“Barton look I’m gonna level with you because we should be friends after that—like—that absolutely astounding thing that just fell out of your face like fucking Pallas Athena into the—never mind that now here’s what it is. You see that fucker over there with the Russian-looking smile and the pool cue?”

“Yes sir I see the gentleman but he is not smiling.”

“Oh yes Barton yes he is. He is a smiling-on-the-inside person Barton.”

“Uh okay sir.”

“That is Volodya the sniper. He is a total international bastard. He’s wanted in so many places we don’t even bother to check anymore. I think the only place he’s not wanted is Belize don’t ask me why not it’s like maybe a filing oversight or something.”

“Uh right.”

“Basically we’re all just horrible bastards Barton is what it is. That guy in the box there did a bad thing and pissed me off and now I’m keeping him like that basically forever. It was a straightforwardly bad thing okay I’m not kidding and it wasn’t what you call it morally ambiguous but it was a shit ton less bad than the stuff we do on a regular basis so I’m not gonna try to tell you I’m some kind of avenging angel or whatever. Avenging asshole maybe you could say only maybe don’t because—yeah okay anyway. Head on a stick, guy in a box. Bad people. I will give you fifteen million American dollars, untraceable, to write that the noted artist Banjo Telemark who is heavily influenced by Warhol came through here with one of his freaky art stunts and his magically hot manager lady and some alarming art flunkies and consultants and bodyguards and what all and you will nod this whole collection through as massively significant modern art and you will never hear about it again. Or you can go confer with your friends in the office and I will offer them the same money and they will take it because I will also explain to them that if they don’t take it Volodya will one day come to their house and kill them and their family and friends and anyone they happen to live near and so on in a kind of biblical propagating extinction wave that will end in the death of I don’t know some really nice old lady in Kamchatka or something like in that game and she will die saying what the actual fuck and I will tell her before she goes that it was all your fault but you will not care because when I go and talk to your friends and colleagues in there the manifest will have item thirty-one Another Human Head Still Wet okay Barton so let’s just take the low road today my Canadian friend. This is where you say oh yah I guess.”

“Oh—”