New Title 1 (35 page)

Highball positioned herself so that a modest wedge of bare breast could be seen through a loop of coat fabric between the buttons, and from a sexist standpoint it’s worth mentioning that her bosom’s previous exposure to the cold air had pebbled her nipple-tips sufficiently enough to cause some formidable “printing.”

Malone cleared his throat, then spat more brown juice. He may even have errantly rubbed his crotch. “I’d like yawl ta do me a favor. You probably heard that we got some low-down crazy sick-in-the-head
psycho
goin’ ’round cuttin’ off puppies’ heads—”

“Oh, no!” Sung exclaimed. “Thwat twerrible!”

Highball bobbed up on her tiptoes, causing her breasts to ride very deliberately up and down. “How could somebody
do
something so awful?”

“Mang,” Menduez said. “Dat some
bad chit,
mang.”

“So if you see
anyone
out here lookin’ suspicious, lookin’ like they don’t belong or fixin’ to git inta mischief, just you call me directly, okay?”

“Oh, yes, sir, officer,” Case Piece promised. “We peel-eye anything poo-putt
,
we’ll be the first ta yaw-yaw at’cha, like splickty-lit.”

Malone made a face. “
What?
”

“Means we’ll call ya.”

“Good, good, thanks.” Malone dragged a final gaze off Highball’s “chest fruit.” “And now I want yawl to have a fine day and a merry Christmas!”

“Back at’cha, sir,” Case Piece bid.

The shiftless gang hacked laughter upon the officer’s departure.

“Fat white dick,” Case Piece sniggered.

“Yeah, dat fat cop
fock
don’t know
chit,
” Menduez assured. “He think he can catch me? He need a fockin’
army
ta catch me!”

“Yeah, that proo-prutt crop, he a stroopid
fruck!
”

Highball shrugged. “I blew him once, to beat a loitering bust.”

Case Piece made a
percolating
facial gesture. “What’choo doin’ here anyway, ‘ho?”

Highball pouted. “I wanted to give you the CD. Now…I just wanna hang with you guys.”

“
Hang?
Shit!” Case Piece winked at Menduez, a signal, after which the young Venezuelan quickly bent Highball over in a headlock.

“Hey!”

Menduez pulled the girl’s overcoat hem up over her impressive rump just as Case Piece came around behind her and—

WHAP!

—kicked her right between the legs.

“OOOOOOOOOW”

“This banana cream pie dumbass gettin’ too big for her boots and, shit, she don’t even
wear
boots. You the gang
‘ho,
‘ho. You don’t
hang
with us. We’re
players,
you just a cum-stop. Now get your lily-white ass on the
street,
and you trick with that trot. Make some
cash
with that gash and then, you see, you bring it to
me,
cos I’se the best—the best—the best pimp there be.”

“Twop dwawer, Clase!”

“Damn straight.”

Highball stood balloon-faced and knock-kneed, a hand to her crotch.

“Weren’t for me, Paulie’d’ve
killed
your ass.
Twice.
Weren’t for me, you’d still be suckin’ five-dollar dick’n sellin’ buddah sacks and beanpies for some loser Joe Neckbone sugar pimp in Bitch City. Make some
money,
honey. And when you done, go back the motherfuckin’ warehouse and baggie more skaggie and wash the peter tracks out’a our shorts. Me and my dawgs, we be
bustin’
moves ’cos we’re
phat
in the grooves. We’re the tippest of the toppest, and you’re…the gang ‘ho. Later on,
if
you’re lucky, we come back and plumb your beezy pussy like a fuckin’ gas station toilet.”

Highball shuddered, teary eyed. “You-you make me feel like a
piece of meat!
”

Case Piece winked his signal again; Menduez headlocked her and—

WHAP!

Case Piece kicked her right between the legs.

“OOOOOOOOOOW”

“You
are
a piece of meat, bitch. You
are
a piece of meat. Now shag ass out’a here and get dizzle with that pwizzle. Make some
money
with that cunny. Get some cum in that chute so’s you make some
loot
with that coot. Underdig?”

“Yeah, I under
dig,
” Highball sniffled and limped away.

“The bitch, she love us,” Case Piece attested. “Right, dawgs?”

“Fruck yeah!”

“Bitch
needs
a good kick in the cunt once in a while. Gotta be
hard,
too, like so hard her fuckin’ ovaries bang together like them steel-ball click-clack things business dudes got on their desks.” Case Piece nodded. “Best way to keep a chick lovin’ ya—kick ’em in the cunt. It build up their
self-esteem.
”

“Chit, yeah, mang. White puta like
dat
, she
needs
guys like us. It’s we who geeve her identity.”

“Right on.”

They crossed the grade school playground which was empty now due to Christmas break. Up ahead, a twitching figure tottered into view.

“Who
this
shit-shoe white-trash garbage-can-on-two-legs motherfucker? He one’a ours?”

“He rook framiliar!”

“Oh, yeah, mang. I sell to him all the tying.”

A broom-skinny white man in dumpster clothes staggered trance-like toward them. His hair looked like a well-used and seldom-rinsed mop.

