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“Yeah, man, I get the same jibe from the hypes on the street,” Case Piece said. “They’re singin’ the blues. Shit, one junkie told me last three dudes he mugged were broke!”

“It’s fucked up. If Obama don’t fix this fuckin’ recession like he said, I’m gonna ask for my vote back!” Paulie blared, and then everybody laughed. Agri was the one with the suitcase, which he opened on a tattered couch. >From this he dispensed five kilo-bags of 95-percent-pure heroin—not that black tar shit from Mexico but the high-end smack from Afghanistan, compliments of our friends the Taliban.

“Damn, Paulie,” Case Piece regretted. “You ain’t kiddin’ the pickups are gettin’ smaller. We was expectin’ seven or eight.”

“It’s a kick in the balls, ain’t it? You’ll have to step on it a little more—fuck ’em. Drug dealers gotta make a living too, you know?” and then everyone, quite obligatorily, laughed again while all but Paulie secretly acknowledged that the remark wasn’t very funny. Then the tirade continued. “Fuckin’ sucks these days, I’m tellin’ ya. Price’a gas goin’ up again, mules chargin’ double, cops gettin’ harder’n harder to get on the pad ’cos they’re more worried about their fuckin’ health care! Top it all off, my wife’s on the rag so I couldn’t even put one in her before I took off. Now that really sucks!”

The others rolled their eyes, then laughed again.

Paulie sat down on an old cable spool that now sufficed for a table. The spool was covered with one-by-one- inch plastic Zip-Loc baggies. “Yeah, the world’s gettin’ fucked up, all right. Shit, you know what we heard on the radio comin’ over? We heard a news guy saying that some really fucked-up-in-the-head piece of shit—some guy in this town—is cuttin’ off the heads of puppy dogs after torturin’ the shit out of ’em. Kid you not.”

Concealing some sullenness, Case Piece said, “Yeah, that’s some fucked up shit, aw right, Paulie.”

“Said it’s some drug-turf thing, and I’ll bet my fuckin’ balls it’s one of these penny-ante fucks tryin’ to work our regions. I’ll tell ya, if I ever caught some low-life fuck torturin’ a puppy, man…I’d have Argi and Cristo do a job on him that would even make me puke.”

Sung gulped. “Yeah, Prawlie. That frucked up. Towtuwing dogs…”

“And not just dogs, the guy said. Puppies.” Paulie shook his head. “Just don’t know what’s gotten into the world.”

“Makes me sick just thinkin’ about it,” Argi said.

“Yeah, Paulie,” Cristo added. “I ever get my hands on the fuck? Oooo—mama mia!”

“Shit, let’s talk about somethin’ else. All this dog-killin’ talk’s makin’ me depressed.” Paulie pointed dejectedly to the wheelbarrow full of smack. “So anyway, that’s the way it goes. Cut the shit a little more’n get it on the street. We’re just like anyone else. Tryin’ to do the best we can durin’ economic bad times.” Paulie looked around. “Say, where’s that bean-eater? He didn’t get whacked, did he?”

“Aw, no, Paulie. Menduez—he our crownest drug-slinger—he doin’ just fine. He’s in back…fixin’ stuff.” Case Piece, repressing a minor sweat, directed to Sung, “Why’n’cha roll the smack in back and see if Menduez needs a hand?”

“White away!” and Sung wheeled through one of the doors.

Case Piece snapped on the boombox. “How ’bout we groove on some tunes, Paulie?” and then a cannonade of annoying sound rocketed forth: “Ya gizzle, ma mizzle, ya fizzle with my grizzle! We’re poppin’ caps, we’re poppin’ trunk, my bitch’s pussy smell like skunk! Tiggy tee, tiggy taw, we bustin’ down the law! We got the jack down jaw and we eat duh cole slaw—”

“Turn that shit off!” Paulie, Argi, and Cristo bellowed at the same time.

“Sure, dawgs,” Case Piece said and killed the boombox. “Just thought…ya might want some tunes. Chill out, ya know?”

