The House

by Edward Lee

  ««—»»

  A little more than a week later, a man named Nicholas Rosetti arrived at the house in a Lincoln Fleetwood. His nickname, however, was Bam-Bam, and for sound reason. At 6-foot-8 and tipping 290, he was employed as the security chief and first bodyguard for one Paul Monstroni Vinchetti, aka Vinchetti "The Eye," a big district boss in the Lonna/Stello/Marconi Crime Pyramid. And the first thing Bam-Bam noticed when he parked the Fleetwood in front of the house was—

  "The fuck?"

  —half of a dead naked woman. Bam-Bam shucked his big Webley .455 and cocked its receiver. If half a dead gal in the front yard wasn't a sign of trouble, then Bam-Bam didn't know what was. It was not a particularly distressing sight to Bam-Bam, as he had cut a fair number of folks in half during his tenure as a crew lieutenant. He'd also cut off heads, noses, ears, lips, fingers, toes, arms, legs, genitalia, etc. It might even be suggested that Bam-Bam had at one time or another cut off everything that could be cut off of the human physique, and he rather enjoyed it. Nevertheless, he drew his gun out of prudence. Whoever cut the skinny broad in half might still be inside.

  He found the other half of the skinny broad in the living room. Just skinny legs and ass, going to rot. And between those two legs, stained into the shabby carpet, was a great big flaky splotch of dried jism. Looks like this bitch got it the hard way, Bam-Bam mused. No doubt she was one of Rocco's flick junkies, and there should be another one up here too, along with some college kid they pinched to make the flicks. Judging by the physical state of the skinny broad, though, Bam-Bam deduced that finding anyone else alive in here offered up a very low order of probability. He found the second chick's head sitting on the kitchen table, a half-rotten tongue sticking out of her eye. Dog barking exploded at him when he went outside: several starving mutts charging the fence at Bam-Bam's appearance. They were trying to bite their way out, as they clearly had not eaten in a while. Their last meal was in evidence, though—a headless skeleton. Bam-Bam calmly shot the dogs with the big Webley and searched on.

  What miffed him most, however, was Rocco and Knuckles. They'd been missing for days now. They were supposed to zip up here and pick up a master reel and get right back to Trenton but that was a no-go. Maybe they booked on Vinch, he supposed. Not a wise thing to do but Bam-Bam could think of no other possibility since their Deville was nowhere to be seen. This college kid who made the flicks wasn't to be seen either, and that made Bam-Bam wonder.

  Back in the house, his size-14 shoes thunked down the hall. The confines of the house, by the way, brought a ghastly death-stench but this did not bother Bam-Bam either. He'd smelled worse things, like the time they sealed a CI alive into a 150-gallon drum and let it sit in the sun for a couple of weeks. But goddamn Vinch wanted to see it so Bam-Bam had pried that can open and showed the boss the job. Vinchetti had doubled over and puked at the stench, while Bam-Bam merely took a deep breath and sort of chuckled to himself. Shit, split floaters and gut jobs smelled worse than this. It was no big deal.

  The big deal was in the ready room.

  "Uh-oh," Bam-Bam intoned.

  Knuckles severed head looked right back at Bam-Bam from where it had been placed on a fold-down chair. Now that's what I call a dickface, Bam-Bam associated. Knuckles' penis was sticking out of his mouth like a tongue. The big body lay on the work table, and it looked liked somebody had tried to debone it. But who? Rocco?

  No. Not Rocco. When Bam-Bam turned his big head and looked on the other side of the room, there lay Rocco cut in half just like the chick outside. Looked like a whole bunch of dog food had been crammed in his mouth, for several empty cans of Giant-brand Big Chunk Beef Dinner lay in the corner. Bam-Bam didn't get it. But somebody'd also done a Sicilian Necktie on the poor bastard. Oh, and his dick had been nailed to the wall. But then Bam-Bam looked more closely at Rocco's lower half. Just two legs connected to an ass, just like the chick. Holy smokes, Bam-Bam thought. This is some work. Rocco's asshole gaped wide, as big around as a soda can. Somebody stuck something big up there...

  Bam-Bam walked back out to the car, utilizing his limited sense of deductive reasoning. The two chicks were dead. Rocco and Knuckles were dead. That only left...

  The kid?

