New Title 1

by Lee, Edward

  The clerk produced the necessary charger. “Here you go, anything else?”

  Paulie busted the charger out of its box. “Yeah, I need to charge my phone here, I’ll pay extra. I gotta make a real important call.”

  The clerk’s brow rose. “It’ll take a while to charge up a totally dead cell, but I’d be happy to loan you my phone.”

  “Naw, naw, the number I gotta call is on this phone…”

  The clerk squinted at Paulie’s cell. “That’s the same Blackberry I have, sir. Here”—he took the battery out of his phone and put it in Paulie’s. “Go ahead and make your call.”

  “Argi, give him a C-note,” Paulie said and started dialing.

  “Sure, boss,” Argi said.

  “Why, thanks very much, sir!” the clerk beamed.

  Paulie ambled off, phone to ear. The line was ringing, then—

  “Hello?” came the voice of Helton Tuckton.

  “You Gomer Pyle redneck fuck! Nobody fucks my kid in the head! Nobody!”

  “Yeah? Well we’se just did.”

  “How can ya fuck a dead baby in the head!”

  The clerk gulped, and asked Argi, “Uhhhh…what did he say?”

  “Nothin’, kid, nothin’.”

  “Easy. ’cos it was your baby,” Helton’s voice replied over the line. It was strange, though. He seemed to be whispering. Why would he do that? “And lemme tell you this, Paulie—I’se never had such a good cum in my life.”

  “So fuck all this movie shit! We’re havin’ it out! Tonight! You name the place, we’ll be there. And we’re gonna grind your hillbilly faggot asses into ground chuck!”

  Helton chuckled over the line. “I’se name the place, huh?”

  “Yeah! Then we go head to head!” Paulie yelled. “Tell us where to meet ya!”

  “All right. How’s about we meet…right here?”

  “What the fuck you talkin’ about! I’m in a goddamn Best—”

  The clerk began to object, “Uh, sir? What’s going on?”

  sheeeeeeeeeeeesh…SWACK!

  The clerk hit the floor like a metal duck in a shooting gallery.

  “Holy fuck, boss!” Argi yelled and drew his gun.

  Paulie gaped at the clerk, who now had a red hole right in his forehead.

  “Aw, sheee-it. I up’n hit the wrong fella,” Helton’s voice echoed, but not over the phone.

  From somewhere in the store.

  Paulie and Argi ducked behind the phone counter.

  “They’re in the fuckin’ store, boss,” Argi stated the obvious.

  “How the fuck they get in without us seein’ ’em?”

  “Must’ve busted in through the back.”

  “Helton, you fuck!” Paulie bellowed. “Where are ya?”

  Helton’s voice boomed like a megaphone now. “Why, I’se right here…”

  Paulie and Argi peeked over the top. Beside a dump-stand of Microsoft Office Home And Student stood Helton, shielding most of his hulking frame. He held a slingshot.

  Argi nudged Paulie. “And over there, boss.”

  Dumar knelt beside a row of compact disk bins. Only half of his face could be seen, but held out before that face was a big pistol.

  Helton extended his arm, the slingshot dangling from his hand. “All right. Let’s see just what kind’a man you really is. No weapons, just bare hands. Right here. Us against you…”

  “You’re on, Jed Clampett!”

  Helton smirked. “Who? I don’t know no…,” but he just shrugged and dropped his slingshot. Then he stepped fully out into the aisle.

  Dumar—

  CLACK!

  —dropped the big pistol.

  “I’ll take the long-hair,” Paulie said. “You take Helton.”

  “It’d be a pleasure, boss.”

  Both mobsters threw their guns over the counter, then stood up—

  “EEEEEEEEE-Haaa!” Dumar yelled and was already somersaulting through the air. His body smacked across Paulie’s chest and toppled him. Helton charged as well, clotheslining Argi as the beefy lieutenant was trying to take off his overcoat. And from this point on, sheer pandemonium ensued.

  Dumar pummeled Paulie on the tile floor, then—

  THUD!

  —several teeth flew out when Paulie hoisted a lucky knee to the redneck’s chin. Helton and Argi duked it out in fisticuffs, big knuckles colliding into faces. But when Argi rammed his head into Helton’s belly, Helton went down. This gave the lieutenant time to finally divorce himself of the cumbersome overcoat.

  Helton sprang back up but paused, gaping. “What’s that there hangin’ out’cher pants, fella? That ain’t a ball, is it?”

  “It sure as fuck is, hill-trash!” By now inflammation had swelled the injured testicle to something almost as large as a mango. “That blond-haired hillbilly punk busted it with his slingshot!”

  Helton chuckled at the ludicrous sight. “Well, I’ll be bustin’ the other one fer ya, and then I’m gonna fuck ya in yer head!”

  “Go ahead and try, Gomer!”

  Helton scratched his head. “Why the hail yawl keep callin’ me Gomer?”

  Glass shattered. Fists rammed into ribs. When Paulie kicked Dumar’s feet out from under him, the backwoods man had an entire revolving rack of MP-3 players hauled down on his back. Paulie climbed onto a counter, poised himself, and jumped, knees heading for Dumar’s chest, but—

  Dumar rolled out of the way at the last second.

  “Fooled you, city boy!”

  Paulie rocked on the floor in agony, and as he did so—

  whisssssssssssssssssss…

  Dumar urinated in his face.

