blurring_the_edges_34_the_trouble_with_billy birdmad The urge to sate your curiosity over discovering that Marisol and a trio of others here and in the L.A. area are running a high-rent prostitution ring is forced to sit on idle when yu get a call from Henry asking you to help him straighten out Billy who has cost Henry a small fortune in hush money over his repeated abuses of the men and women he roughs up during the course of an evening's pleasure. Apparently this time it's a little bit slippery. Billy's fuckdoll-punching-bag this time is not one, but two. Worse still, they are both from "respectable" families who carry some prestige in both business and local politics. But it gets even more complicated, one is a young lady, which of course is troubling enough when he does this sort of shit, but the other one, the one who could be more potentially damaging to just about everything you have ever been involved in because Billy can't stop frum running off at the mouth to lure these people into bed, is the closet-case son of a state representative. This isn't going to be easy. It's not as if Billy is just going to drop his pants, bend over your knee and take a spanking for fucking up. The last time you and Bill went toe-to-toe in a fight, nobody could tell by the damage you caused each other who was the winner, if indeed there even was one. Henry and Jimmy want it done though, they figure cutting into his share of the cash from the deals isn't getting through to him so he has to be taught an object lesson. You're going to have to catch up to him and treat him like a delinquent customer. Somehow, dear Alex, you have to come up with a way to convincingly kick Billy's ass and hope that it teaches him some sort of lesson. It comes as a surprise to you to go to your locker at the fitness center on campus and discover an envelope with seven-hundred dollars in it and a note. The note is a set of instructions from Henry on how and where Billy has been hanging out lately and what do do with him from there. It's just as well, you think, you're not all that keen on Billy as a person anyway and as often as you've warned him about the trouble he could be making for all of you, it's a wonder anyone has let him slide on this for so long with what amounts to little more than a slap on the wrist. Taking the advice given, you begin tailing Billy around. Every night after work you follow Billy's routine and you've got Tricia helping you, capitalizing on her recent bit of estrangement from Zoe as well as her strong dislike of Billy. You split the money that Henry left you and asign her to keeping an eye out when you can't. Asking around at a bar he hits sometimes on Seventh Street, in the general area of Camelback Road, you make arrangements with someone who says Billy has been paying him a lot of attention lately. You end up having to comp him out of what Marisol and MeeKrob paid you for your messenger services. The plan is laid out to slip him something in his drink and to have a cab deliver him to the apartment as soon as he passes out. Henry has informed you thta Billy's valium habit is similar to the one that left you in your nice, cute, near-death state. To your benefit, Billy also drinks a considerable lot more than you and you figure all i'll take to drop him from where he already is would be a little bit of Percocet, just a quarter of a tablet and the degree of incompatibility will make him easily manageable for a few good hours. Friday night comes and you wait in the apartment for the inevitable. You take turns with Tricia watching the parking lot for the arrival of the cab. When it arrives, you tip the driver an additional $20 on top of the six dollars for the fare. "You might want to get him to the hospital or something," the driver says, sounding more like he would like the additional fare than concerned for anyone's safety. "Look," you tell him, calmly, maybe a little coldly, "He'll be fine as soon as he sleeps it off." As soon as the cabbie has gone, you bring him to your car and throw him in the back seat. You start thinking, with a rude grin on your face, of how much more fun it would be to return a certain set of favors and just dump him in the trunk. Feeling a sudden rush of arousal, you turn to Tricia as she finishes duct-taping Billy's wrists behind his back and give her an intense kiss that instinctively sends her hand reaching for your crotch where she gives you a reassuring grab and pulls away with the words "as soon as we're done with Billy." Following the directions you've been given, the drive to the new place that Henry has been using to stash his goods is a little ong, but uneventful. Tricia has her hand on your knee while you drive, occasionally letting it wander a litle higher. Meanwhile, Bily sleeps like a chemically impaired log in the back of the car. Mister Platte has come through yet again, having moved his focus to his real-estate holdings and his talent for wheeling and dealing in more lucrative directions. The place Henry is using was originally proposed to be one of the model homes in a new phase of a big development project, but due to a series of legal and political wrangles involving the land-swap that made the way for this subdivision, the rest of the construction was halted after the first phase. Technically, outside of the development company's records and the requisite permit offices, the house doesn't even exist. All of the utility meters for it are currently located at a small office over in the first phase and apparently somebody with the developer was using it for a personal space of his own. Henry, Jimmy and Platte managed to get a little leverage on the guy from the developer's outfit and are using the house essentially for free. This place has no neighbors for about three quarters of a mile except for the occasional coyote and jackrabbit that venture through here. You are slightly annoyed that this part of everything isn't even paved yet, even though the curbs and gutters are all in place. Pulling up in front of the driveway, you tap the horn and are greeted by the opening of a garage door. Henry and Jimmy are waiting there and they have an old-fashioned steel lobby chair waiting in the middle. Spotting hte rope, the gloves and another roll of duct-tape you realize they've done exactly as you've asked them to do. It is time to begin. In keeping with your typical collection method, you make clear that you want nothing to happen to his face. Jimmy and Henry help you get Billy o0ut of the back o fhte car and into the chair in the garage where they close the door and turn on the light. They look a little ill at ease to see Tricia still following your moves with such intent interest. You strip down to your shorts since you don't have an apron handy, having gone so long without having done one of your more intense bits of interrogation or collection. If he pukes, you don't want it on your clothes. Taking a bucket of cold water, you throw a few cups of it in Billy's face until the shock of it starts to wake him up. Using a scrap of an old t-shirt to gag him, he makes little more than a few muffled noises when he comes to. He does not seem surprised ot see you, but he also doesn't seem terribly happy. As soon as he is focused on you, you tell him that you've warned him, Henry has warned him and everyone else who stands to lose freedom, money and potentially even life has warned him that shit would hit the fan if he doesn't learn to exercise some small measure of self-control. You assume from the tone of the noise he makes next that he can only be saying "fuck you." It wouldn't matter if he was defiant or if he begged you not to do it. You have a job to do. You lay into him with a hard shot to the gut as he is strapped into the chair. You follow with a couple more and then you work in a few to the ribs. You keep a careful eye on him, knowing that you want him to be bruised and injured, but not wanting to go so far as to risk internal injuries or anything that might kill him. As was the case with the way Henry and Billy handled you and your overdose a couple months back, you don't want to have to be in a position ov having to explain the happenstance of a corpse to anybody who might resemble an authority figure. You beat on Billy for about twenty minutes before he passes out from the pain. His ribcage and abdomen look like a battlefield of bruises of varying depths. If you had tried to teach him this lesson in a fair fight, you would look like this too. Besides, you rationalize it to yourself, it's not as if anybody he's beaten up lately ever had a fighting chance. Leaving him to sit there, dazed and battered, you go into the hosue, shimmering with sweat. Tricia, who watched from the house doorway just out of Billy's sight, takes you by the hand and leads you to the bathroom where she makes the shower you take feel that much more invigorating as she gives herself to you. Jimmy and Henry agree to take Bily back to his place as soon as they can get him a little bit medicated again and drop him off. Tricia convinces you to take her back to the apartment where you repeat your shower escapade again before retiring to the bedroom. While you enjoy the evening's reward, you are secretly disturbed by how much the adrenaline rush of what you were doing excited you. 030509 what's it to you? who go blather from