Simon Plaster's Blog

MONDAY 10/16/19 GREASE MONKEY BUSINESS
MAN OVERBOARD? SHARK(S) CIRCLES GREEZERS HEIR

Abba Dabba Dabba:
 Wall Street corporate raider Hardwick & Simmons today filed official notice of its acquisition of 5% of outstanding shares of Trinita Coal Oil & Tar Co. (OTC:TCT), parent of the Greezers lube shop chain, together with notice of its intention to acquire additional shares. The action, coming on the first business day following the murder of Trinita matriarch Nanette Carbone DeGrasso, can only add to the pain of loss no doubt felt by Ms. DeGrasso’s son and presumed heir, Charles DeGrasso, currently an Executive VP of the Company.
Given Mr. DeGrasso’s likely inheritance of a 44% stake in the Company reportedly held by his mother—plus presumed continued loyalty of the longtime matriarch’s Carbone family members reported to own approximately 11% of outstanding stock — the longtime heir apparent perhaps need not fear attack by H&S principal, “Whitey” Simmons. The “Great Whitey’s” appetite is known to favor fare he can gobble up whole, digest quickly, and immediately dispose of residue through his bowels, so to speak.
Fellow H&S principal “Cookie” Hardwick, however, could well present Charles with a different kettle of fish to cope with. Like the fiendish Cookiecutter Shark — only about two feet in length but equipped with the largest teeth in the shark family of predators—Hardwick is known for taking relatively small bites of targeted companies rather than devour his prey entirely. In other words, as an activist minority shareholder, “Cookie” has a record of harassing management in a variety of self- serving ways that do not necessarily kill a targeted company, but leave it severely damaged by multiple distinctive “cookie cutter-shaped” wounds such as can be seen on living marlin and large whales. In some cases, however, death by a thousand bites does occur.
To those who speculate that Charles DeGrasso’s fellow Trinita Executive VP, Joe Degrasso, may have summoned Hardwick & Simmons to champion on his behalf a bid to succeed Nanette Carbone DeGrasso, this monkey says, No way, Jose! Nobody could be stupid enough to voluntarily swim with such voracious sharks.
In other lube industry news...



CHAPTER 31

On his Born to Run skateboard, Lero zoomed down the hallway of the Good Buddy Bail Bonds building. At the door to his residential office...Okay, now he regretted scraping the frosted glass panel free of all words. But no big deal; nothing a little paint wouldn’t fix.
Inside the office...Ah, gone from the walls was the memorabilia from his wasted prior life. Gone from horizontal surfaces was all the other clutter, except for the book—The Hero’s Journey—that he intended to someday read. Specifically, gone from floor, desktop and ceiling were the push-pins. Last night, in the afterglow of his religious experience at the funeral of Nanette DeGrasso, he had turned the page to a new chapter in his life. His decision to become a friar had come...
Lero sat down at his desk, leaned back in the chair, looked up to the ceiling, and mentally retraced the steps of his spiritual journey.
Now that he again thought about it, how ironic that it was his intended prey — Joe DeGrasso — who had led him onto his new path. “Father,” the kindly old man had said, taking his hand, “I would be honored if you would join me on the church steps for a benediction of sorts.”
And what a benediction it turned out to be! It was during that inspiring speech that he had begun to doubt that his suspect could have murdered the aunt he was so devoted to. Joe DeGrasso had not been born on third base and raised to think he had hit a triple. He was a Donald Duck alright, an unlucky guy—hit in the head by a wild pitch, so to speak — who had no doubt had to steal bases to work his way up a greased pole.
Then, standing in the chancel of the magnificent St. Joseph’s Church—with statues of Jesus and other important people looking over his shoulder—the homily about Saint Lorenzo delivered by that friar, how moving! Not only to him, but to Joe DeGrasso. Both of them had been brought to tears.
Still, however, like Saints Peter, Paul and Mary—who wouldn’t admit three times to even knowing Jesus before a rooster crowed—he had pursued that good man down the church aisle like a hound from hell. Only when the penitent Executive VP again addressed him as Father and confessed his sins...No, it was not until he himself had meditated about his own missteps in life during the drive back to Oklahoma City that his epiphany was completed:
He was born to become an Archdeacon of the Church and follow the example set by Saint Lorenzo; giving money to the blind, the crippled, the suffering.
Unfortunately, as pointed out earlier this morning by his ex- wife, to become even a lowly clergyman he would have to attend seminary classes and read a bunch of books. So... With Evie’s encouragement, he had decided to go back into politics; maybe run for Governor; maybe even zoom for...As President he would have lots of money to give away. Continuing to be a lawyer for the time being would be helpful on his new career path, so...
Into his redone office came his assistant, Hen. She was impressed; he could tell by her dropped jaw. After she sat down, he recited to her the entire summary of his religious experience that he had just finished reciting silently to himself. She was in awe; he could tell by the fact that she did not interrupt him and immediately start yapping about something else until...
“Does all that Who-Struck-John boil down to you still being
the defense lawyer for Hernando Gomez...?”
“Oh yes, as a matter of fact, I just got back from a meeting with...”
“...’cause I retraced poor old Mrs. DeGrasso’s last steps
yesterday afternoon when we got back from Krebs. Now I am of the opinion that you have been right all along.”
“Right about what?”
“Right about Joe DeGrasso being behind the murder of his aunt, that’s what.”
“Whoa!” said Lero, holding out his palms in a cease-and- desist gesture. “That bus has already left the station.”
“I don’t know what you mean by that, but I do know — firsthand and unequivocally—that fried fatback being served in the Greezer lube shops is downright uneatable.”
“You’re just picky. Most people would eat old sneakers if they were fried. But so what?”
“The ‘so what’ is that I reckon poor old Mrs. DeGrasso had the steam to walk ten blocks in the middle of the night because she was het up—likely on the outs with Joe DeGrasso alright—and set on inspecting Lardo operations for her own self. The only money in the cash register was what she her own self would have paid Hernando.”
“The joint was closed, Hen. And though lardo is not to your liking, why did the victim consume one double order in her bedroom and a second double order at the lube shop, where another empty wrapper was found clutched in her hand?”
That stopped his assistant-in-training in her untrained tracks, allowing him to get words that mattered in edgewise. “Joe DeGrasso is an innocent man. I have looked into his eyes and heard him...”
“Just because he says he’s innocent don’t mean anything. And there is nothing ‘privileged’ about whatever he told you during your hug. You are not his dang lawyer.”
“Well, no, but I am his...his spiritual counselor. And what he confessed to me has nothing to do with the Gomez Case, which is now truly closed, by the way.”
“Closed?”
Before Lero could explain, his printer signaled an incoming fax, no doubt confirmation from Evie that her boss had approved the plea agreement he had sweet talked his ex-wife into this morning: The murder charge against Hernando Gomez would be dropped. His client would plead guilty to manslaughter. Evie would recommend a prison sentence of five years. And in about half that time, Hernando—if he kept his nose clean—would be out on parole.
Lero leaned back to a credenza behind him, took hold of the fax, and put it on his desk. Hmmm. At the top of the page:
Oklahoma County Medical Examiner AUTOPSY REPORT
Near the bottom of the page:
SUMMARY
Per attached data and diagnoses, the deceased white
female, 95, exhibits pronounced signs of prolonged fasting resulting in malnutrition and severe dehydration. Undigested stomach contents reflect recent ingestion of approximately 12 ounces of dense fat that caused sudden metabolic and electrolytic imbalances. Hypophosphatemia would in turn have caused onset of confusion, muscle weakness, seizures and cardiac arrest.
CAUSE OF DEATH
Sudden Refeeding Syndrome
MANNER OF DEATH

Accident

Hmmm. Lero pushed the piece of paper across the desk to his assistant-in-training, stood up from his chair, and picked up his skateboard.
“See, Hen,” he said, “I told you I had a hunch Joe DeGrasso was not guilty of murder. And I was right about that big picture.”



CHAPTER 32

Joe didn’t like doing business at home sweet home, and
was busting a gut to get started on the Lardo “Roll-Out to
the Sea” from Louisiana all the way to...to Georgia. But Hunter had called to say something important had come up, something that could not be handled at the office. Then an unknown relative-by-marriage — guy by the name of Bobby Mangano — had knocked on the door with what he said was an urgent matter on his mind.
Turned out Mangano worked at a New York City outfit that had been “following” Company affairs, and that “danger” was in the air. So now,Joe sat across from the guy at the pink formica table in the kitchen of his modest suburban house, finishing a funny story about a Hindu, a Jew and kangaroo walking into a bar.
“Ha, ha, ha,” said his guest, while looking at his watch. “I’ll have to remember that one. Getting to the point, Cousin Joe, I wanted to say how impressed I was by the, uh, ‘benediction’ you delivered yesterday on the church steps. You made a compelling case for Carbone family shareholders to stay invested in Trinita. Unfortunately, in that regard, you and my firm—Hardwick & Simmons—are at cross purposes. You see, we have recently bought a substantial block of shares and are interested in buying more.”
“Aha,” said Joe, “I heard someone was sniffing around the Carbones.”
“To be quite honest with you, Cousin, we have also been 'sniffing’ Cousin Charles DeGrasso and...”
“Aha!”
“...and are not entirely pleased with his, uh, ‘aroma’."

“He’s too snooty for Old Spice.”

“And too snooty for Lardo - he actually does favor transition
to tofu - which gives my firm cause for concern. We see great potential value in the cash cow you have brought into the fold, as did our dearly departed matriarch. But with today’s reading of her will, Cousin Charlie will presumably become outright owner of a forty-four percent stake in the Company. We will have to move faster and at higher cost than planned to substantially increase our holdings in order to provide a counterweight to his misguided inclinations. Therefore...”
Joe’s mind had begun to wander and was headed farther afield until...
“...inasmuch as most of the stock we will be buying are shares once owned by your father...”
“Yes, damnit, a full thirty-three percent stake would have and should have been mine, but...”
“Cousin Charlie is indeed ‘Gladstone Gander’; you are the unlucky duck who has had to make your own way. Hands- on management is always best, in our view. So, bottom line, would you be willing to be our champion and challenge Cousin Charlie — not by push-ups exactly — for our former matriarch’s seat?”
So inspired was Joe by the prospect of immediately succeeding to “Her Majesty’s” throne, he barely heard the details of the pitch made by Bobby Mangano before the New York hot shot rose abruptly from the table. At the front door on his way out to another important meeting, “Just one more thing,” said his new best friend, “a small technicality. We’ve not had time to do usual due diligence, so I must ask: Is their anything slightly, uh, ‘offish’ in your past that, if it came to light, would cause embarrassment to Mssrs. Hardwick and Simmons?”
Offish?
“Well, Bobby, as you must know, Cousin Charles and that wife of his have spread rumors...”
“Oh yes, we recognize that you might turn out to be a ‘Fredo’; that’s no problem, but, uh, anything that might rile up the #MeToo mob?”
After assuring Bobby Mangano that his past relations with women were clean as a hound’s tooth and sending him on his way, Joe began to pace the shag-carpeted floor of his modest suburban house’s living room.
“What’s wrong, Joe?” asked the wife, standing at the picture window to watch out for Hunter’s arrival.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he replied, “just the opposite. Don’t want to talk about it right now; don’t want to jinx my luck. Everything is fine and dandy; finer and dandier than ever.”
He was an inch away from grasping the trophy he had always coveted, the prize he deserved, but...He was unlucky. Something always came up to spoil a happy ending.
“I’m just not a closer, Linda. A salesman has got to know how to seal a deal, but . . I talk too much. I can’t help myself; I get carried away and talk right past the closing point. Guys on the lube shop floor tell me all the customer cares about nowadays is speed, nothing but speed. Customers’ minds wander, they lose patience with friendly chit-chat. Five, ten, maybe fifteen minutes after being ready to shake on a deal, they say they need to think about it; and never come back. People call me ‘Joe Blow’, Linda; they call Joe DeGrasso ‘Joe Blowhard’ and laugh at me behind my back. They say Joe DeGrasso talks too much.”
“They didn’t laugh at you yesterday when you were up on the church steps, Joe; and didn’t get bored until you were almost halfway through. Maybe you should have told some jokes.”
“No, no, a funeral is no time to be yakking it up. Guys who crack jokes are not taken seriously. No one promotes a man who cracks jokes. I had to...had to put down those rumors spread by Cousin Charles and that wife of his. And I did it, didn’t I? They didn’t dare come up there and try to beat me at push-ups.
“Look, Linda; look at this,” he said to his wife as he flexed a bicep. “I wish they had taken me up on the challenge; I wish... Not that it matters; rumors don’t matter. That fellow, Bobby Mangano is behind me. Bernardo was already behind me. They want me to roll-out Lardo from Louisiana all the way across the South to...to that other state, with hands...with my own hands on the...on the roller.
“And shareholders; I am already well liked by all the Carbones down there in... in... in, you know; down there in my hometown. Important people are saying I should be the one to take Aunt Nanette’s place, but...Rumors; people say things behind a guy’s back and...You can’t trust anybody to keep gossip under his hat.”
“That’s because hardly anyone but priests wear hats anymore, Joe.”
Damnit, he was an emotional guy. At yesterday’s church service he had gotten carried away with...with...with emotion, not guilt. After all these years, probably that young woman herself didn’t even remember me...There was nothing to remember. He gave her a little shoulder squeeze from time to time, just to be friendly. So what? He sat down next to her only once and, okay, he gave her a little knee squeeze and...and...his hand may have brushed her thigh...maybe her inner thigh. She was the one who made the sudden move that made his hand go up her skirt. It was nothing. She left the Company the next day and by now... Now things were different, damnit. Now women were coming out of the woodwork like...like termites, telling...telling... Why had he told that young casually dressed priest what happened so long ago?
“Hunter’s here,” the wife announced. “And he has brought along some friends. How nice.”
Knock! Knock! Knock!
For crying out loud, why did his grown son never remember to bring a key? Why didn’t he just ring the damned doorbell? Why...?
“May we come in, Mrs. DeGrasso?” said a shortish guy wearing a dark suit. In the guy came, along with Hunter—wearing a shiner—and a semi-familiar-looking big guy wearing a hat, plaid sport coat, orange shirt and rumpled tie.
“Mr. DeGrasso, I am U.S Marshal Jack Mills,” said the shortish guy. “With me and your son — per finder’s fee protocols of the U.S Attorney’s Office—is Mr. Ed O’Rourke, a private investigator.”
“Did you get lost and get beat up by a bully, Hunter?” said the wife. “I have told you a hundred times not to wander off.”
“Yeah, Mom, I...I wandered off.”
“It is my duty, Mr. DeGrasso, to inform you that you are hereby under arrest for conspiring with Mr. Hunter DeGrasso, Mr. Yanko Tarnovskyy, a foreign national, and with other persons unknown, to launder money obtained through criminal enterprises, in violation of Article 18, Section 1956 of the U.S. Criminal Code. You have the right to remain silent and...”
“Arrest?” said Joe, barely able to stand. “I never laid a hand on that woman.”
“Sorry, Dad, I got sucked in before I knew the score.”
“Have you gambled away your laundry money again, Hunter?”
“Say,” said Joe, somewhat recovered. “You guys like ham? I know a pig rancher, owns a spread down...down around Henryetta, no, down around Marietta; treats his livestock like members of the family. I’m serious. Feeds ’em cornbread and pinto beans every damn day. No artificial ingredients. Everything is organs, pure organs. And...and...and he holds back picks of the litters for special customers like me. On my word as a DeGrasso, until you have cut yourself a slice of Henryetta pork, you have not...You have to dicker for it a little, but I can get you a twenty- pounder right out of the stye, my treat. Try it with a couple of slabs of lardo . . lardo...lardo. My cousin wanted to go with... with tofu. No joke. But I’m the guy who knew which of Auntie Nan’s buttons to push. I’m the guy...I’m the guy...I’m the guy...”
“Mr. DeGrasso, a friendly reminder: You have the right to remain silent. I suggest you exercise that right.”
“Yeah, Joe, that’s what my mother warned me about: You talk too much, dear.”



CHAPTER 33

Charles stepped from his Company-owned, Evans-driven, battery-powered limousine onto the sidewalk out front of his also Company-owned boyhood home. He looked up to the second-floor window of what had once been his bedroom, and for the past fifty-odd years the domain of Uncle Bernie.
With his wife and Bobby Mangano in tow, he climbed the sidewalk steps to the weedy lawn ruled over by the hideous concrete statue of Saint Lorenzo. Immediately following today’s reading of his mother’s last will and testament he would give the meddlesome old monk — Brother Bernie — ten minutes to clear out. Not only with highly justified vindictiveness toward his uncle, but for the old man’s own physical safety. For within the hour he would have the rundown house burned to the ground; the statue of Saint Lorenzo hauled off to the dump with other debris.
At the front door, Charles stood and waited—for a full five minutes he stood and waited to be served—before finally summoning his man Evans to push the doorbell button. Instantly, the door opened. As usual, his brown-robed uncle spoke no word of greeting before silently leading him and his party down the dismal candlelit hallway at a rather hurried pace.
♬Day of wrath and doom impending/ David’s word with Sybyl’s blending/ Heaven and earth in ashes ending...♬
“Jesus, what a fire trap,” said Mangano. “A guy could get killed in here.”
♬Worthless are my prayers and sighing/ Yet, good Lord, in grace complying/ Rescue me from fires undying...♬
“It’s a house of hellish horrors, even with ‘Madame Irritable Bowel’ flushed down the County Medical Examiner’s drain,” said Candice.
♬When the wicked are confounded/ Doomed to flames of woe unbounded/ Call me with Your saints surrounded...♬
Thankfully for the last time, into the inner sanctum Charles went, but...The throne-like chair sitting beneath the stained class window’s depiction of the loaves-and-fishes fable was draped with black crepe. Consumed with chagrin, he stood and waited to be served—for a full minute he stood and waited—until Bobby Mangano finally pulled another chair to the desk.
Brother Bernie disappeared into a shadowy corner, as usual. Out of the shadows his mother’s longtime attorney, Todo Pantaleone, appeared. The kindly seeming lawyer provided Candice with a chair, then one for himself. Mangano remained standing.
After opening a thick gray file folder that already lay upon the desk, “We are here for the reading of the Last Will and Testament of Nanette Carbone DeGrasso, the final codicil to which is dated April, 1, 2010,” said the priestly lawyer, before putting on reader glasses and commencing to drone: “‘I, Nanette Carbone DeGrasso, of Oklahoma City, County of Oklahoma, and State of Oklahoma, being of disposing mind and memory and under no restraint, do make, declare and publish this my last Will and Testament, hereby revoking all Wills and codicils heretofore made by me.
“‘First, realizing the uncertainty of life, I place full confidence in my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who promised: ‘I am the the resurrection and the life; he that believleth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live...’”
“Would you please get on with it,” Charles blurted. “My mother has been certified as completely dead by the County Medical Examiner.”
“And then some,” Candice added.
Nevertheless, the shifty lawyer continued to justify his no doubt exorbitant fee by reciting the will’s religious preamble, until finally: “Seventh, I urge my heirs not to set their hopes on uncertain riches, but to hold and enjoy the true wealth to be found through faith in Jesus Christ and good works for others.’”
“Amen,” said Uncle Bernie from the shadows.
“‘To my nephew, Joseph, who has been such a disappointment, I bequeath the many Promissory Notes made and defaulted upon by his deceased father, Samuel DeGrasso, and by himself; with the further provision that he pay at least the accumulated interest to the unfortunate disabled among us, not including himself or any member of his family.’”
Charles chuckled. Candice laughed out loud. Mangano, for some reason, mumbled as he nervously fidgeted.
“‘In keeping with the DeGrasso family tradition followed by my late father-in-law, Antonio, in order to preserve assets intact without diminution in value resulting from dilution of ownership, I bequeath nothing more to anyone, except specifically as follows:
“‘For the benefit of my son, Charles, though such a disappointment, I hereby direct that the Trinita Coal Oil & Tar Company convey to him the Capitol Hill house where I have resided, which I fear he may be in need of following donation to the Church of the Company-owned residence he refers to as Viila d’ Weste, which shall ever after my passing be used as an orphanage. In addition, I directly bequeath to my son all...’”
“Bullshit!” said Candice. “I will not live in this...this...” ”Shush!” said Charles. “I am also to get all...”
“‘...of his late father’s tools—including my beloved late husband’s grease gun—in faint hope that he may find a way to provide for himself through honest work as a grease monkey.’”
To Charles’ horror, that bastard, Bernie, appeared out of the corner and placed a...it must have been an old grease gun that the monk put on the desk!
“Hands that touch that greasy thing will never touch mine!” Candice unnecessarily warned.
“Be careful, Cousin Charlie,” Bobby Mangano cautioned. “That thing might go off.”
“‘And finally,’” the no-doubt crooked lawyer read, “‘I hereby bequeath all my remaining assets — specifically including all my shares of stock in Trinita Coal Oil & Tar Company—to my dear brother, Bernardo, whose constant company and counsel, both spiritual and worldly, has been such a comfort to me.’”
Though aghast, Charles managed to stand. He staggered to the monk’s side, followed by his wife.
“Dear Uncle, you are a man of the brown cloth, bound by a vow of poverty. Donate your windfall to me. In return I shall convey to you this residence, and provide for your every need.”
“To hell with those silly vows,” said Candice, attempting to unbelt Uncle Bernie’s robe.
“That is very kind of you both,” said the unworldly monk, “under the circumstances.”
“Wait a minute, Cousin Bernardo,” said Bobby Mangano, pushing Candice aside. “My firm will buy your inherited stock at a price of, say, twenty dollars per share. You can live in a palace. I have instantly binding ironclad buy/sale forms right here.”
As the Wall Street scoundrel took papers from the inside breast pocket of his jacket, Charles eyed the grease gun that lay on the desk but...stood and waited. After both parties had signed the papers, “I really should advise you,” said the holier- than-him old hypocrite to Mangano, “as of the end of the week, the Company’s main revenue stream will dry up.” “Dry up?”
“Yes, you see my dear sister has for years been selling carbon off-sets: Ironclad Company commitments to cease and desist from engagement in petroleum-based lube operations on a date certain, which is now upon us. Charles got her to thinking and...”
While somewhat gratified to have been of service while standing and waiting, Charles was now less worried about survival of the planet than maintenance of his personal lifestyle.
“But the carbon off-sets sales proceeds?” said Mangano. “The Company must be drowning in cash.”
“Oh no, quite the opposite. My dear sister, a devoted follower of Saint Lorenzo’s example, has for many years been handing out money hand over fist to the blind, the crippled, the suffering poor among us. Though of course there is still the Greezers real estate and the...”
“And the Lardo cash cow!”
“Well, yes, we were desperately hoping and praying that the cow would prove to be holy, but...I really should inform you, young man, that there could be risks, even liabilities associated with milking...”
“No problem; my firm is expert at ‘milking’ and makes mincemeat of risks and liabilities every day. Don’t look so apologetic, old man; with a roll-out of four hundred more Lardos, when Cookie Hardwick gets done chewing on those Ukrainians...Bottom line: I lowballed you. You fell for it. On Wall Street, no tears; a deal is a deal.”
“Cease and desist, Mangano!” Charles shouted. “I demand that you cease this swindle of an unworldly monk, and desist from taking my birthright! I have stood and waited for its delivery to me for my whole life! You, sir; stand and deliver that buy/sell document!”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Charles,” said Candice. “When up on your high horse, you sound more like a common duck than brave defender of your birthright. Quack! Quack! Quack!”
“Sorry, Cousin Charlie, no tears,” said Mangano, turning to escape.
Charles grabbed the grease gun and pointed what he hoped was its “business end” at the Wall Street huckster.
“I don’t want to kill you, Mangano, but...”
“Shoot him, shoot the fucker in the face!’ Candice shrieked. “I love you, Pumpkin.”
“I love you too, Honey Bunny, but...Squirt grease? For God’s sake, it’s petroleum-based!”
“Charles, heed the words of Ezekiel,” said Monk Bernie. “‘The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and goodwill, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness. For he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children.’ I assure you, Charles; the money paid for the stock will be put to good use.”
“Shoot him, Pumpkin, right now, or I won’t love you anymore!”
“That so-called buy/ sell agreement was obtained by fraud,” said the smarty-pants lawyer, Pantaleone. “I would be pleased to represent you in a challenge of its validity, Mr. DeGrasso; and to also challenge the validity of your deranged mother’s will.”
“Is it the girly magazines, Charles? I will gladly return them to you, except for the one with the Gina Lolabridgida look-alike on the cover.”
No, Charles had long since replaced the seized stash of titillating literature. Nor was it the prospect of living in poverty that tormented him; not exactly. It was just that having served by standing and waiting for so long, he could not bear to be looked upon as a...as a disappointment.
“No tears, Pumpkin,” said Honey Bun, grabbing the grease gun. “Hand over the birthright, Bobby-the-Third, or else...”
“Easy, Cousin Candice, easy on the trigger,” said Mangano as he produced the buy/ sell document from his jacket pocket.
Charles grabbed the prize that was his due; stood there and waited...“Run for it, Pumpkin!” said Honey Bunny, before dashing into the hallway.
♬With Thy sheep a place provide me/ From the goats afar divide me...♬
Loping behind his wife...
♬Doomed to flames of woe unbounded...♬ ...knocking over candle after candle in his haste... ♬...call me to Your saints surrounded...♬
...
Charles finally escaped his boyhood home.
Past the statue of Saint Lorenzo, down the sidewalk steps, into the company-owned electric limo beside Honey Bunny, "Home, Evans! To Villa d’ Weste with God’s speed!” he shouted, but...
After a moment or two of no speed at all, “Sorry, sir,” said his man. “The circuitous route we took to avoid the upslope of the overpass seems to have rundown the battery.”
“Heed the words of Ezekiel!” Uncle Bernardo shouted from beside the statue of Saint Lorenzo. “‘And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy thy brothers! And you will know I am Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you!’”
Forced to sit and wait for arrival of the back-up Range Rover, first came the odor of smoke; then sight of the house of horrors ablaze; next the sound of...
...eeeoooeeeoooeeeoooeeeoooeeeoooEEEOOOEEEOO OEEEOOO...
Tragically, after standing and waiting for so long as heir apparent, it dawned on Charles: His goose was cooked.



CHAPTER 34

♬You talk about people/ that you don’t know/ You talk about people/ wherever you go...♬
As the semi-updated comical oldies song from her most recent pole dance routine continued to run through her head like a repetitive echo, Henrietta drove her Checker lickety-split toward a suburb called Nichols Hills.
All day long, questions about Case of a Corruptible Playboy had also played inside her head like a cd. Not questions about Harry DeGrasso and Rachel a/k/a Meghan — the Xpose manager said they had run off to Alaska by way of a honeymoon stop in Hollywood—but questions such as why poor old Mrs. DeGrasso would have indulged herself in a double order of lardo after going to bed were what echoed.
♬You talk about this/ and you talk about that/ If a cat had got your tongue/ you must have took it right back...♬
And why would the old lady who had reportedly lived on thin gruel for decades have got out of bed at midnight and gone ten blocks — likely on foot — to a closed Lardo outlet; and demanded that Hernando Gomez fry up another double order for her?
♬You just talk, talk/ talk, talk, talk, talk/ You talk too much...♬
Then, right in the middle of the dance routine, it hit her like a slap in the face.
♬You talk too much/ you’re never out of breath? You talk too much/ you’re boring me to death...♬
Off the Xpose stage and on the phone, she had again reported to Lero that his first hunch was right: Joe DeGrasso was the “doer”.
♬You just talk, talk/ talk, talk, talk, talk...♬
The right-handed lawyer had hung up on her before she got to the punch line, but not ’til after he’d let slip where he was having an important dinner meeting. So...Henrietta wheeled her Checker into the parking lot of a strip shopping center.
Heads turned her way when she walked into the restaurant called En Croute, likely because she was still wearing the neon orange bikini, Lucite high heels, and lots of body glitter. Setting cheek-to-cheek with a blonde gal in the restaurant’s long one- sided booth that ran length of a whole wall, Lero also looked some startled when she pulled up a chair to their table.
“For crying out loud, Hen,” he said, “I am in the middle of sweet...of discussing with Evie a reduction in her recommended prison sentence for Hernando.”
“Prison sentence! The Police Department file and Autopsy Report prove...”
“Police Department file?” said the gal, with a sidelong glance at Lero.
Though she had not yet been officially re-fired from her non- paying job, Lero introduced her as his ex-assistant-in-training, and introduced Evie as “Ms. Hatfield”, an Assistant District Attorney.
“Ah, yes, the irrepressible ‘Hen’ I have heard so much about,” said Lero’s ex-wife, with eyebrows raised. “I’m told you have ‘pluck ’.”
In a lowered voice, her ex-boss explained that Evie was not satisfied with the Autopsy Report. “Our Medical Examiner is a hack,” the Assistant DA added, “beholden to our County
♬You talk too much♬
Commissioner who wants to drive down the local crime rate in order to avoid paying for a badly needed new County Jail.”
“Well then, you ought to drive up the crime rate your own self, by charging Joe DeGrasso with the murder of his Aunt Nanette!”
“Aw, c’on, Hen. That bus has crashed and burned.”
“Charge Mr. Degrasso based on what evidence?”
“Evidence of motive, for one thing. He brags about putting
Lardo outlets in Greezers lube shops, and would have been real disappointed if Mrs. DeGrasso had disapproved continuing in the fast food business.”
“Why would she disapprove? The Autopsy Report indicates the victim must have been, if anything, overly fond of lardo.”
“Exactly, which leads to opportunity. I reckon that first double order she ate was delivered to her house, and took to her private bedroom by someone she was well acquainted with, such as her nephew.”
“Possibly, but so what?”
“The lardo was what they call the ‘means’ that Joe DeGrasso had to do the dirty deed. At the victim’s funeral yesterday, he stood on church steps and bragged that only he his own self remembered how ‘overly fond’ of lardo his aunt had been in her fat and jolly youthful days. He would have known—or at least guessed—that a serving of the fatback would stir up a craving in her to overly indulge; and that after years and years of poor old Mrs. DeGrasso having nothing to eat but thin gruel, well, her nephew would have known that the shock to ‘Auntie Nan’s’ bowels would kill her.”
“Hmmm. That would explain the lardo wrapper found in the victim’s bedroom,” said the Assistant DA.
“And also explain why a ninety-five-year-old woman would be compelled to walk ten blocks in the middle of the night!” Lero added. “Nanette DeGrasso was a relapsed fatback addict who needed a fix. And Joe DeGrasso was trying to reach the top of a greased corporate pole. My initial hunch was that the Executive VP was the doer; and by golly, I was right!”
Evie Hatfield turned to her ex-husband. With a look in her eyes of downright admiration mixed with wonderment—like she regarded him as some kind of hero—she said: “I wish you wouldn’t say ‘golly’, but...Good job, Ro.”
Reckoning the couple would like to be alone for continuation of their important meeting, Henrietta got up from the table. Walking out of the restaurant—no doubt due to her outfit — everyone clapped, like she had just finished a good pole dance routine.

