Half-dressed as he had been since leaving the club, Code, still dazed, walked into a room with scores of naked women who appeared glad to see him, kissing his keloid medals of the street. He was offered a palette of tastes: breasts, asses, thighs, legs, buttocks, vaginas, cunts, and pussies. While being told that they were making a home movie of his triumph with a bevy of hot bodies, he didn’t notice that he was also being given the “Dawg of the Year Award,” a choke collar. Dominique fastened it around his neck just as Darlene lowered his trousers and stripped him of the rest of his clothes and his 9mm. The women admired his flaccid male-thang that ran halfway down his thigh. They could tell that he was happy to be in their presence, even happier when a group of them began devouring him, attending to every part of his body with probing hands and tongues, rubbing their sticky, lubricated orifices against his street-toughened, muscular black body.
When Francesca slipped on the black metal handcuffs, Code was still woozy from the weed and booze and Tanya’s mouth-fucking, and didn’t think too much about it when he was made to kneel down to service Dominique, who waited with opened legs; her warm aroma greeted his quivering nostrils. This was fun: doing dawg duty amongst all the booty. But his enthusiasm waned when he discovered Dominique’s ever-enlarging cock staring him in the face—and hers was just as large as Code’s. Protesting, struggling against the handcuffs now holding his arms behind his back, Code was forced into service upon feeling the cold barrel of his own “nigga-stopper” behind his right ear and the grip of the choke chain around his neck. Knee-deep into deep-throating Dominique, Code could feel his own backdoor being prepared for a rear-entry maneuver.
Upstairs, Tanya was offered a cognac by Juliette and sighed as she began the bidding, watching Code’s ravishing on the monitor. In a few days, the training would begin and she would bust his opened, dark ass with her own twelve inches—without lubrication. As a fully equipped hermaphrodite, she would teach him how to service her wet slit while he lay on his back in a supine position with his legs and arms beneath him. His transformation from man to bitch would begin. In a few more weeks, Code would disappear and be corseted, shaved, lipsticked, and turned into “Charlene,” sold to the highest bidder. Code’s disappearance would drive up The Code’s sales and further the rumor that the system had taken down another black man. No one would believe that he had been turned into a woman-manufactured male slut, especially not the brothers on the street. But T-Sound knew differently. Music, like sex, was a nasty business, a very nasty business.
PART III
Cops & Robbers
CAN’T CATCH ME
BY THOMAS MORRISSEY
Bay Ridge
The fuck are you doing?” shouted the squat, muscular man from his van. “I was just gonna park there!”
Detective Sal Ippolito heaved his bulk from the car and felt his temper start to rise. Control. He took a calming breath through his nose, enjoying the aromas wafting from the open back window of Epstein’s Bakery, and tapped his windshield. “See that red light on my dashboard? That little sign next to it? I’m a cop. I get to park here because I’m working. Find somewhere else.”
“You see this sign?” The man slammed a stubby-fingered hand on his door, above the Bay Ridge Bread and Bakers lettering. “I’m working, too. I got to pick up bread for my route. ’The fuck am I supposed to do that if you’re in my way?”
Ippolito took another breath. Another delicious nose-ful of cookie-bread-donut goodness warmed his freezing nostrils. “Look,” he said, restraining his annoyance. “It’s Christmastime. How about giving me a little present by not busting my balls? The longer I stand out here talking to you, the longer it’s going to be until I take care of things inside, and the longer until you get to pick up your bread. Go have a cup of coffee. Go do some shopping. Go do anything else, because until further notice this bakery is a crime scene and no one goes in or out. Capice?”
“It’s 4 o’clock in the morning. ’The fuck am I going to go shopping?” The squat man slammed his van into gear. “Crime scene, my ass. Go commit grand theft donut, ya fat pig.”
Ippolito unconsciously rubbed his basketball stomach, fighting the desire to chase him down for premeditated assholery. “Hell with it.” Crystals of salt and half-melted slush crunched underfoot as he turned and walked to the rear door. “At least I can resist temptations.”
