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“Well, Paulie, it looks like you and me finally agree on somethin’. Only the lowest’a gutter scum do things like that—”

“Look, Paw,” Dumar said. “Here’s that surveillance thing they was talkin’ ’bout…”

The screen changed to a grainy, low-resolution frame of a brightly-lit but unkempt back yard. In odd stops and starts, a jubilant mongrel puppy with huge ears jumped up and down as a male figure crept up. The figure seemed short-haired and wore baggy pants; the back of his t-shirt read CHIT, MANG. He leaned over and picked the puppy up. The puppy licked the man’s face, its tail-stub wagging.

Then the man turned, and technicians froze the tape. The frame pushed in as a zoom application was engaged.

Th perpetrator appeared to be Hispanic, late-‘20s or so. In the freeze-frame, he grinned in a manner that could only be called Luciferic.

But Paulie’s own face twisted into a look of disbelief, and he ran toward the nearest TV screen. “Argi! Tell me I’m seein’ things! Don’t that look like—”

“Ain’t no question about it, boss.”

“That fuckin’ Manuel motherfucker, the kid always wearin’ the Scarface shirts!”

“Menduez I think his name is, boss…”

Helton looked funkily at the two mob men. “What’s that you’re sayin’, Paulie?”

On the screen, the stop-start progress resumed. The man stalked away with the puppy in his arms…

The deputy chief reappeared, anger wrinkling his visage. “So there ya have it, folks: the puppy-killer! If any’a yawl know anything ’bout that-that…that person, just you call me. If ya know who he is, if ya seen him in the area, if ya think ya know where he lives…you call me! ”—the officer pounded his fist on his desk. “There is a reward, and I want?him! So, please, help me, help me put this despicable dog-torturer behind bars where he belongs!” The chief pronounced “despicable” as dess-picker-bull. A legend appeared, scrolling the phone number of the county sheriff’s office, and then they showed the close-up of the perpetrator’s face one more time.

Paulie pointed, outraged. “I don’t fuckin’ believe it! That fucker’s on our crew!”

“‘Fraid so, boss,” Argi said, finally able to stand up. His swollen testicle throbbed.

Helton scratched his head. “Paulie, you sayin’ you know that fella? You know the puppy-killer?”

“We don’t really know him, but he works for one of our middle-men.” Paulie ground his teeth. “And I’ll bet they’re all in on it. How could they not know?”

“Can’t imagine, boss,” Argi agreed. “Looks like they been pullin’ the wool over our eyes.”

Paulie stomped a foot. “Well I won’t have that shit! I won’t have a guy on my payroll killin’ puppies!”

Helton stepped up. “Just let me ask you sumpthin’, Paulie. If’n you know who this varmint is, you know how to find him?”

“Fuck, yes! The motherfucker coops in my warehouse three blocks away!”

Helton drew on a contemplation. “Well I cannot abide the idea of a puppy-killer bein’ that close but not doin’ nothin’ ’bout it, and I’se mean I would bend over dag backwards fer the chance ta wear him out.”

“You ain’t the only one, Helton.”

“So…what we gonna do ’bout this here…per-dicker-mint?”

Silence dropped. All four men exchanged glances.

Helton took another step. “We’se can keep on fightin’ here, or…we can have ourselfs a time out, put our feud on hold, and all of us go to this warehouse’a yers and put a world’a hurt on this fella.”

Paulie eyed Helton.

“What about it, boss?” Argi asked. “Might be fun.”

Another pause, then Paulie said, “All right, Helton. Time out. We go whack these guys, then?we get back to our shit. But”—he held up a finger—“no tricks. Deal?”

“Shore, Paulie.”

Paulie eyed the bigger man, chin stuck out. “Swear on your dead mother’s soul.”

Helton frowned. “All right. I’se swear on my dead Maw’s soul, there’ll be no tricks out’a us.”

“Good.”

Helton stroked his beard. “But now you gotta swear on your dead maw’s soul.”

“Fair enough. I swear on my dead mother’s soul—no tricks out of us either.”

Helton stared Paulie down. “And just so’s you remember, a man who ain’t worth his word ain’t worth shit.”

“You don’t need to tell me that!”

“All right, then. Enough’a this bickerin’. Let’s get on with this.”

Paulie nodded. “Get in your truck and follow us…”

(VIII)

“Have yourselves a merry little Christmas,” someone crooned from the radio. Case Piece frowned up from the work table. Had someone changed his station? Then he frowned down at the task piled before them: a heap of raw, high-grade white heroin; and it was into innumerable one-by-one inch plastic mini-baggies that he and Sung were gingerly spooning in single-hit allotments of the potent narcotic. Case Piece shook his head. “Baggin’ skag is a pain in the ass—you hear my sass? I got too much class for this manual fuckin’ labor, man.”

“Aw, fruck,” Sung complained, wielding a tiny spoon. “This prain in the ass, all right, Crase! Too brad Highball reft.”

“Yeah.” Case Piece got up, struck a pose, then began to strut. “I’m stylin’ and profilin’, blood. I’m whilin’ and defilin’—shit! I’m bustin’ and I’m gustin’—‘ho!—baggin’ skag I gotta think—huh!—so I need me another grape drink!”

“Dram good, Clase!”

“Uh-huh.” Case piece opened the refrigerator… “Bummer, man! We all out’a grape drink!”

“There’s mrore in the brack fridge.”

“Cool. See, I go ape without my grape…drink.” Case Piece strode past sundry boxes and junk, then bopped down the dark hall. In one of the back rooms, he opened the fridge, reached for a soda drink, but then—

konk!

—fell face-first into the floor.

He saw proverbial stars, and felt as though he were rocking back and forth like someone on a raft. The surprise blow to the back of the skull seemingly ballooned his head. A wavering state of semi-consciousness claimed him, to the extent that he knew only that something was amiss but could not frame words in thought. He heard, for instance, a heavily dialected voice say, “Dang, Paw. Lookit all the hair on this fella. We seed him a’fore, didn’t we?”

And another voice, huskier: “That we did, son. Out yonder on the street. And that hair-do’a his, I think it’s what they used ta call a Afro.”

Case Piece was unable to assign meaning to any of the words. His cheek rubbed the floor then, as his ankles were grabbed and he was hauled out of the room.

“Fruck, fruck, guys!” Sung blubbered in the front room. He churned in a cocoon of ropes as Paulie stood over him. “Ree your bruds, Prawlie!” the Asian pleaded. “You our twop-dwawer dude!”