Grimoire Diabolique

it was providing a very new and creative utility.

“You stapled their lips together?” Vinchetti deduced.

“That’s correct, sir. The entire procedure took less than a minute, I’d say.”

Vinchetti stepped back, astonished. “That’s really neat-o!”

Dr. Prouty rolled his eyes. Yes. Neat-o.

At the same moment, the door opened, and in walked Vinchetti’s most trusted lieutenant, a weasel-faced little man with hair like steel wool and more pock-marks than Tommy Lee Jones. Tony Guerini had worked his way up from the bowels of Trenton. As a kid, he’d bagged for the numbers racket in all the worst neighborhoods, and as a teenager he was working enforcement. When a hooker gypped her pimp, it was Tony who uglied her up, cutting off her clitoris for the first offense, her nose for the second, then the head for the third. When a numbers collector came up short, it was Tony who shattered his spine, and when a distro guy stepped on the smack a little too hard, it was Tony who cranked the tourniquet around his neck till his eyeballs popped half out and his face hemorrhaged. Tony was an industrious young man. And by the age that most young men were graduating college, Tony was proving himself as a most reliable “button” for the Vinchetti Family. He deemed no job too abhorrent, no hit contract too deplorable. Be it a hardened crew-boss from a rival family or an eighty-year-old lady who was a crooked cop’s mom, Tony would tear out the heart of the crew-boss with a claw hammer and rape the old lady to death without so much as a blink. He’d once machine-gunned an entire busload of first graders simply because one of the kids was a judge’s grandson, and when the Catholic diocese had threatened to not pay back their loan, it was Tony who kidnapped those three nuns from St. Christopher’s and…

Well…

You don’t really want to know what he did to them.

It should suffice to say, then, that Tony didn’t tiptoe through the tulips when it came to getting family work done, and when the Paul Vinchetti had had to go to war, Tony was his commander in the field. A loyal friend and most trusted adjutant.

“Tony!” exclaimed Vinchetti with enthusiasm. “Where ya been, my man! The fun’s about to start!”

“Wouldn’t miss it for a cock-suck from Jenna Jameson,” Tony replied, sporting a high-end Sony Max-Cam. Then he took a look at Hymie’s bulbous hairy buttocks. “Er, on second thought, maybe I would.”

Vinchetti honked comradly laughter and slapped his friend on the back. “Aw, come on! Big, bad, tough-guy, human meat-grinder like you? You’ll love this!”

Tony (who, by the way, wore an absolutely ridiculous white suit, black satin shirt, and red tie) screwed the camera onto a Vivitar tripod. “Fuckin’ Hymie,” he muttered. “I told ya, boss. I told ya that tub’a shit was skimming some cream off the top.”

“Yeah,” Vinchetti remarked. “I had Lunky put a hidden camera in the cash room. Got the walrus-lookin’ fat scumbag rippin’ me off on tape.”

“How much did he pinch? Couple hundred large?”

“Fuck, no. Twenty bucks. It ain’t the amount, ya know? It’s the deed. Ya gotta be loyal in this business.”

Tony nodded sternly. “Damn straight.”

Dr. Prouty, meantime, stood aside, barely listening to the wise-guy banter. He hoped they could get on with it soon. Emeril Live came on in an hour. Bam!

Now Tony was widening the hoods on the lights. “So when did ya tell him you had him cold?”

Vinchetti’s slick grin turned up higher. “This morning right after breakfast. You should’a seen him, Tony! He put down four plates of hash and eggs, so then me and Knuckles Jr. bring him into the office, show him the tape. He was blubberin’ like a baby—a giant baby!—and he’s on his knees beggin’ for his life, kissin’ my wing-tips. Thought he was gonna upchuck all that food right there on the carpet.” Vinchetti’s eyes took on a glitter. “And it’s a good thing he didn’t ’cos…”

But Tony’s attention had drifted to the broad lab table where Hymie and Darcy lay strapped. He squinted in confusion. “Who’s that there strapped next to him? Darcy?”

