by Fante, Dan
“ ‘Jimmy,’ I said, ‘as you know, I am not without influence in Hollywood. I’m going to make it my business to make sure that you never sell another screenplay. By tomorrow the word will be out. Anyone who makes the miscalculation of hiring you will never work for me or this studio again. Full stop.’
“What followed was several more minutes of groveling and self-humiliation. The incompetent little fool even vowed to rewrite the entire first act by the following Monday. But, as you might suppose, I’m a rather busy man and finally—when I could tolerate no more—I stood from my desk. More tears were in your father’s eyes. I actually believe that if I had demanded it, the little coward would have sucked my cock in front of everyone present. The scene was quite embarrassing, actually.”
“The cops know I’m here, Karl. They’re on their way.”
“My only regret is that time passed and it turned out that I had not done enough to sufficiently extinguish your father’s screenwriting aspirations in Los Angeles. Ironically, a few years later, one of my competitors did give him an assignment and the film he wrote managed to receive Academy Award consideration. I was left to suffer a long and unpleasant professional and public embarrassment, one that has remained vivid in my memory.
“So now we move forward in time to the day you encountered my daughter, Sydnye. You vandalized her sports car and humiliated her in a restaurant in front of two dozen patrons. My daughter! My only child. After she described the incident to me and we did some checking, we quickly discovered that you were, in fact, Jimmy Fiorella’s wayward son. Naturally that discovery triggered my recollection of your midget father and his long past-due debt.”
“Screw you, Karl. You’re a butcher and a dead man!”
“You are here to account for what you did to my daughter and, in your own way, to compensate me for the embarrassment I suffered at the hands of your father. After today the slate, as they say, will be wiped clean.”
Swan then tossed his cowboy hat on the bed and folded his arms across his chest. “So tell me, JD,” he whispered, leaning closer, “the dreams you have—your overcompensating personality and those violent headaches—it all seems a bit bizarre. Apparently self-humiliation and mental illness run in your family? Like father, like son, as they say.”
I had to smile. “Go fuck yourself, Pops! You’re the one with the price on his head.”
“The information that I’ve had my people compile on you, although somewhat abbreviated, speaks directly to a singular personality disturbance. I’ve done a good deal of reading and have had some limited personal experience in the area. May I say candidly that your violent nature and consistent substance abuse reveals what any schooled clinician would refer to as a baseline pathology. Self-hatred is the real key here. Perhaps you are even more like your father than you realized. I’m a steadfast believer in genetics. And in your case, apparently, the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.”
“Tell that to your kid. She’s as crazy as you are.”
Swan’s hands were folded on his lap. He looked directly into my good eye. “I feel I must make an admission to you now,” he said. “Frankly, I have misled you. I did guarantee the safety of your mother and her caregiver, Coco, but given the damage you inflicted on Sydnye and on our young Rudy, I’m sure you’ll appreciate my circumstances. I can no longer honor our agreement. They will also die soon. And I assure you that their deaths will be as painful as possible.”
Swan reached over and pressed a buzzer on the night stand. A second later the nurse reentered the room. She was holding a syringe in her hand. “You may inject our subject now,” he ordered. “It’s time to begin.”
The woman missed the first two times because I was rocking from side to side and twisting my body. But on her third try, I felt the needle go in.
The last thing I remembered thinking was: Well, okay, here I go. Fuck it!
THE LIGHTS IN the room I was in were bright and shining in my face as I started to come around. I saw Swan inject me with something and I watched as he put his syringe away.
Thirty seconds later I was totally alert, wide awake.
He was standing next to me dressed in form-fitting white overalls and wearing blue surgical gloves. There was a small metal table next to the larger one I was lying on. It contained surgical tools—scalpels and pliers and a couple of shiny saws.
Looking past the table I could see that the walls of the room were soundproofed, like the walls in Sydnye’s murder room at her apartment. There were no windows.
