New Title 1 (46 page)

“I wanna fuck that Paulie in the head
fierce,
Paw!”

“Yeah, son, we’ll have ourselfs a
dandy
header with him, and we’ll make a movin’ picture of it and get it to his wife, and then we’ll find
her
too, and fuck
her
head.”

“EEEE-doggie!”

Paulie shot his lieutenant a look of total dread. “Fuck, Argi, what we get ourselves into?”

“It’s fucked up, boss. I don’t think we’re gonna get out of this one.”

Paulie sighed. “Well, then we’ll fuckin’ die tryin’…”

“We’se ready when you all is, Paulie,” Helton’s voice echoed.

Paulie and Argi dragged themselves up…

But Helton and Dumar were strangely looking off. They were looking at a row of big-screen, high-def TV’s.

“What gives here?” Paulie muttered.

The weather forecast on the TV abruptly snapped off, and a stolid newscaster was saying: “We interrupt this broadcast for some late-breaking news. Just minutes ago the Pulaksi County Sheriff’s Department reported a break in what local residents have come to know as the ‘Puppy Killer Case,’” and then the screen flashed to a close up of a jowly police officer under which a legend read DEPUTY CHIEF DOOD MALONE. The man seemed to be chewing tobacco as he spoke. “Folks, I’m happy as all get-out to report that we’se finally got ourselves a solid lead in this
horrifyin’
case that has just been up’n
ruinin’
the holiday season for so many of us. See, what we got is a
police surveillance video
of this low-down, dog-torturin’ psychopath.” Malone pointed into the camera. “Now I want yawl to
watch
…”

“What the hell’s this?” Paulie asked. “They caught that guy who was cuttin’ off puppies’ heads?”

“Seems so,” Helton replied. “We done heard about this piece’a shit puppy-killin’ freak just the other day on the radio.”

“Yeah, we heard about it too,” Paulie told him. “Ain’t nothin’ pisses me off more than these sick fucks who like to torture animals. When ya get right down to it, most people are just a bunch of piles of shit who don’t deserve to live, but
animals?
For fuck’s sake, who could kill an innocent animal?”

“Well, Paulie, it looks like you and me finally
agree
on somethin’. Only the lowest’a gutter scum do things like that—”

“Look, Paw,” Dumar said. “Here’s that surveillance thing they was talkin’ ’bout…”

The screen changed to a grainy, low-resolution frame of a brightly-lit but unkempt back yard. In odd stops and starts, a jubilant mongrel puppy with huge ears jumped up and down as a male figure crept up. The figure seemed short-haired and wore baggy pants; the back of his t-shirt read CHIT, MANG. He leaned over and picked the puppy up. The puppy licked the man’s face, its tail-stub wagging.

Then the man turned, and technicians froze the tape. The frame pushed in as a zoom application was engaged.

Th perpetrator appeared to be Hispanic, late-‘20s or so. In the freeze-frame, he grinned in a manner that could only be called Luciferic.

But Paulie’s own face twisted into a look of disbelief, and he ran toward the nearest TV screen. “Argi! Tell me I’m seein’ things! Don’t that look like—”

“Ain’t no question about it, boss.”

“That fuckin’ Manuel motherfucker, the kid always wearin’ the Scarface shirts!”

“Menduez I think his name is, boss…”

Helton looked funkily at the two mob men. “What’s that you’re sayin’, Paulie?”

On the screen, the stop-start progress resumed. The man stalked away with the puppy in his arms…

The deputy chief reappeared, anger wrinkling his visage. “So there ya have it, folks: the puppy-killer! If any’a yawl know
anything
’bout that-that…that
person,
just you call me. If ya know who he is, if ya seen him in the area, if ya think ya know where he lives…you
call me!
”—the officer pounded his fist on his desk. “There is a
reward,
and I
want
 him! So, please, help me, help me put this despicable dog-torturer behind bars where he belongs!” The chief pronounced “despicable” as
dess-picker-bull.
A legend appeared, scrolling the phone number of the county sheriff’s office, and then they showed the close-up of the perpetrator’s face one more time.

Paulie pointed, outraged. “I don’t fuckin’ believe it! That fucker’s on our crew!”

“‘Fraid so, boss,” Argi said, finally able to stand up. His swollen testicle throbbed.

Helton scratched his head. “Paulie, you sayin’ you
know
that fella? You
know
the puppy-killer?”

“We don’t really know him, but he works for one of our middle-men.” Paulie ground his teeth. “And I’ll bet they’re
all
in on it. How could they not know?”

“Can’t imagine, boss,” Argi agreed. “Looks like they been pullin’ the wool over our eyes.”

Paulie stomped a foot. “Well I won’t have that shit! I won’t have a guy on my payroll killin’
puppies!
”

Helton stepped up. “Just let me ask you sumpthin’, Paulie. If’n you know who this varmint is, you know how to
find
him?”

“Fuck, yes! The motherfucker coops in my warehouse three blocks away!”

Helton drew on a contemplation. “Well I cannot
abide
the idea of a puppy-killer bein’ that close but not doin’ nothin’ ’bout it, and I’se mean I would bend over dag backwards fer the chance ta
wear him out.
”

“You ain’t the only one, Helton.”