“Yeah, she mouthed off,” Vinchetti explained. “Didn’t know a good thing when she saw it, if ya know what I mean. Kind’a hate to see her go, though. Flap-jacks for tits and a pussy on her about useless—you could stick a magnum of Asti Spumanti up there and there’s still be slack—but, man, could she chug a cock. I’ll tell ya, Tony, she’d have my rod in her yap right down to the root and still, somehow she’d be able to tongue my asshole.”

“‘S’shame to have to deep-six a talent like that.”

Vihchetti made an odd pause. “Well, you know what I’m talkin’ about, Tony. Right?”

“What’cha mean, boss?”

“Yeah, sure. I heard she’s been blowin’ you all along, same time she was blowin’ me. Heard you were fuckin’ her too.”

Tony shot a dark glance right back. “Hey. Boss. Jokin’ around like that ain’t funny. I would never, and I mean never, fuck around with your private stock.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Tony said.

Vinchetti eyed his friend a moment more, then cracked his hands together and burst out laughing. “Hey, Doc! Would ya get a load of this guy? He thought I was serious!” Vinchetti slapped Tony hard on the back, still honking laughter.

Dr. Prouty rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, boss, you’re a real comedian,” Tony said.

“Bet’cha about shit yer pants, huh! Naw, Tony, I know you’d never fuck me over; I was just funnin’ with ya. But this crackhead bitch here—she’s got a good one comin’.”

“So what she mouth off about?”

“Can ya believe it? The little spunk rag said that I…” Vinchetti thought the better of elaborating. “She just got mouthy, you know?”

“Sure. Ain’t nothin’ worse than a split-tail who don’t know her own place. Only time a chick’s mouth should be open is when someone’s got a hard-on to stick in it. Rest of the time it should be closed.”

Dr. Prouty nearly blanched. I have a feeling these two don’t make any charitable donations to the National Organization of Women.

“I hear that,” Vinchetti agreed. “And what do guys like us do every time? Give ’em some green, put some nice jewelry around their skinny necks, and then they start to think they’re special. They start to get uppity. Start mouthin’ off, start gripin’ and takin’ you for granted. Well fuck that shit.”

Tony nodded in this deep philosophical unanimity. “Fuckin’ chicks. Ain’t none of ’em no good when ya get down to it. Ain’t nothin but a bunch of cum drains, boss, a bunch of low down dirty whores.” But Tony flinched immediately after he’d spoken the words. “Er, what I mean is all of ’em except your wife, boss.”

A laudable exclusion, Prouty thought.

Vinchetti returned the nod. “Well, yeah. Right.”

“So what’cha got planned for these two?”

“Oh, it’s a doozy, Tony! Doc here came up with the idea. Take a look, take a close look at ’em.”

Tony leaned closer over the two immobile faces. “Looks like… What the hell? Looks like they’re stuck together somehow…by their lips.”

Vinchetti chuckled. “Yeah, ain’t it neat-o? Doc here’s got this machine that stapled their lips together.”

“It’s a McCrath Model SS40-C,” Dr. Prouty piped in, holding the device up. “From their ‘S’ series, ‘S’ for small. It’s quite a quality item. The adjustable impact and foot assemblies allow for a—”

“Shaddap,” Vinchetti said, turning his attention back to Tony. “Ain’t that somethin’? Ain’t that some work?”

Tony continued to examine the fine details of the “work” with a watchmaker’s study. “You ain’t kiddin’. But… I don’t get it. They ain’t dead already, are they?”

“Naw, just unconscious. Doc here shot each up with some heavy duty tranks.”

“Actually,” the doctor interjected, now holding up his Bush automatic syringe, “I used the latest barbituric- acid derivative, Phenolax. Induces total unconsciousness in less than twenty seconds. It works by reducing the biogenic output of the diazamine receptors in the brain and—”