Moore The AV Guy

1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-938897-95-5
Verlag: Pink Flamingo Publishers
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet/DL/kein Kopierschutz

E-Book, Englisch, 84 Seiten

Darren is in trouble. He made the mistake of borrowing money from the mob and now he can’t pay it back. He is, however, given a way out – an offer he can’t refuse. All he needs to do is make a movie for Mob Boss, Mr. Blake and his debt will be forgiven. Not only that, he’ll be paid extra for doing the job. The offer seems like the perfect solution, but there are sobering complications. He’s told to film the actual abduction and rape of a mobster’s girlfriend, all of which is part of an insane extortion plot that seems doomed to failure from the start. Darren doesn’t trust the men he will be forced to work for, and what is worse, their intended prey, Gina, is smart, strong, and beautiful. Like Darren, she’s the victim of bad circumstances. He knows that if things go wrong, he and the girl could end up sharing a shallow grave. With his choices limited, Darren films the scene as planned, watching as the lovely Gina is abused and taken in every orifice while being bound to a horrific bed. To complicate matters even more, as the filming continues he comes to care for the helpless Gina, a fact that has dangerous implications for him. dangerous complications for them both.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Moore, Paul

Leseproben

Chapter One “Mr. Blake wants to talk to you.” He was just a guy sitting in a car parked in front of my apartment house when I got home. I hadn’t even been paying any attention to him until he spoke. I did a double take, thinking hard. There was no question in my mind that he was talking to me, and I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t know who Mr. Blake was. I owed the man a lot of money. This encounter didn’t have the feel of something that could turn into a one way trip though. There was no muscle sitting beside this guy. If he was packing a gun, he wasn’t showing it to me. He was rehearsing that dead eyed, tough guy role. They all cultivate it, but he hadn’t perfected it yet. He was only about my age and size, which was hardly intimidating. He was just an errand boy, the kind of guy who would earn his keep by delivering packages, people, or messages. He would be well paid to see very little and remember nothing that he shouldn’t remember. I didn’t know what the penalty for delinquent payment was, but it probably didn’t include a trip to small claims court. On the other hand, I wasn’t that late. We should be at the friendly reminder stage of collection, far short of having Mr. Blake blow cigar smoke into my bleeding face. “Uh, sure.” I held up my camera and forced myself to grin. “Just let me stash this in my apartment and I’ll be right down.” I was already mentally rehearsing a getaway. I could dash past the mailboxes and down the hall to the laundry room, out the back and over the fence. It would be an insanely stupid thing to do, but blind instinct argued otherwise. Abandoning the apartment wouldn’t have cost me much. I was about to be evicted anyway. It was a fourth floor efficiency that I jokingly called “the penthouse”. A real penthouse would have had an elevator though, and more of a view. I had moved out of Mom’s house after she died, because I couldn’t keep up with the mortgage any more. Dad hadn’t offered to take me in. He and Mom had been divorced for years. I had spent my weekends with him, back in the days when visitation rights mattered to us. He had listened to all of those enthusiastic ramblings about my film making ambitions with a sort of weary patience, hoping that I would grow up some day and get a real job, like plumbing, which was his line of work. He thought that movie making stardom was for folks who had been born into the life, like the Barrymore’s or Sheens. It wouldn’t have done any good for me to explain to him that I wasn’t doing it in the expectation of commercial success. I was doing it for the love of the art. Anyway, it has always been traditional for starving artists to live in attics. The kid in the car wasn’t buying any of my hustle though, at least, not enough to let me get out of his sight. “Take your camera along,” he said casually. “Mr. Blake might be interested in seeing it.” I glanced down at the camera. Collateral, I thought. Maybe he would take it and let me buy a little more time. Still, this one was my favorite. If it came down to getting a broken leg or losing this camera, I would have to think it over for awhile. He leaned over the seat and popped the passenger door open for me. “You ain’t in any trouble, dude.” His voice was reassuring. “You might even want to hear what he has to say.” When the gate rolled open, the errand boy drove up the long private drive to the main house. Sloan was waiting out front to pat me down and escort me around to the back of the house. “I’ll need the camera,” he said. When I hesitated he said, “I’ll just hold it for you until you leave. Mr. Blake is a bit camera shy.” He grinned at the protective way I was holding it. “I won’t smudge