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Chapter 13

(I)

Deputy Chief Malone and Sergeant Boover had waited till nightfall to come into the vacant house on Trott Street, and they’d arrived in Malone’s personal vehicle, not their patrol cars. Why? They didn’t want anyone on the street to know that police were in the house.

But since the house was abandoned, they both spat copious plumes of tobacco juice on the floor. Big deal? The house was a foreclosure!

Boover hung curtains while Malone set up lamps in various rooms so that the house would appear tenanted. Upon having the need, Malone loped to the squalid bathroom but to his mortification found it bereft of toilet and sink. “Well, gawd-dang, Boover,” he complained upon returning to the “living” room. “Ain’t a toilet in the damn house or even a sink!”

“I know,” Boover said over his shoulder as he urinated quite noisily in the corner.

Malone shrugged, then did the same, and then, upon hearing the dual streams, their recent quadrupedal acquisition, an adorable German Shepherd/Jack Russell puppy they’d named Buster, raised its leg and peed right along with the men.

Buster romped about, yapping, as the officers finished their tasks.

“Well, dang, Boover. I’d say we done a fine job makin’ this dump look occupied.” Malone pronounced “occupied” as ok-yer-pied.

Boover fired a stream of juice up on the white wall, producing something like a brown question mark. “Yeah, anyone walking by or driving by’ll shorely think someone just moved in.” The lamps glowed bright. Then they walked into the kitchen, whose window faced the rear of the eighth-of-an-acre lot. Boover clicked a switch, then an outside floodlamp lit up the fenced backyard.

“Yeah, I’d say this’ll work just right…” He paper-clipped an edge of the curtain, which produced a minuscule gap. Boover slid over a piece-of-shit table, placed the stop-frame camera on it, then nodded.

“Dang straight, Chief.”

The lens came into perfect alignment with the gap.

“How’s it work?” Malone asked and fired a plume of juice halfway across the room.

“Well, accordin’ to the directions, a average camera takes, like, 18 frames a second, but this camera don’t take but one frame a second. The memory in the machine’ll last days.”

“Sounds just peachy.”

“Peachy for us.” Boover chuckled. “Not too peachy for the dog.”

Malone shoved the gruesome consideration aside. “So what now? We ready?”

Boover turned the camera on. “It’s rollin’, Chief. Now all we gotta do is put the mutt outside and be on our way.”

The Chief sighed sourly. Second thoughts? He glanced into the living room and watched Buster romp about, yipping and yapping in sheer innocent-dog happiness.

“Well, fuck, Boover, I just got ta thinkin’… Weatherman said it was gonna be in the mid-40s tonight. That’ll be damn cold fer little Buster.”

Boover frowned, not sharing his superior’s love for canines. “Buster’s got a fuckin’ fur coat, Chief, and…” He whispered. “It ain’t like he’s gonna be a alive for long anyway.”

The Chief gulped.

“Come on, Buster. Got’cha some viddles,” and from a Wendy’s bag the Chief produced one Triple Baconator. He cut it up into chunks and put in on the floor. Poor mutt don’t know it’s his last meal…

The puppy reveled, devouring the fast food, its tail-nub wagging with vigor. But when Malone looked up…

Boover was gone.

“Boover. Where ya at?”

“In here, Chief…”

Malone piloted himself back to the living room where—

“Aw, fer fuck’s sake!”

—he found his deputy in an awkward squat, pants at ankles. He was defecating rather cacophonously on the tacky carpet.

“We’re cops, Boover. We cain’t just up’n shit on the floor!”

“Hail, Chief. We been spittin’ and pissin’. Why not shittin’? No one’s gonna buy this place—in this economy? Obama’s full’a shit with all his talk ’bout fixin’ the housing crisis. Too busy lookin’ the other way when senior house dems secretly approve giant CEO bonuses for banks that took TARP money—”

“Aw, git off’a that now…”

“‘Sides, there ain’t no toilets and the mortgage company said we can use the place all week.”

The man had a point. We’ll just tell the mortgage folks some junkies busted in an did it…, but the truth was, Chief Malone was incontrovertibly distracted. Boover had finished, and was now wiping his ass dog-style on the atrocious carpet. Meanwhile, little Buster moved his bowels as well. If humans can do it, why not dogs? Malone’s current thought resounded like the voice of some displeased deity: We’se gonna let this cute little puppy get tortured’n kilt…

“What’s wrong, Chief?” Boover asked, hoisting up his police trousers. His lips “O”-d, then ejected a blast of tobacco juice down the hall.

Buster jumped up and down, so pleased he was to be in the presence of these men.

