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Desperation began to set in. He had been walking for hours and wasn't any closer to his betrayers. As he walked past an apartment building, he heard the song by the Geto Boys, “My Mind Playin’ Tricks on Me.” He thought,
yeah my mind is definitely playing tricks on me if I think Imma
bump into that green-eyed bastard. Weed-Eyes is long gone,
he concluded. Don knew that no hype in his right mind would stick around with a whole slab of cocaine and twenty thou. Weed-Eyes could have driven to another area code by now.

Don stopped in an alley and sat on some back porch steps to smoke again. Juanita was a different matter, however. She didn't have her own transportation, nor the mental inclination to sell the cocaine. Knowing Juanita, she would probably try to smoke the whole thing. He took another blast and continued to think. He had to find Juanita and recover as much of his cocaine as possible. He knew for a fact that Juanita wouldn't go home to the small apartment she shared with her drunken mother and four brothers—she hated it there. The only other place she might've gone to was Wanda's house on Cottage Grove. She was the only friend Juanita ever seemed to mention. It wasn't so far-fetched for Don to think she'd gone there.

With the ease of a lifelong ghetto dweller, Don picked his way through the alleys and gangways until he reached the projects on Cottage Grove. Two-story walk-ups lined either side of the busy boulevard. He didn't know which apartment Wanda lived in. He described her to a group of young guys standing in one of the parking lots. He didn't know if they bought his story about being Wanda's long-lost cousin, but he accepted their directions.

Outside the apartment door, Don glanced around to make sure no curious neighbors were watching and then he
gave the door a well-aimed kick. The flimsy lock buckled under the pressure. Don whipped out his pistol and charged into the apartment like a DEA agent on a drug raid.

In the living room he caught Juanita, Wanda, and Raoul in various stages of a crack party: Raoul had a pipe to his lips, Wanda was on the couch with a razor blade in her hand, and Juanita was cleaning her pipe.

Don's and Juanita's eyes locked on one another. She had a shocked look on her face from Don's sudden appearance. Shock turned to terror as she recalled what Don promised to do to her if she ever stole from him again. The wicked-looking pistol in his hand confirmed his threat.

“He gone kill me!” Juanita screamed hysterically. “He gone kill me!”

Juanita's scream mobilized Raoul, who didn't see the pistol in Don's hand; all he saw was someone trying to fuck up their good time. There was no way Raoul could let that happen—not when Juanita had shown up with more cocaine than he'd ever seen in his life and was setting it out. If Raoul could help it, Don wasn't going to lay one hand on Juanita.

Raoul dropped his pipe, jumped to his feet, and charged, brandishing an end table he'd scooped up, all the while screaming.

Don silenced him by shooting Raoul in the left knee. Raoul flipped over the sofa, smashing himself in the face with the end table.

Wanda watched Raoul get shot before she silently exploded into action. Moving swiftly and silently, Wanda
slashed Don's forearm with the razor blade in her hand before he could react.

Don tried to fend her off without shooting her, but received several more slashes on his arms. He backpedaled and stumbled over one of the children's toys, but recovered in time to dodge a razor slash aimed at his throat. With his free hand he snatched a heavy ashtray from the dinette table and smashed it against Wanda's temple. The force from the blow knocked all the fight from Wanda and she fell to the floor with an ugly gash alongside her right eye.

Juanita knew Don was coming for her next and before he could take one step in her direction, she leaped from her seat, grabbed the kilo, and jumped out the window. Don stood with his mouth hanging open until he remembered they were only on the second floor. He made his way over to the window prepared to follow her example. On his way across the living room Wanda grabbed his leg in a feeble attempt to restrain him.

Don aimed a vicious kick at her face, but her hold on his leg threw him off balance and he landed hard on his butt.

Now Don was salty.

Untangling himself enough to get on his feet, Don squeezed the trigger of his .357 and ventilated Wanda's stretch-mark-covered stomach with a dime-sized hole.

Wanda released Don's leg and began screaming while she clutched her abdomen.

Ignoring Wanda's howls, Don continued over to the window and prepared to jump. He remembered to look before
he leaped. Placing his hands on the windowsill, he peered out into the night.

