Miss Torso.

The woman had no arms; her name was Spooky, and the name suited her. Carbon-black hair and murky blue eyes, one iris minutely larger than the other due to a genetic defect called emmetropic binocular deviation. A demure, lilting voice but a mouth fouler than a waste hopper at a pork-processing plant. If anything, she was an interesting persona"

diverse and extraordinary. Spooky stood almost six feet tall, a hundred and twenty pounds, emaciated to near breastlessness. and all thin blue veins beneath parchment-white skin. It was the ice a.k.a. crank a.k.a. crystalized methamphetamine that kept her in the perpetual state of borderline starvation. Eleven years ago she'd been a runway model for the Ford Agency. A cover for Allure and 90s Woman, a stint for Betsey Johnson, and several cosmetic commercials. After so many thousand-dollar-per-day shoots, however, it hadn't taken Spooky long to become utterly habituated to drugs. The fall was fast. When Vinchetti's spotters had seen her turning tricks in Utica, they'd snapped her right up; Vmchetti liked them tall, slim, and gutter-mouthed. One night she'd been higher than Robert Blake's attorney fees when she'd made the very grave mistake of attempting to seduce one of Vinchetti's most loyal b.u.t.tons, Paulie, whose job it had been that evening to drive her home after her nightly visit to the compound; she'd confided: "Paulie, I f.u.c.kin' absolutely f.u.c.kin' hate f.u.c.king Vinch. He's got a little d.i.c.k, and his breath could knock down a motherf.u.c.kin' brick wall," and this she related with her hand deftly plying Paulie's crotch. Paulie had simply smiled, shaking his head, and walked right back into the compound to relate the entirety of the incident to Vinchetti, who, by the way, was the supreme boss of what the U.S. Justice Department referred to as the Vinchetti/Lonna/ Stello Crime Pyramid. Vinchetti controlled virtually all of the white heroin and underground p.o.r.n distribution on the east coast. At any rate, as recompense for this foolish slight, Vinchetti's personal doctor, a well-spoken, Deloreaneasque former Beverly Hills plastic surgeon named Winston F. Prouty, had painlessly amputated Spooky's arms two inches above the elbows. Now Vinchetti used her for kink tricks and videos. He wanted plenty of stump left on each arm, so that the stumps could be inserted into other women during four-and five-ways. It made for great footage.

"Camera ready?' Frankie asked.

Nick made a few adjustments on the tripod. "Just about."

"Lights bright enough, Nick?' Spooky complained in her velvet-soft voice. She sat upright, nude, on the very cheap coffee table that complemented the "suite," which was actually a room at the Howard Johnson's on Route 233 near Rome, New York. They got a special rate often dollars for two hours because the bathroom was completely out of order thanks to the crack dealers who'd trashed the place last week when a drop went bad. Nick and Frankie figured they'd spend the money they'd saved on extra drugs. This was a scat flick. Who needed a f.u.c.kin' bathroom?

"f.u.c.kin' lights are cookin' me like a motherf.u.c.kin' curry-and-ginger pheasant satay,"

Spooky maintained her complaint, the simile prompted by old memories of four-star Big Apple cuisine back when she was with Ford.

"Live with it, b.i.t.c.h," Frankie remarked.

"Throat yourself, you dead-d.i.c.k goombah motherf.u.c.ker" Spooky quietly retorted.

"Jerk me off," Frankie snapped back. Then he paused and belted out a laugh. 'Oh, wait a minute! You can't jerk me off." 'Cos you ain't got no hands."

"Yeah, I wish I had hands, then I could give you the finger." She looked at Nick. "How do you like this useless piece of s.h.i.+t? f.u.c.kin' guy's got more c.o.c.k than three men and he can't do s.h.i.+t with the motherf.u.c.ker. What good's a stunt-c.o.c.k who can't luck? Like t.i.ts on a motherf.u.c.kin' bull."

