“What do you want?” said Ricky.
The man indicated with a nod of his head that Ricky should come to the door.
“Hell,” said Ricky. The man didn’t look like any cop Ricky had ever seen. In fact, he looked more like one of the gentlemen from Boston, who had a habit of turning up unexpectedly at odd times. Still, you couldn’t be too careful where such things were concerned. Ricky went back to his computer and entered a series of instructions. Instantly, windows began to close, firewalls were erected, images were encrypted, and a baffling series of false trails was put in place so that anyone attempting to access the material on his computer would quickly find himself in a maze of useless code and buffer files. If they persisted, the computer would go into virtual meltdown. Ricky knew too much about computers to believe that the material his machine contained would be inaccessible forever, but he reckoned it would take a team of experts many months before they even started retrieving anything worth further investigation.
He stepped away from his desk and walked to the door. He was not frightened. He was protected by Boston. The word had gone out on that a long time ago. He had nothing to fear.
The man on the step wore dark blue jeans, a blue polyester shirt that strained against his body, and a worn black leather jacket. His head was a little too large for his frame, although it also gave the disturbing impression that it had been compressed at one point, as if it had been placed in a vise from chin to crown. Ricky thought he looked like a thug, which, strangely, made him even more inclined to lower his guard. The only thugs with whom he dealt came from Boston. If the man on his step looked like a thug, then he must be from Boston.
“I like your place,” said the man.
Ricky’s face furrowed in confusion.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” he said.
The man leveled a huge gun at Ricky. He wore gloves. Ricky wasn’t to know it, but the gun was a Smith 10 designed for use by the FBI. It was an unusual gun for a private individual to own. While Ricky did not know that, the man holding the gun did. In fact, that was why he had chosen to borrow it earlier that night.
“Who are you?” asked Ricky.
“I’m the finger on the scales,” said the man. “Back up.”
Ricky did as he was told.
“You don’t want to do anything you’ll regret,” said Ricky, as the man entered the trailer and pulled the door closed behind him. “There are men in Boston who won’t like it.”
“ Boston, huh?” said the man.
“That’s right.”
“Well, you think these men in Boston can get to you faster than a bullet?”
Ricky thought about the question.
“I guess not.”
“Well, then,” said the man, “I reckon they ain’t much use to you right now, no sir.” He took in the computer and the array of hardware that surrounded it. “Very impressive,” he said.
“You know about computers?” asked Ricky.
“Not much,” said the man. “That kind of thing passed me by. You got pictures on there?”
Ricky swallowed.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I think you do. You don’t want to be lying to me, now. You do that and, well, I’m likely to lose my temper with you, yes sir, and seeing as how I have a gun and you don’t, I don’t think that would be in your best interests. So I’ll ask you again: you got pictures on there?”
Ricky, realizing that a man who asked a question like that already knew the answer, decided to be honest.
“Maybe. Depends what kind of pictures you want.”
“Oh, you know the kind. Girlie pictures, like in the magazines.”
Ricky tried to breathe a sigh of relief without actually appearing to do so.
“Sure, I got girlie pictures. You want me to show you?”
The man nodded, and Ricky was relieved to see him tuck the gun into the waistband of his trousers. He sat down at his keyboard and brought the equipment back to life. Just before the screen began to glow he saw the man approach him from behind, his figure reflected in the dark. Then images began to appear: women in various stages of undress, in various positions, performing various acts.
“I got all kinds,” said Ricky, stating the obvious.
“You got ones of children?” said the man.
“No,” Ricky lied. “I don’t do kids.”
The man let out a warm breath of disappointment. It smelled of cinnamon gum, but it couldn’t hide the mixed scents that the man exuded: cheap cologne and a stink that was uncomfortably reminiscent of parts of the chicken factory.
“What’s wrong with your arm?” he asked.
“Came out of my mother this way. It don’t work.”
“You still got feeling in it?”
“Oh yeah, it just ain’t no good for-”
Ricky didn’t get to finish the sentence. There was a searing red-hot pain in his upper arm. He opened his mouth to scream, but the man’s right hand clamped tightly across his face, smothering the sound while his left worked a long, thin blade into Ricky’s flesh, twisting as he went. Ricky bucked in the chair, his screams filling his own head but emerging into the night air as only the faintest of moans.
“Don’t play me for a fool,” said the man. “I warned you once. I won’t warn you again.”
And then the blade was plucked from Ricky’s arm, and the hand released its grip upon his face. Ricky arched back in his chair, his right hand moving instinctively to the wound, then immediately distancing itself from it again as the pain intensified at the touch. He was crying, and he felt ashamed for doing so.
“I’ll ask you one more time: you got pictures of children on there?”
“Yes,” said Ricky. “Yes. I’ll show you. Just tell me what you want: boys, girls, younger, older. I’ll show you anything, but please don’t hurt me again.”
The man produced a photograph from a black leather wallet.
“You recognize her?”
The girl was pretty, with dark hair. She was wearing a pink dress, and had a matching ribbon in her hair. She was smiling. There was a tooth missing from her upper jaw.
“No,” said Ricky.
The blade moved toward his arm again, and Ricky almost screamed his denial this time. “No! I’m telling you I don’t know her! She’s not on there. I’d remember. I swear to God, I’d remember. I got a good memory for these things.”
“Where do you get these pictures from?”
“From Boston, mostly. They send them to me. Sometimes I have to scan them in, but usually they’re already on disk. There are films too. They come on computer disks or DVDs. I just put them on the sites. I’ve never hurt a child in my life. I don’t even like that stuff. All I do is what I’m told to do.”
“You said ‘mostly.’”
“Huh?”
“You said ‘mostly’ you get them from Boston. Where else?”
Ricky tried to find a way to lie, but his brain wasn’t working right. The pain in his arm was dulling slightly, but so was his mind. He felt sick and wondered if he was going to faint.
“Sometimes, other people used to bring me stuff,” he said. “Not so much anymore.”
“Who?”
“Men. A man, I mean. There was a guy, he brought me some good material. Videos. That was a long time ago. Years.”
Ricky was lying by omission. Strangely, the pain in his arm was helping him to keep his head clear by forcing him to recognize the possibility that more pain might be to come if he did not play this the right way. True, the man had brought him material, clearly home-filmed but of unusually high quality, even if it was a little static in its camera movements, but it was as a goodwill gesture. He was one of the first who had approached Ricky directly in the hope of renting a child for a few hours, referred to him by a mutual acquaintance in that part of the state, a man well known to those with such proclivities. The gentlemen in Boston had told him that it would happen, and they had been right.