  Meanwhile, Helton and Argi had rough-and-tumbled their way toward the kitchen appliance section. When Helton heaved a Galantz 0.6 cubic-foot microwave at Argi, the latter man ducked and heaved back a Haier-brand mini-refrigerator. The fridge struck Helton right in the head—

  “Have a headache on me, Gomer!”

  Helton merely blinked, shrugged, then laughed.

  They shambled down the aisle, heaving every conceivable appliance at one another: blenders, toaster ovens, knife-sharpeners, can-openers, even a rotisserie hot-dog cooker. Helton took a Brellville Fountain Elite Juicer right across the sternum, he fell over, sprang back up, and—

  WHAM!

  —hit Argi right in the exposed testicle with a George Foreman Grill. Argi’s eyes crossed, his cheeks billowed, and he collapsed in incalculable agony.

  “Now there’s the ticket!” Helton rejoiced.

  Quite bemused, he watched the convulsions of his adversary. The ox-like Argi cringed in a series of caterwauls, shrieks, bellows, and outright baby-bawling, hands clasped to the vandalized organ.

  That fella won’t be gettin’ up soon, Helton reasoned. He loped back to check on his son, noticing that the entire phone department was trashed now, every glass counter blown out. Then, like someone at a tennis match, Helton looked left but his gaze swerved right watching Paulie fly through the air and crash headlong into a DVD display that boasted: HORROR MOVIE BLOWOUT SALE! BUY NINE LIVES STARRING PARIS HILTON FOR $1.99 AND GET PINATA: SURVIVOR ISLAND, THE DEVIL’S CURSE, VENOM, THE EMPTY ACRE, THE SANDMAN, JUST BURIED, DEMONESS, BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD, THE HOUSE WHERE HELL FROZE OVER, AND BLOOD SHACK FREE!

  Lousy DVD’s flew everywhere.

  “Well, hey there, Dumar!” Helton complimented, “That there’s some’a the finest man-throwin’ I’se ever seed!”

  “Thanks, Paw,” Dumar said, dusting himself off. “T’was easy.”

  They both grinned as a pummeled Paulie crawled dazedly away on hands and knees.

  Argi remained shuddering on the floor between the washers and dryers when his boss caromed around the corner.

  “Goddamn, Argi! Those rednecks are kickin’ our asses!”

  Argi’s teeth chattered when he replied, “You ain’t kiddin’, boss…”

  “That skinny kid was throwin’ me around like a frisbee!”

  Agri nodded throug
h persistent agony. “And that big one? Fuck, I must’ve punched him in the head ten times—hard—but it was like bangin’ my fist into a rock. I even hit him in the head with a fuckin’ refrigerator and nothin’ happened. Then he got me in the nut with a Foreman Grill—”

  ”Ouch!” Paulie wiped blood off his face. “We gotta get our guns back—”

  “Yeah, but they’re all they way over the in phone section.”

  “We don’t stand a chance…”

  Chuckling could be heard, then Helton boomed, “You citified fellas cain’t hack a tussle with real backwoods men.”

  “Guess they’se need a breather, Paw. We up’n tuckered ’em out.”

  “S’fine with me. Go ahead, Paulie, take a breather, then we’ll have another go and finish this. Been dickin’ ’round with you low-lifes fer too long. Yeah, we’ll finish it, all right, and then we’ll fuck both yer heads.”

  “I wanna fuck that Paulie in the head fierce, Paw!”

  “Yeah, son, we’ll have ourselfs a dandy header with him, and we’ll make a movin’ picture of it and get it to his wife, and then we’ll find her too, and fuck her head.”

  “EEEE-doggie!”

  Paulie shot his lieutenant a look of total dread. “Fuck, Argi, what we get ourselves into?”

  “It’s fucked up, boss. I don’t think we’re gonna get out of this one.”

  Paulie sighed. “Well, then we’ll fuckin’ die tryin’…”

  “We’se ready when you all is, Paulie,” Helton’s voice echoed.

  Paulie and Argi dragged themselves up…

  But Helton and Dumar were strangely looking off. They were looking at a row of big-screen, high-def TV’s.

  “What gives here?” Paulie muttered.

  The weather forecast on the TV abruptly snapped off, and a stolid newscaster was saying: “We interrupt this broadcast for some late-breaking news. Just minutes ago the Pulaksi County Sheriff’s Department reported a break in what local residents have come to know as the ‘Puppy Killer Case,’” and then the screen flashed to a close up of a jowly police officer under which a legend read DEPUTY CHIEF DOOD MALONE. The man seemed to be chewing tobacco as he spoke. “Folks, I’m happy as all get-out to report that we’se finally got ourselves a solid lead in this horrifyin’ case that has just been up’n ruinin’ the holiday season for so many of us. See, what we got is a police surveillance video of this low-down, dog-torturin’ psychopath.” Malone pointed into the camera. “Now I want yawl to watch…”

  “What the hell’s this?” Paulie asked. “They caught that guy who was cuttin’ off puppies’ heads?”

  “Seems so,” Helton replied. “We done heard about this piece’a shit puppy-killin’ freak just the other day on the radio.”

  “Yeah, we heard about it too,” Paulie told him. “Ain’t nothin’ pisses me off more than these sick fucks who like to torture animals. When ya get right down to it, most people are just a bunch of piles of shit who don’t deserve to live, but animals? For fuck’s sake, who could kill an innocent animal?”

  “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.”