  Bam-Bam got in the Fleetwood and dialed up his boss, (they had car phones in 1977 but generally only rich people had them). "Yeah, Mr. Vinchetti? This is Bam-Bam. I'm up at the house now and, well, sir, it's pretty fucked up."

  "The fuck you talkin' about?" Paul Monstroni Vinchetti replied over the line. He was eating while he talked, probably Calamari Marinara—his favorite—washed down with a couple of Peroni beers. "You find Rocco?"

  "Uh, yes, sir, Mr. Vinchetti, I found R—"

  "Put that dago bastard on the phone right now."

  Bam-Bam grit his teeth. "That ain't too possible, sir, 'cos, see, he's dead and so's Knuckles. Somebody did the job on the both of 'em, and the junkies too."

  "The fuck?"

  "Yes sir. I mean, this was a job, Mr. Vinchetti. Remember the job me and Dapper did on Linwood when we caught him skimmin' the books? We—"

  "Yeah, yeah, I remember. You psychos made him watch while you trash-compacted his baby and pulled his wife's guts out her ass with a pair'a welder's tongs."

  "Yeah, boss, and then we kidney-shanked him. But, shit, this job? This job here? Makes Linwood look like kids playin' in a sandbox."

  A long pause. "The fuck happened up there?"

  "Knuckle's head's cut off with his dick stickin' out his mouth, and Rocco's necktied and chopped in half. Found his cock and balls nailed to the wall like a Home Sweet Home plaque, and somebody stuck something really big up his ass, boss, 'cos his asshole's stretched open wide enough that you can see the inside of his fuckin' colon, sir. And the two junkies are all fucked up too, bigtime, Mr. Vinchetti. One's head's sittin' on the kitchen table and her body throwed to the dogs and the other one's cut in half just like Rocco, top half outside on the front porch, bottom half in the living room, and it looks like somebody fucked the bottom half, boss, 'cos there's a bunch'a dried jizz on the carpet between the legs."

  "God-DAMN, Bam-Bam!"

  "And then there's the kid—"

  "What they do to him?"

  "Well nothin' that I can see, boss, 'cos he ain't here and neither is the Deville, so I figure it's the kid who done the whole job and split."

  A bewildered pause. "What, that fuckin' skinny Leonard kid who shoots the animal flicks? You're tellin' me a fuckin' pencil-neck film school geek pulled a psycho-job on two'a my soldiers? You're tellin' me this candyass cut Knuckles' head off and stuck his dick in his mouth?"

  Bam-Bam shrugged. "I don't see no other explanation, Mr. Vinchetti, 'cos like I said the kid ain't here and neither is Rocco's Caddy."

  "Fuck!" the Mob Boss spat. "That kid made great animal flicks and now I gotta start the works all over again someplace else. Maybe we got made, maybe it was the Bracca Family or the Leone's did a hit on us. Or maybe those Lavender Hill homos out in fuckin' fruitland California. Those cocksuckers always pull psycho jobs and they been tryin' to tear a piece of my porno action for years."

  "Maybe so, boss, but my guess is—"

  "Shaddap and lemme think." A few more bites of sauteed squid. "All right, look Bam-Bam, what I want you to do I want you to go back in and torch the fuckin' place, then get out of there. We'll use one of our places upstate for the flicks. Torch the whole motherfucker good—like you did on that kindergarten back in '65—then get back here."

  "You got it, Mr. Vinchetti."

  Bam-Bam rang off and went back into the house. Torch jobs were easy when you cross-vented the place right, and the gas stove would really add some oomp-pah. It was always more fun, though, when there were people alive in the joint, like that kindergarten back in '65. Bam-Bam didn't hesitate to turn 16 toddlers and a teacher to charcoal 'cos one of the kids was the grandson of a federal judge who was stepping on Vinchetti. But that motherfucker stopped stepping right after that 'cos he had two more gran
dkids not to mention a wife and a fuckin' daughter. Bam-Bam wished he'd gotten orders to do the daughter 'cos she was a looker and he liked to take 'em down slow but, shit, it never happened. The judge laid off.

  He walked around inside again, had another look-over, opening the doors and windows. One thing was really fucked up but Bam-Bam, not one to pay a whole lot of attention to detail, never really noticed it.

  There were a couple bloody footprints in the ready room, only the footprints...

  Well, they weren't fuckin' human.

