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well, raping and killing. Though, in all verity, most citizens not only didn’t care when gang members killed each other and in fact applauded it, the M-27 Gang killed just as many innocent, middle-class tax-payers, essentially just for the hell of it. Federal agents caught nearly the entire gang in a sting operation several summers ago; a shoot- out ensued, and all the gang members were introduced to the morgue. The only member fortunate enough to not be present was Menduez. (He’d been on the prowl for puppies to abduct from peoples’ yards.) But given the intensity of the heat now on for him, he wisely decided to go small-time, move to Pulaski, and hook up with several characters who shared his expertise for marketing dangerous substances.

Small-time worked just fine.

He bopped along, eventually turning into the part of town that was, at best, ill- regarded: a little industrial park in proximity to subsidized block apartments and shit-looking little houses. A warehouse occupied one section of the park, though; its sign read, of all things, WAREHOUSE, and the actual owner of this warehouse, via a very circuitous paper trail, was one Paul Vinchetti III, known to closer associates as “Paulie the 3rd.” The only wares to ever be housed here were kilo-sized bags of heroin. The warehouse served as the operational base for a group who were as ill-regarded as this section of town: NSG-3— heroin middle-men—and one member of this gang was none other than Menduez.

Menduez passed the warehouse’s closed-for-the-last-ten-years garage door and knocked twice, then once, then twice on the smaller steel door aside. Eventually he was admitted, then the door was relocked.

“There be my bro’, Menduez,” greeted the Gang’s magnate, “Case Piece,” a skinny yet apple-biceped late-‘20s African American who wore cliched “‘hood” apparel: blinking $100 sneakers and jeans hanging halfway down his fuckin’ ass. His t-shirt boasted the face and name of his favorite Rap star, REE-dik-YOU- liss. Sitting beside him, scrawling in a numbered account ledger, was this enterprise’s math whizz and financial director, a Korean illegal immigrant called Sung. He looked kind of like Fuji on McHale’s Navy, for those old enough to even be aware of that wonderful old sitcom starring Ernest Borgnine and Al Lewis. Hence: the human components of NSG-3, which stood for, quite politically incorrectly, Nigger, Spic, Gook. A fourth semi-member—who in fact had been the one to let Menduez in the door—was the Gang’s stress-reliever, a short, slim yet well-curvatured Caucasian woman with blond hair and jet-black roots known as “Highball.” Best described as an over-the-hill gang-groupie, this 35-year-old fornicatress turned tricks for the Gang, helped “baggie” the “skag” for delivery to their “street-points” and individual “hypes,” and provided the boys sexual access on demand. Her nickname had been earned at the tender age of 15 when, upon joining her very first gang—a sprawling meth troupe in Minnesota—she’d unflinchingly masturbated close to 50 men and then expertly collected their ejaculations in a highball glass. This served as her initiation to the gang; and one need not be told what she did with the contents of that glass. Perfect implants graced her bosom, these being purveyed during her better days of stripping. A quality genetic composure was easily observed: Highball’s body still looked quite sexually provocative even after decades of drugs, drink, hard knocks, and carnal abandon. An interesting character trait was thus: she tended to wear a black overcoat with Hip-Hop buttons all over it, that and flip-flops. This ploy came in handy, for instance, to quickly display “merchandise”; in fact, it was preliminary in her admission to NSG-3 only days ago. See, great body notwithstanding, Highball’s face—or “grill,” as Case Piece called it—looked a bit long in the tooth, but, however oddly, the overcoat compensated for this. She had spotted the guys loitering near the local Hess station, and she proved her assertiveness without compunction. Waltzing right up to them, she said, “Hey. I wanna be in your fuckin’ gang.”

Case Piece made a comedic facial gesture. “Shit. You old, bitch. Your grill all wrinkly’n shit. We’re V.I.P’s—we don’t lay no dick on no old.”