THE END

CHAPTER 26

Riding shotgun in her old, yellow, checker, Henrietta tried to focus on a copy of a Police Department file supposedly containing oddities in the case against Hernando Gomez for the murder of Mrs. Nanette DeGrasso; while at the same time keeping quiet, as also directed.
At the wheel, driving at eighty-five miles an hour to keep up with a DeGrasso family motorcade, Lero had said he needed to focus his own “right brain”—without interruption—on the oddity of a Sunday funeral. Having been raised in a Catholic church, he had never heard of a funeral service about death and burial taking place on a sabbath day that was all about resurrection and eternal life.
Neither could he understand what was odd about events that took place last night at the Xpose gentlemen’s club that she had reported. To Lero’s way of thinking, the fact that Harry DeGrasso and Rachel a/k/a “Meghan” had announced their marriage plans — plus the fact that Hunter DeGrasso and Yanko Tarnovskyy were also celebrating at the club only hours after the murder of the two DeGrasso playboys’ mean old grandma — was no good reason to suspect that all or some members of the foursome might have been involved in getting the meddlesome old woman out of the way.
For fifty miles outside of Oklahoma City, she had described and re-described what she her own self had seen and heard with her own eyes and ears:
Before fist-fighting broke out, Hunter had got to fussing with Harry in front of Rachel and bragged that his plan had worked; that his daddy was sure to move on up in the family company and take him along to the top. “We’ll see about that,” the dark- skinned pole dancer had answered, but with a sickly look in her eyes, like she her own self had done something wrong and come to regret it. When Hunter took to pounding on Harry-and Yanko lending him a hand-she her own self had jumped on the foreign tennis pro, while Meghan had stood there with folded arms.
But nope, she was again missing a “big picture”, her stubborn boss had replied over and over. According to Lero O’Rourke, while Hunter may have in some small way assisted—and understandably celebrated— his father’s upward corporate mobility, rise of Joe DeGrasso to the top of the family-owned business would be the result of much larger forces at play: “Stock trading shenanigans leading up to—and no doubt to be accelerated by — his aunt’s murder; all of which is unequivocally incriminating to only the Executive VP himself!”
As a highway marker sign flashed by, Henrietta broke her silence by reporting that they would pass right by her little ol’ hometown that she was originally named for... that whereas the town of Henryetta was spelled with a y, a few years ago she had got the spelling of her name changed to Henrietta with an i... that the Cajun daddy she had never known reportedly pronounced their shared last name not as “Hebert” but as “Ay- bear”... that her mother, Wynona Sue, was a hair cutter and make-up artist at The Best Little Hair House in Town... that Mr. Harold Mixon, her ex-boss at a little ol’ weekly newspaper called The Weekly Herald, had been the only real “daddy figure” in her life... and as the town’s water tower came into sight...
“They painted HOTAGG on the water tank to brag that Henryetta is also the ‘Hometown of Troy Aikman and Gaylord Goodhart,’ who both went on to be All Pro football players for the Dallas Cowboys,” she reported. “Gaylord, was and will always be the love of my life, but we began to drift apart when his daddy, Cecil Goodhart—who was the high school football coach at the time—got drunk and drove the school bus into a ditch. Wynona Sue was in the back seat, also overserved with Friendly Creature, and stark naked. She still claims they were eloping to Arkansas, and that she was changing into her wedding dress. It was for the best, I guess; ’cause Wynona Sue and Cecil Goodhart never did get married, and Gaylie turned out to be, in fact, gay as a flower garden.”
“All very interesting,” said Lero, as a black hearse led the funeral caravan onto a curved ramp to the southbound Indian Nation Parkway, “but have you happened to notice any oddities? If so, have you come up with any possible explanations?”
“Well, yes,” Henrietta answered. “I reckon churches don’t usually have Sunday funerals on account of conflict with regular services.”
“Hmmm,” the ACE detective hmmmed. “Yeah, that could be the reason. The motorcade lacks only a police escort to equal the disruptive pomp-and-circumstance of a British monarch’s parade. High-and-mighty members of the DeGrasso family don’t give a hoot about inconvenience to the common people.”
“More odd, to my way of thinking, is that someone in the DeGrasso family seems in such an all-fired hurry to put the old lady’s body into the ground.”
“Take a look at that Police Department file,” Lero again said. “See if any oddities about the case jump out at you.”
“I already took a look,” she immediately answered, “and... Well, for one thing, it strikes me my own self as odd that police found a single dollar bill and coins amounting to ninety-two cents in the crime scene cash register, indicating...”
“...that our client is an honest young man of good character!”
“Maybe, but also possibly indicating that the Lardo fast food outlet seems to have not done enough business for the manager to bother accounting for at closing time.”
“Hmmm? I wonder what Evie might make of that oddity?” Lero wondered out loud.
“For another thing, according to this here file, poor old Mrs. DeGrasso had always had a habit of going to bed right after supper, and they found her bed had in fact been used. On a pillow there was a greasy Lardo wrapper.”
“That’s not odd. I myself often get the late night munchies after relaxing at the end of a hard day with a...”
“Yeah, me too; but how did the victim get hold of the fatback snack? The file says Lardo doesn’t deliver, so someone must have...”
“There you go, Hen,” Lero said with a chuckle. “You think some hot-to-trot ‘Romeo’ climbed a trellis to woo the victim? Mrs. DeGrasso was ninety-five-years of age, for crying out loud!”
Other than to note that the police file made no mention of a trellis at the victim’s residence, Henrietta’s reaction to Lero’s observation was speechlessness, which was just as well. The motorcade had slowed to a crawl, and within minutes entered a small town identified by sign saying WELCOME TO KREBS. A green-and-white-and-red banner further identified the little ol’ town as Oklahoma’s Little Italy. And a few more minutes later, the procession of hearse, limos and cars came to a stop.
After saying that he wanted get a good look at the suspect’s “unguarded demeanor”, Lero goosed the Checker onto the road’s shoulder and up to a bare spot of roadside grass on the edge of a graveyard. He put on a black crewneck sweater. She put on a plain gray sweatshirt. On foot, they passed under an odd cemetery sign: GREEZERS was painted on the door of an old, faded red jalopy - with a pickup truck bed shoved into its rear - that was mounted on top of a high pole. Also painted on the vehicle’s rusty door: Filippo G. DeGrasso 1921 - 1960.
In front of a red brick church with tall bell tower topped by a dome and a cross—identified by sign as ST. JOSEPH’S CATHOLIC CHURCH—a white limousine looked to have also broke ranks and pulled up beside a black limo that had been first in line behind the hearse. One of its doors sprang open. Out jumped an old man with a head of white hair thin and fluffy as baby duck feathers. Despite his dark glasses, Henrietta recognized him from the morning newspaper as none other than...Yeah, she had to admit: Joe Degrasso sure enough had the shady look of someone who would do anything to get to the top of a greased pole.
“I’m gonna snatch off those shades and look the cold-blooded killer in the eye,” Lero said, moving closer. She her own self moved closer too, and...With a blinding display of teeth, bright white and perfect as a row of Chicklet chewing gum tablets, Mr. Joe DeGrasso grabbed Lero’s hand.
“Father...Father, uh...Good of you to, very good; very good of you to come out on... I think it might have been CNN that said this is a... a Monday,” the old man said, grabbing Lero’s arm with his other hand. “I would be honored if you would join me on the church steps for a...a...for a benediction of sorts that I’ve prepared for delivery on this sad, very sad; this very sad, uh, weekend occasion.”
As Lero and his murder suspect walked toward the front door of the church, Henrietta made a mental note to add the incident to the list of oddities in what she—no matter what Lero O’Rourke said—still reckoned would somehow turn out to be Case of a Corruptible Playboy.



CHAPTER 27

Escorted by one of those modern-day, hip young casually dressed clerics, Joe climbed the front entry steps of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, where he was greeted by an older, more traditionally garbed priest. He thanked the second Padre for also coming out on a Sunday...or Monday morning to hear...
At last night’s wake Brother Bernie had all but officially blessed his ultimate promotion to Her Majesty’s vacated position—by authorizing him to lead roll-out of Lardo units throughout the South—but the old monk was a stickler to bureaucratic procedures dictated by a papal order; and had vetoed his request to deliver an appropriate eulogy from the pulpit.
Bro Bernardo failed to understand that life went on after death. The unworldly monk was naively unaware that malicious rumors were afoot; rumors that threatened the Company’s bright future by undermining democratic shareholder support for the most qualified successor to the deceased matriarch.
The wife’s friends had reported that people — Cousin Charles and his wicked wife no doubt — were spreading gossip that he and Aunt Nanette had been on the outs immediately prior to her... her fatal demise. Sly suggestion that he himself was responsible for his aunt’s, uh, worldly departure, had to be immediately put to rest along with the grisly remains of the victim that...that... that still remained...untanned, no doubt, and unrested. Hell’s bells, there were TV cameras on hand, expecting him to deliver a eulogy!
“Dearly beloved,” he said to the crowd of mourners gathered around the hearse at the foot of the church steps, “we are gathered here today to honor...Church doctrine does not allow me to mention the dearly departed by name until...until she is clearly departed, but you all know who I came out on a...on a today to talk about. I grew up in Krebs. Some of you may remember; I’m the guy who always climbed to the top of the greased pole during annual festivals, and always won the salami. I brought home so many salamis, my mother—God bless her—used to say, ‘Joey, give the kids a chance at the Albero Della Cuccagna.’ Yeah, I am the plain Joe DeGrasso you have known for years. Not Saint Joseph; this church was not named in my honor. Heh, heh.”
After waiting in vain for the audience to at least chuckle, “I am the guy who was closest to...to the dearly departed,” Joe continued. “And by the way, let’s take this opportunity to fondly remember founders of the Trinita Coal Oil & Tar Company that went before us, all now at rest in the church cemetery across the street. Rico Carbone begat ...a nameless daughter. Antonio DeGrasso begat a son, Filippo. My grandfather, Big Joe DeGrasso, begat me, by way of his son, Sam. Yeah, I’m that guy: Son of Sam. Son of only Sam. Son of only a DeGrasso...”
Right on cue, Cousin Charles and that deceitful second wife of his exited their black limo.
“So while a certain other Executive Vice-President was born lucky as half-Carbone and half-DeGrasso, I am the unlucky duck who had to work his way up with a spoon...I mean, without a spoon; without a silver spoon in my mouth. I am a grease monkey, and proud of it. Petroleum-based products are in my blood. People — some people here today — say to me, ‘Joe, grease is petroleum-based. When you look in the mirror, how do you live with yourself as someone who runs a Company that was founded on grease?’ When I look in a mirror, I say... I say a little dab of Brylcreem will do ya no harm. The bird, the bird; the bird is the...
“No, bird’s not the word. What I mean is that grease is the word, was the word, was the word before they started sealing off everybody’s joints. Grease is Nature’s way of dealing with friction. I can tell you this, no joke: It’s been a jar of petroleum- based jelly on the bedside table that has been the glue to many a long and happy marriage. My father, God bless him, always said: ‘Joey, someday you and a wife will have your moments of friction, but never go to bed chafing one another. Don’t wake up the next morning feeling sore.’”
“Shut up, you old fool!” shouted no doubt the wife of Cousin Charles, who himself stood smugly aloof, all decked out in that double-breasted blazer of his, with a crest sewn onto the chest; looking on with hands behind his back. “I dare you to come up here,” Joe shouted back. “Let’s see...not you Candice. Let’s see who can do the most push-ups, Cousin Charlie.”
“Perhaps, we should move on with the service,” said the older cleric beside him, tugging at his sleeve.
Joe ignored the interruptions to his eulogy. “In the days ahead, starting today, many of you will be called upon to make the most important decision of your lives,” he continued. “Should you sell or buy shares of stock in the Company? From those urging you to sell, you will hear malicious untruths. You will hear that I and...and that person who used to be the...the she who must be obeyed... were on the outs about roll-out of Lardo units attached to Greezers lube shops. You will hear gossip that it was to make a firsthand inspection that she had...had someone take her to a nearby Lardo outlet on the night of her demise. And that she, supposedly dis...disappointed in a Double Dealer serving of the fatback delicacy, threatened to cancel roll-out of Lardo in Louisiana. You will hear that someone had that kitchen worker hit her in the head with a greasy pot.”
Ohhhhh...the mourners moaned.
“All just gossip; no joke. See, I remember the strict Mother... the sickly matriarch as she was before she was the matriarch. She was fat and jolly before her husband died and she became... It must have been grief — maybe also disappointment in her son and heir—that caused her to change her diet to bowls of thin gruel. Previously, she had been a fanatic about lardo di colonatti seasoned by rosemary...Rosemary was her sister, no, maybe it was paprika. Anyway, I’m the only guy who knew all that. I’m the guy who came up with the idea of wedding Filippo’s concept for Greezers with the Lardo concept in . . in honor of the fat and jolly woman his widow once was. That’s why I insisted that one of the Lardo test units be located in the Greezers lube shop closest to my beloved aunt’s residence, so she could at least open the windows once in a while and get a whiff of sweet memories.
Ohhhhhhh...
“My friends and relatives, there is someone who would do away with that aroma and those sweet memories. Someone here today would replace lardo with tofu!”
Ohhhhhhhhh...
“I’m serious. That certain someone—if allowed to take the place of his...his Superior Mother—would even do away with Greezers’ sweet memories of grease!”
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh...
So carried away was he with his inspiring speech, Joe only now noticed that a vicious black dog had been inspired to chew on his ankle; then he saw and felt... Holy Cow, that the equally vicious wife of his cousin and rival Executive VP had gnawed through a sock and drawn blood from his other ankle.
Nevertheless, “Don’t sell a greased pig in a poke,” he cried. “Hang on to company stock. Buy more. Tell your friends to grab ‘hold of that greased pig and...”
Pall bearers, fittingly attired in the all-black overalls of Greezers grease monkeys, pulled Aunt Nanette’s shiny, also all-black coffin out of the hearse. Brother Bernardo followed under his own steam. Climbing the church steps, one of the grease monkeys lost his grip, but...The hip casually dressed priest —tears running down his cheeks—grabbed ‘hold of a handle.
As the old dressed-up priest followed the pall bearers into the church, while sprinkling what fittingly smelled like paprika here and there, Joe, following — in tears — began to solemnly chant:
♬Grease is the word, is the word, is the word...♬
In his wake, the crowd of inspired mourners joined in:
♬Grease is the word, is the word, is the word, is the word/
It’s got meaning/ Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion/ Grease is the way we are feeling...♬



CHAPTER 28

Mistaken for a fellow man of black cloth by the local priest, Lero — now wearing a white smock and cool hat provided by a helpful altar boy — stood in the chancel of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, dutifully chanting along with a choir:
♬Guilty, now I pour my moaning/ All my shame and anguish owning/ Spare, O God, Thy supplicant groaning...♬
Having not quite qualified for altar boy in his youth, he had never before experienced a church service from such an angle. To do so now was both personally inspiring and useful to his
murder investigation.
♬Through the sinful woman shriven/ Through the dying thief forgiven/ Thou to me a hope hast given...♬
Directly across the open casket in which the victim’s body lay, he had a direct face-to-face view of Joe DeGrasso, stricken in appearance and weeping.
♬Worthless are my prayers and sighing/ Yet, good Lord, in grace complying/ Rescue me from flames undying...♬
Also in the front-row pew a man wearing a double-breasted blazer with a gaudy crest sewn onto it, holding a white hanky to his nose—presumably the victim’s son, Charles—seemed to be sniffing to show disapproval rather than appropriately sniffling to express sorrow. Seated beside him, a black-veiled woman—presumably his wife—held the Toy Rottweiler that had joined in her attack upon the ankles of her husband’s rival.
♬When the wicked are confounded/ Doomed to flames of woe unbounded/ Call me with Your saints surrounded ...♬
Upon completion of the chanting, another front-row occupant — an old man dressed in a long brown robe — hobbled to the church’s pulpit, where a Bible lay opened. After adjusting his spectacles and brushing back one of few strands of white hair
sprinkled across his scalp, he read aloud:
“From First Corinthians, verses twelve and thirteen: ‘For now
we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.’ So sayeth the Word of the Lord.”
While most members of the congregation mumbled in agreement, Joe DeGrasso shouted, “Amen!”
“I am a friar,” said the pulpit speaker, “both ordained priest and monk. As such, I am doubly bound by the Church’s Order of Christian Funerals, which allows not a eulogy for the dearly departed; only a homily. In telling of the life and martyrdom of Saint Lorenzo, however, I confess: I have in mind our own saintly Sister, who was among Lorenzo’s most devout followers.”
“Amen!”
“As Archdeacon of Rome in the year 258 A.D.—second in authority only to the Pope—Lorenzo was responsible for safe keeping of the Church’s material goods, and distribution of alms to the poor. Thus, when the Pope was executed by order of the Emperor, it was to Lorenzo that the Emperor further ordered that Church riches be handed over to him. Lorenzo asked for and was granted three days grace in which to gather the wealth, during which time he took it upon himself to distribute to the indigent as much Church property as possible. At the end of the third day, he presented to the Emperor a delegation of Rome’s most pitiable souls; the crippled, the blind, the suffering, and declared them to be the true treasures of the Church.”
As another rolling rumble of mumbles passed through the congregation, Lero found himself emotionally moved. If only a truly liberal Democrat with Lorenzo’s conviction were to burst upon America’s political scene, how wonderful it would be to see the Establishment denied ill-gotten treasure. But no, in the presence of a truly holy man such as the friar telling Lorenzo’s inspirational story, the fat local priest adorned in bejeweled violet silks — a Father D’Agostino — continued to sit in a chair behind a lectern, snoozing!
“For his act of defiance, Lorenzo was put upon a gridiron above a bed of hot coals and roasted to death,” the friar reported. “Thus, he is known as Patron Saint of Chefs.
Ohhhhh...
Our Italian forebears brought with them to this country love of food that endures in most of their descendants to this day. Until a fateful day in 1960, our dearly departed Sister was among those who loved to cook and eat; but afterward, alas, no more.”
Ohhhhhhh...
Lero, always indifferent to food, resolved to feed his soul with improved nutritional intake of pasta.
“In the process of suffering his painful martyrdom, Lorenzo is said to have cheerfully declared to his Roman tormentors, ‘I’m well done on this side, fellows. Turn me over.’”
While some members of the congregation chuckled, only Joe DeGrasso and he really got the joke, as evidenced by their duet of loud “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha...”
“Thus, Lorenzo is also known as the Patron Saint of Comedians,” said the friar. “Lives of the people born into this community have also been blessed with sense of humor through the years. Until that fateful day in 1960, none of us enjoyed rib-tickling entertainment or laughed more heartily than our dearly departed Sister. Afterward, alas, she was never known to crack a smile.”
Ohhhhhhhhh...
Now DeGrasso was wracked with sobbing, leading a woman beside him — presumably his wife — to give him a good shake.
“Many if not most members of this community are descended from poor immigrants who came to this country to work in coal mines. Many have perished in the mines; including our dearly departed Sister’s father, father-in-law and beloved husband, Filippo, on that fateful day in 1960, when she was but a thirty- five-year-old mother. Lorenzo is fittingly known as Patron Saint of the Poor; and for some unknown reason, also Patron Saint of Coal Miners.”
Having earlier been reduced to tears before getting a grip on himself and the coffin carrying the dearly departed, Lero again began to get watery-eyed.
“And so, on this day of remembrance, let us celebrate not only the life and martyrdom of Saint Lorenzo, but also that of his devout follower, our dearly departed Sister, Nanette Carbone DeGrasso.”
Holy Smoke! As though the friar had yelled “Fire!” members of the congregation scrambled for the exits. Judging by the look of panic in his eyes, Charles DeGrasso would have climbed over them to save himself had not the black-veiled woman — assisted by her growling dog — forcibly restrained him.
Father D’Agostino, now wide awake and on his feet, slammed the casket lid shut, crossed himself, and frantically poured holy water on the coffin. “The Mass is hereby cancelled!” he bellowed. “Remain calm and proceed with safe entombment without delay!”
♬May the angels lead you into paradise...♬
the suspect, Lero caught up to the stooped old man.
Pallbearers rushed to the scene and—accompanied by the hurried up-tempo of a musical chant delivered by brave choir members—trotted the remains of Nanette Carbone DeGrasso toward the church’s front door.
Only Joe DeGrasso — on the arm of his attentive wife — slowly shuffled, head down, in the wake of the dearly departing body of his victim.
♬May the martyrs receive you at your arrival...♬
Recognizing the situation as a perfect opportunity to confront
♬May choirs of angels receive you...♬
DeGrasso took off the dark shades, looked at him with
squinted teary eyes dimmed by advanced age; grasped his upper arm with a feeble grip, and said: “Hear my confession, Father, for I have sinned.”
♬With Lazarus, once a poor man, may you have eternal rest♬



CHAPTER 29

Close behind the uniformed grease monkeys carrying his mother’s coffin, Charles burst from the hellish interior of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, frantically looked up to the sky, and took a deep breath. He had never thought of himself as religious or superstitious, but...but...but...Was his mother’s ghost to reign over him forever like...like...like...?
The tasteless memorial to his long-dead father, towering above the nearby church cemetery, caught his eye.
As a boy, only ten at the time, he had refused to attend the funeral of the harsh man affectionately remembered by others as Filippo DeGrasso. He had never visited the actual grave of the legendary founder of the Greezers chain of lube shops. His first sight of the bizarre monument to “The First Greezer” came when he was a teenager, home from military school for a holiday. On a visit to the family’s ancestral hometown, looking up at the red homemade precursor to a Chevrolet El Camino—half car/ half truck — he had thought, what a waste. If taken down from atop a tall stainless steel pole, the vehicle would have made it possible for him to get a date, take a girl to a drive-in movie, and...possibly “neck”.
But no, he was not to do any necking with a girl for years to come. Uncle Bernie had moved into his former bedroom by then. The former playboy and newly minted “friar” had found his stash of girly magazines and recommended an intensified regimen of cold showers during an extended tour of duty in New Mexico. Last night, his churchy uncle had again treated him like an awkward teenaged...
Oh well, Candice finally exited the church; today’s nightmare would soon be over. He assumed the black-veiled woman now beside him was his wife; she had that black dog in her arms, and was being attended to by Bobby Mangano.
“Hurry!” Charles hissed. “The sooner the burial, the safer we shall be.”
“Today’s proceedings have been quite the fiasco,” the Wall Street wheeler-dealer quite unnecessarily noted. “Why did you not take advantage of the occasion to advance your case, Cousin Charlie, when the TV crews were still here?”
Advance his case? How indelicate! Charles would have much preferred a simple graveside cremation, but no; his wife had argued that the whole purpose of funerals in general was to demonstrate to survivors that a loved one was indeed gone forever. The New York stockbroker had insisted that a public funeral for the former Company matriarch—presided over by him, her heir no longer simply apparent — was especially needed for the purpose of convincing current shareholders to sell.
Fine, he had agreed to preside, but then Brother Bernardo, citing a document called “Order of Christian Funerals” and a letter from the Pope, had not only denied him the honor of delivering a eulogy; the power-hungry monk had himself stolen the show by delivering that so-called homily about Saint Lorenzo! Then... then...then...Brother Bernie’s mention of the dearly departed by name was not a slip of the tongue; Charles had no doubt about that; it was calculated mischief. The meddlesome monk’s continued relevance on Earth depended on him conjuring up a superstitious notion that his saintly sister was not dead and gone forever!
“You missed your chance,” said Candice, walking beside him. “You stood there like a fool, letting that dimwitted cousin of yours campaign for shareholder support on the church steps, based on his close relationship with your mother; making it sound like he was the chosen one and fatback the best thing since sex on roller skates. For crying out loud, he brought along his own personal priest. Why haven’t you come up with a catchy jingle?”
As a matter of fact, he did have a jingle in mind—a ditty along the lines of ♬Eat tofu, the colon cleanser/ Wash the grease right down the john...♬ — but with his mother’s body lying there in a hearse, awaiting delivery to the local priest, to have entered into a contest of dueling jingles would have been tasteless as well as dangerously time consuming.
“You should have accepted your rival’s challenge for a push- ups contest, Cousin Charlie,” said Bobby Mangano. “For crying out loud, the guy is a hundred-years-old. Investors like a CEO who looks physically up to the task of signing dividend checks.”
Push-ups? What in blazes were “push-ups”? He would not lower himself to his cousin’s level of cadging for shareholder support to which he was not entitled. He would rise above such a tasteless exercise.
“You should have claimed you came up with the Lardo concept, Cousin Charlie; you should have said it was only you who remembered how much your mother used to love the delicacy. All the family shareholders I pitched during the service refused to sell...”
“There, you see; they are loyal to me and my succession, not because I pandered to my mother’s alleged disgusting taste for fatback; which I highly doubt was ever the case.”
“...said they were mighty impressed by the pitch for grease made by ‘good ol’ Uncle Joe’.”
“So what? Following tomorrow’s reading of my mother’s last will and testament, I shall own forty-four percent of outstanding Company shares, which, together with Carbone family support and what your Wall Street firm is able to acquire, guarantees my ironclad control of Trinita Coal Oil & Tar forever.”
Walking on, ever so slightly stooped to suggest carriage of a heavier but still manageable burden...What now?
The pallbearers seemed to have stalled at the edge of the cemetery. Charles rushed forward, followed the upward gaze of Brother Bernie, pallbearers, a few remaining funeral attendees, and...What in blazes! The pole supporting the customized car/ pickup truck memorial to his father was sinking into the ground like a...
The monument was a functional, hydraulic-powered lube rack, he realized; the hybrid vehicle equivalent to a...Yes, upon the rusty red Greezers truck coming to rest at ground level, he noticed that also painted on its righthand door...Nanette Carbone DeGrasso 1924 - ...and now a young man with paintbrush in hand was adding, no doubt, the year of his mother’s death.
How curious. Like a time capsule of sorts, a large black toolbox covered with bird droppings—possibly containing the actual lube shop equipment once used by his father—lay in the bed of the small truck, where...
Good grief! Brother Bernie was directing the pallbearers to slide his mother’s virtually identical coffin onto the truck bed next to the tool...Lunging forward to stop the grotesque attempted “burial in the sky”...
“Noooooo!” Charles moaned, fittingly accompanied by the distant wail of an emergency vehicle siren.
“This is in accordance with your dearly departed mother’s wishes,” said the monk, also back on his feet, brushing dirt from
his brown robe. “Every day for the past sixty years my dearly departed sister has spoken of longing to again lie in bed with Filippo.”
Eeeoooeeeoooeeeooo...
Appalled by both his mother’s schoolgirl tackiness and her... “This...this witchcraft shall not be tolerated! I demand these tool boxes and their contents be given a decent Christian burial and...and by not later than midnight that they be entombed with tons on concrete and lots of industrial-strength incense.”
Eeeoooeeeoooeeeoooeeeoooeee...
“I’m afraid that is out of the question, Charles. Sister Nanette’s instructions are quite clear. She wants to lie beside Filippo, looking up at the stars together as they did when they were teenaged lovers.”
“Looking up at stars?! Surely you do not propose to open the lids! At the very least, the boxes must be welded forever shut!”
EEEOOOEEEOOO!
Oh no; now emergency vehicles with lights flashing had arrived on the scene, including an ambulance!
“You are much too late!” Charles shouted, waving frantically. “The victim is dead; my mother is...Tell the man, Bernie,” he said, referring to an officious-looking fellow who emerged from a van. “Tell this medic there is no use in trying to save...”
“The wicked witch is dead!” Candice shrieked. “Bobby! Where is that wooden stake?!”
“Bernie,” said the man, “I allowed you to have your sister’s remains for a family viewing last night, on the strict condition that the body would be returned this morning for autopsy.”
“Autopsy! Yes, yes, that’s the ticket! One must not cut corners in these matters.”
“Sorry, Claude,” said Brother Bernie. “She was beginning to ripen, so I...No, I confess: I could not bear thought of you cutting her up.”
Following the pallbearers to the ambulance, just to make sure
the body was properly handled, “Pay no attention to my senile uncle,” Charles said to “Claude”, whose van identified him as from the Oklahoma County Medical Examiner’s Office. “Be thorough; be very thorough; leave no organ unsliced, no bone uncrushed. And, speaking as her authorized son and heir, I hereby direct you to take absolutely no steps to resuscitate the patient.”
EEEOOOEEEOOOeeeoooeeeooeeeoooeeeoooeeeooo...



CHAPTER 30

At the wheel of her Checker on the road back to Oklahoma City, Henrietta reckoned that Lero saying he’d had a “religious experience” was what they called understatement, though she her own self had witnessed only parts of what happened to him.
Mistook for a “Father Somebody” by Joe DeGrasso, the ACE private detective had stood on the church steps next to a real Father Somebody and the Executive Vice-President, nodding in what looked to be approval of at least half of what the murder suspect said. And then, when one of the pallbearers lost his grip on Mrs. DeGrasso’s coffin, Lero had jumped to the rescue and helped carry the victim’s body into the church.
Due to the crowd rushing inside — not including either Harry or Hunter DeGrasso as far as she could tell—and the doors getting locked, she her own self had gone back to her Checker, moved it off the cemetery grass to a spot where she could keep an eye on the church’s front doors, and spent almost an hour studying oddities in the Police Department file.
When the church doors finally sprang open, the crowd had busted out in what looked like a jailbreak; followed by the uniformed pallbearers—but not Lero—carrying Mrs. DeGrasso’s coffin at a lively pace. Others followed, led by an old bald man wearing a brown robe, also the real Father Somebody wearing a violet outfit, followed by a man in a double-breasted blue blazer jacket—who she had took to be Harry DeGrasso’s daddy—along with a woman under a long black veil, and a small black dog. She had hotfooted to the church and inside found—lo and behold—Lero and Joe DeGrasso standing in a center aisle, hugging.
Afterward, just the two of them—Lero and her own self—had set in a pew. That was when her P.I. trainer said he’d had a religious experience, and also said that he wanted to quietly meditate. By the time they left the church, mourners had gone about their business and burying of the DeGrasso company matriarch seemed to have been done.
During the drive from the little ol’ town of Krebs, Lero O’Rourke had answered only one of her questions by saying that what was said to him by Joe DeGrasso was “privileged” and could not be passed on to anyone. Now, arrived out front of his downtown residential office, Lero got out of the Checker, stuck his head back in through the window and broke his meditation by uttering, “Go in peace and sin no more.”
Chalking off the ACE private detective’s religious experience as just another oddity of his that would likely have passed by morning, Henrietta decided she her own self should get back to work. It was a Sunday; the Xpose gentlemen’s club would be closed tonight; she could do her laundry later. In the meantime...
About ten minutes later, she parked her Checker at a curb across from the house where Nanette Carbone DeGrasso was said to have lived for the past sixty years. The wood-frame house was big and set up on high ground, but looked to be in a rundown condition, which seemed odd for the home of a rich matriarch of a company that owned and operated a chain of lube shops and fast food outlets. A large front lawn statue loomed over her as she stood on a sidewalk with the Police Department file in hand.
Henrietta imagined her own self as being Nanette DeGrasso on the night of her passing; an old woman who had, as usual, gone to bed after an early supper. Somehow “she” had later received a snack of the fried fatback called “lardo”—a greasy Lardo wrapper was found in her bed—and presumably ate it. Was that itself odd? She weighed barely a hundred pounds. Though said by Joe DeGrasso to have been overly fond of the Italian delicacy in her youth, according to statement to police of a longtime maid, “her” diet for many years had consisted of only thin gruel. How did she get hold of the snack? The housemaid and other staff had gone to servants quarters before eight o’clock, and no one had visited prior to that hour. Hmmm?
Henrietta set out for what the police had described as a “nearby” Lardo outlet that “she” had somehow got to for a second double order of the greasy treat. Though up in years, she was said to be hardy. And though the area was called Capitol Hill, the route she followed was not overly steep, up or down. In appearance, however, the surrounding neighborhood was semi- seedy in patches; not the kind of places a gal of any age would have felt comfortable passing through in darkness of night. By the time she arrived at her destination, she was in a sweat.
Cars were up on racks in both bays of the Greezers lube shop and a third one was waiting in a service lane. Though fast food could be ordered from inside during daytime, Henrietta —imagining it to be midnight—went around to the Lardo drive-thru window. A chubby gal with elbows on a counter and drooped head in her hands looked to be snoozing.
Henrietta knocked on the window. The Double-Dealer Weekend Special was priced at $1.80 plus tax on an overhead menu board. Likely Hernando Gomez had got mad when “she” ordered him to fire up a deep-fat fryer; then got madder because she did not give him a tip. A dollar bill and ninety-two cents in coins had been left in the cash register in the middle of Friday night.
And now — after serving a double order of lardo in the middle of a Sunday afternoon — the chubby gal said she could not make change for two one-dollar bills. Hmmm?
The Police Department file said the old woman was found dead with a wadded-up Lardo wrapper clutched in her hand. Would an angry Hernando Gomez have waited for her to eat a double order before knocking her into the grease pit? Did she eat it or...
Henrietta stepped back from the service window. She took a bite of the treat she had walked ten blocks for, and...Ugh!... spit the slab of fried grease out onto the ground.

