Vinny Vidivici lead me, without too much in the way of physical discourtesy, down the short hallway and into the lounge of the penthouse suite of the Hotel Caliph Ornya. Vinny was a man who liked to get straight down to the bare bones of the matter. Or at least, the bare bones of whoever he was dealing with. He figured that everything lead sooner or later to mindless, sadistic violence, and he liked to get the bits in between over as quickly as possible.

The suite was replete with a small harem of girls who were there to do more than restock the mini-bar if you catch my drift, though I’m sure they never got complaints about their room service. They all had mouths that looked as though they could suck an impressively ungainly citrus fruit through some unbelievably thin rubber tubing, and legs up to their lower waist/hip area.

Reclining on the couch and messily devouring what appeared to be chunks of raw wildebeest handed to him by the overly-nubile caterers. Al Dente reclined in all his well dressed corpulence, like Jabba the Hut, but with bespoke tailoring. I’m not saying Al was fat, but his butt cheeks had different zip codes. Spitting out (I’m guessing) a femur, he invited me to sit, though the piles of cushions, quilted blankets, satin sheets and prostitutes everywhere made it kind of difficult.

“Please excuse the merchandise,” he wheezed, “Me and Vinny are thinking about getting into the luxury bedding racket. In fact, we’re looking for someone to head up operations. Do you know anything about luxury bedding?” “Well, I hear corduroy pillows are making headlines,” But he wasn’t impressed, and resumed his carnivorous reclining.

“So what’s the rumpus?” Vinny said, eager to get down to business. Vinny had a head for business. It was severed and on the end of a pole in his shower unit.

“Well, I’m thinking of doing a job for this girl. She thinks her husband’s up to no good and she wants me to catch him with his trousers down. But I think he’s onto me already because I’ve been warded off with a seasonally inappropriate missile.”

“And what’s this confused, badly-thought out plot got to do with us?” said Al, his plate looking like an industrial accident in the dinosaur section of the natural history museum.

“I just want someone looking out for me.”

Vinny exploded. “And why the fuck should we wait around for something to happen to you just so we can pull in some guy, rig him up to a medieval torture device and subject him to the most mind-bending terrors of brutal, savage physical abuse that any human has ever experienced? Wait. I think I just answered my own question. We’re in!”

And with that vague reassurance of bloody retribution, Vinny hurried me out. “Sorry you have to leave us so soon, but after his feed, Al likes to get intimate with the girls. Only he’s so fat and repulsive that he has to make them all drink some strong, sweet, dark red fortified wine first.”

“You mean a port in every girl?” But I was already in the corridor, and not sure if I was feeling any safer.