Ever since the Purge, two long-ass years ago, Scope had been on patrol. He was originally dropped off up in this cracker joint with his partner, Weese-It, but that trifling nigga done gone back to school—afraid of his bitch-ass mamma. Scope though, he kept it real, kept his eye on the bitch-ass poleese and all the bitch-ass joints that did they business between Hamilton and Northern on this stretch of Harford, where he was the eyes and ears for the Shark Set down the way, the Valentino Boyz up the way, and the Big-ass Bulls back in the hood.

Scope’s art was walk-peddling his stripped-down, junior BMX bike, standing on the peddles, his smart phone slotted in a tray duct-taped to his handlebars like a command panel. He wore this bike like a pair of shoes and texted what he saw while he glided, usually peddling to the top of a street and then gliding down slowly on the sidewalk, riding the brake and doing the slow weave, sending out the word to whoever needed it, about marks, poleese and freaks.

Marks were easy, dumb-shit with a pizza, white bitch with her purse, drunk-ass with a knot-roll of cash, freaks with their canes hobbling to the ATM and pharmacy to get their government money and government drugs. Speaking of freaks, some cane-leaning cracker was slouched against the rock-spiked wall at the #19 stop across from the bitch-ass white church…

It was a cool, blustery evening, just after the time wash pushed back to make it harder to bank a bitch-ass cracker at dinnertime. The wind whipped through his gray hoody, exposing his red and black striped scoping shirt. His jeans hugged tight and ass-low as he peddled crawl-like up the sidewalk, slower than a fat cracker could waddle. This cracker here looked like he could be fat, with that big reaper-hooded coat on—like somebody made a hoody for creep-ass crackers. Yes, this was a freak, but not a government freak, but rather one of those stay-behind, creep-ass, cracker freaks.

The creep-ass cracker was leaning on a square-topped cane with a backpack hung over it by the strap, like some lame-ass Bugs Bunny going on the road back in the old-ass cartoon day. The creep was peeking at him through a fold in the hood, through glassy bug-eyed shades, so Scoop came up close, right in front of this old-ass, bull, cracker motherfucker who could be seen had a white beard. Scoop held his head low down between the handle bars and bolded that shit out like a grown-ass hood ոigger—full-strapped and willing.

The hands looked uncle-big and the cane was really a thick-ass stick. The face peered back down at him from under that extended hood—but behind them glasses no eyes could be seen to determine if this cracker was on his last leg and ready to give up the goods or some creep-ass freak. As Scope recognized the face as belonging to the old bus freak, his unspoken question—given away in his snake-like peek up under that hood from over his handlebars—was answered with a silent snarl, as one side of that thin-lipped, white-haired mouth curled up to expose some white ոigger’s Dracula shit. Scope recoiled, stood tall on the peddles over his well-worn knee-high bike, and zoomed past that creep-ass white ոigger, just to let this Freddie Kruger motherfucker know that Scope was damn near uncatchable.

Well, it wasn’t a new mark to call in, but Scope had identified a hazard of the hunt, which might be useful in the get-me-some days to come.