“Hey, blood,” Case Piece announced. “You lookin’ ta cop, ’cos if you is, we your main skagtown
drop.
”

The coin-eyed addict barely heard him. “Naw, man,” he croaked. Abscesses had erupted on his waxen face. “I mugged a old lady at the ATM and just copped.”

“But chew always cop from
us,
mang,” Menduez objected.

“I was jonesing, man.” When the addict scratched his arms, flakes fell off. “Couldn’t find you guys, so I had to cop from the new guys.”

Case Piece spat out a mouthful of Cherry Slush. “
New
guys?”

“Choo don’t mean dem motherless
focks
on Byrdtown Road. Chit, mang, dey long gone.”

“No, man. New guys. They just opened up shop on Maple Street. Sellin’ Mexican black for five bucks less a bag, man. They’re a couple white guys, from Maryland, they said.”

When the junkie foundered away, the three gang-members exchanged ominous glances.

“Fuckin’ competition
all over,
dawgs. Every no-dick piece’a garbage on the street comin’ here’n trine ta horn in on our gig,” Case Piece complained. “Well,
hmmm.
I wonder what we
do
about that. What’cha think…
Menduez?
”

Sung laughed and—in an Asian accent, no less—mimicked the sound of a barking dog.

“Maple Street, huh, mang?” Menduez nodded with a smile, message understood.

— | — | —

Chapter 12

(I)

Veronica conveniently awoke in the back of the truck only minutes
after
the men had dispensed suitable punishment upon the unfortunate Russian girl by the name of Kasha; therefore Veronica new nothing of the rowdy event. “I thought you wanted to go to New York City,” she questioned upon noticing only green pastures and farmland beyond the truck’s windshield, but then Helton explained, “Well, shucks, Veronnerka. We’se tried like the dickens ta get ourselfs a
map,
but…that didn’t work out.” Veronica frowned, went online via her laptop, Mapquested the address of one 62-year-old uptown cosmopolite, Adele Vinchetti, and provided turn-by-turn instructions to their destination.

It would likely belabor the narrative to recant the entire descriptive and subjective ordeal of Helton’s trek and subsequent mission. Nevertheless, some 500-plus miles later, the cumbersome and less-than-sightly vehicle had arrived in “The Big Apple.” Some inconsequential detail, however, seems in order, and given this, it must be said that the metropolis which academic horror writer H. P. Lovecraft referred to as a “polyglot abyss,” a “babel of sound and filth” where “Cyclopean modern towers and pinnacles…rise blackly Babylonian,” a labyrinthine purview embalmed with an amoral populace who amass into an unabated and rampaging “Walpurgis riot of horror.”

One can imagine the psychological impact of such a place upon the simple psyches of Helton and his backwoods kin. Emotional paralysis was one result; others were sound-shock, culture-shock, acute claustrophobia, as well as something quite akin to the
shell-
shock a soldier feels after spending too much time on the front. However, thanks to Veronica’s navigatory guidance, the group was able to arrive without mishap in Manhattan. Much to Veronica’s displeasure, however, she was then required to treat each man to another oral “tweaking,” something they seemed to be quite fond of now that her skills as a fellatrice had been vastly improved. Veronica’s face seemed to lengthen like a mask of tallow at the now even-more-appalling crotch-odor of each man.
My GOD!
she thought shuddering from the musky organic stench, yet she’d done the deed all the same, stopping just short of orgasm as her captives still mysteriously seemed to want.

Then she’d directed them to the home of the 62-year-old Adele Vinchetti—a penthouse in a posh highrise—with relative ease; and, since they recognized her via her online photograph, were able to successfully abduct her when they saw her returning from a stroll after dinner-time. This done, they secured the woman in the back of the truck—Veronica, by now, had been repositioned to the front passenger seat—and fled across the bridge to the nearby city of Newark, whereupon they found a secluded spot beneath an overpass and…

The reader can be trusted to make the correct assumption.

Veronica, on the other hand—and try as she might’ve to
not
make such assumptions, split-infinite be damned—had no choice but to ponder. Sitting handcuffed in the front right seat, as the daylight’s last gasp surrendered to twilight’s first twinkling stars, Veronica stared out the windshield, cotton in her ears. What the men were doing
exactly
behind that old shower curtain she tried not to contemplate, but knowing at least
generally
that they were murdering Paul Vinchetti’s mother and simultaneously
recording
that murder, the darkest recesses of Veronica’s volition
had
to make considerations. Through the cotton, she had heard Helton say something like, “Not the table this time, boys, the
chair.
Tie her upright in the
chair.
We’se’ll do it a tad different this go-round.” He’d pronounced “different” as
diff-urnt.

“How so, Paw?” Dumar had asked.

Helton had answered, “What we’se gonna do
this
time, son, is have a
double-
header…”

A double…HEADER?
Veronica thought. Wasn’t that something in baseball? Further considerations terminated then as the sudden sound of the power drill could be heard even more easily through the makeshift earplugs. But unlike the previous night, the drill-sound had stopped, Helton ordered, “Now do the front, son,” and then the drill-sound had recommenced.
What on earth are they doing with that drill?
Veronica dared to wonder.