Frankie did not take these remarks particularly well. His paste-white prescription-morphine-derivative-junkie face pinkened at the insult. "You f.u.c.kin' armless j.i.z.z-can, I was the number one male p.o.r.n star for a year!"

"Yeah, motherf.u.c.ker, and what are you now? A dead-d.i.c.k goombah motherf.u.c.ker. Gonna take you all motherf.u.c.kin" night to get your d.i.c.k half-hard like last time?"

Frankie stood naked and shuddering like Parkinson's, his once steroid-embellished muscles now sagging in debilitation. "Why, I oughtaa""

Nick appeared weary. "Frankie, come on. We only got an hour left, and we gotta do a twenty-minute scat."

Spooky chuckled as she sat, kind of hunched over now At her waistline, not a single roll of fat could be seen, as if her musculature had been coated with white wall paint.

"Frankie's f.u.c.kin' nervous 'cos he knows he won't be able to f.u.c.kin' get it up, and if Frankie can't get it up, Vinch won't have any reason to keep him around any f.u.c.kin' more.

This time next week he'll be in one of the f.u.c.kin" pylons on that new train bridge they're building across the Mohawk River. Smackheads can't get it up." Spooky grinned ever so subtly, batting her eyes. "Live with it."

Frankie was close to convulsions now. "I ain't no junkie!" he bellowed, needle tracks standing out like st.i.tches on both arms.

Even Nick spared a chuckle at this one. "Frankie, face it. You're a junkie," he said as he lit his pipe and sucked down some crystal meth fumes. "So let's just get on with it. If you can't do the wet shot, I'll do it Then you s.h.i.+t on her face at the end."

"Oh, not another one of those," Spooky said.

Frankie pointed his finger at her like a Beretta 92. "Yes. another one of those, wh.o.r.e. And I ate a whole plate of fried garlic and squid ravioli for lunch. Just for you."

Spooky did not look pleased but by now this was pretty much par for her personal golf course. She raised her stumps as if she actually had arms to throw up in concession. "So let's just do this motherf.u.c.ker and get it the f.u.c.k over with."

"Good idea" Nick put down the pipe and was re-focusing on the coffee table. He was naked too, by the way, and nearly as emaciated as Frankie, yet not so well-endowed. At least his still worked, though, after a few v.i.a.g.r.as which he popped a moment later. He pa.s.sed the bottle to Frankie. "You're letting the chick psych you out. Here, and hurry it up. The Yankees are on."

Frankie, still pouting, popped half the bottle.

"Jesus, Frankie! You'll OD!" Nick yelled.

"G.o.d, I hope so," Spooky said.

"Just gimme a minute," Frankie said, a.s.sured. His d.i.c.k was flaccid as a handful of overcooked spaghetti, twelve inches of overcooked spaghetti, to be more precise. At any rate, it was impressive. Like a f.u.c.kin' pork tenderloin between his legs.

Spooky needed no prompting when Nick put his crotch in front of her eerily still-pretty face. She sucked like the dest.i.tute, maladapted scat-junkie trooper that she was. Nick wasn't quite so tar along in the drug-induced libidinal-system debilitation as Frankie. It only took him ten minutes to pull six inches of crane.

"I'm ready," he said. "How 'bout you?'

Frankie huffed, puffed-faced and masturbating as if working a bicycle pump to save his life. Soon, though, things south of the waistline began to inflate.

Spooky grinned. "Think harder about your dad, Frankie."

"f.u.c.k!" Frankie bellowed, The image of his fathera"a man who'd beaten and sodomized Frankie from ages four through fourteena"couldn't have presented a less-erotic reaction in Frankie's mind. The mammoth p.e.n.i.s went dead-flaccid in about a second.

Laughter fluttered from Spooky's throat, gentle as a stream of moths.

"Come on, Spooky," Nick reasoned. "Lay off him. You're f.u.c.kin' him up."

