The Best American Mystery Stories 2000

Edward Lee ICU

From 999

It chased him; it was huge. But what was it? Me sensed its immensity gaining on him, pursuing him through unlit warrens, around cornerways of smothered flesh, and down alleys of ichor and blood...

Holy Mother of God.

When Paone fully woke, his mind felt wiped out. Dull pain and confinement crushed him, or was it paralysis? Warped images, voices, smears of light and color all massed in his head. Francis “Frankie” Paone shuddered in the terror of the nameless thing that chased him through the rabbets and fissures of his own subconscious mind.

Yes, he was awake now, but the chase led on:

Storming figures. Concussion. Blood squirting onto dirty white walls.

And like a slow dissolve, Paone finally realized what it was that chased him. Not hitters. Not cops or feds.

It was memory that chased him.

But the memory of what?

The thoughts surged. Where am I? What the hell happened to me? This latter query, at least, shone clear. Something had happened. Something devastating...

The room was a blur. Paone squinted through grit teeth; without his glasses he couldn’t see three feet past his face.

But he could see enough to know.

Padded leather belts girded his chest, hips, and ankles, restraining him to a bed which seemed hard as slate. He couldn’t move. To his right stood several metal poles topped by blurred blobs. A long line descended... to his arm. IV bags, he realized. The line came to an end at the inside of his right elbow. And all about him swarmed unmistakable scents: antiseptics, salves, isopropyl alcohol.

I’m in a fucking hospital, he acknowledged.

Someone must’ve dropped a dime on him. But... He simply couldn’t remember. The memories hovered in fragments, still chasing his spirit without mercy. Gunshots. Blood. Muzzleflash.

His myopia offered even less mercy. Beyond the bed he could detect only a vague white perimeter, shadows, and depthless bulk. A drone reached his ears, like a distant air conditioner, and there was a slow, aggravating beep: the drip monitor for his IV. Overhead, something swayed. Hanging flowerpot? he ventured. No, it reminded him more of one of those retractable arms you’d find in a doctor’s office, like an X-ray nozzle. And the fuzzed ranks of shapes along the walls could only be cabinets, pharmaceutical cabinets.

Yeah, I’m in a hospital, all right, he realized. An ICU ward. It had to be. And he was buckled down good. Not just his ankles, but his knees too, and his shoulders. More straps immobilized his right arm to the IV board, where white tape secured the needle sunk into the crook of his elbow.

Then Paone looked at his left arm. That’s all it was — an arm. There was no hand at the end of it. And when he raised his right leg...

Just a stump several inches below the knee.

Nightmare, he wished. But the chasing memories seemed too real for a dream, and so did the pain. There was plenty of pain. It hurt to breathe, to swallow, even to blink. Pain oozed through his bowels like warm acid.

Somebody fucked me up royal, he conceded. The jail ward, no doubt. And there’s probably a cop standing right outside the door. He knew where he was now, but it terrified him not knowing exactly what had brought him here.

The memories raged, chasing, chasing...

Heavy slumps. Shouts. A booming, distorted voice... like a megaphone.

Jesus. He wanted to remember, vet again, he didn’t. The memories stalked him: pistol shots, full-auto rifle fire, the feel of his own piece jumping in his hand.

“Hey!” he shouted. “How about some help in here!”

A click resounded to the left; a door opened and closed. Soft footsteps approached, then suddenly a bright, unfocused figure blurred toward him.

“How long have you been awake?” came a toneless female voice.

“Couple of minutes,” Paone said. Pain throbbed in his throat. “Could you come closer? I can barely see you.”

The figure obliged. Its features sharpened.

It wasn’t a cop at all, it was a nurse. Tall, brunet, with fluid-blue eyes and a face of hard, eloquent lines. Her white blouse and skirt blurred like bright light. White nylons shone over sleek, coltish legs.

“Do you know where my glasses are?” Paone asked. “I’m nearsighted as hell.”

“Your glasses fell off at the crime scene,” she flatly replied.

Crime scene, came the bumbling thought.

“We’ve sent someone to recover them,” she added. “It shouldn’t be too long.” Her vacant eyes appraised him. She leaned over to take his vitals. “How do you feel?”

“Terrible. My gut hurts like a son of a bitch, and my hand...” Paone, squinting, raised the bandaged left slump. “Shit,” he muttered. He didn’t even want to ask.