CHAPTER 22

Henrietta finished cleaning up after what must have been an overnight or early morning hailstorm of misflicked push-pins inside Lero O’Rourke’s residential office, wondering: Where was Lero and what was the Ace private detective up to?
The note stuck to his office door last night had warned of DANGER! Since then her boss must have heard the news about Ms. Nanette DeGrasso being a victim of suspected foul play. The notice also saying CASE CLOSED and Cease and Desist had been took off his office door. And dang it, she had a suspicious development to report: Tension and threats going back and forth between Grandma DeGrasso and both Rachel a/k/a Meghan and Harry about their intentions to get married. Just as she had begun to suspect two days ago when the conniving pole dancer told about researching which daddy was most likely to succeed...
Lero — wearing long pants, jacket, tie; and carrying a worse- for-wear briefcase — ambled in with his usual loose-jointed long stride and plopped into the chair behind his desk. She marched to front of the desk and reported the threatening statements toward poor old Ms. Nanette DeGrasso made by both Harry DeGrasso and Rachel a/k/a Meghan What’s-Her-Name. Her boss, now leaned back in his chair, waved off—with his right hand, she happened to notice—the evidence of the couple’s bitter resentment of the old “bitch” meddling in their marriage plans.
“This is not a case of Romeo and Juliet,” he said. “Old folks often oppose marriage of their children and grandchildren. My ex-wife’s parents even objected to...But eventually, well, in the words of Chuck Berry: “‘Say la vi,’ say the old folks, ‘it goes to show you never can tell.’”
“In this case, there is no evidence old Grandma DeGrasso changed her mind and ever said any such thing about Harry and ‘Meghan’s’ romantic relationship.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, and the dark-skinned stripper goes by an alias; so what?”
“We’re not ‘strippers’; we’re pole dancers, dang it.”
“Succession, Hen; I have a hunch the case at hand is all about bigtime corporate succession. Same old story: A struggle between those two DeGrasso company Executive Vice-Presidents to get to the top of a greased pole is what led to the murder of the matriarch.”
“Dang it, I already told you that Rachel a/k/a Meghan did online research on that very matter and reckoned Harry’s daddy had a better chance to be top dog on the grease pole than Hunter’s daddy. That’s why I suspect she and Harry...”
“Nope, the case at hand is along the lines of a Shakespeare play called Hamlet Gets Business. I saw a movie version when I was in college. Foreign film with sub-titles; kinda hard to understand, and I might have been stoned. But I clearly recall that it started with one of two Executive-VP types murdering his rival, who left a bunch of stock in the family-owned company to his son, Hamlet. The killer then tried to get control of the stock by tricking Hamlet into marriage to a devious hottie named Orphelia. See, the villain — named Klaus, I think — was a greedy capitalist. He had a secret plan to sell-off the company’s docks and factories, put all the employees out of work, and use the sale proceeds to create a monopoly in Swedish rubber ducks. But...No, that’s not the one. The case at hand tracks another movie about rivalry to be top dog, but... Hmmm?”
“Is it The Lion King movie that you are trying to think of? That’s the one about a old lion king and his brother named Scar both wanting to be top dog. The king’s son, Prince Simba, was also ambitious and sang a song called I Can’t Wait to Be King. Scar killed the old king and tricked Prince Simba into thinking he committed the crime. The prince ran away, but came back and ended up fighting his Uncle Scar. See, Simba was the old king’s rightful heir, and became top dog his own self.”
“No, the case now at hand is nothing like that,” said Lero, gazing up at the ceiling and flicking his empty left hand. “It’s a succession case more along the lines of...of...Oh yeah, Some Heir Over the Rainbow; that’s the one.”
Henrietta had not heard of any such movie.
“It’s not yet been made into a flick as far as I know,” said Leroy, now looking straight at her with a straight face. “It’s a comic book case.”
Her boss went on to explain that Donald Duck—all duck — and Gladstone Gander — half-duck and half- goose—were cousins, and longtime rivals. Donald resented Gladstone because his cousin was born lucky. Though too lazy to even willfully wish for something, Gladstone would regularly stumble upon such things as, say, a wallet stuffed with money lying on a sidewalk. Though totally without achievements to his name, he was unbearably boastful. Donald himself, on the other hand, would have had no luck at all if not for his chronic bad luck. And as good luck and bad luck would have it, so to speak, their Uncle Scrooge McDuck, “owner of three cubic acres of money”, decided to determine who was best qualified to be his heir by giving each nephew a thousand dollars to manage.
“Donald used his thousand bucks to make a downpayment on a new car. For his irresponsibility, the McDuck family patriarch scratched him off the list of potential heirs. Gladstone—loafer, chiseler, connoisseur of the fast buck—finds a raffle ticket for a television set; decides he will have no need for the thousand dollars entrusted to him by his uncle, so stores the cash in a hollow tree. Though not impressed that his dark-feathered nephew failed to invest the money, Uncle Scrooge credits him with at least not squandering it, and puts a question mark next to Gladstone’s name on the list.”
After waiting for several seconds to hear the point of the comic book case, “How did Heir Over the Rainbow end,’ Henrietta asked. “Did Donald Duck murder the rich old patriarch of the McDuck family?”
“No one killed the feathered patriarch, but you are on the right track, ‘Watson’. Who had most to gain by murder of the DeGrasso family matriarch?”
“Harry and Rachel had most to gain,” she answered. “‘Cause also according to today’s newspaper, Harry’s daddy—who is named Charles DeGrasso—is the matriarch’s heir apparent, just like Rachel a/k/a Meghan found out by research.”
“The same news article mentioned that there has been a recent, highly unusual flurry of trading in the DeGrasso company stock,” said Lero.
“So what?”
“Have you never seen, or at least heard of the big HBO hit called SUCCESSION? Ms. Nanette DeGrasso was ninety- five-years-old, likely to pass on at any moment,” Lero pointed out. “Neither Harry nor his father would most benefit by her only somewhat accelerated demise, nor would the daddy likely muddy his succession prospects by an untimely divorce case. But if someone else, say, a family member, was set on taking control of the company, getting the reportedly strong-willed old woman out the way would be beneficial to him. As would tarnishing the reputation of the heir apparent’s wife, Mrs. Charles DeGrasso.
“Bottom line: Ms. Nanette DeGrasso was murdered. My hunch: The other Executive VP — his name is Joe DeGrasso — is the doer.”
“You mean Hunter’s daddy, the Executive VP you think is our client, once removed?”
“Not anymore. I was going to file a final report and quit the case anyway. DeGrasso’s flunky saved me the trouble, which turned out to be a lucky break that removes appearance of any conflict of interest.”
“Quit the case?! What about...What about your hunch that Yanko Tarnovskyy and likely Hunter DeGrasso are up to foul play? What about the ‘dirty’ Ukrainian tennis balls?”
“The Ukrainian masher, just a red herring that threw me off the scent of the game afoot, such as happens in almost all investigations. The tennis balls, just McGuffins, also a distraction without importance”
“What about my share of the fee we were to get for surveilling the corrupting activities and associations of Harry? My apartment rent is coming due.”
“Sorry, Hen; you’ll have to go back to nighttime work at Xpose. But if you want to continue with on-the-job training during your off-hours, I would be glad to have you on my new case as an investigator.”
“New case?”
“Señor Gomez — father of the suspect, Hernando — came to Good Buddy for a bail bond. I walked him over to a hearing this morning, and didn’t like the way the Assistant DA treated...
Bottom line: No bail for Hernando. I agreed to be his defense counsel, pro bono, which means’ for good’. No fee, but the case would give you a chance to gain valuable P.I. experience. And by the way, Hen, did you do something with the push-pins?”
’Stead of flipping a coin, Henrietta went around the desk, opened a drawer, put a push-pin in her left hand, and flicked. Bingo, dang it, the push-pin stuck.



CHAPTER 23

In the living room of his modest ranch-style suburban residence, Joe stood at a picture window that would have looked out onto a front lawn if curtains had not been drawn closed. Beside him the appointed son of the only guy he had ever dared to confide in — appropriately dressed all in black, except for a white clerical collar — referred to notes scribbled in a small spiral-bound book.
“Before taking this ‘upstairs’ let’s recap your account of what happened one more time,” said his trusted junior confidante. “You say you arrived at the residence of your immediate superior, Mrs. Nanette Carbone DeGrasso, sometime after eight o’ clock last night for a routine...”
“Well, no, not exactly routine. I urgently needed to meet with The Boss and her advisor, Brother Bernardo about... about unforeseen... She never did anything without the monk’s approval.”
“And the monk was not there, correct? Brother Bernardo’s absence was what was not exactly routine, correct? Nevertheless, you went ahead...”
“Right, for the only time I can remember Uncle Bernardo was not in the house. The door was unlocked and no one was around. I was ...I was worried. I went up to my aunt’s bedroom and...”
“And your aunt was quite alive, correct?”
“Did I say ‘quite alive’? She was propped up in bed. Her eyes were closed. She could have been dead as Kelsey’s nuts, but...”
“Could have been dead?!”
“What I meant to say was that she could have been dead, to judge by her appearance: Emaciated, wrinkled, gray...”
“But alive, correct?”
“When I began telling her about...about...about minor, uh, adjustments to a big deal with Ukrainians, her eyes popped open and...and...she was, uh, disappointed.”
“Mrs. DeGrasso was upset about a turn of events involving a business matter, and highly animated; that’s your story, right?”
“Dog-gone-it, the old woman had unreasonable expectations of getting ten percent—ten percent!—of Lardo profits. One, maybe two percent would have been a good deal, and the Ukrainian son of a bitch, What’s-His-Name, was tough, very tough. He had no personality. He didn’t know how to negotiate; didn’t understand that a guy has to give and take; didn’t understand the back-and-forth of inter...inter...international intercourse.”
“You’re saying your boss declined to approve a deal you had negotiated, right? You gave up and left the premises, correct? You went directly home and arrived...?”
“Not exactly correct in terms of...terms of being the whole story. Auntie Nan was...was...was off her feed, so to speak. She was, uh, disappointed and...and...and...”
“And...and... what, Uncle Joe? Stop glancing toward the kitchen door and try to concentrate.”
“She might have said she, uh, never wanted to lay eyes on me again, but...”
“Jesus, Uncle Joe, she fired you? The murder victim fired you; and afterward... How unfortunate that Aunt Linda was asleep in bed when you say you got home.”
“Can I come in now?” said the wife, Linda, already entering the room with a tray in her hands. “I’ve made carrot cake, Father Izzy.”
“No, thank you,” said Joe’s confessor, Izzy Goldberg, taking rosary beads from a pocket. “I need to hurry this info up to Dad. And no need to call me ‘Father’ when there’s just the three of us, Aunt Linda.”
Joe remained standing at the picture window, now with the curtain pulled open a crack. Media vultures were lined up along the curb, some perched on his lawn, waiting for an opportunity to swoop. Sure, the buzzards were like...were like harmless parrots when they got Christmas hams, bottles of booze, friendly back rubs, but...but...but now the scent of roadkill was in the air. Friends of Linda had called to offer condolences, make excuses for not dropping by with casseroles; saying how they couldn’t believe rumors that he—“Godfather to Lardo gang members recruited from Mexico”—was responsible for the death of that sweet old woman. He didn’t dare risk hinting he had “lawyered up,” so...
Satisfied that the son and junior partner of his longtime personal attorney, Israel Goldberg, Senior, had run the gauntlet to his car without incident...“It’s all Hunter’s fault,” Joe said, turning to face his wife of more than fifty years. “And yours too, Linda. You were always too easy on that boy. You didn’t teach him discipline, honor and...and . . and the other one...”
“It was you who made Hunter quit the Cub Scouts, dear.”
“Damn right I did. The other dads in charge of that pack of... pack of snotty little do-gooders, they played favorites when it came to handing out merit badges. Hunter never got one.”
“Hunter didn’t do anything good to earn one, Joe.”
“So he didn’t make fires out of twigs; so what? So he didn’t make battery gadgets; didn’t make bird houses out of empty cans...What a bunch of nerds! Birds don’t need houses. They live in nests and eat... Oh, yeah, Linda: honor, duty and nutrition; that’s the motto. Those are the values you should have drummed into Hunter when he was young. If I had refused to eat Brussel sprouts, my mother—God rest her soul—would have taken a belt to my backside.”
“Hunter loves Brussel sprouts, Joe. It’s you who hates them.”
“Now I hate them, yeah; I am sick of Brussel sprouts, but when I was a boy...I don’t know, Linda; I just don’t know. Somewhere along the line...Maybe it wasn’t bad nutrition; maybe it was something else that made Hunter turn out rotten. Maybe...”
“Maybe it was you bragging on him so much, Joe. That might have been the reason his head swelled up like yours.”
Rubbing the top of his head with a hand, Joe had to admit that the wife might be half right. His son had always looked up to him; had always wanted to be a chip off the old block; but had just never measured up. And now...The Lardo big deal was their last chance. Now it was too late.
He slumped into a chair, looked up to his wife, and...“I’m done for, Linda,” he admitted. “Last night, before...No, last night, after more than fifty years of service to the Company, Aunt Nanette fired me. No joke. After sucking all the fizz out of me, that old witch threw me away like I was nothing but an empty soda can.”
“It’s not too late, dear. Cans can be recycled. Birds need houses, same as dogs.”
“What I am saying,” said Joe, again rubbing his head, “is that I will never be...never be a lion king. That damn doctor guaranteed those transplants would live and multiply forever, not turn into dead-dandelion fuzz, but...Damnit, he took follicles from...from...from my...Now my head looks like a shrunken scrotum.”
“Yeah, with all the fizz gone. It’s Nature’s way, Joe.”
Ding. Dong.
What the hell! After ringing the doorbell for no reason, then using his key, Hunter walked in.
“Don’t start on him, Joe,” said the wife. “This is not a good time for family fighting.”
“It’s okay, Mom. I deserve a beating for not stepping in yesterday. It was a mismatch.”
“Family fighting? All I ever said was...” Up onto his feet, Joe gave Hunter a firm bicep squeeze. “It wasn’t your fault, Son. You fell into bad company. That Ukrainian with that mustache... just like that Hendrickson kid down the block; Jesus, smoking cigarettes at age six. No wonder he came to no good.”
“It wasn’t Earl’s fault, Dad. I set that fire because you lied; you promised to buy me a BB gun.”
“I did buy a BB gun for you, damnit; a top of the line Daisy pump-action model; the best money could...”
“Yeah, but only after I set your pants on fire while you were napping. I’m sorry about that, Dad. I’m sorry about everything. I tried to make it all right in the end. I called Father Ward last night to...”
“Damnit, Hunter, I taught you to never confess anything to those.... You can’t trust those unmarried priests to keep things under their hats. Confess only to...hell, you’re a lawyer; confess only to yourself, but never out loud.”
“Father Ward is still the Mount Saint Mary football coach, and still good friends with...Remember how Uncle Bernie used to chant Hail Marys on the sideline when the Rockets were losing.”
“A lotta good that did,” Joe snorted. “Ward should have listened to my chants from right behind the bench: ‘Hunter! Hunter! He’s your man/ If he can’t do it, no one can!’ The son of a bitch wouldn’t listen; wouldn’t put you in the game, goddamnit!’
“Yeah, I remember. It was embarrassing, especially since I wasn’t even on the team.”
“You should have been on the team. You should have been the star in place of that other guy, Williams. You should have done what I...”
“Should have done what?” said his son in a disrespectful tone of voice. “Should I have stole the star player’s shoes? Yeah, that advice worked out great when basketball season came around. Thanks a lot, Pops.”
“Don’t blame me for your...for your...for your bad choice, Hunter. All I said was that teammates are not really mates, not in the...not in the sacred and honorable biblical sense. They’re rivals, competitors, enemies. High school sports are for learning the moral values of the business world. Competition between, say, Ford and Studebaker is a sissy game compared to what goes on inside companies. In the corporate world, it’s...it’s dog-eat- dog, and loser eats the hindquarters. If you’re not one up...It might have been Saint Mary Magdalene herself, blessed mother of Jesus Christ, who said...said if you’re not one up...not one up on the cross, you’re one down.”
“Yeah, I must have been absent from Easter Sunday Mass when she said that.”
“Or it might have been that Notre Dame football coach who talks funny. He might have been lisping about crossing a goal line for that big statue overlooking the stadium, the one they call ’Touchdown Jesus’.”
“Yeah, might not have been Jesus’ mother. But anyway, Dad, I called Father Ward to get Uncle Bernie’s cell phone number. I wanted to make one last pitch for...”
“Monks have cell phones?”
“Everybody has a cell phone, Dad, except...Anyway, I got through to Coach during a rivalry game versus the Casady Cyclones and he passed the phone to Uncle Bernie, who happened to be standing right next to him on the sideline, chanting. I made a last ditch pitch to save the Lardo deal and...”
Joe grabbed his son by both biceps and tried to shake him. “That sneaky old monk was out and about in Capitol Hill last night?! Did he say anything about...? Did he say anything about seeing me out and about?! Tell me, Hunter, what did that lying
bastard say about...about me?!”
“He said you’d done the best to your limited abilities, Dad. He
said that when he got home after the game he would recommend to ‘Sister Nanette’ that she not refuse the five-percent deal offered by ...by the Ukrainians. But it was obviously too late by the time he got home; the dice had been rolled and come up craps.”
Joe again slumped into a chair, silently cursing his bad luck. His undeserving cousin...Damnit, Charles would inherit Her Majesty’s stock and Company position as The Big Cheese. The son of a bitch would dance on the Lardo deal’s grave, and his too. His longtime rival would never agree to rehire...Joe blamed his old man, for squandering what should have been his birthright, running off to Alaska with that floozie, leaving him to fend for himself like an ordinary person. He himself coulda, woulda, shoulda...
Hunter’s damn cell phone buzzed. His son put the gadget to an ear and listened, probably to something being said by another longwinded con man from Ukraine or Alaska or... Joe bit his tongue. Damnit, Hunter had never bounced back from the basketball shoes setback that had cost him a scholarship at Duke.
“And don’t forget the setback of getting caught taking that kickback and losing his job in the Company legal department, Joe,” the wife would have said in reply. Nothing good ever happened after...after...
“Really?” his ne’er-do-well son finally said in answer to whatever flim-flam scam had been pitched. “That’s great. I will notify all parties without delay.”
Looking down at him, smiling like a fool, “Pops, that was Uncle Bernie, calling to say the Lardo deal is a go. As executor of that old witch’s estate and with power-of-attorney to handle Company business, he wants to meet with you tonight to discuss your management of the Louisiana roll-out.”
Joe sprang from the chair. “Didn’t I tell you, Linda,” he exclaimed. “Our boy...Hell, for some guys it takes longer for... for...for their heads to set solid! And that Bernie, whatta guy! Only a monk, yeah; but with a head set solid for business. Brother Bernardo understands that five percent of the take...”
“Yeah,” said Hunter, “Uncle Bernie said something about half a loaf, and mouths to feed.”
“Exactly!” Joe exclaimed. “My Lardo idea is the greatest thing since sliced half-loaves of buttered bread!”



CHAPTER 24

Lero again reclined at his desk, again looking up to the ceiling, again flicking push-pins. Though this afternoon’s left-handed exercise indicated no discernible improvement in his right-brain function, he was relieved to sense that this morning’s return to lawyering seemed not to have caused a flare-up of cluttered left- brain thinking.
Thanks to his disposal of the Yanko Tanovsky y red herring—partial thanks also to his dismissal of the Romeo a/k/a Harry Degrasso and Juliet a/k/a “Meghan” girly nonsense put forward by his young assistant-in-training—his mind was now virtually devoid of petty distractions; an almost totally blank slate. The next trick would be to keep his intuitive outlook also uncluttered by picky details of the Hernando Gomez case itself, most if not all of which could only cloud the big picture. And that would be a hard one.
Unfortunately, the Assistant DA assigned to the case happened to be his ex-wife; and Evie had always had a way of engaging and besting him in small-minded fact-based argument. The challenge would be to resist taking any bait she dangled to entrap him into making a mistake...and make Hernando look bad too.
At this morning’s bail hearing Evie’s attitude toward the young, poor, uneducated Hispanic kitchen worker had been inflexibly hostile; which was ironic in a way. His ex-wife’s avowed purpose in becoming a lawyer had been to serve the cause of justice on behalf of the “little guy” against exploitation by the immoral capitalistic system. Now she was effectively carrying water for the corrupt establishment, as epitomized by the Trinita Coal Oil & Tar Company and its Executive Vice-President, Joe DeGrasso.
Yep, despite another push-pin tumbling onto his desk, Lero had no doubt that Hernando Gomez had been caught in a web of rivalry and intrigue surrounding corporate succession. To establish his client’s innocence, he would have to get around Evie and prove involvement of an Executive VP in murder of the boss above him on the greased Trinita Company pole. Not that pulling off that trick would be easy, he began to realize. Tough as Evie might be, lawyers on the payrolls of corporate big shots were no doubt just as tough, if not entirely unscrupulous. The Evie he used to know would have been first to agree that it was not by accident that the rich got not only richer, but also routinely got away with murder, in no small part due to their ability to hire sharp-shooting lawyers.
His best shot would be to somehow sneak up on the oil-and- tar company fat cat, make a case against his suspect before he sensed legal jeopardy, Lero was thinking, when...He hardly recognized his old man: All cleaned up, wearing what looked to be a new outfit composed of odd-colored felt hat, plaid sport coat, orange shirt, striped green-and-blue tie, sharply creased trousers and...oh yeah, same old thick-soled black cop shoes.
“This must’ve fell out of a van that hit a pothole,” his father said, dropping a manilla file folder on the desk.
Lero opened the file...
Oklahoma City Police Department Robbery & Homicide Division
Re: Gomez, Hernando/ Murder
Lero closed the file.
”Since I hear ‘Leroy E. O’Rourke, Esquire’ now handles criminal cases when not busy with foreclosures...Jesus, Leroy, what’s with the thumb tacks?” Easy Ed O’Rourke said, tossing some dirty laundry from a chair before sitting down. “I thought you might be interested in that file’s references to a statement—copy of the statement is not included—that your client made to your ex-wife.”
Statement?
“Yeah, apparently Gomez went on record to make a number of things clear: Numero uno, he hates rich Americans. Numero two, the old perra a/k/a ‘bitch’—who interrupted his work, demanded special service and didn’t leave a tip—really pissed him off. And strike three, yeah, he has a lawyer and knows his constitutional rights.”
“Heck, I meant to tell Hernando not to talk to anybody, but must have...”
“Yeah, well, a minor detail; easy to slip off the sharp blade of a busy lawyer’s mind.”
“It was way out of line for Evie to talk to my client without me being present.”
“Be sure to give her a stern lecture at the Gomez hanging. In the meantime, Leroy, you might want to focus your mind on that file of Xeroxes. There are some oddities to the case that seem to have been brushed aside.”
“Oddities? Like what, for instance?”
“Like for instance the fact that the victim apparently showed up at a fast food joint after midnight, alone. A little odd; don’t ya think?”
“Hmmm. Are you suggesting she was with someone, maybe a boyfriend? Statistics show that most female murder victims are done in by...”
“Jesus, Leroy, I wish you woulda spared me that peek inside
your head,” said Easy Ed. “You think some Romeo climbed up a trellis and invited the victim to come out for a romantic candlelit snack at a lube shop? That’s what Lieutenant Jackson seems to have thought, by the way, until somebody must’ve hit the dumb fuck over the head with a two-by-four. For crying out loud, this particular ‘Juliet’ was ninety-five-years old!”
“Just being lawyerly,” Lero explained; “checking off boxes; making sure all the bases were...I have already fingered, not necessarily the actual doer, but the guy calling the shots, and... You were right on the money yesterday, Pop; the case I stumbled into is all about corporate succession. One of those two Executive VPs is...”
“Don’t tell me ’til it’s a wrap, Leroy,” said his father, getting up from the chair. “I want to be surprised. And I’m already late for work.”
“Late for work?”
“Yeah, you also gave me an idea yesterday, Leroy. After thinking about something you said, I called my old patrol buddy, Marty Crane, who also has time on his hands, and...Anyway, we are now the two-and-only ‘Easy Ed and Smarty Marty’, together again as ‘O’Rourke & Crane, Private Detectives’.”
“Gee, Dad, I wish you had...”
“Try to stop saying ‘Gee’, Leroy. It’s one of the reasons Evie divorced you, remember?”
Yeah, he remembered; his habit of saying “Gee” was one of a long list of “dorky” things that had started to annoy Evie after law school, but...Gee — he could not help thinking the common term—for he himself to have been chosen to be a partner in an O’Rourke & O’Rourke detective agency would have been a dream come true.
“Gotta go; gotta get with Marty and start doing some private
gumshoeing.”
Lero looked down at the...at the Pandora’s Box his father had
dumped on his desk. Dreading the release of no doubt a swarm of confusing data, but determined to prove...He opened the Police Department file and began to look for “oddities” in the case against Hernando Gomez for the murder of an old woman who, for some reason, seemed to have gone out for a greasy snack on the midnight of her murder.



CHAPTER 25

“I have a strong commitment to the institution of marriage,” said the traveling salesman, Larry, sliding another ten-dollar bill along the Xpose bar toward where Henrietta stood in her platform Lucite shoes and bright orange bikini; “just not to being confined in the institution with my wife, heh, heh.”
She felt semi-bad to be taking the money, but with Lero O’Rourke working pro bono his own self and not able to pay... Actually, at least in a bassackwards way, she had Lero to thank for tonight’s “wages”, she realized. According to Larry, after being caught last night by “that sleazy divorce lawyer” he had gone home and confessed to his wife, likely to more than hanging around Xpose, Henrietta reckoned. The wife had throwed some clothes and shaving gear out of the house—along with the traveling salesman his own self — so now...
“The RV is parked right outside,” Larry said. “It’s got its own kitchen, its own bed, so...Hey, Sparkle, we could drive down to the Windstar Casino tonight; park for free in the lot and, you know, see if we made a pair of aces, heh, heh. Or asses. Heh, heh.”
“I reckon a traveling salesman such as your own self has a bunch of clever lines like that up your sleeve,” she said, looking past Larry toward the darkened tables area to where Rachel a/k/a Meghan had dragged Harry after finishing an onstage routine.
“To sell pots and pans door-to-door, a guy to has come across as likable. He has to gently break ice; not with jokes—women don’t get jokes—but with what they call double intendos that get the message across with a soft touch, if you know what I mean, heh, heh.”
Lero had brushed off her suspicions of Rachel a/k/a Meghan and Harry possibly having had something to do with last night’s murder of Grandma DeGrasso; but dang it, with her so-called boss not directly paying her to be his assistant, Henrietta felt justified to keep working from her own point of view on what she still thought of as Case of a Corruptible Playboy.
“It’s only about a hundred miles down to the Windstar Casino parking lot, and there’s a bottle of gin iced down in the RV fridge. You could slip out of something comfortable, heh, heh, and into a Martini, heh, heh. Shake it or stir it, whatever you...”
Out of the tables area darkness came the redheaded, red- bearded son of one of the Executive Vice-Presidents and the dark-haired, dark-skinned pole dancer who had took to grooming him.
Arrived at the bar, Harry caught the eye of a server and called for a bottle of non-alcoholic sparkling water. Henrietta moved slightly away from Larry for a better view and... Rachel a/k/a Meghan turned her dark eyes and held up her left hand to show off a sparkling diamond ring on a finger.
Was it decent for the couple to be out celebrating less than twenty-four hours after Harry’s grandma had been murdered? Was it another suspicious sign that the two of them, after both making threatening complaints against the “meddling old woman,” were carrying on with...
Into the gentlemen’s club came Hunter DeGrasso and Yanko Tarnovskyy, both liquored up to judge by their rambunctious laughter.
As “Meghan” brought down her hand with a jerk, her prior
intended groom raised his own hand and with a crooked finger signaled for her—and maybe Harry too—to join him and Yanko in the table area darkness to where they were headed. Danged if the scheming pole dancer didn’t look to be inclined to follow...until Harry grabbed her arm.
“Criminy!” said Larry, “are you married? Is that...that madman your husband?!”
Henrietta turned her head, barely in time to see an obviously het up Hunter DeGrasso charging—likely not at the nervous traveling salesman — but at Harry and Rachel a/k/a Meghan.



SUNDAY 10/15/19 GREASE MONKEY BUSINESS
SUNDAY MORNING ROUNDTABLE LIVE ONLINE DISCUSSION

Abba Dabba Dabba:
Lot of rumors going ’round about fall-out from the death
of Nanette Carbone DeGrasso, longtime head of Trinita Coal Oil & Tar Co. (OTC:TCT), parent of the Greezers lube shop chain. Will the Company matriarch be routinely succeeded by her son and longtime heir apparent, Charles DeGrasso, a Company Executive VP? Or is there a stock play in progress aimed at elevating rival Executive VP and Ms. DeGrasso’s nephew, Joe DeGrasso, on the corporate lube rack?
While succession has been talked about openly both before and since yesterday’s tragic event, only in whispers have industry observers wondered aloud about whether Mrs. DeGrasso’s murder is itself part of an internecine struggle between the two contenders for the top job.
To shed light on the matter from a professional angle, this monkey is pleased to have at today’s Sunday Morning Roundtable three experts, to-wit:
Blonde bombshell, Ms. Nancy Grace, fiery victims’ rights activist and famous TV legal commentator currently hosting the Injustice With Nancy Grace series.
Judge Judy, not blonde but also a bombshell and famous no-nonsense TV legal beagle, holding court daily on CBS as America’s highest paid TV star.
Detective Mark Fuhrman, former LAPD crime stopper, former radio talk show host, author, and currently an expert crime analyst for Fox News.

Nancy:
Me first, Monkey. It is clear as the stuck-up nose on his face that Charles DeGrasso murdered his mother for reasons having nothing to do with corporate succession. It’s a hate crime. The son of a bitch is a sicko, with a mile-wide Norman Bates Complex. He no doubt blamed his mother for putting on his father’s pants after staging daddy’s death. Mark my words: When brought to the bar of justice the “heir apparent” will make that detestable so-called “affluenza” defense used by lawyers for that punk teenager in Texas, who killed four people—including three Good Samaritans—by driving drunk and high on drugs. Ten years on probation; that’s what that rotten brat got, just because a corrupt judge allowed a slick lawyer to argue that being born rich, and spoiled as a child, had given the defendant — “through no fault of his own”—a superiority complex. Supposedly his “to the manor born” attitude made it impossible for him to know the difference between right and wrong. For that itself, the royal arse of Charles DeGrasso should be guillotined twice. For standing by and allowing a poor young Hispanic boy to take the fall — if not purposely framing him — he should be drawn- and-quartered. His entrails should be fed to hyenas...

Judy:
That’s a lot of Who-Struck-John for a dumb blonde. Yeah, so-called beauty fades. Dumb is forever. In court, I am the boss, Applesauce. Unfortunately, however, no one other than the Hispanic dishwasher will likely ever be hauled into court for murder of the DeGrasso family matriarch, at least not until the sequel plays out. Stock market play? That’s Wall Street baloney. In Brooklyn we know a Mafia turf war when we see one. It could be Charles DeGrasso who is being played, but my guess would be that Joe DeGrasso will turn out to be the "Fredo". No, he’s not quite Charles’ a/k/a “Michael Corleone’s” brother, not even officially an heir presumptive backing up Charlie; but he is a Co-Capo Bastone. No doubt Joe DeGrasso has been handling a little action of his own on the side; now has his nose out of joint; and fears he will be sleeping with da fishes if Good Time Charlie is recognized as the new Godfather.

Mark:
Close, but no cigar, Judge; not in my book. Yeah, I can see this Joe DeGrasso character as a “Fredo”, but what about the Consigliere? Could be that Bernardo Carbone lacked confidence in Good Time Charlie’s ability to carry on with the rackets; offed the Capo Crimini himself to disrupt a routine succession within the DeGrasso Crime Family. If that’s the plan, it’s working. With the Godmother not yet buried, female members of this roundtable have already accused her two most likely successors of the murder.

Nancy:
That’s sexist, you bastard!

Mark:
Yeah, based on what I have read and heard, I like the Brother as doer, who most likely will next feed both DeGrasso cousins to da fishes. Think about it: Bernardo Carbone, reputed to have been a reckless playboy, survives a coal mine explosion. Supposedly scared straight, he becomes a priest, then a monk; gives away all his stock in the crime family business; supposedly takes a vow of poverty. But then has second thoughts. What kind of monk would hang around for the next sixty years, advising the Godmother on every detail of her management of the Greezers establishment?
You can take a goombah out of the lube shop, but you can never get the grease off a...

Nancy:
You, sir, are an unChristian racist bigot. Just because the Degrasso name sounds like it may be of Italian descent, just because the wrongfully accused dishwasher happens to be Hispanic, just because Brother Bernardo is a man of faith...

Mark:
I got nothing against wops, spics, monks or real chicks.

Nancy:
And you are a perjurer. If you had not lied under oath about your prejudice against African-Americans, that slimeball, O.J. Simpson would never have beaten the murder wrap!

Judy:
Order! Order at the Roundtable! Nancy, put down the virtual gun! Mark, sit in the virtual corner and keep your dirty- mouthed typing fingers off the keyboard!

Monkey:
Stay with us for more Sunday Morning Roundtable chat featuring lube industry experts, including the legendary “Tin Woodman” himself, W.D. Fortley.

