SMELLS LIKE BULLSHIT

Chapter 12
As I wait for Pauly, I look around the “office”. It is clear this was a slapdash effort to look like a legitimate business. The trim around the floors and doorways were close but didn’t match exactly, you could see tape edges in the drywall, and an occasional brush mark. Someone bid this job really cheap, or Pauly did the job himself as he sampled the stock. I feel the receptionist’s eyes on me, as I turn and catch her looking at my crotch.

“See something you like Doll” I said laying down my best glimmer of the pearly whites. She grins the grin of a naughty vixen, mini Vance struggles to get a look.

“Can I touch it?” she asks?

“Touch it?” I reply, “Baby you can, touch it, kiss it, stroke it, rub it, grip it until it turns colors be my guest.

She looks back down and runs her tongue over her perfect lips, wetting them slightly. Mini Vance is starting to really pay attention, and I see her eyes dart over to my left thigh as she catches the slight movement in my pants leg.

Confusion sets in.

She says…”It’s so big and shiny”

Shiny? What the hell is she talking about? Mini Vance hasn’t surfaced yet.

Then I remembered the .50 jammed in my waist band…shit.

“Oh that. Sweetie, Vance would love to show you that as well.” I take a step forward - a door opens behind her, as I hear another open behind me. A trap! I quickly draw both guns, and back up until I am against the wall, aiming at opposite ends of the room. This is not good. If I cap someone, even if I just wound someone it might frighten or turn off this Polynesian Princess. If I need to shoot someone and hesitate... damn, why can’t women resist me? I wonder if the Desert Eagle is even loaded?

The man at the door behind my receptionist must be Pauly, he looks like a Pauly. When he sees me pointing the .50 at him, an angry frown covers his already threatening mug. Then his expression changes to “what the fuck.”

I notice that he isn’t really even looking at me or the hand cannon. I quickly look to my left and see why. Standing there, frozen, with a startled look on her face was the cleaning lady. I lower the 1911, then the .50. The cleaning lady lets out a loud sigh, clutches her chest with one hand and grabs her cart with the other. “Sorry ma’m, Vance didn’t mean to scare you.” She just stood there staring at me wide eyed, and breathing heavily.

“Put away the hardware, before you hurt yourself.” Pauly had moved to the receptionist’s desk and was staring straight into my skull. “Youse the one who wants to talk with me?”

“Yes sir, but Vance won’t take up much of your time”

“Vance better not take up my time, I have a dinner date and a craps game to get to.”

“This way.” Pauly turned to walk toward the door. I glanced at the receptionist. She was looking at me with her big, soft, brown eyes. I smile. She slowly winks, and lightly licks her upper lip. A shudder races from my ears, through my shoulders and down to my loins… She would have been worth getting shot.

“Shut the fuggin’ door” Pauly says, with just enough Jersey accent that told me he wasn’t long out of the Garden State. I step into a small office and shut the door behind me.

I extend my hand and say “Vance, Vance Manion Private Eye and Personal Strength Coach”

Pauly looks at me somewhat puzzled, and grips my hand in what I could only believe a vice would feel like if some crazed gorilla on steroids and crank were manning the controls. I give it my all so I wouldn’t look like some sissy from homoville, but I could feel the bones in my hand starting to grind together. He releases my hand quickly and the blood rushing back into it was almost as painful as his grip. Pauly sits down behind the desk and motions to an empty chair.

“So Vance Manion what can I do for you? You looking for a job? I seem, to have an opening in my distribution department”

“Vance has a job, but I would like to ask you about that opening, how exactly did the position become ‘open’?”

“Well Vance, let me tell you a secret, never go into business with family, sometimes it works and sometimes, well sometimes your brother catches you groping his crush and puts two in your chest in broad daylight. Know what I mean?”
I paused a little shocked…did Pauly just solve the shooting for me? What is his part in this? This guy is talkative, how much more will he tell me?

“Let Vance get this straight, the two Samoan brothers worked for you? And the dead one was your distribution guy?”

“That’s right Sherlock,” Pauly replied.

“You guys are the liquor distributor right?” I asked.

“I spoke to soon, Sierra Minerals, does that sound like liquor to you?”

“Vance noticed that there were no tax stamps on your client’s liquor bottles.”

Pauly leans forward in his chair, cocks his head, looks at me and asked, “Who’s paying you to give a shit?”

“Vance can’t say, client privilege”

Pauly leans back and opens his desk drawer, and the next thing I see is my sawed off shotguns twin aimed squarely at my face. “I asked you nicely, and now I’m telling you…who da fuck you working for?”