“Fuck, Boover. I don’t think I’se can go through with it. I mean look at him. Ain’t that just the cutest little puppy you ever seen?”

“Whole thing was your idea, Chief, and you ask me, ‘twas a good ‘un. Best way ta catch the puppy-killer’s ta get a picture of him snatchin’ the puppy. Then we put the picture on the damn tv and we got him. Won’t take but five minutes ‘fore someone recognizes him and turns the sick bastard in. And knowin’ the rednecks in this town? He’ll be turnt in dead.”

I shore as shit hope so… Malone knelt to pet Buster, who immediately began to lick the Chief’s face. Malone had a tear in his eye.

“It’s for a good cause, Chief. Think’a all the other puppy lives Buster here’ll be savin’…”

Malone had a frog in his throat. “Come on, Buster. Bet’choo’d like ta go romp about outside, huh, boy?”

The dog yipped and yapped, vaulting up and down.

Malone opened the kitchen door, and Buster sprinted out.

“It’s the best way,” Boover tried to console.

“Come on, let’s git out’a here. This place is depressin’ me… And”—Malone sniffed, smirking. “What you eat, anyway?”

“Guess it’s the pig knuckles and collard greens. Must’a et three, four plate’s of the stuff.”

“Gawd DAMN, Boover!”

They left the house and got into Malone’s ’92 Seville. No one spoke as the Chief pulled away, but when he glanced in the rearview mirror, he could see Buster bobbing up and down behind the fence, yipping a happy goodbye.

“I need a dang drink.”

“Too bad we’se both on duty till midnight, Chief. Cops don’t drink on duty…unless the boss says they can.” Boover winked.

“Aw, fuck. We’ll probably get a call—”

“Shit, Chief, we ain’t gonna get a call. This close ta Christmas? In our juris? Come on. Let’s have a few up the Crossroads. We’ll just tell ’em we’re off duty.”

Malone felt flustered. I just sentenced a puppy to death…a HORRIBLE death. “Naw. We’ll get a call—”

“All right, whatever you say. But I’ll bet’cha we don’t get no calls. Bet’cha a fifth’a Turkey.”

“You’re on—”

“Unit, 207, do you copy?” the radio crackled.

“First bet I won in a long time—fuck—maybe my whole life,” Malone said, then keyed the mike. “This is 207, Connie. We are 10-8 on Trott Street. Go ahead.”

“Respond Code 3 to confirmed Signal 47 at 610 Druckerwood Drive in Peerce Point.”

“Piss,” Boover muttered. He spat a yard-long plume of juice out the window.

Malone scratched his head. “Dang, Connie. A Signal 47? The hail’s that?”

“Arson resulting in one or more homicides,” the staticky female voice answered.

Malone moaned. “We’se 10-6,” he droned.

Boover placed the portable “cherry” on the dash and turned it on. “At least Peerce Point ain’t far,” he remarked. “But I ain’t never heard’a Druckerwood Drive.”

“Me neither.” Malone rekeyed the mike. “Connie, what is it? A house, a apartment buildin’? What?”

The radio crackled. “610, Druckerwood Drive, Peerce Point”—a pause, then: “The Daisy-Chase Nursing Home…”

(II)

The big black truck lumbered along the back roads, and at the stroke of midnight, December 22nd officially became December 23rd. The night seemed warmer, stars glittered pristinely through overhead branches. The moon glowed like a cabalistic totem.

Forebodences of the most acerbic sort seemed to rumble in Helton’s gut as his son manned the wheel. “Pull ‘er over, Dumar. Let’s sit a spell, git some sleep.”

“Shore thing, Paw.”

Veronica was already asleep, on the truck floor with her wrist handcuffed to the header table. When Dumar parked in a secluded grove, he cut the engine; the night swallowed the truck when the headlights went off. With only a candle burning now, the three men took seats in back.

Micky-Mack rubbed his crotch. “Dang, Unc. Sumpin’ about headers…”

Dumar rubbed his crotch. “Yeah, Paw, like…”

“It’s like my dick loves headers so much, it stays half-hard, like, all the time.”

Helton nodded, and rubbed his crotch. “Let it be a warnin’ to ya, though. Headers feels so good, and so much better’n reglar pussy…folks can git misguided sometimes. They ferget that yer only s’posed to have headers to revenge a serious crime. But ta have a header willy-nilly—like Caudill used ta…it’s up’n the worst sin a man can commit. You boys understand?”

Dumar and Micky-Mack nodded…but they each rubbed their crotch again.

“So what we do now, Paw?”

“Yeah, Unc. If all’a this Paulie fella’s kin is up in New York and thereabouts, how’s come we didn’t stay there? Aside from his wife, he ain’t got no more rellertives down our ways, and that black fella tolt us she’s out’a town.”

