The Black Assassin

The Life and Deaths of Sigmund Leon Wortherly

By Sigmund L. Wortherly

Most lack the capacity to kill.

Oh, maybe a handful can push themselves to take a life if it means protecting themselves or

Loved-ones from bodily harm. Or they might kill in the heat of passion, out of some uncontrollable

rage or the lust of revenge.

But very, very few people have the stomach to kill in cold blood. It takes a rare and special

person to kill in cold blood.

I, Sigmund Leon Wortherly, am that rare and special person.

I have the ability to kill in cold blood. And, God help me, but during my 60 years on this

Earth, I have used it. More than a dozen times, at least. And, in all likelihood, more than that. For at

this stage of the game, I have probably lost count.

My methods of killing were varied. Sometimes I shot my victims. Sometimes I stabbed them.

Sometimes I strangled or smothered them. Sometimes, I just plain beat them to death with my

hands. Once, I fatally head-butted a guy. Another time, I threw hot, caustic Drano in some dude’s

face, blinding him in one eye and causing permanent damage to his mouth, tongue, esophagus and

other internal organs. With this victim, I don’t know for sure, but I’m fairly certain my actions

hastened his demise.

Sometimes I killed in self-defense. Sometimes I killed for revenge. But mostly, I killed for

money. I was a contract killer. A hired gun. A paid assassin. A hitman. And I was good at my job. So

good that all manner of people tried to recruit me to do their killing for them – other hitmen, drug

dealers, terrorists, Black Liberation Army members and good old-fashioned Mafia Kingpins. So

good that New York City Police Department once dubbed me “Mister Tough”. So good that, on the

street and in prison, they call me the Iron Man, the Hammer, Killer, Mister Kill Death, the Death

Maker and Doctor Death. In a reference to James Bond and his vaunted license to kill, some even

dubbed me Agent 0010.

Not once, did I lose a night’s sleep over my murders. Not that I enjoyed killing, mind you.

There was no great fun in doing it. No, I didn’t get any kind of adrenalin high or sexual rush, if

that’s what you’re thinking. Just a feeling of quiet satisfaction and professional pride. To me, it was a

job, sometimes for revenge, nothing more. But the fact that I was such a cold-blooded dude when it

came to sending others to their deaths made plenty of people stand up and take notice.

“Man,” they used to say about me, “this guy is cool. He’s got nerves of steel. Things don’t

bother him. This is a guy to watch out for.”

Because of my coolness in the face of death, I actually applied for jobs as a professional

executioner. Both Florida and Illinois had placed ads in magazines seeking candidates who could

throw the switch or administer the fatal injection. I answered those ads. Got nice letters back from

the attorney generals of both states. To my great disappointment, however, they were not amenable

to hiring prison inmates.

As far as my victims themselves were concerned, I had no regrets. None whatsoever. The

reason? Most of them had it coming. They were bad people. Scumbags and dirtballs. Drug dealers.

Thieves. Loansharks. Pimps. Number bankers. Gamblers. And other hitmen. The dregs of society.

Hey, I figure I even did the world a favor by taking these people off the streets, y’understand what

I’m saying? I was a regular vigilante. A collector and disposer of human garbage. A latter-day Robin

Hood, if you will.

Take Big Jack, for instance.

Even though we partnered on and off for six months, I always knew that, one day, I would

end up killing Big Jack.

Big Jack was a hitman himself, a drug dealer, a thief and a bully. As his name suggests, he

was a giant of a fellow – 6 feet-4, 250 pounds – very dark-skinned, with a pockmarked complexion

and short, curly hair. He was also extremely well-educated and articulate. Spoke the Queen’s English,

as a matter of fact. So, quite naturally, he felt perfectly justified in anointing himself “the smartest

black man in the world.”

Big Jack tried to make people think he was cunning, mean and fearless. Omni-present dark

glasses helped enhance his evil image. Plus he would boast freely about how cold-blooded he could

be. His favorite story was the one about the three fools who entered an uptown club and made the

mistake of robbing him of his jewelry. Later that night, he caught up with them on a Harlem Street

Corner and shot all three to death.

