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“The motherfucker could walk right by us and wink and we couldn’t do shit,” Boover observed. “Unless we had the balls to—”

Malone cast a stern look and shook his head.

“You ever seen the guy?” Boover asked, to change the subject they’d all thought about but never voiced.

“Yeah, couple of times. Word is he bops between here, New York, and Jersey; when he’s here, he stays at the Caudill Mansion with his wife—”

“Marshie Caudill,” Boover acknowledged. “There’s a match made in heaven. Best-lookin’ stripper in town winds up hitched to a fuckin’
don.
”

“And that’s where he met her, too. She worked that strip joint since she was 16 but then
bought
the damn place once her father died and left her all those mineral rights and money.”

“You figure Marshie’s got anything to do with Vinchetti’s smack business?”

“Naw. She’s just arm-candy and a piece of ass,” Malone felt certain, for as attractive as Marshie Vinchetti was, she was twice as stupid. “What I heard is they spend some’a their time at the Mansion, but most at some ritzy townhouse just out’a Newark. Don’t see as much’a Marshie, not since her baby died. Her first kid, that little snot ‘Becca, lives at the house here all the time while she’s in school. Gotta servant looks after her.”

“Fuck ’em all,” Boover sputtered, arms crossed. He looked disgustedly at the staked dog’s head in the present yard. “And now we got this. One’a Vinchetti’s guys…killing
puppies…
”

“Where’s the rest of the dog?”

“Dude chucked what was left in the back yard by the door. He always puts the head on a stick in front and leaves the rest in back so when the cowboys split, they see that too. Yanked the skin right off the pooch, then slit its belly open. Cute, huh?”

“And you know damn well the poor mutt was still alive while all that was happenin’.” Malone shook his head again. “Who the
fuck
could do somethin’ like that?”

“Like the feds said. Probably a bagman from Venezuela—that’s where the dog-head thing comes from. Shit, they probably
eat
dogs in
that
shit-hole third-world commie dive.”

Malone was getting depressed. He couldn’t take his eyes off the dog’s head: that of a tiny white poodle.

“Whose dog is it?”

“Adeline Parker—”

“Shit.”

“She’s over there, bawlin’ her eyes out.”

“I’ll talk to her. Try to clear the rest’a these folks out,” and then Malone walked dejectedly to the fat, jowly old woman blubbering in the yard.

“Aw, gosh dang, Adeline, I cain’t tell how sorry I am ’bout your little dog,” he began.

The old lady was inconsolable, boo-hooing to such extremes—God bless her—that Malone fantasized kicking the unpleasant old blue-haired biddy hard in the ass. “You find the evil varmint done this to my little Fluffy! You find him, Chief! If’n you don’t I’ll use
all my power
in the community to see that you never get elected again.”

Here we go.
Malone put his arm about her shoulder and tried to urge her back in the direction of her house. “We’ll find him, all right, Adeline. I give ya my word, and when we
do
find him…he’ll up’n pay dearly.”

“Aw,
bullshit!
” Adeline gruffed. “You police these days ain’t got the
spine
to do things right no more. No, no, not like the good ole days. If yawl had any
balls,
like
real
 men, you’d catch this monster’n kill him! But, no, no, you’ll be more concerned with his fuckin’
rights!
Makin’ shore he gets a
fair trial!
Anyone tortures a
puppy
ought’a be tortured
hisself!
”

Jesus please us,
Malone thought. “Now, Adeline, let’s have no more talk like that. Why don’t’cha go on home now, git yerself a nip and try ta get some rest—”

“And where was you! Where was you’n the rest’a yer overpaid, lazy cops when this psycho was stealin’ my poor Fluffy? Tell me that!”

“Just you get on home now, Adeline…”

The elderly nuisance pulled away from Malone, then stomped toward the grim stick bearing the head of her pet. Still blubbering, she pulled the head off the stick—

“Aw, now, Adeline!” Malone moaned. “That there’s kind’a what we call evidence! Ya cain’t just up’n take it!”

“Stop me! Gonna give my Fluffy’s head a proper burial, and if’n you don’t like it, then kiss my ass!”

Boover returned as the woman stormed off. “Forget about the head, Chief. Ain’t like we can take prints off it.”

“Shee-it,” Malone muttered.

“You got any idea how we might go about catchin’ this guy?”

Malone tweaked his handlebar mustache. “I been thinkin’ ’bout it. You know how the feds do it, don’t’cha? They have thereself a
sting
operation.”

“A sting, huh? How are we gonna do that?”

“It ain’t gonna be easy but, see, I figure if we play our cards
smart,
we can catch this dog-killin’ piece’a shit, and once we do
that,
we might be able to catch Vinchetti himself…”

(II)

God, I love him so much,
Veronica mused of Mike as she stood behind the camera counter. She believed in Providence—
not
the city or the basketball team—and she knew that it was God who’d placed Mike Anthon in her life’s path. Her heart
pattered
thinking about him—Mike, not God—and she also knew that her insistence to remain a virgin
proved
her faith beyond doubt.
God KNOWS, He KNOWS,
she thought. The certain
venal
sins—namely fellatio—that she committed with Mike were purely pragmatic in this new and restless age; and with those she skirted the far more grievous sin of
intercourse out of wedlock.
God, she knew, would forgive the fellatio, for He knew the true foundation of her resolve: to live and love in accordance with God’s Word.