Now the nurse turned to finick with the IV monitor; Paone continued to struggle against the freight of chasing memory. More images churned in some mental recess. Fragments of wood and ceiling tile raining on his shoulders. The mad cacophony of what could only be machine gun fire. A head exploding to pulp.

Blank-faced, then, the nurse returned her gaze. “What do you remember, Mr. Paone?”

“I—” was all he said. He stared up. Paone never carried real ID on a run, and whatever he drove was either hot or chopped, with phony plates. The question ground out of his throat. “How do you know my name?”

“We know all about you,” she said, unfolding a slip of paper. “The police showed us this teletype from Washington. Francis K. ‘Frankie’ Paone. You have seven aliases. You’re thirty-seven years old, never been married, and you have no known place of legal residence. In 1985 you were convicted of interstate flight to avoid prosecution, interstate transportation of obscene material depicting minors, and multiple violations of Section 18 of the United States Code. Two years ago you were released from Alderton Federal Penitentiary after serving sixty-two months of concurrent eleven- and five-year jail terms. You are a known associate of the Vinchetti crime family. You’re a child pornographer, Mr. Paone.”

Christ, a fuckin’ burn, Paone realized. Somebody set me up. By now it wasn’t hard to figure: lying in some ICU ward strapped to a bed, shot up like a hinged duck in a shooting gallery, one hand gone, one leg gone, and now this stolid bitch reading him his own rap sheet off an FBI fax. He sure as shit hadn’t gotten busted taking down some candy store.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

Her eyes blazed down. Her face could’ve been carved from stone. Yeah. Paone thought. I’ll bet she’s got a couple kids herself flunking out of school and smoking pot. Bet her car just broke down and her insurance just went up and her hubby’s late for dinner every night because he’s too busy balling his secretary and snorting rails of coke off her tits, and all of a sudden it’s my fault that the world’s a shithouse full of perverts and pedophiles. It’s my fault that a lot of people out there pay righteous cash for kiddie flicks, right, baby? Co ahead, blame me. Why not? Oh, hey, and how about the drug problem? And the recession and the Middle East and the ozone layer? That’s all my fault too, right?

Her voice sounded like she had gravel in her throat when again she asked: “What do you remember?”

The query haunted him. The bits of memory blurred along with the room in his myopic eyes — bullets popping into flesh, the megaphone grating, spent cartridges spewing out of wafts of smoke — and chased him further, stalking him as relentlessly as a wild cat running down a fawn, while Paone fled on, desperate to know vet never daring to look back...

“Shit, nothing,” he finally said. “I can’t remember anything except bits and pieces.”

The nurse seemed to talk more to herself than to him. “A transient-global amnesic effect, retrograde and generally nonaphasic, induced by acute traumatic shock. Don’t worry, it’s a short-term symptom and quite commonplace.” The big blue eyes bore back into him. “So I think I’ll refresh your memory. Several hours ago, you murdered two state police officers and a federal agent.”

Paone’s jaw dropped.

At once the chase ended, the wild cat of memory finally falling down on its prey — Paone’s mind. He remembered it all, the pieces falling into place as quickly as pavement to a ledge-jumper.

The master run. Rodz. The loops.

And all the blood.

Another day, another ten K, Paone thought, mounting the three flights of stairs to Rodz’s apartment. He wore jersey gloves — no way he was rockhead enough to leave his prints anywhere near Rodz’s crib. He knocked six times on the door, whistling “Love Me Tender” by the King.

“Who is it?” came the craggy voice.

“Santa Claus,” Paone said. “You really should think about getting a chimney.”

Rodz let him in, then quickly relocked the door. “Anyone tailing you?”

“No, just a busload of DJ agents and a camera crew from 60 Minutes.”

Rodz glowered.

