Edward Lee: Header 2

“Aw, no, Paulie. Menduez—he our crownest drug-slinger—he doin’ just fine. He’s in back…fixin’ stuff.” Case Piece, repressing a minor sweat, directed to Sung, “Why’n’cha roll the smack in back and see if Menduez needs a hand?”

“White away!” and Sung wheeled through one of the doors.

Case Piece snapped on the boombox. “How ’bout we groove on some tunes, Paulie?” and then a cannonade of annoying sound rocketed forth: “Ya gizzle, ma mizzle, ya fizzle with my grizzle! We’re poppin’ caps, we’re poppin’ trunk, my bitch’s pussy smell like skunk! Tiggy tee, tiggy taw, we bustin’ down the law! We got the jack down jaw and we eat duh cole slaw—”

“Turn that shit off!” Paulie, Argi, and Cristo bellowed at the same time.

“Sure, dawgs,” Case Piece said and killed the boombox. “Just thought…ya might want some tunes. Chill out, ya know?”

“That shit gives me a headache almost as bad as the Caruso my mother made me listen to when I was a baby,” Paulie groaned.

Case Piece peeked again out the window. “So, Paulie? What’s with the motor-home? You don’t need a ride that big to putt-putt smack to a few points.”

“Naw, see, this was a special occasion,” Paulie began.

“Doc, he say somethin’ ’bout killin’ two birds with one stone.”

“The Doc was right.” Paulie rubbed his crotch for no apparent reason. “We needed the Winnebago for an action.”

“An…action?”

Argi’s throaty voice kicked in. “That’s goombah mob talk for a button.”

Case Piece squinted. “A button. How come I got the feelin’ you ain’t talkin’ ’bout buttons on a motherfuckin’ shirt? ”

Paulie chuckled. “We had to whack someone, as in kill him. Vendetta thing. You know what vendetta means?”

Case Piece stroked his beardless chin. “Oh, like revenge’n shit.”

“Yeah. My wife, Marshie, you ain’t never seen her but—ooo, she’s a doll. Ain’t she, boys?”

“Magnifico,” complimented Argi, kissing the tips of his fingers.

“Makes Helen’a fuckin’ Troy look like a pack’a zits on a monkey’s ass,” Cristo said.

Paulie nodded. “Right. See, I only married her two-three years ago but every year this time she gets all depressed and—just like a fuckin’ woman—she never told me why. So I think it’s ’cos of the kid, even though that was, like six, eight months ago.”

“The kid?” Case Piece inquired.

“Aw, yeah, I guess you don’t know about that. See, me’n Marshie, we wanted a kid, so I knocked her up and, bam, nine months later, out pops the kid. Beautiful baby girl. But, shit, see, the kid wasn’t but three months old before it kicks off. Some…kid disease, right, doc?”

“Quite a despairing and heretofore unexplained syndrome knows as SIDS,” said the tall doctor solemnly. “The acronym for Sudden Infant Death.”

“Yeah, that shit—”

“Aw, Paulie, man,” Case Piece offered his condolences. “That be some fucked up shit. Sorry to hear it.”

Paulie flapped a hand. “So anyway, like I was sayin’, I thought that’s what the wife was all in the blues about but it turns out it was somethin’ else too. See, her fuckin’ father’s birthday is in December, and, see, her father got whacked, like, fifteen years ago. He was white trash who got rich on a land deal, so then a couple crackers jealous of his money killed the old guy. Now, Marshie wouldn’t tell me how these fuckers whacked her father but she said it was more awful than anything I could ever think of, but then I think, oh, yeah? Well, fuck, I decided that a little vendetta was in order, and it had to be a real gore-house job, ya know?”

“Oh, so you put the drop on the dudes who whacked the old man,” Case Piece assumed.

“Naw, naw, see, funny thing is, them two crackers? They wound up gettin’ capped by a cop the same day. But just ’cos they’re dead don’t mean it’s all over.” Paulie shrugged. “It was the only thing I could do. My wife wanted revenge so I thought, shit, I’ll show ’em revenge.”

Case Piece wasn’t getting the jibe. “But if the two crackers got capped, who’s left?”

“Who’s left?” Paulie jested, then Argi and Cristo laughed.

“The family, ” Argi answered.

Paulie smiled. “Like I said, vendetta. It wasn’t good enough the two guys got whacked by someone else.”

Case Piece grimly eyed the stump-grinder. “So you come here to pick up that thing’n figure on snatchin’ the family and stump-grindin’ ’em, huh?”

Paulie grinned. “Naw, naw. Somethin’ worse. ”

“Shit, man, that some captown groaty shit. What could be worse than gettin’ stump-grinded?”

Paulie, Argi, and Cristo all laughed. “Somethin’ that all them crackers would never forget. To let ’em know that no one fucks with Paulie Vinchetti’s wife. No one. ”

Case Piece blinked. “Oh, I dig.” He blinked again. “So…what’cha do, man? What be tricker than the grinder? ”

“Somethin’ so bad, so off-the-wall gore-show,” Paulie replied, grinning, “that you don’t wanna know. What’cha think, Doc? Ya think I ought to tell Case Piece about the job?”

Prouty cleared his throat. “Actually, sir, if you happen to hold Mr. Piece in any esteem at all, you’d be doing him a service by not telling him.”

Yet, again, the mafiosos laughed.

“Man, you white guys are fucked up,”Case Piece said, “but, shit, that’s cool.” The black man paused. “Wait, Paulie, what the fuck’s any’a this got to do with you guys drivin’ ’round in something half the size of this warehouse?”

“’Cos for this job?” Paulie kept grinning. “We need somethin’ big.”

“Solid,” Case Piece muttered, and even as the narrative becomes more and more muddled, it was clear that Case Piece didn’t want to know.

Dr. Prouty looked behind the beaten couch and alerted the others. “There seems to be a..damsel in distress here.”

Case Piece chuckled. “Oh, that just Highball.”

Prouty touched his chin. “She appears to have suffered a mild contusion of the zygomatic process and upper-right maxilla region.”

“Shit, she got her grill busted for some pain-in-the-ass bitch-city yaw-yaw,” Case Piece corrected.

Paulie winced. “What’s bitch-city yaw-yaw? ”

“You know. Yappin’, motor-mouthin’, jib-jabbin’ the way girls do.”

“Oh, you mean, she was whinin’ so she got her clock cleaned.”

“Yeah, Paulie, yeah.”

Paulie peeked behind the couch, where Highball lay out cold. “Christ, man. She looks fuckin’ fifty. ”

“Oh, sure, she be a little wore out in the face, but, shit, Paulie, she be our top dro’”

“ What? ”

“You know. Real dingo, man. Get’cha a ringer in yer dinger, get some motch in yer crotch. Queen’a bitch city, you know, our crownest dawgie drop. ”

“ What? ”

“I think he means she’s the gang whore, boss,” Argi said.

“Oh, but…man,” Paulie continued to observe. “Her face is all wrinkled! She get many johns with a face like that?”

“Shitload, Paulie, ’cos it ain’t the face, it’s the bone-covers, you know, the skin-suit. Highball, she be the boo boo head who got a pwizzle put some sizzle in yo swizzle’n make ya wanna drizzle.”

“ Huh? ”

“You know, got a pinktown honkie-monkey real boo-ya, uh-huh.”

Paulie frowned.

“Means she’s a good lay, I think,” Argi said.

“Well, fuck,” Paulie said. “Lemme check out the melon-stand, as they say,” and then he reached down to unbutton the girl’s overcoat.