Don't Be Cruel

by Mike, Argento,

  Soshi thought for a moment. If Kathy was bound up in the basement, somebody wanted her bound up in the basement. That somebody was most likely her boss, and helping Kathy could have some negative connotations come annual review time.

  She was thinking about what to do when she came to the conclusion that anyone who would do this to a woman was an asshole and besides, Papa was already an asshole, so she was kind of unsure exactly what that meant since he couldn't technically be two assholes.

  "Mmmmffffgggg," Kathy said, snapping Soshi from her thoughts.

  "Hold on. Jesus," Soshi said as she knelt and began to tear at the tape.

  When Soshi removed the tape from Kathy's mouth, Kathy said, "Thanks. I owe you one."

  "Well, one, you never tell Papa who let you go. Two, as soon as I'm finished untaping you, how about you grab a case of Miller Lite and schlep it up to the bar."

  "Fair enough."

  Polamalu pulled up in front of Grandma Spew's house and got out. He stood on the sidewalk as he waited for Elvis and the old lady to get out. Elvis climbed out. But the old lady remained in the passenger seat, not making a move to get out.

  Polamalu said, "C'mon, get out of the car already."

  Grandma sat there, looking straight ahead.

  Elvis elbowed his way past Polamalu and opened the door for Grandma.

  "Thank you, Jesus. You're such a considerate young man."

  "You're welcome, ma'am," Elvis said, and shot Polamalu a hard look.

  "How was I supposed to know?" Polamalu protested.

  Elvis rolled his eyes and shook his head. They walked to the front door. Polamalu thought, it's the Beav's house. Once inside, Grandma Spew tottered to the kitchen and yelled, "You boys make yourselves at home. I'll get you some Ovaltine and cookies."

  Polamalu and Elvis sat side by side on the floral print couch.

  Elvis asked, "Well?"

  "Well, what?" Polamalu replied.

  "What're we supposed to do?"

  Polamalu was thinking about that. Papa had asked him to get rid of the old lady. And in theory, it didn't sound too difficult. She was old. She had lived her life. It wasn't like he was going to take out someone who had the best years of her life ahead of her. He tried to think about it rationally. The money was a factor.

  But theory is one thing. Plugging an old woman who was carrying a tray of two tumblers of Ovaltine and a plate piled with peanut butter cookies was another. Polamalu just wasn't ready to deal with the reality of the situation. He knew, at that moment, he'd never be ready for something like that.

  Elvis sensed what Polamalu was going through. In theory, he should pull the .44 from his shoulder holster and shoot both of them. That was the idea, he guessed. But the reality was he liked Grandma Spew and killing Polamalu in her home would be poor manners. Besides, he had nothing against Polamalu. He seemed like a nice guy.

  "Cookie?" Grandma Spew asked as she held the plate in front of Polamalu.

  "Don't mind if I do. Thank you, ma'am."

  D'Onofrio sat at his desk, looking out the window. Wiley's reports, or what passed for Wiley's reports, were on his desk. He had just finished reading them and was thinking about them, trying to connect the dots, put the pieces of the puzzle together, assemble a perpetual motion machine from a pile of dog shit.

  He thought about what he'd do in retirement. He could always get a security gig at the local college.

  It was easy work, busting kids for smoking weed and drinking beer under the bleachers at the baseball field. The pay wasn't bad.

  His phone bleated, interrupting his daydream.

  "D'Onofrio," he answered.

  "Major, Sheriff Taylor up here in Potter County."

  "Sheriff, what can I do for you?"

  O'Onofrio had a brief fantasy of quitting and going to work as a deputy in Potter County, Barney Fife territory. While away his days fishing at the old duck pond with Opie and Sheriff Taylor.

  "We got some boys from the city up here. Thought you'd be interested."

  "Let me transfer you to the detective unit, Lieutenant Callahan."

  "I talked to him. He said you would be interested in this one personally."

  "Really?"

  "Yep. Seems these boys, named Hatfield, Sidney Beauregard and Edward Jefferson Davis – I shit you not – had recently purchased a new Ford pickup truck in your city."

