Daredevil, page 6
Or he could have just not turned up for the fight at all. He and Matt could’ve left New York. The city he’d lived in his whole life.
But where would he go? He doesn’t know anything else. And Matt? On the run? Nah.
No. He’d planned on doing what he was told. Just like he always did. Be a good little boy. Listen to the good mob boss. Do as you’re told.
But when he saw Matt in the crowd, something changed.
He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t let Matt down. He believed in his dad. No father could ignore that.
No matter the cost.
Jack leaves the arena by a side door leading out into the alley. Rain’s falling, glowing white in the street lights. Oily puddles on the the asphalt reflect brake lights from cars passing the alley mouth.
A sound: shoes scuffing. The splash of a puddle.
Jack stops. He sighs, puts his hands in his pockets. Rigoletto has moved quicker than he anticipated.
He doesn’t turn. “Get it over with, then.”
They come at him with pipes and fists. Slade, McHale, Gillian, Angelo, and Marcello. He doesn’t bother fighting back. No point. He realizes that now. He isn’t walking away from this. He signed his death warrant in that ring.
The fists fall. The pipe hits with a crack, breaking his wrist. He grunts in pain. He won’t give them anything more than that. The pipe comes down again, onto his ankle. He thinks it’s Gillian with the pipe. Another crack. Bone shatters. Slade—heavy, strong—comes at him with fists.
Nose broken. Eyes swollen shut. He’s lying against a dumpster. And still the blows come. He doesn’t feel the pain anymore—he floats above it, his mind tucking itself away in some kind of self-preserving cocoon. But he can hear the wet smacks. Can still feel the blows landing.
He still doesn’t regret what he’s done.
He regrets leaving Matt on his own, though. But he’s glad of their talk last night. He’ll be okay. The kid will be okay.
Then the blows stop. Jack forces one eye open and sees his four attackers step back into the rain, out of the light. Shadows of death fading back into hell.
Another figure walks slowly toward him. Shoes click-clacking on the wet tar.
Jack has never really noticed how old-fashioned Rigoletto dresses. The suit. The overcoat and the fedora. Like he’s from the ’50s.
He’s old-school. The last of a dying breed.
He’s still a moron, though.
Jack starts to laugh, a broken, bloodied chuckle that spills out past shattered teeth and ruptured lips.
Rigoletto pauses a few feet away. Unsure. Then he walks forward again, till the light above Jack slowly crawls across his face. He’s frowning.
“Hell you laughing at, Murdock? You gone crazy?”
Jack keeps laughing, but the laugh turns into a bloody cough. He hacks and chokes, finally managing to spit up blood from his lungs. This is really it. He’s finished.
Oh, well. He had a good run. Not everyone can say that.
He feels the pain melt away, and he grins at Rigoletto, a young man’s grin. He manages to move two of his fingers. The pain flares briefly to life as he forces broken bones into the shape of a pistol and fires it at Rigoletto.
Rigoletto stares at him, then opens his jacket and pulls out a .44.
“You’re a dumb S.O.B., Murdock, you know that?”
Rigoletto forces the gun into Jack’s mouth. Jack tastes oil. It’s cold on his tongue.
When the end comes, it’s a relief.
CHAPTER 7
Seven years ago.
It’s Matt who has to identify his dad’s body. There’s no one else to do it. Matt is the only family Jack had.
At first, he thinks it’s all been a mistake. There’s no way the corpse lying on the steel table in that freezing room is “Battlin’” Jack Murdock. It can’t be. He reaches out to touch his dad’s face, but the coroner stops him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Better not, son,” he says gently. “We’re … talking gunshot trauma.”
Matt swallows back tears. He takes a deep, shuddering breath and clenches the steel table, his fingers turning white.
In the end, he has to identify Dad by one of his tattoos. The faded one on his upper arm. Matt can feel the ink on Dad’s cold skin, trace the shape of it with his fingertips. Jack told Matt he got the tattoo on the last day of high school. Him and Matt’s mom. One half of a heart each. He’d laughed when he told Matt. Corny as all hell, he’d said, staring at the tattoo. But we were young. And at the time it was the most romantic thing either of us had ever done.
