Don't Be Cruel

by Mike, Argento,

  Kathy thought, why is he talking about me in the past tense?

  "I thought I could count on you. I guess I was wrong."

  Papa shook his head and stood slowly.

  "I have to step out for a minute, take care of something, but I'll be back with Sid and Eddie before long. Sid's really looking forward to seeing you again. I think that boy's in love. You just make yourself comfortable here. Can I get you anything?"

  "Mmmmrrrfg."

  "I didn't catch that."

  D'Onofrio entered the head fed's office and even before he sat in the chair, he said, "That fucking Wiley. I never did trust that asshole. He fucked all of us."

  The head fed gave him a hard look. He knew D'Onofrio was trying to bullshit him. It really didn't take much to figure out.

  "Hey, I had to try," D'Onofrio said.

  "Nice try. But we're both fucked," the fed said. "The U.S. Attorney is ready to crawl up our asses. And he don't trim his fingernails."

  The phone bleated and the fed picked it up.

  "Yes," he said, looking at D'Onofrio. "He just got here. Uh, huh. Right now? OK."

  The fed hung up the phone and said, "Let's take a little walk. On the way, maybe you can come up with a plausible explanation for this shit."

  This was it, D'Onofrio thought, 13 steps and then the gallows.

  They walked down the hallway and rode the elevator one floor up to the gallows, on the other side of a frosted glass door with gold lettering saying "U.S. Attorney."

  They pushed through the door and the receptionist said, "He's expecting you."

  When they entered the office, the prosecutor was on the phone. He looked up from his call and motioned for the two men to sit in the chairs in front of his desk.

  "OK," he said into the receiver. "I have to go now. I have someone in my office. I'll call you later."

  He gently hung up the phone, tented his fingers on his desktop and said, "So gentlemen, would either one of you care to tell me just what the fuck is going on here?"

  D'Onofrio and the fed exchanged a quick look. D'Onofrio looked at the fed and nodded toward the prosecutor. The fed shook his head and returned the gesture, raising his eyebrows for emphasis.

  D'Onofrio shook his head.

  "You know," the prosecutor said, "I'm sitting right here and I'm not fucking blind."

  The fed said, "Sir, we may have made a few missteps in the Green Acres bombing. Uh, bombings. Just a few, um, missteps, is what you'd call them. But I can assure you…"

  "You couldn't assure your own ass with both hands," the prosecutor said.

  The head fed and D'Onofrio looked at each other. They were both wondering, "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Neither one felt an urgent need to ask for a clarification, though.

  "I'd drag both your asses before the grand jury," the U.S. attorney said, "but I have no fucking clue where to start."

  The prosecutor paused. He waited for D'Onofrio or the fed to start talking. Both men knew well enough to exercise their right to remain silent. They had both seen enough dumbasses hang themselves with their own words. They weren't about to fall into that trap.

  The prosecutor said, "Well, fine. But really, where do I start?"

  D'Onofrio was confused. It seemed he was really asking them to tell him where to start. He couldn't remain silent any longer. "Are you asking us to help you fuck us? Do I have that right?"

  The U.S. attorney wasn't sure how to answer. He was, but if he said he was, they'd shut up and he still wouldn't know where to start. He still had an advantage over these two guys. They didn't know that he had finished next to last in his law school class, edging out a guy from Lithuania who barely spoke English. And they didn't know he achieved this high office more through his ability to shake down lawyers for campaign contributions for his political patrons than any legal acumen he may have possessed. On the other hand, he really had no clue how to proceed and he couldn't just sit there and stare at them all day.

  "Yes," he said. "You have that right."

  D'Onofrio relaxed immediately. The prosecutor was a moron who tried to hide it behind a façade of bluster.

  The prosecutor may have been a blustery moron, but he did have some political instincts and they were telling him to look for an escape hatch.

  "Look, guys, we have a huge fucking mess here and we need to find a way out of it. If I end up getting fucked on this one, I'm fucking you," the prosecutor said, pointing at the head fed.

