“I hear you!” Kathryn giggled in return. She wiggled the brush she’d just dipped into the second, restaurant-sized bucket, which was full of chocolate pudding with a licorice base. “Make sure you understand, Mr. Bell, once I seal up your rectum with this tar and that other stuff you have going on…in the front, you will probably implode in about ten hours. Come on, girls. Spread those flabby cheeks so I don’t miss any of the nooks and crannies.”

“Yuck,” Yoko said.

“Oooh, he’s so hairy back here!” Nikki grimaced.

“STOP! Okay, you bitch. I’ll tell you what you want to know,” Bell grunted.

“Too late,” Annie said. “You snooze, you lose! Slap it on there, Kathryn! Seal him up tight!”

“Jesus, God, stop. Please,” Bell begged, tears rolling down his cheeks.

“Listen to him,” Adel Newsom pleaded. “You’ll see he was the brains of this…this enterprise.”

Kathryn stood up from her half crouch, the dark pudding dripping on the plastic tarp. The real tar she’d spread earlier was starting to harden up. She smiled. “Start talking, Mr. Bell.”

“It’s all there on my money clip. It looks like a money clip, but it’s actually a Memory Stick. All my files and bank information are on it.”

“Well, lookie here, girls,” Nikki said, holding up a sheaf of bills attached to the Memory Stick. She ripped off her latex gloves, ran to the dining-room table, and inserted the Memory Stick into the laptop sitting there. “Wallah! It’s all here. At least it looks like it is. Ooooh, this is good. The man is rich!

“Maggie, I’m going to upload these files. You’ll have them in a minute. Wait! Where and how much money do you want me to transfer for all those adoptive parents?”

“We have an escrow account at the paper. Just a second. I’ll send you the number of the account. Pick a number you’re comfortable with, and it’s a done deal. Remember, it is Christmas, so be generous. Babies are expensive. That means, be generous.

“And be certain to include funds to reimburse the parents they sold the babies to. We have to follow through on the promises we made when we explained that they had been the victims of a swindle. That the children they thought they were going to be able to adopt legally could not be adopted, because even though the surrogate mothers had signed off on the adoptions, the biological fathers had not and would not. That the babies were going to be returned to the families that had arranged for their conceptions and births, but if the ‘buyers’ would just not raise a fuss, not only would their money be returned but, more important, private adoptions through reputable parties would be arranged within the next year.”

“Gotcha,” Nikki said as she tapped at the keys on her laptop.