Hogg glanced over at us. “It’s Denny’s first job—and the cocksucker ain’t seen too much of this sort of shit, either. We really gonna have to get rough here, so I don’t want ’em seein’ anything that’s gonna turn ’em off the profession before they get their tastes fixed to it.” Hogg’s next breath got his grin settled. “Besides, I don’t want ’em to think that some of these bitches fight back too hard.” He winked over at Denny and me. “It might just get them all upset.”

The woman’s one open eye darted around. “You’re goddamn right I’m fighting back!” she shouted suddenly, arching her shoulders from their grip. “You low-down filthy sons of bitches! You weak-assed, yellow-bellied scumbags! You—!” and got her hand free—“two-bit, chickenshit—” She pounded the wop a good one on the side of his neck; it made him open his mouth and gasp. The nigger hit her again with his free hand on her head, and her words suddenly got thicker. But they didn’t stop coming, and she didn’t stop pounding.

“You shouldn’t of …” the wop grunted, trying to grin at the nigger; it didn’t look like much of a grin: “… of done that!” He grabbed for her swinging arm and missed. “Goin’ on like that, she was getting me—watch it, there!—all worked up again—” She hammered her arm into Hogg’s chest, fist to elbow, so he staggered. She hit him again—at the same time kicked the nigger hard in the knee; his foot jerked up off the floor and he almost lost his balance—so that Hogg went all the way out to the end of his grip.

“Shit …!” the nigger gasped.

But Hogg came back in again.

They struggled to get her in the back room. Once she kicked over a pile of gallon paint cans that rolled, clanking and thunking one another. “Jesus …!” the nigger said and danced out of the way of one, while the wop tripped on another; they dragged her back toward the door. She was still beating on the wop—got in three good ones to his head. Hogg went in last, hefting the chains with one hand, pulling up his pants with the other. Over their grunts, I heard her suddenly scream; then chains connected—hard. The scream stopped.

Denny pulled his fingers out of the girl’s pussy—the elastic of her panties snapped her belly—and licked. “Get your legs apart. Aw, come on! How am I gonna fuck you like that? Hey—” That was to me. “Lick out that cunt, cocksucker.” He reached to pull her panties down, but she rocked away from him and gave him a look that was like a roar without a voice. Then she put her thumbs in the band and pushed them down herself till they were a roll on her unequal thighs.

They were blue. The panties.