About three feet above me, on either side of the bright lights, suspended from the ceiling, was a bank of two-foot-wide mirrors that ran the length of the table. When I looked up I could see myself fully in the reflection. Other than Swan and his instrument table and one wooden chair, there was no other furniture in the room.
I began to hear music playing, coming from speakers somewhere. He must have hit a switch.
It was Cole Porter again. Tony Bennett vocals this time. “It was just one of those nights . . . just one of those fabulous flights . . . a trip to the moon on gossamer wings, just one of those things.”
Swan was leering down at me. “Welcome back, Mr. Fiorella. Time to get started. My daughter will be here in a few moments. I’ll be assisting Sydnye and guiding her hands as she clips, or cuts, or saws, depending on her preference. You’ll have to forgive us but, given the circumstances, her work may not be as precise as we’d all like. I have just injected you with bupivacaine to ensure your full participation and I will use epinephrine to stop your bleeding. And, on my instrument table, I have a handy battery-operated cautery that will seal your wounds as we go.
“But before Sydnye arrives I’m going to administer a second mild injection. The dizziness and physical effects wear off rather rapidly but it will allow you to remain in a calm state of consciousness during your procedures. It’s important for you to be with us every step of the way. My goal is for you to be completely aware of what is happening until the moment before you beg for death.”
“That’s nice, Karl. Got a cigarette?”
WHEN SYDNYE ARRIVED a couple of minutes later I had a nice buzz going. I couldn’t see her through my overhead mirror but I could hear her wheelchair as it thumped down some stairs. Finally the nurse wheeled her close enough to the table that she came into my line of vision.
Swan helped steer his bandaged daughter against the table where I was lying. Then he spoke over his shoulder to the nurse: “Sydnye looks uncomfortable. I assume you gave her another injection? Will she be able to participate?”
“Yes, Mr. Swan. She’s out of pain but please, not more than a few minutes. The Dilaudid will most likely cause dizziness off and on.”
“Then that will be all, Maria,” Swan snapped. “Sydnye and I will make do. We’ll take it from here.”
“Please call for me immediately if she appears to have any negative reactions.”
“I said, that will be all, Maria. Leave the room!”
“Yes, patron.”
SWAN SLOWLY HELPED his daughter into a pair of latex gloves. When that was done he smiled broadly at the bandaged geek beside him in the wheelchair. “Now, how would you like to begin, my dear?” he asked quietly.
“Figgers furs. I wann to doo hisss figgers,” she said, hissing the words through frozen lips. “I wann hit to beee sloooo.”
“The saw or the clippers, my dear?”
“I sad sloooo, fadda! I wann da saw.”
“Excellent choice.”
I watched through the mirror as the tall, gray-haired man reached down under my table and turned up the volume on his Cole Porter CD.
“ . . . so good-bye dear and amen
here’s hoping we’ll meet now and then . . .
It was great fun
but it was just one of those things . . . ”
Swan then picked up a short stainless steel saw fr
om his side table. He placed it in his daughter’s hand, guiding her to the end of my arm. Then he put the blade on top of my little finger and said, “Make your first cut here, Sydnye. Now?”
There was no pain as the crazy bitch began grinding the blade into me. I felt throbbing, then watched my blood spurting upward. Thirty seconds later Swan held up my little finger.
“Excellent. A good excision. Excellent, Sydnye!”
Papa was smiling broadly as I bit down hard on my cheek and lower lip.
Then he reached for a syringe. “Mr. Fiorella, I’ll be injecting coagulant as we go. We don’t want blood everywhere, now, do we?”
At first I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t concentrate. Then I could finally get the words out: “Blow me, Karl.”
“Fazzer,” Sydnye mumbled through her taped jaw, “shob tha figger up Fi-rella’s rectum.”
“Of course, my dear. Should we do it one at a time or do you want to wait and do them all at once?”
“Noooo, onn hat a timmmm.”
Swan spread my legs with one hand. He’d dipped my severed appendage into something greasy. Then I felt the thing as it entered my ass.
