This feeling doesn’t last long, however. Herkimer is tired of the script, too. He sighs as if he’s a vexed professor tired of trying to appeal to a recalcitrant student. He unclenches his fist, lumbers over to the table, and plugs in one of the curling irons.

“Jimmy, no,” Charlie begs.

Herkimer stabs the ham, gouges a hole, and inserts the curling iron into it.

“Where is the Nakamura sword, Otto?”

Again it registers that I should just say it, but instead I say, “Holland?” Then I make a dunce face and say, “Oh, wait. Or is that Denmark? Or Flemland? It’s so hard to keep those straight.”

Herkimer doesn’t strike me this time. He just makes more conductor-like circles with one of the curling irons—the unplugged one—and smiles at me as the room begins to fill with the smoky intimations of cookout.

“You should have heard the noises your dog made.” Herkimer yelps and flaps his hands in front of him in a frantic doggy-paddle. “Burned the tongue right out of his head. Only thing left was this little red finger of meat. Flicking around like this. Flick-flick, flick-flick. It was all wet and shriveled up like his red doggy dick.”

“Jimmy, please,” Charlie says.

He takes the hot iron out of the ham and waves it in front of me. Heat waves ripple against my face. Even that hurts. I mask my terror of it by discharging a spray of water from my eyes. Then he reinserts the hot iron into its hot ham, providing for me an illustration of what I have in store. Next he pries my mouth open, inserts the cold curling iron deeply down my throat, seals it with duct tape, and casts his gaze between the two irons as if approving of a charming double date. I gag against the cold metal, but it’s no use. I can’t get it out.

From his seat in the corner, Azar emits a ghoulish, aspirated giggle. He loves it.

“He wasn’t even conscious,” Charlie begs. “He doesn’t know anything.”

Herkimer is on her in a flash. He vises down on her neck, making her eyes bulge cartoonishly from her head.

“But you know, don’t you? You can stop it, Charlie. Just tell me where the Nakamura sword is.”

The rump of ham is sizzling now. Fat hisses and spits from the hole.

“I don’t know,” Charlie repeats desperately. “I didn’t get it. Janus still has it.”

“You? The Polecat? Didn’t get your MacGuffin? I highly doubt that.”

Herkimer walks back across the room and plugs in the curling iron that is taped into my mouth. Then he crosses to the table and starts fucking the ham rump with the hot iron. “See that?” he says, releasing the greasy smell of fatty bacon. “It takes about sixty seconds for it to get hot, so I’d say you now have fifty seconds.”