“Holed up in one of the farmhouses near here, I’d guess. The snowstorm caught him as much by surprise as it did us.”
“And how’d you happen to be following this Turner?”
“I used to be in the business.”
“What business?”
“Turner’s.”
He thought about that, too, but longer than a second.
Then he said, “I see.”
“Yes, I think you do.”
“But you aren’t in that business any longer.”
“Not exactly. Now I’m in the business of offering my services to the prospective victims… the targets of people like Turner.”
“So you followed Turner to this… job… and ascertained that I was the victim, the target, and now you’re making contact with me, to do what?”
“To save your life. To stop Turner. And his partner. Usually I make an attempt to find out who took the contract out, as well, since the real threat is the person who sent the hitmen, not the hitmen themselves… in most cases, that is. In your case the guy who bought the hitmen is already known to you, and, better yet, is dead. So once the hitmen are taken out, you can rest easy.”
“This is pretty bizarre.”
“So are phone calls at three in the morning from guys who slit their wrists as they say they’re having you killed.”
“But you believed that story.”
“Yes. And you believe mine.”
“Yes. Bizarre as it is, or possibly because it is so bizarre, I believe you. I do have some questions, though… first, what’s your fee?”
“Eight thousand dollars.”
“How did you arrive at that figure?”
“It’s about what I’m guessing Turner and his partner were paid.”
He nodded, as if to say, “Fair enough,” then said, “Do you have any idea who the partner is?”
“Yes. I think the partner is in this lodge. Right now.”
“What, in hiding…?”
“In a manner of speaking. It’s one of your crew.”
“What? But that’s…”
“Possible. Very possible. Not your wife. Probably not Janet, either… though lady hitmen do exist, believe me. But more likely one of the boys… Frankie Waddsworth, Richie Hudson, or Harry.. ”
“Not Waddsworth. I’ve worked with him before.”
“That would make it less likely. But not impossible. Most people in the murder business have other jobs, for a cover, for extra income, or both. Waddsworth might have been assigned this because you’ve worked with him, and he’d make a good inside man. Did you go after him, for this film, or did he approach you?”
“His agent approached me.”
“There… you see. Waddsworth is a possibility.”
“I’ve never worked with the others before… Hudson or Janet Stein or Harry…”
“Did you approach them?”
“I put feelers out to try and find people, in the Chicago area, who could do the quality of work I need, and who were willing to do porno. It was Richie who contacted me, told me about his agency. Janet I just picked up recently, when our original soundman backed out. She was a friend of a friend of somebody at the Geneva Playboy Club.”
“The soundman backing out could’ve been arranged. That makes even Janet a possibility. What about the actors who finished filming and left yesterday? Had you worked with them, before?”
“Yes, and we drove them into Chicago, to O’Hare, last night… I saw them board a plane, to go back to New York. So it isn’t one of them… waiting behind, lurking in the snow or something. Jesus. This is crazy.”
“Naturally. Let me ask you a question. Who would logically be the last to leave this place, once filming is done?”
“Why, me, of course. I’m the director. I’m in charge.”
“Well, then, that’s when it was supposed to happen. Just you alone here, with that last remaining person, who’d then do you in. Or it’s possible Turner would be the one to do you in. It’s possible, come to think of it, that Turner is the hitter, and the inside man is the back-up person, the stakeout guy. Very possible. Anyway, that’s when it would be done: when nobody else was here. Except you. And your wife, who might also get taken out.”
“No!”
“That’s the facts of life. But this snowstorm… it’s gummed up the works for Turner and company. As long as we’re snowbound here, nobody’s going to die. Not unless Turner and his partner are willing to snuff all of us, and that’s not likely… people in this line of work don’t kill unnecessarily. Only when they are paid to kill somebody is somebody in danger, and you’re the only one in this place that has a contract out on him.”
“But you said my wife…”
“Yeah, she’d probably get her lights put out, too, because she’d be in the way. But that would be a necessary killing, and anyway, with a husband and wife, it would be easy to rig something, easy to make it look like they took each other out.”
“God! You make it sound so clinical… like a goddamn textbook.”
“Maybe I ought to write one. So. Now it’s your turn.”
“What?”
“About the contract. About why the guy took the contract out on you.”
And he told me.
22
“He thought I killed his daughter,” he said.
“I see.”
“No you don’t. He was wrong. You see… it’s hard to explain. Have you heard of snuff movies?”
“Sure. That’s where somebody is actually killed on camera, right? Snuff flicks. While back there was a lot in the press about them.”
“Right. Snuff movies, slasher movies, they called them. Most of it was media hype, and I’m glad to say it finally died… pardon the expression. The media finally decided the slasher movies were a hoax.. which to a large extent they were. There were some fake ones, but there were some real ones, too. Rumor has it the Manson clan made some, but none of the media people ever turned one up. But I did. Not the Manson snuff movies. But there were a few made in Mexico. Rumor said South America, but it was Mexico. There were four or five of ’em, I found. I bought ’em from a guy… I didn’t even buy them, exactly. I was just a middleman. Jesus. It’s hard to explain.”
“You’re doing fine.”
“Well, like I said before, I know some people in mob circles, some of my backing’s been from them. Like for example, the guy that owns this place, this lodge, he’s a mob-related guy. He’s backing the picture, and one thing he insisted on was we use his place for some of the filming… he’s going to get off on having a print of a porno film shot in this lodge, his lodge, and he can show it to his friends and his girl friends and everybody can get off on it. Anyway, I was doing a favor for some mob people, being a middleman on these slasher flicks. See the goddamn things don’t go into any kind of wide distribution or anything. They’re too fuckin’ hot for that. But these hardcore violence freaks, these S amp; M guys, they’ll pay incredible coin for something like that. One print, going into a private collection and not likely to be seen by anybody but that one collector and maybe some of his pervert friends, is going to bring in maybe ten grand. Ten grand for a little reel of fuckin’ film! It boggles the mind. So I was a middleman for the things, and one of them somehow got seen by this guy Meyers. It was the film that was getting the most attention, of the five or six I handled. Going for something like twelve grand a shot. That was because all the other films had Mexican girls in it. This one had an American. You know how those films go, don’t you? They’re regular porno loops. Except different. The girl thinks she’s just there for the regular sex stuff, sucking, fucking, but then after the sex stuff, right at the climax, the guy, and maybe some other guys who come in the room, takes a razor or something and kills the girl. Really kills her. On film. It’s something. In some of ’em they dismember the girl. It’s something.”
“Something,” I said.
“Well this guy Meyers, he sees the one with the American girl in it, and he’s outraged and he uses his own mob connections to track down the source of the film, and I’m the source, and so he puts the contract out on me.”
“The girl in the film?” I said.