George Bane walked into the rain without his coat. Seconds later two blasts rang out. Josh ran out into the street in time to see a car screeching away from the curb and his father lying dead in the gutter, blood from the two bullet wounds washing away toward a storm drain.
Josh started screaming and didn’t stop until the police arrived.
The thugs knew his father was becoming an example for the other merchants so they made him a different kind of example. The daylight murder in front of dozens of witnesses, virtually all of them children, was a bold stroke undertaken to force the entire neighborhood into utter submission. Instead of fifty dollars a month, the price for protection would now be a hundred. And the neighborhood went along.
The police, meanwhile, were strangely unable to find any trace of George Bane’s murderers despite detailed descriptions, which increased Josh’s rage and frustration all the more. With nothing else to do, he turned all his thoughts toward revenge, glad in a way that the police weren’t trying to catch the killers because now he could deal with them himself. He thirsted for a vengeance only killing the butchers personally could quench. That goal occupied his every waking hour. He planned for it, prepared for it — the knot in his stomach tied tighter each day. He’d get them all right; that certainty was the only way he could live with what had happened.
While Bane was quite aware of his own physical prowess, he was equally aware that even such prowess could not allow him to kill as effectively as he must. And all the bone-crunching workouts in the world couldn’t change that. Killing was something new, foreign. He wanted to do it, but he didn’t know how. The time had come to seek out a new type of training and a new kind of instructor.
Any kid on the street could tell you that the toughest man in New York was a black hulk named Gus Conglon, better known as King Cong. Bane learned the name of the Harlem bar where the King hung out and went there one afternoon after school.
He started through the door, his guts in his throat. But he swallowed them back down reminding himself of why he was here. A dozen pairs of black eyes turned from the bar and followed his progress, mouths agape in astonishment. Bane never hesitated, just kept walking toward the corner booth where the biggest man he had ever seen sat sipping a beer.
“You lookin’ for me, white boy?”
“You the King?”
“That’s what my friends call me.”
Bane caught his breath. “Can I sit down?”
King Cong laughed in amazement. “Sure, white boy. Sorry I can’t offer you a beer but I only got one glass.”
Bane sat there, going numb.
“Well, white boy, my time’s precious and the clock’s runnin’.”
Bane saw no other choice but to get to the point.
“Two men killed my father ten days ago,” he said lamely.
The King looked at him a little closer, nodding.
“The candy man over in the Bronx?”
Bane nodded.
“I heard about that. Clock’s still runnin’, white boy. What you want from me?”
Bane pulled a wad of bills, all his savings, from his pocket and pushed them across the table. “It’s not much but I’ll get more. I’ll pay you whatever you want, everything I have.”
That brought a smile to the King’s face. “Well, white boy, I been offered all sorts of stuff by people before but I never been offered everything. What you want me to do, ice those two dudes for you?”
“No,” Bane said staunchly. “I want you to teach me how to do it myself.”
The smile vanished. “Some things can’t be taught,” the King said and he poured himself another beer, trying hard to look away from the grim, determined boy before him.
Bane’s expression didn’t waver. Wordlessly, he held his ground.
The King chugged his beer, smacked his lips. “Well, white boy, you already know how to fight; I could tell that much by the way you move. Bet you’re damn good too. Trouble is you’re used to rules and regulations. Ain’t none of those on the streets.” The King swept a massive hand across the table and covered Bane’s eyes before he could react. “Take away the light and most fighters are near fuckin’ helpless.” He pulled his hand back. Bane twisted his features. “But the streets are dark and uneven. You got to learn the street way if you want to ice people. Most people get killed after dark. That’s the way it’ll be for those two dudes who iced your father.”
“Then you’ll teach me?”
King Cong cracked another smile and pushed the wad of bills back across the table. “What the hell, right? Just get ready to work harder than you ever worked before.”
“When do we get started?”
Class began the very next afternoon and Bane learned more about fighting and staying alive in one session with the King than he had in two years of boxing and Karate. Conglon set up an obstacle course in his cellar and tied a blindfold around Bane’s eyes.
“Now I don’t want you tryin’ to dance through this like some ballet faggot,” he warned. “Speed’s all that matters, speed and balance. If you trip, don’t fall. If you bang into somethin’, don’t let it slow you down.”
After two weeks on the obstacle course, the King moved class into a nearby alley and then to the streets themselves, at night mostly. He taught Bane how to use darkness instead of avoiding it, showed him how to focus on an outline or shadow instead of a complete shape. Motion was the key; maintaining yours while you followed your opponent’s. Sounds had to be picked up, filtered, analyzed immediately. Attacks came most often from the rear and sounds always preceded them.
In three months Bane was almost able to hold his own against the King. His senses, all of them, had been improved a thousand percent. He became a skilled night fighter which made him all the more formidable during the day.
“That, white boy, is the point,” King Cong told him. “And I’m startin’ to think it’s time we went to work on those two dudes who made you come round here in the first place.”
Bane just nodded. They had spoken barely at all during the months about the motivation behind his coming to the King. He figured the giant had a method and he wasn’t about to disrupt it. Patience had to be exercised. Push too hard and the King would push back harder. So Bane waited, though the thought of avenging his father was never far away.
The next day they went to work on guns, specifically a fat snub-nosed revolver with special tape on the trigger and butt that swallowed fingerprints. They only practiced at close range, no more than ten yards and usually less.
“That’s the way your hit’ll be,” the King explained. “And, believe it or not, they’s the toughest shots to make.”
It took a week before Bane got it down pat.
“Got a line on the hitters who iced your old man,” the King said suddenly one night. Later Bane would learn that he had known all along but had held the information back until he was sure his student was ready. “Free-lance muscle for the local strong arms. Not very popular. Won’t be missed. That’s a break. Anyway, the two of ’em hang out at McGilray’s Bar every night. You gotta be waitin’ outside for them tomorrow. I’ll drive ya. They’ll be drunk so you won’t have to worry much about them catchin’ on but they’re still pros so watch your ass.”
Josh gnashed his teeth. “I want them to know it’s me. I want them to know who’s killing them.”
The King frowned. “Trouble with that, white boy, is that if they got time to see ya, somebody else might too.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
The King just nodded.
It was raining the next night. Fitting, Bane thought as he huddled on a stoop two doors down from McGilray’s. It was one A.M. before the two killers came out of the bar. They were wearing the same overcoats they’d had on that rainy Saturday. He recognized them immediately and realized only one of them was drunk. His heart fluttered but he didn’t let himself hesitate.