"Something wrong, Pelham?"

"How did you know my name was Pelham?"

"Untie the package."

"How did you know my name was Pelham?"

"Untie the package and I'll tell you."

"I think you intend to kill me."

The man sneered again. "That's right. But we can kill you quickly. Decently. Or we can kill you slowly and painfully. Like your messenger. Like this."

He nodded and the two big men grabbed Remo's head in their hands and began to squeeze. The fat man with the snub-nosed gun giggled. The man with the package watched, waiting to see pain and surrender in the victims' eyes.

But there was no surrender. Only a flash of contempt and anger. The man dropped to his hands, fast before he could be held up. Into the close kneecap of the black man went an elbow, driving the kneecap through the joint, spinning the body upside down so the Afro went crashing into the counter with a crack. Up into the white man's groin went a single hard finger, crushing a testicle and driving the man into the air and then back against a pyramid of red paint cans which caught the shocked body and surrendered, splaying cans across the floor.

The fat man tried to squeeze the trigger. He was still trying when his muscles stopped receiving signals. They stopped receiving signals because there was something wrong with the remnants of his spinal column. A whole vertebra was in his throat.

The two big men were retching on the floor. The man who had held the package just gasped. When he saw the now-hard brown eyes stare into his mind and feed upon his fear, when he suddenly smelled his own death upon him, he urinated.