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Highball smirked. “You think I can eat after hearin’ that shit? Fuckin’ spic must be crazy!”

“Si, cerda, si,” Menduez uttered, smiling.

“Ya spic fuck! You dissin’ me? What’s cerda mean?”

“Eet meens beautiful woooooman.”

“Oh, well… How sweet!” said Highball, the compliment temporarily divorcing the smirk from her face. To Case Piece and Sung, two Double Whopper Value meals were dispensed. Then Case Piece asked, “What’s in the sack, jack?”

Menduez grinned and removed from the sack a cute-as-a-button Cocker Spaniel puppy. The puppy licked Menduez’s face, frantically wagging its tail.

“A puppy!” Highball wailed in delight, but there was anything but delight in the reactions of Case Piece and Sung.

Highball took the puppy in her arms and coddled it. “Menduez got us a puppy! It can be the gang mascot!”

Menduez laughed, then said to Case Piece. “I found out wheech house those new players creebing at, dah focks.”

Highball didn’t receive Menduez’s meaning, yet so delighted she was with the puppy, she didn’t think to ask. “What should we name it?”

“How’s ’bout Dead Meat?” Case Piece said.

“Huh?” replied the prostitute, and it might be appropriate to remind the Reader again that Highball was new to the gang. She was therefore unaware of Menduez’s abominable penchant; so when Case Piece explained that penchant, Highball shrieked and began to run with the puppy.

“What the fuck kind of sick shit is that!” she screamed. “Ain’t no way I’m lettin’ him torture this puppy!”

Menduez blocked the door.

“Shit, girl,” Case Piece said. “This be a gang, not Sesame Street. You new, so’s you can’t go actin’ all crazy’n shit. Uh-huh. The dog thing is Menduez’s thing. We don’t exactly dig it either but that’s the way it rolls. Menduez, he do a lot for our gang and you…don’t. So cut out the chick-shit and give Menduez the dog back, less you wanna cap in yo’ white ass. You underdig?”

Highball looked pre-seizural at the prospect. But she underdug, all right, especially the “cap” part, but still… Still…

“It’s a puppy, for fuck’s sake!”

WHAP!

Menduez rammed his fist into Highball’s cheek. She collapsed, unconscious even before she hit the floor, then the Venezuelan sociopath picked the puppy back up, which immediately began to lick his face. “American girls, mang, they’se loco,” he said, then took the puppy to a room that was thankfully so far back in the building that Case Piece and Sung wouldn’t be able to hear…the sounds.

Sung frowned, then bit into his Double Whopper with Cheese. “That gry, he no wight in head!”

Case Piece shrugged. “Yeah, well, I guess none of us is. We all a bunch of drug dealers. I don’t know how he can do that shit to dogs either but, shit, that’s what they do where he from. Sung, we need to be more sensitive to other cultures. Me bein’ a player from the ‘hood’n you bein’ from Japan or some shit.”

Sung hacked out a bite of his sandwich. “Ko-wee-ah, man!” he howled. “I from Ko-wee-ah, not Japan! Fruck the Jrapanese, the frucks! In Wald Waw Two, the fruckin’ Jrapanese pigs kill all our men and turn our women to whores! They take our rice and give to their soldiers and make us eat our own shit! Fruck Jrapan! Americans should’ve brombed whole cunt-twee!”

“Chill, chill, Sung. Shit. I don’t know from no Korea, man. Though it was all the same, Japanese, Chinese’n all—”

Sung hacked out another bite of sandwich. “China! Fruck! Dirty Wed Chinese, they come over our cunt-twee in the north and kill us all for the commissar! Fruck the Chinese!”

Case Piece rolled his eyes. “Whatever, Sung. Lay back, huh?”

Both men glanced up at the sound of knocks on the door. Two knocks first, then one, then two more.

Sung opened it, and in walked a tall, well-postured man with neatly trimmed gray hair. He looked rather like John Delorean, for those who remember John Delorean. Nice slacks, nice dress shoes, and, oddly, a white labcoat, like a doctor’s.