"I can't f.u.c.kin' help it I hate that grease ball motherf.u.c.ker. Doesn't f.u.c.kin' matter what I say any-f.u.c.kin'-way. It's gonna take that big lummox till next Easter to get half wood. He might as well be jerking off a f.u.c.kin' empty rubber."

Frankie's dead-meat c.o.c.k flapped against his leg when he turned briskly and glared at Spooky. "I oughtaa"

"You oughta what? Huh? I'll tell you what you oughta f.u.c.kin' do. You oughta grow a d.i.c.k that works, you f.u.c.kin' pasta-scarfing p.i.s.s-ant small-time mob errand-boy very-quickly-outliving-his-usefulness no-d.i.c.k piece of garbage."

Frankie bulled forward, Nick pus.h.i.+ng him back. "I oughta f.u.c.kin' kill you," Frankie yelled.

Spooky laughed, raising her stumps. "s.h.i.+t, I've been begging for someone to kill me for ten motherf.u.c.kin' years." Her pair of diminutive tattoos enforced this a.s.sertion: rifle-scope crosshairs over her heart and, along the front of her throat, a six-inch perforation mark and the words CUT HERE. "You don't have the f.u.c.kin' b.a.l.l.s to kill me, Frankie.

There's nothing in your sack but two dead eggs."

Nick was fighting the losing battle in trying to push Frankie away from her. "Frankie, Frankie, come on, don't do it!" Nick yelled. "Vinch wants her alive for the scats-you kill her and we're all lunch meat."

"I don't care! I'm killin' her!"

"Did you blow your dad, or did he just f.u.c.k you in the a.s.s, huh, Frankie?' Spooky continued to taunt "Bet you got hard every time back then."

"I'm gonna kill her, Nick, I'm gonnaa"

"You're an impotent waste of s.p.a.ce, Frankie," she saw fit to add. "Do the human race a favor. f.u.c.kin' hang yourself."

"You're dead, b.i.t.c.h! Dead."

"Cool down, Frankie." Nick implored. "Cool down. You kill her then Vinch'll have that psycho doctor of his do a job on both of us. You heard about what he did to Tony and Darcy, didn't you?"

Frankie stalled momentarily. It wasn't a pretty story. Indeed, then, he began to cool down.

A grateful impa.s.se ensued. Frankie gained his composure. "All right, all right," he conceded. He stood feet apart, closed his eyes, and began to m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e again. Spooky sighed, asked Nick, "Hey, load a pipe and light me up first will you? I'm motherf.u.c.kin'

feenin'. like, really f.u.c.kin' bad." This was but one inconvenience of being armless: Spooky, a clinical drug addict couldn't smoke drugs without a.s.sistance. Nor could she wipe her a.s.s, effectively wash herself, clip her toenails, etc. "I've gotta have a hit I got the motherf.u.c.kin' meth bugs crawling all over me. How about it Nick?"

"No," Nick put his foot down. "When we're done."

"f.u.c.k that motherf.u.c.kin' s.h.i.+t, man! I need some ice! Now!"

"When we're done," Nick repeated, half-blitzed himself.

"Come on. Nick. I'll stick my tongue up your a.s.shole."

Nick frowned. Such favors he couldn't have been less interested in. All he wanted to do was ride his meth-buzz, get his c.u.m-shot and catch the Yankees. Clemens was pitching tonight, thank G.o.d.

"I need some batu, man! I need some f.u.c.kin' cristy! I'm not kidding."

"You'll have to wait. Maybe if you gotta wait you won't f.u.c.k with Frankie's head anymore."

"Yeah," Frankie growled; the grin on his face denoted great pride. He turned around, displaying quite an achievement: twelve inches of very erect genitals. His eyes thinned ruefully at Spooky. "How's that for some dead d.i.c.k, hose-bag?'

Spooky tossed a shoulder. "Hey, Frankie, when you were a baby. did you swallow your dad's nut, or spit?'