I first met Big Jack in the mid-1960s through Willie, one of my earliest partners in crime.

Willie and Big Jack used to play hoops together on The Battleground, a blacktop playground up at

152nd Amsterdam that was legendary for its brutal, ghetto-ball style of play.

Big Jack himself had played college ball. And he was a pretty fair player, too. So good that,

he came close to making the Olympics. After College, he earned a couple of masters degrees in

education and began working towards his PhD. He even taught school for a while. But somewhere

along the way, he went “cc” – from college to crime.

He began ripping off drug dealers. The selling drugs, although he’d always cut stiff down

before he put it out on the street. If it was 90% pure when he got it, you could be certain it was only

60% pure when you got it. Big Jack figured he was such an intimidating figure; nobody would dare

come back on him to complain.

Big Jack was a steady drug user himself, a lifelong devotee of speedballs. Speedballs are

mixtures of heroin and cocaine and, let me tell you, they’ll give you a jolt like you wouldn’t believe.

With speedballs, you can sniff ‘em. Inject ‘em. Or do like the Chinese do and smoke ‘em, a practice

known as “chasing the dragon.”

In the autumn of 1965, Willie and I were planning to take off a big drug dealer in the Bronx.

Big Jack wanted in. “Hey, I’m down, too,” he told us. So off the three of us went, to do the deed.

We used a girl we knew to gain entry to the dealer’s apartment. Banging on the front door,

while Willie, Big Jack and I stood off to the sides with our guns drawn, the girl mentioned the name

of a mutual friend. “Hey, y’all!” she shouted. “Betty told me to come by and see him.”

As soon as the people inside opened the door, the three of us rushed through it and were up

on ‘em.

Two women were in the living room, taking care of a baby while watching TV. The dealer

wasn’t home yet. So we tied up the women, and waited for the dealer to return. I positioned myself

behind the door. Big Jack and Willie stood back aways, guns drawn. The moment I heard the key in

the lock, I threw the door open, grabbed the dealer by the collar and snatched him inside. Then I

grabbed his bodyguard and snatched him inside, too. While Big Jack and Willie kept them covered, I

made the two men lie face-down on the floor. Then I tied their hands behind their backs. Neckties

were always my favorite devices for binding my victims. They were impossible to untie, especially

when I utilized the square knots and bow lines I learned in the Navy. After I tied their hands, I

covered their mouths with duct tape.

Big Jack grabbed the dealer and yanked him to his feet. Pushing him back towards the

bathroom, he sat him down on the side of the tub. He ripped the duct tape off. “Okay. Where’s it

at?” Big Jack demanded.

For a while, the dealer tried to play macho and tough it out. “C’mon, man, I ain’t got nuthin’

here,” he said. “Get outta my house, man.”

But Big Jack knew he was just bullshitting. Bringing his pistol down sharply, Big Jack

smacked the guy upside the head. The blow accidentally discharged a round from the chamber.

Startled by the sound of the gunshot, the dealer toppled over in a heap.

Out cold.

He had fainted.

Big Jack threw some water on the guy’s face and slapped his cheeks to revive him. When the

dealer came to again, he gave it up quickly. Heroin and $1,500 in cash, under the mattress of his bed.

Plus jewelry, hidden in the bedroom closet. A sweet score.

From that night on, Big Jack and I began working on a steady basis. For the next six months,

we schemed and scammed, thieved and bullied, selling drugs, doing drugs, stealing other people’s

drugs and sometimes their money, too. Hell, we were regular highwaymen. Though we did most of

our stickups in Harlem or the Bronx, we would travel as far as Jersey or Maryland when there was

money to be made. And the money we made was damned good. One time, we ripped off a drug

dealer of $10,000 in cash, plus his heroin. By putting the heroin back out on the street, we able to

boost our profit margin even higher.

We had a host of ruses we used to get our unsuspecting victims to open their doors to us.

