-three when Pops disappeared. He'd spent the last two years carrying that absence, spiraling through it, using it as fuel for music and fights in equal measure. Tonight some stranger in a bar had turned his father into a punchline.

"The man who was talking," I said carefully. "You get his name?"

"Nah. I wasn't thinking about names. I was thinking about putting my fist through his face."

"What'd he look like?"

Rashid described him. Average height, heavyset, dark complexion, wore a Nets cap backward. His friend was skinnier, lighter, had a gold chain and a gap between his front teeth.

"Would you recognize them again?"

"Both of them."

"And the story he told. Pops on his knees. A chain. Being dragged into a building. He say where?"

"Nah, his boy cut him off before he got that far. Said something like 'chill, not here' and that's when the first dude looked around the bar and spotted me. He saw my face and he knew I'd been listening. He still laughed though. He looked right at me and laughed." Rashid's hands balled into fists on the table. "That's when I got up."

I sat there across from my brother and processed what he'd just told me. Pops on his knees. A chain around his neck. Dragged into a building. That was new. Everything we had so far, the financial trails, the shell companies, the Hampton Royal hotel records, Tommy Vicks' testimony before he vanished, all of it suggested Pops had been taken. But none of it had described what happened to him after. This was the first time someone had put an image to it. Pops on his knees.

My hands were gripping the edge of the table hard enough that the wood was pressing lines into my palms. I let go, flexed my fingers, breathed.

"Come on," I told Rashid. "We're going to Ma's."

"O, I don't need to..."

"We're going to Ma's."

I drove Rashid to Bed-Stuy. He sat in the passenger seat with his torn-up hand resting on his thigh, his head against the window, quiet. I called Kadeem from the car and told him to meet us at the house.

Kadeem was already in the kitchen when we arrived. He took one look at Rashid's face and his expression went tight.

"Sit down," he told Rashid. "Let me see."

Rashid sat at Ma's kitchen table. Kadeem got ice from the freezer, wrapped it in a towel, handed it to Rashid for his lip. Then he looked at the knuckles.

"You hit someone."