You think you're big time? You're gonna fuckin' DIE big time!

Somebody’s pullin’ me close to the ground. I can sense, but I can’t see. I ain’t panicked, I been here before. Same as when I got popped on 104th Street. Don’t take me to no hospital, please. Fuckin’ emergency rooms don’t save nobody. Sons of bitches always pop you at midnight when all they got is a Chinese intern with a dull spoon.

No favour. I owe you. Favour gonna kill you faster than a bullet.

Here’s me back on the street. Third Sunday in August. Old Timer’s Day in the barrio. Nothin’ left. Like them old cowboy movies, only instead of tumbleweed and cow dung we got stripped car wrecks and dog shit.

I’M RELOADED! Come on in here, motherfuckers! Come on, I’m waitin’ for ya! You ain’t comin’ in? I’m comin’ out! You’re up against it now, motherfuckers! I’m gonna blow your fuckin’ brains out! You think you’re big time? You’re gonna fuckin’ die big time! You ready? Here comes the pain!

Oh, Jesus. Jesus Christ, look at you. You said they were friends, Guajiro. But there ain’t no friends in this shit business.

Times have changed. What happened to the miniskirts? Where’s all that marijuana? Now everything is platforms, cocaine, and dances I don’t dance. What a man gotta come to when he loses five years.

This guy, this counsellor in Lewisburg, Mr Seawald, once said to me: “Charlie, you run out of steam. You can’t sprint all the way. You gotta stop sometime. You can’t buck it forever. It catches up to you. It gets you. You don’t get reformed, you just run out of wind.”

Okay, Benny Blanco from the Bronx. The chick Steffie belongs to the club. Now if I ever, I mean if I ever, see you here again you die, just like that.