Free Plainclothes Naked by Jerry Stahl Page A

yanked his shoes off. The blind boy man kept screaming
    “Why?” But Tony didn’t care. He threw the kid’s Hush Puppies in the trash and started throttling him.
    That’s how Tony was wired. He was a throttler. Which was perfect. The second Carmella provoked Tony into choking her, Mac would step in and kill him, thereby saving her life and, in his much-mulled over fantasy, gaining her outsize, willing body in gratitude.
    On the other hand—Plan B—if Tony killed Carmella before Mac could intervene, that worked, too. They could share the money. Tony was a maniac, but he was a fair maniac. On every job they’d done, he’d split the take a clean sixty–forty.
    “How much you say she’s holding?” Tony whispered, eyeing the saucy rest home supervisor while Mac explained that he didn’t know for sure, but it looked like a tasty wad.
    Much to McCardle’s disappointment, Tony didn’t take the bait. “I don’t believe you! We got the chance for serious money, and you’re tripping over chump change some pudge stuffed in her boob-wedgie.”
    “Well ... yeah,” Mac said, a little hurt. “Why not?”
    Disgust curled Zank’s lips. “You want it, you take it,” he said. “I got better fish to fry. You even know why we checked in here?”
    “THEY LOVE THEIR MOMS!” Jerry Springer shouted, and Tony ripped the plug out of the wall so hard the TV nearly toppled.
    McCardle was stung. Though, come to think of it, he wasn’t 100 percent sure what they were doing at the Pawnee. The embarrassing truth showed up on his face.
    “The Black Dino doesn’t know,” Zank mocked, pinching Mac’s cheeks and squeezing them until his eyes watered. Zank’s voice was getting louder, and McCardle watched Carmella, perched on the edge of the queen-size bed, straining to hear. “The Black Dino thinks we dropped my mother out a fucking window, took off with some fat Spic bitch, and checked into this fleapit so he could pinch a chunk of lunch money. The Black Dino’s not too fucking bright is he? Is he? ” he repeated, louder still, pretend bitch-slapping him as Carmella slipped off the peach bedspread.
    She padded forward with the remote held high over her beehive and a look in her eye that stuck McCardle’s tongue to the roof of his mouth.
    “I can’t hear you!” Zank shouted, at the exact second Carmella whipped the remote off his temple. She reared back and banged him again before he could even turn around.
    “Spic bitch, huh?”
    “Spic bitch,” Tony smiled, shaking off the second blow. His temple sprouted a bloodless egg, as if something under the skin had hatched and wanted out.
    Carmella was so stunned by his disturbo grin she forgot to hit him again. The remote dangled from her raised hand, neglected.
    “You wanna play?” Zank asked her, as happy as McCardle’d ever seen him. “The fat Spic bitch wants to play with a white boy?”
    Tony let out a yip, and Carmella dodged his first punch with sur prising grace. Ducking under it, she caught Zank on the chin with a punishing uppercut. McCardle had to admit, she fought like a man. He was still thinking about it when he saw the big-barreled .357 in his partner’s hand. Tony held the thing like he meant to shoot, but instead he just poked her. He shoved the barrel hard in Carmella’s stomach, then giggled and jabbed her in her breast.
    “Doughy,” he laughed. “We got us the Pillsburita Dough-girl.”
    Zank eeny-miney-moed Carmella’s bosoms with the muzzle. “So where’s the dough-girl keep her dough? A dumb-ass black birdy told me there’s some dough-re-mi in there somewhere.”
    Zank turned to McCardle and waggled his eyebrows, sharing the fun, and Carmella made for the gun. She ripped it from Tony’s hand, then Tony snatched it back. Carmella slapped at the barrel and for one frantic second, Zank bobbled the weapon, which is when McCardle tried to grab it and fired in his face.
    The shot was so loud it left McCardle deaf. When he opened his eyes,Tony was