That night, Matt returns to Madison Square Garden.
You knew. You knew something might happen, he thinks.
That was what all that talk had been. About Matt looking after himself. Getting away from New York. Spreading his wings. Dad knew.
Matt stands at the mouth of the alley. He can hear a snapping sound: the crime-scene tape, already torn and caught on the dumpster, flicking in the cold wind.
He moves forward, his stick tapping the way ahead of him. Not that he needs it, but he always likes to have it in case anyone is watching. It stops the questions.
He knows the spot instantly. Can smell the tinny ozone of Dad’s blood. He stops just beyond the dark stain and takes a deep breath, smells hot dogs from the street. Pizza and curry. Lamb from the Greek diner a few blocks away. Beer, wine—red and white, dry and sweet. He can smell them all.
He pushes them to the background and focuses on his immediate surroundings. The odors in the alley reveal a picture of recent events. The cops with their leather shoes. The coroner stinking of bleach and industrial-strength cleaner.
Matt turns in a slow circle. His dad is easy to spot. He’d know his dad’s fragrance anywhere: talcum powder, whisky, the clean scent of hard-working sweat. Sadness. He still doesn’t know how he can smell sadness. He just can.
And layered over it all is the stench of blood.
Then more. A whiff of gunpowder. Gun oil. Brylcreem in hair. Expensive aftershave. Gold rings.
He’s smelled that before. Rigoletto.
There are others, too.
Slade. Every time Matt encounters Slade, he notices the stink of garlic and prawns, his favorite food. Matt can smell it in the alley now.
And more.
McHale. (That ancient Old Spice aftershave, sharp and pungent, fails to hide his terminal B.O., the sweat soaked into all his clothes; no matter how many times he washes them, he can’t get the stink out.)
Gillian. (Asian food. Noodles. Sweet-and-sour chicken. Every lunch without fail.)
Angelo. (Designer aftershave. Expensive face creams.)
Marcello. Little Italian guy with a huge nose. Always sniffing, like he has a permanent cold. (Homeopathic remedies. Ginger, tree roots, and bark. Green tea, psyllium husks to help with his IBS.)
Six men. Six men against one.
Matt is pretty sure he knows what happened here. Rigoletto wanted Jack to throw the fight. Jack decided he wasn’t going to do that—and he paid the price. Rigoletto must have lost a fortune to take such extreme action.
After tonight, money is going to be the least of Rigoletto’s worries.
It’s already midnight. Matt doesn’t see the point in waiting any longer.
All the lessons over the years … he’s always known Stick was training him for something, and this, Matt feels, is it: to punish those who have done wrong.
Matt slips on his dad’s old motorcycle jacket. It’s dark red, almost black. Then he finds an old balaclava at the back of a drawer and pulls it on, feels the wool scratch against his skin. Jeans and sneakers next. And finally, his old baseball bat, stashed away in the back of the closet.
He takes to the rooftops. It’s where he is most comfortable nowadays. Where he can be alone, where he doesn’t have to bother pretending. Where no one can see him.
That’s important. If he’s ever spotted, there will be questions. He still can’t explain what he can do. How the hell would anyone else understand?
It isn’t hard to pick up the first scent. Old Spice and sweet-and-sour chicken is not a combination that many people carry around. Gillian and McHale. They always seem to be together, like a pair of those old TV cops. Same fashion sense, too: creased suits, food stains covering their shirts.
Matt tracks them to a bar on West 41st Street, perches on the opposite roof, and waits. He can hear them inside. Laughing and telling crude jokes. Drinking pitchers of beer and whiskey chasers.
“You see his eye, man?” McHale. Thick Bronx accent. “The way it went red like that?”
“Ruptured,” says Gillian.
“Huh?”
