Dirty Words - [7]

Then he realized he was fucking huge.

When John Holmes died, the other guys used to joke that Bobby was in first place now.

For all he knew, he was.

On the bus, Bobby always tried to get the seat next to Loretta Delveccio since Loretta had a bad habit of falling asleep on the ride to school. When she started snoring, Bobby would open his pants and place his dick on her lap while his buddies (who couldn't even get their dicks onto their own laps) nearly herniated themselves trying not to laugh. Yeah, Bobby's dick had served him well over the years, not only sexually, but as a comedy prop.

But he never realized that it could be used as a weapon.

"He wants you to do what?" Pete's mouth hung open. Three scotches later and his hands still shook from the ordeal.

"He told me to fuck Angela."

"Angela?"

"Angela." Bobby translated the situation for Gino.

Gino's mouth also fell open in synch with Pete's. "Angela?"

"Yes. Ange-fucking-la. Will you two clean out the earwax?"

Pete slammed his J &B and waved at the bartender for a refill. "But…why?"

"He wants me to teach her a lesson."

Angela DeMarco was Henry's third ex-wife. They'd married eight years ago when she was twenty. Their divorce was uglier than Pete's pockmarked ass-a metaphor that Bobby wished he didn't have in his head. Her lawyers couldn't touch Henry's money, since to the legit world, it didn't exist.

Angela knew it did.

She'd been making threats.

"What if she don't wanna be taught a lesson?"

Bobby threw back his fifth shot of Jack. "I kinda think that's the point, Pete."

Angela DeMarco's groans are muffled through the red rubber ball-gag as Bobby fucks her. The handcuffs on her feet and hands click on the frame rhythmically with every thrust. Bobby looks out the window and sees the Empire State Building gleaming over the river, like Manhattan's very own monstrous dick.

It's beautiful.

Angela screams. At least she tries to.

"You ain't gonna do it, are ya?" Pete asked as he rolled the handtruck into the back if the van.

"What choice do I have?" Bobby slid the jukebox off the cart and secured it in the hold, one of those new internet jukeboxes that all the bars in Manhattan had been switching to.

In with the old, out with the new.

Gone were the days when Bobby and the crew had to wrangle a half-ton of quarters into Brooklyn every week. These new babies took in mostly bills. Hell, they even took credit cards nowadays. In the last year, the new machines had tripled the cash money flowing into DeMarco Amusements.

Pete looked queasy. "We got enough shit to worry about right now, as is. Why the fuck is Henry even worrying about Angela? Christ, we got the Stella crew taking over the Meatpacking district, Chinatown's cut off, those crazy-ass Russians have all of Queens locked down now. I don't even want to talk about Koreatown. We're gonna have nothing left soon, and Henry's wasting our time with his marital problems?"

"That's Henry's choice, Pete." The real question that none of them asked was; why the fuck did Henry DeMarco do anything anymore? Why had he taken to wandering the neighborhood in his bathrobe? With all the money coming in, why hadn't he shored up his crew with more men than the current rotation of Bobby, Pete and Gino?

Their territory had been whittled down to Greenwich Village east of Seventh Avenue and was getting smaller every month.

If the Stella boys decided to take the rest of their territory away suddenly rather than chip away at it?

If they wound up in a sudden war?

Bobby knew that the pathetic DeMarco crew would be left, well…with their dicks hanging out.

"I don't want to sound paranoid, but…" Pete had been starting a lot of his sentences that way lately. The problem was, he didn't sound paranoid at all.

"But what?"

"When I went to clear out the machine down on Houston and Sullivan? I'm pretty sure I saw Chaz Stella's Caddy parked down the block."

Bobby stayed silent.

The two of them finished loading up the truck. Pete shuffled his feet as he unstrapped his back brace and tossed it into the cab. Bobby knew he had something on his mind when he did his little two-step, like a kid who had to pee.

Pete clapped his hands and rubbed them together. "Okay then. You doing the collections today or Gino?"

"I am."

"When are you going to do…it?" He wasn't asking about the collections any more.

"Tonight."

"Jeez." Pete looked like he might puke. Without another word, Pete clapped his hand onto Bobby's shoulder and grasped it tight.

They'd been through a lot together, done a lot of crazy, sick (mostly illegal) tasks for Henry DeMarco-but what Bobby was being ordered to do? That was something else.

Pete drove out the bay doors and went left on Metropolitan, heading for the bridge.

Bobby walked around the receiving desk, where Gino waved him over. Gino looked around the area, a little red-faced. He palmed something into Bobby's hand.

A foil wrapped condom.

"Per il tuo cazzo."

"Grazie."

When he finishes, Angela is slumped on the bed, her arms and legs dangling up like a marionette waiting for the show to begin. He dresses slowly in her bathroom, the bedroom silent but for Angela's strained breaths.