Edward Lee: Header 2

“Chill, chill, Sung. Shit. I don’t know from no Korea, man. Though it was all the same, Japanese, Chinese’n all—”

Sung hacked out another bite of sandwich. “China! Fruck! Dirty Wed Chinese, they come over our cunt-twee in the north and kill us all for the commissar! Fruck the Chinese!”

Case Piece rolled his eyes. “Whatever, Sung. Lay back, huh?”

Both men glanced up at the sound of knocks on the door. Two knocks first, then one, then two more.

Sung opened it, and in walked a tall, well-postured man with neatly trimmed gray hair. He looked rather like John Delorean, for those who remember John Delorean. Nice slacks, nice dress shoes, and, oddly, a white labcoat, like a doctor’s.

“Doc!” greeted Case Piece. “My man! How you be?”

The doctor, whose name was Dr. Winston Prouty, formerly an esteemed plastic surgeon from Beverly Hills, was currently a rather uncharacteristic errand boy for Paul Vinchetti III. Prouty considered Case Piece’s query, then answered in a rich, articulate tone. “Why, your man be…in reasonably good physical and mental repair, I’d estimate.”

“Solid. Shit, we ain’t peel-eyed you in a long-ass time.”

“I’m on a special excursion with Mr. Vinchetti and two of his affiliates. We’re, in a manner of speaking, multi-tasking. Two birds with one stone?”

Sung held out his sandwich. “You maybe rike brite of my Double Ropper, Doc?”

“Kind sir, your generosity is appreciated in the utmost, but I must respectfully decline, as…recent events have forestalled all appetite. I’m here merely to make sure—as the old saying goes—that the coast is clear.”

“It be clear, Doc, it be clear, and, man, we need a new drop off ’cos we is fresh out’a skag.”

“Well then that regrettable deficiency will be remedied posthaste,” and next Prouty made a call on his cellphone, said something, and hung up. Within moments, a refined rumbling could be heard outside.

“Damn, Doc, what you boys drivin’ ’round in?” Case Piece asked. “Sounds like a fuckin’ tank.”

“Holy shrit!” Sung said, peeping through the minuscule front window. “It look like big fruckin’ house on reels!”

Case Piece looked, too, and saw the massive motor-home parking in front of the warehouse. “Shit, we could have ourselves a party in them wheels. That’s trick. ”

For some strange reason, the innocuous remark caused a moment of malaise within the doctor. “I…assure you that…no manner of partying has ever taken place in that Winnebago.”

“Well, shit. Sung, get the wheelbarrow! We got junkies out there fuckin’ cryin’ for the shit.”

“Hence, the machinations of addiction and its formidable utility in consumerism.”

Three more men entered then, all dark-haired, all wearing suits, gloves, topcoats, and sunglasses. A raucous greeting ensued. The first man was, of course, Paul Vinchetti III, aka Paulie the 3rd, lean, salon-tanned, mid-to-late-‘30s, son of Paul Vinchetti Jr., grandson of Paul Monstroni Vinchetti, aka “Vinch the Eye,” originally a district boss in the Lonna/Stello/Marconi Crime Pyramid, an armature of that mythical human machinery known as the Mafia. (It may be worth pointing out that said crime pyramid was now referred to as the Vinchetti/Stello Crime Pyramid. Lonna and Marconi had gotten greedy and both wound up stump-ground.) Paulie was told quite frequently that he was a dead-ringer for the Duke University basketball coach, but he’d never heard of the guy. Shit, Paulie was a mob boss. He didn’t watch fucking basketball.

Next in Paulie’s crew was an ox-necked, crag-faced, and broad-shouldered lieutenant, Arrigetto “Argi” Calzano. Argi was 55 years old and had caused a great deal of Vinchetti’s enemies to sleep with the fishes. Third was Paulie’s “fix-it” man, a trim, good-natured psychopath about 40 years old: Cristo Picrinni. His real first name was Cristoforro which meant “follower of Christ.” He’d blow-torch a judge’s baby, gang-rape-to-death a police chief’s adolescent daughter, or pressure-cook the head of a politician’s aged father, all without an iota of reservation.

“There’s my man on the street,” Paulie said. “What’s up?”

Case Piece replied, “‘S’all solid. I’m your Ace Boon Coon, my man. We’se just chillin’ and killin’, slingin’ and blingin’, dealin’ and stealin’, thuggin’ and muggin. Everything’s crown—uh-huh.”

Paulie blinked. “And sorry we’re late. The pickups are taking longer and getting smaller. It’s this goddamn recession.”

“Yeah, man, I get the same jibe from the hypes on the street,” Case Piece said. “They’re singin’ the blues. Shit, one junkie told me last three dudes he mugged were broke! ”

“It’s fucked up. If Obama don’t fix this fuckin’ recession like he said, I’m gonna ask for my vote back!” Paulie blared, and then everybody laughed. Agri was the one with the suitcase, which he opened on a tattered couch. >From this he dispensed five kilo-bags of 95-percent-pure heroin—not that black tar shit from Mexico but the high-end smack from Afghanistan, compliments of our friends the Taliban.

“Damn, Paulie,” Case Piece regretted. “You ain’t kiddin’ the pickups are gettin’ smaller. We was expectin’ seven or eight.”

“It’s a kick in the balls, ain’t it? You’ll have to step on it a little more—fuck ’em. Drug dealers gotta make a living too, you know?” and then everyone, quite obligatorily, laughed again while all but Paulie secretly acknowledged that the remark wasn’t very funny. Then the tirade continued. “Fuckin’ sucks these days, I’m tellin’ ya. Price’a gas goin’ up again, mules chargin’ double, cops gettin’ harder’n harder to get on the pad ’cos they’re more worried about their fuckin’ health care! Top it all off, my wife’s on the rag so I couldn’t even put one in her before I took off. Now that really sucks!”

The others rolled their eyes, then laughed again.

Paulie sat down on an old cable spool that now sufficed for a table. The spool was covered with one-by-one-inch plastic Zip-Loc baggies. “Yeah, the world’s gettin’ fucked up, all right. Shit, you know what we heard on the radio comin’ over? We heard a news guy saying that some really fucked-up-in-the-head piece of shit—some guy in this town —is cuttin’ off the heads of puppy dogs after torturin’ the shit out of ’em. Kid you not.”

Concealing some sullenness, Case Piece said, “Yeah, that’s some fucked up shit, aw right, Paulie.”

“Said it’s some drug-turf thing, and I’ll bet my fuckin’ balls it’s one of these penny-ante fucks tryin’ to work our regions. I’ll tell ya, if I ever caught some low-life fuck torturin’ a puppy, man…I’d have Argi and Cristo do a job on him that would even make me puke.”

Sung gulped. “Yeah, Prawlie. That frucked up. Towtuwing dogs… ”

“And not just dogs, the guy said. Puppies. ” Paulie shook his head. “Just don’t know what’s gotten into the world.”

“Makes me sick just thinkin’ about it,” Argi said.

“Yeah, Paulie,” Cristo added. “I ever get my hands on the fuck? Oooo—mama mia!”

“Shit, let’s talk about somethin’ else. All this dog-killin’ talk’s makin’ me depressed.” Paulie pointed dejectedly to the wheelbarrow full of smack. “So anyway, that’s the way it goes. Cut the shit a little more’n get it on the street. We’re just like anyone else. Tryin’ to do the best we can durin’ economic bad times.” Paulie looked around. “Say, where’s that bean-eater? He didn’t get whacked, did he?”