Published by arrangement with the Olympia Press.

Author: Marshall Macao (pseud.)

About: How Many More Must Die?

Harlem, the early sixties, the summer gets hotter every second as K'ing fights desperately to unsnarl a blood-soaked reign of terror. The scheming Kak, in a depraved attempt to gain the inner favor of underworld demon Zedak, is seduced into a series of cult murders by his mysterious Amazonian sorceress, Queshaka. Ghetto gangsters fall into the web of violence, which K'ing must unravel, putting mind and martial arts against the Red Circle's most hideous caper yet!

Excerpt:

Kak was torn between making Queshaka stop and trying to ride the animals himself and getting to where they were going. In the end he let Queshaka drive all the way to Garden City, Long Island, and park the car four blocks from the white-columned mansion of Angelo Martenello.

There was plenty of darkness left. Kak Nan Tang, already excited beyond measure by the splendid spectacle of New York City, was now overwhelmed in a different way with the quiet affluence of one of America's richest and most exclusive communities. “So this is where they come when they have fought their way to stagnation,” he thought to himself. “They build these walls of stone and brick around their huge houses with the gables and the arches and the columns and the porticos, and they plant hedges and shrubs and flowers and trees, and they put statues of little black boys holding lanterns out in front. They hide inside and drink their liquor and play cards with their friends and decide they no longer have to watch the time pass because their bellies are full and their heads are numb and they do not have to kill to live. At least they do not have to kill with their bare hands. They tell themselves they are more than cavemen because their caves are big and warm in the winter and cool in the summer and lighted by electricity and heated by oil and they use gas for their cooking that is brought to them through pipes instead of wood brought to them by slaves. They tell themselves that if they are not good men, they are not bad either. And this is what they want, for if they were good they would have to fight the bad, and if they were bad they would have to fight the good. And as it is they simply go to sleep.”

Now Kak could see why Martenello had turned on him. It wasn't because of the money. It wasn't because of the other mafiosi. It was because Martenello had grown fat and lazy. He had never wanted more than to fight his way to equality with the richest men he knew. He had never had any pure desire to shed blood, to fight for the sake of fighting. He had wanted only this—to go to sleep. Now he would get what he wanted.

But as Kak and Queshaka approached Martenello's twenty-five room Ionic-columned mansion with its fruit trees in the side yard and its rose garden in the front and its backyard that had once been a polo field, all surrounded by a twelve-foot stone fence topped with three feet of barbed wire, the most powerful Mafia capo in America was awake. It had been forty-five minutes since one of his bodyguards had pounded on his bedroom door, drawing him from between pale yellow silk sheets to tell him that six of his best hit men had been butchered in the Trans World Airlines terminal at Idlewild Airport and another four had been blown to pieces in the driveway and Kak Nan Tang had vanished.

To his bodyguard, whom he ordered to station himself on the second story landing, he seemed as cool and self-possessed as ever. To his wife Lucille, once a trim, vivacious showgirl whose bleached blonde hair had fooled him for the first three years of their marriage, he seemed perhaps a little more nervous than usual. To himself, Martenello was strange. He was scared. In his time he had killed between twenty-five and thirty people. He'd taken slugs in the arms and legs and one in the back of the neck that had missed his spine by a few hundredths of an inch. He thought of himself as a fighter. But— ten hit men gone just like that? And it had been made to look as though they had been after each other.

Martenello began to wonder who was crazy. That night he had decided that Leone was certainly crazy. And this Kak Nan Tang? He had to be crazy too, going up against ten hit men like that. Maybe it would work once for him. Maybe he was smart. Maybe even a genius. But even a genius couldn't press luck like that forever. And that's what it had to be. Luck. Martenello kept telling himself that he wasn't crazy for having defied the Red Circle, and as far as he knew he believed it. That is, until Kak Nan Tang kicked down his door.

Martenello was bent over the desk in front of his window when he heard the crash behind him. From his bed Lucille screamed and pulled the sheets up over her slightly sagging but still silicone-plump breasts.

Martenello whirled and jammed his hand up under his armpit to grab at his .45. His back braced against the desk top and his right foot kicked out to shove Kak back so he could get a slug into him. But the gun hadn't cleared the holster before Kak's Lightning Kick slammed a steeltipped toe up under his elbow and cracked it back into his face, tearing the limb out of joint and mashing his nose to a flat, oozing pulp of cartilage and ripped skin. Martenello lashed out blindly with his other hand but his sledgehammer fist caught thin air and Kak brought an Elephant Kick up into his groin. When he doubled over Kak's Iron Hand slashed down like an executioner's axe across his neck. The cracking of the bone was like a rifle shot but only Lucille Martenello, who clawed wildly at the sheets and tried to flee as her husband's body thudded to the deep pile carpet, was alive to be horrified by it.

Lucille was soft and pasty and panicked. Queshaka, right on Kak's heels, swerved to pounce on her as she fought to free herself of the bedcovers. The sorceress smashed a fist between Lucille's wildly flopping breasts and knocked her back down flat gasping and choking.