Fuck you if you can’t take a joke, Paone thought. He didn’t much like Rodz — Newark slime, a whack. Nathan Rodz looked like an anorectic Tiny Tim after a bad facelift: long, frizzy black hair on the head of a pudgy medical cadaver, speedlines down his cheeks. Rodz was what parlance dubbed a “snatch-cam” — a subcontractor, so to speak. He abducted the kids, or got them on loan from freelance movers, then shot the tapes himself. “The Circuit” was what the Justice Department called the business: underground pornography. It was a $1.5-billion-per-year industry that almost no one knew about, a far cry from the Debbie Does Dallas bunk you rented down at Metro Video. Paone muled all kinds of underground: rape loops, “wet” S&M, animal flicks, scat, snuff, and (their biggest number) “kp” and “prepubes.” Paone picked up the masters from guys like Rodz, then muled them to Vinchetti’s mobile “dupe” lab. Vinchetti’s network controlled almost all of the underground porn in the East; Paone was the middleman, part of the family. It all worked through mail drops and coded distro points. Vinchetti paid two grand for a twenty-minute master if the resolution was good; from there each master was duped hundreds of times and sold to clients with a taste for the perverse. “Logboys,” the guys who did the actual rodwork, were hired freelance on the side; that way, nobody could spin on Vinchetti himself. Paone had seen some shit in his time — part of his job was to sample each master for quality: biker chicks on PCP blowing horses and dogs, addicts excreting on each other and often consuming the produce of their bowels. “Nek” flicks. “Bag” flicks. Logboys getting down on pregnant girls, retarded girls, amputees and deformees. And snuff. It amazed Paone, in spite of its grotesquery: people paid to see this stuff. They got off on it. What a fucked-up world, he thought a million times over, but, hey, supply and demand — that was the American Way, wasn’t it? If Vinchetti didn’t supply the clients, someone else would, and as long as the money was there...

I’ll take my cut, Paone stonily thought.

The biggest orders were always for kp. According to federal stats, 10,000 kids disappeared each year and were never seen again; most of them wound up in the Circuit. The younger the kids, the more the tapes cost. Once kids got old (fourteen or fifteen) they were deemed as “beat,” and they were either sold overseas or put out on the street to turn tricks for Vinchetti’s pross net. One thing feeding the other. Yeah, it was a fucked-up world, all right, but that wasn’t Paone’s problem.

The competition was squat. Only one other East Coast family ran underground porn, the Bontes, and they had a beef with Vinchetti going way back. Both families fought for pieces of the hard market, but the Bontes only owned a trickle of the action, and Paone could’ve laughed at the reason. Dario Bonte, the don, thought it was unethical to victimize children. Ain’t that a laugh, Paone had thought. The son of a bitch’ll string women out on junk and put them in scat films till they starve to death, hut he won’t do any kiddie. What a chump. Most of the money was in kp anyway. No wonder Bonte was losing his ass. And every now and then some foreign outfit would try to move on Vinchetti’s turf with kp from Europe.

But they never lasted very long.

All in all, Paone’s job was simple: he bought the masters, muled them to the lab, and kept the snatch-cams in line — guys like this muck-for-brains short-eyed scumbag Rodz.

“I got five for ya,” said Rodz, “the usual.” Rodz’s voice was more annoying than nails across slate, a nasally, wet rasp. “But I been thinking, you know?”

“Oh, you think?” Paone asked. He’d never seen such a pit for an apartment. Little living room full of put-it-together-yourself furniture, smudged walls, tacky green-and-brown carpet tile; an odiferous kitchen. Buckingham Fucking Palace this ain’t.

“Like two K a pop is getting pretty skimpy these days,” Rodz went on. “Come on, man, for a fucking master that Vinchetti’s crew’ll dupe hundreds of times? That’s serious green for him. But what about me? Every time I make a master for your man, I’m sticking my neck out a mile.”

“That’s because you were born with a mile-long neck, Ichabod.”

“I think two-point-five at least is fair. I mean, I heard that the Bonte family’s paying three.”

“The Bontes don’t do kiddie porn, grapehead,” Paone informed him. “And anybody in the biz knows that.”

“Yeah, but they do snuff and nek and all the other hard stuff. I’m the one busting my ass making the masters. I should be able to go to the highest bidder.”

Paone stared him down. “Watch that, Rodz. No jive. You master for Vinchetti and Vinchetti only. Period. You want some advice? Don’t even think about peddling your shit to some other family. The last guy who pulled a stunt like that, you know what happened to him? Jersey cops found him hanging upside-down in some apartment laundry room. Blowtorched. And they cut off his cock and Express Mailed it to his grandmother in San Bernardino.”

Rodz’s face did a twitch. “Yeah, well, like I was saying, two K a pop sounds pretty square.”

I thought so, Paone regarded.

“So where’s that green?”

Paone headed toward the back bedroom, where Rodz did his thing. “You don’t touch doggie-doo till I see the fruits of your labor.”