Like asking for directions (“Hello, can you tell me where Elm Street is?”), or using the name of a

friend of a friend (“Yo, Eddie sent us over!”) or even announcing ourselves as the law (“Police! We

have a warrant! Open the door!”). Knowing that people in the ghetto would always look through

their peephole while the other crouched down low, out of the line of sight. After a few minutes, the

guy standing in full view would up his hands in disgust, turn and walk away, knowing that his

departure was being carefully observed from behind the door. A few minutes later, the occupant of

the apartment would open the door a couple of inches to make certain the coast was clear. And –

Boom! – that’s when the guy crouching low would spring up on him.

Because of all the body-building I’d done over the years, I was the one who usually played

the croucher. My upper torso was so heavily muscled that, after one or two good whacks, I could

usually snap the chain lock right off its frame and bowl over the person behind the door, all in one

fell swoop.

Now we didn’t always break down the doors to pull off our stickups. Sometimes, we’d catch

‘em right in the hallway and rip ‘em off. One time, up in the projects, we actually got the drop on an

off-duty cop who was moonlighting as the building’s rent collector. Big Jack took the cop’s shield. I

took his gun. The two of us split the cash. Big Jack could be a vicious sonofabitch. I once saw him

hammer the head of a drug dealer so hard with the butt of his long-barreled, .38-caliber pistol that

he nearly caved in the guy’s skull. When another customer tried to stiff him on a $2,000 heroin debt,

Big Jack left this message with the middleman, who happened to be a Harlem haberdasher: “When

you see him, tell him he better be getting’ a black suit on.”

The customer quickly settled his debt.

Then there was the one dude was actually ended up killing.

He was a popular guy in the neighborhood, a heavy-duty drug dealer, the local candy man.

Knowing where he lived, we trailed him in our car one night, then sped ahead to beat him home to

his rooming house. At the moment he arrived at his building, we were already inside, laying in wait.

While he was unlocking his door on the second floor, Big Jack and I were up on the third floor,

looking down at him from the banister. A second after he went inside his room, we tiptoed down

the stairs, drew our guns and barged through his still-open door.

“Police!” Big Jack bellowed, brandished the police shield we had stolen from the off-duty

cop.

Convinced we were The Man, the dealer surrendered meekly. “Well, okay,” he said. “You

got me.”

I pushed the dealer face down on the floor, then tied his hands behind him with a necktie.

Once he realized what we were all about, the guy tried to hold out on us.

“Man, I ain’t got nuthin’,” he insisted.

“Oh, yeah?” I said, knowing he was lying.

Then I resorted to a little torture, poking the tip of my pocketknife into the delicate flesh

underneath his fingernails to encourage him to give it up. Despite my improvised manicure, he

continued to deny that he was holding any drugs or cash or anything else on the premises.

Suddenly, while I was holding him down, Big Jack emerged from the back room, holding up

a roll of cash that he had discovered inside a coat pocket. Wordlessly, he signaled me that there had

to be more.

“Stab him, man!” yelled Big Jack. “Stab the motherfucker if he won’t give it up!”

I plunged my knife into his thigh.

I must have severed the guy’s femoral artery, cause he began to bleed like a stuck pig.

Instinctively, I rolled away from him. Throughout my career, I always tried to keep from getting

blood on myself and my clothes. Hey, I’m a very neat person. Obsessive-compulsive about

cleanliness, if you will. I hate blood. I hate dirt. And I hate dirty people. Cleanliness, I believe, is

most assuredly next to Godliness.

I wiped the knife off on the dealer’s pants leg, then threw it out the window.

The guy was still alive when we left him. It was some time later that we learned that he had

bled to death.

Not only did Big Jack and I thieve together. We partied together, too. We’d go to our

favorite bar, John’s Recovery Room, a lively joint up at 137th and Lennox. The Recovery Room was

right across the street from Harlem Hospital, one of the prime sources of our drug customers. Hell,

I used to go into that hospital so often to make my drug deliveries – to the patients, to the security

guards, to the nurses, to the orderlies and even to the doctors – that all I needed was a white jacket

and a stethoscope and they would have taken me for one of the attending physicians.

On a typical night at the Recovery Room, we’d peddle our drugs to our regular clientele –

cops, firemen, correction officers, sanitation workers, hospital personnel and ordinary civilians. In

between, we’d do a little blow ourselves, have a few drinks, chat up the ladies, look to get laid. For a

while, Big Jack and I dated two women who were best friends. Hell, they looked so much alike, they

could have been sisters.

