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“How could they do that?” Paulie yelled, red in the face and spittle flying, and—

BANG!

—he rammed his fist again into the wall.

“What’s all that bangin’ out there?” Melda inquired from her cubbie of horrors in back.

Cristo looked worriedly over his shoulder. “Wow, boss. Ya know, ya might not want to keep bangin’ the wall like that.”

Dr. Prouty stammered, while raising his brow at the dents in the wall, “Your confederate is quite right, Mr. Vinchetti. Your infuriation is quite understandable given these grim circumstances but, really, what benefit will there be in breaking your hand?”

“They fucked my mother in the head!” Paulie wailed, “and then they let a DOG fuck my mother in the head!” but this time when the don hauled his fist back, Argi caught it.

“Yeah, boss. Better idea is for ya to calm down—”

“Argi!” Paulie bellowed. “If three rednecks and a dog fucked your mother in the head, wouldn’t you be pissed?”

“Well, yeah, boss, sure. But if ya bust your hand from bein’ pissed off, then don’t that give Helton the last laugh?”

Paulie’s brain simmered in contemplation, and eventually he loosened up. “Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, clearing his head. “I can’t give that hayseed fuck the last laugh… I gotta find some way to, some way to”—he snapped his fingers. “Doc, what am I tryin’ to say?”

Dr. Prouty, still pale himself from witnessing the video, paused, then replied, “I believe, sir, that you mean you need to find a way to re-process this very regrettable catalyst into a mode of energy that can be utilized to your advantage. Rather than expending energy via rage, it would be better to convert that energy into transitive action.”

“Yeah. That’s what I was tryin’ to say.” Paulie sat down on the padded bench seat. “Fact of the matter is…I never even liked my mother. She bad-mouthed my dad and treated me like shit when I was a kid. But still. I’m Italian, and it’s my mother. Pow-Wow time, guys. What do we do?”

“We know he was in Manhattan last night,” Argi offered, “so maybe he’s still there. Maybe he’s lookin’ to find more of your relatives to—”

“To fuck in the head, yeah.”

“So I’m thinkin’ maybe we should go to Manhattan ourselves. Shit, boss, were not that far. We could try to find him. Air him out once and for all.”

“Sounds like a good idea, boss,” Cristo affirmed from the driver’s seat.

Argi: “He found your mother easy enough. Maybe he’ll go after more of your relatives now.”

“Yeah…maybe…” But Paulie was working on something. “Or maybe what we should do is go after more of his relatives.”

“But how, boss?” Cristo asked. “The guy lives in the hills. We don’t know shit about the backwoods. Only reason we knew how to find Helton’s grandkid is ’cos your wife told us he caught crayfish at that lake most mornings.”

“Yeah, boss,” Argi went on. “And it ain’t like we can look up the name Tuckton in the phone book. Shit, these rubes don’t even have phones.”

The hum of the big motor-home’s tires droned on. Paulie looked to Prouty. “Doc. What do we do? How we get a line on this redneck’s relatives?”

Wearied but desperately trying not to show it, the good doctor struggled a moment, then offered this convoluted sentence: “Recalling that your wife’s cultural roots to some extent parallel Mr. Tuckton’s, and given that she, in fact, apprized you of information that led to the grandson’s abduction…perhaps you should ask your wife.”

Paulie stared at him and blinked. “Cristo! Turn the Winnie around and go back to Pulaski!”

“Back to Pulaski, boss?”

“That’s what I said.” Paulie looked to his lieutenant. “Argi, gimme the phone…”

— | — | —

Chapter 13

(I)

Deputy Chief Malone and Sergeant Boover had waited till nightfall to come into the vacant house on Trott Street, and they’d arrived in Malone’s personal vehicle, not their patrol cars. Why? They didn’t want anyone on the street to know that police were in the house.

But since the house was abandoned, they both spat copious plumes of tobacco juice on the floor. Big deal? The house was a foreclosure!

Boover hung curtains while Malone set up lamps in various rooms so that the house would appear tenanted. Upon having the need, Malone loped to the squalid bathroom but to his mortification found it bereft of toilet and sink. “Well, gawd-dang, Boover,” he complained upon returning to the “living” room. “Ain’t a toilet in the damn house or even a sink!”

“I know,” Boover said over his shoulder as he urinated quite noisily in the corner.

Malone shrugged, then did the same, and then, upon hearing the dual streams, their recent quadrupedal acquisition, an adorable German Shepherd/Jack Russell puppy they’d named Buster, raised its leg and peed right along with the men.

Buster romped about, yapping, as the officers finished their tasks.

“Well, dang, Boover. I’d say we done a fine job makin’ this dump look occupied.” Malone pronounced “occupied” as ok-yer-pied.

Boover fired a stream of juice up on the white wall, producing something like a brown question mark. “Yeah, anyone walking by or driving by’ll shorely think someone just moved in.” The lamps glowed bright. Then they walked into the kitchen, whose window faced the rear of the eighth-of-an-acre lot. Boover clicked a switch, then an outside floodlamp lit up the fenced backyard.

“Yeah, I’d say this’ll work just right…” He paper-clipped an edge of the curtain, which produced a minuscule gap. Boover slid over a piece-of-shit table, placed the stop-frame camera on it, then nodded.

“Dang straight, Chief.”

The lens came into perfect alignment with the gap.

“How’s it work?” Malone asked and fired a plume of juice halfway across the room.

“Well, accordin’ to the directions, a average camera takes, like, 18 frames a second, but this camera don’t take but one frame a second. The memory in the machine’ll last days.”

“Sounds just peachy.”

“Peachy for us.” Boover chuckled. “Not too peachy for the dog.”