He sat down on a couch that had no doubt served as a prop in dozens of Rodz’s viddies. High-end cameras and lights sat on tripods, not the kind of gear they sold down at Radio Shack. The masters had to be shot on large-format inch-and-a-quarter high-speed tape so the dupes retained good contrast. The five boxed tapes sat before a thirty-five-inch Sony Trinitron and a studio double-player by Thompson Electronics. “Good kids this time too,” Rodz complimented himself. “All level.” Sometimes a kid would freak on camera, or space out; lots of them were screwed up from the get-go: Fetal Cocaine babies, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Battered Child Syndrome. There were times when Paone actually felt sad about the way things worked.

Now came the sadder part: Paone had to sit back and watch each master; lighting, resolution, and clarity all had to be good. He plugged in the first tape...

Jesus, he thought. Pale movement flickered on the screen. They were always the same in a way. What bothered Paone most were the faces — the forlorn, tiny faces on the kids, the look while Rodz’s stunt cocks got busy. What do they think? Paone wondered. What goes on in their heads? Every so often the kid would look into the camera and offer a stare that defied description...

“At least let me UV the cash while you’re watching,” Rodz said.

“Yeah, yeah.” Paone threw him the stuffed envelope. His face felt molded of clay as he watched on. Rodz always fronted his flicks with cutesy titles, like Vaseline Alley, The Young and the Hairless, Stomper Room. Meanwhile, Rodz himself donned nylon gloves and took out the band of century notes. Ten grand didn’t look like much. He scanned each bill front and back with a Sirchie ultraviolet lamp. Technicians from Treasury worked liaison with DJ and the Bureau all the time. Their favorite game was to turn someone out and dust buy-money with invisible uranyl phosphate dyes. Dead solid perfect in court.

“Clean enough for ya?” Paone asked. “I mean, a clean guy like yourself?”

“Yeah, looks good.” Rodz’s face looked lit up as he inspected the bills. “Unsequenced numbers too. That’s great.”

Paone winced when he glanced back to the screen. In the last tape, here was Rodz himself, with his hair pulled back and a phony beard, doing the rodwork himself. Paone frowned.

“Sweet, huh?” Rodz grinned at himself on the screen. “Always wanted to be in pictures.”

“You should get an Oscar. Best Supporting Pervert.”

“It’s some fringe bennie. And look who’s talking about pervert. I just make the tapes. It’s your people who distribute them.”

Rodz had a point. I’m just a player in the big game, Paone reminded himself. When the money’s good you do what you gotta do.

“I’m outa here,” Paone said when the last master flicked off. He parked up the tapes and followed Rodz out to the living room. “I wish I could say it’s been a pleasure.”

Rodz chuckled. “You should be nicer to me. One day I might let you be in one of my flicks. You’d never be the same.”

“Yeah? And you’ll never be the same when I twist your head off and shove it up your ass.”

By the apartment door, Rodz held the speedlined grin. “See you next time... I’d offer to shake hands except I wouldn’t want to get any slime on you.”

“Thanks for the thought.” Paone polished his glasses with a handkerchief, reached for the door, and—

Ka-CRACK!

“Holy shit!” Rodz yelled.

— the door blew out of its frame. Not kicked open, knocked down, and it was no wonder when Paone, in a moment of static-shock, noted the size of the TSD cop stepping back with the steel-head door ram. An even bigger cop three-pointed into the room with a cocked revolver.

“Freeze! Police!”

Paone moved faster than he’d ever moved in his life, got an arm around Rodz, and began to jerk back. Rodz gasped, pissing his pants, as Paone used him as a human shield. Two shots rang out, both of which socked into Rodz’s upper sternum.

“Give it up, Paone!” the cop advised. “There’s no way out!”

Bullshit, Paone thought. Rodz twitched, gargling blood down his front, then suddenly turned to dead weight. But the move gave Paone time to duck behind the kitchen counter and shuck his SIG 220 chock-full of 9mm hardball. Move fast! he directed himself, then sprang up, squeezed off two rounds, and popped back down. Both slugs slammed into the cop’s throat. All Paone heard was the slump.

Shadows stiffened in the doorway. A megaphone boomed: “Francis Frankie Paone, you’re surrounded by Justice Department agents and the state police. Throw down your weapon and surrender. Throw down your weapon and surrender, throw down your—” and on and on.

Paone shucked his backup piece — an ice-cold Colt snub — and tossed it over the counter. Another state cop and a guy in a suit blundered in. Dumb fucks, Paone thought. He sprang up again, squeezed off two sets of doubletaps. The cop twirled, taking both bullets in the chin. And the suit, a DJ agent, took his pair between the eyes. In the frantic glimpse, Paone had time to see the guy’s head explode. A goulash of brains slapped the wall.

