Header 2

by Edward Lee

  “Terrific. Let’s go to the check-out and you can buy it, and then you can leave.”

  “Well…,” the woman hesitated. “Like I said, I wanna buy it but I don’t have the money.”

  Mike ground his teeth. This chick looked about two steps short of the homeless shelter; she was probably a street-crazy to boot. He seethed: “If you don’t have money…how are you going to BUY IT?”

  The woman smiled brokenly, rose on her tiptoes, and opened her overcoat.

  The physical image hit Mike’s face like a fist.

  “Come on…”

  Ten minutes later, he led her out of the back office to the front door.

  “Toodles,” she said and waved the CD. “Thanks.”

  “Have a Merry Christmas,” Mike said, catching his breath. Jesus, that there is what you call Snappin’ Pussy. He apprized her coltish legs as she left, and he could’ve sworn he caught a glimmer of semen trickling over her ankle.

  Just as the overcoated woman left, the vibrant and probably hyperactive Greeter walked in. (Mike still didn’t know her name.) She cast a leery glance over her shoulder. “Who was that?”

  The manager’s heart-rate was still coming down. “Huh? Oh, that… Uh, that was the Logictech rep. I…had to order more trackballs and wireless mouses—er, I guess…mice.”

  The Greeter watched the woman stride across the parking lot. “She looks more like a street whore.” Her firm, peach-sized breasts turned to him. “Anyway, I’m back from lunch.”

  “Pizza tonight?”

  A licentious grin, then after looking to and fro, she brazenly rubbed Mike’s crotch. “Only if I can have sausage on mine.”

  “No problem, babe.”

  She flinched and whined. “But…Mikey? I still have Christmas shopping to do but I’m on the clock till close. Can I leave early but, you know, stay on the clock anyway, if you know what I mean?”

  “Sure, babe. It’s good to be the boss.”

  She squealed and kissed him. “Thanks, dreamboat! See ya tonight.” She sailed through the automatic doors and had a reefer in her hand like a magic trick.

  Just after the Greeter left, Archie strolled in. He had several Subway bags dangling. “Why’s the Greeter leaving?”

  “I cut her loose. Talks too much. But she won’t be talking tonight with my dick stuck in her mouth.”

  “Nice guy. Here’s your meatball sub. Foot-longs are still only five dollars. Oh, and please tell me you’ve heard from Veronica.”

  “I haven’t heard from Veronica.”

  “Well, shit, man. Her car’s still out back. Don’t you think you should call the police?”

  “Why? She’s a big girl. Hey, you won’t believe this, but some whore with a killer bod just came in here and did me for a Hip Hop album.”

  Archie frowned as he bit into his double-meat Philly Cheese Steak. “You’re right, I don’t believe it. Now, if you’re not going to call the cops, at least call her. Aren’t you even the least bit concerned?”

  Mike looked at him, deadpan.

  “She could be lying dead in a ravine somewhere.”

  “Well, if she is, what good will it do for me to call?” He glanced around. The store was empty. “Look, I’m not taking time out of my busy schedule to call a girl who not only gives the worst head in the world but won’t even fuck me.”

  “For fuck’s sake! Would you call her? She could be in trouble. Even a soul-dead cold-hearted selfish prick like you must care a little bit about her.”

  Frowning, Mike whipped out his cellphone. “Okay, you want me to call her, I’ll call her.” He dialed, waited, paused, then whispered “Voice mail,” to Archie.

  Then: “Veronica, this is Mike. Honey, I’m really worried about you. Your car hasn’t moved, you didn’t show for work, you haven’t called. Please, baby, you’re worrying me to death. If I don’t hear from you soon, I’m gonna call the police. Please, honey. Call me. I’ll be waiting.”

  He hung up.

  “I don’t believe it,” Archie enthused. “You do care about her!”

  Mike nodded. “Of course I do. What kind of a schmuck to you think I am?” but of course he’d made the call to his own busy-signal.

