‘I’ve heard that you know more than a hundred ways of killing a man with your bare hands, Hunter.’

‘I only need one at a time.’

‘True. But then again, you’d need your hands to do that.’

Malcolm Peck goes by the shortened name of Mal. He doesn’t ever confess his full name; he delights in telling people his name is short for malice.
Mal Peck is a bad man.
He’s a white-supremacist.
A racist.
The name Malice fits him like a glove.

His cousin Jason was a bad man, too. That was until I put a 9mm Parabellum in his skull.
After that he was just dead.

Mal Peck showed me his machete.
He used its rounded tip to measure the distance between my bound wrists and my thumbs.
‘I’m going to take your hands away from you,’ he said. ‘So you can’t go shooting anyone else. I promised Jason that.’

‘Like Jason’s going to care,’ I said. ‘He was a baby killer, Mal. Even you have to admit he got what he deserved.’

‘He was my blood. You think I care about some snot-nosed nigger outa the projects?’

Jacked on methamphetamine, Jason and his skinhead crew had been driving round the streets of Tampa in a souped up Chevrolet Impala taking pot shots at passersby. They weren’t indiscrete shots: they were all aimed at black kids.
Jason had killed a seven year old boy as he walked home from Ben & Jerry’s with his eleven year old brother.
Seven years old; it meant nothing to Jason Peck.
The only thing that mattered was the colour of the boy’s skin.

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