Death Wish by Iceberg Slim

time.”
    There was a long silence before Collucci chuckled and said, “Olivia, I should get help for my head.” He hung up.
    Collucci slipped clothes on over his pajamas and drove to a side street in Oak Park and parked his new nineteen thirty-eight Buick Limited. He went through the unlocked steel gate and into the bungalow.
    Collucci did not know that a Tonelli bodyguard, clearing his head of too much vino on a bench near the bungalow, spotted him and rushed to notify Joe Tonelli.
    Five minutes later Olivia grunted naked joy under Collucci’s sweet punishment. Soon, under Collucci’s deep strokings, Olivia’s pleasure yowled the dog-fashioned shadows.
    And seeing and hearing all through a tear in a drawn shade was Joe Tonelli. He waggled his head, and his three button men followed him down the walk away from the peephole.
    Collucci at that moment climaxed. After a moment he went to the bathroom. He stood relieving himself, and that’s where he heard muffled voices beneath the partially open bathroom window. He peered out and saw Joe Tonelli’s handsome features contorted into a mask of rage and hurt.
    Collucci noticed two of the button men were the two young guys he had seen in the root cellar chopping up and packaging the body of grocer Tarantino.
    Tonelli whispered in hoarse Sicilian, “That criminal raper of children must be punished for his crime against my daughter’s innocence. You, Antonio, give me five minutes. Knock hard on the frontdoor like a big emergency. You say I got a bad attack, big pain in my chest. She’s got to come right away to my bedroom. I will be very sick. She will not be allowed to come back here to him.
    â€œEmilio, Mario, Antonio, conceal yourselves and get him when he leaves.”
    One of the root cellar pair said, “Mr. Tonelli, should we . . . ?”
    Tonelli waved his hands in disgust that Antonio had no perception of the need for less than fatal chastisement in the case at hand. “Antonio, we must not be too extreme in this matter.”
    He shrugged. “But she must be protected against her weakness for his filthy abuse. Break him up. You know, stomp his face and his private parts to jelly. Change him so all young girls will scream and flee at his approach.
    â€œThere is no trouble for me from my daughter. I knew nothing of the burglar discovered on my property. We must be very careful that no suspicion of me will shock her soft loving heart and harden it against me. Understand?”
    Tonelli went down the walk and the others faded into the shadows. Collucci heard his heart pounding as he went and lay beside Olivia. He made his decision quickly. He wouldn’t hide behind Olivia’s skirt for safe conduct out of Tonelli’s trap. He would say nothing about her father to hurt her.
    He wasn’t afraid of the button men because he knew he had a vital edge on them. They were handicapped. They had orders only to disfigure and cripple him.
    But young Collucci’s decision to ambush the ambushers rather than use Olivia to shield him from harm was really influenced by a deeply rooted terror of personal cowardice. Deadly danger always generated his reflex ferocity to attack, maim, and destroy the enemy.
    His fear of cowardice was tied in with his poisonous hatred for his father. Collucci lay embracing Olivia, waiting for Antonio to bang on the door.
    As they lay there waiting for the knock, he trembled withemotion. As always in situations of personal danger, he remembered the awful cowardice of his father. His father’s face, dripping sweat. He remembered the terror stink of his father’s breath behind a barricaded door in the attic of the Collucci home.
    His father held him in a death grip and muzzled his mouth. They listened to his mother and sister begging for mercy. Then he heard them screaming for help. The sex murderer hatcheted them into silence. And then worst of all, after their voices stilled,