Juanita had made the second-story drop without incurring any serious injury—only bruising her butt from an awkward landing. She had taken a moment to make sure no bones were broken, but the sound of Don shooting Wanda in the apartment made her vault to her feet. She was so paranoid from smoking yams she believed Don was shooting at her. Like an Olympic sprinter, she kicked up her heels and ran into the street.

Cottage Grove has always been one of the busiest boulevards on Chicago's South Side and the early morning hour was no exception. Juanita was so scared for her life she ran into the street, paying no heed to the oncoming traffic.

Juanita never saw the headlights or heard the protesting squeal of the tires before a speeding flatbed tow truck slammed into her. The grille of the truck struck her high in the chest. Her head whipped back with a grisly snap before she somersaulted thirty feet into the air. Juanita was dead before her body landed and slid to a stop half a block from the initial impact.

Even in death Juanita refused to let go of the cocaine. The kilo had accompanied Juanita during her airborne somersaults, but it burst when she slammed into the asphalt. A miniature mushroom cloud of cocaine erupted, covering the immediate area with a powdery layer of the controlled substance.

From Wanda's apartment window, Don watched Juanita's
grisly death with a mixture of emotions. He felt a slight twinge of guilt for the part he played in her demise, and anger from witnessing his beautiful cocaine spread all over the street where it was no use to anyone.

Disgusted, Don turned from the window and walked over to take a seat on the urine-smelling couch. Not paying the slightest bit of attention to the two wounded cluckers, Don picked up a crackpipe. He took a chunk of crack from the mirror on the coffee table and dropped it on the screen in the pipe bowl. After melting the crack with one of the numerous torches on the table, Don put his lips to the stem and sucked the smoke into his nervous system.

When Don stood up, his head was reeling from taking such a gigantic hit. His heart was beating hard in his chest. He managed to steady himself, then swept the crack off the mirror into the bag he was carrying in his pocket. As he headed for the door, a devious thought entered his haze-shrouded mind. On the dinette table was a bottle of rubbing alcohol that Wanda and Raoul used to rub on their mosquito bites, a side effect of sleeping in an apartment without screens on the window. With a wicked grin on his face Don poured the contents on the ragged furniture. He threw the empty bottle on the floor. He packed his pipe again from the plastic bag and lit a torch. He held the torch to the bowl and took another godfather hit. As he walked toward the door he exhaled the smoke. On the threshold he turned and tossed the flaming torch onto an alcohol-drenched easy chair.

Instantly the chair ignited. Quickly the fire spread to the sofa and that was all she wrote.

Not concerned in the slightest about Wanda's and Raoul's welfare or that of her children, Don slammed the door as he left the apartment.

Raoul rescued all but two of the children with the help of the neighbors. The early morning news carried accounts of the accidental death of an eighteen-year-old girl carrying a large amount of cocaine. They would also milk the topics of the two children murdered in a fire set by an unknown arsonist.

Detective Carson and Detective Winters were assigned to the case and interviewed the bedridden witnesses at the hospital. The two detectives pieced together a shaky story from Wanda, who was in critical but stable condition with burns on 40 percent of her body and a bullet wound in her stomach.

The culprit the detectives would come to know as Donald Haskill, alias Don-Don or Don, had vanished into the night. Neither detective knew it, but they would hear that name again and again. When they finally got a chance to interview the boy brought in earlier that night suffering from a gunshot wound, he would blame Don also.

When the detectives left Wanda's room, she received more visitors. Four distraught young men wanted to know why their baby sister was in a steel drawer in the morgue.
One of the men, father of one of Wanda's dead children, wanted to know if the same culprit was responsible for the death of his son, too.

Recognizing her opportunity for revenge, Wanda lied to the four brothers about Juanita's death. She told them Don pushed Juanita in front of the truck and that he purposely burned up two of Wanda's sons.

The brothers left in a hurry.

In the meantime, Don sat alone in his room at home smoking crack. He heard someone banging on the door and a voice called out, “Open up, it's the police!” By the time his sister got up to let them in, he had escaped out the window and was a block away.

Rhonda opened the door to see what the police wanted and they pushed past her. “Hold on. You can't come in like this. My mother is a policewoman. I know my rights. What's this about?”

