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After some minutes of squinting, it was discerned that no maps of New York City existed on the rack.

“Hon?” Helton inquired. “These here look like just county maps’n such. What we need is a map that’ll show us how ta git ta New York City.”

Kasha’s frown smoldered. “New York City! How stupid can you be?” the richly accented voice cracked. “Why would gas station in little shit Virginia town have New York City map?”

Helton stood, taken aback. “Well, I don’t rightly know but I thunk ya might have some, say, in the back.”

“You thunk wrong! Now why not you just pay for gas and leave? I don’t like you redneck types in store!”

Helton stilled himself. “Ain’t no call ta be nasty, missy. We’se just tryin’ ta get directions.”

The woman’s face turned pink with aggravation or even hatred. “This shit place and shit country! I should have stayed on potato farm near Magnitagorsk—”

“Well, then just you go back ta Mag-neeter-gorsh, missy, ’cos if’n ya don’t like America, then ya can pack yer blammed ‘taters up yer butt!” Helton could not refrain from objecting.

A hostile laugh and a jiggle of her outstanding breasts, and Kasha asserted, “You big dirty rednecks—oh yes!” and she pronounced “big dirty rednecks” as beeg darty redneeks. “This country full of nothing but shit people! That all I see all day! If it not you rednecks, it the welfare people or the farking old people or the drug add-eeks or the—” and she used the plural form of the N-Word.

Helton steeled himself against the desire to open up a can of whup-ass, but instantaneously, a better idea surfaced. “Well, gal, you certainly got’cher dander up ’bout somethin’ but I’se guess we all have our days like that. How ’bout we just pay up’n git?” He extracted a 1966 $100-bill just as Dumar approached and set several sodas down.

“Oh! Oh!” Kasha raged next. “Here come another redneck now! My God, I hate rednecks. You big fat redneck, and you-you little skinny scrawny redneck!”

“Well, hold on there, gal,” Dumar responded. “We ain’t said nothin’ ‘gainst you.”

“Oh, fark you! Fark both of you! In my country, Mother Russia, shit people like you get put in forced-labor camp! All you useless, shit people!” and it needs to be mentioned belatedly that she pronounced the word shit as “sheet.” She leaned forward—awesome mammarian-carriage swaying in the tight shirt—and exaggeratedly sniffed the air. “Oh! Oh! And you smell!” She mimicked coughing. “You smell like shit! ”

Dumar began, “Paw? Are we gonna—” but Helton smiled and staid his son’s remark, then whispered very lightly, “Pull the truck ’round back.”

A knowing glint came into Dumar’s eyes, then he departed the store.

“Here ya go, hon,” Helton went along and gave her the hundred. “And since yer havin’ such a bad day, wine- cha keep the change?”

She grimaced at the bill. “Oh, fark! Even your dirty redneck money smell like shit!”

“But first ring me up fer one’a these here Cherry Ice Slush drinks,” Helton quickly added and lumbered to the machine at the rear of the store. He dawdled there, holding an empty cup, then cast a cruxed glance back. “Missy? Sorry, but—shee-it—I cain’t make out how ta work this fancy machine. Seein’ how’se I just left you some sizeable change, how’s ’bout you showin’ me?”

“Oh! Oh!” Her hands visibly shook. “How stupid can fat dirty redneck be to not know how even to pour ice- slush drink!” Her face was now past pink as she shot from around the counter and stalked to the machine.

As she did so—it needs to be mentioned—her breasts bobbed spectacularly up and down.

She snapped the cup out of Helton’s hand. “You just put farking cup under spigot and—”

No more words escaped the hostile woman’s mouth after Helton clacked a big redneck knuckle against her temple. She fell limp as a stuffed doll (mind you, a stuffed doll with great breasts) and Helton dragged her out the back of the store.

(II)

 “Fuck,” Deputy Chief Malone said, and then, again, with emphasis. “And I’se mean fuck.”

The stoop-shouldered and large-adam’s-appled Sergeant Boover nodded. The ambulance had just pulled away, and among its contents was the dead body of resident Clifford Giller, an old VFW-type cantankerous prick nonetheless well-known in the community. When Mr. Giller had noticed his adorable, week’s-old puppy missing from his yard, he’d immediately spied the crowd forming at one of the more decrepit slum-houses down the street. He’d investigated, of course, only to discover, to his incontemplatable horror, the severed head of his beloved pet mounted barbarously on a stick in the front yard.

Whereupon, he suffered a massive thrombotic stroke and died on the spot.

It had taken a half-dozen more police to dispel the very-displeased crowd of local residents who’d gathered at the scene. Departing comments included, “What good’s a police force who don’t do nothin’ ’bout dog-killers?” “Whole world’s turnin’ ta shit, it seems, and the county cops’re letting our humble town turn ta shit with it,” “It’s our tax dollars payin’ their salaries! And while they’re eatin’ their fuckin’ donuts, our lovin’ pets’re gittin’ tortured by drug dealers!” and the like.

Fuck ’em, Malone had thought. He didn’t even eat donuts—a blood-sugar issue—but what irked him more than whining residents was the prospect of someone killing puppies, because, see, he liked puppies far more than he liked people…

The house had been found empty, its tenants—clearly illegal-immigrant heroin dealers—having fully comprehended the message so loudly planted in the abysmal front yard. Puppy parts, blood and fur, etc., were found in back, with much more evidence that the innocent animal had indeed been tortured and mutilated. Malone winced at the thought, acknowledging just how delighted he himself would be to turn the tables and torture the human who’d instigated this atrocity.

And it was all making Malone look quite inept.

“Smack, smack, and more smack,” he muttered, watching other officers close the scene. “Vinchetti just keeps gittin’ richer whilse we just keep lookin’ like horse’s asses.”

Chewing tobacco made a bolus of Boover’s left cheek, about the size of his adam’s apple. “So you really think it’s one of Vinchetti’s movers who’s the dog-killer?”

“Just a hunch, but…yeah. Every time some outsider comes into his territory, this happens. That’s some callin’ card.”

Malone walked droopily back with Boover to their cars. He glanced dazedly at the now-vacant tenement- house just as a gloved evidence technician removed the puppy’s head from the stick and placed it in a plastic bag.

“So what about this big plan of yours, Chief?” Boover said in a tone that possibly could’ve been sarcastic. “Your plan to catch the puppy-killer?”

“Shit takes time, Boover. You know that. I’se waitin’ on a delivery—”

“Delivery?”

“Yeah,” Malone said, choosing to keep his cards closer to the vest. He felt edgy; he snapped his fingers. “Gimme some’a yer Red Man, huh? I’se havin’ a nic fit like nobody’s business and I’m fresh out.”

Boover spat some juice, frowning. “Fuck, Chief. You make more money’n me. Obama just upped the price a buck a bag and ya know what for? To pay health care for kids whose folks’d rather spend their welfare cash-relief in bars than work! Just keeps uppin’ taxes for pork-barrel spendin’ and White House fuckin’ doll houses and plantin’ tomatoes on the South Lawn!” Naturally, Boover pronounced “tomatoes” as tum-ay-ters. “Don’t that grapehead know