Chapter 29 Summary and Analysis
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
You can return to the book hub anytime.
Summary
After fleeing Richmond, Buddy Lee pulls the truck into a gas station just past the city limits. He vomits immediately—the contents look like spilled finger paint, a sign of internal damage from the beating they took. Ike checks his own injuries in the mirror: blood on his face, a swollen chin, and a reopened head wound from the baton strike. Buddy Lee, ever the optimist, reframes their survival: they took licks, but they're still standing, and maybe that's why they're still alive—to finish what they started.
Ike asks about Buddy Lee's jackknife, and Buddy Lee reveals it belonged to his father. No further explanation is needed; the knife is a legacy piece, and Ike understands its weight.
Ike decides to call in a debt from an old contact. He drives to a strip mall in Chesterfield County, a lonely outpost near Route 360 bordered by a cornfield and abandoned shipping containers. He tells Buddy Lee to stay in the truck. Buddy Lee offers him the knife for protection, warning that debts and loyalties fade over time. Ike takes it.
Inside the barbershop, Ike asks for Slice, giving his old name: Riot Randolph. The name causes the barber's hands to tremble. While waiting, Ike overhears a conversation among the customers about a drag-show commercial. Craig, a man getting his beard dyed, makes homophobic remarks, claiming that gay sons are the result of failed fatherhood and that he'd beat the gay out of his own boys. Lavell pushes back with humor, but the groupthink prevails. Ike grips his chair, reflecting on how the barbershop used to be a sanctuary—the last place he didn't have to apologize for being a Black man—but now he sees its darker side: circular logic and reinforced prejudice. He thinks about how six months ago he might have laughed along, but after Isiah's murder, he can't.
Ike is led to a back office where he meets Slice—Lancelot Walsh—a former gang leader who now runs operations from Cap City to Red Hill and up to DC. Slice's enforcer pats Ike down and confiscates the knife. Slice is initially dismissive, noting Ike's new life as a landscaper. Ike asks for a meeting with Tariq, known as Mr. Get Down, who knows a woman named Tangerine that may know who killed Isiah and Derek. Slice refuses, citing Tariq as his business partner.
Ike reminds Slice of the debt: he killed Romello Sykes with his bare hands for the North River Boys, went to prison for seven years, and Slice sent his wife only three hundred dollars once. Ike recounts his son's murder—shot six times, two in the face, so disfigured he couldn't recognize him. He asks what Luther would say. Slice, moved, agrees to bring Tariq in an hour, but declares the debt settled: