As he stepped from his car the asphalt was not there—not for his Rockports anyhow. The gravel at the mouth of the alley didn’t taste half bad though: Kind of light on week-old rat shit, don’t you think, Barney?
Yes, Detective Mancuso, a bit light on properly aged rat shit fermented under God’s own heat lamp—plenty of glass in the aggregate though. Yep, still in Charm City!
The Mick uniform was already helping him up, “You okay, detective?”
Barney Mancuso never had to consider the logistics or operational concerns of saving face when he was trashed on a Wednesday morning, or on any other morning when Friday was looking a long way off.
“A okay, officer. Thank God I didn’t park curbside!”
There, sober, just like that—done, instant pot of coffee.
“Yes Sir,” the horrified officer was saying, as he looked around at the hood-rat bodies. “I’ve been at it for an hour now. It’s almost noon, hot as balls and the Coroner’s Office is still over in Edmondson Village.”
Just then a car door slammed and they turned from the mouth of the alley—where four T-shirted blood-soaked hood-rat bodies lay draped over the curb from the alley to the storm drain like winter ducks on a string—to see Abe waltzing over from his beater, which was double-parked, camera in hand. The uniform was named Morrell. Barney patted him on the back and stood like Grant at Vicksburg, “Never fear, Officer Morrell, CSI Baltimore is here!”
The flies were already swarming in the summer heat and Officer Morrell’s job would be pretty damned nasty by 2:00 p. m.
“Hey Abe.”
Abe stopped in his tracks, “What the fuck! Are you kidding me? I just ate Barne!”
Draped shit! They’re hanging like cordwood curtains off that curb. There is not a soul around. What a neighborhood. The one in the gutter, look at him!
Abe was snapping pictures and Barney needed some mental space and made his case with his infamous wit, “Officer Morrell, could you secure the perimeter and keep the crowd at bay please.”
Not even getting the joke, or at least not appreciating it, the uniform walked about into the deserted street and then headed up the alley, looking for the crowd that was not there.
Abe looked over his shoulder at him as he approached the stiffs on the curb. “The douche bought that? Christ, he’ll be a major in a year.”
Abe then pointed at the tall stiff with the grill. “No Eyes, none of these stiffs have any fuckin’ eyes Barne!”
Barney walked up on the sidewalk and considered their attitudes as Abe stayed in the gutter snapping pictures. He reached into his pocket and ripped the cap off his four ounce Jose Cuervo and downed it, tossing the bottle in the gutter behind his rear wheel. “Posed, and stiff as shit. This was about midnight, or just before. They all have their hands over their groin. What the h—”
He squatted and lifted up the hands of the kid with the pink head-rag, “Jesus, Abe, the genitals are gone. By the time this hopper gets to hell he’ll be a transsexual.”
Abe then swung up onto the sidewalk and snapped pictures of the rigid posed hands over the groin, and one of the gaping wounds exposed by the two rigid arms Barney was holding up at a 45-degree angle.
“Christ, Barne, I’m glad I ate before I rolled out. I won’t have an appetite for days after this shit—got a watch my sugar ya know.”
His eye then caught the sneakers of the gutter kid, the one who bought it in the street. “Abe, the stiff in the street: give me enough of him to wallpaper the shitter.”
He walked over and looked down into that kid’s face, frozen in fear, as if he were stiffer when he got done than he was now. There was an eye carved in the middle of his forehead, and some kind of weird hooped cross carved in his bare chest. His shirt was tucked under the back of his head. Most importantly, his eyes remained in his head, and his hands were folded over his belly, above a groin that had not been mutilated, and was still adorned in thigh-high jeans and blue form-fitting boxers.
What the hell is your story, kid?
Barney began to open his phone to call Ed. The scrapping of urgent shoes on the crumbling concrete of the alley brought him out of his communion with the dead. It was Officer Morrell, looking like he had seen a ghost. “Down the alley just past the turn. Hurry, the rats are trashing your crime scene.”
He was running before he knew what he was doing.
Jesus, I’ll die of a heart attack in this heat!
By the time he had hit the back alley he was weaving, his heart pounding in his ears.
Barney Mancuso: dead from the hundred meters!
Morrell was standing over a trashcan lid and a milk crate, placed in the middle of the barren concrete alley, between the weed-choked yards, pointing at the upside down milk crate, where a handful of eyeballs were dangling from the bloody ramen noodles that had once linked them to the brain. His finger was shaking as he pointed to one bloody strand and then another. His voice quaked, “Two rats, made off with these two eyes, down the alley into the weeds.”
Abe was mumbling something as he snapped close-ups. Then the three of them walked over to the upside down trashcan lid. Within were four sets of human genitalia, scorched with fire, having the appearance of hard hollow ash anatomy models. Morrell was engrossed, sniffing over the lid as he pointed, “Liter fluid, detective. I lit my grill with the stuff just last night!”
Abe pitched forward and grabbed the sagging wire fence and began hurling his guts, stuffed with spaghetti by the looks of it.
What a nimrod!
“Jesus, Abe! How about toast and jam every once in a while!”
