Avarice by S. W. Frank

he’d clock his ass. “That’s how you feel?”
    “Fucking A!”
    “Then you don’t know me Domingo and I’m beginning to think you’re on some shit. Nobody has to remind me where the fuck I come from. I have the wounds tattooed on my skin.”
    “Yeah, well you aint around anymore to get harassed my cops or witness our hombres get busted or shot by police. Aint shit changed except the day, but I’m still here primo while you’re hanging out with Italians.”
    Alfonzo begged to differ. A lot had changed. The residency requirement for law enforcement is one. The other mess Domingo was popping sounded like he wanted a problem solver for matters of the head. “Have you voted or got active in the community instead of complaining?”
    “Nah, what for. We’ve been dealing with an extermination from inside and out, aint shit I do gonna’ change a thing!”
    “That self-defeatist rhetoric is the infestation effecting too many in our ‘hood.”
    “At least I’m still here, primo.”
    “You wouldn’t be satisfied until I caught a bullet in the damn head, because staying in the ‘hood to prove something to you would only have me dead!”
    “But before you were some big Don you were Alfonzo and survived fine without the guards and whatnot.”
    Alfonzo didn’t bother to correct Domingo’s asinine statement. The dumb prick didn’t know Nico was the reason his ass wasn’t lying in the morgue back in the day. Alfonzo pressed his spine to the chair. “You know what… fuck it. Are you seriously going backwards at this juncture?”
    “That’s not how I see what I’m doing.”
    Alfonzo flexed forward. “I’m advising you to stay legit.”
    “That would matter if I asked for your opinion.”
    Alfonzo tilt his head to the side when he detected the change from cordial to adversarial. He didn’t like it. “You don’t need to take that route. You need money primo, name the amount and I got you.”
    “I don’t need a hand-out; I’m more than capable of taking care of myself.”
    Alfonzo recognized the futility of trying to talk sense into Domingo. He suspected he’d graduated from weed to a stronger substance. For the sake of his family he tried to reason with the asshole. It’s hard when you love somebody to stand by and do nothing when they’re heading straight for destruction. “Are you in trouble; is anybody on your back?”
    “Nah. I’m doing me.”
    “By selling,” Alfonzo sighed. “Damn, you’re letting pride and money become the great divide between family.”
    “You’ve been up in the stratosphere too long. Money divides the world; how it’s made is where we disagree.”
    Domingo’s animosity toward him must’ve been simmering for a while. “Every dollar you make from that poison will have somebody’s blood attached.”
    “And what you do isn’t tainted, primo?” Domingo challenged.
    “You have a choice not to get dirty instead you’re throwing away legitimacy for delusions of grandeur simply to have people bowing to your ass.”
    “Don’t tell me you don’t get high off respect.”
    “Respect?” Domingo’s naïveté nearly caused Alfonzo to laugh. The man was a child in thinking. “False respect primo bought with money and intimidation isn’t the kind I want. I’m naturally high every day when I wake and later make it home to my family. There’s nothing glorious about violence. Those riches I’ve amassed are my family and that material shit you’re coveting is what’s going to get your ass killed one day.”
    “All I know is I’m not happy messing with oils and bolts. Uncle Al loved this shit but I don’t!”
    Alfonzo’s eyebrow cut upward.  On the wall were pictures in frames, gathering dust on the edges of his namesake in various poses with customers. There were ‘hood rappers, business people and everything in between. But it’s the genuine smile and the beam of a contented man that Alfonzo respected. Domingo the ungrateful bastard had the audacity to sit