Warren Murphy - Mob Psychology

Jeter and Devin canvased every comic-book store and newsstand in Amherst, trying to sell Transformed Tae Kwon Do Teen Terrapins to anyone that would take them.

Where they weren't laughed at, they were spit upon.

" I can't tell my mother," wailed Jeter.

"Neither can I," moaned Devin.

It was Jeter who hit upon the thing that was to enable them to recoup their investment and make them millionaires many times over.

"There's only one thing we can do," he said.

"What that?"

"Get on the Tuckahoe show."

"How will that help?"

"It won't," Jeter admitted. "But both our moms watch him every day. It's better than having to watch them cry when they learn what we did."

They hitchhiked to New York City, a case of Transformed Tae Kwon Do Teen Terrapins number one under each arm.

It was surprisingly easy, they found. The research director of The Bil Tuckahoe Show had only to listen to their tale of woe once when she blurted out, "College students who squander their tuition money on comic books!" she cried. "It's perfect, and we can postpone that awful segment on monkey makeovers."

"But we didn't buy them," Jeter started to say.

"We had them printed," Devin finished.

"Don't say another word! Bil likes his guests to go on cold."

The next day, frightened and tearful, Jeter and Devin found themselves in front of a studio audience as the silverhaired Bil Tuckahoe fixed them with his sheepdog eyes and demanded, "You two boys are addicted to comic books, aren't you? Admit it. You'll do anything for a mint copy of The Fantastic Four. Lie, cheat, steal, sell your parents into slavery. "

They tried to explain. Devin started to cry. Jeter lifted a copy of Transformed Tae Kwon Do Teen Terrapins number one up to his face like a felon being hauled before a judge.

A camerman rushed in to capture the cover in his viewfinder, while a studio technician punched up a slugline graphic which read, "Deter Baird. Addicted to Comic Books."

The image of four fat masked sea turtles clutching Oriental weaponry was broadcast across the nation for the first time, electrifying preschool America.

Jeter Baird and Devin Western never sold a single copy of their comic book. They never finished college or got their marketing degrees.

They didn't have to. The cartoon, toy, and film offers began pouring in before taping ended on that day's edition of The Bil Tuckahoe Show.

Soon the images of the four terrapins was unavoidable from Manhattan to Madagascar. The money came in by the sackful. Every toy deal triggered another. Modest TV cartoons led to full-length movie deals. Everything the scaly cartoon creatures touched turned to gold.

It was an American success story of unprecedented proportions.

And, like all American success stories, it had a downside.

Jeter and Devin had enjoyed six years of exponential business expansion, moving directly from their cramped dorm rooms to a sprawling office park cum movie studio just outside of Amherst, when they realized the free ride was over.

They realized this when, during the filming of Transformed Tae Kwon Do Teen Terrapins III: Shell Game, a sniper killed the star, D'Artagnan.

D'Artagnan was not the actor's actual name. It was Sammy Bong, an out-of-work chopsocky actor running around the TM backlot in a polyurethane-and-foam-rubber anamatronic Terrapin costume.

D'Artagnan was about to run an evil ninja through with a fencer's sword when his polyurethane shell was split by a steel jacketed bullet and the green of his foam chest turned dark with blood.

The demand note came in the morning mail, while Jeter and Devin were still in shock.

The note said: "We get ten percent. Gross. Or Athos is next."

To add insult to injury, the note was made from words cut out of Terrapin toy ads and pasted onto a sheet of official Terrapin kiddie stationery.

"What do we do?" asked Devin in a sick voice.

"We pay. Next time it could be us."

The trouble was, the note forgot to say whom to pay.

They found Athos with his green throat slit and stuffed into a trash barrel on the backlot that very afternoon, his threetoed webbed feet dangling askew over the sides.

Nicky Kix Stivaletta showed up as the private ambulance was hauling the deceased Terrapin away under the wide unblinking eyes of the surviving Terrapins, Aramis and Porthos.

Nicky Kix stepped out of the work car and sauntered up to Jeter and Devin. He was flanked by two goons in pinstripes.

Devin, quicker on the uptake, hissed to the surviving Terrapins, "Swim for it!"

The Terrapins held their ground. They wanted to defend their honor.

"Or you're both fired," added Jeter.

The dejected terrapins slunk off to safety.

"You get my message?" asked Nicky Kix, rolling a toothpick around his mouth as he pushed the hard words out.

"Why'd you kill Athos? We were going to pay you!" demanded Devin, hot tears streaming down his cheeks.

Nicky Kix shrugged. "I like the smell of roadkill."

"Ten percent?" said Jeter.

"Cash. No checks."

"Can we get a receipt?" Jeter and Devin asked in unison, their incomplete business courses coming into play.

"No," said Nicky Kix in a bored voice.

Dejectedly Jeter and Devin led Nicky Kix and his muscular entourage to their joint office, pushing aside plush Terrapin toys, edging past Terrapin arcade video games and cardboard movie-lobby standees.

Jeter cleared a cardboard box containing breakfast-a pepper-and-onion pizza-from a chair so Nicky Kix could sit down.

"I'll stand," said Nicky Kix, eyeing the stained seat warily. He snapped his fingers impatiently. "Now, pony up. I ain't got all day."

In fact, Nicky Kix Stivaletta was destined not to have more than a minute and thirteen seconds remaining in his entire life.

He got an inkling of this when the office door suddenly banged open, upsetting a three-foot-tall plush Aramis doll.

Nicky's bodyguards whirled, hands going into coats, fingers wrapping around hard steel pistol grips.

Webbed three-fingered hands beat them to the draw.

One pair simply swept in for Sal (Toe Biter) Bugliosi's unprotected ears. He heard a thunderclap that kept his eardrums ringing until three days after his embalming. The air pressure scrambled his brain in its skull cavity and opened every fissure in the protective bone.

The other Terrapin-his purple mask and short stature marked him as Porthos-employed a high kick to break Pauli (Pink Eye) Scanga's pelvis like a soda cracker.

Pauli let go of his half-drawn pistol and grabbed his crotch, which was leaking all manner of body fluids, and tried to claw his lower body back into an erect position.

But his legs simply bent at ankles and knees and he made a messy moist pile where he had stood.

"Aramis!" blurted Jeter.

"Porthos?" gulped Devin.

"Bullshit," snarled Nicky Kix as he drew down on the advancing Terrapins with a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun he whipped out from under his coat.

He hauled back on one trigger.

The blast riddled Aramis. Unfortunately for Nicky Kix, it was the plush Aramis in a corner. It also cracked the arcade game screen and made a cheap plastic Terrapin alarm clock jangle discordantly.

Porthos was wide open, however. Nicky sent a blast of buckshot toward his sappy face.

The blast, however, made a kind of black spiral galaxy pattern in the dropped fiberboard ceiling.

Nicky Kix looked up. He saw the peppery hits. He looked down, where he noticed a green three-fingered hand holding his smoking shotgun barrels at an upward angle.

He was thinking: Where have I seen this shit before? when the shotgun was taken away from him rather harshly, and returned, stock-first, into his abdomen.

Nicky Kix said "Oof" and doubled over, still on his feet.