CHAPTER 17

Unshaven and unkempt, still dressed in pajamas, robe and slippers, Charles continued to stand at a window in the study of his Company-owned Villa d’ Weste mansion; alas, to no avail. His wife of fifteen years, dear, sweet Candice, had left him for another man.
The evidence was undeniable. Yesterday afternoon, she had returned from...from naked “cavorting” at that confounded racquet club, and—complaining of another headache—had locked herself in her bedroom; later allowing only a kitchen helper inside to deliver cocktails and dinner.
Desperate to intercept her this morning before she left the mansion, he had lain on the floor outside her bedroom door like a dog; alas, also to no avail. According to an upstairs housemaid, Mrs. DeGrasso had departed at dawn with suitcase in hand. He could not help but wonder: In her haste to rendezvous with... with that Ukrainian fellow no doubt, had Candice delicately stepped over him or upon him as he lay there?
Though slightly titillated, he forced himself to turn from dwelling upon “Mrs. DeGrasso’s” departure to hoping for her return. All would be forgiven. He had made that quite clear in the message he’d had his man Evans convey to his wayward wife. These things happened in the most devoted of marriages. Many wives, including his first spouse, Deirdre, got carried away with their extracurricular interests and with those who shared them.
But for the sudden loss of fire in the basket of that confounded hot air balloon, he had not doubt Deirdre would have drifted back to him.
Hopefully, Candice — a good deal more...mature than Deirdre—would have the good sense to land on her feet. Back to earth, she would...His private phone rang. He rushed to it and put the receiver to an ear. Through the phone...
“Sorry to interrupt your vigil, sir,” said his man Evans, “but several ever more urgent calls have come in from...”
“From Mrs. DeGrasso!”
“Alas, no, sir. No reply yet from...”
“Blast it, Evans, did you not convey my words to my wife
exactly as dictated?”
“Yes, sir; I have your exact words right here in my notes, to-
wit: ‘My dearest Pussy-Wussy: Won’t you please come home. I am in such want of a scratch. Yours ever, Puppy-Wuppy.’”
“And yet no return call?”
“No, sir. It is Mr. Mangano at Hardwick & Simmons in New York who is most anxious to speak with you. May I give him your private number and permission to call direct?”
Mangano? Oh yes, Mangano, the newfound cousin-in- law. During their shared flight from Lucky Louie’s funeral to the Dallas/ Fort Worth Airport, the Wall Street analyst had come up with an intriguing idea for ensuring “family-friendly” control of the Company and buttressing of his position as heir apparent to Her Majesty, to-wit: In addition to constantly cajoling unsophisticated family shareholders to hold onto inherited Company stock, Bobby Mangano had suggested that he—Executive Vice-President for Investor Relations—should encourage scattered “Outsider” shareholders to sell their holdings to a knowledgeable and “simpatico” investor. Charles had agreed, but since being chastised by his mother...
“Oh alright,” he said to Evans. “Have my cousin-in-law call me directly in...” Charles looked at a wall clock...“Let’s first give Mrs. DeGrasso another five minutes to tire of her escapade.”
He had told the Wall Street analyst only that he was intrigued with the idea of buying out certain shareholders, but apparently the youngish and inexperienced fellow had misunderstood his intention to deliberate on the matter. Apparently the Hardwick & Simmons agent had acted rashly and stirred up trading of Company stock, much to the displeasure of Her Majesty. And rightfully so, Charles had to acknowledge. “Act in haste, repent at leisure” was one of the wise sayings he had always...
His phone rang. He glanced at the wall clock. At most a single minute had passed, but...
“Time is money,” said the voice of, not his Pussy-Wussy, but rather...“Sorry to press you, Cousin Charlie,” said Mangano, “but I need that list of stockholders before the vultures move in and drive up the share price. Our country cousins are already asking for more than their relatives got within the past twenty- four hours.”
Charles was aghast. “Am I to understand that your firm is buying stock held by family members whose loyalty may someday be essential to buttressing my position as...”
“Money never sleeps, cousin. While waiting to get the list of so-called ‘Outsiders’, we grabbed the lowest-hanging fruit and are now eager to...”
“Too eager, sir! Distracted by other matters of vital importance, I have not yet had sufficient time to wisely consider...” Alarmed by shrieking of his pet peacocks on the lawn, Charles looked out a window and saw—thanks be to heaven!— his wife’s white Mercedes speeding up the long driveway toward... toward him.
“I shall get back to you on this matter when circumstances allow,” he said into the phone, before dropping it onto the floor and scurrying toward the mansion’s front door.
Inside the vestibule, “Welcome home, my dear!” he said with open arms.
“What the hell are you doing here at this hour?” she answered, pushing past him, probably yet again suffering from yet another headache, but...Candice wheeled around to face him.
“While you sit around with your thumb up your ass, your deceitful Cousin Joe is cutting in line to be named top dog, you fool!”
Though titillated by his wife’s suggestive remark, Charles remained—hands to his side—speechless, as Candice quite understandably ranted that his first cousin and fellow Executive Vice-President had hired a private detective to smear her with insinuation of behavior unbecoming the wife of the Company’s rightful heir apparent to the high office currently occupied by “that wretched old woman”.
She had cultivated a relationship with Yanko Tarnovskyy for him—her husband—she explained. “I brought to you Yanko’s proposition for Greezers to partner with his Ukrainian associates and add salo to products sold by those disgusting lube shops,” his wife rightly reminded him. Salo was the Slavic equivalent of the Italian lardo promoted by his cousin and rival Executive Vice- President: The deceitful Joseph “Little Joe” Degrasso!
“But oh no, you—pandering to that old witch’s irritable bowels—pitched tofu, coupled with phasing out of all grease! Now your backstabbing cousin is the Company’s big swinging dick. While you sit around in your pajamas with your thumb...”
Charles tightened the sash of his robe, ran a hand through his unkempt hair, and puffed out his chest. “I will have you know, my dear, that I have been hard at work this very day on ensuring my status as heir apparent,” he said, before describing Bobby Mangano’s...or rather what he now thought of as his plan to promote buying up of Company stock by a strategic ally. Shares that might have been inherited by Cousin Joe had his branch of the family not been so foolish amounted to a full thirty-three percent of outstanding stock. Shares that Uncle Bernie had also frittered away amounted to another eleven percent. All now held by the Outsiders.
“Why limit yourself to chasing down Outsiders?” Candice cooed. “You have already cultivated the confidence of your horrid mother’s Carbone kin. Encourage them to also sell their stock to this Bobby hot shot, and you will control more shares than ‘Her Majesty’ owns,” said his wife, with a look in her eyes that was downright lubricious, but...
“No, no, my dear. Hasty climbers have sudden falls. Her Majesty’s stock shall come to me personally in due time. To arrange trades of shares owned by members of her side of the family—even to a ‘family-friendly’ investor—would be an act of disloyalty. The shock would prematurely kill my aged mother.”
“Do it!” Candice hissed. “Do it now! Put Joe-fucking- DeGrasso and Yanko-fucking-Tarnovskyy in their place. Stage a coup!”
Stage a coup? He had not thought of... of Bobby Mangano’s plan as unfriendly toward the Company’s long serving matriarch. No, absolutely not; his mother would soon exit the stage by natural causes, at which time...
“Oh you silly goose; you and your proper stuff,” said Candice, coming toward him, licking her lips, now undoing the sash of his robe. “Do not fear, my dear. Screw your courage to the sticking place. Do it; do it now and...” After turning away, from over her shoulder: “Be a brave Puppy-Wuppy, not a pussy cat who would eat fish but not wet its paws. I shall await word of the grisly plot's execution in my boudoir, after a soothing mud bath.”
Charles hurriedly returned to his study, picked up the telephone from the floor, and...“Cousin Bobby, where were we?” he said after punching a call-back button. “Oh yes, after cooly reflecting on the matter, I shall immediately dispatch to you a list of all Outsiders holding Company stock, but...”
Feeling a bit green around the gills, so to speak, his courage melted and slid down the sticking post. “Could we not focus exclusively on them and, uh, give back, say, half the fruit recently plucked from my mother’s, and your dear wife’s close family members? I fear ‘Her Majesty’ — heh, heh — will otherwise look upon your...my...our plan as a ‘coup’ of sorts, directed at her. The shock...”
“So what?” he heard the Wall Street analyst cooly reply. “Nanette Carbone DeGrasso is a ninety-five-year-old product of a bygone time, and now well past her expiration date. In fact, well, didn’t you get the book I sent, Cousin Charlie? Speaking figuratively, you understand, ‘When you strike a king—or queen — you must kill her.’”
After vaulting up the mansion stairs—his courage now again congealed—Charles gently tapped on the door of his wife’s boudoir. It opened a crack and...To Candice, sprawled on her bed — slathered in mud — he announced that he had put his paws in the water, so to speak.
“To bed, to bed,” she replied.“Come, come, come, my fearless Puppy-Wuppy, who has hatched this enterprise with me.”



CHAPTER 18

Standing outside Unit ♯12 at the rundown Park Manor Apartments on Northwest 63rd Street, Lero braced himself for an unpleasant sensory onslaught. Visual messiness. Sticky surfaces. Odor of cigarette smoke. Deafening racket. He would not dare taste any snack his father might offer. “Easy Ed” O’Rourke, four times divorced, lived alone in the small so-called studio unit; sitting day and night in a ratty so-called recliner, can of beer in one hand, cigarette in the fingers of the other; arguing with faces of people appearing on various cable news shows.
But his dad was a retired cop with over thirty years of experience handling bad actors such as Yanko Tarnovskyy, so... Lero took a deep breath, opened the door without need of a key, and...
“I’m back!” a gray-haired, gray-bearded man on the TV screen declared.
“Fuck you, you conniving bastard!” Easy Ed bellowed in return. But no, this time the object of his father’s wrath was not Wolf Blitzer on CNN. It was...Lero noticed another image of the gray-haired guy on a DVD case sitting beside the recliner. Take What’s Yours was the tagline for an HBO series titled SUCCESSION.
“You’ll get yours in the end, you son of a bitch!”
“Dad!” he shouted, prompting his father to turn his head as he put the TV on pause and...
“Jesus! No need to shout. Scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry. I’m a little uptight.”
“Wanna beer? There’s cheese dip in the fridge; crackers around here somewhere.”
Leroy explained he’d come for advice; then went on to tell how a routine case of vetting a rich playboy for the Executive VP of the DeGrasso grease company — whom he had later identified as the subject’s uncle—had led him to a hunch of probable foul play involving the client’s son and a Ukrainian thug. Evidence supporting his hunch had been, uh, lost; and he doubted his inexperienced new assistant would be up to the task of replacing it with new goods on a villain named Yanko Tarnovskyy. But either way, was it right for him to pursue the hunch, or did he owe it to his client to stick to the job assigned to him and not dig up dirt on his son? Should he call in the cops or...?
“No, do not embarrass me, Leroy. Do not call my...My old buddies inside the Department might think I myself had lost my marbles or...”
Lero held up a hand to interrupt. With his other hand he reached for the vibrating phone in his pants pocket. The call was from Henrietta. In reply to her complaint about his unavailability, he explained that he’d had his phone turned off to save battery power.
“Make it fast, Hen. I’m in the middle of an important meeting.”
“Well, for one thing,” she said, “I have detected that the Mrs. DeGrasso who hangs out at this here racquet club is not Harry’s aunt; she is his stepmother.”
“So?”
“For another thing, I have found out that Harry’s daddy is also an Executive Vice-President of that grease company. I reckon he—not Harry’s uncle—is our client ‘once removed’; and that what he really wanted all along was for us to surveil his missus, not Harry.”
“No way, Jose. The Executive VP’s flunky only said that while we were at it—at surveilling Harry...Stay focused, Hen. Have you gotten into Yanko’s private office? Have you...?”
“I peeked in, but...”
“...got hold of Yanko’s balls?”
“No...”
“Heck!”
“...‘cause Harry’s stepmother had hold of them...”
“Mrs. DeGrasso? The wife of...?”
“...with her skirt pulled up and panties pulled down. She had
Yanko pinned against a wall; mashing on him against his will, by the look of things.”
Lero ended the call in a daze, went into the apartment’s kitchenette, and opened the fridge. Returning with two beers and a moldy bowl of cheese dip, he gave a beer to his father, who again paused the TV show.
“Dad, it’s a divorce case,” he said, collapsing onto a sofa. “I’ve been snookered into a sleazy divorce case by a suspicious husband,” he admitted, but...In his defense, Lero hastened to explain in detail the confusing maze of relationships within the DeGrasso family. “Thank God I talked to you before going to the police,” he concluded with a sigh. “If Evie had found out...”
“It’s not necessarily just a divorce case, Leroy,” said his father, blowing smoke from another Marlboro into the air. “Look at the big picture.”
“What big picture?”
“Who’s to say you were wrong about it being that fucking uncle-not the broad's husband-who hired you to ‘keep both eyes open’ at the same time? Who’s to say that son of a bitch didn’t want to expose the hanky-panky of the other guy’s wife?”
“Why?”
“Succession, Leroy, succession. The minute I heard these two clowns were Executive VPs of the same company, I knew what was going down. Same old story; you see it every day: Guys climbing the establishment’s greased pole, crawling over one another to pull down the guy ahead of them. Take Willie ‘Wrong Way’ Jackson, for instance, my ex-partner. Dumber than a sack of nails, but I took him under my wing; taught him everything he ever knew, starting with c-a-t spells cat. Brought him into headquarters to work under me when I made Master Sergeant, on merit! The son of a bitch...
“Okay, maybe I overstayed my sick leave. I was in Hawaii, for Christ’s sake. Women out there dance in grass skirts and one of them...Anyway, I get back to find that Jackson had been licking the lieutenant’s balls; telling that he was the one who solved all those cases; and that I’d been losing it ever since falling off the table at Jerry McD’s retirement party onto my head. Next thing I know, Jackson jumps over me, succeeds the lieutenant, and... Okay, I pissed on his shoes during roll call; now I'm a civilian.”
Lero sized-up his old man: Fifty-seven; yeah that was old. Always on the hefty side, he had gained a few pounds in forced retirement. Some days—such as this one—he didn’t bother to shave. But the rest of the salt-and-pepper hair on his head was thick, and always neatly groomed in a flat-top. Easy Ed O’Rourke was still bright out of the eyes, still feisty, still...
“Take that son of a bitch,” his dad said, nodding his head at a frozen image of the gray-haired, gray-bearded man on the TV screen. “He’s Logan, founder of a global media conglomerate called Waystar Royco, and so-called fucking patriarch of a family he’s brought into the business: Three males and a bitch named Shiv, constantly scheming against one another to be named the old man’s successor. This scene is right after start of the show’s first season. He had promised to hand over control to a son, Kendall, but then had a stroke that almost killed him, and now he’s back, meaner and more manipulative than ever. He and the son are going to struggle for control of the family empire. Ha! I’ve watched it a dozen times. Kendall loses, bigtime; goes to pot, literally; kills someone in a car wreck. The old man gets him off but in the series’ second season...”
His father pulled a recliner lever to launch himself into a standing position and hurried toward a cluttered bookcase, jabbering about how “Logan” had brought a broken “Kendall” back into the company; how Logan had attempted a coup but failed to take his father's worldwide enterprise public; how a series of internal scandals had made the company subject of a congressional investigation; how shareholders had finally rebelled and...“Here it is,” he said, returning with a DVD case in hand. “You gotta see the finale of last year’s season number two.”
Lero, fidgety, checked the time on his phone, but...With the second DVD inserted into the player and his father back to inserted into the recliner, fast forwarding with the controller...
“Here we go,” said the storyteller. “A congressional hearing has been scheduled; pissed-off shareholders have told Logan that someone—namely him—needs to walk the plank to save family control of the company; you know, take the blame for everything that’s gone wrong; or as Logan puts it: Make ‘a blood sacrifice’. So what does he do? In this final episode, titled This Is Not For Tears, he calls a meeting of the fucked-up family and a few company executives, supposedly to have them decide who should be the sacrificial lamb. Watch this; that’s Kendall arriving at the family gathering.”
“Hey, dad, just out of interest, um, did you ever think I could
do it,” a thin, dark-haired man said to the old gray-haired man named “Logan”.
“Do what?” the old man replied. “The top job? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You can say.”
“You’re not a killer. You have to be a killer.”
Failing to see his father’s point, Lero again looked at his phone to check the time, and started to say...
“You said you wanted my advice, Leroy. Well here it is: Big business is like the Mafia. If you take on a fucking Godfather, you had better kill him.”
Lero finished his beer with a gulp. “I gotta go, Dad,” he said, “but what are you saying? That I should go against my client — the Executive Vice-President who’s Harry’s uncle—for...for...for what? He himself hasn’t done anything illegal, as far as I know. It’s his son and the Ukrainian tennis pro who...”
“No, Leroy, I’m saying you have got yourself almost involved in something way out of your league. Corporate succession is a dangerous game played by big-business bastards wearing suits and ties who are rough, lots rougher than rag-tag boys in back alleys of the hood. I’m saying you should turn in a vanilla- milkshake report to your client—a report that says nothing of interest to anyone—collect your fee, and go back to being a fucking lawyer. What the hell, I got Good Buddy to let you have that office space on the understanding you would handle foreclosures of real estate put up for bond collateral.”
“I know, but...”
“Forget about Evie and what she might think of you. Leroy, listen to me: You don’t have to be anybody’s hero.”
Leaving his old man’s seedy apartment, Lero told himself he didn’t give a damn what his ex-wife’s opinion of him might be. As a boy, he had wanted his father...had wanted to be a cop, like his father. Even when he was in college...No, by then he no longer would have liked to wear a uniform, ride around in a patrol car, and hassle “rag-tag boys in back alleys of the hood”. But that Wall Street bastard, Gordon Gecko, and his gang of white-collar criminals; yeah, he would still like to be a big-league private detective who brought dirtballs like them to justice.



CHAPTER 19

At the main gate of the Waterford condos complex off Northwest 63rd Street, Joe judged Hunter’s newish digs as the perfect place for his son to be living and doing business. Classy but casual, and private; hotel right across the street in case a guy needed to entertain a group.
He himself had always followed, and always advised his son to follow the example set by that old movie actor, What’s-His- Name? Magoo? Manjou? A guy named something Frenchy like that once said in a magazine interview that to be successful, a guy had to look successful. The famous actor told that when his career stalled, he had hocked everything in order to buy the most expensive outfit of clothes he could find; put an extra shine on his shoes, a carnation in his lapel, got a haircut and a...a...
Waiting for a condo guard to clear a car ahead of him for admission, Joe recalled a high school assignment to write a paper about a movie titled...titled...Anyway, he had learned a valuable lesson. The famous actor in the movie — Manjou, yeah, that was it; Andy, no, Adolphe Manjou—had a certain style of mustache that German Commies adopted for characters in movies and cartoons as a symbol for corrupt politicians, con men, slick criminals and the like. They called it the “Manjou Beardlet”. So yeah, the guy might have been a good actor but he was no Red Skelton; never would have made it as a salesman. No one trusted a man who wore a mustache. People wanted to do business with...
“I have an appointment to meet Mr. Hunter DeGrasso, Esquire,” he said to the guard standing out front of a small gatehouse. “I am his father, here for an important meeting to wrap-up a big deal.”
“Watch out for the old women and don’t stop,” the guard replied. “They come out like fleas at this time of day, to walk their little dogs and flirt with men who pass by.”
Arrived at Hunter’s condo, Joe stooped to pick-up the day’s newspaper, then rang the doorbell...four times.
At the sight of his barefoot son in the opened doorway... “What the hell, Hunter, are you sick? You need to get dressed for the...Why aren’t you dressed? It’s four o’clock in the afternoon, for Christsake!”
“Chill, Dad, business guys don’t dress-up anymore like you and...like that old actor you always talk about.”
“And you haven’t even shaved! Jesus, Hunter, this is not a weekend night at that...that nightclub. This is an important meeting we’ve got scheduled.”
“It’s your meeting, not mine. And Dad, FYI: The facial hair is called scruff; it’s casual; it’s manly. It’s European.”
“It’s not clean...it’s unshaven, damnit.”
After pushing past his son into the condo’s living room, Joe was further appalled to find left-over food on a coffee table, a dirty sock lying in one of the bowls, several empty beer cans and two half-empty vodka bottles.
“Criminy, Pops, you’re getting to be just like Mom,” said Hunter; standing there as he himself went about picking-up after his forty-nine-year-old son. In the kitchen, aha, there was the problem. Joe wheeled around.
“You’re not eating right, Son. At your age, you’ve gotta start watching out for cholesterol and stuff called gluten. You gotta take nutritional supplements every day and...Push ups! You gotta get in shape.”
He pulled open his suit jacket and held out his belly.
“Hit that, boy,” he said. “Give it your best shot.”
Hunter, always a softy, declined the challenge.
“Get down on the floor; give me ten and I’ll double...No, there’s no time. Get yourself cleaned up and I’ll finish out here. Pardon my French, but this is a big f’ing deal. We’ve got to get ready for the meeting.”
Fifteen minutes later, his son reappeared with a clean face; still tieless, but jacketed and shod.
“Leave the sales pitch to me,” Joe said. “You’re the lawyer — an entrepreneurial lawyer; not a deal breaker—but big shots... Principals like to deal with principals when there’s money on the table. No offense, Son, but you’re too modest. You always start too low and too...A guy’s gotta start with a couple of good jokes to lighten the mood. It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. It’s personality that sells. Never under-sell yourself; always...”
Knock! Knock! Knock!
What the hell! It sounded like someone was trying to break down the damned door. Hunter opened it and in came...What the hell! The big-shot Ukrainian sent to represent the Company’s overseas partner was...big alright, bald, tan, and mustachioed; wearing tennis shorts, sneakers... and what looked to be a sweaty shirt, for crying out loud. But carrying a familiar-looking black briefcase.
“Hey, ‘Ivan’, right?” said Joe, extending his hand for a shake. “Ivan Yackinoff, cream of the Russian army, ha, ha, ha.”
“Ivan Chernof, not in Russian army no more, but boss I work for,” said the messenger boy, obviously not getting the joke, nor understanding the business etiquette of handshaking.
Still standing, the guy opened the briefcase, handed over some papers, and said, “Here is deal for roll-out of Lardo in Louisiana state.”
Somewhat surprised, disappointed actually that no salesmanship was called for, Joe took the papers, thumbed to a second page and...“Ha, ha, ha, I see you are a kidder, my friend. But there’s an old saying in this country: You can’t kid a kidder. Ha, ha, ha...”
“No joke. We had deal that your company get ten percent of Lardo profits.”
“Yes, but that was a tentative deal applicable to the trial roll- out. As indicated in the new documents I had delivered to you, my Company gets twenty percent from here on out. There’s going to be a lot of high-level executive time required on our part. I myself...Remember the old jingle: ♬Grease is a...is... is a word/ It’s the word...♬ ? Anyway, bottom line: The eighty percent I’m offering is a sweetheart deal for you. I’m serious.”
“Deal in documents I deliver is you get seven percent. Bottom of line.”
“Now look here, Buster, if I have to get on a plane and fly over there to...to...to Moscow, for a face-to-face with, uh, Ivan What’s-His-Name, the new deal will be at thirty percent for my side of this deal. Comprende?”
“Now five percent for your company.”
“Aw come on, man, that’s not the way we do business over here. In America....Say, do you like ham? I know a pig farmer who feeds his stock nothing but...Call me Joe,” he said, again extending a hand. “What do your friends call you, my friend?”
“To friends, I am Yanko. To you, Mr. Tarnovskyy.”
“I told you, Dad,” said Hunter, standing off to the side in a sweat. “In Ukrainia, a deal is a deal. And look at it this way: In Louisiana alone we’ll roll-out forty Lardo units. Each will do at least a million to two million per year in sales. Five percent of the bottom line is better than zero percent of nothing.”
“And General Chernov is putting up all the money, plus big legal fees for your boy.”
“No, no, no,” Joe said to Hunter. “If I came back with a five percent deal, your grandmother would kill me.”
“We handle old woman,” said the Ukrainian double-crosser, with a hard look at Hunter.
“No, no, no,” said Joe to the foreigner. “For crying out loud, Aunt Nanette is ninety-five-years-old. The shock of your kind of handling would kill her.”
“We handle old woman,” the son of a bitch repeated, this time with a blank-eyed stare at him.
“No, no, no,” said Joe. “I ...I...I will handle the problem.”



CHAPTER 20

After a hamburger and tater tots supper at a drive-in restaurant, Henrietta drove her Checker on a Northwest Expressway service road, puzzling over the meaning of a note Lero had left push-pinned to the door of his residential office. Not the part inviting her to come see his garage band perform; the other part: CASE CLOSED! Cease & Desist Investigation. DANGER!
She had not yet reported the potentially dangerous situation she her own self had detected at the Sunningdale Racquet Club earlier—Harry DeGrasso’s angry reaction to his grandma’s meddling in his personal life had sounded downright threatening—so what could Lero be referring to? As usual, his eye-phone was not in operation; she would have to catch up with him at a joint called Grease Pit, where his garage band—The Lug Nuts—would be playing so-called punk music. In the meantime...
Henrietta pulled into the alley behind the Xpose gentlemen’s club, parked her Checker, and entered through the back door. Inside the dancers’ dressing room, standing at a mirror, spraying glitter... “I thought you quit this racket,” said Rachel in a semi- frosty tone of voice.
“I just dropped by,” she replied, “’cause I happened to bump into Harry today out at the Sunningdale Racquet Club — where I now have a day job—and he....”
“I wondered what you were up to, but not for long. Harry’s completely single, and is going to be rich in the very near future.”
“I my own self have no interest in ‘grooming’ Harry DeGrasso, if that’s what you mean. I came by to tell you that he has a grandma who has heard about you grooming him; and she is none too pleased about it. For Harry’s sake...”
“I know all about that mean old woman from online research. She is a domineering ‘matriarch’ who has ruled the roost for too long. I don’t give a damn what she thinks about us. Neither will Harry if he comes to the club tonight and...Sorry to tell you, ’Sparkle,’ I am pretty sure he will be dropping by. You ‘your own self’ can have Hunter.”
“I don’t want Hunter neither, but I reckon the law might be wanting him one of these days in the very near future.”
Rachel a/k/a “Meghan” wheeled around. “Tell the truth, damnit; you did dish dirt to that sleazeball who was in here last night,” she hissed. “You told that divorce lawyer about Hunter’s secret plan, didn’t you!”
“Rachel, you never told me any details about any secret plan, but that sleazeball who was in here happens to be a semi-friend of mine,” Henrietta admitted. “He thinks Yanko Tarnovskyy is up to no good. Hunter could get in trouble if keeps on hanging around with the overseas tennis pro. And others could come to grief if you keep on playing Harry against Hunter in a dangerous game of...”
“I’m done with playing games. Harry’s the one. I’m going to tie the knot around his neck this weekend. And by the way, I prefer to be called ‘Meghan’.”
Lively music blasted into the dressing room. Gals headed out to the stage.
“‘Meghan’ is preggers, my dear.”
“Preggers?”
“Harry won’t mind. He’s crazy about me. After tonight, that old bitch of a grandmother won’t be a problem.”
More lively music blasted in. The club manager stuck his head into the dressing room and bellowed, “C’mon, Meghan, tits up!” Henrietta hotfooted into the alley, jumped into her Checker and took off lickety-split. While Harry’s attitude toward his grandma had been heated, Rachel’s hard feeling toward “that old bitch” had struck her as downright chilling.
The Grease Pit turned out be inside an actual auto repair garage located on a lively strip of nightlife on North Western Avenue.
♬You’re in for a surprise/ You’re in for a shock/ I’m a footstep at night/ I’m a scream of the fright...♬
In addition to loud semi-musical racket, the air inside the garage was filled with leftover oil-and-gas fumes
♬All hear my warning/ Never turn your back/ On the ripper...the ripper...the ripper♬
A semi-large crowd stopped jumping around in flashes from strobe lights and commenced to yell and scream applause for the Lug Nuts band that was up on a platform supported by a raised lube rack. Members of the band next began to holler:
♬Somebody got murdered/ Goodbye, for keeps, forever...♬
She spotted Lero, standing slightly out of the spotlight, whacking on an electric guitar like he was hammering nails, and in a hurry.
♬Somebody got murdered/ The name cannot be found/ A small grease stain on the pavement/ They’ll scrub it off the ground...♬
He seemed to be out of rhythm with the the other Lug Nuts, maybe because he was whacking with his left hand.
♬But where were we last night?/ No one can remember/ Somebody got murdered/ Goodbye, for keeps, forever...♬
After waiting an hour for the band to take a break, Henrietta went up close to the rack above an actual grease pit and waved at her boss, but...
♬I’m so bored with the U.S.A./ I’m so bored with the U.S.A./ But what can I do?...♬
She waved again, this time with both arms, but...
♬Yankee detectives are always on TV/ ‘Cause killers in America work seven days a week...♬
Finally, Lero spotted her, stepped into the spotlight, and bellowed more of what could have been an advertising jingle for the ACE Private Investigations Agency:
♬Move up, Starsky/ For the C.I.A./ Suck on Kojack/ For the U.S.A...♬
Henrietta reckoned that Case of a Corruptible Playboy was not as “closed” as the ACE Private Detective his own self seemed to think. There was danger afoot alright, though not necessarily nor even most likely related to Lero’s suspicions about Yanko Tarnovskyy. In any case, for her to hear about what her boss had detected would require that she not be struck deaf by loud racquet, and could wait ’til morning.


SATURDAY 10/14/19 GREASE MONKEY BUSINESS
GREEZERS MATRIARCH DEAD COMPANY IN FOUL PLAY?

Abba Dabba Dabba:
Ms. Nanette Carbone DeGrasso, 95, expired in the wee hours of this morning, likely as a result of injuries suffered in what authorities believe was an assault committed by an employee of her family-controlled company’s chain of lube shops trading under the name Greezers.
According to Lieutenant Wilmot L. Jackson of the Oklahoma City Police Department, a Señor Hernando Gomez, recently arrived from Mexico, claims he was washing pots and pans after closing time of the Lardo fast food service window of the Greezers lube shop located in the Capitol Hill district of the city when interrupted by someone banging on a back door. Upon him opening the door, the banger (Ms. DeGrasso) supposedly ordered Gomez to fire up a deep-fat fryer and prepare a double order of lardo, the company’s recently introduced fatback fast food fare. After complying with those instructions, the immigrant pot washer claims to have returned to his chores without knowing what happened to the elderly corporate chief executive.
“Don’t eat that, lady; it’s horseshit,” Lieutenant Jackson told reporters gathered at the crime scene. “Early day-shift workers discovered Mrs. DeGrasso’s oily corpse lying in a grease pit of the lube shop. She was dead alright, completely beyond saving by artificial resemination (sic). And there will be more grisly crimes such as this if the federal government continues to allow illegal Mexicans to stay in this country to wash our pots and pans at all hours of the night. Statistics show that nothing good ever happens after ten P.M.”
Later, Assistant Oklahoma County District Attorney Evilene Hatfield confirmed that based on the police investigation, Hernando Gomez will be charged and prosecuted to the full extent of the law for his involvement in the death of Nanette DeGrasso.
Demise of the major shareholder, longtime Chairperson and CEO of the Greezers lube shop chain’s parent company, Trinita Coal Oil & Tar Co. (OTC:TCT), comes in the midst of speculation that fundamental changes in Company management and/or its ownership structure are afoot. Indeed, news of Ms. DeGrasso’s passing seems to have fueled a continuing rally in TCT stock that some observers believe indicates control of the Company may be in play.
Reached for comment, the deceased matriarch’s son long seen as her heir apparent, Mr. Charles DeGrasso, issued a formal statement of “No Comment.” Fellow Executive VP, Mr. Joseph DeGrasso, seen by some observers as a rival of his Cousin Charles to succeed Ms. DeGrasso, also had nothing to say, which is highly unusual for him if not unprecedented.
In other lube industry news...