“We're looking for somebody and we have information that he lives here,” Detective Carson said gruffly as he moved into the living room.

“Where's your warrant?” Rhonda asked defiantly.

Carson scowled. “We don't need one if we have reason to believe that a suspect fleeing from a crime ran into this residence.”

“Nobody has fled anywhere. What are you talking about? This don't sound right. I'm calling my mother.”

Detective Winters grabbed Rhonda's arm softly but firmly. “Does Donald Haskill live here?”

“Yes, that my little brother. He isn't here. What you want with him?”

“We just have a couple of questions for him,” Detective Winters said as she nodded her head to two uniformed officers.

Guns drawn, the two policemen headed up the carpeted steps.

“Where the hell are they going?” Rhonda asked. “I told you that my brother wasn't here.”

“But he does live here?” Detective Carson said from over by the mantelpiece. “This him in this photo?”

The picture was of Don on his sixteenth birthday, taken on the front porch.

“Yes, that's him. You still haven't told me what this is all about, though.”

Just then the two cops came down the stairs.

“Anything?” Carson asked.

“Nothing,” one of the officers answered. “We found what had to be his room. It's in a shambles. Window was open leading out onto the back porch roof. Looks like our guy left in a hurry.”

Winters pulled a business card from her pocket and handed it to Rhonda. “If your brother comes home, give him our card and make sure he gives us a call. Tell him that since your mother is on the job, he doesn't have to worry about being mistreated. Let's go.”

Rhonda noticed Carson trying to slide the photograph of
Don in his pocket. “What are you doing? I didn't say that you could take that.”

Carson's face turned slightly red. “Well, we need this to identify a suspect in an ongoing investigation and …”

Winters cut in. “Do you mind very much if we take the picture? We'll do our best to get it back to you.”

“I guess so. Don't hurt my brother. I don't know what he's supposed to have done, but don't hurt him.”

“We won't,” Winters assured her as she swept the uniformed officers and her partner out the door. “He'll be okay. Good night and sorry to bother you.”

While the police were leaving his mother's house, the only thing Don cared about was making it to the little, seedy motel on King Drive. There he could rent a room and lay low. As long as he had crack and money he was straight.

THE COBWEBS AND MURKINESS CLEARED AS LONNIE
awoke with a gasp. He plummeted back into the limbo of his partial coma. Before he went under he heard an authoritative voice summon the doctor.

Three hours later Lonnie awakened for the second time. A million needles of pain stabbed him as he debated whether to open his eyes. Several excruciating attempts resulted in failure. Finally he gave up, content to stare at the inside of his eyelids.

It was no minor miracle Lonnie was still alive. When the burning slug from Don's pistol burrowed into his flesh it felt like his soul was on fire. Scared that Don was still on his trail, he had cut through a gangway and ran into a backyard. Big mistake. In the dark he had nearly split his skull on
the porch as he rounded the small house. Slamming into the ancient wood of the porch had knocked the wind and almost the life out of him. Scarlet blood pumped out of the gash in his forehead and the hole in his stomach. All he could remember was a voice from deep down inside telling him to get up. He tried to ignore the voice, but it was persistent. Marshaling all his strength he somehow maneuvered onto his hands and knees and began to crawl through the gangway that led to the street. The ninety feet of pavement he spanned seemed like ninety miles. Several times he blacked out from losing such a large amount of blood. Finally he made it to the street and flagged down a motorist.

The motorist summoned emergency assistance via his cell phone. Police and an ambulance arrived in a relatively short time. At Cook County hospital the doctors worked for seven hours to stabilize Lonnie. From there he was moved to intensive care. He was in a drug-induced coma for three days before he regained consciousness for the first time.

He pretended to be unconscious while he listened for several hours to the doctors and police detectives. Lonnie learned the detectives hoped he would recover so they could question him about Sajak's and Diego's murders. Detectives Winters and Carson had gone over the crime scene with a fine-tooth comb. Their guess was Lonnie was the only survivor of a drug deal gone bad. That was why they were sitting on Lonnie, waiting for any improvement in his condition. It was so rare to find a living witness when drug deals went bad. If Lonnie regained consciousness and could
tell them who was responsible for the carnage in the backyard it would be an easy case.