Frankie's grand twelve-incher went limp in an instant. "I'm gonna kill her!" he re-exploded, and this time Nick was off balance when he lunged to push Frankie away.

"My guess is you swallowed," Spooky conjectured, not even flinching as her ogre-sized nemesis struggled to reach her. "You look like a swallower. Bet your parents didn't even need to buy any baby food because of all that nut you were eating every day."

"Frankie-no!" Nick shouted, buta"

SMACK!.

Too late.

Frankie's primordial rage propelled his fist over Nick's shoulder where it connected with Spooky's chin effectively as a Tyson right-cross. Spooky's head snapped back, then her upper-body snapped back, all so fast she could only be seen as a chalk-white blur.

She lay perfectly still on the cheap coffee table.

Nick and Frankie gaped down, bug-eyed. They knew at a glance. Spooky's head hung over the table edge, her eyes crossed and wide open, her tongue hanging out. The silence was absolute.

"Man. Oh, man," Nick whispered. Beads of sweat wrung out of his pores. "Frankie, you better pray she ain't..." He couldn't even say the rest.

He knelt down, put an ear to her chest.

And gulped.

He felt around her neck for a pulse.

Gulped again.

Then he raged up at Frankie: "You big dumb cement-head motherf.u.c.ker! You killed her!"

"I-I-I" Frankie gaped. "No, shea""

"f.u.c.kbrain! You broke her neck against the edge of the table!"

"No, I-I-I..." Frankie was remiss for locution. "No. She fell, and her neck... It got broke."

"You KILLED THE b.i.t.c.h! And now Vinchetti's gonna have one of his crew KILL US!

They'll hang us upside down by meat hooks through our a.s.sholes and blowtorch us! He'll have that crazy-a.s.s doctor cut all our skin off!"

Frankie started to blubber he was so s.h.i.+t-scared. Nick sat dejected on the floor, head bowed.

"Let's-let's-let's just. . . leave town!" Frankie suggested. "Go somewhere. Hide."

"We could go to Mars and it wouldn't mattera"Vinchetti would find us. We could go to f.u.c.kin' Egypt and bury ourselves a thousand feet under one of the pyramids and he would find us. We killed his best scat girla"Vinchetti loves scat. He'll be more p.i.s.sed off about this than when the Yankees lost the series to Arizona"

"We're dead," Frankie blubbered.

Nick just nodded.

"Let's just-let's just-let's justa"leave her here," came Frankie's next brilliant idea "Just say she croaked, say she OD'd or somethin'. Yeah. Leave her here."

"It's a f.u.c.kin' Howard Johnsons! We can't leave a dead meth-head wh.o.r.e with no arms in a Howard Johnsons! You murdered her! Our prints are all over the room! The clerk saw us come in. This is a homicide scene, Einstein."

Frankie maintained his frantic blubbering. "Well-well-well let's dump her body. Dump her body in the ca.n.a.l. Then we can say some of Peroni's boys muscled her away from us.

Peroni's been trying to horn in on Vinch's scat and nek market for years, and he's dumped a lot of bodies in the ca.n.a.l. The cops'd think it was Peroni."

Nick opened his mouth to voice further objection buta"

"Hmm," he said.

"Vinch might believe it, Nick."

"He might He just might." Nick glanced around, brain ticking. It was a bad plan but it was all they had. "Frankie. put your clothes back on. Then take the camera, lights, and tripods back out to the Caddy and put it all in the trunk." Now he was looking at the long suitcase they'd carried the equipment in. "We'll carry Spooky out in that"

"In what?' Frankie was stepping into his slacks. "You mean the suitcase?'

"Yeah. The suitcase."

Frankie scratched his chin. "Oh, Nick, I don't know. I don't think she'll fit"

Nick got up and grabbed his eight-inch Gerber Mk IV sheath knife off the dresser.

"She'll fit just fine, Frankie. After I cut her legs off."