  Bam-Bam was about to yank the stove away from the wall, and here was a detail he couldn't help but notice. The stove was warm. All the burners were off but the oven dial had been left on the WARM setting, and come to think of it—in all that palpable stench of atrocity which hung in the house—he thought he smelled something pretty good, like breakfast.

  "Fuckin'-A," he remarked when he opened the oven. His breadbasket rumbled instantaneously. There in a big pan lay a full rack of mouth-watering baby-back ribs and a pile of motherfuckin' bacon that looked just great, and since Bam-Bam possessed an appetite bigger than his fuckin' suit size, he didn't see no harm in scarfing some of this primo grub before he burned the house down.

  ««—»»

  Meanwhile, a gray 1967 Cadillac Deville drove a steady 55 miles per hour down Route 795 just out of New York. The driver was very prudent; he did not want to be stopped by the police.

  Riding with him were his five new wives—that is five girls in their late teens, all wearing white bonnets tied under their chins and severe black ankle dresses. All five of them were pregnant though none of them knew this yet.

  The driver knew, though.

  The driver knew a lot of things now.

  He knew, for instance, that his peculiar appearance would preclude him from any interaction with the human race. He belonged to another race now, and he would live accordingly. When they needed gas, one of the girls would get it. When they needed food—the same. Inconveniences would be rife, but they would be minor, and the driver knew that a wondrous future awaited them all. They would find a place to start their new lives, and they would live off the land, and they would be fruitful and multiply.

  It would be glorious!

  What the driver didn't know was that in the Cadillac's trunk was the most recent Sunday edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. The newspaper contained an Arts & Entertainment Section, and on page D1 of that section was an article whose headline blared: SUNDANCE WINNERS ANNOUNCED! From there the article went on to cover this noteworthy film festival and the 20 categories for which the awards were given. One film in particular made quite a splash, and hauled in First Place for Best First Film, Best First Director, Best Editing, and Best Cinematic Abstraction. It was called The Confessor, and it was made by someone named Leonard D'arava. But no one knew who this person was and, alas, the awards were never claimed.

  BOOK TWO:

  THE HOUSE

  Dedication: This novella is for Jeff Funk!

  PART ONE

  (I)

  "It was a snuff house," the skinny girl said. She almost defied description: malnutrition through which some prettiness still managed to leak out, like light under a closed door, a big-eyed human scarecrow. Long inky straight hair and skin that was oddly pallid and bright at the same time. She was probably mid-'20s but looked pushing 40, obviously worn out by dope, alcohol, and overall atrocious living. Melvin had seen her sitting by the dumpster at the Chinese carry-out it had taken him a FUCKING HOUR to find. It had been in the phone book with an address that appeared to be near the county highway, so he'd jumped in his father's HUM-V, thinking it would be just down the road. Wrong. The house truly was far removed from everything. Which makes sense, he'd thought. If Dirk and the realtor hadn't been bullshitting. A safe house, ideally, would be located remotely. A safe house, yes. But...

  "A snuff house?" he asked the girl. Wasn't snuff powdered tobacco that Europeans sniffed up their noses? Somebody made powdered tobacco at this house? Then it clicked in Melvin's book-smart but otherwise very naive brain. Snuff movies.

  But that was just an urban myth, wasn't it? Such types of films didn't really exist, surely. Who would want to watch them? he wondered.

  He'd offered to give the skinny girl a lift, to opportunize his predicament. Melvin, only now, realized why she might be sitting near the dumpster: for scraps of edible garbage from the restaurant. He hadn't seen anyone so destitute since he'd written that unpleasant piece on the homeless shelters in Syracuse. But when he'd asked her: "I'm a little lost. Could you tell me how to get back to Route 10?"

  Her eyes seemed to vibrate with hope. "Oh, fuck yeah, man. Are you going north?"

  "Yes. About forty-five minutes past Pennellville—er, at least I think it's about that far, but I'm not sure because once I turned off to try and find this carry-out place, I—"

  She spoke very quickly, like hyperventilation. "Oh, that fuckin' rocks, man! Can you give me a ride? I'm going that way myself, and, shit, I really NEED to get there. Almost no one goes north past this shit little shopping center. It's boondocks up there, man."

  You can say that again, Melvin thought, now that he'd been up at the house for one day. "I'd be happy to give you a ride. You can guide me."