“Shall we continue?” Swan said to his daughter.
WHEN THEY HAD finished and all the fingers on my left hand were cut off, I could see what was left of my bloody stump in the mirror above me.
Swan tapped his daughter on the arm. “That was the last one,” he said. “Now we’re ready for the left foot, Sydnye.”
A few minutes later the toes of that foot were wiped clean and lined up in a steel pan at the end of the table.
I could feel myself going in and out of consciousness.
“Mak hum heat zemm, fazzer,” she whispered. “Whon hat a dime.”
Just as the bitch said the words she was suddenly out cold. I saw her drop the saw to the floor and then teeter and slump at the end of the table.
Swan went to her and set her upright in the chair, but she was gone—unconscious.
A minute later I could smell ammonia, or something as strong. He stuck whatever it was under her nose and she seemed to be coming around.
Then I began hearing banging at the door. The noise seemed to be coming from far away but thudding loudly in my ears at the same time. I took a deep breath. I could feel myself letting go. After that there was only the relief of blackness.
THIRTY
I woke up slowly and began to try to clear my mind.
My first thought was that I was dead. But that had to be wrong. I was thinking, so being dead didn’t make sense. Or maybe it did. Maybe dead people think too.
Trying to open my eye—the one that wasn’t still swollen shut—I could sense light in the room. Then I tried lifting my head, hoping it would clear my vision, but nothing happened. I was unable to move or see.
Finally the good eye opened and I could make out that this wasn’t Swan’s operating room. There was no mirror above me. The walls weren’t dark and there were other beds. There were people in the other beds and there was a TV playing somewhere. A basketball game.
Then I smelled the stink of stale reefer. No, this wasn’t hell or Jesus-land or anywhere else. Somebody was howling. Then I realized that the howling was what had woken me up.
I couldn’t sit up and I felt weak, so I tried to talk. Only a whisper came out. “Where am I?” I said to the ceiling.
“What?” a voice answered above the howling and the TV. Then another voice said, “Hey, he’s awake.”
Then the first voice again—laughing above the howling. “Where da fuck you think you is, muthafucka?”
“Just tell me, okay?” I said in a louder voice so as to be heard. “Is this a hospital?”
“Bullseye,” the voice came back. “County USC. The bess firstes class shithole in L.A. You got here day before yestaday. You all fucked up, my man. Chopped up ’n’shit.”
Then the howling subsided and I was able to close my eye again.
WHEN I NEXT came around, the head of my bed was elevated and Detective Archer was standing a foot away, talking to someone. I blinked a few times to make out who that was. It was Afrika.
Then, with a lot of effort, I tried to boost myself up so I could see them better. A sharp pain in my left hand caused me to change my mind. All I could do was to try to raise my head.
Looking across the room I saw that the other beds were now empty.
Seeing I was awake, Archer leaned toward me and pushed a straw into my mouth. “Take a drink,” he said.
I took a drink, then slid my head back down on the pillow.
He was smiling. “You made it, tough guy. Just hang in. Relax. It’s all okay.”
It took another minute but I finally boosted myself up to take another hit from the bent straw. My thirst was overwhelming. My throat was raw. “Tell me something I don’t know,” I croaked.
“Like what?”
“Like what’s wrong with me. My eye. Why the bandage? Am I blind?”
“No. Like I said, you’re okay—mostly. The doctor told us you broke the bone above your eye. But that’ll heal okay.”
“Nice to know.”
“You’re getting better. You’ve still got two eyes.”
“I keep thinking I’m dead. I’m all fucked up. My mind’s playing tricks. I keep thinking that this conversation isn’t happening.”
“We got to you. We found you. That’s the bottom line.”
“Found me? Found me where?”
“Karl Swan and his daughter, Sydnye. Remember that?”
Then it started coming together. “Wait! Is my mother okay?”
“Yeah, she’s fine. Never better. Her friend’s okay too.”