  "That's mighty interesting, sheriff. What's that have to do with me?"

  "I'm getting to that. The dealer, we checked, accepted payment for the truck from Philo "Papa" Papadopoulos , who registered the truck to a nonprofit he runs, something called Bucks for Boobs."

  "Bucks for Boobs?"

  "That's what it's called. Bucks for Boobs was recently the recipient of a big insurance settlement in the death of Sam something Polish, I can't pronounce it. He was an associate of this Papadopoulos character, who is partners in a strip joint called The Happy Beaver."

  "I know the place," D'Onofrio said.

  "Well, next time I'm in town, you'll have to take me there. Anyway, his partner is a guy named Walter Nunn. I think you've been looking into some stuff regarding him, things blowing up, if I'm not mistaken."

  "Yeah," D'Onofrio said, slowly, as he sat up in his chair.

  "What we're after is the truck. We got the boys up here, but the truck's missing. We'd like to find it and talk to whoever's driving it about now."

  "OK."

  "Thought you'd be interested."

  "Are the Hatfield boys talking?" D'Onofrio said.

  "Nope. I guess I forget to mention, we have them, but they're in our morgue. Looks like a fishing accident."

  "Fishing accident?"

  "It happens more than you think. But with the truck missing, we have to suspect there's more to it. Maybe someone took off with their truck. Maybe they had something to do with the boys' current conditions. So we're looking for the truck. Maybe if it turns up down there, you give us a call."

  "Sure will," D'Onofrio said. "Thanks."

  "No problem. Just remember, you owe me a night out at The Happy Beaver next time I'm down there."

  "Any time."

  Smith and Spew drove past Grandma's house slowly.

  "Whose car is that?" Spew wondered, pointing to the Neon in front of the gate.

  Smith didn't know. He figured it belonged to whoever was inside babysitting Grandma, waiting for them to show up.

  Smith pulled the truck to the curb about half a block up the street.

  They climbed out and stealthily made their way to Grandma's house. They hopped the picket fence and ran to the side of the house. Smith peeked in the window. He saw Elvis and Polamalu sitting on the couch.

  Spew whispered, "What?"

  "Elvis and Polamalu."

  "Troy Polamalu is in my grandma's house?" Spew said.

  "Shhhhhh," Smith said. He didn't want to explain it right then so he whispered, "No, a different one."

  "There's a different one?" Spew whispered.

  Smith shut his eyes and exhaled loudly.

  "So, what are we going to do?" Spew whispered.

  "Let's just burst in. Take them by surprise," Smith said.

  "Do you think that's a good idea?"

  "Do you have any better?"

  Spew thought for a moment.

  "Guess not."

  They made their way to the front porch. As they approached the door, Spew whispered, "Remember to wipe your feet. Grandma's pretty strict about that."

  Smith wiped his feet and then kicked the door in, bursting into the room while training his Glock on the two men on the couch.

  "Jesus, Ed, I had a key," Spew said. "That was totally unnecessary."

  Polamalu held up the plate of cookies and said, "Cookie? They're really good."

  Grandma returned from the kitchen and said, "Oh, Shane, there you are. And the Haskell boy. You boys have a seat and I'll bring you some Ovaltine."

  Grandma started to walk toward the kitchen and then turned around to look at h
er shattered front door.

  "Shane," she scolded, "did you remember to wipe your feet?

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The lone bagpiper played "Amazing Grace" on a hillside overlooking the grave. Cops from all over the state came to pay tribute to Wiley, their fallen brother who gave his life in the line of duty.

  Not much of Wiley's family was there. He had driven them away years ago. His ex-wife showed, just to make sure he was dead. His mourners were mostly cops who never met him and had no idea who he was, which was just as well because most people who knew Wiley really didn't like him.

  D'Onofrio delivered the eulogy. He was proud of it. It was one of the most finely crafted pieces of bullshit he had ever concocted. Wiley, in the major's version of his biography, was an American hero, the only thing standing between law-abiding citizens and the forces of chaos and violence. He was the thin blue line that protected citizens from the heinous acts of the sociopaths that we all know are lurking around every corner, looking to steal our wallets, cut our throats, rape our virginal daughters.