CHAPTER 21

Charles put down a phone and turned to face his wife, reclined on a sofa in his study, dressed in a so-called leisure suit made of shiny black fabric. Adding to the manly effect was her hair, that she had cut during the night to a length approximately equal to that of his. Traces of the black mud beauty mask she’d worn to bed had vanished, now replaced with a glistening clear gel.
That damned dog of hers sat in her lap like a lump of oily coal. A half-empty crystal pitcher of a Bloody Mary sat on a table beside her. In one hand, she held a half-empty glass; in the other her phone. For Candice to be giggling suggested an appalling lack of remorse for the many times she had openly wished for his dear mother’s demise.
“Gotta go, Tabby Cat,” she said to one of her three weird sisters. “Charles looks to be in need of another tummy scratch.”
Though somewhat titillated by her remark, “The entire senior staff of the Rainey & Rainey legal firm advise me to not talk to police personnel without presence of counsel,” he replied. “They further advise that I clear any prepared statement to the media with them before personally delivering it in front of reporters and/ or cameras. Gordon had the gall to strongly suggest that if I do go public, I should take care not to display any sign of lying: Avoiding eye contact, for instance. Looking downward. Putting a hand to my face. Clearing my throat. Visibly swallowing. Pausing in my speech. ‘Hiding’ my hands behind my back.
Glancing toward the nearest exit. Revealing an attitude of contempt and moral superiority. In other words...”
“Yes, I see, dear. Gordon wants you not to be your natural self. But he is only a lawyer. What does he know about public relations? I say, go out there and break a leg.”
“You mean ‘put on a show’? A show of what attitude exactly?”
“A show of upbeat majesty, of clear conscience, of...All I said to Tabitha earlier was that it was passing strange that the cat seems to have got Cousin Joe’s tongue. Since reports that the hit man happened to be his man at that disgusting fatback operation he put only ten blocks from your dear mother’s residence, well, Tabby just now called back to tell me gossip is rampant and unanimous in the view that it is quite incriminating that the old windbag—for the first time in his life—has, quote, ‘no comment’. No doubt he has lawyered up, which cinches the case against him. It’s now your job, my dear, to make sure the gossip sticks.”
“Well, now that you mention it, Cousin Joe was always a...a disappointment to Mother. Many’s the time she rapped his knuckles with that damn ruler of hers, which he no doubt bitterly resented. He used to call her ‘Mother Superior Stigmata’ behind her back.”
“And no doubt worse,” Candice added. “Imagine what he is calling you behind your back.”
“Hmmm. Yes, he might well be referring to me as ‘Charlie’, or even ‘Chuck’.”
“That too, but imagine what gossip he must be privately telling the police.”
“Yes, probably that I too was a disappointment to the Mother...the victim.”
“Dumb cops will believe anything.”
“I am not so sure of that, my dear. The Chief, when he called with official notification of the...the...”
“Murder, Charles; it was murder. It’s done and can’t be undone. Morbidly suppressing the grisly truth of the matter will drive you mad.”
“The Chief seemed to think it odd, perhaps even suspicious, that I declined to come to the morgue to formally identify by name...”
“OMG!” Candice exclaimed, with a jerk that prompted fierce growling in his direction by the Rottweiler. “The police are bringing the greasy corpse here to be identified?!”
“OMG!” Charles himself exclaimed. “The Chief didn’t say, now that I think of it; but at the very least, no doubt dumb cops will come to ask questions.”
“Questions? Don’t deign to answer them, Charles.”
“I shan’t, not without counsel present. But you too, my dear; Gordon advises that you too may be put on the spot.”
“Spot? What spot?” said his wife, bolting upright in obvious alarm; the effect of which was to sic “Greasy” to attack. As Candice frantically put hands to her face, apparently searching for left-over traces of last night’s black beauty mud, the smallish but fierce beast viciously snapped at his ankles until...
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Thankfully, the toy terror turned its attention to whomever was at the door.
“Close the drapes!” Candice urgently whispered.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Don’t answer!” his wife urgently commanded.
“Mr. DeGrasso, a gentleman is here to see you,” said the butler’s voice. “A Mr. Robert Mangano III from New York. He says his business is urgent.”
“Ah, the coupmeister!” Candice exclaimed, before going to retrieve “Greasy” and open the door. “I am Mrs. DeGrasso,” she said to the unexpected visitor, “Charles’ spouse.”
“Spouse?” said Mangano. “Mrs....?”
“Not Harry’s mother, for heaven’s sake.”
“No, I, uh, wouldn’t think so. Is this Harry?”
“No, no, this is my dear little ‘Greasy’. Harry is Charles’ quite
neglectful son from a previous marriage. We’ve not heard a word from him about what happened; not a single word of concern about how his father is coping. Please—may I call you, Bobby the Third, Robert III? — join us for Bloody Marys.”
Charles ignored the “coupmeister’s” offer of a handshake. “What the deuce are you doing here?” he said. “This is no time to be...to be...out and about...or not to be...in seclusion.”
“I booked the firm’s private jet and flew in last night following our conversation, Cousin Charlie. I was disturbed by your waffling attitude about...”
“I ‘waffle’ no longer, sir! In view of last night’s tragic event, I must now demand that your firm return Company shares to their rightful owners, namely my Carbone family relatives. I shall issue a corrected Investor Advisory to them and direct that any prior correspondence suggesting ‘sell’ be expunged from the record!”
“The ‘tragic event’ was murder,” said Candice, delivering a Bloody Mary to the Wall Street finagler. “Charles can’t bring himself to say the word, just as he superstitiously forbids mention of his deceased mother by name.”
“Her Majesty murdered?” said Mangano, rather cooly, as though not truly surprised by the news. “Perfect timing. Shareholders will be in panic about Company prospects. There will be a funeral of course, at which many will gather. I have a briefcase full of blank sell orders and...No, Cousin Charlie, the die is cast. It is far too late for us to reverse course, and why should we? As insiders, we know that with you in charge and my firm supporting your brilliant plans, the future of the Company is not only secure, but bright.”
“Suck it up, Charles,” said Candice, handing him a full glass of Bloody Mary. “Ding, dong, the witch is dead!”
“Ding, dong indeed!” said Mangano, before sucking up a mouthful of...“Say, what’s this? Looks almost like...like entrails of a toad, ha, ha...or toe of a frog, maybe tongue of a dog,” he said, picking something from his glass with his fingers.
“Just a bit of something cook threw in,” said Candice. “My sister’s recipe.”
Charles took a gulp of the concoction, then another, and another. Immediately, it began to dawn on him that there was no need to worry himself mad. What was done was indeed done. There was no need for him to morbidly dwell on the bloody, or rather greasy outcome. To the contrary, he had finally achieved all that he rightfully deserved, for which he had been patiently standing and waiting his entire life.
Bobby Mangano lifted his glass.“The queen is dead!” he bellowed. “Long live the king!”
Candice lifted her re-filled glass: “The queen is dead!” she too bellowed. “Long live the new queen!”
Charles lifted his now empty glass. Spontaneously moved, he, his devoted wife and his again trusted advisor began to sing as one:
♬Ding, dong, the witch is dead/ The wicked old witch is dead!/ Ding, dong, the merry-o, sing it high and sing it low/ Let ‘em know the wicked old witch is dead...♬
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“My apologies for interrupting your party,” said the butler’s voice. “The Chief of Police is here, and a hearse.”
Instinctively, Charles—and Candice with darting glances too —looked for a way out, but...
“Charles, for crying out loud!” his wife hissed. “Yes, for crying out very loud; we must make our grief and clamor roar!”
♬Ding, dong the queen is dead/ Our beloved queen is dead/ Ding, dong, sorrow and woe, sing it high and sing it low...♬

CHAPTER 11

Feeling obliged to report what she had detected last night at the Xpose gentlemen’s club, Henrietta pulled her old Yellow Checker cab of a car alongside the bullet-riddled so-called “Jailbreak Getaway Car” parked in front of the Good Buddy Bail Bonds building. Down the building’s narrow hallway, she found Lero just as she had first met him two days ago: Leaned back in a chair, gazing up to where...Now there must have been at least thirty or forty push-pins stuck into the ceiling.
“I’m getting better,” he said, turning toward her with his chronic toothy grin, though there must have been at least another twenty or thirty push-pins littering his desk and dozens more scattered on the floor.
Eager to get back to her apartment and back to some more sleep after another late night, she didn’t bother looking for an unofficial and upaid empty seat, but remained standing to deliver her surveillance report.
“Bottom line,” she said after describing the gist what had gone on at Xpose, “I reckon Rachel shifting her aim from Hunter DeGrasso to Harry is the main potentially corrupting influence the subject faces. ‘Cause like I said, she looks to be sweet on Hunter, but is suddenly now set on getting Harry into wedlock based on his daddy’s and his brighter futures at the family-owned grease company.”
Though his eyes had brightened at mention of the man named Yanko Tarnovskyy joining Hunter at Xpose, “Nothing out of the ordinary going on,” said Lero. “Nature’s Law of Natural Selection: Peahens choose to mate with male peacocks that have the biggest, brightest plumed feathers. Female gorillas go for males with the biggest balls. All about gals getting a guy who looks most able to produce offspring and take care of a family. My ex-wife, Evie, took up with a junior bank executive whose father...
"You’re right-handed, aren’t you, Hen. I noticed that right away. Regrettably, so am I; and a victim of law school. Historically, southpaws have made up only about twelve percent of the population, but...” he said with a sigh, before going on to recite a long list of famous “brilliant lefties”:
Generals: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte.
Presidents: Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Obama, someone named Hoover.
Brainiacs: Einstein, Darwin, Newton, “who invented the left-handed monkey wrench.”
Artists: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Leroy Nieman. Miscellaneous: W.C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, Bart Simpson. Comedians: Casey Stengel, Jerry Seinfeld, Prince Charles. Composers: Cole Porter, Paul Simon, Paul McCartney. Singers: Kurt Cobain, Lady Gaga...“Yeah, even some
women,” he said. “Joan of Arc, Marilyn Monroe, Oprah Winfrey; though of course, in the words of a famous feminist, Camille Paglia, ’There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.’”
Jack the Ripper?
“Actually, Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens, lead singer in Judas Priest; he took the moniker from one of the band’s songs. Then, of course, there’s Iggy Pop, Godfather of Punk, and one of the Stooges.
Any doubt about Iggy’s mental health was removed by the famous concert incident in which he used his left hand to smear his belly with peanut butter.”
“Oh.”
“You see, Hen, like they say: ‘Only left-handed people are in their right minds.’ Whereas right-handers such as you tend to break down problems into parts and analyze each piece, left- handers working out of their right brains have the ability to look at problems as wholes, and solve them.”
“Oh.”
“For instance, your surveillance report only mentioned, without comment, the suspicious fact that the baldheaded guy, Yanko Tarnovskyy, carried a briefcase into the strip club last night?”
“Dang it, Xpose is not really a strip club,” she answered. “And according to Rachel, Hunter uses the gentlemen’s club as a sort of office. So no, there was nothing out of the ordinary to comment about.”
“What size was the briefcase, big enough to hold, say, a dozen tennis balls?”
“Tennis balls? I reckon that would be unusual, though not necessarily suspicious. The briefcase brought in by the baldheaded man was a regular-sized one for holding sheets of paper.”
“Hmmm,” Lero hmmmed, now standing and beginning to pace behind his desk. “Ever hear of the case—it might have been one handled by Sherlock Holmes—about the client who owned a bicycle factory?”
No, she couldn’t say she had ever heard of any such a case.
“A few weeks after hiring a stranger—could have been a Lithuanian or maybe a Ukrainian, now that I think about it—the factory owner discovered his profits were evaporating.
He suspected the new guy was somehow stealing money; so had the company security team stake out the factory and jump the stranger when he got off work and headed home. Nothing; they found nothing incriminating. Tried again a week later; got the same result. The worker had neither money nor noticeable other ill-gotten loot on his person. So the owner brought in a private detective — it must have been Holmes — who staked out the suspect’s morning arrivals to the factory. Bingo, case solved. Yanko...I mean the stranger, was a thief alright.”
“How did Sherlock Holmes figure it out?”
“Elementary, my dear ‘Watson’. The stranger arrived at work every day on foot; rode home on different but lookalike bicycles that everyone assumed was his own bike.”
“Are you saying you suspect this here Yanko Tarnovsky is stealing tennis balls from...or maybe stuffing, say, Xpose ash trays into his briefcase?”
“Could be,” said Lero, “but that’s not really the point. You see, while a left-brained right-handed thinker, such as a typical lawyer, would make the mistake of...”
Henrietta yawned, but Lero O’Rourke failed to pick up on the fact that she was tired, and at the moment not much interested in learning how to “think outside of a big box”.
“Here,” he finally said, coming toward her with push-pins inside a small box. “Open your left palm and stiffen your fingers,” he then directed, before placing push-pin in the niche between her stiffened index and middle fingers. “Now, without breaking your wrist, flick your hand upward and slightly outward.”
She flicked as instructed and...“bingo”, so to speak.
“Lucky accident,” said Lero, handing her another push-pin. “Try again.”
Bingo again.
“Hmmm,” said the also right-handed private detective — and lawyer — after she had “luckily” performed what he called a “hat trick”. Then, headed back to his desk chair...“Ouch! Damnit!”
The outside-the-box thinker had stepped on a push-pin, but... “See,” he said turning toward her with another toothy grin, “left- handers are known to be accident prone. I’m getting better.”
They walked out of the office together. Lero—now shod in sneakers and with skateboard in hand—heading for the Sunningdale Racket Club “to confiscate Yanko Tarnovskyy’s balls”. Henrietta — aiming to go back to bed — wondering what the baldheaded tennis pro had brought to his meeting with Hunter DeGrasso in a briefcase and...She now semi-recollected that the tennis pro might not have took the briefcase with him when he left the gentlemen’s club after the meeting.
Hmmm.



CHAPTER 12

On route to making another report to “Her Majesty,” Joe drove his company-owned Range Rover up the interstate highway overpass connecting sections of north and south Oklahoma City and was almost blinded by brightness. Even through
the extra-dark lenses of his aviator shades, he saw brightness, nothing but brightness. He was a salesman, by God, and Hunter had delivered the big deal of a lifetime, as promised. Whatta guy!
Sure, his son, had made a few bad choices in the past, but as Joe always said—and now repeated aloud—“Show me the guy who has not stubbed a toe or two, and I’ll show you a guy who never danced when he thought no one was watching.” Mistakes, he himself had made a few; but then again, too few to mention. And as he also often said, the only difference between good boys and so-called bad boys was just that the goody-goody suck-ups never got caught.
Hunter did not “steal” those sneakers; he mistook his teammate’s locker for his locker, broke the lock and...He would have returned the Air Jordans after the basketball season ended; his son didn’t need to cheat to be the best damn player on the court. Hell, he would have gotten a scholarship play for Duke if not for...The other kid was no good anyway, but the coach was a son of a bitch who had it in for Hunter. Made a big deal about “teaching a life lesson” for Hunter’s own good, but...but... but...
When his grown son was a bright as hell young lawyer working in the Company’s legal department, that...that...that... was not an illegal kickback Hunter accepted from an opposing counsel; it was a gift, a token of respect and appreciation for handling himself well in a negotiation, not a litigation. Hell, he himself had both received and handed out many a Christmas ham, case upon case of booze, and sometimes a few Benjamins passed to and from people he cut deals with. Though trained as a lawyer, Hunter was a chip off the old block. A salesman—a deal maker as opposed to a nerdy bean counter sitting in a corporate office—had to show friendship, and personality. But Brother Bernie—though himself a degenerate playboy in his youth — what a goody-goody!
Joe removed the aviator shades as he approached Her Majesty’s rundown “palace”, and saw brighter brightness, nothing but brightness. No way could “The Boss” not recognize him—and Hunter—as representing a...a...a bright future for the Company. The very idea that his aged aunt would even think of handing over Company reins to young Harry...Not that skipping past Charles was not the right way to go into...into the blue of a bright future. His cousin had lost the argument about how to diversify into fast food service. So Charlie’s nose was out of joint, but so what? He himself had lost a few rounds through the years. He himself had been knocked down a few times, but as he always said...
Joe forgot exactly what he always said about...something about himself being the comeback kid; the guy who got off the mat and...and...The point was that Charles was a sore loser, not a team player, and had publicly badmouthed the Lardo concept. He had as much as colluded with Olive Oyl, the Company’s most
threatening rival! Promoted? Hell, Charlie DeGrasso should be fired. Not that promoting his son, Harry, would be the way to go into...into...into...brightness!
Somewhat startled to realize he had arrived at the “palace”, Joe collected himself, grabbed the black briefcase Hunter had delivered to him, and put on a smile. Bounding up sidewalk steps toward the towering front-lawn statue of Saint Lorenzo, the catchy name of a song came to mind. Standing at Aunt Nanette’s front door, waiting for Bro Bernie to admit him, melody and words of the song came into his head. But then — let inside by the dour brown-robed monk, following him down the dreary hallway—the catchy tune was drowned out by churchy chanting.
♬Worthless are my prayers and sighing/ Yet, good Lord, in grace complying...♬
Attempting to counter the downbeat mood of the palace’s ever present funereal march music, he hummed a few bars of the upbeat song, but...
♬Rescue me from fires undying...♬
As Jesus smiled down upon him from the cross mounted above the door to Mother Superior’s inner-sanctum, under his breath he sang:
♬Every time they hear that oom-pa-pa/ Everybody feels sort-la-la-la...♬
As brother Bernie opened the door and stood aside, he sang:
♬Then they hear a rumble on the floor...♬
Greeted by luminous brightness of the stained glass depiction of the famous biblical loaves-and-fishes picnic, unable to contain himself, Joe burst into full-throated rendition:
♬Roll out the barrel♬, he sang, ♬ We’ll have a barrel of fun!/ Roll out the barrel, we’ve got the blues on the run/Zing boom tararrel, ring out a song of good cheer/ Now’s the time to roll the barrel, for the gang’s all here!”♬
Her Majesty was clearly not amused, but for the moment he didn’t care. As Brother Bernie retreated to his usual shadowy corner, Joe sat down in a chair across the desk from the scowling longtime widow in black. He situated the briefcase on his lap so it would open in her direction, pressed the latches and...“Presto! Changeo! Lardo!”
His aunt eyed the briefcase’s contents warily for a moment or two; then stood to look downward with a better view of the twelve thick stacks of hundred-dollar bills, each amounting to approximately twenty thousand simoleons. Still seeming somewhat wary, she sat down.
“That would amount to almost quarter of a mil,” the Mother Superior then said, drily, but with her black eyes shining bright as the polished rosary beads she fiddled with. Bro Bernie lurched from the corner and began to empty the briefcase of its treasure.
“What do you think of me now?” Joe crowed. “Still think ‘Little’ Joe DeGrasso is a disappointment?”
“Your grandfather, Big Joe, earned his money with sweat of his brow,” she answered. “Your father, Sam, pissed it all away. How did you come by this load, ‘Little Joe’? Explain.”
Determined to stay on the bright side of the street, so to speak, he reached into his jacket and—wordlessly—handed over a single sheet of paper that explained all: Updated and complete initial quarterly sales of fifty Lardo trial units attached to Greezers lube shops totaled almost a hundred million dollars. Profit amounted to approximately 2.5 million, and the Company’s take was ten percent. “Do the math. On an annualized basis...”
“Why in cash?” his aunt asked.
“Why used bills?” Bro Bernie queried.
“Ukrainians,” Joe explained. “They tend to be, not ‘backward’, but un...un...unAmerican. Don’t trust banks. But they are honest, hard working and ambitious to live the American Dream,” he added. “Eager as beavers to...”
♬Roll out the barrel♬ he bellowed. ♬We’ll have a barrel of fun...♬
“Our partners are ready, willing and able to finance a state- by-state national roll-out of the Lardos money making machine!” “Louisiana might be a good place to start,” said the monk to
his sister. “Regulators take things easy down there.”
“Yes, and it’s nearby,” The Boss answered. “A statewide roll-out in Louisiana under Harry’s direction would be a good
proving ground for...”
“Harry?!” Joe exclaimed, slamming the empty briefcase shut.
“You can’t be serious, Mother...Auntie Nan. This is mine and Hunter’s big deal. We deserve...”
“Your ne’er do well son shall never again work for this company; not while I am alive.”
“But, but, but young Harry is...is...is...sewing wild oats! I didn’t want to upset you, but...but I now feel duty-bound to report that I had to have a stern talk with Harry just yesterday. He hangs around a racquet club all day, as does Candice. It could be his stepmother — his wicked stepmother — who is exerting a corrupting influence on him.”
The Boss—who openly despised Charles’ second wife—directed a knowing look at Brother Bernie, who silently nodded, also knowingly.
“And that’s not all,” Joe continued. “Night after night, Harry has also taken to hanging around a so-called ‘gentlemen’s club’, and—according to my confidential sources—has gotten into trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” said the straight-laced Mother Superior. “Not inclination to ‘wine, women and song’ that runs in your line of the family, I hope.”
“All that in spades, Auntie Nan. It seems young Harry has become bewitched, bothered, and bewildered by a certain dark- skinned striptease dancer at a club called—brace yourself, Auntie — X...X...Xpose!”
“All the more reason he should be sent to Louisiana, out of the clutches of this...this...this ‘stripper’. Down there in those remote bayous...”
“No, no, no,” said Joe, now on his feet. “Louisiana bayous are teeming with...with...with naked Cajun women! Better by far, by very far, that young Harry be sent away to cool his jets off in, say, Alaska.”
“Alaska? We have no Greezers unit in...Your ne’er-do-well father went to Alaska to escape bill collectors, and your mother. He came to a bad, though merciful end in that forsaken territory populated by...”
“Eskimos love blubber. Lardos potential is unlimited in Alaska. And they now drive cars up there. Assigned to the Arctic region, Harry could earn valuable know-how and a feather in his cap.”
“No, I don’t think that would be the way to go,” said the stubborn old woman, but...
“Well then,” said Joe. “I must tell you, Aunt Nanette: Our Ukrainian partner will not likely accept the untrained, undisciplined, un...un...unlikable redheaded Harry to roll out Lardos in Louisiana. And as you may recall, if we do not roll out a barrel within the next thirty days, the astute Ukrainians have the option to wed elsewhere, most likely with Dip Stix.”
Brother Bernie grabbed the sleeve of Joe’s jacket and somewhat roughly steered him from the inner-sanctum. In the dimly candlelit hallway...
♬Guilty, now I pour my moaning/ All my shame and anguish owning/ Spare, O God, Thy suppliant groaning!♬



CHAPTER 13

Late for work again, Lero saw that Harry DeGrasso had gathered the Greezer Kamp Kids on courts ♯7 and ♯8. Also that Yanko Tarnovskyy and Mrs. DeGrasso were stepping over the near base line onto court ♯1, apparently about to start a lesson. Other courts were unoccupied, making court ♯3 a good vantage point for surveilling DeGrasso as well as Tarnovsky, and — while he was at it — “see that Mrs. DeGrasso’s treatment by club staff was in keeping with her station as wife of our Executive Vice-President.”
Walking past court ♯1 with broom in hand, as if on cue... “Your husband, he Executive-almost-President, yes; and I bet he play golf,” Yanko was saying to his pupil. “Yanko only middle man in American system but play excellent tennis. Just go to show: In this country, higher you rank in establishment, smaller your balls. Haw, haw, haw.”
Appalled that the crude Ukrainian brute would tastelessly tell the old off-color locker room joke to Harry’s almost elderly aunt, Lero barely restrained himself before walking on. To have called-out the boorish tennis pro would likely have blown his cover, or at least resulted in compromise if not termination of his position to carry out his mission. Tarnovskyy was up to something unsavory, and from what both he himself had seen at the racquet club, and his young female ex-assistant had seen with her own eyes at the Xpose club, Hunter DeGrasso was almost certainly in on the foul play.
Possible also was that Harry DeGrasso was not the innocent lamb only “susceptible to being corrupted” that his uncle apparently thought him to be. Hard to say at the moment, in part because the subject of his investigation, Harry—since identifying him as “that sleazy divorce lawyer”—had become a bit standoffish.
As he began to sweep the surface of court ♯3, Lero reviewed in his mind details of the gratuitous surveillance report Hen had delivered to him earlier in the morning:
Yanko had come into Xpose at approximately 10:30 p.m. He brought with him a “regular-size” briefcase, and went toward Hunter DeGrasso’s regular table.
Harry and the dancer named Rachel a/k/a Meghan had almost immediately come from the club’s darkened table area to a dimly lit stand-up bar, where Hen was chatting with a gentlemen’s club customer.
Though having described Hunter only the night before as her “intended groom”, supposedly Rachel “hit on” Harry; and when Harry excused himself to go to the men’s room, confided to Hen that her newly “intended mark” was Hunter’s gullible cousin. Supposedly the change of horses resulted from her “discovery” that Harry’s father was likely to become “top dog” at the family- owned company even though Hunter’s dad was Executive Vice- President.
Ha! Both girls must have read, or more likely seen the movie version of The Romance of Tristan and Isolde, said to have been the favorite story of Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero’s Journey. Both girls—or at least Rachel—seemed to have gotten carried away with a notion that Hunter was equivalent to “Morholt”, the “black knight” in service to King Anguish of Ireland; Harry the equivalent of “Tristan”, the “white knight” sworn to King Mark of Cornwall; and that she herself—Rachel a/k/a Meghan also a/k/a “Princess Isolde”, so to speak—would be better served to “hit on” Tristan after he killed Morhort—Isolde’s previously “intended groom”—portending King Mark’s ultimate victory over King Anguish in a rivalry between the two Executive Vice- Presidents.
Now that he thought about it more deeply as he swept, it was not an entirely nonsensical notion, Lero had to concede. Father of the junior executive his ex-wife Evie had taken up with was a rich and powerful corporate fat cat at the time, but then... All beside the point. As was Yanko’s and Hunter’s scheming... except for the possibility that Harry might be, or might become involved. Dog-gone-it, to carry out his mission and collect his full fee, he had no other choice than to dig into what was up with the Ukrainian tennis pro’s counterfeit balls.
He looked toward court ♯1, where Yanko was now watching Mrs. DeGrasso hit balls against a backboard. Then noting that the club’s bar-and-grill terrace was still unoccupied, he casually walked toward the racquet club’s pro shop.
Satisfied that Yanko was fully engaged in Mrs. DeGrasso’s lesson on court ♯1, Lero put down the broom, entered the unoccupied pro shop and hurried into Yanko’s private office. Two cans, both labeled Dunlop ATP Championship Balls, sat in plain sight on a desk. After glancing through a small window toward court ♯1, he opened one of the cans and...aha!
“Yanko! I’m here, and it’s almost eleven!” a woman shouted from nearby. He again looked out the small window and...Damn the luck! Standing right next to the pro shop entrance—and his exit — was none other than Bernice nee Morrison, ex-wife of his ex-client, Morris. “It’s exactly eleven, Yanko!” she shouted, frantically waving a hand. “It’s my turn!”
Out on court ♯1, Yanko—seeming not to hear the urgent summons — stood close behind Harry’s aunt, seeming intent on coaching her forehand stroke, but then...For crying out loud, Tarnovskyy began to fondle Mrs. DeGrasso’s buttocks, with both hands!
Running toward scene of the obscene assault in progress, Lero shouted, “Unhand that woman! She is the wife of my client! I have been hired to...” He stepped between Mrs. DeGrasso and Tarnovskyy, but...
“Butt out, Buster!” she said with an angry snarl, obviously misunderstanding his good intentions.
He wheeled around to face her tormentor. “And I intend to report your cheating to my client, Harry’s uncle, who happens to be Executive Vice-President of Greezers.”
“You are that sleazy divorce lawyer!” shrieked the ex-Mrs. Morrison, squeezing between Yanko and him with her lacquered claws bared. “You ruined my life!”
He escaped the attempted attack, took hold of Mrs. DeGrasso’s arm, but...She, obviously still confused about what was going on, shook herself free and fled toward the ladies’ locker room. Other 40-Love Bunch women, now assembled on the bar-and- grill terrace, clapped their hands to applaud his rescue of the almost #MeToo victim.
Not yet finished with putting the foul-mouthed Ukrainian in his place... “And by the way, ‘ball boy’,” he said to Tarnovskyy, staring down the insolent tennis pro, “the full joke goes like this: In America, the most favored sport of the lowliest of workers is said to be basketball; for maintenance level employees, it’s bowling; for front-line skilled labor, football; for supervisors, baseball; all played with balls bigger than your crummy middle- man’s Ukrainian specimens that easily fit into a regular-size briefcase!”
“Gimme that ball!” Yanko demanded, reaching for the evidence of his cheating at tennis —and no doubt other foul play — that Lero had absent-mindedly carried from the office. “I said, gimme that ball before I call the cops!”
No way was he giving up the goods on the Ukrainian thug. No way would he back down even if...As Tarnovskyy, with eyes bulging, came at him, Lero wheeled around and dashed toward the tennis courts, spreading the alarm.
“Run for it, Harry!” he screamed. “Yanko is a bad influence!”



CHAPTER 14

Irritated to have been summoned in the midst of a hectic day, Charles rode in the back seat of his Company-owned battery- powered limo toward an audience with his mother. His man Evans sat beside him, taking forever to scan and grasp the gist of a book.
Having arrived at his office at ten, Charles had taken on the daunting task of writing letters to Carbone family shareholders listed as mourners at yesterday’s funeral for Lucky Louie; a task made more than usually trying due to lack of personal information about members of the younger generation who had attended.
Tedium of the chore was broken only by receipt of a cordial email from Bobby Mangano, in which his newfound cousin-in- law had again expressed how much he appreciated their time together during the “hitchhike” to the Dallas/ Fort Worth airport aboard the Company plane. Also mentioned was that he had sent a book—Bobby must have ordered it from D/FW while awaiting his flight to New York—which had arrived shortly after noon.
Eager to make an appropriate reply, but not bookishly inclined, he had delegated the clerical task to...
“What, again, is the title?” he asked Evans. “And do you not yet have a handle on what the book is about?”
“The title is Education of An Heir Apparent. It is about the great businessman, Lee Iacocca — who recently died, as you may have noticed — and specifically focuses on...Would you have me read aloud the blurb on the book’s jacket?”
“Yes, a blurb will do.”
“At the top is a quote, attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson but sounding more like something Machiavelli might have said, to-wit: ‘When you strike a king, you must kill him.’”
“Emerson? MacSomebody? Read on, Evans, but please, my man, skip the tedious details.”
“‘As of 1978, having masterminded the Ford Motor Company’s successful venture into racing and its brilliant introduction of the revolutionary Mustang model, Lee Iacocca was the universally acknowledged heir apparent to company Chairman, Henry Ford II. O’erweening ambition and impatience, however, drove him to attempt a coup by privately telling members of the Board of Directors that the aged Ford was senile and had to be removed from his position without delay. Caught...’”
“Hmmm, how long had this fellow, Mac-What’s-His-Name, been heir apparent? How old was the aged and senile Chairman? Details, Evans, details.”
“It doesn’t say in the blurb, but...‘Caught scheming, Iacocca was unceremoniously fired by Ford, who explained by saying, ‘Sometimes you just don’t like someone.’ But the former heir apparent had learned a profound lesson.”
“Yes, yes, a lesson, but too late. I daresay that’s the point.”
“To the contrary, sir; it says here that when Iacocca went on to become quite successful as Chairman of the Chrysler Corporation he made a practice of repeatedly grooming, only to unceremoniously dispose of heirs apparent to his lofty position before they could challenge him for the top spot. He held on until...”
Crossing an overpass, the large and heavy limo—obviously inadequately powered for the overpass up-slope—came to a stop. Which was why Charles always traveled with a reliable motorized escort.
Relocated to the back seat of an alternatively-fueled Range Rover; his man Evans again seated beside him, he wondered: What then was Bobby Mangano’s point in sending him the book about a lesson learned by an heir apparent? Was the astute investment analyst suggesting that he “strike” his aged mother to speed up his own succession?
“Oh no,” said Evans. “I am quite sure Mr. Emerson used the terms ‘strike’ and ‘kill’ metaphorically. And the blurb’s usage of ‘dispose’ to describe Mr. Iacocca’s actions no doubt means...”
“What, that heirs apparent such as myself are mere flowers, plucked in our prime to briefly adorn the lapels of others, only to be discarded like wilted boutonnieres? Is that the lesson I am to take from this confounded book?”
“No, sir, I am quite sure this book means nothing in relation to idle gossip about prospects for Mr. Harry’s immediate elevation.” “No, of course not. Harry is an idle playboy who has not served by standing and waiting.”
Arrived at his mother’s residence in a foul mood, Charles stood on her house’s rickety front porch, awaiting admittance by her brother, Uncle Bernardo. Yes, he thought of his boyhood home as solely “her” house, though a day after his father’s funeral his mother had clearly told him he was to be “the man of the family”. Ha!
Brother Bernie opened the door. The old monk had always exuded an air of generalized disapproval of the world around him, but on this occasion... Charles sensed downright malice directed specifically toward him. If so, the feeling was mutual.
Only days after his mother’s brother moved into the house, “Don’t be a disappointment,” were her parting words, sternly spoken at a bus station from where he — her barely teenaged son by then—had been shipped off to a so-called military academy in New Mexico. Not until years after the wretched schooling experience had mercifully ended had he fully realized that the lesson drummed into him by the kind-seeming academy chaplain — Colonel Corn — was subtly designed to...
Marching down a dreary hallway in Brother Bernie’s wake, the beginning words of a verse the colonel had made him memorize came to mind:
When I consider how my light is spent/
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide/
And that one talent which is death to hide/
Long’d with me useless, though my soul more bent...
As his mother’s sanctimonious gatekeeper gently tapped on the door to “Her Majesty’s” throne room, snatches of the curse’s ending followed:
...who best/ Bear his yoke...His state
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed/
And post o’er land and ocean without rest/
They also serve who only stand and wait.
Was he to be severely scolded by Her Majesty? Charles
wondered as the monk delivered him into his mother’s also dreary presence. Perhaps even spanked? The thought, though sarcastic, he found to be slightly titillating, but...No, if he was to be verbally lashed for something he’d done—or not done to her satisfaction—he would not “take a seat” as directed. He would stand like a man rather than humbly submit to another humiliating...
“What do you have to say about Harry?”
“Harry?”
“Your son, Harry DeGrasso, for whom you—as his nominal father — are still nominally responsible.”
“The Harry you speak of is a redheaded grown man. I have
nothing to say about...”
“I am told he hangs around clubs day-and-night. I hear he is
involved with a black striptease dancer.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised, but wouldn’t know. Other important
matters require my full attention.”
“I am also told that wife of yours — his nominal ‘stepmother’
for Christ’s sake—also hangs around at least one of Harry’s clubs, and is also a...a corrupting influence on Harry.”
Though appalled, Charles found himself to be a bit more than slightly titillated. In his youth he had heard of a local family- oriented Sportsman’s Club, where—it was said—women stripped naked at monthly gatherings called “smokers.” As a lifelong non-smoker, he had never...Candice striptease dancing? At the Sunningdale Racquet Club? Appalling, yes, but at the same time...
“You are such a hopeless disappointment, Charles,” said his mother, with a sigh, before looking down at some papers on her desk. “You are supposed to manage shareholder relations, a simple task, but apparently beyond your meager...”
“My reading of your Certificate of Condolence at yesterday’s funeral for Lucky Louie Carbone was very well received,” he reported. “Especially well received by a youngish cousin-n-law, Bobby Mangano, who is very bright and quite excited about my idea to...”
“Someone traded Trinita stock through a broker in New York called Hardwick & Simmons,” said The Boss, looking up from the papers with an accusatory look in her hard coal-black eyes.
Deciding it prudent to not go further into the conversation he’d had with his newfound cousin-in-law, “An Outsider,” he speculated. ”Yes, no doubt someone holding shares scattered by Uncle Sam. Probably someone cleaning out a drawer, someone in need of loose change, someone who came across old stock certificates and...”
“At the moment, I am not interested in the particular ‘someone’ who sold Company shares. I want to know what fool — or fox — bought the stock.”
“I shall get right on it,” he said, before turning and virtually bolting for the door.
“While you’re at it, get ‘right on’ that so-called wife of yours,” his mother shouted from behind him. “I myself will take care of the Harry problem, with a ruler to his rosy rear end!”
As he trotted down the hallway, recalling his mother’s corporal disciplinary measures administered to him in his youth and early adulthood, Charles again felt slightly...He dismissed the titillating thought from his mind and exited into fresh air. From the rickety front porch, “Home, Evans!“ he shouted to his man in waiting. “I must visit with Mrs. DeGrasso immediately on a matter of utmost...And by the way,” he added as he stumbled down sidewalk steps, “is that so-called private detective you hired a blind man, or just utterly incompetent?!”