Dumar leaned forward on his milk crate, query in his eyes. “You figure Paulie’s gonna throw in the towel?”

Helton opened a bag of Riceworks Gourmet Brown Rice Crisps that he’d stolen from Marshie’s mansion. They tasted funny, kind of…citified, but were good enough. “I’d like ta think so, son, but there ain’t no way he’ll call off the feud”—Helton eyed his son and nephew quite solemnly—“not after he seen what we done ta his Maw.”

Several sobersided moments passed, then—

The three men busted out laughing.

Micky-Mack was hee-hawing so hard he had tears in his eyes. “We fucked his Maw! In her head!”

“Two at a time!” Dumar guffawed.

“And then Droop—ole Droop!”

“I’d pay cash money ta see the look on Paulie’s face when he seed a egg-suck dog fuckin’ his Maw’s head!” Dumar wheezed.

“And I’ll’se bet it was some look, boys!” Helton roared.

Micky-Mack: “And them big citified implants stickin’ out, and there’s ole Droop humpin’ away and havin’ hisself a nut in her brain!”

They all high-fived.

When they settled down, Dumar asked, “But, Paw, gettin’ back ta more serious stuff… It’s your hankerin’ that Paulie’ll be so sure-fired pissed…that he’ll get us back?”

“I think he shorely will son, sorry ta say.”

“But how, Unc?” the youngster queried next. “Our kin all live back in the boonies spread out clear across the next three counties. He ain’t gonna be able ta find ’em.”

“He’ll find ’em if’n he sets his mind to,” Helton assured. “All it takes is askin’ a few folks a few questions.” He raised a finger. “So’s when he does? We gots ta be ready.”

Micky-Mack moaned. “Aw, Unc Helton—you mean we’se’ll have ta go back to New York City?”

Dumar moaned as well, and put a hand to his belly. “Dang, Paw. That’s one place I don’t never wanna see no more.”

“Scary just ta look at,” Micky-Mack added. “All them buildin’s reachin’ high up in the sky, all’a that noise’n all them cars’n’ buses, and all that honkin’‘n jabberin’n folks scowlin’n walkin’ fast—”

Dumar: “All talkin’ on them cellphone things whilse they’se walkin’ and drinkin’ at them weird Starbuck places’n all that dirt’n smoke in the air.”

“I’se don’t never wanna go back there neither, boys,” Helton said, still a bit dizzy in the recollection. “Big cities ain’t natural, ain’t what God wants fer folks. Ain’t right fer people to be livin’ way up in the air like that, in all that cee-ment’n such. Damn buildin’s are so high ya cain’t even see the proper light’a day. And, dang, the smell’a that one place we droved through—what was it? Chinatown?—it were shorely the devil’s ass-crack we was smellin’.” Helton shook his head. “But dependin’ on how long this here feud lasts, well…we just might have ta go back. In the meantime, though…” The big man looked deeply at his companions. “I been thinkin’. See, there is one’a Paulie’s kin—one I plum up’n fergot about—one not too far at all from where we’se are sittin’ right now…”

“Really, Unc?” Micky-Mack asked, incredulous.

“Who is it, Paw?”

Helton just smiled and said no more of it. Then he bid his kin goodnight, blew out the candle, and they all fell fast asleep.

(III)

Paulie had indeed called his lovely wife Marshie at her suite at the BeIaggio in Las Vegas, Nevada, and she had indeed possessed the knowledge that Paulie so fervently sought. When asked, “We’re havin’ a tear-ass good time down here but we need to know where this fuck Helton’s relatives live. Any idea, like, if his mother is still alive?” she’d answered in a delighted redneck shriek, “Oh, yeah, Paulie! The old withered fuck’s name is Petunia Tuckton, and she’s like real old, and ya knows what, hon? Last year she had herself a stroke and they stuck her in a nursin’ home—the Daisy-Chase nursin’ home in Peerce Point! Ain’t but a hop, skip’n a jump from Pulaski!” and that had brought a veritable well of joy to Paulie’s heart. Marshie had also mentioned that Helton Tuckton was known to drive a “big-ass black truck,” which might prove useful as well.

Argi had been assigned “torch” duty, and in truth, this was by no means the first nursing home he’d set fire to. He’d torched the north-end of the Daisy-Chase facility—a simple yet formidable diversion—then he and his associates had spirited one octonegeric Petunia Tuckton—urinary catheter and all—from her window in the south-end wing. Previously, however, they’d made a pit stop back at the warehouse, for…some things they might need. Among those things were several shovels.

Then they’d found a suitable secluded field, set up their camera, and began to dig.

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