“Doc!” greeted Case Piece. “My man! How you be?”

The doctor, whose name was Dr. Winston Prouty, formerly an esteemed plastic surgeon from Beverly Hills, was currently a rather uncharacteristic errand boy for Paul Vinchetti III. Prouty considered Case Piece’s query, then answered in a rich, articulate tone. “Why, your man be…in reasonably good physical and mental repair, I’d estimate.”

“Solid. Shit, we ain’t peel-eyed you in a long-ass time.”

“I’m on a special excursion with Mr. Vinchetti and two of his affiliates. We’re, in a manner of speaking, multi- tasking. Two birds with one stone?”

Sung held out his sandwich. “You maybe rike brite of my Double Ropper, Doc?”

“Kind sir, your generosity is appreciated in the utmost, but I must respectfully decline, as…recent events have forestalled all appetite. I’m here merely to make sure—as the old saying goes—that the coast is clear.”

“It be clear, Doc, it be clear, and, man, we need a new drop off ’cos we is fresh out’a skag.”

“Well then that regrettable deficiency will be remedied posthaste,” and next Prouty made a call on his cellphone, said something, and hung up. Within moments, a refined rumbling could be heard outside.

“Damn, Doc, what you boys drivin’ ’round in?” Case Piece asked. “Sounds like a fuckin’ tank.”

“Holy shrit!” Sung said, peeping through the minuscule front window. “It look like big fruckin’ house on reels!”

Case Piece looked, too, and saw the massive motor-home parking in front of the warehouse. “Shit, we could have ourselves a party in them wheels. That’s trick.”

For some strange reason, the innocuous remark caused a moment of malaise within the doctor. “I…assure you that…no manner of partying has ever taken place in that Winnebago.”

“Well, shit. Sung, get the wheelbarrow! We got junkies out there fuckin’ cryin’ for the shit.”

“Hence, the machinations of addiction and its formidable utility in consumerism.”

Three more men entered then, all dark-haired, all wearing suits, gloves, topcoats, and sunglasses. A raucous greeting ensued. The first man was, of course, Paul Vinchetti III, aka Paulie the 3rd, lean, salon-tanned, mid-to- late-‘30s, son of Paul Vinchetti Jr., grandson of Paul Monstroni Vinchetti, aka “Vinch the Eye,” originally a district boss in the Lonna/Stello/Marconi Crime Pyramid, an armature of that mythical human machinery known as the Mafia. (It may be worth pointing out that said crime pyramid was now referred to as the Vinchetti/Stello Crime Pyramid. Lonna and Marconi had gotten greedy and both wound up stump-ground.) Paulie was told quite frequently that he was a dead-ringer for the Duke University basketball coach, but he’d never heard of the guy. Shit, Paulie was a mob boss. He didn’t watch fucking basketball.

Next in Paulie’s crew was an ox-necked, crag-faced, and broad-shouldered lieutenant, Arrigetto “Argi” Calzano. Argi was 55 years old and had caused a great deal of Vinchetti’s enemies to sleep with the fishes. Third was Paulie’s “fix-it” man, a trim, good-natured psychopath about 40 years old: Cristo Picrinni. His real first name was Cristoforro which meant “follower of Christ.” He’d blow-torch a judge’s baby, gang-rape-to-death a police chief’s adolescent daughter, or pressure-cook the head of a politician’s aged father, all without an iota of reservation.

“There’s my man on the street,” Paulie said. “What’s up?”

Case Piece replied, “‘S’all solid. I’m your Ace Boon Coon, my man. We’se just chillin’ and killin’, slingin’ and blingin’, dealin’ and stealin’, thuggin’ and muggin. Everything’s crown—uh-huh.”

Paulie blinked. “And sorry we’re late. The pickups are taking longer and getting smaller. It’s this goddamn recession.”