“So…what we gonna do ’bout this here…per-dicker-mint?”

Silence dropped. All four men exchanged glances.

Helton took another step. “We’se can keep on fightin’ here, or…we can have ourselfs a
time out,
put our feud on hold, and
all of us
go to this warehouse’a yers and put a world’a hurt on this fella.”

Paulie eyed Helton.

“What about it, boss?” Argi asked. “Might be fun.”

Another pause, then Paulie said, “All right, Helton. Time out. We go whack these guys,
then
 we get back to our shit. But”—he held up a finger—“no tricks. Deal?”

“Shore, Paulie.”

Paulie eyed the bigger man, chin stuck out. “Swear on your dead mother’s soul.”

Helton frowned. “All right. I’se
swear on my dead Maw’s soul,
there’ll be no tricks out’a us.”

“Good.”

Helton stroked his beard. “But now you gotta swear on
your
dead maw’s soul.”

“Fair enough. I swear on my dead mother’s soul—no tricks out of us either.”

Helton stared Paulie down. “And just so’s you remember, a man who ain’t worth his word ain’t worth shit.”

“You don’t need to tell
me
that!”

“All right, then. Enough’a this bickerin’. Let’s get on with this.”

Paulie nodded. “Get in your truck and follow us…”

(VIII)

“Have yourselves a merry little Christmas,” someone crooned from the radio. Case Piece frowned up from the work table. Had someone changed his station? Then he frowned down at the task piled before them: a heap of raw, high-grade white heroin; and it was into innumerable one-by-one inch plastic mini-baggies that he and Sung were gingerly spooning in single-hit allotments of the potent narcotic. Case Piece shook his head. “Baggin’ skag is a pain in the
ass
—you hear my
sass?
I got too much
class
for this manual fuckin’ labor, man.”

“Aw, fruck,” Sung complained, wielding a tiny spoon. “This prain in the ass, all right, Crase! Too brad Highball reft.”

“Yeah.” Case Piece got up, struck a pose, then began to strut. “I’m
stylin’
and pro
filin’
, blood. I’m
whilin’
and de
filin’
—shit! I’m bustin’ and I’m gustin’—‘ho!—baggin’ skag I gotta
think
—huh!—so I need me another grape drink!”

“Dram good, Clase!”

“Uh-huh.” Case piece opened the refrigerator… “Bummer, man! We all out’a grape drink!”

“There’s mrore in the brack fridge.”

“Cool. See, I go
ape
without my
grape
…drink.” Case Piece strode past sundry boxes and junk, then bopped down the dark hall. In one of the back rooms, he opened the fridge, reached for a soda drink, but then—

konk!

—fell face-first into the floor.

He saw proverbial stars, and felt as though he were rocking back and forth like someone on a raft. The surprise blow to the back of the skull seemingly ballooned his head. A wavering state of semi-consciousness claimed him, to the extent that he knew only that something was amiss but could not frame words in thought. He heard, for instance, a heavily dialected voice say, “Dang, Paw. Lookit all the
hair
on this fella. We seed him a’fore, didn’t we?”

And another voice, huskier: “That we did, son. Out yonder on the street. And that hair-do’a his, I think it’s what they used ta call a
Afro.”

Case Piece was unable to assign meaning to any of the words. His cheek rubbed the floor then, as his ankles were grabbed and he was hauled out of the room.

“Fruck, fruck, guys!” Sung blubbered in the front room. He churned in a cocoon of ropes as Paulie stood over him. “Ree your bruds, Prawlie!” the Asian pleaded. “You our twop-dwawer dude!”

“My ass,” replied the don. “You guys are killin’ puppies here. No one who works for me kills puppies.
No one.
”

“No, no, Prawlie! It ruz Menduenz!”

“Yeah?” Paulie tapped his foot, then looked up with a grin, when Helton dragged Case Piece into the room. “Good job, Helton.”

Helton dropped the drug dealer’s ankles, frowned errantly at the fact that the man’s jeans were
halfway down his fucking ass,
leaving striped boxer shorts pulled up over his navel. Helton propped him up limp in the corner.

“Is he dead?” Paulie asked.

“Naw. All’s I give him is a little knuckle shampoo. Be another minute’re two ‘fore he wakes full up.”

Case Piece’s eyelids fluttered above a hung-open mouth. His head lolled, but he remained three-quarters unconscious.

“Dumar’s lookin’ fer the other ‘un.” Helton said. He looked to Sung. “So what we got here?”

“Just a bagman. Fucker’s name is Sung or some shit. Some Chinese name—”

“Kow-EEE-ah, Prawlie!” Sung objected even his not-looking-very-good predicament.

“Whatever.”

“Looks more like a
puppy-
killer ta me—”

No, no, mran! I srare. Crase Preece and me, ree
never
hurt puppies!”

Just then, the door swung open, and in lumbered Argi, with his ruptured and now-nearly-grapefruit-sized testicle exposed, that—

And the stump-grinder.

“Need some help there, fella?” Helton offered.

“Yeah, sure, if ya don’t mind,” the beefy lieutenant said. “This fucker’s heavy even for a portable. Comin’ in I bumped my sore nut on the guide bar—
man,
that hurt.”