CHAPTER 15

♬Take off your shoes/ Baby, take off your dress/ You can leave your hat on/ Yes, yes, yes...♬
Doing steps and poses while semi-zoned out, Henrietta mentally reviewed the status of the Case of a Corruptible Playboy. Most worrisome was that last night - when Harry DeGrasso went to the men’s room - her scheming co-worker - Rachel a/k/a Meghan - had confided that she had done research and decided Hunter was not as good a bet for wedlock as was his redheaded “doofus” of a cousin; but later gazed out toward Hunter’s table with what looked to be almost tears in her dark eyes.
♬Go over there, turn on the lights/ Get up on the chair, woman; yeah that’s right ...♬
Except for the details about the DeGrasso cousins’ daddies—both Executive Vice-Presidents of a family company—she had reported what happened to Lero O’Rourke this morning. The private detective, though seeming perked up to hear the part about Yanko Tarnovskyy, had brushed off Rachel’s a/k/a Meghan’s possible corruption of the “subject” as being ordinary as a female gorilla’s preference for a male with larger gonads. Lero’s focus had been on whether Yanko Tarnovskyy’s briefcase was big enough to hold a dozen tennis balls. Only later had it occurred to her own self that she had not noticed in particular whether or not the Sunningdale Racquet Club pro had took the briefcase with him after his meeting with Hunter DeGrasso.
♬Won’t you do that for me, Babe?/ You can leave your hat on...♬
As the music got near to stopping, Hunter walked in; signaled an invitation to Rachel with a crooked finger, and went toward his regular table. The dark-skinned beauty swung herself around her pole, stepped off the stage, and — sure enough, with her new mark, Harry, not around— went to join her first-picked groom.
Henrietta her own self spotted the middle-aged traveling salesman named Larry, signaling with a waved hand from his regular spot at the stand-up bar. In need of an easy tip even if likely small, she went on over to him. “Boy oh boy, what a day!” he said, now waving to the bartender. “The wife just doesn’t understand that a traveling salesman needs to unwind when he gets back home. The anxiety of knocking on doors, knowing they’ll be slammed in your face, hangs around a guy on his day off. So...Hey, buddy, butt out.”
Henrietta turned her head and...What in tarnation! There stood none other than Lero O’Rourke, plain as a carbuncle on a...Well, not likely on the plastic nose that went with the attached lensless eye-glasses and fake black mustache of his disguise, but...“Sorry,” he said to Larry. “I am a private...sort of a cop, and need to have a few words with your date.”
The anxious traveling salesman, suddenly red in the face, backed away with his hands held up. “Hey, I do not even know this young woman,” he said. “I just dropped by. I was just...just... just leaving,” he added before turning around and skedaddling.
“Hen, I need you to come back to work,” the ACE private detective said in a lowered voice, before going on to explain that whereas it was bad enough that Yanko Tarnovskyy had cheated in a tennis match versus Harry yesterday, “the Ukrainian thug is also a masher.” To rescue Harry’s aunt from an attack on her backside today, he’d had to break cover.
“The creep will deny the sneaky assault of course,” the hero said, “and Mrs. DeGrasso may well be too mortified to confirm it. But I had already gotten into Yanko’s private office, seized one of his dirty balls and...Unfortunately, it must have dropped out of my pocket when my skateboard hit a bump during my hasty getaway. So if you could get yourself hired by the Sunningdale Racquet Club to, you know, nail down the loose end, I’ll split the rest of my fee with you.”
Before she could answer, “Uh oh, the s.o.b must have followed me here,” said Lero, as the barrel-chested, baldheaded Yanko Tarnovskyy his own self walked into the gentlemen’s club — not carrying a briefcase — and headed for Hunter DeGrasso’s regular table.
“Act normal,” the disguised detective advised, “as if I were just an ordinary Xpose customer.”
A split-second later, Rachel came out of the darkened table- area and—just like last night—marched toward the bar in an obvious snit. “That was his last chance,” she said, after joining them. “That no-good son of a bitch; if he thinks he can treat me like a common...like a wife without benefits, he is in for a very unpleasant surprise,” she huffed, likely referring to Hunter shooing her off again.
Another split-second later, “That’s him,” said Larry the traveling salesman, still red-faced and obviously still anxious; back to the bar in the company of the club manager and pointing a finger at Lero. “He’s a damned private cop, trying to catch respectable customers in the act of relieving ourselves!”
“Private detective!” said Rachel, glaring not at Lero but at... “He’s snooping for Hunter’s current wife. Were you just now telling this creep something about me and . . Damnit, Sparkle, I trusted you to keep your mouth shut about my private affairs!” “I have not just now said a word about anything to this creep,
Meghan; I swear to it.”
“This guy’s no private dick,” the club manager announced.
Clenching an unlit cigar in his teeth, he used a free hand to yank off Lero’s disguise; then further announced: “This here is none other than ‘Zero’ O’Rourke, son of a cop, yeah, but he himself is just a sleazy divorce lawyer.”
“Oh my God!” Larry wailed, before again wheeling around and this time scooting toward a fire exit. Lero tried to follow, but the club manager grabbed hold of the lapel of his blazer and...
Next to arrive at the bar were Hunter DeGrasso and Yanko Tarnovskyy. “This the snoop I about to tell on to you,” the “masher” said in a foreign accent. “He claim your old man is client.”
“OMG!” Meghan wailed. “Hunter, I have not said anything to anyone about your secret plan; I promise.”
“Nah,” said Hunter to Yanko. “Dad would never be checking up on you, my friend. And wouldn’t hire this guy to shine his shoes. ‘Hero’ here is Harry’s friend. My, uh, ‘naive’ cousin introduced me to him just the other...Hell, you were there, Yanko. Probably he was snooping on you and...What do you care; you’re not married, and the private dick’s report on your hanky-panky with you-know-who could work to our advantage; see what I mean?”
As the club manager and two bouncers hustled Lero toward the fire exit, music started to play.
♬Hey! Hey! Hey! / Hey, Cinderella, step in your shoe...♬
Other dancers got onstage, but Rachel a/k/a Meghan — with arms flailing—followed Hunter DeGrasso back toward his table.
♬Get outta my dreams/ Get into my car...♬
Yanko headed for the regular exit, now with his briefcase again in hand, Henrietta noticed. Stepping into his path, “Say there, Mr. Yanko,” she said, batting her eyes, “any chance for a gal like me to find daytime work out at that racquet club of yours?”
♬Get outta my my mind/ Get into my life...♬
“Maybe,” the club’s tennis pro replied, looking her up and down. “Yanko’s in middle of big deal right now. Come by club tomorrow. We see.”
♬I said open the door/ (Get in the back)/ Tread on the floor/ (Get on the track)/ Get in the back seat, baby...♬
Henrietta returned to the stage for hopefully the last pole dance of her life. The tips had been nice, but tomorrow she aimed to get back to her newly chosen professional career. ’Cause as a writer of cheesy private detective stories might put it: Plot of the Case of a Corruptible Playboy was getting to be thick as a bowl of congealed chili-and-beans; and—as she her own self might add—the bowl was getting slippery with grease around the edges.



FRIDAY 10/13/19 GREASE MONKEY BUSINESS
WHAT’S UP WITH GREEZERS? STOCK MARKET BUZZ PUZZLES

Abba Dabba Dabba:
Continued trading in stock of Greezers’ parent, Trinita
Coal Oil & Tar Co. (OTC:TCT) has made a big baboon out of this monkey. Yesterday’s Grease Business Report dismissed early morning trades of only 15,000 shares at $10.00 per share as noteworthy only for their odd rarity; and further opined that the transactions were driven by a single or few seller(s). Through the day, however, and into this early morning, thirty trades for almost 100,000 shares at prices of $12:00 to $14.00 per share indicate unprecedented buyer interest for still no readily apparent reason. So what’s up, Pussy Cat?
“Diversification,” says Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business News. “Greezers’ bold move into fast food service—tasty Italian food service at that—is moving the needle. Expect Lardo to overtake Jersey Mike’s in sales per unit by year end. In addition, inevitable phasing out of the petroleum-based lube business will bring liquidation of fixed assets and lots of cash. A bird’s nest on the ground for savvy investors watching their step.”
“Succession,” says Jim Cramer of CNBC’ Mad Money, referring to rumored imminent changes in Trinita’s upper management. “Company matriarch, the legendary Nanette Carbone DeGrasso was the right person at the right time when she succeeded her husband, Filippo in the Big Chair; but her smartest move has been to groom her son, Charles DeGrasso, to take over. He’s not tanned, but ruddy, well rested and ready.”
Former Madison Avenue advertising whiz kid, now Wall Street curmudgeon, Robert “Freemo” Wrenn, interprets the buzz quite differently. “Flies,” he opined when reached for comment at his home in Boca Grande, Florida. “Common house flies circling a rotting corpse. Mrs. DeGrasso herself has likely been deceased for days, if not months or even years. She has been essentially a mummy for decades; more an embalmed figurehead than functioning executive. And the business? Also a carcass; dead in the water as a...No, dead out of the water, as reeking of rot and encircled by flies as a beached tarpon. It’s all an insider’s staged pump-and-dump play designed to rip off unsophisticated traders.”
Reached for comment, Ms. Nanette Carbone DeGrasso’s brother and close advisor, Bernardo Carbone, replied in writing thusly: “Having eyes, do you not see? Having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember?” Following that tease came an apparent press release written in the dead language of Latin, which—translated by a priest at Christ the King Church — tells the biblical tale of seven loaves and a few fishes feeding a multitude.
So again, what’s up?
Stock split; this monkey says a Trinita Coal Oil & Tar Co. (OTC:TCT) stock split is in the works to facilitate trading and boost total share value.
In other lube biz news...



CHAPTER 16

♬Gotta stay outta trouble/ gotta do what’s right/ Gotta lube your joints/ before they get tight...♬
Hired by Yarnko Tarnovskyy —but not allowed to wait tables at the Sunningdale Racquet Club bar-and-grill until she got one of those skimpy all-white outfits—Henrietta pushed a broom on one of the club’s eight outdoor tennis courts.
♬Gotta re-duce friction if you wanna go far/ Gotta count on Greezers to grease your car...♬
At one end of the row of courts, Yanko was up against the rear of a middle-aged gal and reaching around her—not “mashing” that she her own self could tell—just teaching the gal how to swing a racquet.
♬Grease is the word, is the word that you heard/ It’s got groove, it’s got cool, it’s got jive...♬
At the other end of the row of courts a bunch of younguns — wearing black tee-shirts lettered Greezer Kamp Kids in white—were circled around Harry DeGrasso, singing the jingle that had played on radio and TV for as long as Henrietta could remember.
♬Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion/ Get greased at Greezers and drive♬
As the camp kids ran off that court to have snacks on a grassy area, she went over to sweep up after them and to...“You’re that girl from...You’re Sparkle,” said Harry DeGrasso. “What are you doing here? Are you spying on me for my grandma?”
“No, I am not spying for no grandma,” she answered. “I happened to meet Mr. Yanko at Xpose last night and he offered me a day job.”
“Yeah, that figures,” said Harry, looking past her toward the lessons court, where another middle-aged gal—wearing street clothes—had joined the tennis pro and his pupil. “Sorry,” he then said, looking at her own self, “I am kinda what they call paranoid, I guess. My grandma wants me to take my father’s place as an executive vice-president and ‘heir apparent’ to someday take her place in our family business, but somebody dished dirt to her about me and Meghan. I wouldn’t care—I don’t want to work at the damn grease company — but I resent the hell out of anyone saying anything bad about...I aim to marry Meghan and seek my fortune in Alaska.”
Hmmm. Two nights ago, “Meghan” had switched to “grooming” Harry in place of his cousin, Hunter—based on research indicating Harry’s daddy, and him too, had brighter futures in the family business — but last night, after again saying Hunter had blew his “last chance,” the dark-skinned pole dancer had wailed to Hunter a denial of telling anybody about his “secret plan” and chased him back to his table.
“Harry, it’s none of my business, but...If your grandma, or some other concerned family member, is having you and Meghan, uh, surveilled, I’m sure she or he has your welfare in mind. And as a friend of Meghan’s, I’m also sure she her own self would not want you to do any rash thing about your employment, not to mention relations with your grandma, until you two have...”
“Mrs. Degrasso! Mrs. DeGrasso!” someone hollered. Harry and she turned their heads as a gal wearing a skimpy, all-white tennis outfit ran from the bar-and-grill to the edge of the lessons court. “It’s your husband’s assistant, a Mr. Evans on the phone,” the gal shouted. “He says he has an urgent message from Mr. DeGrasso!”
With the gal in street clothes looking to be het up about something—and letting either Yanko Tarnovskyy and/or the other gal know about it in no uncertain terms—none of the threesome paid any attention to the urgent message.
“Just like my so-called stepmother,” Harry snorted. “A woman almost sixty-years-old, out here every day, flirting with that Ukrainian jerk. For all she cares, my father could be having a heart attack.”
“Which of those gals is your mother?”
“The one who’s all dressed up, no doubt reeking of perfume.” “Does any other ‘Mrs. DeGrasso’, such as your aunt, also
hang out here?”
“Aunt Linda? No way. Uncle Joe’s wife is a classy lady, like
Meghan.”
Hmmm. Henrietta had a notion that Lero O’Rourke was too confused about Case of a Corruptible Playboy to know if he his own self was on foot or horseback.
“I don’t give a damn what that old bitch says about Meghan,” said Harry, more red in the face than usual. “She herself had better watch out, or someone might just take a ruler to her rosy rear end!”
After the het up playboy had turned away and headed for the cluster of snacking camper kids, Henrietta turned around, and — seeing that the lessons court had been abandoned — swept in the direction of the pro shop. Though Yanko Tarnovskyy and Hunter DeGrasso were sure enough handing a briefcase containing something back and forth — maybe something related to the “secret plan” Rachel a/k/a Meghan had blurted about— she her own self was now more doubtful of Lero’s suspicions that foul play somehow involved them secretly dealing in “dirty” tennis balls.
Still, mindful of her assignment to “nail down a loose end,” she went over to the cooler of ice water set outside the pro shop.
Seeing no one around, she went inside the small space. According to Lero, he had found evidence proving his suspicions in the club pro’s adjoining private office.
Henrietta opened a back door a crack and...What in tarnation! Lero O’Rourke, “Ace Private Detective”, had dropped a ball alright!

CHAPTER 7

Joe wheeled the Range Rover into the Sunningdale Racquet Club parking lot and — spotting Cousin Charles’ wife waddling out of the clubhouse — came to a stop and tooted his horn. She gave him a more unfriendly than usual look and hurried to her parked car. Charles’ son, Harry, then appeared beside the Rover; got into the shotgun seat, and off they went.
“How goes my camp for our employees’ underprivileged kids?” he asked his nephew.
“Boring,” replied his junior Sales & Marketing subordinate, “for me and the kids. Also not boosting much employee family morale, Uncle Joe. The racquet club pro is a jerk; fancies himself a ladies man but is just a dirty old lech. Hits on my stepmother right in front of the kids. And one of the ball ‘boys’—Leroy O’Rourke is my age for crying out loud—was a sleazy divorce lawyer before probably being disbarred.”
Yanko? Yanko? No, he didn’t recall a guy named...Leo O’Rourke? Hmmm. He’d once got the autograph of a Leo Durocher, but that Leo was...he was not a damn Yankee; and not a damn lawyer. Guys like that—lawyers—were bad influences on the morals of kids. Lawyers were deal breakers; natural enemies of deal makers such as himself. It was the internal sell, getting around picky corporate attorneys, accountants and the like—not to mention Mother Superior and Brother Bernie — that was so tedious. Bureaucracy was manned by guys worried about risk and liability. Guys that were not well liked.
Guys who were losers.
After explaining all that to his inexperienced protege, Joe inched toward the point of their meeting by saying, “Heard from Hunter that you might have got lucky last night, heh, heh. Good for you, Harry. Young guy like you ought to sew wild oats while you’re a young guy like ...like you. But watch yourself in the clinches, Slugger. Say it with mink, but never in ink. See the idea?”
“Not really.”
“Take Hunter for instance, a prince with the world on his plate of oysters; got tricked into marriage when he was way too young; tricked by fatherhood. Now weighed down with mortgage payments, child support payments, credit card payments out the wazoo; all because of getting, uh, in a clinch with, what’s her name? That woman clinched Hunter by . . by...”
“Yeah, I hear he’s being divorced. But didn’t you and Aunt Linda have to...?”
“Hunter will be okay, way better than okay. He’s got a lot on the ball; he’s bright as hell, and is well liked. That’s why I’m glad to hear he’s taken you under his wing; showing you the ropes; teaching you how to network outside the box. Best thing Hunter ever did was leave the Company’s legal department. Now he’s an entrepreneurial lawyer who makes deals, and bright as hell. See, it’s not what you do, Harry; it’s who you know and who knows and likes you. It’s contacts, Harry, contacts! When you boil it all down, life amounts to contacts and salesmanship, plain and simple.
“Like an ancient Greek wise guy once said — I think it might have been Aristotle, the guy who married Jackie Kennedy — the only thing you’ve got in this world is what you can sell; and he was a Greek genius. For a salesman, there is only upside. No, he doesn’t lube the joints of cars, or the joints of guys’ bones; but as I myself have always said: Grease monkeys and sawbones wouldn’t have those jobs if not for salesmen leading the way; out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. A salesman is a dreamer of impossible... possibilities. It comes with the territory.”
“Actually, Uncle Joe, I’m pretty sure it was a character in an old movie they keep remaking for TV — Death of a Salesman — who always said exactly all that.”
“Maybe so; there used to be a lot of movies about salesmen. One that inspired me and my generation was The Fuller Brush Man starring Red Skelton, who gets implicated in a murder committed with a brush. Funny as hell, also inspiring, but nowadays...Sorry to hear Skelton’s passed on — he was a helluva salesman—but...Joe DeGrasso is not dead yet, not by a long shot!”
Joe steered the Rover into the service lane of a local lube shop. Lettered in black, a big sign on the left side of the building said GREEZERS. Lettered in brown on the right side, a new sign said LARDO. In between in bright red, the tag line he himself had come up with: Greasy Come, Easy Go. “Catchy, huh?” he said to his nephew, before getting out of the Rover.
Standing at the service window of a pilot Lardo unit inside the lube shop, they eyed an overhead menu board. “Just a slice of bread and glass of water for me,” said Joe, with a pat to his belly. “The doc says I need to go easy on the old colon. But for you, my boy, I highly recommend the Double-Dealer Special consisting of two lardo sliders — the ‘Honey, I’m Home’ —with blue cheese, onions, garlic cloves and homemade honey habanero pickles—and the ‘Sugar-n-Spice’ lardo desserto slider with pineapple and jalapeño peppers. Crispy pigs’ ears on the side.”
After placing their orders, “You know, this is all my idea,” he boasted, with a wave of his hand. “Our Ukrainian partner, Hunter’s client, wanted to wed lube jobs with salo—cured slabs of fatback seasoned with paprika—reputed to be popular in Middle Eastern Slavic countries. No way would Aunt Nan and Brother Bernardo have gone along with that idea. But I remembered that in her younger days she had been crazy about Lardo di Colonnata, which is strips of cured fatback seasoned with rosemary and other herbs and spices. Bingo; I closed the deal. You see, Harry, here’s the thing: A salesman always finds a way to skin a cat.”
“Yeah, I recall you saying all that before, Uncle Joe, lots of times.”
Minutes later, again seated in his Range Rover, up they went on a hydraulic lube rack, for a grease job as they dined, except... “Since the 1970s, cars with factory-sealed joints don’t need shots of fresh grease, damnit. But still a lot of precious bodily fluids to be squirted from under the rack, still an important calling, still a...a...a...
“But a guy also has to have luck,” Joe continued with a sigh. “Take my old man for instance. No joke, Harry, if my father had not had bad luck...well, I would be running a lube shop chain of over five thousand units by now. I'm serious. But my dad, your Great Uncle Sam DeGrasso, was an adventurous man. When he finally got hold of some real money by inheritance, instead of basically sitting on it like his Cousin Nanette, he bought a claim on Resurrection Creek near the town of Hope, Alaska; and set out to placer mine for gold in the creek bed with a pan and sluice box. Unfortunately, it happened to be winter at the time. When things were just about finally thawed, well, the famous Good Friday earthquake of 1964 collapsed a log cabin saloon my old man happened to be sleeping in, and killed him. We’ve got quite a streak of self reliance in our line of the family, but I was only a teenager and...If not needed at home, I would have gone up there and come back with pockets full of .. . full of gold nuggets.”
“Lucky for you that you had Grandma Nan’s company to fall back on,” said Harry, who had not put in an honest day’s work during his entire life. “Otherwise, you would have had to go to work to support Aunt Linda and Cousin Emily and...”
“Fall back on? Hell, my sales and marketing work has kept the family Company afloat for over fifty years! Like someone... It might have been Red Skelton in that movie who said the thing about family business is somebody steals, what’s the difference? Not that Joe DeGrasso ever stole a dime. I’m the guy who came up with the Company jingle back in the Seventies. I’m the guy who in the Eighties... No, it was this year that I got Greezers into the lardo business. I’m the guy...What I’m trying to say, Harry—for your own welfare—is that you should beware of getting caught the clinches of...of...”
“Don’t worry about me, Uncle Joe. I have no intention of repeating Hunter’s mistakes.”
“Clinches of...of...of family business corporate bureaucracy was what I was about to say. Hunter was too smart to fall for a big office, big salary, big title, big...What I am saying, Harry, is beware of a so-called promotion to a deadly dull executive position of figuring out budgets, attending staff meetings, making longwinded speeches, writing letters and attending funerals. Stick to sales and marketing. I will put you out in the field and, by God —on my word as a DeGrasso—I will make a salesman of you! No joke.”
“I have no interest in following in my father’s footsteps, and... No offense, Uncle Joe, I would rather take a beating than become a salesman like...Being a salesman would be like death to me. I would like to go out on my own, maybe to Alaska to pan for gold.”
Joe’s ears perked up and... As the lube rack began to descend, he noticed that after taking only a single bite of a single lardo slider, his nephew seemed to have spit it out into a wrapper. To be a salesman, a guy had to look on the bright side; had to put aside his personal likes and dislikes; had to be a believer in the product. In other words, another line of work might be just the ticket—to, say, Alaska—for a still youngish guy like Harry DeGrasso.



CHAPTER 8

With the racquet club and kids camp shut down for the rest of the day due to hard rain, Lero lay on the couch in his residential office, counting push-pins stuck into the ceiling. Day-by-day and night-by-night he was getting better at left-handed flicking. Consequently, related attunement to intuitive function of his right brain was also clearly improving. Yesterday, he had picked up on...
Okay, the fat camper kid had turned out to be only a sneaky glutton, but still, a potentially corrupting influence on Harry DeGrasso. And earlier today, no, cheating at tennis was not necessarily a felony offense, but if he had not spotted that evidence of Yanko Tarnovskyy’s bad character, chances were he would have failed to detect the wily Ukrainian’s suspiciously off- colored balls. What the bald and barrel-bellied bad actor was up to remained to be seen, though he had a hunch it all had something to do with smuggling from a foreign country.
Yes, his right cerebral lobe was doing better against its left- side nemesis, but still had a long way to go. He had endured three years of law school, after all; and had been in DIY therapy for only about ten months; since coming across an online magazine article titled Learning to Think Like a Lawyer — sub-titled Careful: A Career in Law Could Change the Way You Think—in which a man named Henry Dahut, Esquire told a tale that could almost have been titled The Misadventures of Leroy O’Rourke, Esquire.
Like Dahut, he had set out to become a lawyer only because it seemed to be the thing to do at the time. Unlike Dahut, however, he’d not had in mind a comfortable income and respectable station in life. No, he blamed Evie—his girlfriend at the time — for the near fatal mistake. She wanted to enroll in law school, and he wanted to continue banging her on a regular basis. Halfway through a first year course in Basic Real Property Law taught by the law school dean, Professor James Irwin a/k/a “The Big I” —undoubtedly the most thoroughgoing asshole who ever lived—he’d begun to vaguely realize he had made a mistake.
In keeping with the so-called “Socratic Method” used by law schools, Irwin taught by asking supposedly probing, challenging, thought provoking questions to students who were supposed to have read and analyzed the issues presented by actual cases decided by appellate courts, in effect stories of past lawsuits written by judges. The process was designed to force students to learn to think in the cool, clear, precise, linear way in which lawyers in their various guises made the rules society lived by, without taint of emotion, intuition, or feeling born of mind or instinct. And it worked. Sort of like the Marine Corps boot camp regimen that broke down recruits before rebuilding them to fit “The Program”.
Lero recalled imagining the fat professor as having been an unliked, unathletic kid who had obsessively lifted weights in his family’s basement to build up a freakishly strong forearm, then vengefully becoming a so-called teacher solely for the purpose of brutalizing following generations of kids in mandatory arm wrestling matches. Though The Big I had only one muscle hidden inside his soft, jowly bulk of sixty-year-old flesh-and- bone, he was the archetypal bully with formidable power to intimidate. It was the left lobe of his brain that Irwin had built up beyond recognition as human. His right lobe had atrophied into nothingness.
In the classroom, when one of a hundred students was called on by the would-be “Socrates”, ninety-nine silent sighs of relief would rise like evaporating sweat. The chosen young man or woman, without worldly experience or benefit of Irwin’s decades of mental calisthenics—he or she sitting as The Big I stood on an elevated platform—would be required to effectively fight a dual with him; the bloody outcome of which was never in doubt. Back and forth bully-and-victim would parry-and-thrust; slicing complex issues into opposing rational analyses leading to different conclusions; then dividing each sub-analysis along other contradictory lines of logic; and so it would go: Two, four, eight, sixteen, a thousand cuts. Irwin would often amuse himself by nicking his opponent here and there with lawyerly phrased, semi-polite personal insults; then finish him or her off with a vicious thrust and cry of “Hai!” Roughly translatable in context to: “I am a genius, and you are an idiot!”
Evie loved the classroom sword play. He himself, not so much. A couple of weeks prior to final exams, Irwin had grilled him mercilessly in class about acquisition of legal title to land by so-called “adverse possession”—“squatters’ rights” essentially — posing and disposing of obscure nuances of various hypothetical situations related to the requirement—among others—that the adverse possession be hostile to all other claims, including those of the titled owner.
Lero had neglected to read the assigned case. The professor had made him look like a bloody fool, though in truth — he had to now admit — half his wounds were self-inflicted. Thankfully, The Big I had moved on to a next victim, a woman, and opened another can of worms about ownership of the subject land’s “appurtenant improvements” made by the squatter — construction of a partially dug out “sweat lodge” — but...
“You are asking me to separate the dance from the dancer,” she said in exasperated response to Irwin’s demand that she be more incisive. “It can’t be done. It shouldn’t be done!”
Suddenly, the hushed classroom seemed to have become nothing less than tropical. Rivulets of condensation appeared to run down its large windows that had previously looked out on a bright Spring day. A fly found its way in and circled lazily over the room with a faint buzz. How dare she!
He should have stood up and walked out of law school then and there, Lero now clearly realized. But Evie and he had impulsively gotten married on New Year’s Eve and...he stayed. Like Pavlov’s dog — just as described by Henry Dahut, Esquire — he endured continued law school conditioning aimed at trapping his mind within the confines of inductive and deductive forms of reasoning; making him think defensively, proceed slowly, measure and calculate risk; avoid snares by becoming a rational, categorical, linear thinker, without tolerance for ambiguity. Despite himself, if only by osmosis, he had been made to at least semi-think like a lawyer; and in the process, less able to emotively think outside the box, make creative choices, see big pictures.
Like thousands of lawyers who wanted to get back in touch with their right-brained selves, Lahut had changed careers after thirteen years of practicing law. Lero himself was now doing approximately the same, but it was difficult. The damage had been done. Drifting into sleep, it occurred to Lero that he — like Adam in the Garden of Eden — had been blissfully munching on fruit from the tree of life until seduced into eating from the tree of knowledge. Everything had changed from vaguely whole to sharply dualistic; from a kind of rosy haze to stark black-and- white.
Evie had divorced him following his dismissal from the law firm where they both worked. Now she was an Assistant District Attorney, with whom he’d had occasional humiliating courtroom encounters at bail bond hearings prior to launching his new career as proprietor of ACE—“Attuned Confidential Enquiries“ — Private Investigation Agency.