One night, we met another woman at the bar and tried to get it on with her in tandem. A

ménage a trios, as they say. But both of us were so coked up that, once we got up to the hotel room,

neither one of us could do the nasty.

“Look at that!” the girl giggled. “Between the two of you, neither one can get a goddamned

hard-on!”

Eventually, Big Jack and I went our separate ways. He got himself into all kinds of cons and

scams. I, on the other hand, began doing murders for money. After both of us got busted, we

bumped into each other again in June of 1996 at the Bronx House of Detention, on a day when

both of us happened to show up in the infirmary for sick call. I was on my way upstate for my first

homicide. Big Jack, who had been working as a welfare investigator for the city, had been arrested

for grand larceny. They had caught him conning illiterate welfare mothers into signing vouchers for

their furniture and clothing allowances, then diverting most of their cash into his own pocket.

When the police took Big Jack into custody, they searched him and found the shield from

the off-duty cop we had robbed in the projects. Knowing I was already going away for murder, Big

Jack wanted me to take the weight for the robbery of the cop, too.

“You gotta be crazy,” I told him.

In the end, luckily, the cop was unable to identify either one of us. Big Jack ended up doing

only a short haul in the joint. But I went away for nearly 10 ½ years for a homicide.

While I way away, a friend of mine sent a letter saying that Big Jack had given him $15 to

deliver to me. Fifteen dollars to help me feed my family. Fifteen lousy bucks. What a scumbag.

More than a decade later, when I came back out again, I ran into Big Jack at the Recovery

Room. He was the same boastful asshole I remembered from my youth. “Yeah, I just took off 10Gs

up the Bronx,” he bragged.

And me, with not a pot to piss in, said, “Well, then, how about you help me out a little?”

But Big Jack was having none of that, “Hey, man,” he sneered, “you go get yours like I got

mine.”

I never forgot that.

I always knew that, one day, I would end up killing Big Jack. For one thing, he was such a

God-damned braggart, I could have puked. He bragged about his education. He bragged about his

size and strength. He bragged about his women. He bragged about his murders and his stickups. He

bragged about his wealth. At the bar, he’d always be flashing his roll of money, making sure

everyone got a good, long look. Then he’d get down on me for not following his example.

“What do you do with your money?” he’d ask. “Go home and look at it in the drawer?”

“No,” I’d reply. “I use it to take care of my family.”

For another thing, for all his size and weight. Big Jack was really a coward. He tried to get

over on people because he was so big, but in reality it was all just an act, a bunch of bullshit. When

push came to shove, he would just as soon back down from a fight or beg me to help bail him out.

Now, a lot of people in this world are afraid of big men. They think that just because they’re

big, they can fight better. But it’s really small men of this world who are the meanest and the

nastiest. Think about it. Napoleon was only 5-foot-2. Nathan Bedford Forest, a legendary

Confederate cavalry leader in the Civil War, was small. Ditto, Walter Stevens, a ruthless killer who

bodyguarded Al Capone. And what about all those mobsters like Lansky, Lepke, Anastasia and

Galante? You think they were big men? Hell, no! They were tiny. Last but not least, don’t forget

Attila the Hun, the “Scourge of God.” According to the history books, that guy was a fucking

midget! And he ended up conquering half the world.

The main reason I always knew I would kill Big Jack, however, was that, all during our

partnership, he was cheating me. Time and time again, he was pocketing more from our stickups

and our drug deals than he was letting on.

The real moment of truth came after I had knifed that one drug dealer to death. Afterwards,

when we met up again at the Recovery Room, Big Jack pulled out a small felt bag and dropped it on

the bar. “Hey, Ziggy,” he said, “look what I found back there.”

He opened the bag. Out rolled a dozen small diamonds. He did not offer to share those

diamonds with me. Nor did I ever see them again. Until that day, some weeks later, when Big Jack

showed up at the Recovery Room. Sidling up to the bar, Big Jack slapped his fat hand on top of the

counter.

“Hey, Ziggy,” he said, “check this out.”