“What else? Did I get Swan? I remember shooting at him.”
“Do you remember being in the room in the basement with Swan and his daughter?”
I had to think. “No. But I remember a big mirror.”
“People died that day. A lot of people died.”
With effort I held up my thickly bandaged left hand, then looked at it for several seconds. “Jesus! Sydnye was chopping me up. Now I remember!”
“Correcto,” said Afrika.
Finally it was all back. The reality of what happened hit me fully. “Jesus Christ! Fuck! So what have I got left? What didn’t they hack off?”
Archer made a face and fell silent. Then looked away.
“C’mon, for chrissakes!” I yelled.
“Well, okay,” Afrika said, “they got your fingers and your thumb on your left hand.”
“What else? Gimme more water!”
Archer put the straw back into my mouth, then spoke. “Your toes. The ones on your left foot. All your toes.”
“What else? Don’t fuck with me, Detective. Just tell me. I need to hear it.”
“That’s it. That’s when we broke in.”
“Jesus!”
“They sewed them back on. The doctors. We found them on a table at the scene. Your foot will probably be okay after the rehab. You’ll be able to walk.”
With effort I held up my bandaged hand. “And this? What about this? Did they save my fingers? What happened to my fingers?”
“Look, you’re alive, Fiorella. If I were you I’d let that count for something.”
“Meaning I don’t have a hand anymore?”
“No man, you’ve got a hand—that’s still there. Just no fingers or thumb on it.”
“Jesus!”
“We couldn’t find the fingers, at least not right away. Too much confusion. We didn’t know.”
“But you found the toes! So where were my fingers? They weren’t with my toes?”
“If we could’ve found them, the surgeon would’ve sewn them back on, like the toes. But they didn’t turn up until the next day.”
“Turn up?”
“Think, Fiorella! Put it together.”
Then I remembered. “Wait! You’re saying they were still up my ass? Is that it?”
“Hey, the docs had no way of knowing. When they didn’t show up, we figured they were thrown out or washed down a drain somewhere. Then, after you took a dump—it was too late. They’d been off the hand too long.”
IT TOOK ARCHER and Afrika the next hour to put the events together and explain the rest.
There was a food tray next to my bed and while we talked Afrika was apparently getting hungry. He began taking stuff off the tray, a piece at a time, and eating it.
According to Archer’s theory, the banging I had heard after Sydnye collapsed—before I’d passed out—was probably Raoul, Swan’s man. He had come to warn them, and was pounding on the door when I went unconscious. The transmitter that one of Archer’s guys had stuck under Mom’s Escalade’s bumper while it was parked outside Chez Jay’s in Santa Monica had led them to me. They’d tracked me to the Malibu estate.
It had taken a SWAT team over two hours and a lot of ammunition to invade Swan’s compound, then the stable, and then the torture room. The cellar I was in had been defended by Raoul and three more bodyguards with automatic weapons.
Archer told me that there had been a delay of several hours because it was Swan’s estate that was the target and no one—no high-level cop—wanted to stick his neck out. Permission for an assault had been rejected at the highest level.
That’s when I interrupted. “So, okay, just tell me—did they get them both? What about Sydnye?”
Afrika was smiling. “Oh yeah, we got Sydnye. She won’t be doing any more killin’, that’s for sure. She was in a coma at the scene from a blood clot from her head injuries. She’s still in ICU at county lockdown. We had her DNA on the radio knob in the bedroom and on the bathroom mirror in O’Rourke’s apartment. She’ll get the needle, or life without. And, of course, she’ll never walk again, without help. Both her shins are crushed. Plus her lamps are out—permanently—thanks to you. And Swan’s man Raoul took one in the head. We won’t know for a couple of more days who fired that shot. Oh, and we also found Swan’s freaky video library where he’d filmed several dozen of his torture killings. His personal little cable reality show. They were all in a box in a safe in the basement of the apartment complex. Sick son of a bitch.”
