The Last Plate on H Street
A Novel

About this book:

Rayford Vance served four years in a federal penitentiary learning how to turn cold steel into a breakfast grill. Now he runs Vance's Provisions out of a white Freightliner on H Street, serving grits and sausage biscuits to bus drivers, clerks, and the new money streaming into a neighborhood that used to burn. He pays his taxes. He keeps his head down. He's built something clean with hands that once broke doors for a living.

Then Troy Bennett leans against the service window in a lambskin coat that costs more than Rayford's truck. Ten years ago, they ran night drops together until a bad lock and an off-duty cop ended it. Now Troy's legitimate—or says he is—running logistics out of a cold-storage warehouse on Okie Street. He needs a truck that moves invisible product through a city that's pricing Rayford off the curb. The bike lanes are coming. The variance costs ten thousand dollars Rayford doesn't have. And Troy's offering a key to Bay 4 with a photo that says *your meat is getting cold*.

*The Last Plate on H Street* is a slow-burn crime novel steeped in grease, grit, and the weight of a past that won't stay buried. Sharp as a bench scraper and hot as a flattop at 6 a.m., it's a story about what a man will cook up to keep his corner—and what gets served when the bill comes due.