Bad Games

73



Arty Fannelli turned to the male officer sitting to the left of his hospital bed. “Are you ever going to be replaced by a female officer?” he asked.

The officer didn’t look up from his Sports Illustrated when he replied, “Sorry, dickhead, you’re stuck with me.”

“Dickhead? Are you allowed to talk to me like that?”

The officer turned the page and continued reading. “Yup.”

Arty pulled at his handcuff strapped to the bed’s frame. “Are these really necessary? I’ve been here a few days now; I think you can trust me.”

The officer frowned at something in the magazine, muttered, “Overpaid prima donnas…”

“Hello? Are you listening? I was stabbed eight hundred times for Christ’s sake. Where the hell am I going to go?”

There was a knock at the door. The officer stood and threw the magazine onto his seat. Detective Henry walked into the room.

“Hey, you know he called me a dickhead?” Arty said to Henry.

“You are a dickhead,” Henry said.

Arty laughed. “So what’s up, Mikey? You stopping by to ask a few more questions?”

“Not exactly,” Henry said. He walked over towards the officer on duty and stood by his side.

Arty said, “Well what is it then? You finally pulling Chuckles here off-duty? If so, can I put a request in for something with a bit more curves? No offense, Chuckles.”

“Why would I do that?” Henry asked. “It’s probably in your best interest to start getting used to men.”

Arty smiled. “You really think I’m gonna serve any time, Mikey?”

Henry raised an eyebrow. “You don’t?”

“Of course not. An anomaly like myself?”

Henry smirked. “Anomaly?”

“Oh I’m sorry, Mikey, am I talking over your head? I’ll try and put it in layman’s terms.” Arty cleared his throat, loving it. “You see there are thousands of headshrinkers out there who will want to know why my brother and I did the things we did. They’ll want to know why all their stupid little theories about evil and human behavior were ultimately fed to them in one giant shit-burger.

“They’ll keep me in cushy hospitals and kiss my ass in order to find out what makes me tick, and, more importantly…” He flashed a pornographic leer. “What excites me.

“Hell, there’ll probably even be a f*cking waiting list to come see me. Every budding shrink with a hard-on for stardom will be desperately trying to solve the riddle of the infamous Fannelli brothers so they can write the next bestseller.

“Was it nature? Was it nurture? What? It was neither? Holy shit! This truly is great! We can’t send him to prison! We need to study him! Take CAT scans of his brain, find out how he’s wired, ask him endless questions written by so-called experts who circle jerk to Freud. We need to find out what makes this guy so unique.

“I mean come on, fellas. I’m the kind of guy movies are written about, for Christ’s sake. The kind of real-life boogeyman screenwriters salivate over. How often do you come across someone composed of pure, unfiltered malevolence?”

Arty paused, a smile on the corner of his mouth. He remained fixed on the two officers, gauging the impact of his words. He never noticed the two visitors who had entered quietly to his right.

“And this will go on for as long as I want it to,” Arty continued. “I’ll give them a taste…” He held up his thumb and index finger as though pinching a bug. “A teensy- weensy taste. And then when the time is right, I’ll give them a little more. And then a little more after that. I’ve got the tools and the smarts to keep the game going for a very long time. You see, Mikey and Chuckles, even when I’m confined I can orchestrate a game to amuse myself.

“So please, don’t even—for one second—try some of your spooky cop talk in an attempt to scare me about the horrors of prison…because I’m not going there. Somebody of my stature belongs under a microscope; not behind bars. And we live in a sick enough society with a f*cked-up-enough legal system to make it happen. And we both know that, don’t we?”

Someone cleared their throat to Arty’s right. He turned his head. Amy and Patrick were standing side by side, a big smile on both their faces.

“What the hell are you two smiling at?”