Richard E. Barish

It's March madness and the college boys are playing basketball on T.V. But on the streets of D.C., the homeboys are dealing, dissing, dying. From behind plate glass, with an 80s backbeat pounding in his brain, Marcus Clay watches it all happen, and prays that he can make a go with his downtown record store. Then a car comes careening down U Street, and what Marcus sees next will plunge him into the middle of a war. A drug runner is decapitated in the crash. A bystander - a white boy desperate to buy a woman's love - snatches a bag of cash from the wreck, and a prince of crime wants it back.