No way I’m going down. Paone felt surprisingly calm. Back room. Window. Three-story drop into the bushes. It was his only chance...

But a chance he’d never get.

Before he could move out, the room began to... vibrate. Three state SWAT men in Kevlar charged almost balletically into the room, and after that the world turned to chaos. Bullets swept toward Paone in waves. M-16s on full-auto spewed hot brass and rattled away like lawn mowers, rip-stitching holes along the walls, tearing the kitchen apart. “I give up!” Paone shouted, but the volley of gunfire only increased. He curled up into a ball as everything around him began to disintegrate into flying bits. Clip after clip, the bullets came, bursting cabinets, chewing up the counter and the floor, and when there was little left of the kitchen, there wasn’t much left of Paone. His left hand hung by a single sinew, his right leg looked gnawed off. Hot slivers of steel cooked in his guts.

Then: silence.

His stomach burned like swallowed napalm. His consciousness began to drift away with wafts of cordite. He sidled over; blood dotted his glasses. EMTs carried off the dead police as a man in blue utilities poked forward with a smoking rifle barrel. Radio squawk eddied foglike in the hot air, and next Paone was being stretchered out over what seemed a lake of blood.

Dreamy moments later, red and white lights beat in his eyes. The doors of the ambulance slammed shut.

“Great God Almighty,” he whispered.

“I told you you’d remember,” the nurse said.

“How bad am I shot?”

“Not bad enough to kill you. IV antibiotics held off the peritoneal infection, and the EMTs got tourniquets on your arm and leg before you lost too much blood.” Her eyes narrowed. “Lucky for you there’s no death penalty in this state.”

That’s right, Paone slowly thought. And the fed statutes only allowed capital punishment if an agent was killed during a narcotics offense. They’d send him up for life with no parole, sure, but that beat fertilizing the cemetery. The fed slams were easier than a lot of the state cuts; plus, Paone was a cop-killer, and cop-killers got instant status in stir. No bulls would be trying to bust his cherry. Things could be worse, he recognized now. He remembered what he’d told that punk Rodz about taking things for granted; Paone stuck to his guns. He was busted, shot up like Swiss cheese, and had left a hand and a leg on Rodz’s kitchen floor, but at least he was alive.

Yeah, he thought. Hope springs eternal.

“What are you smiling about?” the nurse asked.

“I don’t know. Just happy to be alive, I guess... Yeah, that’s it.” It was true. Despite these rather irrefutable circumstances, Paone was indeed very happy.

“Happy to be alive?” The nurse looked coldly disgusted. “What about the men you murdered? They had wives, families. They had children. Those children are fatherless now. Those men are dead because of you.”

Paone shrugged as best he could. “Life’s a gamble. They lost and I won. They’re the ones who wanted to play hardball, not me. If they hadn’t fucked with me, their kids would still have daddies. I’m not gonna feel guilty for wasting a bunch of guys who tried to take me down.”

It was ironic. The pain in his gut sharpened yet Paone couldn’t help his exuberance. He wished he had his glasses so he could see the nurse better. Hell, he wished he had a cold beer too, and a smoke. He wished he wasn’t in these damn hospital restraints. A little celebration of life seemed in order, like maybe he wouldn’t mind putting the blocks on this ice-bitch nurse. Yeah, like maybe roll her over onto the bed and give that cold pussy of hers a good working over. Bet that’d take some of the starch out of her sails.

Paone, next, began to actually laugh. What a weird turn of the cards the world was. God worked in strange ways, all right. At least He’s got a sense of humor. It was funny. Those three cops bite the dust and I’m lying here all snug and cozy, gandering the Ice Bitch. Paone’s low and choppy laughter did not abate.

The nurse turned on the radio to drown out her patient’s unseemly jubilation. Light news filled the air as she checked Paone’s pulse and marked his IV bags. The newscaster droned the day’s paramount events: A heat wave in Texas had killed a hundred people. Zero-fat butter to hit the market next week. The surgeon general was imploring manufacturers to suspend production of silicone testicular implants, and a U.S. embassy in Africa somewhere just got bombed. It made things even funnier: the world and all its silliness suddenly meant nothing to Paone. He was going to the slam. What difference did anything, good or bad, make to him now?