Entering the bakery was like walking into a brownie: warm, moist, and sweet. Steam and heat thickened the atmosphere in a delightful contrast to outside. Ippolito licked his lips, taste buds searching for some of the chocolate or almond that flavored the air.
“H—hello?” A tiny, wizened woman edged into the kitchen. She was so bundled up against the cold, Ippolito doubted she would have been able to swing the fire axe she grasped. “Who are you?”
“Police, ma’am.” He slowly took out his badge. “Detective—”
“Sally! Little Sally Ippolito!” The woman relaxed and lowered the axe. Its weight made her lurch forward. “Not so little anymore, eh?”
Ippolito frowned before he recognized her. “What are you doing here, Mrs. Funerro?”
“I called you people.” The old woman shuffled over to lean against a sink filled with batter-crusted trays and pans. “Eppy used to save the first loaf of bread of the day for me. I haven’t been sleeping well lately, so I thought I’d surprise him coming by. I’ve done it before when my goddamn insomnia kept me awake. I think that snippy waitress at the Bridgeview gave me regular coffee when I asked for decaf, just to be mean—”
“Mrs. Funerro, what happened? The operator said you told her there was trouble.”
“I didn’t want to say too much over the phone because I wanted to get this,” she shook the axe, “to protect myself.”
“From what?”
“I came to the back door, because I know Eppy leaves it open sometimes to let the heat out—isn’t that a silly thing in this cold?—and when I called out, he didn’t answer. I found him in the front. Well, his body. I was going to call Father Mulhern, too, over at St. Patrick’s, but then I remembered Eppy is—well,—Jewish. I don’t know what those people do about death. Maybe I should call a rabbi?”
“Mrs. Funerro—” Visions of being trapped in the old lady’s apartment when he was a grocery delivery boy years ago, delayed by tales of sciatica and back spasms, made him cut her off. “Did you say Mr. Epstein is dead? You found his body?”
She exhaled. “I thought the police were observant. How will you find clues if you aren’t even listening to what I say?”
Ippolito unholstered his gun. Mrs. Funerro gasped. Putting a finger to his lips, he crept to the doorway with the surprising grace of the obese.
“I told you, I found his body. There’s no one else here now.”
He scanned the shop. Formica cases sat packed with fresh racks of oversized chocolate chip cookies, perfectly frosted layer cakes, and pastries of every shape and filling. Glass and stainless steel reflected the holiday window lights while the Now Servin sign was reset to zero, a string of number tabs hanging below it like a tongue. A flat tray filled with some kind of cookie waited atop the serving counter to be put away. Everything looked as normal as any of the dozen bakeries and bagel shops around the neighborhood, except for the wide red puddle staining the black-and-white tile floor. A slight slope had allowed it to spread almost to the front door.
Ippolito sighed. “Oh boy.”
Epstein’s body lay facedown behind the serving counter. Ippolito crouched and rolled him partway over. The front of his baker’s whites was now squishy scarlet from the nasty, raw gash at his throat, while dozens of tiny rips revealed more wounds on his body. Their edges looked as though something had been gnawing at him.
What the hell? “You were the only person here?” he asked without turning. “No one else? No animals, dogs, or some rats, maybe?”
“Rats? Eppy kept a clean shop.”
He gently set the body back down. No sign of a struggle was in evidence, but a
gingerbread figure lay near Epstein’s outstretched hand in a grotesque parody of the dead man. The cookie wasn’t a traditional shape; still humanoid, it looked like a man in a suit and hat, holding a gun. The white frosting gave it a pin-striped suit and mobster attitude, still evident even though half its head and one shoulder had been bitten off. It had apparently come from the sheet of similar cookies inside the case—all those rows were symmetrical except the top, which presumably was missing the half-eaten one. Ippolito picked up a sheet of wax paper.
“Hello, saliva traces and DNA.”
He started to rise, when he noticed something on the glass inside the case. In front of all the mouth-watering treats (Resist the temptation! he scolded himself), words had been written in what looked like Epstein’s blood:
Run, run, as fast as you can
Can’t catch me …
Mrs. Funerro came up behind him. “Did you find something? Is that a clue?”