  As he was uttering the words, D'Onofrio felt sick. The truth of the matter was Wiley was a degenerate gambler who spent most of his work days at the off-track betting parlor when he wasn't banging hookers. He thought mentioning that would kind of put a damper on the event. The truth, as always, was a real buzz kill.

  The mourners filed away from the gravesite. D'Onofrio was walking to his car when the head fed sidled up beside him. Just what he needed.

  "That was very nice. Touching, even. I damn near believed it," the fed said.

  "Fuck you."

  "Such language. Do you suck your mother's cock with that mouth?"

  "What do you want?"

  "I'm just wondering whether we've made any headway on the Green Acres case."

  "No, we haven't," D'Onofrio lied. The last thing he needed was this guy taking over and fucking everything up.

  "Well, I think we are going to have to try harder."

  "Who the fuck is this 'we' you keep talking about?"

  "It's the generic 'we.' It means 'you.' "

  Papa sat at a table in the back of the social club and ordered an espresso. The waiter brought it to him, delivering it with as much indifference as was humanly possible to muster without, technically, being dead.

  Papa sipped the coffee and waited. He was just finishing it and trying to get the attention of the waiter to order another when The Boss entered. The Boss wore a silk suit and had a guy with him who looked like he could kill your entire family by just looking in their general direction.

  The guy drifted off to the bar while The Boss took a seat opposite Papa. The waiter, without any prompting, delivered an espresso, setting it before The Boss with a bow and a wide smile. The Boss was widely known as a good tipper. And being rude to him could be fatal, as one former waiter learned. It's hard to wait tables missing both thumbs.

  The Boss ran things in South Jersey, which gave him about as much clout as the night manager at the Applebee's in Camden. There wasn't much for him to do. Most of the good stuff was carved up between more powerful bosses in Philly or Atlantic City. Still, in the order of the universe, he ranked well above Papa, whose small town thing couldn't be relied upon for a consistent source of income.

  "You called. Your meeting," The Boss said.

  "I'm glad you could see me. I know you're a busy man and your time is valuable so I'll try to keep this brief to allow you to return to the important business of your, um, business."

  "No need to suck my dick. I'm here."

  "Well, remember, some time ago, I did you a favor," Papa said.

  The Boss didn't like to be reminded of that. He didn't like owing favors and this one didn't turn out very well. He had to move his mistress out of town when his wife found out about her and threatened to cut her tits off. So he sent her to The Happy Beaver to work as a dancer. Her first night, she bit some guy's penis off and the ensuing legal difficulty turned out to be, well, difficult and only went away when Fat Sam convinced the guy that there were more important appendages than his penis, as far as maintaining quality of life, and it would be a shame should anything happen to any of them.

  The Boss nodded and said, "What do you need?"

  "Well," Papa said, "where should I begin?"

  He explained the whole thing to The Boss. It wasn't a good idea to hold back. Hold back and the guy finds out later and you wind up in a trash incinerator.

  "I can't see where you went wrong. It sounds like a perfectly good plan," The Boss said, a sarcastic edge to his voice.

  The scheme, The Boss thought, was unnecessarily complicated. He preferred dealing with things in a more straightforward manner. A guy needs to be killed, he gets a bullet behind the ear and his body winds up intermingled with shredded Buicks. He didn't go for all this tricky bullshit. He was old fashioned when it came to that stuff.

  Still, The Boss knew an opportunity when it presented itself.

  "I'll tell you what I'll do," he said. "I'll put one of my guys on it. He'll take care of everything. Clean the slate, so to speak. And you can get on with your life."

  The Boss paused and sipped his espresso noisily. Papa waited for what was coming next.

  "Now, as far as payment…"

  There it was.

  "I will remind you that you owe me a favor."

  As soon as he said it, Papa realized it was the wrong thing to say.

  "And I will remind you I'm returning the favor by agreeing to do it," The Boss said. "Actually doing something is extra. I have to cover my overhead, expenses, liability insurance and so on and so forth. I'm sure you understand."