the lens.” He didn’t brace me with a hand on my arm or anything like that. He just walked beside me. He didn’t say anything else to me either. I had seen him around town a few times, and knew him by his reputation. He was one of those lean, weathered guys you see a lot of out in flyover country. It would be easy to dismiss him as nothing more than dumb muscle, unless you noticed his reptile gaze. Everyone else that I knew had to cop an attitude to keep the predators at bay. In his case, the predators generally recognized him as one of their own, and they gave him a wide berth. He never raised his voice, or said much, but when he did say something, people always listened to him. Blake was sitting in a chaise lounge beside the pool with a blonde standing behind him and massaging his shoulders. She was a buff bit of tawny flesh that had been stuffed into a string bikini. It was yellow with white polka dots, like the one in the old song. When he saw us coming, Blake waved her away. “It’s business, Bunny,” he said. She pouted prettily and went to sit at the far end of the pool. She passed me without so much as a glance. Maybe Blake was the jealous type, and she was being careful not to rile him, but it was more likely the usual reason. Girls like her never bother to look at guys like me. It’s not that I’m gross or anything. I was a gangly kid who grew up into a skinny man. I started wearing glasses in middle school, and could only afford contact lenses later. I was never a jock or a party guy. If you threw in hobbies like reading and videography, you can see how I got typecast as a nerd early on. Women generally go for the bad boys, or the guys with money or power, or the cool guys. I didn’t have any of those advantages. Blake had three out of four. Bunny slumped in a chair and picked up a book of crossword puzzles to work on while she waited. She seemed unhappy about being sent off, as though pampering Blake was her most important mission and passion in life. I wondered what the compensation package was for such devotion. Blake watched me watching her, but he seemed pleased by my appreciation. Maybe he was proud of himself for having a woman that other men wanted, or maybe he had been wondering if a known artistic type like me was gay, and he was relieved to find out that I wasn’t. Not that he should have cared. A man like Blake would ignore anyone who wasn’t useful or threatening to him. I didn’t see how I could be either one of those things. Blake leaned back in his chair and blew smoke. He liked thin little cigars. They went with his whole ensemble. There was a wide brimmed Stetson on his head. It was covering the bald spot, and no one had ever seen him without it. The jacket that was draped over the back of his chaise lounge had a suede yoke with piping around the seams and pearl buttons on the pockets and cuffs. His shirt was Western styled as well, but it was short sleeved. His string tie had been loosened so that he could open a couple of buttons to let the heat out, exposing too much black chest hair and a glint of gold chain. His boots were handmade ostrich. The hat and heels gave him height and swagger that he wouldn’t have had otherwise, but the lean and rugged persona would always elude him. He looked ridiculous, but nobody laughed at him, ever. “So,” he said wearily, “this is the AV guy.” The dialect spoiled the whole John Wayne image that he was trying for. It was classic New Jersey, with a hint of some Old World backwater. I don’t think that he had ever been west of Chicago. Blake wasn’t his real name. That would be something hard to pronounce, something that was familiar to officers of the law. “Good morning, Mr. Blake,” I said. Sloan sat down behind him. He was doing nothing, like a robot recharging his solar batteries. It was the wrong position to take if he wanted to prevent me from making a quick exit. I took that for a good sign. “They tell me that you owe me some money,” Blake said. “Yes, Sir.” I said. “I know I haven’t been able to pay down the principal yet, but I’m keeping up with the interest.” In fact, I was a few days late with that, but it was a forgivable sin I hoped. “How much is it?” Was that a rhetorical question, or was he that vague about the terms? If he really didn’t know what I owed him, maybe he didn’t know that I was falling behind in my payments either. “The original loan was for ten thousand, Sir.” He nodded, unimpressed by the number. I suddenly realized that ten grand was small change to Blake. He wouldn’t waste his own time collecting it. This had to be about something else. “I need a guy who can make a movie for me. I want a good movie, with sound and color, not all fuzzy and crap. Something with real quality. If you make this movie for me, we can forget the whole loan and I’ll give you a few grand besides.” A movie – the scene had become surreal. This thug with cowpuncher delusions wanted to be a film producer. “You’re a smart kid,” his eyes narrowed as he studied me. “You know that nothin’ we talk about here don’t go out there.” “I know that,” I swallowed. He glanced to the left and right and leaned in toward me. I tried not to smile. There was...