“You mean committing murder did something to your head? I certainly should think—”

“No. Going broke did something to my head. That’s what did something to my head.”

“You committed the perfect crime,” said the producer, somewhat impressed.

“Yes, I committed the perfect crime. So what?”

There was silence in the shabby room.

“You will be the first outsider to see the videotape,” said the cripple.

“You trust me?” asked the producer, the makings of a sneer on his face.

“Not as far as I can throw you,” answered the cripple, “but what are my options?”

“Someone else,” suggested the producer.

“No one else,” said the cripple. “I’m stuck with you because you’ll make it happen.”

“I still can’t believe none of your lawyers stopped you from committing murder.”

“Well, believe it. When I was the game show king of television, nobody, I mean nobody, prohibited me from doing anything I wanted to do. I wouldn’t let them. I had an ego bigger than…bigger than yours!” The cripple snickered to himself for a moment. Which led to a coughing attack. And that to multiple instances of spitting into the cripple’s dirty handkerchief. When the cripple was finally in control of himself again, he looked white faced and wretched.

“Well, get on with it,” ordered the producer. He had just about enough of the cripple, his coughing and spitting and malodorous room. He wanted out of there, and the sooner the better.

“I sense you want to leave,” said the cripple.

“I am intrigued, I must say, and—”

“Would you rather go…or stay…and see a videotape of The Death Game?”

In the year 2010, Retta Mae Wagons was seventeen, black, and a whore. And extremely pretty. She was tall and slim with great tits and an equally splendid ass. Sometimes she wore her hair in cornrows and sometimes she didn’t. When she didn’t, the girl’s brown hair was unnaturally soft. She had a wonderful smile, big white teeth, big brown eyes, and eyelashes that went on for miles. She was a beauty.

Retta Mae had been a hooker for almost a year. She knew all the tricks of the trade and was good at what she did. She knew she was good too. The johns considered her one of the best. Retta Mae Wagons got top dollar on the Upper East Side, which was where her pimp, Dannyboy Marley, placed her. Another thing Retta Mae Wagons was, was smart. If she’d gone to college, she could’ve been anything she wanted to be and been good at it.

The girl knew all those things.

The year before Retta Mae Wagons became a whore, she lived with her mother and eleven brothers and sisters in a project at Ninety-third Street off York Avenue in Manhattan. As a child she loved school and got straight A’s. She even skipped the ninth grade.

“It’s a rotten shame this child cannot apply for college,” Retta Mae’s high school principal told her mother. “It’s just a dirty rotten shame. Your daughter’s brilliant. And she loves to study.”