  (V)

  Quiet day, still. Chilly but calm. Drifts of holiday music piped this way and that. Christmas was in the air.

  Case Piece and his “dawgs” bopped down the streets of the town’s seedier environs, their chunk of the shitty world firm in their hands. Case Piece wore a T-shirt depicting George W. Bush injecting heroin. Menduez wore a Scarface shirt that read: ALL DAH TYING WE GETTIN’ FUCKED BY DAT WASP WHORE. Sung wore a jacket whose back was emblazoned with a map of South Korea.

  They were selling some smack. Yeah. Case Piece slurped his Cherry Slush, nodding as he appraised the town he was sufficiently corrupting like a small-time cartel honcho. “Fuck, what that ole song be?” and then he sang, “Shit. Goddamn. I want me eggs and spam.”

  “That frat, Clase Preece!” Sung approved and bit into one of those Dolly Madison chocolate pies.

  “Chit, mang,” Menduez suspected. “Dat ain’t dah fuckin’ song, mang.”

  “Whatever.”

  Sung attempted a Rap. “Here crum dwoctor dway wiff the Twangeray!”

  Case Piece chuckled. “Listen ta Sung, man. Trine ta Rap like a player but he’s from Malaysia or some shit.”

  Sung hacked out a bite of pie. “Ko-WEE-ah, man! Fruck Malaysia! They a bunch of wadical extremist frucks with co-wupt government! We in Korea are Buddhist! The weligion of peace!” and this Sung bellowed so hard, the 9mm pistol stuck in his belt behind him almost fell out.

  “Chill, man, chill. I just kiddin’ ’cos I knows how it whiles ya.” Case Piece looked ahead. “Here come Highball all happy’n shit. Paulie’s right, she need a bag over her grill but her bod is phat to the groove.”

  “Hi, guys!” came the busted hooker’s exuberant greeting.

  Case Piece frowned. “Open up that bitch-wrap so’s I can peel-eye your tits, ‘ho.”

  Objection wrinkled her already wrinkled face. “Aw, come on, man. It’s fuckin’ December—it’s cold!”

  Case Piece stared. “Say what?”

  A smirk, then Highball opened her overcoat, immediately shivering.

  “Shit, yeah. Now that shit’s top as a crown.”

  “Yeah, man!” Sung railed. “Twop as a kwown! And twick-time super prussy!”

  The chill air shriveled the exemplary nipples and made her pubic hair stand on end. She closed the coat and gleefully handed Case Piece the CD. “Look! I got you a present!”

  The gang leader’s eyes widened. “Shit, bitch! Looks like you finally do somethin’ right.” He eyed the cover of the CD. “It my man, UN-lissen-ABULL. Dig it,” and then he put the disk in his boom-box and let ‘er rip.

  “Junky, a kunky lunky—jay, kay, ell—munky, you nunky oh-unky—emm, enn, oh—”

  “Turn that shit off!” a sudden voice cracked.

  The four street denizens looked over and saw that a county sheriff’s car had just pulled up, and scowling at them from the open window was the corpulent and oddly reddened face of Deputy Chief Dood Malone, one cheek crammed with chewing tobacco.

  Case Piece turned off the music. “Sorry, officer. We was just jammin’ on some tunes, don’t’cha know?”

  “Well, try some country and western—Jesus.” The man spat a plume of juice on the street. “You all got jobs?”

  “Oh, yes, sir,” Case Piece said. “We work for…Manpower.”

  The Chief looked suddenly reflective as if summoning nice memories. “I worked for Manpower when I was young. Great job. Provides opportunities for people, keeps ’em out’a trouble, keeps them off the drugs.”

  “Chit, yeah, sir,” Menduez assured with a pocket full of drugs. “We don’t do none’a dat drug chit.”

  Case Piece concealed a frown, while Malone’s own distraction continuously dragged his eyes to Highball’s curvatures. “Uh, oh—good. Make sure ya don’t. It’s
evil stuff folks are pushin’ on these once-fine streets.”

  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 underdig,” 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 p
aralysis 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.