ritzy townhouse just out’a Newark. Don’t see as much’a Marshie, not since her baby died. Her first kid, that little snot ‘Becca, lives at the house here all the time while she’s in school. Gotta servant looks after her.”
“Fuck ’em all,” Boover sputtered, arms crossed. He looked disgustedly at the staked dog’s head in the present yard. “And now we got this. One’a Vinchetti’s guys…killing puppies…”
“Where’s the rest of the dog?”
“Dude chucked what was left in the back yard by the door. He always puts the head on a stick in front and leaves the rest in back so when the cowboys split, they see that too. Yanked the skin right off the pooch, then slit its belly open. Cute, huh?”
“And you know damn well the poor mutt was still alive while all that was happenin’.” Malone shook his head again. “Who the fuck could do somethin’ like that?”
“Like the feds said. Probably a bagman from Venezuela—that’s where the dog-head thing comes from. Shit, they probably eat dogs in that shit-hole third-world commie dive.”
Malone was getting depressed. He couldn’t take his eyes off the dog’s head: that of a tiny white poodle.
“Whose dog is it?”
“Adeline Parker—”
“Shit.”
“She’s over there, bawlin’ her eyes out.”
“I’ll talk to her. Try to clear the rest’a these folks out,” and then Malone walked dejectedly to the fat, jowly old woman blubbering in the yard.
“Aw, gosh dang, Adeline, I cain’t tell how sorry I am ’bout your little dog,” he began.
The old lady was inconsolable, boo-hooing to such extremes—God bless her—that Malone fantasized kicking the unpleasant old blue-haired biddy hard in the ass. “You find the evil varmint done this to my little Fluffy! You find him, Chief! If’n you don’t I’ll use all my power in the community to see that you never get elected again.”
Here we go. Malone put his arm about her shoulder and tried to urge her back in the direction of her house. “We’ll find him, all right, Adeline. I give ya my word, and when we do find him…he’ll up’n pay dearly.”
“Aw, bullshit!” Adeline gruffed. “You police these days ain’t got the spine to do things right no more. No, no, not like the good ole days. If yawl had any balls, like real?men, you’d catch this monster’n kill him! But, no, no, you’ll be more concerned with his fuckin’ rights! Makin’ shore he gets a fair trial! Anyone tortures a puppy ought’a be tortured hisself!”
Jesus please us, Malone thought. “Now, Adeline, let’s have no more talk like that. Why don’t’cha go on home now, git yerself a nip and try ta get some rest—”
“And where was you! Where was you’n the rest’a yer overpaid, lazy cops when this psycho was stealin’ my poor Fluffy? Tell me that!”
“Just you get on home now, Adeline…”
The elderly nuisance pulled away from Malone, then stomped toward the grim stick bearing the head of her pet. Still blubbering, she pulled the head off the stick—
“Aw, now, Adeline!” Malone moaned. “That there’s kind’a what we call evidence! Ya cain’t just up’n take it!”
“Stop me! Gonna give my Fluffy’s head a proper burial, and if’n you don’t like it, then kiss my ass!”
Boover returned as the woman stormed off. “Forget about the head, Chief. Ain’t like we can take prints off it.”
“Shee-it,” Malone muttered.
“You got any idea how we might go about catchin’ this guy?”
Malone tweaked his handlebar mustache. “I been thinkin’ ’bout it. You know how the feds do it, don’t’cha? They have thereself a sting operation.”
“A sting, huh? How are we gonna do that?”
“It ain’t gonna be easy but, see, I figure if we play our cards smart, we can catch this dog-killin’ piece’a shit, and once we do that, we might be able to catch Vinchetti himself…”
(II)
God, I love him so much, Veronica mused of Mike as she stood behind the camera counter. She believed in Providence—not the city or the basketball team—and she knew that it was God who’d placed Mike Anthon in her life’s path. Her heart pattered thinking about him—Mike, not God—and she also knew that her insistence to remain a virgin proved her faith beyond doubt. God KNOWS, He KNOWS, she thought. The certain venal sins—namely fellatio—that she committed with Mike were purely pragmatic in this new and restless age; and with those she skirted the far more grievous sin of intercourse out of wedlock. God, she knew, would forgive the fellatio, for He knew the true foundation of her resolve: to live and love in accordance with God’s Word.
Christmas muzak issued lightly through the store. “Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus…” Garlands of blinking lights extended overhead, while the front windows displayed cardboard holly and giant XMAS SALE signs. She looked down at the row of Casio and Nikon CoolPix digital cameras, only to spy her own superimposed reflection in the glass counter top. Even in this abstract image of herself, as the Christmas lights above blinked down, she could see her aura of faith. Please, God. Give me the strength to steer Mike off his path of error. Let my love be true enough to CHANGE him.
Mike had promised to take her out tonight—for pizza—and the prospect made her brim with joy. Every so often, she glanced over at him, trying hard to seem nonchalant but it wasn’t easy. He stood over there now in the cellphone department talking with his crony Archie, and every so often his gorgeous, dark eyes would flick over to her, then flick back down. He’s checking me out but doesn’t want me to know, she realized, blushing. Mike was vain, and she knew that sin of vanity came from his GQ good looks—he couldn’t help it. And men so possessed of such sheer handsomeness often played hard to get. No big deal, Veronica thought. Patience was her virtue.
Aside from her sin of fellatio, she knew she was guilty of a little vanity herself but this, too, God would forgive because it served as a means to a Godly end. You have to keep them interested, she knew all too well, otherwise you lose them in this amoral quagmire we call modern society… She’d just have to keep the faith because, in essence, that’s what God would want her to do. Her nipples tingled beneath the loud, bright-blue employee shirt. The sheer polyester accommodated her ploy quite well…
She’d deliberately taken to foregoing her bra (I may not have a runway model’s face but I KNOW I’ve got great breasts…) and would several times daily tweak her nipples to make them protrude. Men liked that. She wanted Mike inundated by a positive erotic image of her. Oh, she knew he’d been with plenty of women and was constantly accosted by plenty more every day. But those silly girls don’t love him, and he knows that.
Ultimately, Veronica was very aware that she was using lust to lure Mike closer into her life, and lust was a sin. But her rationale seemed too honest to be incorrect. It has to be okay to use lust as my bait simply because God knows my eventual intentions are to live sinlessly, in a marriage with Mike. It made sense to her, at least. She got bristly thinking about him, and bristlier still when musing upon such a time when they were husband and wife. Her uncle’s trust fund, she knew, was more bait for the expectation but, again, eventually true love would find its way to his heart.
Then money wouldn’t matter. Only our LOVE would matter, and upon completion of the thought, a tear of joy slipped from her eye.
