In bed that night, Eddie suddenly hears footsteps on his porch and a sinister voice calling his name. Thinking that it must be Angel, he rises to investigate, but there is no one there. He wonders if he is losing his mind. In the morning, he walks to the store for some groceries and is stopped by Belinda, a girl from the neighborhood who is pushing a stroller up the street. Belinda flirts with Eddie, but he does not reciprocate because he knows that if he does, her husband Junior, who is being held at the prison in Vacaville, will hear about it and retaliate. As he talks to Belinda, Eddie catches a glimpse of Angel standing at the end of the block. Cutting the conversation short, Eddie runs after him, but it is too late: Angel is nowhere in sight.

Trying to catch his breath, Eddie calculates his next move. He decides to take the offensive and go after Angel, to "mess [him] up before he [gets] me." On his way, Eddie stops at a fast food restaurant, where he takes a table by the window and eats a cheeseburger and some fries. The young gangster Samuel passes by on the other side of the street with a couple of homies, and Eddie, overcome with a rising sense of paranoia, abruptly leaves the establishment and continues on his way.

The swamp cooler is running at Angel's house and Eddie figures that his nemesis is most likely home alone. An "old mutt" in the yard sees Eddie and barks at him. After a while, the back door of the house opens and Angel hollers at the dog, "Shut up, Humo." In hiding, Eddie waits a few minutes, then throws a small potted plant "not meanly" at the dog, to make him resume barking. When Angel, as expected, angrily emerges from the house again, Eddie leaps out and grabs him by the legs, causing him to fall backward and hit his head against the doorjamb.

Eddie pummels Angel, screaming profanities and accusing his hapless victim of killing Jesus. Angel, scrambling to protect himself, vehemently denies having done such a thing. Samuel arrives on the scene and attacks Eddie from the back with a stick. Angel and Samuel join forces and encircle Eddie, but Eddie manages to deal Angel another telling blow and then catches Samuel in a headlock, smashing the little gangster's head into a wall and flooring him. When Eddie turns back to Angel, he finds that his adversary is nowhere to be seen. He hops over the fence and runs down an alley, and when he looks back, he sees Angel standing alone at the other end, watching him.

Eddie takes refuge at Jose's house, even though his friend's mother still blames him for her son's stabbing and wants him gone. Bruised and bleeding, Eddie tells Jose about his fight with Angel. His marine buddy is subdued but refuses to turn his back on his friend. Jose has an appointment at the hospital to have his stitches out and Eddie decides to go with him. Jose drives his mother's "ancient Impala" over to the medical center and when they arrive, the two wait on orange plastic chairs at the second-floor clinic until Jose's name is called. With a no-nonsense attitude, a nurse gets busy on Jose with a pair of tweezers; the job is done in ten minutes, "like a lube and oil change."

Just by chance, Eddie and Jose take the stairs instead of the elevator back down to the ground level of the building, and to their complete shock, they encounter Angel coming up from the bottom level. Angel, like Eddie, is a mess, his eye swollen from a row of new stitches. When Angel sees Eddie, he freezes for a moment. But then suddenly, Eddie's eyes blaze and he races toward his enemy and attacks; bystanders scatter as the two, locked in the deadly embrace of combat, tumble down the narrow flight of stairs.