“Sling it, bro.”
“Yeah, bwo!”
The skinny Caucasian female addict teetered forward with hollow eyes and a proffered $20 bill. Her arms looked like bones painted the color of lard, but with needle-tracks like lines of black pepper. Menduez slapped the heroin baggie into her hand, then, like a card trick, the $20 was in his own hand. “Chew only buy smack from us, right, woomahn?”
“Oh, yeah, man,” the stick-girl affirmed. Her clothes were rotten.
“Chew don’t never buy from no fuckin’ cowboys, right? ’cos, if chew do?” Menduez shook his head. “Chew wind up fucked.”
“No, no, I’d never do that, man,” the addict assured, shuffling away. She picked at the ass-crack in her rotten jeans. “Thanks, man.”
“Hey, girl!” Case Piece called out. “Merry Christmas—uh-huh!”
They all high-fived when Menduez returned to the group.
“How many skag-bags we got left, my man?” Case Piece asked.
“All gron, man!” Sung informed.
Case Piece got back to his bop. “Our gig? Shit. It’s trick as a crown. It’s tip as a top—we drip to that drop.”
“Yeah, mang. Last week, chit took us all fockin’ week to sell what we sold in one fockin’ day, mang.”
“Shit, all’s a sudden it seem like this recession be over,” Case Piece regarded hopefully. “Guess my top-dawg Obama, he must’ve fixed the economy. We movin’ skag.”
Menduez, “Yeah, mang, and we still got three kilos left, I tink.”
“Yeah! Twee,” Sung verified. “Our gig twop-dwawer, boyz!”
The three idiots continued walking. Case Piece…well, he rubbed his crotch. “And now we gots our own ‘ho with the trickin’-est bod.”
Menduez squeezed his crotch, too. “Where dat puta tonight, mang?”
“Turnin’ twicks?”
“Naw, she back the crib, baggin’ the next kilo. See what I mean, me’n my dawgs? We got it made in the shade. Paulie and his boyz, they bring it, we sling it, and Highball, she bag the skag and we slag the skag. Right on.”
Menduez frowned. “Slag? What chew mean by dat chit, mang?”
“Yeah, Clase Pleece. Rut does slag mean?”
Case Piece slumped. “Shit. It don’t mean nothin’. I just make it up cos it rhyme.”
Their laughter crackled down the dark street.
When they turned the corner, the next road extended in worse repair than the previous. Lots of old triplex tenements and drab apartments with dingy laundry flapping from high rails in the cold breeze. But on the porch of one triplex, several young Hispanic men sat.
“Dare day is, dah poo-putt piece’s a chit,” Menduez guttered sinisterly.
Case Piece grinned at them and pointed his finger like a gun.
The sullen faces on the Hispanics observed the NSG-3 through indirect glances, then they got up and went inside.
“More new cowboys, chit. Mexicans, sellin’ dat black tar chit in our town. Fuck, I bury doze cockroaches.”
“Competition, man,” Case Piece said. “It part’a business, like my top dawg Paulie say.” He slapped Menduez on the shoulder. “Look like you’ll be busy tonight, Menduez. You need to do that doggie thing you do and send those chumps a message. And if it don’t work, fuck, we’ll just pop trunk on the motherfuckers.”
“Hey, I see a new puppy dog today just down the stweet!”
“Yeah, mang, I see it too. At house dat asshole Giller lives.” Meduenz prounced Giller as “Geeler.”
“Aw, that honkie dick? Shit. I ‘member one time, I’se just jammin’ to my tunes walkin’ down the street with my Grape Slush, and that honkie dick, you know what he say? He say, ‘Negroes ain’t allowed on this street.’ Shit. That white fuck. I’m duh Ace Boon Coonest player dare is, I’m a motherfuckin’ thug-king, I ain’t no Negro. Yeah, Menduez, whine’choo snatch that honkie piece’a shit’s puppy and do that dog thing you do?”
“Chore, mang. No prob-leng.”
“Time to sky up, dawgs. Let’s bop our butts back to the warehouse. I need my dick deep in Highball’s cash drawer, don’t’cha know. And that bitch better’a done our laundry and washed the fuck-rust out’a our sheets like I tole her, or I’se bust her up!”
“Shrit, yeah, man!” Sung enthused and rubbed his crotch. “Ret’s get back to the kwib!”
Menduez kept rubbing his crotch. “Chew guys go on ahead, mang. First eyeing gotta snatch me dat piece’a chit Giller’s puppy,” and then he turned and went down another street.
“Come on, Sung. Shit.” Case Piece was about to head back to the warehouse but he suddenly stopped and brought a hand to his forehead. He seemed to be experiencing a mental flash. “Wait, wait! I just got me some creative inspiration!” and he looked up at the crisp winter sky, closed his eyes, and began to sing: “Hickory dickery DOCK! In her mouth she suck my SLOP and swallow every DROP! The clock strike five, I’m slappin’ jive! Hickory dickery motherfuckin’ DOCK!”
Sung applauded. “That gwate, Clase Pleece! You a wegular wapper!”
“Shit, yeah,” Case Piece agreed. “Keep them words in that genius brain of yours, Sung. I gotta find some way to get it to my man Ice-T. Shit, he make a hit out of it!”
Indeed.
The two drug dealers eventually returned to the warehouse, but the first sight that greeted them stopped them both in their tracks.
“Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo,” Case Piece said, holding out his hand.
In the darkened parking lot sat—
“Prawlie’s Rinnebago!” Sung exclaimed.
Case Piece scratched his Afro. “Shit. What Paulie doin’ back? He and his dudes split hours ago.”
“We better trek it out!”
Bright yellow lights could be seen in the Winnebago’s windows, but when they were closer, the forms of three men could be seen: two in dark overcoats, their arms crossed as they smoked, and taller man who wasn’t smoking. Additionally, Case Piece thought he heard something.
The sounds of muffled shouts?
The three forms glanced over as the footsteps approached. The two smokers turned out to be Argi and Cristo, the third man, Dr. Prouty.
They all looked…dismal.
“Hey, bros?” Case Piece greeted. “How you be?”
The doctor spoke up, “I regret to reply that we don’t be very well at all.”
“Yeah,” Cristo said, his eyes grim. “Some fucked up shit happened tonight.”
“Oh no!” Sung remorsed.
“What, cops?” Case Piece dreaded to ask.
“Naw—”
“But…where’s Paulie?”
Argi jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, at the motor home, while at the same moment, that muffled shouting rose again.
The shouting, unmistakably, belonged to Paulie.
“Those motherFUCKers! You see what they did! I’m PAULIE FUCKIN’ VINCHETTI, and nobody does a job like that on me! Nobody!” Was there a pause, then a strange, regular slopping sound? “Back in ya go, bitch—yeah, back in! You like that? Huh? Fuck! Those fuckin’ guys! Who do they think they are?” Another pause, another slopping sound. “Fuck it! Back in ya go! What the fuck, huh? So help me God I’m gonna GET those guys!”
“Man, bloods. Paulie, he sound like he’s whilin’ out. Who he yellin’ at?” Case Piece asked.
“The broad,” Argi answered.