  "And I presume if I fuck you, you're going to fuck him," he said, pointing at D'Onofrio. "So it looks like to me, major, that it would be in your best interest to fix this shit."

  "That's a lot of fucking," D'Onofrio said. "I hope you'll be gentle."

  Smith and Spew drove back to town in the Hatfield brothers' new truck. Smith turned on the radio and looked for the UFO channel, but the truck had satellite radio and the UFO channel wasn't among the 175 choices. He tuned into the Howard Stern show instead.

  "I love Howard," Spew said.

  "You would."

  On the show, Stern was trying to talk some porn star into taking off her clothes. As it became clear the woman would be getting naked, Spew leaned toward the radio in anticipation.

  "You know," Smith said, "you can get as close as you want to the radio and you're still not going to see the naked porn star."

  "I know that."

  After Stern was successful in getting the woman to disrobe, even Spew lost interest in the show. He stared out the window, watching the trees pass by.

  Smith looked at him. He wasn't a bad kid. He kind of liked him. Sure, he was a fuckup, but like most fuckups, he meant well. And he loved his Grandma. Anybody who loved their Grandma can't be all bad.

  "So," Spew asked, "where're we going?"

  "Back to the church. We're going to get Grandma."

  Grandma was still in the pew with Elvis. Or Jesus. She wasn't sure anymore. Elvis tried telling her that the icon in the apse wasn't Jesus. "Ma'am, did Jesus wear a white jumpsuit?" Elvis asked her.

  "I can't be sure," Grandma Spew said. "Didn't Jesus say, 'Don't be cruel?' "

  Elvis thought about it. In a way, that was pretty much what Jesus said, at least as far as his limited understanding of God's only child led him to believe. Elvis said it too. He might not have written it, but when he sang it, he meant it.

  "But ma'am…"

  "You can call me Grandma. That's what everybody calls me."

  "OK. Grandma."

  Elvis was wondering how long he'd have to say here with the old lady. He was starting to feel kind of weird about keeping the old woman captive in the church. It really wasn't like he was holding her at gunpoint. He did have a gun that Papa gave him – Papa said it was the same weapon, a .44, that Elvis used to shoot his TV – but he wasn't about to pull it on the old lady. She seemed very nice and he enjoyed her company. She was a little off, but she was nice to him, respectful. Besides, Elvis had a soft spot for old ladies. He'd played a lot of senior centers and the old ladies always loved him.

  "See, Grandma, look up there," Elvis said, pointing at Elvis dead on the golden toilet. "I don't think Jesus died on the toilet."

  "Are you sure?" Grandma said. "It might be one of those Book of Mormon things. Those people believe some stuff that's pretty unusual. I saw a show on TV about them. It said they wear special underwear. I wear special underwear too. Just in case I wet myself. But I think their special underwear is different."

  Elvis laughed. He was about to wet himself.

  "You're really funny, Grandma."

  "I am?"

  They sat for a moment, gazing at the icon.

  Grandma looked at Elvis and wrinkled her brow.

  "Who are you again?"

  "I sure as hell ain't Jesus, I can tell you that."

  Papa emerged from the basement and called to Soshi, "Send Polamalu back to my office, will ya?"

  Soshi made a face, mocking Papa, and then turned to the door. "Santonio," she yelled over the din of "Don'
t Stop."

  "Office."

  Fuck, Polamalu thought, who puked back there now, Jerry Lee Lewis?

  He trudged to the office and walked in without knocking.

  "Sit down," Papa ordered.

  Polamalu remained standing.

  "Look, I know you're kind of pissed off about the whole Elvis puke thing. But I'm gonna make it up to you."

  "I'm listening," Polamalu said.

  "I need a favor."

  Polamalu thought Papa was in no position to ask any favors. Mopping up Elvis barf was quite enough for one night. He was way overdrawn at the Polamalu savings and loan.

