Dukey K. Williams was pleased. The hit on the Magic Lantern restaurant was a success. It had disposed of Tomassio Vitorelli, a big man in the Bassalino organization. And the bombing had put the fear of God into other restaurants and clubs that didn’t want the same treatment. Let the Bassalinos start to sweat. It was a good beginning.
* * *
Leroy Jesus Bauls was also pleased. The hit had been his idea.
Dukey K. Williams had come to him.
Dukey K. Williams was prepared to let him do it his way.
Dukey K. Williams was going to lay a lot of bucks on Leroy. Mucho, mucho big bucks.
Yeah, things were sweet for a guy who had started out with everything against him.
Leroy’s Swedish mother was a hooker, and his black father a pimp. As soon as he was able he’d left home. His parents were dead as far as he was concerned, and it wouldn’t bother him one bit if they actually were.
Good-looking at an early age, he never had any trouble finding a bed to sleep in. If he’d wanted to, he could have followed his father’s profession; there were plenty of offers. But Leroy had no desire to be beholden to any woman.
Instead he joined a street gang and cruised with them for a while. It was small stuff, rolling drunks and old ladies, knocking off neighborhood stores. By the time the profits were split up they were practically nonexistent. Leroy knew he had to move on to better things.
He decided that narcotics was the business for him. Once or twice he’d smoked pot, tried acid twice. Neither did anything for him. That was good. The thing to be when dealing with drugs was cool, and definitely a nonparticipant.
He’d seen what drugs did to people, the way dope affected their looks, and he wanted none of that. But pushing was another bag of shit; pushing could lead to a lot of money.
Leroy was young, good-looking, and a convincing talker. He picked out the area he wanted to operate and, with a small stake from a friend, went into business.
Soon he found he was stepping on toes. The space he’d picked was already fully covered. They warned him off. They thought he was some punk kid, easy to handle. He bought a gun with his first week’s profits and waited.
There were three sets of toes he was stepping on. Within a month all three of them were dead, shot. Leroy wrapped his gun in plastic, weighted it with rocks, and safely laid it to rest at the bottom of the river.
With his fifth week’s profits he bought himself another one. He was sixteen years old.
For a year he concentrated solely on dealing, working on his own with good sources of supply. He stashed his money away and kept his gun handy. Nobody bothered him. His reputation preceded him. He kept to his own area and didn’t get in anyone’s way.
He lived alone in a rooming house. Never went out except on business and rarely spent any money. By the end of a year he’d saved a substantial amount. Enough to buy a car and a whole new wardrobe of clothes, and to rent a decent apartment.
His first purchase was a black Mercedes. Next he had several black suits custom-made for him. And then he furnished his apartment with a lot of expensive black leather couches and chairs.
He looked older than seventeen.
Leroy found that to maintain his new life-style he needed even more money. So he employed two friends of his to work his space and moved on to new territory.
Within days he received word that Bosco Sam’s toes were too many to step on and Leroy knew it, so he paid him a visit.
They came to an arrangement. Leroy was to keep to the area he already had, and instead of moving in on Bosco Sam’s action, Bosco Sam would throw a couple of things his way that would bring him a lot more money than hustling drugs.
Leroy liked the idea. More bucks for less work, and he still kept a couple of guys working for him.
In the first year Bosco Sam gave him three contracts to take care of. Three hits. Leroy executed them all without a hitch.
Leroy was moving up. He was getting himself a reputation, and it was doing him nothing but good.
Now, four years later, Leroy Jesus Bauls was top man in his profession. He had long ago moved out of the drug scene.
He had used his spare time to study explosives, electronics, computer bombs. There was nothing he didn’t know how to do, from blowing up a plane to planting a bomb in a bank that he could detonate three weeks later.
Leroy Jesus Bauls was a free-lance hit man. The best.
He had a reputation for taking risks, and every risk he had ever taken had paid off. Leroy was riding high.
Now he waited. Dukey K. Williams would let him know when to move again, and when he did, Leroy would be ready.