Strange Flesh (25 page)

Olya lets out a long exhausted breath and cracks her neck. She gives Xan a tender kiss on the cheek. “We’re glad our Sashinka is okay,” she says. “Maybe late at night we have this strong man escort you home.” Then she leaves.

Garriott and Xan seem to be repressing a desire to look at each other. I step over and pick up the case. Glued to the velvet backing is a horrific mess of blood, bone, and metal. My mind takes a second to identify the mutilated remnants of a human jaw with a large hole saw stuck through it. Tooth fragments decorate the deep blue fabric like the pearls the case was made to hold. The circumference of the bit is filled with some kind of bloody meat. A reference to Gina of course, but within Billy’s game world, perhaps also to the
120 Days
vignette wherein a deranged libertine uses a hollow drill to extract cylinders of flesh from his victims.

Attached to the sharp center point of the bit is a little sheet of paper bearing a calligraphic scrawl:

I demand tooth for tooth still
So forever you will
Hear the sound of a drill

Though Olya rallied quickly, for a moment there, I think Billy’s present found its mark. I assume the bone is artificial, and the rest comes from a local butcher. The display is gruesome enough without considering the alternatives.

Garriott seems like he’s about to say something but doesn’t.

“Tomorrow we’re going to have to talk about revving our security here,” I say.

They both just nod.

“I’ll go check on her.”

I slip into her office and shut the door behind me. Olya is gazing out her window. She doesn’t turn around.

“Why does Billy think you’re to blame for Gina Delaney’s death? What does he want from you?” I ask.

“I don’t think about what crazy little men want. He is not significant. Like a mosquito.”

“But we need to take certain measures. Aren’t you concerned that he might come after the Dancers to get your attention? Or”—I think about Garriott’s video of their fight—“do something violent?”

She gives me a long considering stare and then rolls her eyes. “Let’s be real. Billy is an artsy
sooka
fuckwit, not a dangerous psychotic. And we make a slippery robot. Not a nuclear bomb.”

“But, Olya, if I’m to believe the numbers you used to lure me onto this project, every time you walk through those doors with your silver cases, you’re dragging millions of dollars behind you. What if he figures out he could use them to fuck with you?”

She turns down her mouth, acknowledging the point. “Ya. Zhimbo, you are correct. So maybe we get a safe.”

But I think back to the look on Billy’s face when Gina kissed him and then the photos of Gina’s corpse. The message of revenge in this latest gift of jewelry to Olya tells me that Billy’s rage is escalating. I don’t think we have long before his next move.

And is it a safe the iTeam needs, or bodyguards?

S
ince the internet serves as high-test fertilizer for conspiracy theories, any game that harnesses the collective brain of an online community will have members who want to talk about what’s
really
going on. With Alternate Reality Games in particular this tendency is overt. Solving the riddle of who’s sponsoring it (and to what corporate end) takes on an importance that can supersede the game’s actual story line. Given the obscurity in which Billy’s cloaked his contest, I’m not surprised to find posts like this one:

Anna_Lynne_Goss
Joined: 01/09/15
Posts:047
Location: In Deep

Let me put to rest all this nattering about what you have to do to “win” a vignette and get “promoted.” Here’s a list of current winners that haven’t yet seen custom submissions:
Day 3, Scene 3 -- Romeo in Juliet [1971]
Day 4, Scene 5 -- Strapped [2009]
Day 7, Scene 2 -- Paradise Lust [1973]
Day 7, Scene 4 -- No Mercy [2000]
Day 8, Scene 1 -- Marquis de Sade [1994]
Day 11, Scene 3 -- The Whorestia [1972]
Day 15, Scene 2 -- Dante’s in Fern’s Hole [1974]
. . .
And so it goes. Anyone see the pattern here?
Like it’s a coincidence that X-rated literary adaptations from the early seventies occupy half the top spots. Yes, Ronnie seemed more interested in Sade than his source texts. But please!
These rumors about the Pyros are total bullshit.
Savant
is not an enlistment site for an insane cult. It is not an FBI sting operation. You don’t have to do anything violent or illegal to win. Just pick the “right” porno and cash in.
This “game” is just a stupid marketing gimmick to manufacture interest in Exotica’s back catalog. Let’s not give them the satisfaction. We’re in NOD to satisfy
ourselves.
_Anna

For the most part, I have no idea what she’s talking about. But one detail makes my hair stand on end: her line about “the Pyros.” I should have known they’d come into this.

The Pyrexians are an urban legend, the demonic bogeymen of hard-core file-sharing rings. I first encountered references to them while assisting the FBI in penetrating a kiddie porn distribution network based out of Reno. The kind of low-rent psychos pushing that stuff often lead shifty, precarious lives. Any time someone in their circle disappeared, or an inexplicable tragedy struck, some credulous dolt would always name this shadowy group as the agent of fate.

