Life in the Hole, Part I: The Catalyst

Venture deep into the shadows between Brooklyn and Queens where anything goes, and meet a man named Bam who's seen, and done, almost everything.

Bam was twelve years old when he took his first life.

A noise roared out from the back of his home in East New York, Brooklyn, echoing from below while he was feeding pigeons on his roof. Bam knew something was wrong; in fact, he lived with the anticipation that something would always go wrong. His family had dealt in heroin as far back as he could remember. Rather than video games and backyard barbecues, Bam's childhood was colored by gray-faced strangers manically knocking at his door.

He knew what he had to do. He grabbed the machete from the front foyer. Within moments the intruder was on the floor, no longer grappling Bam’s mother, no longer breathing.

Three decades have passed since this confrontation. Bam's voice is gravelly, his eyes weighed down by a web of crow’s feet. He's lived a hard life. Having embraced the family business at a young age, his adulthood was defined by alternating bouts of gang violence and prison time. Now this troubled child is trying to do right by his ow…