  "Oh, fuck yeah, thanks. Shit. This is great. And I'll make it worth your while, too."

  Melvin had no idea what she meant by that but he'd soon find out. His sense of direction was awful—as awful as his social adaptations—and Dad's space-cadet new wife probably didn't have her cell phone on her, not that she would know the directions either.

  Anyhoo, that's how the conversation had started, and now this nearly cadaverous dark-haired and waxen-fleshed urchin sat beside him in the HUM-V, eating one of the bags of shrimp toast, cheeks stuffed like a chipmunk or, a squirrel, Melvin thought, bemused by the coincidence, for, when he'd asked, "What's, uh, what's your name?" she'd answered very quickly, "Well, gee, shit, my real name's Shirley but everybody calls me Squirrelly, 'cos, fuck, I guess I'm kind of a squirrelly person, ya know? And that's what the other kids called me in kindergarten before my folks croaked and me'n my sister got shoved in Foster Fuckin' Care. Fuck, man, if you ever have kids, don't fuckin' die on 'em, man, 'cos holy fuckin' shit, those twisted pervs in Foster Care'll be ass-fuckin' 'em when they're six and teachin' 'em to suck cock. That's what happened to me and my sister, man. Fuckin' shit-head father had to drive shitfaced one night and rolled the station wagon right off the fuckin' Mohawk River bridge, with him'n my mom in it. They fuckin' froze to death in the water, man, and I was five and my sister was seven, and that was the end of the line for us. Oh, fuck, but what was I saying? Yeah. Squirrelly Shirley, they called me."

  The name fit, with or without the staccato-burst, jonesing-junkie description of her less-than-flowery childhood. Melvin felt sorry for her, as least as far as he could comprehend anything beyond the shelter of his inadequate-and-socially-oblivious-rich-boy-still-living-with-his-father-even-at-age-33 life.

  Driving, he sipped his bottle of Snapple and said, "Wow, I'm really sorry to hear that."

  "What? That my name's Squirrelly?"

  "Er, well, no. I mean—"

  "We still gotta half hour on the road so how 'bout I suck your dick now while you're driving?"

  Melvin shuddered, nearly spat out a mouthful of Snapple when she immediately and with no compunction whatsoever, leaned over in the passenger seat and began to caress his crotch. Melvin's inexperienced and quite virgin penis hardened just as immediately.

  "I'll get'cha off good and then maybe you could lay twenty or maybe forty bucks on me. It's good head and I won't rush ya. Oh, and can I have your egg rolls when I'm done? I haven't eaten in, like, three motherfuckin' days."

  Melvin was shaking he was so nervous. A pruh-pruh-pruh—prostitute! Her little white hand tended his crotch like an expert doughmaker's, kneading, kneading. Oh, oh! This is going to be wonderful! He looked over at the blanched face framed by hair black and sh
iny as volcanic glass. She wore cutoff jeans trimmed so high that he could see a few stray black pubic hairs. Her skinny legs extended, crossed. She also wore a white tubetop with coffee stains...or some other manner of stain, and as she played with Melvin's crotch some more, she pulled the tubetop down to reveal raving white flaps of skin for breasts, and nipples large as lenses on a typical pair of glasses. These nipples, however, weren't circles but instead irregular ovals. In fact they looked more like chewed beef jerky than anything else. In summation, then, her mammarian attributes were ugly and non-arousing from any conventional viewpoint. Not a Class Rack, in other words.

  Melvin's penis tremored as did most of the rest of him, his testicles drawing up. Squirrelly's breasts would be sure to turn off most men, yet Melvin found them to be the most erotic thing he'd ever seen in his life for one reason alone: aside from those few glimpses of his father's new wife's bare bosom (which was another story), he'd never seen "live" breasts before—ever. On Cinemax, sure, and in magazines owned by his few acquaintances at the paper. His social introversion, for instance, even at age 33, excluded him from the possibility of going to a strip joint. It also excluded him from a trip to one of Syracuse's many adult video stores where he could rent pornography and, hence, see attractive naked women having sex. Likewise, the idea of soliciting a prostitute for an actual sexual experience that involved a woman instead of his hand was impossible. And getting laid the normal way? Asking a girl out on a date and cultivating mutual interests and eventually going to bed with her?