“He thought I killed his daughter,” he said.
“I see.”
“No you don’t. He was wrong. You see… it’s hard to explain. Have you heard of snuff movies?”
“Sure. That’s where somebody is actually killed on camera, right? Snuff flicks. While back there was a lot in the press about them.”
“Right. Snuff movies, slasher movies, they called them. Most of it was media hype, and I’m glad to say it finally died… pardon the expression. The media finally decided the slasher movies were a hoax.. which to a large extent they were. There were some fake ones, but there were some real ones, too. Rumor has it the Manson clan made some, but none of the media people ever turned one up. But I did. Not the Manson snuff movies. But there were a few made in Mexico. Rumor said South America, but it was Mexico. There were four or five of ’em, I found. I bought ’em from a guy… I didn’t even buy them, exactly. I was just a middleman. Jesus. It’s hard to explain.”
“You’re doing fine.”
“Well, like I said before, I know some people in mob circles, some of my backing’s been from them. Like for example, the guy that owns this place, this lodge, he’s a mob-related guy. He’s backing the picture, and one thing he insisted on was we use his place for some of the filming… he’s going to get off on having a print of a porno film shot in this lodge, his lodge, and he can show it to his friends and his girl friends and everybody can get off on it. Anyway, I was doing a favor for some mob people, being a middleman on these slasher flicks. See the goddamn things don’t go into any kind of wide distribution or anything. They’re too fuckin’ hot for that. But these hardcore violence freaks, these S amp; M guys, they’ll pay incredible coin for something like that. One print, going into a private collection and not likely to be seen by anybody but that one collector and maybe some of his pervert friends, is going to bring in maybe ten grand. Ten grand for a little reel of fuckin’ film! It boggles the mind. So I was a middleman for the things, and one of them somehow got seen by this guy Meyers. It was the film that was getting the most attention, of the five or six I handled. Going for something like twelve grand a shot. That was because all the other films had Mexican girls in it. This one had an American. You know how those films go, don’t you? They’re regular porno loops. Except different. The girl thinks she’s just there for the regular sex stuff, sucking, fucking, but then after the sex stuff, right at the climax, the guy, and maybe some other guys who come in the room, takes a razor or something and kills the girl. Really kills her. On film. It’s something. In some of ’em they dismember the girl. It’s something.”
“Something,” I said.
“Well this guy Meyers, he sees the one with the American girl in it, and he’s outraged and he uses his own mob connections to track down the source of the film, and I’m the source, and so he puts the contract out on me.”
“The girl in the film?” I said.
“Yeah,” Castile said, the images from the TV wavering across his face, “you’re right. Just my luck. Meyers’s daughter.”