Free Death Wish by Iceberg Slim

glaring at Roscoe.
    Bumpy said coldly, “You a dirty nigger, Roscoe. We all Warriors, chump, and you gonna be executed!”
    Roscoe’s lips pounded together soundlessly. Slim tore a page from the address book and gave it to Ivory.
    Roscoe croaked, “Ivory, that number ain’t nothing but jive. I ain’t never laid eyes on Lieutenant Porta.”
    Roscoe glanced resentfully at Dew Drop and said, “Ivory, I’m a black brother, and you dudes shot me through hot grease. ’cause I stuffed like I was working for the rollers, I gotta get wasted? Man, it ain’t right, and it ain’t fair.”
    Bumpy shouted, “Lemme go, Lotsa! I wanta bust his goosul pipe. I told that stupid motherfucker a hundred times before I sponsored him to cut me loose if he was wrong. Lemme go, Lotsa.”
    Ivory said firmly, “Cool it, Bumpy. I can understand your feelings about the brother. But you know, even if we knew for a fact that Roscoe is working with Porta, none of us here has the authority to waste him.”
    Finally Bumpy relaxed in Lotsa Black’s arms and was allowed to step free. Ivory nodded. A fake cop handcuffed Roscoe’s hands behind his back and shoved him onto the rear floor of the Pontiac. Ivory sat alone on the rear seat as the Pontiac, followed by the Plymouth, and went down the alley with Bumpy seated between Dew Drop and Lotsa Black.
    Roscoe looked up at Ivory’s tight face when the Pontiac came out of the dark alley and said weakly, “I ain’t been done right from the git-go. What’s gonna happen now?”
    Ivory looked down at him for a long moment and then said coldly, “Guilty or not, you’re a cunt sonuvabitch. I’m calling that telephone number when we get inside the Zone. If it fits Porta’s pad, you get your big chance to meet our leader and rap for your life.”

7
    C ollucci stared at the marble of light bouncing on the floor indicator panel as the elevator zoomed toward the Tonelli penthouse. He felt a twinge of paranoia. What if the meeting was really a cover for a Tonelli trap? What if Bellini, his only buffer against Tonelli’s treachery, was absent? He suddenly felt stifled. He removed his overcoat.
    The cage came to a halt, and he stepped out onto the red entrance hall carpet. A brass chandelier shone like a cache of gold in the ceiling. He stepped into a large lounge. It was an around-the-clock station for Tonelli guards. But now the room was strangely unmanned.
    Collucci froze in the silence. He felt the weight of the derringers dangling on the elastics down his arms. Just let him pick up an inflection between Cocio and Tonelli, a mere flicker of fatal electricity in a glance between them, and he would leap like a lethal jack-in-the-box and dumdum the brains from their skulls.
    He looked at the closed-circuit TV monitors flickering on a control panel on a wall to the right where he saw the dome machinegunner reading a magazine. The two garage guards were flapping jaws and waving playing cards on the limousine’s backseat. He moved his eyes across other tiny screens that revealed street activity around the building.
    On a monitor flashing colorful action he watched a children’s Christmas Party beneath a retractable plastic bubble on the terrace. Two dozen parents, including Consuella with Tonelli beside her holding her twins on his lap, sat with faces turned toward a makeshift stage watching children perform a play in biblical costumes.
    Collucci went down a brightly lit hallway. He went past a dozen-and-a-half rooms and suites on both sides of the hall occupied by Tonelli guards and aides. He paused for a moment at the locked three-inch-thick steel door behind which lay Tonelli’s private quarters.
    He felt a twinge of hopelessness, but he moved on and stepped down into the sunken living room. He thought, how tough can it get to put the bastard to sleep? He dropped himself down on a blue satin chair facing