Christmas muzak issued lightly through the store. “Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus…” Garlands of blinking lights extended overhead, while the front windows displayed cardboard holly and giant XMAS SALE signs. She looked down at the row of Casio and Nikon CoolPix digital cameras, only to spy her own superimposed reflection in the glass counter top. Even in this abstract image of herself, as the Christmas lights above blinked down, she could
see
her aura of faith.
Please, God. Give me the strength to steer Mike off his path of error. Let my love be true enough to CHANGE him.

Mike had promised to take her out tonight—for pizza—and the prospect made her
brim
with joy. Every so often, she glanced over at him, trying hard to seem nonchalant but it wasn’t easy. He stood over there now in the cellphone department talking with his crony Archie, and every so often his gorgeous, dark eyes would flick over to her, then flick back down.
He’s checking me out but doesn’t want me to know,
she realized, blushing. Mike
was
vain, and she knew that sin of vanity came from his
GQ
good looks—he couldn’t help it. And men so possessed of such sheer
handsomeness
often played hard to get.
No big deal,
Veronica thought. Patience was her virtue.

Aside from her sin of fellatio, she knew she was guilty of a little vanity herself but this, too, God would forgive because it served as a means to a Godly end.
You have to keep them interested,
she knew all too well,
otherwise you lose them in this amoral quagmire we call modern society…
She’d just have to keep the faith because, in essence, that’s what God would want her to do. Her nipples tingled beneath the loud, bright-blue employee shirt. The sheer polyester accommodated her ploy quite well…

She’d deliberately taken to foregoing her bra (
I may not have a runway model’s face but I KNOW I’ve got great breasts…
) and would several times daily tweak her nipples to make them protrude. Men liked that. She wanted Mike
inundated
by a positive erotic image of her. Oh, she knew he’d been with plenty of women and was constantly accosted by plenty more every day.
But those silly girls don’t love him, and he knows that.

Ultimately, Veronica was very aware that she was using lust to lure Mike closer into her life, and lust was a sin. But her rationale seemed too honest to be incorrect.
It has to be okay to use lust as my bait simply because God knows my eventual intentions are to live sinlessly, in a marriage with Mike.
It made sense to
her,
at least. She got bristly thinking about him, and bristlier still when musing upon such a time when they were husband and wife. Her uncle’s trust fund, she knew, was more bait for the expectation but, again, eventually
true love
would find its way to his heart.

Then money wouldn’t matter. Only our LOVE would matter,
and upon completion of the thought, a tear of joy slipped from her eye.

Nonchalant, nonchalant,
she commanded herself as she came out from around the camera counter. No customers were present so Veronica used this opportunity to momentarily excuse herself. Mike looked up, then Veronica waved daintily with her fingers and mouthed
Little girl’s room,
and scurried away.

Bing Crosby crooned more Christmas rhymes as she hurried to the back, to the
employee’s
bathroom, because that one had a lock.
What would Mike say if he caught me back here!
came the alarmed consideration, and then she giggled.
Knowing him, it’d probably get him aroused
.
She wasted no time once she locked the bathroom door.
All right, so I’m a little insecure,
she admitted. She pulled down her work pants along with the wildcat-red Victoria’s Secret lace panties (Mike preferred
quality
underthings) and up over her 36C bosom came the blue work shirt. She appraised herself, as she often did, and was quite content with the appraisal. The alabaster-white skin glowed in its own healthy lambency, her abdomen sleek and flat, her full and equally lambent bosom dark-nippled and erect, her almost-bare pubis fecund in its form, vital in its feminine youth, and accentuated by the meticulous half-inch-wide strip of downy, ash-brown hair.

My body’s almost as good as the girls in the Victoria’s Secret catalogue!
she realized, and she thanked God for so bestowing her.

Next she looked just as honestly as her face.
Fine, a little nerdy in the face, but how can I complain?
The hair atop her head hung shinily to the middle of her back and shared the exact same interesting hue as her spare pubic hair. The zit on her nose wasn’t very big and would surely be gone in a day or so. And tonight? Mike would be so distracted by her body, he wouldn’t even notice.

She felt tickly even before she reached into her purse for the Doc Johnson’s Mini Pocket Wand; she mustn’t take too long—Mike would wonder what she was doing. She turned the wand on low, then stiffened and hissed when she touched its manic end to her right nipple, following the circumference of her areola. Delicious, intense waves seemed to spill over her chest from the inside out. The tender papilla swelled at once, and felt nerve-charged and somehow connected to her awareness. Round and round, the tip went, then to the other breast, then back. In only a minute, the warm spheres of her breasts seemed to beat, the nipples gorging till they stuck out in a manner that was anything but inconspicuous.

Just what she wanted.

The groove of her sex began to slicken, yet she never once considered lowering the wand to actually pleasure herself.
That
would’ve been a sin; and would reduce to falsehood her own morality. In truth, Veronica had never even had an orgasm and this was not due to frigidity at all but via her own force of will. Again, she thought of minor sins allowed to serve a Godly end—and wasn’t this just more proof of her faith? Her entreating of Mike orally was only to demonstrate her own charitability; it was not some lustful need on her part. She knew this, and knew that God knew it too. She was saving her very first orgasm just as she was saving her virginity: something to only be experienced once betrothed in the eyes of God and with Jesus as her witness. Not many women would have such strength, no indeed. There had even been rare occasions when Mike had reciprocated with cunnilingus, whereupon Veronica had only feigned climax, knowing full well that such abstinence only proved
more
—still
more
of her faith.