There, on his pinkie, was a brand new gold ring. Engraved with his initials. And studded

with small diamonds. As usual, I just smiled and played dumb. But in my mind, I kept saying to

myself: “Okay, now I know where it’s at.”

In 1977, I went away to prison again, this time to do 4 ½ years on an attempted murder

conviction. When I came back out, I began peddling my drugs again. Wasn’t doing too badly, either.

After a few weeks, I bumped into Big Jack at the Recovery Room. He had just finished a federal bit

at Danbury for tax evasion. And he was eager to revive our criminal partnership.

“I heard about you, man,” he said when he saw me at the bar. “I heard you were out again,

taking care of business.”

This time, I was careful to measure my words. “I’m doing so-so,” I replied, keeping a poker

face. I knew he was trying to ferret out how much I was making from my drug-selling. Plus, he was

probably scheming to rip me off again.

“Hey, we partners, man,” Big Jack smiled.

“Oh, yeah?” I replied. But that’s as far as I let things go.

One thing you should know about me is that I make it a practice never to rush into things,

especially a hit. I may be angry as hell ay you, but most of the time, I mask my anger. Then, when

you let your guard down, I get right up on you. Yeah, you may think everything is fine with me,

cause I’m all smiling and friendly. Then, before you even realize what’s happening—Bam! –I got

you.

Yep, that’s me. Smiling and friendly one moment. In action, the next. That’s the way of the

true warrior, and I am a true warrior. It’s almost like I’m two different people. “Which one are you

today?” my ex-mother-in-law always used to ask me. “Doctor Jekyll or Mister Hyde?’ With me, you

could never be sure.

Big Jack could talk all he wanted about being “the smartest black man in the world.”

Unfortunately, with all his schooling, he had never bothered to read the writings of that great 17th

Century Frenchman, Francois, Due de La Rochefoucauld, who was wise enough to know that: “The

surest way to be deceived is to think one’s self more clever than others.”

Or Niccolo Machiavelli, who knew that: “A prince…must imitate the fox and the lion.”

Or Sun-tzu, the 6th Century Chinese strategist who understood that “every matter in war

requires prior knowledge.”

Or the great Prussian military genius, Carl von Clausewitz, who reasoned that: “Surprise is

the most powerful element of victory.”

But I had read them.

I waited for nearly 18 years for my revenge.

It came in 1983, when I was living in the projects over by Amsterdam Avenue and West 61th

Street. The day of reckoning, I more or less lazed around the house, hanging out with my girlfriend.

She had no idea what I was planning. I, however, spent the better part of the day preparing myself

mentally. I thought about some of the legendary big game hunters in India, Africa and North

America whose biographies I had devoured as a kid. People like Elmer Keith, Jim Corbett, Carl

Aiken and Sasha Siemel, who used to hunt South American jaguars with a spear. And, of course, and

my all-time favorite, Howard Hill, the archer who actually managed to bring down a bull elephant

with a bow and arrow. I tried to put myself inside their heads. Then I imagined myself to be a keen

stalker, a master tracker, a noble warrior bracing for the kill. On this particular day, I purposely

refrained from getting high on dope. When I finally evened the score with Big Jack, I wanted it to be

an act that was straight from the heart, pure and undiluted, not the byproduct of false courage

induced by drugs.

Because of the heat, I wore loose-fitting clothes that day—Polo shirt, jeans, high tops and a

light-weight windbreaker with side pockets that could easily conceal my gun. Later in the day, I took

a cab uptown to the bar, where I ran into my pal Freddy. Freddy and I had done time together in

prison, and he was in on my payback plan for Big Jack. I had wanted to take Big Jack up to the park

and kill him. But Freddy suggested I do it right here in the neighborhood, especially since it had the

reputation of being a dumping ground for hit victims. With all those bodies dropping left and right,

no-one in his right mind was gonna talk to the police.

Early in the evening, Big Jack pulled up to the bar in his big new Cadillac. As usual, he was

dressed to the nines--$900 suit, silk shirt, gold rings, gold watch, expensive Italian shoes. Swaggering

and boasting, he sauntered into the bar and sat his fat ass on a stool. He had just come from having

dinner with his woman, a schoolteacher he lived with just off Central Park. And now he was on his

way to meet his girlfriend. As usual, he made a point of loudly broadcasting his business.