He squinted up when another figure came in. Through the room’s blurred features, a face leaned over: a sixtyish guy, snow-white hair and a great bushy mustache. “Good evening, Mr. Paone,” came the greeting. “My name’s Dr. Willet. I wanted to stop by and see how you’re doing. Is there anything I can get for you?” “Since you asked, Doc, I wouldn’t mind having my glasses back, and to tell you the truth I wouldn’t mind having another nurse. This one here’s about as friendly as a mad dog.”

Willet only smiled in response. “You were shot up pretty bad but you needn’t worry now about infection or blood loss. Those are always our chief concerns with multiple gunshot wounds. I’m happy to inform you that you’re in surprisingly good shape considering what happened.”

Jolly good, Paone thought.

“And I must say,” Willet went on, “I’ve been anxious to meet you. You’re the first child pornographer I’ve ever had the opportunity to speak with. In a bizarre sense, you’re famous. The renegade outlaw.”

“Well, I’d offer to give you an autograph,” Paone joked, “but there’s a problem. I’m left-handed.”

“Good, good, that’s the spirit. It’s a man of character who can maintain a sense of levity after going through what you’ve—”

“Shhh!” the nurse hissed. She seemed jittery now, a pent-up blur. “This is it... I think this is it.”

Paone made a face. From the radio, the newscaster droned on: “... in a year-long federal sting operation. One suspect, Nathan Rodz, was killed on-site in a frantic shootout with police. Two state police officers and one special agent from a Justice Department task force were also killed, according to authorities, by the second suspect, an alleged mob middleman by the name of Francis ‘Frankie’ Paone. Paone himself was under investigation for similar allegations, and thought to have direct ties with the Vinchetti crime family, which is said to control over fifty percent of all child pornography marketed in the U.S. Police spokesmen later announced that Paone, during the shootout, managed to escape the scene, and is currently the subject of a statewide manhunt...”

Paone’s thoughts seemed to slowly flatten. “What’s this... Escaped?”

The nurse was smiling now. She opened a pair of black-framed glasses and put them on Paone’s face...

The blurred room, at last, came into focus.

What the fuck is this?

A tracked curtain surrounded him, as he would expect on an ICU ward, but then he noticed something else. It wasn’t an X-ray nozzle that hung overhead; it was a retractable boom, complete with microphone. And one of the IV stands wasn’t an IV stand at all; it was a stand for a directional halogen light.

“What the hell kind of hospital is this!” Paone demanded.

“Oh, it’s not a hospital,” Willet said. “It’s a safe house.”

“One of Don Dario Bonte’s safe houses,” the nurse was delighted to add.

Willet again. “And we’re his private medical staff. Generally our duties are rather uninvolved. When one of the don’s men gets shot or hurt, we take care of him, since the local hospital wouldn’t be safe.”

Bonte, Paone thought in slow dread. Dario Bonte — Vinchetti’s only rival...

“And the police were all too happy to hand you over to our goodly employer,” Willet continued. “Half of the state police are on Don Bonte’s payroll... and this way, the suffering taxpayers are spared the cost of a trial.”

Paone felt like he was about to throw up his heart.

The nurse’s breasts shook when she giggled. “But we’re not just going to kill you—”

“We’ve got some interesting games to play before we do that,” Willet said. “See, our job was to make sure you survived until Junior could get here—”

A door clicked open, and then the nurse reeled back the curtain to reveal a typical basement. But that was not all Paone saw. Standing in the doorway before some steps was a frightfully muscular young man with short dark hair, chiseled features and—

Aw sweet Jesus holy shit—

— and a crotch so packed it looked like he had a couple of potatoes in his pants.

“Three guesses why they call him Junior,” the nurse giggled on.

“And three more guesses as to what happens next,” Willet said. Now he had shouldered a high-end Sony Betacam. “You see, Mr. Paone, your boss may own the market share for child pornography, but our boss owns a share of the rest. You know, the really demented stuff. And as a gut-shot amputee, you’ll be able to provide us with a very special feature, don’t you think?”

Paone vomited on himself when Junior began to lower his jeans. The nurse jammed a needle into Paone’s arm, not enough sodium amytal to knock him out, but just enough to keep him from putting up much of a fight. Then the nurse took off his restraints and flipped him over.

“Don Bonte doesn’t like child pornographers,” she said.

The stitches across Paone’s abdomen began to pop, and he could hear Junior’s footsteps approach the bed.

“As they say,” Willet enthused, “lights, camera, action!”