Edward Lee - Header 2

But Dumar just kept moaning. “Awwwww, awwwww. Bad enough they fucked her but-but, aw holy Moses! ” and then his voice corroded down to a dismal gurgle. “They put her back in the ground with her belly full’a their shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit… ”

Distracted, Veronica shot a sharp glance up. “ What? ”

“Nothin’, hon. He didn’t say nothin’,” Helton urged. “Just…git back ta yer ‘puterin’.”

Veronica flinched, then resumed her key-tapping.

“My lovin’ faithful wife,” Dumar continued to moan. “How… how could they?”

“Micky-Mack,” Helton snapped. “Take Dumar outside fer a breath’a fresh air. It’ll do him good.”

“Shore, Unc,” and then the younger man escorted Dumar out.

Faithful, lovin’ wife? Helton reflected. Well, that wasn’t quite the case. He’d heard a story or two about Mary Beth. He couldn’t substantiate them but…

Dumar had likely heard some stories as well but disregarded them posthaste—love, indeed, was blind. When one was in love, one chose not to believe such gossip. Nevertheless, Mary Beth had had a reputation before her proper marriage to Dumar: a reputation of promiscuity. There’d been one time, though, after the marriage, when the corn liquor rations had worn thin, and Mary Beth—quite the toper, mind you—had implied that if Helton upped her ration slightly, she might be inclined to express her gratitude via oral avenues. (Dumar had been out on a deer hunt for several days when this occurred.) But Helton—naturally—had declined the sultry woman’s offer and had, well, punched her up a bit for stooping to such an immoral low. It stood to reason, though, that if Mary Beth had made this offer to Helton for extra liquor, there existed a high order of probability that she’d made the same offer to others; hence, cheating on Dumar. Further, Helton had heard quite a few verifications of this…

Of course, he’d never mentioned this to his son, and the whopper of a bruise on his wife’s face had been convincingly explained as the result of a clumsy fall whilst gathering firewood. But the woman, point-blank, was a high-order tramp, and Helton supposed it was even possible that the sprightly, young—and now very dead—Crory Tuckton had been in fact sired by loins other than Dumar’s.

So much, then, for faithful, lovin’ wife.

Helton looked woefully at Veronica just in time to see her glance up, smile, and say, “Got it.”

“What’cha got, hon? What’cha got?” he replied excitedly. He stooped over to look at the screen.

“I pulled up a newspaper, and—”

“ Newspaper? Where?”

Veronica grew flustered. “On my computer. Online.”

“But that ain’t no newspaper! That’s a machine.”

Veronica couldn’t have sighed more wearily. “It’s the New York Times-dot-com, Helton. No, it’s not a physical newspaper, it’s the newspaper’s website. ”

Helton gripped his own head. “Hon. All’a this tek-noller-gee’s givin’ me a blammed headache!”

Veronica’s own headache throbbed. “It’s a newspaper in magic land, all right?” She could’ve screamed. “Anyway, it seems that Paul Vinchetti comes from a long line of alleged criminals. He’s been arraigned a dozen times for everything from racketeering, bribery, and tax evasion to drug trafficking, contract murder, and distribution of illicit pornography.” She shrugged. “But he’s never been convicted. Dream Team lawyers and lots of money. Look. Here’s a picture of him,” and then she read the under-caption: “‘Alleged Mafioso Paul Vinchetti, aka Paulie the 3rd, seen here leaving federal court after his trial. Vinchetti was arrested in June for allegedly producing snuff films for the underground porn market. All charges were dropped when state’s witnesses failed to appear.’”

Helton squinted at the shimmering screen…

“So there he is. Paulie,” he intoned. The smartly dressed man in the digital photo smiled as he was about to get into a waiting limousine. “Rat-faced little bastard, huh? Ya can just tell, Veronnerka. Ya can tell how evil that man is by lookin’ at his face.”

Veronica diddled with some keys. “Here’s another picture,” and she read: “‘Alleged criminal mastermind Paul Vinchetti III having dinner at New York’s premier restaurant, Massaccesi’s, just one week after alleged rival and district mob boss Agostino Pagnatelli was murdered by unknown gunmen. Vinchetti is seen here with his wife Marshie and his mother, Adele.’”

“Yeah, that’s Marshie, all right. Got tramp’n backwoods whore written all over her. And them big tits on her? They’se implants. Bet she’s got almost as much money as him after inheritin’ Thibald Caudill’s fortune.” He chuckled, however grimly. “Hon. That fussy cracker hose-bag is what we call a ‘sperm-GURGLER’, yessir! With money’re without, low-life trash is low-life trash. What she is is like a spittoon in a bar, only it ain’t spit that’s been fillin’ it up all these years. It’s cum. ”

Veronica winced. “Helton, please…”

“Oh, sorry. Pardon my coarse language.” But his eyes widened when he looked harder at the photo. “And that there’s his mother, you say?”

Veronica nodded. “Adele Vinchetti. She’s 62.”

“Looks dang good fer a gal her age, huh?” Helton rubbed his crotch without conscious forethought. “Bet she’s got them fancy implants too.”

“And every other kind of cosmetic surgery,” Veronica supposed of the shapely, Sophia-Lorenish-looking woman in the photo. “She’s very, very rich. Owns a brownstone in the Upper West Side according to the city tax records.”

“A brownstone? The hail’s that? Who wants brown stones? ”

“Don’t worry about it,” she snapped. “You wanted me to locate some of Paulie’s relatives, so I did.”

Helton scratched the brush-like beard. “These pictures is fine but, hon, we need an address. ”

Another jiggle of the keys, then Veronica pointed. “The good old AOL White Pages, Helton.”

“Huh?”

“12 West 75th Street and Dessorio Avenue.”

“The hail? ”

“Adele Vinchetti’s address.”

Helton stared fixedly, then:

“EEEEEEEEEEEE-ha!” He leaned over and—

Veronica’s face shriveled.

—planted a big wet halitosis-tinged kiss on Veronica’s cheek.

“Git yer butts back in here, boys!” he yelled out the side door. “We’se going on a trip! ” and when Dumar and Micky-Mack re-entered the truck, their faces were full of wonder.

“Gather ’round!” Helton trumpeted. “Veronnerka done struck gold again! She up’n got the address fer Paulie’s mother! ”

In unison, Dumar and Micky-Mack railed: “EEEEEEEEEEE-ha!”

“And she lives in…” Helton looked down. “Where she live, hon?”

“In a multi-million-dollar brownstone she inherited from her late husband, Paul Vinchetti, Jr.,” she said. “It’s in Manhattan, Upper West Side.”

Micky-Mack was jumping up and down. “Manhattan? Where the hail’s that?”

“New York City.”

Micky-Mack stopped jumping up and down. He, Dumar, and Helton all traded glances that could only be called ominous.

“New York City?” Dumar inquired. “ The New York City?”

“The one and only.”

“Sheeeee-it,” Micky-Mack whispered. “That’s big as even Pulaski, ain’t it?”

Veronica winced. “Pulaski is hardly a big city, Micky-Mack. It’s a town. It’s got a population of ten thousand. New York’s got a population of ten million. ”