“That shit gives me a headache almost as bad as the Caruso my mother made me listen to when I was a baby,” Paulie groaned.

Case Piece peeked again out the window. “So, Paulie? What’s with the motor-home? You don’t need a ride that big to putt-putt smack to a few points.”

“Naw, see, this was a special occasion,” Paulie began.

“Doc, he say somethin’ ’bout killin’ two birds with one stone.”

“The Doc was right.” Paulie rubbed his crotch for no apparent reason. “We needed the Winnebago for an action.”

“An…action?”

Argi’s throaty voice kicked in. “That’s goombah mob talk for a button.”

Case Piece squinted. “A button. How come I got the feelin’ you ain’t talkin’ ’bout buttons on a motherfuckin’ shirt?”

Paulie chuckled. “We had to whack someone, as in kill him. Vendetta thing. You know what vendetta means?”

Case Piece stroked his beardless chin. “Oh, like revenge’n shit.”

“Yeah. My wife, Marshie, you ain’t never seen her but—ooo, she’s a doll. Ain’t she, boys?”

“Magnifico,” complimented Argi, kissing the tips of his fingers.

“Makes Helen’a fuckin’ Troy look like a pack’a zits on a monkey’s ass,” Cristo said.

Paulie nodded. “Right. See, I only married her two-three years ago but every year this time she gets all depressed and—just like a fuckin’ woman—she never told me why. So I think it’s ’cos of the kid, even though that was, like six, eight months ago.”

“The kid?” Case Piece inquired.

“Aw, yeah, I guess you don’t know about that. See, me’n Marshie, we wanted a kid, so I knocked her up and, bam, nine months later, out pops the kid. Beautiful baby girl. But, shit, see, the kid wasn’t but three months old before it kicks off. Some…kid disease, right, doc?”

“Quite a despairing and heretofore unexplained syndrome knows as SIDS,” said the tall doctor solemnly. “The acronym for Sudden Infant Death.”

“Yeah, that shit—”

“Aw, Paulie, man,” Case Piece offered his condolences. “That be some fucked up shit. Sorry to hear it.”

Paulie flapped a hand. “So anyway, like I was sayin’, I thought that’s what the wife was all in the blues about but it turns out it was somethin’ else too. See, her fuckin’ father’s birthday is in December, and, see, her father got whacked, like, fifteen years ago. He was white trash who got rich on a land deal, so then a couple crackers jealous of his money killed the old guy. Now, Marshie wouldn’t tell me how these fuckers whacked her father but she said it was more awful than anything I could ever think of, but then I think, oh, yeah? Well, fuck, I decided that a little vendetta was in order, and it had to be a real gore-house job, ya know?”

“Oh, so you put the drop on the dudes who whacked the old man,” Case Piece assumed.

“Naw, naw, see, funny thing is, them two crackers? They wound up gettin’ capped by a cop the same day. But just ’cos they’re dead don’t mean it’s all over.” Paulie shrugged. “It was the only thing I could do. My wife wanted revenge so I thought, shit, I’ll show ’em revenge.”

Case Piece wasn’t getting the jibe. “But if the two crackers got capped, who’s left?”

“Who’s left?” Paulie jested, then Argi and Cristo laughed.

“The family,” Argi answered.

Paulie smiled. “Like I said, vendetta. It wasn’t good enough the two guys got whacked by someone else.”

Case Piece grimly eyed the stump-grinder. “So you come here to pick up that thing’n figure on snatchin’ the family and stump-grindin’ ’em, huh?”

Paulie grinned. “Naw, naw. Somethin’ worse.”

“Shit, man, that some captown groaty shit. What could be worse than gettin’ stump-grinded?”

Paulie, Argi, and Cristo all laughed. “Somethin’ that all them crackers would never forget. To let ’em know that no one fucks with Paulie Vinchetti’s wife. No one.”

Case Piece blinked. “Oh, I dig.” He blinked again. “So…what’cha do, man? What be tricker than the grinder?”