“The correct term is ‘ruptured.’ When all the blood vessels pop. Think it was Slade’s toe cap. He’s got those metal cowboy tips on the ends of his boots.”
They’re talking about Dad. Matt grips the edge of the building, the concrete rough beneath his fingers.
“What’s with that?” says McHale. “The guy’s Italian.” He pronounces it Eye-talian. “What’s he goin’ around wearin’ those things for?”
“The guy loves cowboys. What’re you gonna do?”
“It’s weird.”
“Why? What difference does it make to you?”
“None. But those ties … Did you see the one last night? One of those leather things with the belt buckle at the top. They should be banned.”
“Didn’t take you for a fashion connoisseur.”
“I’m not. I just got taste, you know? Taste don’t cost nothin’.”
A loud burp.
“Right. You ready?”
“I’m still drinking.”
“Bring it. I want to join Angelo over at the Magic Box. Hear she’s got some fresh blood in. From Czechoslovakia.”
“Yeah? Where’s that?”
“Not sure. Russia?”
They stagger out of the bar, their feet scuffing on the sidewalk. They stumble along the street, passing a bottle of whiskey back and forth.
Matt keeps pace along the rooftops. He waits for his chance—and finally sees a narrow alley up ahead. The streets are pretty quiet here. No one to witness. Perfect.
He picks up speed, sprinting across the rooftops, dodging around metal chimneys spewing greasy steam from fast-food joints, and air-conditioning vents that rattle and groan like they’re alive. He leaps across a gap between buildings, feels the gulf pass below his feet, and lands easily—barely a pause, still running. Swift, smooth. Calm. Just like Stick taught him.
He grabs the fire escape, slides down the ladder, hops over the balcony, and drops the last 15 feet to the ground.
He readies his bat, moves toward the alley mouth.
“All I said was,” McHale says as they approach, “I said to her, you don’t stick your fingers in the peanut butter. It’s unhygienic.”
“What did she say?”
“She said it was just a jar of peanut butter, and she’d use her finger if she wanted to. I kicked her out. Told her never to come back.”
“Hey!” Matt calls. “You the two bastards who killed Jack Murdock?”
A pause.
“The hell?” mutters Gillian.
“Who’s there?” shouts McHale.
“Doesn’t matter,” says Gillian. “Whoever it is, he’s gonna die.”
Matt hears the snick of a switchblade. He smiles grimly.
They come slowly, feeling their way forward.
“It’s dark,” whispers Gillian. “I can’t see nothin’.”
“Means he can’t see, either,” mutters McHale.
“Right,” Matt whispers—from behind them.
McHale whirls around. Matt’s bat comes up and hits him between the legs. The fat man doubles over with a scream. The bat comes up again, hits him in the throat. He drops instantly, gasping for breath. An extension of Matt’s arm, the bat whirls to the right, flicking around in a circle. It hits Gillian twice.
The crack of a broken nose. Shattered teeth falling to the ground. A snarl of rage, the whistle of wind as the switchblade comes.
Matt brings the bat up, then flicks it down.
The snap of a breaking wrist. A blubbering scream.
Gillian falls to his knees.
The clatter of metal as the blade drops.
Matt could kill them. He could do it quick, get his revenge.
But he doesn’t.
Matt Murdock takes his time.
They beg for mercy—while they can still talk.
Matt doesn’t stop. He thinks of his dad, lying in that morgue, and he drops the baseball bat and goes to work with his fists—just like his old man, using the moves Jack taught him when he was a kid, before he warned Matt away from boxing.
Even when they pass out, he keeps going. The rage and fury spills out, every wet slap of fist on bloodied skin. Every grunt, every shift of their unconscious bodies beneath his fists, makes him want to hurt them even more.
At the end, he still wants to kill them.
But he manages to pull himself back from the precipice. He can almost see his old man standing there, shaking his head.
I told you to use your head, kid. You call this using your head?
I’m doing this for you, Dad.
Twenty minutes after he called the thugs into the alley, Matt Murdock grabs his now-red bat and climbs back up to the rooftops.
