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Had he said the right thing? It was enough to make his sphincter twitch. He willed himself to stay calm, to live up to the executive producer card at the end of the show.
    "Every time I read a bad review, you're insulting me. Every cent the show loses, you owe me," Crofoot said. "If the show is cancelled, so are you." Eddie's stomach cramped so severely he almost lurched off the toilet seat. He wanted to whimper but instead he forced himself to laugh, to show he knew Crofoot was just being a funny guy.
    "Don't worry, my shows are never cancelled, they're just put on permanent hiatus. " Eddie coughed out a couple of uproarious guffaws, nearly choking. "All kidding aside, Daddy, you know it's not my fault. The networks control everything. It's the way the television business is run."
    "Then it's time it was run differently." Crofoot said it so coldly Eddie's ear went numb. "In my business, you don't wait for someone else to take you out."
    "What do you want me to do?"
    "Whatever the new co-executive producer tells you to do."
    ''You got it, Daddy." Eddie was actually relieved. Fine, let one of Crofoot's goons take the heat. But there was one big, terrifying drawback. "I'm not gonna share a card, am I? I won't share a card."
    "You'll have your own card," Crofoot said. "And if the show doesn't start winning its time slot, you'll have your own tombstone."
    "That's classic." Eddie laughed, but the tears rolling down his cheeks weren't joyous. "Great stuff. Incidentally, does this guy have any television experience?"
    Crofoot hung up.
    Eddie lost the connection and the control of his sphincter all at once.

    # # #

    He managed to slit Rodrigo Lincoln's pale, thin little throat without getting a single drop of blood on his rubber surgical gloves.
    And when Rodrigo fell on the marble entry hall floor, spilling blood like a dropped carton of milk, not one speck of red landed on Delbert Skaggs's brand-new Nike running shoes. That's because the shoes were sheathed in plastic bags that were cinched to his ankles with rubber bands.
    Delbert had been waiting in Rodrigo's immaculate Cape Cod-style home for only twenty minutes, and it took less than five seconds to do the job, without getting dirty and without leaving a single fiber or particle behind for some forensics specialist to track him with.
    Delbert calmly walked back into the kitchen, rinsed the steak knife carefully, dried it with a paper towel, and returned it inconspicuously to the knife drawer, whistling while he worked, something he'd learned from Snow White and never forgotten.
    He opened another drawer, took one of Rodrigo's ziplock bags, dropped the damp paper towel into it, then pocketed the bag in his sweatsuit for disposal a long distance away from the scene of the crime.
    Delbert sprinkled some Comet in the sink and carefully washed it down. It was his policy to leave a crime scene cleaner than it was when he arrived. Unless, of course, it would call attention to his presence. Then he just wiped away anything that might, even in the most obscure or microscopic way, point to his existence.
    Attention to detail. All the best craftsmen had it. Delbert was no exception.
    He headed for the back door, pausing for a moment to admire a child's crayon drawings and finger-paint masterpieces taped to the fridge, and the picture of Rodrigo's wife, striking a self-consciously silly pose in a bikini on some Hawaiian beach. Mixed among the pictures were notes, grocery coupons, and postcards, all held in place with plastic fruit magnets. This could have been a fridge in any middle-class household in America. But only the Angel of Death knew the whole picture ... that Mom occasionally "explored her sexuality" with another woman from the car pool, Daughter enjoyed crushing snails while walking home from school, and Daddy laundered money for the mob—when he wasn't shoving it in his own pocket, that is.
    That was. Past tense. Delbert Skaggs had seen to that. He was good at what he did,