“Well, the wrinkles are from meth, but I don’t do that shit no more, and I don’t do crack, coke, beans, eightballs—none of it. My jones is fucking, sucking, and swallowing cum. And what guy really gives a shit about the face? I gotta topper-drawer bod than anything you ever fucked, and I’ll fuck’n suck all’a ya, like, all the time. Just let me in your gang. I’m a gang girl, always been.”

Sung and Menduez stood arms crossed, appraising.

“All right,” Case Piece consented. “Let’s see you pimp your shit. Get them poo-putt bitchcovers the fuck off.”

All Highball had to do was open her overcoat, and—

All three gang guys raised big brows, grinned, and began rubbing their crotches.

Case Piece’s enthusiasm burst forth. “Shit, bitch, damn, that’s some xtralishious white-bitch up-town bags and trick-time super bubble-pie!”

“Ain’t it?” Highball said.

“Now let’s see the cash-drawer.”

Highball raised one leg, in a brazen pubic exhibit.

Menduez and Sung high-fived, hooting in their particular accents.

“Shit, ho!” Case Piece approved. “That’s the phattest, toppest, trickest, goldest food-card machine I ever peel-eyed in my whole fuckin’ thug LIFE! Make my baboon sack go all a-fuckin’ quiver!”

“And check out my clit,” she advised, then—acrobatically maintaining the pose—she V’d her fingers over her vulva’s tip, applied pressure, and bared an astonishingly large clitoris. The nerve-corpulent kernel stuck out like the end of a mini-frank.

“Damn, girl! You got a cunt-nugget!”

 “Fruck!” Sung railed. “You twop dwawer, girl!”

And Menduez: “Dat’s some serious buena CHIT, mang! Keeler tits’n poosy, mang!”

Highball grinned, nodding. “Good. Now make me hip to your crib so you can peel-eye me fuckin’ ya all till you’re cryin’ like babies,” whereupon the boys escorted her to the warehouse and, with great satisfaction, sampled the goods.

And this was only days ago, yet in that short time, Highball had acclimated to the gang quite well, and she even did all of their laundry. At this very moment, though, she flip-flopped herself to the wall where a bizarre apparatus leaned. “Hey, Case Piece? What the fuck’s this?”

The device looked akin to an industrial floor buffer that sat strangely on a long metal blank, rather skateboardish, but the “blank” possessed a peculiar pivot at the center on the bottom. The machine housed a small gasoline motor with the words ALPINE on it.

Case Piece gulped. “That a stump-grinder, ‘ho.”

“The fuck?”

“You ain’t met Paulie’n his crew, bitch…”

“Fruuuuuuck,” Sung intoned. “They hawdkwore…”

“Chit, yeah,” Menduez added with a gulp.

“So don’t never be dopest enough ta piss ’em off,” Case Piece went on. “See, they be the dudes that bring us the uncut smack every month.”

Highball scratched her jet-black roots, still eyeing the machine. One end was clearly a grinding-wheel. “Yeah? So what’s that got to do with this…stump-grinder?”

“S’fore grindin’ tree stumps but, Paulie? He use it ta grind people. No jive. These dudes? Fuck. Anybody cross ’em, they fuck ’em up, and if they cross ’em bad enough… they stump-grind ’em.” Even Case Piece, as bad-ass as he may or may not have been, showed signs of unease in relating this. “Say some player or jamake start trine to sell smack on Paulie’s turf? Paulie bury the dude up to his neck—no jive—and then one’a his crew, he take that machine’n grind his head off.”

“Fuck!” Highball yelled.

“And there was one time, see, this bagman was double-dealin’ ‘tween Paulie’s smack and some jamake’s— they stake the dude’s squeeze to the ground and, see, this bitch was poppin’ she was so pregnant. So then Paulie’s guy…he stump-grinds the chick’s belly, all’s while makin’ the dude watch.”

Highball paled.

“But ya know what? That dude, he never double-deal again.”

“Fuck,” she muttered.

“Here chore BK Veggie, puta,” Menduez said, and handed her a sandwich from the Burger King bag.