Two down. Four to go.
He knows where Slade will be: the gym.
Matt sneaks in his usual way, round back into the locker room. He pauses inside. He can hear Slade pounding away at the bag—but he can hear something else, too. A quiet flicking sound with a slight echo to it. He runs the sound through his mind and comes up with a source. He sniffs. Ginger. Green tea.
Marcello. Cleaning his nails with a knife.
Matt pads through the locker room and into the passage outside. He remembers, all those years ago, when he heard his dad being forced into working for Rigoletto. That night started his old man on the path to his death. That was the night his dad really died. Jack just hadn’t known it yet.
Matt figures Slade will be different from McHale and Gillian. Slade thinks he’s a boxer. Then he hears Stick’s voice in his head. Don’t underestimate your opponent. Slade was a boxer. Not pro-level, but he’s big—has a lot of weight behind him.
So Matt evens the playing field: He flicks the light switch at the entrance to the gym.
“Hey, Slade? What happened, man?”
Slade’s voice, coming from the ring. “What the hell you think? Power cut.”
“Nah. Look. There’re lights outside.”
“Then it’s the breaker. Go look.”
“I’m not goin’ down there!”
“Don’t be such a chicken. Go look!”
“You go look.”
Matt moves across the wooden floor, avoiding the boards that creak. He hefts his baseball bat, pauses to listen for breathing—then swings.
Marcello drops. Matt isn’t sure he likes the sound the man makes when he falls. He hit him hard—maybe too hard.
“Marcello? The hell was that?”
Ropes stretching and creaking as Slade climbs out of the ring.
“Marcello? This isn’t funny, man. What was that sound?”
Matt waits as Slade approaches. As his huge form barges through the air, currents form around him, giving him shape in the gray twilight of Matt’s mind. He’s almost seven feet tall and covered in thick, curly hair. Like a werewolf in human form.
Slade makes his way carefully across the floor, toward where Marcello had been sitting on a wooden stool. He stumbles over the little man’s prone figure. Matt senses uncertainty in Slade as he reaches down and touches Marcello’s face. His fingers come away covered in blood.
He straightens up, looks around.
“Who’s there?” he growls.
Matt hesitates. Out of all Rigoletto’s henchmen, he hates Slade the most. He’s a bully, just like the ones from school. The ones that made Matt’s life a living hell. Matt knows his old man hadn’t been bothered by Slade—Jack just ignored him. But over the years, Matt has been listening to Slade. He’s seen the casual cruelty in his eyes, sensed the sadistic nature of the man.
Matt wants him to see who is punishing him. Wants him to know why.
He moves back to the light switch and flicks it on, making his way quickly along the wall and up into the ring. He waits beneath the spotlight for Slade to see him. The big man is still staring down at Marcello.
“Over here.”
He can feel the air currents shift as Slade turns and sees Matt.
“Come on then, big guy,” says Matt. “Let’s see these amazing boxing skills you’re always talking about.”
He drops the bat.
“I’ll even give you a fighting chance.”
Slade takes his time, looking around in confusion as he approaches. He doesn’t believe Matt is here on his own. Matt knows he’s wondering where the reinforcements are.
When he realizes no one else is coming, his big face splits into a cruel grin. Matt can hear his lips stretching, hear the amusement in his voice.
“Gonna break you in half, little man.”
He pulls himself into the ring. Matt feels the vibrations through the canvas, the way it dips slightly with Slade’s every step. He senses the towering, solid wall of the man, and the heat from the spotlight disappears as his shadow falls over Matt.
Matt tilts his head to stare up. The man’s imposing bulk makes him think of recess. Hundreds of beatings. Hundreds of taunts. All the times he was left lying in the grass, bleeding and crying. Forced to take it, because the old man told him to. Forced to take it over and over and over and over.
Rage surges to life, burning through his veins, igniting his blood. His muscles tremble. He feels like he can take on the world, can fight and fight until no one is left.