Fans of torture porn, bestiality vids, and snuff films tend to obsess over their passions. Often, avid collectors call their compulsion “the Fever,” another name for which is “pyrexia.” Because supply is always severely limited, they constantly fantasize about abundant sources of new
material. Seductive, then, to believe in the existence of this organization that possesses a massive reservoir of “the good stuff.” That traffics in helpless victims while constantly turning out new ones, thereby controlling a global empire of sadistic violence. Of course, they’re also very jealous of their treasure, and so you have to beware that certain material coming into your possession hasn’t been stolen from them. If they catch you distributing it, you’re marked for death. At once feared and revered, the Pyrexians represent a sort of Bilderberg group of kiddie porn.

At first, I thought the whole thing was a joke, one of many black fables from a marginal subculture. But in the crushed-anthill days following the Feds’ first arrests, I discovered some genuinely worried conversations about them. Just as thieves fear each other more than the police, the same is apparently true of perverts.

From browsing the posts of early Château de Silling explorers, I can see wild theories cropping up that the place was a secret recruiting device for the Pyros.

But since the group is just a chimera from the folklore of the depraved, I decide to look into Anna’s idea that someone made Château de Silling as a marketing stunt. While Billy’s aims surely aren’t commercial, if he’s promoting players as a reward for such submissions, I should try to find out why. Which will require some diverting research.

I consult an online video service I belong to called Nutflux that specializes in soigné interface glosses on the Internet Adult Film Database. They also classify industry personnel according to everything from declared religion to “ejaculatory accuracy.”

Four of the films she lists were all directed by the same individual, one Ronald Farber, a celebrated pioneer of modern erotica and I suppose the “Ronnie” that Anna tagged in her post. His detailed bio describes how in 1971, this lowly camera technician at a TV news station in Irvine, California, came out of nowhere to found Freyja Films, named after the Norse goddess of love. He created lush pornographic salutes to literary classics shot with the newly emerging video technology. His efforts, beginning with
Romeo in Juliet,
were well received. Freyja began minting money as the seventies porn explosion got under way.

Then in 1973, despite his obvious success, Farber took a large
investment from the exploitation house Big Stick, run by “Big” Ben Mondano, a notorious industry asshole with reputed connections to organized crime. His product ran more to efforts like
Taste It, Don’t Waste It,
parts 1–144, and so this merger of love and lust was a curious one to porn aficionados. The combined company was renamed Exotica Entertainment Enterprises, a.k.a. “Triple E.”

Both Farber and Mondano died more than ten years ago, but Exotica has certainly thrived since then. The company is currently led by “Benito” Mondano Jr. and has become a diversified porn colossus. They’re a huge blue-movie studio with a significant presence in the cable, pay-per-view, online, and mobile markets. They’ve got an adult novelty operation that sells everything from performance-enhancing herbal supplements to performance-obviating penile substitutes. They run the Amazone chain of high-end strip clubs, a sex education outfit, and even a political action committee.

Maybe I’ve let a specious forum post lead me off course here. I have trouble imagining why Billy might be interested in this specific porn company. Then I see at the bottom of their website that Exotica’s headquarters are in New York above their Amazone flagship. Its location at Forty-sixth Street and the West Side Highway rings a bell. I check my notes and see that this is the address McClaren mentioned for the most recent of Billy’s disorderly conduct charges. So maybe someone there was the last person to see Billy in the flesh.

A
t Amazone, Benito Mondano sits by himself in an aerie of leather couches commanding good views of the club’s first floor. He’s absorbed in a conversation on his cell phone, and a bouncer reads the paper on a stool next to the velvet barrier cutting off access to him.

I order a bottle of Michter’s 25 from the bar and freak out the bartender when I take it from him as he’s starting the tea ceremony prescribed for opening precious liquor.

Offering the bottle, I ask the bouncer, “Would Mr. Mondano like a drink?”

Without looking at me, the guy says, “He’s got one, sir.”

Mondano’s eyes narrow at the label when I motion to him that I want a word. He gives a put-upon shrug to his security and hangs up his call. I walk up the short flight of stairs and introduce myself.

He looks like a sketch comedy cast member midway through a wardrobe change. Attired in the ugly suit and thick, too-short tie one expects from movie mobsters, he’s adorned himself with bling-y D&G blue-tinted aviator shades and big diamond studs in both ears. Just the thing for schmoozing at Long Island nightclubs, but the kind of fashion choices that would provoke a capo of the old school to violence.

He lets me marinate in a decent Brando soul-stare for a while. Then he smacks his lips and in a much less accurate gravelly whisper says, “So . . . tell me, what can I do for you?”

A curious performance for someone not yet forty. I almost accord him
a facetious “Don,” but manage to resist. “Mr. Mondano, I’m working on a documentary—”

With a world-weary glance at the heavens, he says, “Please, my friend, let me stop you right there. You can’t shoot in the club. Distracts the ladies and—”

“No, no. I just want to ask you a couple questions.” I pull out Billy’s photo. “This is my subject. He’s an artist who designs these controversial games. Anyway, kind of an elusive guy. Right now I’m trying to track him down.” He pretends to ignore the picture. “I heard he was tossed out of here a couple weeks ago. Maybe he was taking some unauthorized video himself?”