Hunting Season

He hadn't had a score all weekend, although he had to admit that he hadn't really put his best foot forward until today. He lit a cigarette and blew a curl of smoke into the rancid, humid air. Something about the smell made him think of Willie the Loan Shark and the money he owed him and how mean he could get.

"Just a little while longer, Willie. Just a little bit more." The young blonde woman appeared suddenly at the pay phone on the opposite corner, some thirty feet away. His heart pounded with excitement. He eyed her carefully from his hiding place, fascinated by her lips in animated conversation.

"Such pretty lips. I'd like to rip them off her face." Easy enough to do. He had done it before.

Bostic was a tall, thin man with shoulders not quite as large as the chip he carried on them. His jaw was jagged, his nose long and straight. His eyes were dark and cruel and they were very busy now, intent on long blonde hair. He felt inside his jacket pocket. Gently, his dirty fingers stroked the plastic handle of the army knife. Soon he would wash them well. In her blood.

Bostic resolved very early in life the issue of stalking a prey or becoming one. The streets of Spanish Harlem had proffered no easy lessons, whether taught by the hoodlums and the drug peddlers or the woman everyone said was his mother. But at least he had known who she was. That was more than he could have said about the string of men he called 'Daddy' in those misspent years of his youth. Maybe then there had been some conscience, some feeling for other people, the germ of a soul. Now there was none.