The Frenchman's Revenge (5 page)

Nianzu and Quitin
each
grabbed
hold of one of his arms
and hoisted
Tony
to his feet
a
s
Louie kicked his chair out from under him.

Louie said in a harsh voice, “Take off your clothes, asshole. N
ow
, or I’ll shoot your fingers off one at a time
. Then I’ll
then start taking your toes.”

Tony
stared in horror at the man he had thought was one of his
own
. He shook
so hard
that
he
had trouble unbuttoning
his shirt.

Nianzu took a knife
from h
is boot and said with a sly smile, “
H
ere
,
let me help you.”

With a quick slash
,
he cut the buttons
off the
shirt
driving
the knife in just
deep
enough to leave a
thin
line of blood from Tony’s neck to his waist. Tony screamed in
pain
as Louie and Quitin pulled off his shirt.

“Now your pants,
fat man
.
D
on’t make me use my knife again to help you.
No telling what I might cut off
,
” Nianzu said with a grin.

Tony struggled with the buttons on his pants
,
huffing and puffing like a locomotive
lurching
up the side of a mountain.
He got the pants down to his knees
,
but lost his balance
toppling
to the floor
--
a heap of
writhing
flesh.

“Jesus God, what a pig,” Quitin muttered. He
reached down in disgust and
pulled off one
of Tony’s
boot
s,
then the other
. F
inally
,
he
jerked the pants of
f
the huge man
,
who was
wallowing on the ground
like a
giant catfish
.

He started to pull off Tony’s long underwear but turned to Louie
, his forehead creased with disgust.
“Help me, Lou. I don’t think I’ve seen or smelled anything like this in my life.”

Louie gave
Quitin
a sympathetic grin and said to Tony, “You got two minutes to get naked and stand up
. O
r I start shooting.”

To underscore his point
,
he
aimed
his gun at Tony’s foot and fired, grazing his ankle.
Tony screamed in pain
, n
o longer tr
ying
to hide his
panic
.
Shaking like a wounded elephant
,
he
struggled out of his foul smelling underwear
. He
crawled first to his hands and knees
,
then
,
using the table as a brace
, he
pulled himself up to standing.
His face was purple with fear.
Any vestige of anger was long gone
,
replaced with terror.

The Chinese men
stared in amazement
at
the mammoth
mound of
quivering
human
flesh
before them
.

No one spoke for a moment
,
then Quitin said
pointing
his gun
at the fat man’s groin, “
Christ, does he even have a prick under all
of
that
?”

Wattu said in disgust, “He probably had to have one of his men hold back the fat so he could get his cock out far enough to fuck those little girls.”

“
Damn
, talk about out of proportion,
”
Mikmo said.
“
What
would you say
is
the proportion of gut to cock
, men
?
Maybe a hundred to one?”

“
Nah
,”
said
Louie
, “
A thousand to one
,
if
not more
.”

The men
laughed
in disgust as Tony’s face flamed
. H
umiliated tears tracked through the grime on his face.

The Frenchman allowed a
glimmer of a smile
to
cross
his
face
at his men’s taunting banter
,
but when he t
urned to the naked man
,
he
didn’t hide his revulsion
.

Tony
stood sobbing
,
trying to cover his
hairy groin
with his hands.
He looked to
t
he Frenchman and cried out, “
You’re
gonna kill me
, aren’t you
?
You are, aren’t you?
Then do it
,
god damnit!
Shoot
me now
and get
it
the fuck over
!”

The Frenchman smiled a soft
mocking
smile.

“
What kind of a
family
man are you
,
Tony?
Is that what goes for courage in your gang?
You die easy while your men suffer?
Hmm, I didn’t know that’s how
Marcello
trained
his
men to die. Like cowards, Tony? Begging and crying for mercy
? And,
if I’m no
t
mistaken
,
with piss running down your leg
?”

The Frenchman paused and lit another cigarette.
He walked closer to Tony and blew smoke in his face.
When the smoke cleared, he continued.

“
You want to die quickly
,
Tony?
You want to die without pain? Quickly? One easy shot?
”

He smiled again
,
but the smile didn’t reach his hard eyes
. H
is voice was soft, sinister.

“
I don’t think so.
I don’t think so
,
Tony.
”

Tony blanche
d
, clearly
remembering the tales of how
t
he Frenchmen killed his enemies
. T
he rivulet of piss r
an
down his leg
,
form
ing
a good sized puddle on the floor.

The Frenchman shook his head
. H
is voice was filled with a quiet fury.

“
No, Tony
,
I want you to die
slowly
, a
s slowly and as painfully as those
eleven
year old girls did.
I want you to feel the pain and the fear that every one of th
em
felt.
You
and your men
are going to scream
until your throat
s
bleed
, Tony
.
Ah
,
yes, coward
s
that you are, y
ou’ll scream louder than those little girls did when they were ravished by men who paid you for the privilege to attack children half their size.
”

Tony was
bawling like a baby
. T
ears st
reaming down his face
, his massive body sh
ook
with fear
. M
ost of the men against the wall were
openly
sobbing
,
begging for mercy.

The Frenchman nodded to Nianzu and said, “Tie his hands.”

N
ianzu
tie
d
Tony’s hands
tightly behind his back and pushed him toward the wall.

The Frenchman grinned and said, “I know your temptation is to run, Tony, like the coward you are.
Not many place
s
to run, my friend, but just in case…”

He pulled a gun from his boot and shot Tony in the foot.
Tony fell to the ground screaming
,
writhing
in pain.

The Frenchman nodded
over his shoulder
to Nianzu and Louie
as the rest of his men left the room
.
Nianzu and Louie rolled in two large drums of gasoline.
They
lit the fuses attached to the cans and
shoved the
drums
further in the room
. T
hen
,
along with
t
he Frenchman
, the
three of them
backed
through the doorway
out of the room.

Too late, the men against the wall
understood
what was happening
. S
cream
ing
and shoving
,
they
charged the door
in
horror
, trampling over Tony in
a
panic
. B
ut in a matter of seconds
,
there was a huge flash as the barrels exploded
and flames tore across the room.
Nianzu and Loui
e
slid
in
the bolt
locking the door
from the outside
. The
y
followed
t
he Frenchman out of the brothel
,
ignoring the screams of terror coming f
rom the
room behind them.

~~~

The scene outside was pandemonium.
P
eople
were
screaming
in
fright
,
backing away from the burning building. Nianzu
went to help their
men who were
load
ing
the
young girls in
the
horse drawn
carts
they had stationed by the stable
.
Hal
f
dressed m
en
,
customers in the brothel
,
were standing back
,
huddled against the
fence
,
trying to hide
. P
eople who lived
close
and patrons of nearby
taverns
filled the street
. Dozens of people ran
up to the scene
,
shouting questions
,
add
ing
to the cacophonous din
.

The Frenchman stood off to the side
on a ridge above the street
smoking a cigarette
, quietly observing the chaos below
.
Nianzu came over to report.

“
We got all the girls and the customers out.
Every
one
is out now except for Tony’s men.”

“Madam
e
To
rrent
o
?”

“We let her go.
She is standing over there by the
j
ohns.”

“The
f
ire
d
epartment?”

“They
’re
on their way.
The steam engines are coming up on Market Street now.
They’ll be here within t
en
minutes.
The only building that will burn down tonight is the brothel.”