I finished turning my head. I glared at Fat Boy. He said, “He don’t want to miss none of it. Like he’s gonna remember the credits or something. Like he’s taking notes. All right. All right, Snake, my man. We’ll get on with it.”
But Fat Boy didn’t move from his chair. He sat quietly for a moment and puffed his cigar and didn’t take it out of his mouth. Ash fell off the end of it and onto his lap and he brushed at the ash casually with the automatic, making a grey streak across his pink pants. He looked at Beverly and smiled and moved his hand between her legs. “Man, man,” he said.
Thunder rumbled outside.
Fat Boy cocked his head at the thunder. “Storm’s getting serious, ain’t it? It’ll blow your movie out, Snake.”
“You don’t know that,” Snake said.
“Wishful thinking,” Fat Boy said, and removed his hand from Beverly and pinched the cigar out of his mouth. He thumped the ashes on the floor this time. “What we got here Mr. I-Got-It-Made, is a major fuck up. Right, Snake?”
“You’re the one fucked up,” Snake said.
“Part of it,” Fat Boy said. “But you got to admit, fate didn’t play right.” Fat Boy studied me for a hard moment. “Mr. I-Got-It-Made, I don’t hate to take you out at all. Not at all. But you know, I got to tell you, had the wind blown slightly different, we wouldn’t be here. You’d be coming home to a little fuzz taco tonight.” Fat Boy bent down and reached under the bed and pulled out a sheer, white nightie. It matched the panties around Snake’s hand. “She had this on when we got here,” Fat Boy said. “I like to imagine she wore them for me. But I don’t think so. She was waiting on you. All saddled up and ready to go. I like that. Wives these days, they don’t do that anymore. Or so I’m told. But here you got one does. That’s all right, man. All right.”
“You can’t rent Mothra in this town, Snake said. “I’ve called around. They don’t have it. Reptilicus neither.”
“You should have taped it,” Fat Boy said. “You should have done that.” t='
“The VCR has bad sound. Everything I tape goes up and down on the sound. You can’t hear it good. Makes you nervous to watch it. I can’t stand to watch when the sound’s bad.”
“You rent Mothra at any of your stores?” Fat boy asked me.
“No,” I said.
“Those cassettes you got downstairs? Your own collection? You ain’t got Mothra there, do you? Or this other one? What is it, Snake?”
“ Reptilicus, ” Snake said.
“You got that one?” Fat Boy asked.
“No,” I said.
“All right, Snake,” Fat Boy said. “We’re gonna wrap this up now.” Then to me: “I like to keep Snake happy. He can do some jobs I don’t like, and I got to keep him happy. Before we go, I’d like to say you and that half-brother of yours did some pretty good figuring on what was going on. Me and Snake, we took the Doc’s wife out for him. We admit it. We did it. We did it for money. Snake, he banged her. Right, Snake?”
“That’s right,” Snake said. “Doc didn’t care. He told us go ahead with whatever we wanted. And I could have done this one, Fat Boy, you weren’t so long winded.”
“He’s something, ain’t he?” Fat Boy said. “Prefers Mothra over a woman. Won’t cost him a thing to mount your piece and ain’t a thing anybody can do about it, and he wants to see some giant bug or monster thing tear up a toy truck.”
Fat Boy paused and sucked on his cigar and blew out some smoke and took interest in it till it faded. He said, “Snake here, he got the cassettes from downstairs. Took a little peek on your TV to make sure. Says ain’t much there. But some questions could be raised and I’d rather not have that. So, we’re taking the cassettes.”
Fat Boy removed his cigar and blew on the tip of it and turned his head slowly to Beverly. “Couple things got to be cleaned up. Your brother Arnold for one… That was Snake’s fuck up. But we’ll clean that up. There’s ways. The photo book though. That’s my personal copy that I was going to donate to the cause of framing your asshole nephew. I’d like it back. I don’t care who sees it long as I arrange how it’s seen. Where is it?”
“I gave it to Arnold,” I said.
Fat Boy said. “Gave it to Arnold, huh?”
He took the cigar out of his mouth and blew on the tip again. The tip turned cherry-colored. Fat Boy leaned over Beverly. “What I’m gonna do here, is stick the end of this on your wife’s tit. That’s a sensitive place, the tit.” Fat Boy leaned forward suddenly and licked Beverly’s nipple. A sound came from Beverly’s throat, behind the rubber ball. It sounded small and pitiful. I had never heard a sound from her like that before. She had dealt with things in our life up until now without that sound.
I knew it was pointless, but I couldn’t help myself. “Please,” I said. “Don’t hurt her. Take me. Leave my family alone.”
Fat Boy put the cigar back in his mouth. “Hey, I ch. r. an do any fucking thing I want. I’m gonna burn her tit off, is what I’m gonna do, you don’t talk to me about that photo album.”
I’m uncertain what prompted me to keep the lie. I suppose, deep down, I knew the truth wouldn’t change anything. And if my family was going to die, I wanted to make sure I went out without making things easy for these two assholes.
From what they’d said, my impression was Bill hadn’t mentioned the lawyer or that I had made copies of the cassettes and given them to Virgil along with the photo album. Something happened to us, Virgil might pursue things on our behalf. At this point, it was almost a moot matter. Still…
“I swear, on my wife’s life,” I said. “I gave the album to Arnold.”
Fat Boy sucked on the cigar and bent over Beverly and blew smoke in her face. She squinted her eyes and turned her head. Fat Boy looked at Snake. “What’d you think?”
“I think I’m gonna miss fucking Mothra is what I think.”
“Naw, naw, you’re not. What’d you think?”
“I think he gave it to the brother. He ain’t gonna lie now, Ole Mr. Hard Punch. He ain’t gonna do that, knowing things can be okay, he tells the truth. Am I right, Mr. Hard Punch?”
He kicked me in the kidney. I grunted. Got my breath. I knew things couldn’t, and wouldn’t be okay, but I said, “Right.”
“I believe him,” Snake said. “He likes this woman.”
“Yeah,” Fat Boy said. “I believe him too. I was him, I’d like this woman.”
Fat Boy thumped ashes on Beverly’s pubic hair. He blew on the tip of his now short cigar and made it glow bright again. He reached over without looking and stuck the cigar against Beverly’s stomach. She jerked so hard at her restraints the mattress curled on the sides. I could smell her flesh burning. I dove for Fat Boy.
I wasn’t quick enough.
He came out of the chair fast for a fat man and brought the. 45 around and slammed me just above the left ear. A flash of white went through me and blinded all vision. I came to a moment later, lying on my side. Little specks, like black sawdust in water, swirled before my eyes. The taste of vomit was in my mouth. I had convulsed and thrown up on the floor. I felt as if someone had a crowbar jammed in the side of my head and they were lifting up on it, trying to get my scalp off.
I tried to get a knee under me, but my knee cap felt as if it weighed about as much as a small car. I couldn’t do it.
Snake gave me some help. I could smell him before I saw him. He got me by the back of my coat collar and pulled me up and kneed me in the stomach and sat me on my ass, gasping. I wanted to do all kinds of things, and in my mind I was doing them. Coiling my feet beneath me, preparing to jump, but in reality I was sitting on my ass, trying to get my breath back, feeling as if a dentist’s drill was going off in my ear, burrowing and burning its way into my brain.
Snake pushed me on my side and jerked my hands behind my back and I my ay felt something go around my wrists, and by the time I got my wind back enough to actually try and do something, my hands were tied and so were my ankles.
Snake got hold of me and pulled me up on my knees. “You like that okay? That comfortable?” he said.
“Piss on you,” I said.
