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[b]131st Street
Harlem[/b]

I stood on the sidewalk and watched the traffic coming and going. The steady rain from earlier was gone, replaced by the occasional mist, but I still wore my hoodie up to keep my head dry from a sudden return to a downpour. Plenty of foot traffic on the street meant the people of Harlem were more optimistic about the weather than I was.

"GIVE TO THA LAWD!"

I had to suppress a laugh when he heard the shrill cry. On the corner of Lennox and 131st street, Sister Mercy was doing her thing. She'd been working the corners of Upper Manhattan for nearly twenty years now, dressed in her black nun habit and ringing that bell while she shouted about fire and brimstone and the only way to heaven was to give to the "lawd." 

"'For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils' First Timothy 6:10, people. GIVE TO THA LAWD!"

You wouldn't think it by looking at her, but the sister was without a doubt the best street hustler of all the would-be conmen and scammers operating out on the streets. It didn't hurt that she has a dynamite racket. It takes real balls to impersonate a nun, and the sister had balls. The truth was that sister was actually a brother by the name of Jackson Coleman. Jackson was a former B&E man who hit the right racket to feed his drug addiction. I knew him back before he went to jail, back when I was gangbanger Carl Lucas. We got back in touch after my homecoming and I found an unlikely ally in the hustler. From time to time over Sister Mercy had helped me out with errands and intel for a price. A cross-dressing junkie nun who cons people with a bell and the bible. I had to grin. Where else but Harlem?

"Say, Sister Mercy," I said as I palmed two twenties and shook the good sister's hand. "What do you know good?"

"'Blessed are they who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times', Psalm 106:3," she said loud enough for the pedestrians passing by to hear before whispering. "Luke Cage, my man. What's up, homie? GIVE TO THE LAWD, PEOPLE."

"Wondering if you had your ear to the ground on something, Sister."

I held up my cell phone. On the screen was the picture I had taken at the crime scene of Bobbito Garcia's murder. It was zoomed in on the calling card, the bloody crown found inches away from the dead boy's body.

Sister Mercy let out a low and soft whistle before returning back to the work of yelling about damnation and monetary salvation. She thanked a passerby as they tossed a dollar into the bucket at her feet. After a few moments of thought, she finally shook her head.

"That's out of my range, brother. Hood politics and shit. Only thing I know is that they call themselves the Kings of Harlem."

"A gang?" I asked.

"An army," she whispered. "They are Day of the Jackal-type motherfuckers. They roll on anybody they don't like, and they roll in force. That's all I know."

"What about your network? All those homeless fools."

Sister Mercy stopped ringing her bell for a second before she nodded. "Joe the Bum. He's a homeless guy that bottom feeds by hanging around young drug slingers, get's free taste of the product, does errands for them for cash. They supposed to be slinging, and if they are Joe would know all about them.

"You better, Sister. I don't want to kick a nun's ass."

"I do what I can, nigga," she whispered softly. "I'll be here tomorrow morning with Joe the Bum."

"Sister, I could kiss you..."

"'But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart,' Matthew 5:28, brother. Repent and GIVE TO THA LAWD!"

I laughed and walked away while Sister Mercy started back up. Thanks to her, I had a line on the people who potentially did it. Now, I needed to find out exactly why they would have wanted to kill Bobbito.