  "I know, you're thinking I have some balls asking you for a favor after earlier today. But I wouldn't be asking unless you were uniquely suited to carry out this task."

  Polamalu said nothing.

  "It's not that big a deal. I just need you to go to church."

  "Am I going to need a mop?"

  "Maybe."

  A fisherman found the bodies just before dawn. He had backed up to the boat ramp next to the dock and was ready to unload his boat when he noticed the wreckage at the dock. He whistled. That was once a nice boat.

  Then, he spotted, on the dock, the bodies.

  "Shit. My fucking luck," he said to himself as he pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911.

  He wanted to be on the water by the time the sun came up. Now, it looked like he was going to be stuck here until the sheriff arrived, at least. He reached into the cooler in the back of his truck and pulled out a beer. Might as well have a cold one while waiting for the sheriff.

  A deputy arrived first, threw up in the lake and called for help.

  "Better send the coroner too," he said into his radio.

  The fisherman said, "You got this under control? I can go, right?"

  "I think you have to stick around for a while, sir. If it's not too much trouble."

  Soon, the dock was crowded with the coroner, his deputy, a couple of sheriff's deputies, the sheriff himself, and some volunteer firefighters who heard the call on the radio and stopped by to gawk at the bodies. One of the firefighters brought his girlfriend. In these parts, this was a pretty good date.

  The sheriff studied the bodies and looked around the landing.

  He pulled a deputy aside and asked, "Notice anything strange?"

  The deputy scanned the landing and then looked at the bodies.

  "They look like Siamese twins?" he said.

  "They call them conjoined twins now," the sheriff said. "But that's not it. Look around."

  "The dead deer?"

  "Well, that is strange."

  "Looks like it was hit by a truck."

  "That's not what I meant. These fellas had a boat. Over there's the boat trailer. What's missing?"

  The deputy hated when the sheriff did this to him. He had no idea what was missing. If he knew, he would have said so.

  "How'd these fellas get here?" the sheriff asked.

  "Boat?" the deputy guessed. The sheriff shook his head. "How about you go over there and help Lonnie with the crime scene tape. Is that Lonnie's new girlfriend? What pole did he find her on?"

  The deputy walked away.

  The sheriff stood over the bodies and took another look. He walked over to the fisherman and said, "You touch anything?"

  "Nope."

  "We're going to need to get a statement from you."

  "I figured as much. Shit."

  "Fish'll be there tomorrow."

  They stood at the end of the dock and looked at the wreckage.

  "That's a real shame," the sheriff said. "That was a nice boat."

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Nunn paced his living room, ruminating. He'd been doing a lot of ruminating recently. Too much.

  He wasn't used to so much introspection. In fact, he tried to avoid it. Whenever he dove deep into the recesses of his psyche and examined his innermost thoughts, he rarely liked what he found. There were some bad things buried down there, and there, he thought, they should stay. But now that his life had been consumed by a tsunami of bad craziness, he was spending more time than usual trying to answer the question that has haunted human beings since they evolved brains large enough to handle the excess baggage of existence.

  Why me?

  The obvious answer, of course, was "Why not?" He knew he had shattered the limit on his karmic credit card, and lost any hope of ever paying it off, a long time ago. He was at peace with that. There was no element of self pity in his pondering.

  He just questioned how the cosmic forces work. Yes, he had been a prick most of his life. But there were a lot of pricks in the universe, an infinite, ever expanding number, and how do some of them skate through life without so much as a scratch while the forces in charge of these things took a massive dump on him?

  He read about huge crooks in the paper, titans of finance and industry whose avarice had destroyed the lives of countless people and the economies of entire nations, politicians whose quest for power left trails of bodies in their wake, people who should know better, but didn't.

  More often than not, they got away with it. They're pricks, just like him, to varying degrees, but how many of them wake up thinking this could be their last day? How many of them have craters in their driveway, holes in their garages and a lopsided stripper in their bed? How many of them live in terror of gnome-like mobsters, bad cops and the results of trailer park genetic experimentation?

