Johnny never bothered to return the knife to his brother, keeping it with him ever since. It was the only weapon he ever needed in a world in which only the strong survived and compassion was a weakness. Few people ever bested him in a fight, and those who did always lived to regret it. For Johnny believed that a reputation for making life unpleasant for anyone who tangled with him was the only kind of life insurance that would do him any good. It worked for him.
By the time Johnny was sixteen, he had five girls turning tricks for him – standing under the lamp-posts at the corner of One-Hundred-Eighth Street and Northern Boulevard waiting for the "white trade" that drove down to Corona at night hoping to pick up some Black pussy and maybe change their luck. From each of the girls Johnny collected seventy or eighty percent of the take, enough to pay for the fancy clothes that he had gotten used to wearing and for the rent on the apartment that he had been living in ever since his mother had thrown him out calling him "trash" and telling her daughters to stay away from him. He didn't spend any of the money on a car, though. Because it would be two years before he was old enough to drive.
In return, Johnny gave his girls protection. And he gave them junk. It hadn't taken Johnny long to learn that junk was the key to manipulating people in the ghetto. And he had a hunch that it might be the key to manipulating them on the outside, too. At sixteen, he didn't know much about life outside the ghetto. But he meant to find out…
To the police, Johnny Walker was just another neighborhood punk, making trouble now, but likely to spend his more mature years as a porter or a bootblack or a taxi driver over in Forest Hills. Most of them didn't even know him by name.
But to the men who profit by the Police Department's mistakes, Johnny Walker was distinguishing himself as a tough – but smart – young, in dependent racketeer. A kid who hadn't been to school but knew how to get his way with people. A kid who knew what made them tick. The men were especially impressed by the fact that, although Johnny had been dipping a finger in the small-fry dope traffic of Corona's back streets, he had been smart enough to stay off the stuff himself. Maybe he could even be relied upon.
It wasn't long before Johnny was approached by these men, and a deal was made. And it wasn't long before Johnny added numbers running to his burgeoning criminal operations. Johnny Walker was a man on the way up. He had already started thinking about what color Cadillac that he would buy. Next year. When be was old enough to drive.
When Johnny got his Cadillac a year later, he had already begun to outgrow Corona. He couldn't see any reason for staying out of Jackson Heights to the west or Elmhurst to the east. Color barriers meant nothing to him. Johnny had no prejudices. He hated everybody.
Now, looking down at Gloria kneeling on the floor and blubbering like a baby, Johnny laughed again. Corona was a long way off and a long time before. He remembered that day, twelve years before, when he had bought his first Cadillac, paying in cash to the amazement of the high-talking white salesman. He had driven his new car straight to Forest Hills. Not more than two miles south of Corona via One-Hundred-Eighth Street, it had been a whole different world to him then – a world in which his new Cadillac didn't seem like such a big deal. He remembered stopping on Queens Boulevard to look around and resolving to settle for nothing less than the nicest apartment on the highest floor of the tallest building.
And now, twelve years later, he had all the things that he had dreamed about as a kid. His penthouse apartment in the Silver Towers was probably the most desirable in Forest Hills. His living room had been designed by one of New York's leading decorators. There was no other like it, anywhere. The floor was done in white vinyl with big splashes of bright color scattered carelessly across it like the spots on an artists palette. All the furniture was of molded plastic and foam rubber, rising out of the floor in all manner of other-worldly shapes and designs, yet each piece was perfectly comfortable and completely functional. Each piece of furniture was colored to match the section of floor that it occupied, making the whole room appear to be a cohesively molded unit.
In the center of the room was a black plastic platform, raised to the same height and serving the same purpose as a sofa. When Johnny was at home he occupied it, using the platform as his throne. All the other seats in the room had been carefully arranged so that they faced the black platform. The Forest Hills crime king liked his subjects to be attentive. Johnny liked the effect. It pleased him, as did the sight of Gloria, her dark face stained with tears, groveling at his feet.
"Please, Johnny," she sobbed. "I'll do anything for you. Anything you ask. Just give me a shot. Please. Just one shot."
Johnny smiled, flashing his gold-capped tooth.
"Anything I say, huh?" he said, frightening her with his sudden affability. "Wait a minute, then. I want Foxy to be here."
Then, turning away from Gloria and facing the back of the apartment, he called, "Foxy! Foxy, come on out here." Foxy was one of Johnny's henchmen. Along with the other two, Cobb and Edward, he occupied the rear section of Johnny's penthouse, converted from what had formerly been two apartments. Foxy was Johnny's closest associate – though not his friend, for he had none. He was the muscle that Johnny used for his dirty work now that he had risen above soiling his own hands. If Johnny Walker was Forest Hills vice king, then Foxy was his Captain of the Guard, his enforcer, carrying out the big man's orders and seeing to it that all his underlings did the same.
A moment after Johnny called him, Foxy entered the room, his white skin appearing almost yellow, a result of the fact that he rarely went outside in daylight. He was short – about five-foot-six – and built like a bullet. Even his head was bullet-shaped, coming to a bluntly rounded point at the top. His gray – nearly white – hair was cropped close to his head, the bristly covering accentuating his bullet-shaped skull and making him look like a gnome.
Foxy was dressed in a stained leather vest and equally stained leather pants. The bulging muscles of his shoulders, back and biceps threatened to tear the vest apart at the seams. His pants, fastened at the front with a leather thong, gaped open, revealing the curling growth of silvery hair on his belly and loins.
"Foxy, you know Gloria, don't you?" Johnny said, his voice taking on a mockingly courteous cadence.
"Yes, I believe I do," Foxy answered, sensing the game that his boss was playing. Foxy's voice was gruff, as though hoarsened but not quieted by a permanent case of laryngitis.
Gloria began to sob again. "Oh, come on Johnny," she wailed. "Don't tease me. Foxy knows me as well as you do. I've been living in your bedroom for the past three months."
Johnny looked angry. "Shut up, bitch," he spat. "You said you'd do anything for a shot. Now's your chance to prove it. Take off your clothes."
Gloria looked up at Foxy and her eyes opened wide. Then she turned back to Johnny. "Oh, come on, Johnny," she said, her voice falling to a whisper. "Not in front of him. I'm your girl. Yours alone. Please, Johnny. Don't make me do this. I'm your girl." She began to cry and the rest of her words were swallowed in her sobs.
"Then do as I tell you," Johnny responded coldly, his lips drawn tightly across his flashing teeth. "You want a shot. Now take off your clothes." Then, changing his tone to a friendlier one, he added, "I just want Foxy to see your tracks – your needle marks – so he'll know how badly you need the fix. You're still my girl."
Gloria brought her sobbing under control although the tears continued to fall. "If you say so, Johnny," she said hopelessly. She rose from the floor without using her hands to assist her. Her lean body was lithe and sinewy. Before meeting Johnny, she had been a dancer, working whenever she was lucky enough to get an occasional chorus part in an off-Broadway show.