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expertly slit the scrotum, popped out the raw ball and— snick! —severed the vesicular cord. One, two, three—done. Surgically precise for, after all, Knuckles had had a lot of experience cutting things. He had cut off arms, legs, heads, faces—you name it, Knuckles had cut it.
    And it might be added that Knuckles had then placed Leonard's ball in a Dow "gripperzipper" ZipLoc plastic bag, presumably to submit as proof to this Vinchetti person that the assigned task had been properly completed.
    (Later, for what it's worth, Leonard's ball would be thrown into the palatial back yard of Mr. Vinchetti's estate where a guard dog would swallow it whole.)
    Leonard lay in the back seat, clutching his groin. They're taking me someplace...to make movies? Very shortly he would find out what kind of movies, and why, and it is not necessary to expend wordage on the self-explanatory. Instead he contemplated his predicament in stopped degrees. He'd lost a testicle because he owed the Mob money. The Mob should have killed him but they didn't. Instead they were taking him to some arcane location to make movies. He was still alive and therefore still technically able to fulfill his dream of seeing The Confessor  win Best New Picture at the Sundance Film Festival lock, stock, and barrel.
    Things, he supposed. could've been worse.
    "Um, excuse me, Mr. Rocco, but, um—"
    "Lemme guess, kid," Rocco drolled back. "Your bag hurts."
    Rocco and Knuckles busted out laughter.
    "I—I mean, I'm grateful to you for not killing me, and I'll gladly do whatever you want me to do in order to make recompense for my debt—"
    Rocco slapped Knuckles on the arm. "Ya hear that, Knuck? The kid's got smarts. Recompense. I like it."
    "But, uh," Leonard droned on from the back seat's black murk. "Did you say that I would be making movies  for you?"
    "Yeah, kid. Now pipe down. I gotta nod."
    For the next five hours then, Leonard lay in the smothering, leather-scented dark of the Deville's back seat. It was dreamy. Charles Mingus and blue-note jazz drifted, barely audibly, from the radio, and Leonard kind of floated back there above the Cadillac's quality suspension. He dozed off intermittently, dreaming of sweet nothings. But sometime later the long car's shock absorbers began to squeak, and Leonard was jostled slightly awake.
    He could hear the rough and steady popping noise of the car's tires rolling up a winding gravel road. He could see the moon through the back window, the moon and the stars and the heavens above. It reminded him of a poem he'd read once: In the moon, in the stars, in the heavens above, even the angels are burning up with all my love...
    Then he wondered, What does heaven hold for me?
    The car stopped and he heard a sound. It was a sound that would symbolize a paramount aspect of his life over the coming year.
    The sound of a dog barking.

    ««—»»

    "Mostly dog flicks," Rocco informed when they entered the run-down little house on the hill. "That's what you'll be shooting. There's a pen out back we keep the mutts in. Plenty of dog food in the pantry. Make sure you feed 'em at least twice a day, or they'll try to eat the girls."
    Leonard followed them in, carrying as much of his gear as he could hold in his arms. The pain at his groin meshed with the sheer confusion of his soul bushwhacked him; he didn't really even comprehend what Rocco was saying. What they'd walked into was a dirty kitchen fitted with a lot of old appliances. An unpleasant, meaty odor hung in the air. "Christ, this fuckin' place stinks worse than the meat-packing district," Rocco complained, a wince in his eyes.
    "It's the whores," Knuckles elucidated in moron monotone. "They don't wash."
    "We oughta deep-six'm both in the Hudson, but it'd probably kill the fish."
    Rocco and Knuckles busted out laughter.
    "In here, kid."
    Leonard, still oblivious and heavy laden with his equipment, dumbly followed Rocco into a room off the kitchen. A light clicked on. "Is your shit