Don Dimaio of La Plata

Fiction. You're walking along the road in La Plata when the fog rolls in. Giant billboards hulk close above while the lights of the city are blotted out one by one. A black limo with the #1 license plate pulls up out of the pea soup and the driver, a goon in a trooper uniform, says, "Get een." The back door opens and there he is, all sharkskin suit and slick toupee, kicked back on the leather seat and grinning in a horizontal mirror: Mayor Donald "Pally" Dimaio. High up in the mist you hear an ape-like shriek: Ook ook ai ai ai! The engine is running. "Well, buddy," says Mayor Dimaio, holding out a rolled-up hundred. "You want some of this?" Take a bribe and ride with La Plata's favorite rogue politico through a tripped-out town of strip clubs and drug dens where the heirs of Abraham Beige, original pilgrim, rub shoulders with gun-waving goodfellas who steal their lines from `90s gangster flicks. Robert Arellano taught creative writing at Brown University and is the author of FAST EDDIE, KING OF THE BEES, which is also available from SPD.**