Edward Lee - Header 2

Case Piece made a comedic facial gesture. “Shit. You old, bitch. Your grill all wrinkly’n shit. We’re V.I.P’s —we don’t lay no dick on no old.”

“Well, the wrinkles are from meth, but I don’t do that shit no more, and I don’t do crack, coke, beans, eightballs—none of it. My jones is fucking, sucking, and swallowing cum. And what guy really gives a shit about the face? I gotta topper-drawer bod than anything you ever fucked, and I’ll fuck’n suck all’a ya, like, all the time. Just let me in your gang. I’m a gang girl, always been.”

Sung and Menduez stood arms crossed, appraising.

“All right,” Case Piece consented. “Let’s see you pimp your shit. Get them poo-putt bitchcovers the fuck off. ”

All Highball had to do was open her overcoat, and—

All three gang guys raised big brows, grinned, and began rubbing their crotches.

Case Piece’s enthusiasm burst forth. “Shit, bitch, damn, that’s some xtralishious white-bitch up-town bags and trick-time super bubble-pie!”

“Ain’t it?” Highball said.

“Now let’s see the cash-drawer.”

Highball raised one leg, in a brazen pubic exhibit.

Menduez and Sung high-fived, hooting in their particular accents.

“Shit, ho!” Case Piece approved. “That’s the phattest, toppest, trickest, goldest food-card machine I ever peel-eyed in my whole fuckin’ thug LIFE! Make my baboon sack go all a-fuckin’ quiver!”

“And check out my clit,” she advised, then—acrobatically maintaining the pose—she V’d her fingers over her vulva’s tip, applied pressure, and bared an astonishingly large clitoris. The nerve-corpulent kernel stuck out like the end of a mini-frank.

“ Damn, girl! You got a cunt- nugget! ”

“Fruck!” Sung railed. “You twop dwawer, girl!”

And Menduez: “Dat’s some serious buena CHIT, mang! Keeler tits’n poosy, mang!”

Highball grinned, nodding. “Good. Now make me hip to your crib so you can peel-eye me fuckin’ ya all till you’re cryin’ like babies,” whereupon the boys escorted her to the warehouse and, with great satisfaction, sampled the goods.

And this was only days ago, yet in that short time, Highball had acclimated to the gang quite well, and she even did all of their laundry. At this very moment, though, she flip-flopped herself to the wall where a bizarre apparatus leaned. “Hey, Case Piece? What the fuck’s this?”

The device looked akin to an industrial floor buffer that sat strangely on a long metal blank, rather skateboardish, but the “blank” possessed a peculiar pivot at the center on the bottom. The machine housed a small gasoline motor with the words ALPINE on it.

Case Piece gulped. “That a stump-grinder, ‘ho.”

“The fuck? ”

“You ain’t met Paulie’n his crew, bitch…”

“Fruuuuuuck,” Sung intoned. “They hawdkwore… ”

“Chit, yeah,” Menduez added with a gulp.

“So don’t never be dopest enough ta piss ’em off,” Case Piece went on. “See, they be the dudes that bring us the uncut smack every month.”

Highball scratched her jet-black roots, still eyeing the machine. One end was clearly a grinding-wheel. “Yeah? So what’s that got to do with this…stump-grinder?”

“S’fore grindin’ tree stumps but, Paulie? He use it ta grind people. No jive. These dudes? Fuck. Anybody cross ’em, they fuck ’em up, and if they cross ’em bad enough…they stump-grind ’em.” Even Case Piece, as bad-ass as he may or may not have been, showed signs of unease in relating this. “Say some player or jamake start trine to sell smack on Paulie’s turf? Paulie bury the dude up to his neck—no jive—and then one’a his crew, he take that machine’n grind his head off.”

“Fuck!” Highball yelled.

“And there was one time, see, this bagman was double-dealin’ ‘tween Paulie’s smack and some jamake’s—they stake the dude’s squeeze to the ground and, see, this bitch was poppin’ she was so pregnant. So then Paulie’s guy…he stump-grinds the chick’s belly, all’s while makin’ the dude watch.”

Highball paled.

“But ya know what? That dude, he never double-deal again.”

“Fuck,” she muttered.

“Here chore BK Veggie, puta,” Menduez said, and handed her a sandwich from the Burger King bag.

Highball smirked. “You think I can eat after hearin’ that shit? Fuckin’ spic must be crazy!”

“Si, cerda, si,” Menduez uttered, smiling.

“Ya spic fuck! You dissin’ me? What’s cerda mean?”

“Eet meens beautiful woooooman.”

“Oh, well… How sweet!” said Highball, the compliment temporarily divorcing the smirk from her face. To Case Piece and Sung, two Double Whopper Value meals were dispensed. Then Case Piece asked, “What’s in the sack, jack?”

Menduez grinned and removed from the sack a cute-as-a-button Cocker Spaniel puppy. The puppy licked Menduez’s face, frantically wagging its tail.

“A puppy!” Highball wailed in delight, but there was anything but delight in the reactions of Case Piece and Sung.

Highball took the puppy in her arms and coddled it. “Menduez got us a puppy! It can be the gang mascot!”

Menduez laughed, then said to Case Piece. “I found out wheech house those new players creebing at, dah focks .”

Highball didn’t receive Menduez’s meaning, yet so delighted she was with the puppy, she didn’t think to ask. “What should we name it?”

“How’s ’bout Dead Meat?” Case Piece said.

“Huh?” replied the prostitute, and it might be appropriate to remind the Reader again that Highball was new to the gang. She was therefore unaware of Menduez’s abominable penchant; so when Case Piece explained that penchant, Highball shrieked and began to run with the puppy.

“What the fuck kind of sick shit is that!” she screamed. “Ain’t no way I’m lettin’ him torture this puppy!”

Menduez blocked the door.

“Shit, girl,” Case Piece said. “This be a gang, not Sesame Street. You new, so’s you can’t go actin’ all crazy’n shit. Uh-huh. The dog thing is Menduez’s thing. We don’t exactly dig it either but that’s the way it rolls. Menduez, he do a lot for our gang and you…don’t. So cut out the chick-shit and give Menduez the dog back, less you wanna cap in yo’ white ass. You underdig?”

Highball looked pre-seizural at the prospect. But she underdug, all right, especially the “cap” part, but still… Still…

“It’s a puppy, for fuck’s sake!”

WHAP!

Menduez rammed his fist into Highball’s cheek. She collapsed, unconscious even before she hit the floor, then the Venezuelan sociopath picked the puppy back up, which immediately began to lick his face. “American girls, mang, they’se loco,” he said, then took the puppy to a room that was thankfully so far back in the building that Case Piece and Sung wouldn’t be able to hear…the sounds.

Sung frowned, then bit into his Double Whopper with Cheese. “That gry, he no wight in head!”

Case Piece shrugged. “Yeah, well, I guess none of us is. We all a bunch of drug dealers. I don’t know how he can do that shit to dogs either but, shit, that’s what they do where he from. Sung, we need to be more sensitive to other cultures. Me bein’ a player from the ‘hood’n you bein’ from Japan or some shit.”

Sung hacked out a bite of his sandwich. “Ko-wee-ah, man!” he howled. “I from Ko-wee-ah, not Japan! Fruck the Jrapanese, the frucks! In Wald Waw Two, the fruckin’ Jrapanese pigs kill all our men and turn our women to whores! They take our rice and give to their soldiers and make us eat our own shit! Fruck Jrapan! Americans should’ve brombed whole cunt-twee!”