CHAPTER 9

On-board a company plane — unfortunately now referred to by some as “The Greased Pig” — Charles passed the time by using a calculator to estimate the carbon footprint of his trip to the small southeastern Oklahoma town of Krebs, ancestral home to both his mother’s Carbone family and the DeGrassos. He was a devout expert in the settled science of climate change and determined to do his bit to save the planet, but...
How about that: Approximately six tons of carbon dioxide emissions from the 747 jet’s 200-mile round trip, and he was the flight’s only passenger. Oh well, he would add cost of a few extra carbon off-sets to his expense report. On a net basis, he was contributing only marginally to the world’s impending doom; and again, he had ambitious plans to more than wipe out his accumulated personal carbon account when he succeeded his mother as head of the Company.
As the plane began its somewhat bumpy let down toward the long asphalt landing strip funded by the Company to facilitate performance of duties related to family shareholders, his mood similarly descended. In the words of Great Britain’s current Prince of Wales on the subject of the aged Queen Elizabeth, he also resented his own mother for behaving as though she was the only one who mattered. Nanette Carbone DeGrasso had not planned for the future, and seemed to see herself as a last “sovereign”.
Indeed, in “Queen Nanette’s” mind—and in the public mind, alas — she was the Company, and the Company was she. Everything was about what was good for her; not what was good for the planet; and damnit, not what was good for his marriage! While “Her Majesty” indulged in her selfish outdated ways...
THUMP! The “Pig” made a hard landing and thump!... thump!...thump!... bounced down the runway before coming to an abrupt stop.
His man Evans met him on the tarmac and—with a no longer needed umbrella in hand—led the way to a battery- powered limousine hauled from Oklahoma City by truck. While being driven toward a post-funeral reception scheduled to follow what had no doubt been a long and tedious service at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, Evans briefed him on particulars concerning a recently departed Louis “Lucky Louie” Carbone, son of his mother’s first cousin.
“This Mr. Carbone owned only five thousand shares of Company stock at the time of his death and was a widower,” Evans reported, “so presumably his shares will be scattered among four surviving daughters.”
At the thought of more personal paperwork, Charles sighed.
“His nephews and nieces—all or most of whom will presumably be in attendance at the reception—hold an additional seventy-five thousand shares collectively,” Evans further reported. “As for the many other Carbone relatives you may encounter, well, I strongly suggested to the St. Joseph’s deacon that he have someone issue name tags to all mourners.”
Arrived at an exceedingly rundown residence, Charles saw that a large crowd had spilled onto a weedy front yard and into the street. Stepping out of the limo, he switched on his mind’s trusty auto pilot that would take him through a well worn script for occasions such as this one. Facial expression suitably somber, but also benignly pleasant in attitude. His posture somewhat stooped, to suggest the carrying of a heavy, though manageable burden. Hands, with fingers interlocked, held against his vested midriff to avoid being grabbed for a shake, and/or having his pocket watch pinched. Now ever so slightly nodding to those with whom he made eye contact, to simply acknowledge their presence without suggestion of recognition that might invite more personal interaction. Up on the shack’s front porch, he faced the assemblage and said:
“From my mother, Nanette Carbone DeGrasso, I bring heartfelt tidings of sorrow and comfort.” Evans handed him a framed Certificate of Condolence. He put on reader glasses, looked down, and began to robotically intone:
“Dearly beloved, to mark the passing of my cherished first cousin, once removed—Louis ‘Lucky Louie’ Carbonne—I am honored to...”
Ooops, a collective gasp from the audience informed Charles he had done it again: Mindlessly read aloud the name of the deceased instead of glossing over the written text by referring to Lucky Louie as simply “the dearly departed”. With terrified expressions on their faces, almost all of the mourners turned away and hurried from the front yard. Obviously they were believers in foolish age-old Italian superstition that the souls of the dead did not want to depart; and that to vocally give them earthly identities by name during an immediate period of mourning encouraged the souls to hang around and haunt the living forever.
For the benefit of the few brave mourners who remained — including one woman — he hurried through the rest of his mother’s blessing and stepped down from the porch.
“Shame on Nanette Carbone!” the woman without name tag shrieked, “and on you too, Charlie DeGrasso! You wouldn’t even let your hometown relatives bid on the local Greezers franchise.”
Though appalled to have been addressed as “Charlie”, he politely informed the anonymous woman that all Greezer lube shops were company owned—not franchised to others—meaning that local shareholding relatives did have “franchises” in a way.
“Okay, but you won’t even hire relatives as grease monkeys. Lucky Louie would be alive today if he’d had Greezers medical insurance.”
Instead of informing the complainer that non-executive employees were not covered by Company insurance, Charles patiently explained—per what his Uncle Bernie, the brainy monk, had ground into him—that one had only to note the historical failure of monarchies to see the inevitable doom of high-and-mighty establishments brought on by nepotism.
“What about you, Charlie? Other than being Nanette’s mistake, what makes you qualified to be an Executive Vice- President, and your mother’s f’ing heir apparent?”
“Hold on there, Cousin Vera,” said a youngish fellow, identified by name tag as simply “Bobby”, who had stepped to Charles’ side. “As the grandson of both Rico Carbone and Antonio DeGrasso —two of the Company founders—Cousin Charlie doubly deserves his high-and-mighty position. He has grease in his blood, and has endured on-the-job training since birth.”
As Vera Nobody rushed off in an obvious huff, Charles — not offended to have been simply referred to as a “Charlie” — grinned amicably and offered a handshake to his newfound relative, Bobby Somebody; who then further identified himself by presenting a Wall Street business card emblazoned: Robert S. Mangano III...Acquisitions Analyst...Hardwick & Simmons Private Equities Ltd. “I am your cousin by marriage to Rita,” he further explained — pointing — “formerly Rita Carbone.”
“Oh yes, the lovely Rita.” How was that good looking lad of theirs, he started to venture, before thinking it better not to risk a mistake.
“Your patience in dealing with the peasant mentality of our country cousins is commendable,” Cousin-in-Law Robert said. “And as one who has a rooting interest in the few shares Rita inherited and holds onto for their sentimental value, I have been much impressed by the sagacity of your Investor Relations Advisories. In addition, I say, kudo, kudo, kudo to you, Cousin Charlie, for your launching of the Company’s new venture into fast food service. Lardo, simply brilliant!”
Charles harrumphed, but then acknowledged that indeed it was he who had steered the Company toward diversification into so-called fast food service. “I have long maintained that in order to save the planet we must phase out of the petroleum-based lube business, but...”
“Brilliant!”
“...not into so-called food produced from pork or other livestock, the major sources of flatulence that also pollutes the atmosphere.”
“Also brilliant!”
“I myself urged phasing into serving what is called ‘Impossible Tofu’ that...”
“Absolutely brilliant!”
“...is indistinguishable in texture and taste from the real McCoy.”
“Uh, real McCoy of what exactly?”
“Real tofu, of course. While the growing of soybeans depletes the planet’s water supply, cotton and chicken litter are both plentiful and...”
“Now you’re cooking with grease!”
“Unfortunately, yes. Our out-of-touch cousin, Joe DeGrasso, out-flanked me by bringing to the table that odious lardo concoction; and a no cost, no risk deal with a Ukrainian company to finance it.”
“Heck, I wish I had known about all this at the time,” said the Wall Street analyst with a grimace. “My firm could easily have financed your brilliant idea for...‘Impossible Tofu’, brilliant! I myself could have...”
“I’m afraid not, Cousin. My mother and her brother, Uncle Bernie, are dead set against taking on debt or issuing new stock. I was not in a position to...”
“Right, right, right,” said Cousin Robert, putting a hand to his forehead and suddenly beginning to pace. “You are, for the moment, only your mother’s heir apparent. But in the near future...” The cousin-law-law stopped in his tracks, looked at his wristwatch and said, “Heck, I would love to carry on this most interesting conversation, but the wife and I need to be on the road.”
Mightily impressed that a cousin-in-law — and a young man at that—would have acquired such savvy, Charles was sorely disappointed to be told by Robert S. Mangano III that he and the lovely Rita had to immediately leave by rental car in order to catch a flight to New York from the Dallas/ Fort Worth Airport, but... What the heck, D/FW was only two or three hundred miles out of his way back to Oklahoma City. Investor relations was, after all, his heavy responsibility. And Charles was eager to hear more about the brilliance of his ideas from the astute relative by marriage who was himself almost a Company shareholder.



CHAPTER 10

♬Take me down/ to paradise city/ where the grass is green/ and the girls are pretty/ Oh, won’t you please take me home...♬
No longer employed by ACE Private Investigation Agency and still in need of rent money, Henrietta struck a pose onstage at Xpose. Her new semi-friend, Rachel a/k/a Meghan, did the same at the pole beside her, while looking into the darkened area where Harry and Hunter DeGrasso were seated.
♬Just an urchin livin’ under the street/ I’m a hard case that’s tough to beat...♬
She would have liked to be carrying on with surveillance of Harry DeGrosso in what she thought of as Case of a Corruptible Playboy— not to mention carrying on with a new career other than pole dancing—‘cause for one thing, she had a hunch that the subject’s associations and activities at the gentlemen’s club were likely more potentially corrupting than those out at a suburban tennis club.
♬Rags to riches or so they say/ You gotta keep pushin’ for the fortune and fame...♬
In particular, Hunter DeGrasso struck her as a likely bad influence on his boyish cousin; and on Rachel too, she was thinking as she moved into a series of dance steps. Recalling the “I know what you’re up to” look Rachel gave her targeted “mark” and what she later said...
♬...you think it’s all a gamble/ when it’s really just a game...♬
Henrietta’s notion was that whatever the supposedly smart
lawyer was “up to” was no good; and had something to do with the “big deal” he had put together for his daddy. According to Rachel, the daddy was Executive Vice-President of the DeGrasso family grease company; and fixing to become top dog.
♬Take me down/ to paradise city/ where the grass is green/ and the girls are pretty...♬
On the other hand, whatever Hunter DeGrasso was up to didn’t necessarily have anything to do with Harry DeGrasso, she was thinking, when a bald, barrel-bellied man—carrying a black briefcase—came into the club, blinked his eyes a few times, then headed in the direction of Hunter Degrasso’s regular table.
♬Take me home♬
Lero O’Rourke had not seemed even slightly interested in her surveillance report about the subject prior to getting a phone call this morning from his client, then taking her off the case. Nevertheless, with the music now stopped and Rachel also headed for her intended groom’s table, Henrietta had an urge to join her and the DeGrasso cousins, but...No, her own self tagging along would no doubt rile up the dark-skinned gal again, she reckoned.
“Hunter has a roving eye,” she’d said last night during their after-work session of girl talk at her apartment. “I know that; I know he has no character; but once I get him into... Well, they don’t call it wedlock for nothing. He won’t be able to afford another divorce.”
So, not inclined to do any lap dancing or flirtatious chit- chatting, Henrietta went over to the stand-up bar, where a middle-aged gentlemen’s club customer...“I saw you making eyes at me,” he immediately said, “and have already ordered a glass of champagne just for you.”
He introduced his own self as Larry and went to explaining the need of traveling salesmen to relieve stress. “The wife thinks life on the road is just a night-after-night party,” he was saying, as both Rachel and Harry Degrasso came out of the darkened table area and joined them at the bar. “Meghan” looked none too happy—like Hunter might have shooed them off—but Harry, beaming, ordered a bottle of champagne.
“Hey, buddy, we’ve got a twosome going on here,” Larry complained, as Harry went to jabbering about never imagining he would be happy to see someone named Yanko Tarnovskyy.
“Me too,” said Rachel, now suddenly beaming her own self. “To tell the truth, Harry, though I am fed up with your cousin bringing his dirty-leg business associates into the club, as though it was his private office and me his flunky. I was glad to be interrupted.”
From then on—plain as a dropped egg on a sidewalk—the dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty sure enough commenced to “get Harry into trouble”, as his cousin Hunter might have put it. And might have planned.
Soon as the gullible subject excused hisself to go to the men’s room, Henrietta excused her own self from semi-listening to Larry continuing to talk about the needs of traveling salesmen and turned to Rachel.
“Harry is dumb,” the undumb pole dancer said, “but he has character and...” And she had been doing some online search, she semi-whispered before sharing what she had doped out:
Whereas Hunter was entangled in a bitter divorce fight and paying out the nose to support his current wife and a couple of kids, Harry was single and unattached. Whereas, Hunter, almost fifty, was a lawyer but not even a law firm member—with not even a real office—Harry was still in his thirties and a Vice- President of the DeGrasso family’s grease company. Whereas Hunter’s father was Executive Vice-President of the company, so was Harry’s father an Executive Vice-President.
And whereas the big-talking Hunter had supposedly put together a big deal for his father that supposedly had put his old man in position to set him up for life, she had discovered that Harry’s father was the only son of the old lady currently in charge—’stead of just an aged nephew—and heir apparent to take over when the old woman—Hunter’s and Harry’s grandmother — kicked the bucket.
“Bottom line, Harry—though redheaded and sort of a doofus—is the better bet,” Rachel concluded, but with a semi wistful gaze in the direction of the regular table of what now seemed to be her no longer intended groom.
Hmmm, Henrietta silently hmmed, as stage lights went back to bright and music again played. Rachel a/k/a Meghan might be more of a corrupting influence on Harry than his cousin, Hunter.



THURSDAY 10/12/19 GREASE MONKEY BUSINESS
GREEZERS STOCK ACTION MYSTERY WHODUNNIT, AND WHY?

Abba Dabba Dabba:
Early morning trading in shares of Greezers parent company, Trinita Coal Oil & Tar Co. (OTC:TCT) has this monkey scratching his head, no doubt like most other lube industry observers. Okay, only five trades for a total of 15,000 shares, about .5% of the company’s outstanding stock, but still...
Though Trinita is listed Over-the-Counter and is technically a publicly held enterprise, hardly anyone has traded in its stock for decades. Why? Because controlling ownership is closely held by members of its founders’ families, notably including Nanette Carbone DeGrasso, who is also its longtime Chairperson and CEO.
Yesterday’s Monkey Business Report citing determination of the matriarch’s son and heir apparent (current Exec VP Charles Degrasso) to steadfastly maintain family stewardship of the Greezers 500-unit chain of lube shops, and its commitment to building so-called “longterm value” could hardly have attracted interest in TCT shares.
According to an old Wall Street adage: Unsophisticated shareholders become longterm investors, as opposed to traders, only when they find themselves owning a loser.
Trinita was founded in the 1930s by brothers Antonio and Joseph DeGrasso, partnered with Rico Carbone. Based in the small Oklahoma mining town of Krebs, they concentrated on production of coal oil and tar for twenty years. In 1952, led by Antonio’s son and sole heir, Filippo DeGrosso, the company launched the Greezers chain and rapidly expanded under his management.
Unfortunately, all three founders and Filippo were killed in a 1960 mine accident. Nanette Carbone DeGrasso, by virtue of being both widow of Filippo and one of Rico’s three children, inherited and has retained an approximately 45% bloc of company stock. Her brother, Bernardo Carbone, a Catholic priest-turned-monk, inherited an 11% ownership stake, but is believed to have donated his inheritance to charity, while reportedly remaining active in company affairs.
Another 11% presumably continues to be owned by multiple generations of descendants of Nanette’s deceased sister, who are believed to be steadfastly invested in her leadership.
So a 44% hunk of Trinita ownership almost matching Nanette’s bloc of stock is out there: Most of it comprised of shares passed on by Joseph DeGrasso to his sole male heir, Sam, who promptly lost the inheritance in another venture. The other 11% being comprised of what was donated by Bernardo DeGrasso.
Given Monday’s Grease Monkey Report about Greezers’ disappointing venture into fast food service, this monkey says the motivated party (s) to today’s trades was no doubt the seller (s). No, not based on the old Wall Street adage: “Sell on news. Buy on rumor.” The other one: “In the longterm, you’ll be dead.”
In other lube biz news...

CHAPTER 4

In the library of his suburban Oklahoma City mansion — Villa d’ Weste— Charles DeGrasso sat at an antique desk, penning yet another note on ornately monogrammed personal stationery to yet another Trinita Coal Oil & Tar Company shareholder. Specifically, to a Mrs. J.C. Carbone — a person he would not know if she were somehow allowed to walk through the door — he wrote:
Dearest Cousin Jolene,
My mother and I are beside ourselves in grief for your loss of that last sturdy tooth that served you so well through thick and thin. Alas, however, I regret to write that the Company is presently not in a position to declare a dividend on your stock that would enable you to purchase dentures. A diet of less thick and more thin; yes, there’s the ticket for, I trust, many more years of happy slurping if not chewing.
After signing the letter beneath a complimentary close of Yours ever so truly, Charles put down the pen, opened a laptop and punched in a request for data; then picked up the pen and wrote: P.S. Our best wishes also to that darling little girl of yours, Emma Lou, on the upcoming occasion of her...He glanced at the laptop screen...oh my, sixtieth birthday! Do not the little ones grow up before we know it!
His work as Executive Vice-President for Investor Relations—mainly writing letters, talking on the phone, attending funerals and the odd birthday party or other occasion now and then—was laborious, to be sure; but vitally important to serving his mother’s virtually religious obsession, shared by him, of maintaining family control of the Company. His mother herself, commonly referred to as “Her Majesty,” owned the largest single bloc of stock, comprised of shares handed down from two of the Company’s founders: her father, Rico Carbone, and father-in-law Antonio DeGrasso. Uncle Bernie, her brother, had donated his shares to charities long ago, but descendants of Her Majesty’s deceased sister and Carbone cousins, though scattered, had remained fairly easy to manage. With those two branches of family ownership secure, he was able to largely ignore a third group of shareholders comprised entirely of truly total strangers called the “Outsiders”.
Joseph “Big Joe” DeGrasso, also a Company founder, had been survived by a single descendant, Uncle Sam; a likable enough fellow, as Charles recalled from childhood—but of a most prodigal temperament—who had sold his entire third of outstanding Company stock on the open market in order to finance a deplorable lifestyle. Since then, holders of those shares — the “Outsiders” — had been only a minor nuisance, best dealt with by benign neglect. Why his mother had bestowed a title - Executive Vice-President for Sales & Marketing — upon Uncle Sam’s son, “Little Joe,” was a mystery. Thankfully, his cousin—a compulsive windbag and embarrassment to the Company for decades—was now seventy-five years of age and would soon be out of hot air. Soon he himself, recognized heir apparent to “Her Majesty” would finally...
Charles eyed a stack of unanswered letters, put his pen aside, leaned back in his chair, and sighed. He had come home early from his Company office in order to catch his wife, Candice, when she got back from a so-called racquet club. Sight of her in a skimpy, tight-waisted white tennis outfit...Well, while some might call it a perverse fetish of sorts, Candice’s roll of belly fat, her dimpled thighs—not to mention her dimpled buttocks that sometimes peeked from the panties under her short tennis skirt—never failed to make him literally swoon. He had dared to hope that today his “Honey Bunny” might address him as “Pumpkin” or even more titillatingly as...
To put it bluntly, he had dared to hope his wife might be up for a spoken version of what the hip younger generation called an “afternooner”. But because she was tired and sweaty from playing her silly game — which he found doubly arousing — Candice had dodged his romantic overture and gone to her bedroom suite for a bath. Too bad; he found his wife of fifteen years less appealing when freshly scrubbed.
With another sigh, Charles straightened himself, again took pen in hand, and went back to work.
Dear Cousin Gino:
Given that I myself have not yet indulged in consumption of the so-called fast so-called food being test marketed in select Greezer units, I cannot in all honesty agree with your assessment that “lardo” is in fact “the best thing to come along since buttered bread”. As a caring relative, however, I would caution you not to over-indulge in your own consumption of the greasy fare, which in and of itself would likely be insufficient to increase lube shop sales to the point of justifying declaration of a dividend on your stock. My mother and I remain committed to building long-term value in steadfast family ownership, which requires careful husbanding of Company resources.
As he referred to the laptop for information regarding Gino Carbone’s immediate family, hobbies, past correspondence and... “For crying out loud,” said Candice from behind him, “why are you still hanging around?”
Charles swiveled his head and saw that his wife had bundled herself in a long terry cloth bathrobe and wrapped her head with a towel, but...Her face, covered with black mud, what a turn-on! Instantly chilled, however, by sight of her black canine escort: A so-called Toy Rottweiler named — solely to irritate him, Charles suspected — “Greasy”.
“As the f’ing ‘heir apparent’ you should be attending to Her Majesty,” Candice said, “by, say, slipping arsenic into her afternoon glass of warm water!”
The wife had become increasingly unkind toward his aged mother in recent months if not years, but who could blame her? Following the demise of his first spouse, Deirdre, in a hot air balloon mishap, he—past fifty years of age at the time—had seemed to be the more or less imminent heir apparent to the Big Chair still stubbornly occupied by “Her Majesty”. Indeed, he himself had been similarly frustrated for decades. To simply want bestowal of that to which he was entitled by birth was not personal ambition of the meaner sort his mother referred to as the “engine of deceit” and “original of vices”.On the other hand, his frustration with unmet expectations did indeed amount to the “gilded misery” she described.
Charles sighed. He should not have to “reach” for what was his birthright. Following his father’s untimely death in 1960—when he himself was a lad of ten—his mother had inherited control of the Company at age thirty-five. Good luck for her. But why had the family matriarch not handed him the reins years ago? Why had she never recognized his capabilities? Why did she not delegate real authority to him instead of Uncle Bernie, an unworldly monk? To put it indelicately, why did the old woman—now ninety-five—not simply go to her grave, as would be more becoming for a mortal of such advanced age?
Charles again sighed. In the words of the aged Queen Victoria’s son and heir, he didn’t mind praying to an Eternal father, but felt like the only man in the world with an eternal mother!
As Candice attended to her favored companion—that infernal electronic gadget that conveyed written messages from and to God knew whom — Charles rose from his chair.
“I do not approve of you hanging out at that so-called racquet club!” he blurted. “It’s unseemly for the wife of the Company’s Executive Vice-President to be seen dallying there on a daily basis. It’s indecent for a woman your age to be scampering after balls in those skimpy outfits of yours. It reflects poorly upon me, your husband; as does the sarcasm of your reference to me as ‘heir apparent’.”
Greasy growled. Candice looked up from the gadget and, uh- oh; from the look in his wife’s eyes, he realized he had spoken perhaps a bit too directly. But then...
“I see your point,” she calmly said, “though from a slightly different perspective. Your so-called son and sole heir, Harry, also hangs around the racquet club on an almost daily basis. He, quite unlike you, is rather athletic, as well as redheaded. Sight of Harry bounding after balls graphically confirms for all to see that he is, in fact, not really your offspring. Poor Deirdre, bored to death; no one blames her.”
That was a low blow, even for Candice!
“As for my dismissive references to you as ‘heir apparent’, I agree; quite off the mark You are one of two Executive Vice- Presidents, the other being your equally dorky Cousin Joe. Yes, as applied to you, my dear, the term ‘heir apparent’ is no longer even sarcastically applicable; indeed, not even understandable to anyone who knows the score. You, my dear, are the proverbial has-been who never was.”
With that parting shot, Candice turned and walked from the room, followed by that runtish black beast.
Charles rushed his desk, picked up a phone, and put in a call to his man, Evans. To have fully confided in his assistant earlier would have been unbearably humiliating, but now...
“Evans, I was just wondering,” he said in as casual a tone as he could muster; “what reports on Harry’s associations and activities at that racquet club have you received from the private investigator you engaged?”
“Nothing concrete so far, Mr. DeGrasso. But the investigator has hired an undercover agent to also watch over Mr. Harry at a gentlemen’s club.”
“Call him off that wild goose, Evans, and, um, suggest to the detective that he keep a sharp eye on that racquet club’s so- called tennis instructor. Fellow by the name of Tarnovskyy. He is a Ukrainian, I understand, and one hears so many worrisome reports these days about the corrupting influence of human dreck flushed from the former Soviet Union.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, uh, while your investigator is at it...”
Mortified to have somewhat openly steered a hired peeper toward closer incidental proximity to his wife’s racquet club associations and activities—Candice was forever gabbing on her phone about “Yanko”—Charles returned to his comforting duties as Executive Vice-President for Investor Relations:
P.S. To be frank, Cousin Gino, I strongly advise you and everyone you know to desist from consuming the unhealthy and rather disgusting fried slabs of pork fatback called lardo!



CHAPTER 5

At the Xpose gentlemen’s club— located in the basement of a tall, semi-new suburban office building — Henrietta had handed over her resume to the club manager, a cigar- chewing semi-older man who at first looked as dubious as Lero O’Rourke about the state of her “T-and-A development”; but then let her strip down to her underwear for an onstage audition. She had been a cheerleader in high school and last year at the Oklahoma Public Education Center, where the gals trained and worked out as pole dancers, an exercise not much different than playing on a schoolyard jungle gym.
After she’d done a few steps: Prance Spin, Carousel Spin and Body Wave... “Yeah, it might work,” the manager had said, taking an unlit cigar out of his mouth. “Lot of our gentlemen are re-living their college days and might like a shortish, uh, slim, girlish performer. Get yourself a ‘Betty Coed’ outfit at Naughty Nancy’s Nookstore — higher the heels, the better — and be here tonight by eight o’clock for facial make-up.”
So now—at eight-thirty—she stood in a crowded dancers’ dressing room in front of a full-length mirror. The outfit paid for by Lero was just a skimpy bikini; “collegiate” only by being what boosters of the Oklahoma State University Cowpokes called “the nation’s brightest orange”; and by a little black flap in front of her crotch with the word Pokes printed in also neon orange. The Lucite platform high-heels had been recommended by a Nookstore salesgal to make her legs look longer. With addition of sprayed-on glitter and an assigned stage name — “Sparkle” — the manager had declared her good to go, but...
“Take my advice, hon,” said a dark-haired, dark-skinned gal standing beside her in a white fur bikini. “Lose the flap. Most of the club’s gentlemen are Oilies who learned how to drill for black gold at OU. They’re Boomer Sooners, not likely inclined to stuff twenty-dollar bills into ‘Pokes’ panties.”
She introduced herself as Rachel a/k/a “Meghan”; said she had worked at Xpose for two years and commenced to offer more advice:
“Absolutely no touching, either initiated by you or tolerated. Don’t waste your time lap dancing for, or socializing with anyone who looks to be short of his mid to late thirties. Young ones are lousy tippers and apt to slobber. Gay guys are generous with compliments, but also cheap when it comes to stuffing cash. Look for a steady guy, but no dating outside the club until he has ponied up at least three grand over a period of not more than thirty days. Never forget: This ‘glitter’ won’t last forever; think long-term and score while you’ve got it.”
The cigar-chewing manager stuck his head through the door. “Tits up, ladies!” he bellowed. “On your heels!” The lively beat of a recorded old Steven Tyler song blasted into the dressing room, followed by...
♬She was a fast machine/ She kept her motor clean/ She was the best damn woman I had ever seen...♬
Following Rachel’s a/k/a Meghan’s lead, Henrietta strutted into the club showroom and onto its large, slightly elevated round stage set beneath a revolving overhead disco ball. Other gals followed and also took hold of floor-to-ceiling chrome poles.
♬She had the sightless eyes/ Telling me no lies/ Knockin’ me out with those American thighs...♬
From darkness surrounding three sides of the stage, invisible customers only clapped, but loudly. At a crowded semi-lit stand- up bar on the other side, others also clapped, except for one gentleman who hooted and hollered. As previously advised by the manager—to just “go with the flow”—she commenced to mainly just strike poses between brief dance steps in rhythm with the music.
♬ Working double time/ On the seduction line/ She was one of a kind/ And mine all mine...♬
In fleeting flashes of light reflected off the overhead glitter ball, she got only glimpses of men seated at the tables, and wondered: How was she to even recognize Harry DeGrasso from the picture Lero O’Rourke had showed her, much less “surveil” the “subject’s” activities and associations?
The music changed. On the pole next to her, Rachel lit a cigarette and did a Fireman Spin on her pole. Henrietta her own self pulsated her chest in a Shimmy Step; followed by a Wiggle-and-Flash. Then—as taught at the Oklahoma Public Education Center—imagining her own self as having hands full, trying to firmly shut a car door with a hip, then the other, she shifted her weight from foot to foot while rotating her pelvis in a Bump-and-Grind; and finished the routine with a Booty Shake. Applause was loud and long.
“That’ll be worth at least a hundred when we join the gentlemen,” said Rachel under her breath.
But about five minutes later, Henrietta broke the most important rule of pole dancing taught by her OPEC instructor.
♬We’ve been here too long/ Tryin’ to get along/ Pretending you’re oh so shy/ My temperature is running high...♬
She just couldn’t make herself “stay in the moment”. Zoned out, she moved and posed like a mechanical robot.
♬Do you wanna touch? (Yeah)/ Do you wanna touch me there? / Or do you just wanna stare?♬
Gazing mindlessly toward the semi-lit stand-up bar... All of a sudden, there he was: The redheaded...“Psst!” whispered Rachel, who had abandoned her pole and followed her gaze. “That nerdy red-bearded guy is Harry DeGrasso. He’s rich and stupid; just your type. His cousin is my mark. Follow me.”
Together, they headed toward a spot of stage-side darkness that Harry DeGrasso looked to be bound for.
“Hello, Handsome,” said “Meghan” to an actually handsome dark-haired older fella with facial scruff and semi-glazed eyes; setting at a table. “Meet Sparkle,” she then said to Harry, just arrived at the table and still standing. “I’ll bet you have a liking for blue-eyed strawberry blondes.”
“Not as much as I do,” said Rachel’s mark, who introduced his own self as Hunter, and more or less ordered Henrietta to set down in the chair closest to him; then peeled four or five twenty-dollar bills off a roll of cash, which she grabbed before he could stuff them into her bikini. “Harry prefers duskier female companionship,” he said. “Don’t you, cousin?”
Meghan, who might have been about a half-black gal, set across the table, glaring at Hunter.
Strained chit-chat over champagne drinks followed, until Hunter DeGrasso’s eye-phone buzzed. He took the call and after listening for several seconds: “Chill, Dad,” he said into the phone. “Check’s in the mail, so to speak.” After another pause, “Yeah, I’m at the gent’s club with Harry, who seems to be getting into trouble with a dark-haired beauty named ‘Meghan’.”
To Henrietta, the dark-eyed glare “Meghan” directed toward Hunter seemed to have changed from a hostile look along the lines of “What do you think you’re doing?” to an equally unfriendly one of “I know exactly what you’re up to.”



WEDNESDAY 10/11/19 GREASE MONKEY BUSINESS
GREEZERS STUCK LIKE GLUE? COMPANY EXECS HOLD FIRM TO PLANS

Abba Dabba Dabba:
In response to yesterday’s Monkey Business Report
concerning current status and plans for the future of the Greezers chain of lube shops, this monkey finds himself caught in the middle between emails from top officials of the chain’s parent company, Trinita Coal Oil & Tar Co. (OTC:TCT), to- wit:
“While it is true that our family company’s trial venture into fast food service may have been ill conceived in some fundamental respects,” writes Charles DeGrasso, Executive VP for Investor Relations, “be advised that your veiled suggestions regarding possible changes to our well established longterm ownership and management structure are utterly without foundation.
“Yes, at age 95 my dear mother, Nanette Carbone DeGrasso, has perhaps reached the limits of human endurance. Certainly she has earned the right to relax for the little time remaining to her. Be officially advised, however, that I who have been heir apparent for decades stand ready, eagerly willing and exceedingly able to take the Company helm at a moment’s notice. Indeed, assuring continued family control for continued creation of longterm shareholder value has been, and shall ever be, my raison d’etre. In short, the DeGrasso Family is not, and under my leadership shall never be for sale!”
In a somewhat different vein, Joe DeGrasso, Executive Vice-President for Sales & Marketing, writes:
“Your report on the roll-out of Greezers fast food service got it all wrong, Bozo. Sure, there were bound to be some gaffes in introducing Lardo to the American market; working out communications with our Ukrainian partner; nailing down fatback supplies; training staff, etc. All of that was expected, which is why we have so far tested operations in only fifty units, two per each of the continental United States. When complete first quarter sales are officially added up, you can take it from me as a DeGrasso: We will be cooking with grease!
“As for your cruel reference to the declining condition of our matriarch, yes, Auntie Nanette—God bless her—is on her last legs; and okay, maybe she has stayed too long at the party. Maybe it is past time to pass the torch. I’m a salesman; I always look on the bright side. What I see in the future is bright as hell brightness in a certain member of a new generation of DeGrassos. To those who say I may be losing my grip, I’ve got news for them: Joe DeGrasso is stillI greasing with a head full of steam!”
Reached for comment, a spokesman for Ms. Nanette Carbone DeGrasso said only that she was “disappointed’, without specifying whether the company and family matriarch was referring to roll-out of the Lardo concept or prospects for her succession.
In other lube biz news...