“Oh, man,” he boomed out, “I just had me a nice meal with some collard greens and fried

chicken and dirty rice, this, that and the other. And now I’m gonna go get it on with my lady friend.

Yeah, man, I got me this new babe, and, boy oh boy, is she hot to trot.”

That’s when I said to myself, “Okay, I’ll do it now.”

To Big Jack, however, I remained all smiley and chummy, “Hey, Big Jack,” I said to him. “I

got something I wanna show you.”

I was cool. Real cool. Not a trace of nerves.

Big Jack scowled. “Look, man,” he said, in the tone of someone who has more important

things to do with his time. “I only got but a few minutes. You wanna show me something? What

you wanna show me? Huh? What you wanna show me?”

“Won’t take but a second, man,” I said. “I got it a couple of blocks away in the hallway.”

“Well, what is it, man?”

“A silencer.”

Big Jack’s eyes widened.

“Oh, yeah, you got one, man?”

At that moment, I knew I had him hooked. Silencers are almost impossible to get on the

street. Guns, knives, drugs, they’re easy to come by. But silencers are as rare as orchids in winter.

Even the mob has a tough time getting its hands on silencers.

“I’m gonna show it you, man,” I said.

My man Freddy vouched for me, just the way we had planned it. “Yeah,” Freddy said

matter-of-factly, “you left that thing over there in the hallway, right, man?”

By now, Big Jack was practically salivating. “Alright, man.” he said. “Let’s stop fucking

around here. I got an appointment. So let’s go see it.”

Together the three of us left the bar.

As Big Jack, Freddy and I walked along the streets, Big Jack insisted on giving me the benefit

of his superior knowledge about firearms.

“You know, man,” he said, “silencers are supposed to be for a .32-caliber.”

“No, no, this is for a .38,” I said.

“No, man, that couldn’t be,” said Big Jack. “They only make ‘em for .32s”

As usual, he was full of shit. He didn’t know that silencers come in all different sizes.

As we walked towards the tenement, I found myself doing what I always would do just

before I was about to become the causation of a person’s death. I began ruminating about what his

final day had been like. Had he had a good day or a bad day? Was he in a good mood or a foul

mood? Had he washed his face that morning? Brushed his teeth? Taken care of all his business?

Eaten a good meal? And, if he had, exactly what was it that had been on his plate as he sat back

afterwards, burping and farting and picking his teeth? Had he gone to the movies? Watched TV?

Had sex? What kind of sex was it? Was the sex enjoyable? Given that I would be responsible for this

person spending his very last day on this Earth, all of these questions were of keen interest to me,

Sigmund L.Wortherly, his destroyer.

Freddy and I entered the tenement first. Big Jack followed us in. The place was a rathole,

run-down and ragged, crawling with junkies and drunks. Some guy was shuffling up the stairs as we

came in. He looked back down at us for an instant. We waited until he disappeared. Then, as Big

Jack lingered by the staircase, I walked towards the back of the building, hoping to continue out into

the backyard. Unfortunately, the back door had been mailed shut.

Big Jack was growing restless. “Alright, man,” said Big Jack, “I ain’t got all day. Now where

the fuck…?”

Before Big Jack could even finish the sentence, I whirled around with the .38-caliber snub-

nosed revolver in my hand. My first shot hit him dead center in the gut. The second caught him

square in the mouth, spun him half-way around and knocked him down on the staircase. I stepped

up to his body and put two more slugs into his back. Then I leaned over him for the coup de grace.

One shot, just behind his left ear.

And that was the end of Big Jack. For eternity.

Once it was finished, I walked back outside with Freddy. As we came down the steps

towards the sidewalk, we passed an 18-year-old kid walking up the steps. For a brief instant, our eyes

locked. Clearly, he had seen us. And we knew he could identify us. But there was no time to discuss

this, so we kept on walking. The kid passed us by and entered the tenement.

At the corner, Freddy and I caught a livery cab uptown. We got out on Lennox Avenue and

began to head across the 145th Street Bridge, towards the Bronx. As we walked, we talked.