  "OK," Papa surrendered, "what do you want?"

  "Twenty percent of the insurance proceeds," The Boss said.

  "Twenty percent?" Papa blurted.

  "You want to try for twenty-five?" The Boss asked.

  "No, twenty is fine."

  The Boss wasn't finished.

  "And twenty percent of the proceeds from the gift shop at the church," he said.

  Papa seized up. The bloodsuckers from Elvis Presley Enterprises already grabbed a huge percentage of the profits. Another twenty percent wouldn't leave much for him. But as he had learned in his previous dealings with The Boss, this wasn't a negotiation. Worst case scenario, he could cook the books. The Boss would expect no less. It was a part of doing business.

  "I can do that," Papa said. "How soon can you clean this shit up?"

  "It'll be done before you know it," The Boss said. "My guys, they don't get paid by the hour."

  Kathy sneaked into Papa's office. She thought if she got the insurance papers and some other evidence and sent it anonymously to the cops, it would cause Papa enough trouble to put an end to this ordeal. She knew Smith said no cops, but this had gone too far. And if she controlled what evidence the cops got, she could keep herself and Smith out of it and they could live happily ever after.

  She rifled through the filing cabinet by the desk. She found some interesting stuff – photos of the mayor doing the investment bankers, among other things – but nothing that helped her right now. She sat at the desk and went through the drawers. In a bottom drawer, she found a large envelope containing the insurance papers. It was easy to spot. Papa had written "Insurance Scheme" on the envelope with a Sharpie.

  As she stood, she kicked something in the desk's kneehole. She bent over and looked. It was a briefcase. She put on the desk, flipped the latches and opened it.

  Talk about living happily ever after, she thought.

  Wiley's wake had entered its tenth hour at the cop bar in town, a tavern owned by Greeks and modeled after an Irish pub. D'Onofrio had been there for most of the ten hours and was entering the stage of inebriation that results in the brutal telling of brutal truths, a stage of drunkenness that, more often than not, ends with someone's clothing burning in a driveway.

  D'Onofrio was flirting with a public information officer, a former TV reporter known for her admiration and resp
ect for the police. Word was she expressed that admiration and respect frequently, indiscriminately and orally.

  "You know," D'Onofrio said, "I remember watching you on Channel 8 and thinking you were some tight-ass bitch. But then, I guess I got to know you and you know…"

  The PIO was drunk enough to let the insult slide. She was on a quest. She was blowing her way up the chain of command and D'Onofrio would be her first major. She slid her hand up D'Onofrio's thigh and whispered in his ear, "You think we could go somewhere private."

  They wound up in the back seat of the major's city-issued Crown Vic. The PIO was fumbling with his fly when there was a sharp knock on the window.

  It was the head fed.

  "Sorry to interrupt," he said after D'Onofrio rolled the window down.

  The PIO looked up from his lap with an annoyed expression.

  "Oh, hi, Sondra, how've you been?" the head fed asked.

  "Been a while, Stewie," she said.

  D'Onofrio was a little irritated. He wasn't ready to discuss the investigation with the fed, especially when Sondra had his dick in her hand.

  "I hate to break up this touching reunion, but did you interrupt my blowjob just to get reacquainted with Sondra here or is it something else, Stewie?"

  "It's something else," he said, holding up a large envelope. "Some woman dropped it off at our front desk not long ago."

  D'Onofrio squinted at the envelope.

  "Does that say what I think it says on it?"

  "It does."

  D'Onofrio looked at the envelope and then looked at Sondra.

  "Tell you what," he told the fed. "Give me ten minutes, OK?"

  Papa returned to his office and wondered whatever happened to the Hatfield boys. They were supposed to return to The Happy Beaver after the business at the lake, but they never showed. Then, he started to wonder what happened to Elvis. And Polamalu, for that matter.

  These fucking guys, he wondered. He was glad a real professional was on the way to help him straighten this shit out.

  He went down the steps to the basement to check on Kathy.

  She was gone.