Quickly he stood, using his bulk to block her view of the body and, more importantly, the writing. “You must have watched police shows on TV. You know I can’t say anything.” Especially if I don’t want everyone from here to Astoria to know about it He held the half-eaten cookie behind his back. “Forensics will tell us what happened. For now, I need you to do something very important.”
The old woman leaned forward conspiratorially. “You want me to canvass for witnesses? I could do that—I know everyone from Shore Road to Fort Hamilton Parkway. Maybe somebody saw something. That snippy waitress got her break at the diner a little while ago. Maybe she knows something—she’s always talking to those boys who go in there, the little gossip.”
“No, no, that could be dangerous.” Ippolito put an arm around her skeletal shoulder and guided her through the kitchen to the rear door. “I need you to go back to your house and write down everything you saw and experienced here tonight.”
“Write down …?”
“You’re our main witness right now. We need to protect you.” He nodded solemnly. “I’ll have a car sent to watch your door, too. Just in case.”
Hope enlivened her voice. “Am I … in danger, you think?”
“Just in case.” He touched one beefy finger to the side of his nose. “But do me a favor—no axes. We can’t have our most valuable witness hurting herself.”
Now she was positively glowing. “Of course. Of course, you’re right. But the Bridgeview is on my way. If I stop there I can question—”
“Straight. Home.” He closed the door before she could argue.
Epstein had kept a small office next to the kitchen. Ippolito used its phone to make his report before going back out to the front shop to wait for assistance. Through the front window he watched snow begin to fall on an empty Fourth Avenue. Memories of his grocery delivery days returned like ghosts of Christmases past. Way too many years ago. Years and pounds. He started to smile until a glare reflected off the floor and reminded him why he was there. The car, a Mercedes SUV with a Christmas tree’s worth of headlights, had stopped at a red light outside. A shirtless young man wearing a thick gold rope around his neck hung out the passenger window.
“I love you, Angieeee! Merry Fucking Christmas!” the man screamed. “Aaaaaaaaa! I love you, Aaaangieeee!”
Across the street an apartment window slammed open. “She don’t love you, ’cause she’s up here sucking my dick! Just shut the hell up!”
Now the driver of the SUV joined in. “You can’t talk to my boy like that! Fuck you!”
“Fuck you!”
The light turned green and the SUV sped off in a screech of tires and obscenities. “Home sweet home,” Ippolito shook his head. “Where everybody’s a tough guy and no one takes crap from no one, because their boys have got their backs.”
He turned away from the window and his memories to study the scene. The tray atop the serving counter was also filled with those mobster gingerbread men, in eight neat rows of four. Gingerly he avoided the pool of blood as he stood over them. The cryptic message on the display case was backwards from this side, but the baked goods looked just as wonderful. From this position he couldn’t see the body either, and any of the smells death brings were smothered by the overwhelming scent of delightful holiday treats.
“Temptation,” he reminded himself. He stared into the display case, feeling like a child, before something odd caught his eye: One of the gingerbread mobsters had red hands. And they all had white frosting eyes and pinstripes, but red mouths.
Ippolito frowned. The gingerbread mobsters on the countertop looked identical, but with white frosting mouths. He picked one up and circled the counter, stepped over Epstein’s body, and crouched to take one from inside the case. His knees creaked. Holding the two side by side he noticed the one from inside the case, in addition to the varied coloring, also seemed … bigger.
Fatter.
“Hmph.”
Carefully he replaced the larger one, an involuntary grunt escaping his pursed lips as he reached. “Jesus, I’ve got to lose some weight. My New Year’s resolution.” Still in a crouch, he leaned against the counter for support. The hand on which he rested his weight clutched the gingerbread mobster from the countertop.
“What are you looking at?”
The gingerbread mobster had no reply. Its white frosting eyes remained unblinking, its white frosting mouth remained in a fixed sneer.