  No one had the answers, he thought, not Jesus or Elvis or whatever uncaring force it was that kept the universe expanding.

  There is just me, he thought.

  "Honey?"

  It was Traci With an I.

  He snapped out of his trance and said, "Yes?"

  "Do you really think we should be standing around here, what with all these people trying to kill us–I mean, kill you?"

  "You're right. We need to get the fuck out of here."

  He ushered Traci to the front door and dragged her through it.

  They stood on his front porch. He looked at the driveway, and then, the street in front of his house.

  He hung his head.

  "What's the matter?" Traci asked.

  "I don't think we have a car."

  Yes, he thought, there is just me

  Why the fuck me?

  Smith and Spew entered the sanctuary, guns drawn, and worked their way to the front pew, slowly. They split up and each took a side aisle, checking each pew as they moved methodically to the front of the church.

  When they checked the second pew, Smith made a hand gesture to Spew, indicating that they should stand and turn toward the area of the pew where Grandma Spew was sitting with Elvis.

  Spew shrugged and shook his head.

  Smith tried again, twirling his hand and pointing to the front pew.

  Spew shrugged again.

  "Fuck it," Smith said, and stood up and walked to the front pew.

  Empty.

  Spew arrived behind him.

  "They aren't here?" Spew asked.

  "Looks that way," Smith said.

  "Where do you think they are?"

  "If I knew that, we'd be there."

  Grandma Spew rode up front with Polamalu. She stared at the Steelers logo tattooed on the side of his head. She turned to Elvis in the backseat and pointed at Polamalu's head.

  Elvis nodded.

  "This man has something on his head," Grandma whispered, loudly.

  "I can hear you," Polamalu said.

  Grandma looked to Elvis to say something. Elvis said, "Nice tats."

  "I got them after the Super Bowl. I was going to get Santonio Holmes' number tattooed on my chest and back, but I ran out of money halfway through. I only have a 'one' inked on my back. It looks a little strange."

  Grandma turned to the front and kept shifting her eyes toward Polamalu. This man looked kind of scary, she thought. What would Jesus do? She turned and looked at Elvis. Well, she thought, Jesus is just going to sit there on his fat as
s.

  "Where we going?" Grandma asked.

  "The same place I told you we were going a few minutes ago," Polamalu said.

  "Where's that?"

  "Home. We're going home."

  Soshi was running low on Miller Lite. Strip club patrons liked Miller Lite, believing against hope that it prevented beer bellies that the strippers would find unattractive. They wanted to appear attractive to the strippers because all of them believed the legend of the stripper with the heart of gold who would take pity on some poor slob whose only chance of seeing a naked woman was to pay a $10 cover and $8 for a Miller Lite and introduce him to pornographic carnal pleasures.

  It never happened. The most they could hope for was a $20 lap dance and maybe a handjob if one of the investment bankers needed to make the payment on her Beemer.

  Soshi looked for Polamalu. He wasn't by his station at the door and he wasn't breaking any arms in the VIP room. He was gone.

  Fucking slacker, Soshi thought.

  Soshi made an executive decision to suspend bar service while she fetched more Lite. It didn't matter, really. The investment bankers were doing an interpretive dance intended to illustrate the burst of the housing bubble and all eyes were glued on them as they slathered bubble bath on each other's breasts.

  Soshi threw open the bar door and mumbled, "Fucking Santonio."

  She unbolted the cellar door and eased down the steep steps, watching her step in the mediocre glow of a 60-watt bulb. She turned a corner at the bottom of the stairs and grabbed a case of Miller Lite.

  She heard a noise. It sounded like "Mmmmrrggfff."

  She looked between two stacks of beer and lying there was Kathy, bound up with tape.

  "I didn't know you were into that kind of thing," Soshi said.

  Why the fuck does everybody who sees a bound woman think she likes it? Kathy thought. She made noises and bounced her head to indicate that she wasn't into it and wanted out of it.