WEEK ONE - TUESDAY

Tuesday, October 11

There are pit bulls, there are pudgy pit bulls, and then there’s Harry Mucs: pig-eyed, slab-faced, broad shouldered and squat, in a way that suggested there was once a lot of muscle there to contend with, but years of exercising less physical methods of humiliating people had softened him up a lot.

Harry sat hunched over what he would have liked to have been a monolithic desk had he a larger office and chewed on his pencil, menacingly - a nasty habit, but he didn’t care. He didn’t have to. As Chief Operating Officer, he’d chewed and spat out more than just pencils. Starting from nowhere, Harry had clubbed his way to the top of a major international corporation having learned early that no one but Harry was going to look out for number one. He could still remember asking his Mama the day of his cousin’s Easter party how she knew he’d eaten all the jelly beans and his Mama, smiling slyly, saying that she’d asked Fuzzy. FUZZY? Fuzzy, his favorite teddy? Fuzzy, with the missing nose and the patchy fur? “AND HE TOLD YOU?” yelled an indignant three-and-a-half-year-old Harry, staring with disbelief at the stinky traitor clutched tightly in his fist by the ear. Harry played very different games with Fuzzy after that, knowing instinctively how important it was to make an example out of the little snitch so that all of the other sweet-eyed cuddly toys piled on his bed and plotting against him wouldn’t think they too could double-cross Harry baby and live to brag about it. And now here he was. Not everyone knew it, but it was Harry who ran the show, Harry who pulled the strings, and Harry who ...

“Harry?” his secretary, uh, Admin. Asst., Janey, buzzed him, interrupting his flow of concentration, again.

“I told you I didn’t wanna be disturbed!” he bellowed at her. He liked dumb AA’s from Jersey, but Janey was too dumb to be scared.

“Yeah, I know, but Tim’s here. You want I should show him in?”

Harry’s eyes darted connivingly from side to side. Tim. He had plans for Tim and now more than ever he needed a guy he could trust, well, control anyway.

“Yeah, send him in,” he growled.

A Blood & Treasure Publication

ISBN: 1 90555 8 00 7