Death Wish by Iceberg Slim Page A

he heard the fiend grunting joy as he violated the dead. He saw his father feel his way down the attic stairs with his arms locked across his eyes against the carnage. He saw his father go out the front door and disappear forever.
    He thought about his first foster home where he was burned with cigarettes and locked in the pitch-black basement for two days because he ate a sausage from the icebox without permission.
    Antonio knocked. Collucci patted Olivia to calm her.
    She said in a sharp voice, “Who is it?”
    Antonio said loudly, “Antonio, Miss Tonelli, your father fights for breath in his bedroom and calls you.”
    Olivia went to the door and told Antonio she would come in a minute or two. She kissed Collucci good-bye with a promise they would meet at a downtown theater the next day.
    Collucci was a blur of silent motion. He speed-dressed and chain-bolted front and back doors, then he drew a giant kettle of scalding water. He found a nearly full half-gallon container of bleach and quickly emptied the bleach into the kettle with the water. Next, he found a heavy industrial wrench under the kitchen sink.
    He eased the front door open and stepped out on the front porch with the kettle. He threaded the end of a bath towel through one of the holes in the latticed walls enclosing the porch, then he tied the kettle by its wire handle near the top of the porch roof.
    He chinned himself to the roof and reached down and got the kettle. Then he went silently across the roof to the rear of thebungalow. He got on his belly and peered over the rim of the roof at the three button men. They crouched among lilac bushes on both sides of the steps leading from the back porch. All three had baseball bats.
    Mario, a muscular giant, on one side, Antonio and Emilio on the other side. He stood and hurled the scalding contents of the kettle down in a sweeping motion. The trio’s screeches of pain reverberated in the night like mass murder.
    In one motion he slipped the wrench from his belt and plunged down. Emilio and Antonio were screaming and scrambling out of the bushes. Emilio, fleeing the bushes behind Antonio, stumbled and fell on his knees on the lawn.
    Collucci’s rage was at its uncontrolled peak. He gripped the wrench with both hands, raised it high above his head, and sighted for the top of Emilio’s shiny skullcap of hair. Then he growled for velocity and whistled the wrench down. Emilio’s eyes were phosphorescent. He rolled to his side and flung his arm up to shield his head.
    His elbow took the crunch of the steel blow, and the arm burst blood and shards of bone. Collucci swung the wrench rapidly, breaking Emilio’s wrist on his other arm and his right ankle.
    Collucci saw Antonio fifteen feet away with a wicked-looking forty-five automatic in his hand. He waved it aimlessly as he frantically wiped the back of his other hand across his eyes to clear them of the scalding bleached water.
    The stench of Emilio’s loosened bowels pulled a spurt of vomit from Collucci’s guts. He leaped across the unconscious Emilio toward Antonio. But, too late, he saw the shadow of Mario on his right swinging the baseball bat. The blow struck the wrench upraised at the side of Collucci’s head.
    The bat splintered and banged the wrench against the side of Collucci’s head. His legs went rubbery for a moment. He viciously backhanded the wrench at Mario’s throat and busted his jaw instead. Mario fell and rolled into the lilac bushes in agony.
    Collucci smashed down Antonio’s gun arm as he was leveling it. The automatic skittered across the grass. Antonio, dangling his useless arm, bombed his foot at Collucci’s crotch. The toe of his shoe sank into Collucci’s navel and doubled him into a knot on the grass. Antonio rushed and snatched up the wrench with his good arm. He grunted as he brought it down. Collucci turned a saving fraction in time. He heard the whoosh and dull impact of the