“Hey, man that was alright,” said Freddy.

“Yeah, man, that went down okay,” I said.

Freddy asked, “Do you think he’s dead.”

I laughed. “What are you, kidding? If he’s not dead, it’s a bad trick being played on him.”

Midway across the bridge, I tossed the gun into the East River. Then Freddy and I made a

U-turn and walked back into Manhattan.

They say that murderers often return to the scene of the crime. Well, I was no exception. My

curiosity simply got the better of me. Back down at 143rd Street, the police cars and the ambulance

had pulled up to the curb in front of the tenement. The cops had sealed off the entire street while

canvassing for witnesses. The forensics guys had roped off the tenement with yellow tape while they

dusted for prints and searched for shell casings and other evidence.

Once I saw that tape, I knew the deed was done. You see that tape, man, that’s finality.

Freddy and I split up and went our separate ways. “I’ll see ya later, man,” said Freddy.

“Okay, man,” I replied, “you go ahead.”

As Freddie sauntered off, I walked slowly past the taped-off crime scene, casually glancing

over like any other peckerhead rubber-necker. I later learned that the cops had caught a junkie trying

to rifle Big Jack’s pockets and steal his shoes. Realizing he was not the murderer, they turned him

loose. Then they arrested another guy who lived in the building, believing he must have been the

killer. But they had to release him, too.

As far as I was concerned, the cops couldn’t have cared less. As I passed by the crime scene,

nobody looked at me. Nobody stopped me. Nobody tried to question me. Nobody had a clue. And

all the while, I kept thinking to myself, “Oh, yeah, I got him. He’s long gone.”

I kept walking south. A few blocks further, I popped into a bar, flopped down on a stool

and ordered myself a vodka with orange juice. As I sat sipping at my drink, I relived the kill. It had

been a good kill, swift and neat, with no complications. I felt good about myself. It was something

that had to be done. If anything, I was disappointed that the kill had gone down so quickly. It took

all the fun and the glitter out of the act. After all the anticipation, I had hoped that the actual deed

would have lasted a little longer. But it was over and done with, just like that. I had waited all these

years for this? For something that took less than a minute? Damn! What a letdown!

That night, I went back home to the West Side. Had myself a big meal. After dinner, I

turned on the t.v. set and watch my favorite program, “America’s Most Wanted.”

The next day, Freddie went back to Harlem and tracked down the 18-year-old kid who had

seen us walking out the tenement.

“My man,” said Freddie. “Just what did you see yesterday?”

“I didn’t see nothing.” the kid replied.

Hell, this kid was no dope. Everyone knew that 143rd Street was the spawning ground for

many of the city’s most vicious hitmen—as well as the dumping ground for a lot of their victims.

The word on the street was: Don’t mess around on 143rd, or else you’ll wind up in somebody’s

backyard being eaten by rats.

So that was the end of it. After it was all over, I went back to my business of murdering,

thieving and drug-selling. Although I was never arrested or charged in Big Jack’s murder, people on

the block figured it must have been me who pulled the trigger. In fact, one of my friends who had a

spot from which he sold drugs and liquor actually came down on me for stirring up so much shit.

“Man, stop doin’ that!” he scolded. “Cops all up and down the block all night long, I can’t do a

dime’s worth of business. Don’t you be doin’ that no more, y’hear?”

Most other folks, however, seemed relieved. They couldn’t stomach Big Jack any more than

I could.

Two days after Big Jack’s death, I got a call from the woman Big Jack had been living with.

The phone rang at 7 a.m., waking me from a deep sleep.

“Hello, Ziggy,” she said. “You hear about Big Jack?”

“No, I didn’t,” I lied. “What happened?”

“He got himself killed up in Harlem.”

“My goodness,” I said, feigning surprise and compassion.

“And the wake is tonight up at the Unity Funeral Home. It’s gonna be quite an affair, too.”

“Oh yeah?” I said. “Well thanks for letting me know.”

I hung up the phone. Then I rolled over and went straight to back to sleep.

If it’s one thing I hate, it’s to be awakened from sound sleep. Especially if it’s for no good

reason.

And this, most assuredly, was for no good reason.