anything, Tony!” He buried his face in his hands. “I just know it wasn’t you that got me stoked. It was her, that Carmella, the way she spread them big legs, the way the inside of her thighs got all sweaty-like, how they touched all the way to her knees, and then, Sweet Mother of Jesus, when she pulled out that big vibrator... .”
“Enough! You’re gonna make me blow chunks.” Zank straight-armed McCardle to make him stop. “We went to the motel for insur ance, Cocoa Puff. The idea was, one guy stays in the room with the broad, one guy goes out and checks the street and number she gave us, makes sure we’re not bein’ gamed. I find out Carmella slipped us some phony address, I call you up and you torture the cunt till she coughs up the right info. Then you kill her. That’s how it’s done. Where’d you go to school, man?”
McCardle dabbed his eyes with the sleeve of his parka.
“You mean, I could’ve been with her? While you were out check ing?”
“What’d I just say?”
“But what if she gave us the right address?”
“Then we don’t torture her,” said Zank. “We just kill her.”
McCardle hardly heard. He was still thinking about what could have been: a blissful hour or two, alone with that massive beauty. He could have tied her up, buried his face in her beehive, licked all over her hips. . . . The Big Love opportunity of a lifetime, gone. He plunged his face in his hands.
“Get ahold of yourself,” Zank growled. “We gotta kamikaze.”
Tony shifted on the seat to find a position that didn’t ache. He wondered if Mac could tell he wasn’t cherry, and quickly blocked the thought with a dozen other ones. But McCardle was somewhere else entirely. In Mac’s mind he was tying the bodacious rest home supervi sor to the bedpost, cinching the rope tight below her belly button, let ting his fingers linger over that shaved slope down to her no-doubt chubby lovelips. Oh yeah! He wanted to leave her hands free, so when he tickled her she could still hit him. He wanted—
“There she is!” Tony cried, gunning the Gremlin up Carmichael just as Dee-Dee Walker stepped out of Tina’s house and strode toward the Trumpet pool car. He slowed down to check her out and lowered his voice.
“Looks kind of hoity-toity for a fucking old people’s nurse. I bet she already got some dough for Mister Biobrain and spent it on clothes, the thieving bitch!”
Tina, meanwhile, watched from behind her living room curtain as the reporter set her camera and notebook on the roof of her Toyota Camry and unlocked the door. She kept watching while her inquisitor picked up her stuff, got in, and started the car. If Tina noticed the avo cado Gremlin with the bleeding white guy and buff little black man squeezed in front, it didn’t register.
She closed the curtain before the two vehicles disappeared around the corner.
TWE LVE
Manny had a brother named Stanley he never talked to who went to Penn State and became a stockbroker. Stanley moved to New Jersey, married three shiny blonds in a row, and fathered a pair of children with names like colognes: Artemis and Jade. What made Manny think about Stanley was the stench in the Liver Ward.
Along with cracking her coccyx, breaking some ribs, rupturing her spleen, and shattering both elbows after her rest home plummet, Tony Zank’s mom had been diagnosed with acute cirrhosis. So she’d been shipped from Seventh Heaven to Marilyn Charity, where they stuck her in Liver.
Most of the other occupants, walking-dead rum mies with distended bellies and tears flowing hepati
tic yellow when they begged for a bottle, slumped on the edge of their beds and stared at their hands. An odd fact: Once they stopped seeing giant insects flying out of the walls, dying drunks pretty much stared at their hands all day. But their hands were not what Manny was ponder ing. It was their stench that grabbed him by the throat, a toxic cocktail of sweat, bile, soaking sheets, and rank
“Enough! You’re gonna make me blow chunks.” Zank straight-armed McCardle to make him stop. “We went to the motel for insur ance, Cocoa Puff. The idea was, one guy stays in the room with the broad, one guy goes out and checks the street and number she gave us, makes sure we’re not bein’ gamed. I find out Carmella slipped us some phony address, I call you up and you torture the cunt till she coughs up the right info. Then you kill her. That’s how it’s done. Where’d you go to school, man?”
McCardle dabbed his eyes with the sleeve of his parka.
“You mean, I could’ve been with her? While you were out check ing?”
“What’d I just say?”
“But what if she gave us the right address?”
“Then we don’t torture her,” said Zank. “We just kill her.”
McCardle hardly heard. He was still thinking about what could have been: a blissful hour or two, alone with that massive beauty. He could have tied her up, buried his face in her beehive, licked all over her hips. . . . The Big Love opportunity of a lifetime, gone. He plunged his face in his hands.
“Get ahold of yourself,” Zank growled. “We gotta kamikaze.”
Tony shifted on the seat to find a position that didn’t ache. He wondered if Mac could tell he wasn’t cherry, and quickly blocked the thought with a dozen other ones. But McCardle was somewhere else entirely. In Mac’s mind he was tying the bodacious rest home supervi sor to the bedpost, cinching the rope tight below her belly button, let ting his fingers linger over that shaved slope down to her no-doubt chubby lovelips. Oh yeah! He wanted to leave her hands free, so when he tickled her she could still hit him. He wanted—
“There she is!” Tony cried, gunning the Gremlin up Carmichael just as Dee-Dee Walker stepped out of Tina’s house and strode toward the Trumpet pool car. He slowed down to check her out and lowered his voice.
“Looks kind of hoity-toity for a fucking old people’s nurse. I bet she already got some dough for Mister Biobrain and spent it on clothes, the thieving bitch!”
Tina, meanwhile, watched from behind her living room curtain as the reporter set her camera and notebook on the roof of her Toyota Camry and unlocked the door. She kept watching while her inquisitor picked up her stuff, got in, and started the car. If Tina noticed the avo cado Gremlin with the bleeding white guy and buff little black man squeezed in front, it didn’t register.
She closed the curtain before the two vehicles disappeared around the corner.
TWE LVE
Manny had a brother named Stanley he never talked to who went to Penn State and became a stockbroker. Stanley moved to New Jersey, married three shiny blonds in a row, and fathered a pair of children with names like colognes: Artemis and Jade. What made Manny think about Stanley was the stench in the Liver Ward.
Along with cracking her coccyx, breaking some ribs, rupturing her spleen, and shattering both elbows after her rest home plummet, Tony Zank’s mom had been diagnosed with acute cirrhosis. So she’d been shipped from Seventh Heaven to Marilyn Charity, where they stuck her in Liver.
Most of the other occupants, walking-dead rum mies with distended bellies and tears flowing hepati
tic yellow when they begged for a bottle, slumped on the edge of their beds and stared at their hands. An odd fact: Once they stopped seeing giant insects flying out of the walls, dying drunks pretty much stared at their hands all day. But their hands were not what Manny was ponder ing. It was their stench that grabbed him by the throat, a toxic cocktail of sweat, bile, soaking sheets, and rank
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