The temptation proved too much. He cocked his head at the cookie and adopted the tone of the SUV driver: “Fuck me? Fuck you!” He chuckled as he bit off its head and chewed. “Yeah, I can eat you. It isn’t New Year’s yet.” He took another bite. The gingerbread was still faintly warm, and a hint of cinnamon tickled his palate. It dissolved in his mouth like butter on hot pancakes, leaving an aftertaste of gingery vanilla.
“Wow,” he smacked his lips. “Mr. Epstein, the world will mourn the loss of so great a cookie master—”
Scuttling above him made Ippolito’s head snap up. He dropped the half-eaten cookie and started to rise, reaching for his gun. As he came eye-level with the counter he saw the flat pan was now empty. Before he could process this, he saw why.
And he screamed.
* * *
“God, he just called this in,” the patrolman said sadly. “Can’t have been more than twenty minutes ago.”
Detective Mike Schofield’s jaw tightened. “Well, obviously the killer came back.”
Ippolito’s body lay atop the body of the bakery’s proprietor. It took two blankets to cover the mass, and both were sponging up blood. It was everywhere. Schofield noted spray patterns from severed arteries as well as smears that showed the hefty detective hadn’t gone down without a fight. Judging by the damage to Ippolito’s body, there had been more than one assailant.
The patrolman was staring at the display case’s glass window. “What’s this supposed to mean?”
Schofield glanced at it. “Whatever it means, it’s written here, too.” He pointed at the countertop. “‘Run, run, as fast as you can. Can’t catch me …’ We’ll see about that, scumbag. You don’t kill a cop and walk away. We watch out for our own.”
Next to the writing sat a tray filled with gingerbread mobsters. Schofield frowned. They were big and fat, overlapping each other in a way that would have made them burn in the oven if that was how they’d been cooked.
“Let me ask you something,” he said to the patrolman. “You bake gingerbread men, you give them faces with white frosting, right?”
“Yeah.”
Schofield pointed at the cookies on the countertop. “So how come these ones have red mouths?”
CASE CLOSED
BY LOU MANFREDO
Bensonhurst
The fear enveloped her, and yet despite it, or perhaps because of it, she found herself oddly detached, being from body, as she ran frantically from the stifling grip of the subway station out into the rainy, darkened street.
Her physiology now took full control, independent of her conscious thought, and her pupils dil
ated and gathered in the dim light to scan the streets, the storefronts, the randomly parked automobiles. Like a laser, her vision locked onto him, undiscernable in the distance. Her brain computed: one hundred yards away. Her legs received the computation and turned her body toward him, propelling her faster. How odd, she thought through the terror, as she watched herself from above. It was almost the flight of an inanimate object. So unlike that of a terrified young woman.
When her scream came at last, it struck her deeply and primordially, and she ran even faster with the sound of it. A microsecond later the scream reached his ears and she saw his head snap around toward her. The silver object at the crest of his hat glistened in the misty streetlight, and she felt her heart leap wildly in her chest.
Oh my God, she thought, a police officer. Thank you, dear God, a police officer!
As he stepped from the curb and started toward her, she swooned, and her being suddenly came slamming back into her body from above. Her knees weakened and she faltered, stumbled, and as consciousness left her, she fell heavily down and slid into the grit and slime of the wet, cracked asphalt.
* * *
Mike McQueen sat behind the wheel of the dark gray Chevrolet Impala and listened to the hum of the motor idling. The intermittent slap-slap of the wipers and the soft sound of the rain falling on the sheet-metal body were the only other sounds. The Motorola two-way on the seat beside him was silent. The smell of stale cigarettes permeated the car’s interior. It was a slow September night, and he shivered against the dampness.
The green digital on the dash told him it was almost 1 a.m. He glanced across the seat and through the passenger window. He saw his partner, Joe Rizzo, pocketing his change and about to leave the all-night grocer. He held a brown bag in his left hand. McQueen was a six-year veteran of the New York City Police Department, but on this night he felt like a first-day rookie. Six years as a uniformed officer first assigned to Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, then, most recently, its Upper East Side. Sitting in the car, in the heart of the Italian-American ghetto that was Brooklyn’s Bensonhurst neighborhood, he felt like an out-of-towner in a very alien environment.
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