CHAPTER 6

Leaned back in the chair at his office desk, Lero opened the palm of his left hand and placed a push-pin on its side in the niche between stiffened index and middle fingers. He flicked his hand upward and slightly outward from his body, but... Damnit, the push-pin failed to stick into the acoustic tile ceiling above him.
The trick was to keep the wrist locked when flicking in order to achieve a spiraling as opposed to tumbling flight of the projectile; and was not an idle exercise. To the contrary, his regular early morning routine was aimed at stimulating the right cerebral lobe that controlled his left hand, and thereby undo the brain damage inflicted upon him in law school. He tried again with another push-pin and...bingo!
According to something he had read somewhere, a famous poet by the name of Archibald MacLeish had spent a lifetime on a psychiatrist’s couch trying to correct the mental disability resulting from his experience at Harvard Law School. For the time being, he himself could not afford a shrink, and so... Damnit, just as his newly hired assistant barged in, another push-pin failed to stick.
Without even looking for an empty chair — which would have been futile in any case—Henrietta took a small spiral-bound notebook from a jeans hip pocket and commenced to report on her surveillance of Harry DeGrasso’s associations and activities at the Xpose gentlemen’s club last night:
“The subject arrived at approximately 9:15,” she said, “and immediately joined his older cousin, Hunter DeGrasso. A co- worker by the name of Rachel a/k/a ‘Meghan’ and I also set down at the table. And though Rachel had previously identified Hunter as her ‘mark,’ the cousin steered her to the subject and gave me a hundred-dollar tip for my dancing. Minutes later, Hunter got a call on his eye-phone from someone he called ‘Dad’; told the caller that ‘a check was in the mail’ and that the subject looked to be ‘getting into trouble’ with Rachel, who he accurately described as a ‘dark-haired, dark-skinned beauty.’ Later on...”
As his young untrained assistant went on to tell that “Rachel a/k/a Meghan” had insisted that she stay overnight at her apartment—and from there launched into an account of girl talk that had gone on for no doubt hours—Lero began to see that “Hen” was utterly unable to see the forest for the trees that had distracted her.
“The dark-skinned beauty confided to me that she has been grooming Hunter DeGrasso to be, well, her groom, soon as his divorce from another gal is finalized. Whereas Harry is a dumb playboy with no future, according to Rachel, his older cousin is a smart lawyer who has put together a big deal for his daddy, now Executive Vice-President of the DeGrasso family grease company and fixing to be made top dog.”
Lero yawned, but the naive would-be private eye failed to detect the hint.
“Rachel was plenty het up that her intended groom had ‘pimped’ her to his worthless cousin, and said she intended to make it clear to Hunter that there was ‘a limit to what she would do to advance his and his daddy’s careers.’ So it looks to me like...”
Lero looked at his watch, but before he could cut short Hen’s irrelevant clucking, his phone buzzed.
The call was from the guy who had hired him on behalf of the DeGrasso family’s company—an R.C. Evans by name—who immediately started barking at him for being out of touch.
“Sorry,” he replied. “My phone battery ran down yesterday. But before you ask, not to worry, Mr. Evans. At the Sunningdale Racquet Club, I am on the subject like a dirty shirt; and my top assistant has his nighttime associations and activities at the Xpose gentlemen’s club covered like a blanket.”
“Forget about surveillance at the strip joint,” said Evans. “Our Executive Vice-President wants you to focus on the racquet club. In particular, you are to keep a sharp eye on the club pro, a Ukrainian named Tarnovskyy.”
“Okay.”
“And while you’re at it...”
After the grease company flunky delivered supplemental
instructions, Lero ended the call and got up from his desk. “Sorry, Hen,” he said. “The client wants to drop surveillance at Xpose, so I have to let you go. But don’t be discouraged. Heck, after, uh, leaving my first job at a law firm, I took a shot at politics — ran for State Senate — and discovered... Anyway, my advice is for you to work on development of left-handedness, and try again at a P.I. career when you’re ready.”
About thirty minutes later, only slightly tardy, he arrived by skateboard at the racquet club. Greezer Kamp Kids were assembled at one end of center court, watching a singles match between Harry DeGrasso and Yanko Tarnovskyy. With a sharp eye on the Ukrainian tennis pro, he sidled up to Harry’s assistant. In answer to him asking, she pointed to one of the women congregated on the Base Line Bar & Grill terrace— the same woman whose neck had been nuzzled yesterday by Tarnovskyy — and identified her as Mrs. DeGrasso. R.C. Evans had instructed him to not only keep a sharp eye on Tarnovskyy, but while he was at it, to also see to it that club staff treated Mrs. DeGrasso in a manner appropriate for her station as wife of an Executive VP. In other words, he—a lowly ball boy—was to bow and scrape in the old broad’s presence.
Harry’s aunt was up on her feet along with other members of the obviously lowballed “40-Love” bunch, clapping hands to applaud for...who and what? Tarnovskyy was standing at the net with hands on his hips after his forehand smash had landed at least ten feet beyond the opposite baseline. Glaring at Harry, he bellowed, “Well, what’s the call? In or out?!”
“Sorry,” Harry replied in a genuinely apologetic tone. “I thought...”
“Just make the calls, and be clear about it from now on! Okay?!”
Obviously put off form by the reprimand—containing a not so veiled accusation of unsportsmanlike conduct—DeGrasso double faulted his next three services—to further misdirected applause by the “40 Love” ladies — and lost the game.
Hmmm. As Tarnovskyy proceeded to bound to and fro after his own repeatedly undeclared foot faults, Lero recalled a college course that had included a book written by a British expert named Stephen Potter. The title was Gamesmanship: How to Win Without Actually Cheating. Its main point was that the essence of winning in any human endeavor was to “break flow,” to disrupt the norm.
As put by Potter, “The first muscle tensed is the first point lost.” Or maybe the first point won. Anyway, in one dramatized chapter an astute gamesman had employed the exact same gambit in a tennis match that Tarnovskyy had used against Harry: By questioning his opponent’s implied call of an obvious out-of-bounds shot, the gamesman had no doubt planted in Harry’s mind an unsettling notion that he was somehow guilty of having done something wrong.
And now, as Harry awkwardly stumbled to conclusion of the match—and his humiliation at the hands of a smirking Yanko — Lero noticed that the tennis balls they had been using seemed to be a slightly faded shade of neon yellow.
“Better luck next time, boy,” the Ukrainian pro said to Harry as they walked off the court, “not that it do you any good against Yanko Tarnovskyy. Haw, haw, haw.”
Lero picked up a stray ball that Tarnovsky y had not retrieved. It looked like a standard, though oldish Dunlop ATP Championship ball, but felt slightly soft. He threw it to the ground and...The ball did not have a normal bounce. It would have played slower than a regular Dunlop ATP, and likely would have thrown the younger, more fit Harry DeGrasso off-stride. With the goods on Yanko in hand, he followed the unsporting “gamesman” toward the bar & grill, and sure enough . .
“Gimme that,” said the cheater, grabbing the evidence from Lero’s hand. “No one grope my Ukrainian balls without personal invitation, haw, haw, haw.”
To his amazement, the “40-Love” ladies — including Harry’s aunt, for crying out loud — howled with laughter.

"GREEZERS: A Tale of Establishment's Decline and Fall" by Simon Plaster



TUESDAY 10/10/19 GREASE MONKEY BUSINESS
GREEZERS ON SLIPPERY SLOPE? “LARDO” TRIALS UNIMPRESS

Abba Dabba Dabba:
Introduction of fast food service at fifty units of the
Greezers chain of auto lube shops seems to have gotten off to a disappointing start. According to most observers, “Lardo” additions—offering deep-fried pork fatback—have so far miserably failed to match the sizzle generated by last year’s marriage of Popeye’s fried chicken and Olive Oyl lube outlets.
“We made a limited roll-out of the Lardo concept in order to work out kinks in our joint venture with UK Food Enterprises, including language barriers,” says Joe DeGrasso, Executive VP for Sales & Marketing at Greezers parent - Trinita Coal Oil & Tar Co. (OTC:TCT) - referring to the company’s Ukrainian partner. “Olive Oyl and Popeye are just lined up next to each other in separate single beds. At Greezers the eating and lubing functions are being completely wedded for what I call a ‘lubricious’ customer experience.”
For decades most independent lube shop operators—led by Jiffy Lube, Grease Monkey (no relation), Kwik Kar and Dip Stix—have sought increased sales and profitability by continuously adding franchised units, products, services, and SPEED. Not Greezers. Under the iron-fisted rule of Ms. Nanette Carbone DeGrasso, the Oklahoma City based lube shop chain—has been set in its ways of doing business for fifty years. Since its initial growth spurt prior to elimination of grease joints in cars during the 1970s, the family controlled company has added only about two dozen Greezers units.
Indeed, that Ms. DeGrasso approved the Lardo joint venture with a Ukrainian partner six months ago startled industry watchers, leading to widespread speculation that the 95-year- old matriarch might be loosening her grip in anticipation of finally handing control to a successor, or even contemplating sale of the company.
Many say finding a capable successor to Ms. DeGrasso within the family gene pool would be unlikely if not impossible. On the other hand, with annual sales of perhaps up to $1 billion — and modest corporate debt — the Greezers lube shop chain would be a tempting dish of “fatback” in the hungry eyes of numerous Wall Street wolves.
Either way, the question is this: Will the Greezers empire survive?
In other lube biz news...



CHAPTER 1

Henrietta stood on a downtown Oklahoma City sidewalk, confused as a goat staring at signs wrote in Spanish.
Across the street, JAILBREAK GETAWAY CAR was painted on the side of a bullet-riddled black jalopy parked in a lane of what looked to have once been a filling station. On top of the one-story building set diagonally across a corner lot, a large sign said GOOD BUDDY BAIL BONDS. After checking the address listed on an Employment Opportunities want ad clipped out of the morning paper, she crossed the street, went into the bail bonds office and — as directed by a gal at a desk — followed a narrow hallway to its dead end. There, a sign painted on a frosted glass door panel said—not ACE Private Investigation Agency—only Leroy E. O’Rourke, Esquire; and below that, Attorney at Law.
Inside a cluttered office, a youngish fella was leaned back in a chair, bare feet on a desk, gazing upward as though in deep thought. She followed his gaze and...What in tarnation? There must have been fifteen or twenty push-pins stuck into the ceiling above the desk. To announce her arrival, she cleared her throat. Looking downright startled, the fella got up from the desk. In addition to having no shoes or even socks on, his wearing of cut-off chinos and a faded gray tee-shirt —that seemed to be a souvenir from a long-ago punk rock concert—failed to fit her image of a lawyer, or “ACE” private investigator.
He was awful tall, and to judge by the two or three steps he made toward her, seemed unusually lanky and loose-jointed.
“Sorry,” he said, with a toothy grin and extended hand. “Out late last night and...” As he looked around, maybe for an empty seat to offer, she got a notion he had slept on the office’s tattered divan. “Leroy O’Rourke,” he said after giving up any such search for available seating. “What can I do for you, Miss...?”
She handed over the Employment Opportunities ad and — with Leroy O’Rourke looking her up and down like her Grandma O’Hara sizing up a fryer chicken for Sunday supper—went to telling her qualifications for getting hired on as “Female Assistant to Private Investigator”.
For ten years after graduating from high school, she had worked for weekly newspapers in her little ol’ hometown of Henryetta, Oklahoma—that she was originally named for—and in Oklahoma City. She had decided to give up on a career in lowdown journalism, but much of her prior reporting had involved investigation of various mysterious goings-on. And recently—just over a week ago during a visit to her little ‘ol hometown—she had semi-accidentally got hired by a wealthy woman who told her that a newborn delivered to her doorstep was an impostor who had been switched with a real heir by someone. Though not at first understanding that the old woman was talking about not a “grandchild” but a dog, she had solved the case and decided to become a full-fledged private detective.
“No offense, but the gig calls for more, uh, more ‘developed’ T-and-A,” said the barefoot attorney at law. “On the other hand...”
Henrietta stomped a foot.
“ ...can you dance? And would you mind appearing on-stage, not totally nude, but...”
As Leroy O’Rourke turned around and stooped to remove some stuff from a chair — including a battered yellow skateboard inscribed Born to Run in red— she resisted an urge to fetch a foot up against his backside.
He raised up, offered her the emptied chair, re-took his own seat behind the desk, and commenced to explain that a “functionary” of a major family-owned business had hired him to discreetly investigate the activities and associations of a certain family member. “The subject’s name is Harry DeGrasso, a thirty-five-year-old bachelor like me, but apparently naive, gullible, and possibly susceptible to the influence of bad actors. Based on various online rumors, I have a hunch the subject is under consideration for major advancement in the family business currently headed by his aged grandmother.”
To “surveil” the “subject”, he had gotten a job at a Sunningdale Racquet Club, where Harry DeGrasso hung out on a daily basis; and two days ago had detected a possibly unsavory association. Complicating the assignment, however, was that Harry was an enthusiastic playboy who hung out at multiple clubs, recently including a favorite “gentlemen’s club” called Xpose.
“On the off chance of detecting any unsavory nighttime associations or activities in play inside the gent’s club, I really should surveil the subject there, Miss...Call me Lero,” he said, “and I’ll call you Hen, okay? But Harry might spot me doubling- up on him; become suspicious; and to tell the truth...I play electric guitar in a garage band, and have better late-night things to do. So I need a female assistant to...”
He paused to run a hand through his tousled hair and—looking semi-embarrassed—“Xpose is really a pseudo gentlemen’s club, reputed to cater to a better class of clientele,” he said. “Mainly the ‘hostesses’ dance a little. Uh, flirt with customers. And pose for pictures...not completely nude. There is no prostitution allowed, at least none of the illegal variety. So...” “Lero” gave her a dubious look.
“...if you could somehow pretty-up yourself and get a job at
Xpose, well, on top of what you make there — mainly tips — my client will pay two hundred dollars a night.”
Hmmm. Henrietta looked around the office. Hanging on a wall was a framed navy blue tee-shirt with YALE imprinted on it above two crossed long-handled oars. Also a black-and- white caricature picture of Bugs Bunny that—except for the ears—semi-resembled the semi-bucktoothed attorney at law his own self. Also an old rock concert poster featuring someone called Sid Vicious and The Sex Pistols. No lawyer license was in sight.
A shelf was occupied by a single book titled The Hero’s Journey by a Joseph Campbell.
The office could have been the bedroom of a teenaged boy by the look of it; and in fact Leroy “Lero” O’Rourke—despite traces of gray in his hair and crow’s feet on the edges of his merry brown eyes—had a boyish manner about him that was semi-charming. As was thought of making two hundred dollars a night, plus tips.
“I’ll do it,” said Henrietta. “I’ll ‘pretty-up’ my own self; go get a job at that gentlemen’s club; and privately detect who and what might be corrupting the gullible playboy.”



CHAPTER 2

Driving his Company-owned Range Rover onto the downslope of an interstate highway overpass connecting sections of north and south Oklahoma City, Joe DeGrasso’s usual upbeat attitude turned to downbeat. It was one of those Pablo’s-dog sort of reactions that he always experienced immediately prior to audiences with Aunt Nanette.
Known as simply “The Boss” to most who dealt with her and as “Her Majesty” to others, he himself thought of the 95-year- old family matriarch as a “Mother Superior Stigmata” of Blues Brothers movie fame. Though she had not actually rapped his knuckles with a ruler recently, the strict task mistress still almost always ended their meetings by saying something to the effect of how it saddened her that he was such a disappointment.
Damnit, he was not a schoolboy! He himself was seventy-five years of age — still fit as a fiddle; still the well liked and respected Executive Vice-President in charge of Sales & Marketing for the DeGrasso family’s lube shop business — old enough to remember “Auntie Nan” as once jolly, fat, and merely mortal.
His aunt’s transformation to chronically irritable scrawny saint had begun on a memorable day: August 10,1960. During a reunion in the family’s ancestral hometown of Krebs, Oklahoma, her husband Filippo—probably drunk on wine—met his Maker while on a sentimental visit into a nearby abandoned coal mine that suddenly flooded with thick oily liquid when he — or someone—in fact kicked a bucket of something that set off an explosion.
Also lost in the disaster was her father, Rico Carbone; her father-in-law, Antonio DeGrasso; and Joe’s grandfather, “Big Joe” DeGrasso; the three founders of Trinita Coal Oil & Tar Company. Only Brother Bernardo—Aunt Nanette’s actual brother and a playboy later turned priest-turned-monk—had miraculously crawled out the the inferno, blackened and greasy but otherwise unscathed.
From that day onward, his aunt — as heiress to all of the stock held by her father-in-law and husband, plus a third of shares owned by her father —had run the Company and its chain of lube shops with the iron will of a Catholic boys school headmistress, without ever leaving the house she had previously shared with her husband. Nor had Brother Bernardo ever left her side as trusted advisor since graduating from a seminary three or four years after his close call. All of which made it extremely inconvenient and unnecessarily tedious for a busy company executive such as himself to...
Realizing he had arrived at what was effectively company headquarters—a dilapidated three-story frame house in a now somewhat rundown area known as Capitol Hill—Joe’s spirits descended deeper into dread. With head down, he climbed steep sidewalk steps toward a towering front-lawn statue of Saint Lorenzo. His aunt was devoted to the patron saint of various groups of losers, and—by costly Papal decree—patron saint of Trinita Coal Oil & Tar, parent company of the Greezers chain. Though a penny-pincher in company business matters, she was charitable to a fault toward undeserving others.
The “Mother Superior” had summoned him to complain about start-up fast food sales at select Greezer units, he suspected. Combining fast food service with lube shop operations had been, well, not exactly his idea. His son, Hunter, an entrepreneurial lawyer, had brought the concept to him, together with a ready- made big deal to finance its execution. One of his son’s clients, a Ukrainian enterprise, was eager to enter into a joint venture with an American retailer for introduction of salo—strips of pork fatback cured in salt and flavored with paprika—into the U.S. market. Great idea, but not one that ever would have worked as initially presented.
Because Aunt Nanette had long-since lost all interest in food other than bowls of thin gruel for breakfast and at day’s end, the internal sell would have been impossible for anyone but himself to pull off. Only he had once been close enough to the now emaciated old woman to remember her prior fondness—bordering on addiction—for Lardo di Colonnata: Thinly sliced strips of fatback cured with herbs and spices—always including rosemary — traditionally served as antipasto.
Surprisingly, Brother Bernardo had readily endorsed the proposition, while at the same time insisting that one of the trial installations be made in a nearby Greezers unit where he could “keep an eye on the cash register”.
As usual, the front door to the house was opened by the berobed old monk — now stooped, bespectacled, bald except for strands of white hair growing here and there from his scalp, ears and nose—who also as usual only silently nodded a greeting. Leading him into a dreary hallway dimly illuminated by candles burning twenty-four hours a day in slavish devotion to memory of the long dead Filippo, the old cleric mumbled to himself. The odor of incense filled the air. Loud semi-musical church chanting came from somewhere.
♬Day of wrath and doom impending/ David’s word with Sibyl’s blending/ Heaven and earth in ashes ending...♬
Above a heavy oaken door, a white marble figure of Jesus hung on a coal-black cross.
♬Oh, what fear man’s bosom rendeth/ When from heaven the Judge descendeth / On whose sentence all dependeth...♬
The door opened to an inner sanctum adorned with a large stained glass depiction of the biblical loaves-and-fishes picnic miracle. At a table covered with a black cloth, his wizened Aunt Nanette—also covered in black cloth—sat in typical straight- backed pose on a simple wooden though throne-like chair; fiddling as always with rosary beads; her coal-black eyes darting
♬When the Judge his seat attaineth/ And each hidden deed arraigneth/ Nothing unavenged remaineth...♬
left and right.
Despite himself, Joe bowed his head; then barely managed to ward off an impulse to kneel and kiss one of the several rings on both of the Mother Superior’s hands.
♬What shall I, frail man, be pleading?/ Who for me be interceding?/ When the just are mercy needing...♬
Brother Bernardo closed the door and took his usual place in a darkened corner, from where he hovered like an especially attentive restaurant waiter.
Moments after Joe himself sat down at the table, his aunt said, “You’re late. Just like your father, Sam DeGrasso: Always ten minutes late and a dollar short.” Interpreting her typically stinging remark as heavy-handed segue to complaint about slow Lardo start-up sales, he prepared to offer a list of excuses, but...
“How goes Harry’s progress?” she asked.
“Harry?”
“My grandson, your nephew, whom I believe is assigned to you for training in sales and marketing.”
“Harry, oh yes; he’s well liked and progressing nicely under my wing. Makes a good appearance in the business world. The man who creates personal interest is the man...is the, yeah, he’s the guy who gets ahead. I’ve promoted the lad to Vice-President of Employee Relations, with responsibility for maintaining company morale, building team spirit, ginning up a winning staff attitude. Though underpaid, a man who is treated with respect will be...will be...”
“Yes, yes, ‘happy in his work’. I saw the movie. But Harry is now thirty-five, hardly a ‘lad’. At his age, I myself was running the company.”
“Not to worry, Auntie; not about young Harry. I see him in ten to fifteen years as fully trained and almost ready to take over for me.”
“Perhaps; though I regret to say that in the case of Charles, too much time spent in ’training’ seems to have been counter- productive.”
Joe’s ears perked up. He had been inclined to dismiss rumors that “Her Majesty” was finally contemplating retirement despite mounting evidence that her only son and presumed heir, Charles, was woefully inadequate for the job of leading the Company onward and upward. And young Harry was a mindless playboy. Was she thinking of skipping past Charles? Would she perhaps skip sideways onto his branch of the family tree?
“Charles is like a cousin...I mean to say, he is a cousin, but not like a cousin; more like a brother to me,” he said of his dimwitted relative, “but... You see, Auntie, Charlie is liked, but sad to say, not well liked. His only responsibilities have been limited to the cut-and-dried staff work of tending to ‘Investor Relations’ involving only our unimportant family shareholders. To put it bluntly, Aunt Nan, unlike yours truly, Charlie is just not a salesman. I myself—as Executive Vice-President for Sales & Marketing—am already practically running all the important...”
“You are ‘practically’ full of it, just like your father. You...and Charles too—it saddens me to say—are a disappointing pair, and now too old to redeem yourselves. Harry, on the other hand...”
“Harry can’t carry my boy Hunter’s jockstrap,” Joe blurted. “If brought back into the company as a breath of fresh air, Hunter, after three or four years of orientation under my wing...”
“From what I hear, your forty-nine-year-old ‘boy’ is well into what appears to be a permanent mid-life crisis, to put it kindly. Got kicked out of honorary membership in the Knights of Columbus for ‘substance abuse’ and...”
“The Grand Knight is a son of a bitch who had it in for Hunter.”
“...being divorced by his long-suffering wife based on his serial adulteries and...”
“Hunter is an attractive guy that the wife never deserved; I said so from the git-go.”
“...refuses to pay child support, and yet...”
“The boy’s law practice is going through a rough patch.” “...runs up credit card debt on tawdry activities and associations.”
“It’s called networking, damnit! Hunter gets around. He is... he is very well liked. And let’s not forget that it was Hunter who put together the Lardo joint venture, under which the Ukrainians put up all the money and we get ten percent of the take. The potential is unlimited. With lube sales chronically flat, at best, Hunter’s big deal could be the company’s salvation.”
“I was about to get to that,” said the old woman, furiously fiddling with the rosary as though it were an abacus. Brother Bernardo stepped out of shadow with a sheet of paper and her reader glasses in hand. Mother Stigmata pushed back her Widow’s Weeds. “These early sales reports—to the extent they are even vaguely understandable—are disappointing, to say the least.”
The old bat took off the glasses; gave him an especially stern Mother Superior look; and reached for...not a ruler, thank God. “Bernie,” she croaked, “where is that so-called menu? When I approved the joint venture, I did so without being told the Lardo di Colonnati would be fried, for Christ’s sake!”
“A high-priced consultant staged focus groups and confirmed my view that lube shop customers strongly prefer fried fast food,” Joe patiently explained. “It’s too early in our trial roll-out to judge...”
“I want more complete sales reports put on this table pronto,” said The Boss. “It saddens me to say it, Joe, but you and your son are such disappointments.”
Head down, Joe slunk from the room and into the dreary hallway, silently cursing Hunter for his many miscues. His son had a lot on the ball; unfortunately not always including a sharp eye, damnit!
♬With Thy sheep a place provide me/ From the goats afar divide me/ To Thy right hand do Thou guide me...♬



CHAPTER 3

Lero ducked behind a light pole adjacent to the outdoor tennis courts of the Sunningdale Racquet Club. Across the way, a group of possibly still middle-aged women — The 40-Love Bunch printed in pink on their all-white tennis outfits — was gathered at the club’s open-air Base Line Bar & Grill; drinking midday cocktails and being regaled by the club pro, Yanko Tarnovskyy.
He recognized one of the women — a Bernice nee Morrison—ex-wife of a former client: once-wealthy oil man, Morris Morrison, who had been referred to him by a mutual acquaintance. The couple had already semi-amicably agreed to part ways, but were quibbling over split of the marital “pots- and-pans”, so to speak. It was the wife’s obnoxious attorney who made a federal case out of what should have been a routine matter. Morris had finally told him to throw the kitchen sink at her.
Lero peeked from behind the pole. Yeah, it was her alright; now rubbing lotion on Tarnovskyy’s deeply tanned shaved head and loudly laughing.
What was it that made the gross middle-aged Ukrainian tennis pro so attractive to women? Tarnovskyy had a big nose and wore an unclean, probably dyed, jet black mustache. He was not exactly fat; more what might be described as barrel-bellied as well as barrel-chested, with spindly legs that looked like they might have once belonged to someone else and been grafted onto him. On the other hand, the pro was semi-quick on his feet and a clever player, who in a thick Slavic accent boasted of having been the doubles partner of a notable Ukrainian star of the past, when both represented the Soviet Union. Now he seemed to be more of an “Elvis impersonator” sort of entertainer than...
“Stop it, Yanko!” the ex-Mrs. Morrison shrieked. “I’m ticklish.”
No, Yanko was not attractive. It was just that vulnerable past- their-prime women like Bernice...Hard to believe, but in the course of taking her deposition and otherwise looking into the dowdy Mrs. Morrison’s financial affairs, he’d stumbled onto evidence of her multiple illicit sexual affairs during fifteen years of marriage to Morris. With the pool boy. With her hairdresser. With their marriage counselor, for crying out loud. She deserved not a single pot or pan, but...
Morris was cruising at sea on the deadline date for a critical court filing in the case and ... Lero ground his teeth. A couple of years earlier he had been severely burned—fired by a law firm, actually—for carelessly failing to comply with a similar procedural technicality of appearing in court on a certain date. So he had taken it upon himself to formally accuse his client’s unfaithful spouse with documented adulteries. Unfortunately, a courthouse reporter for the local newspaper picked-up on the story and...
The “40-Love” gaggle was scattering. Tarnovsky was nuzzling the neck of another woman with his nose and mustache, as Bernice—looking crestfallen—stood nearby. Lero felt a pang of guilt, but...Oh well, he had a new career to think about and could not afford to mess it up.
A “Greezers Kids Kamp” was in progress. Children of the lube shop chain’s employees — virtually all Hispanic — had been swatting tennis balls here and there under the loose supervision of Harry DeGrasso, redheaded and redbearded junior executive of his family’s company, with help from a nondescript female assistant. Now the kampers were gathered at picnic tables off to the side of the courts, having lunch. As Lero went about scooping up dozens of balls, he eyed a lippy fat kid he had previously fingered as likely a bad actor. After seeing Harry take off his watch and put it on a table napkin, the kid had moved over next to him and...yep, wrapped the watch in the napkin and slunk behind a nearby bush.
He rushed to the scene of the crime. “Excuse me, ‘Kamp Kounselor’,” he said to Harry DeGrasso, pointing a finger toward the bush. “I’ve got a hunch that fat kid you’ve been hanging out with just now stole your watch.”
DeGrasso looked down at his bare wrist. Together they crept toward the bush. The fat kid looked up to them like the proverbial cat caught eating a canary, or—more precisely—like a fat kid caught eating a greasy snack. “Here’s your watch, Harry,” said the assistant, who had followed them. “You put it down on the picnic table next to the plate of lardo.”
Heck.
“Say, aren’t you ‘Hero’ O’Rourke,” said DeGrasso, “the guy who made that miraculous catch to win the state high school football championship in...It was 2002. I was there, home from boarding school for Christmas. It’s an honor to shake your hand,” he said, extending his. “I’m Harry DeGrasso.”
“2002 was a long time ago,” Lero replied. “I now go by just Lero, or just Ro to friends.”
“Hey, that’s my cousin over there,” said his apparently longtime admirer, pointing to a dark-haired guy who had sat down at a bar-and-grill table with Yanko Tarnovskyy. “Meeting the great Hero O’Rourke face-to-face would make Hunter’s day.”
As they approached the table, Harry referred to his boss — an “Uncle Joe”—as Executive VP of the family-owned company and his cousin’s father. Arriving at the table...“need to gin-up sales,” the cousin named Hunter was saying to the tennis pro. “Yeah, nice to meet you,” he said to the great “Hero O’Rourke” without offering a handshake. “Kinda busy right now, Harry. See you tonight at the, uh, other place.”
Retreating from the Base Line Bar & Grill, Harry DeGrasso—sort of like a sports writer doing a “Where Are They Now” article — commenced to quiz him about “The Catch” and its aftermath.
Just dumb luck, he explained for the thousandth time over the past eighteen years; and that was true. With his team, the Mount Saint Mary Rockets, losing by five points with only seconds left to play, he had been thinking about something else—making out with a girlfriend after the game, to be precise—when the ball suddenly dropped in his outstretched arms.
“You were a true hero, and no doubt went on to...”
Yes, he had gone on to college. A booster had seen at least one of the many TV replays of “The Catch” and talked his alma mater, Harvard, into giving him a scholarship.
“May I call you just Ro?” said Harry. But then, another question...
No, he had never again been a “hero” at anything. After giving up football due to injuries, he had been recruited to join the Harvard crew because of his long arms and legs. His only “trophy”—won when a first-team oarsman got sick minutes before a race — was the sweaty shirt of a losing Yale opponent.
“Oh.”
Yeah, he had “voluntarily” returned to Oklahoma City, he next confessed; and had worked for a couple of years at a law firm, routinely processing mortgage foreclosures until...
“Are you a member of the club?” said Harry—traditionally donned in all-white — eyeing his untraditional all-gray duds for a moment before continuing to grill.
Lero answered that upon realizing he was not cut out for tedious paper-pushing legal work, he had hung out his own shingle and become a struggling independent trial lawyer.
“OMG!” said Harry Degrasso, stepping back a peg. “You became that guy, the doofus of a lawyer who screwed-up that divorce case!”
Leroy looked back toward the racquet club’s bar-and-grill. Yanko Tarnovskyy, standing alone—with hands on his broad hips, spindly legs apart—glared at him. Had Bernice nee Morrison spotted him? If so...Well, as it turned out, on the court filing deadline for their divorce case the Morrisons had been at sea together on a romantic cruise, during which they had forgiven each other for mutual infidelity and renewed their wedding vows. Back on shore, however, graphic newspaper reports taken from his court filing had spoiled the mood, so to speak. Morris hired a new lawyer and cast Bernice from the marital bed to where she was now obviously vulnerable to being preyed upon by the likes of...
“Hey, ‘Hero’!” Tarnovskyy bellowed. “Scoop the balls and quit bothering the members!”
Hmmm. Leroy had a hunch it might be Harry’s association with the Ukrainian tennis pro—not with any of the Greezers Kamp Kids—that had the DeGrasso family concerned about his racquet club associations and activities.

Review by Dianne Woodman, Bestsellers World

Wind: A Tragicomedic Tale of Trials & Errors is an entertaining book of political and social satire that focuses on the conflict between religious beliefs and science, along with human rights issues. The chapters are split into sections that coincide with the six days of the biblical account of creation. Genesis 1 has been assigned as part of the reading material for a western literature course at the Oklahoma Public Education Center (OPEC) in Oklahoma City. Should this be allowed or is it unconstitutional? Are the Censorship threats from the American Civil Liberties Union a real concern?

The story centers around Henrietta Hebert, Professor Owen Hatteras, Lawrence Farrell, and William B. Ryan, although all of the supporting characters play essential roles. Henrietta wants to rejuvenate her journalism career by furthering her education. She enrolls at OPEC and takes on the task of writing for the school newspaper under the tutelage of Professor Hatteras. Owen adamantly disagrees with the story of biblical creation but changes his stance in pursuit of his own agenda which ties into the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. Farrell and Ryan, candidates in a District Attorney’s race, are on opposite ends of the political spectrum when it comes to whether or not Genesis 1 being assigned as reading material in a public school violates the constitution.

Diametrically opposing viewpoints of a highly controversial issue are deftly presented in a skillful fashion by Simon Plaster. He wonderfully depicts the extreme variance among people’s beliefs in delightful and serious ways that capture readers’ attention. The complex and intriguing commentary keeps readers invested in following the story to the end. Readers will appreciate that Plaster does not skew his writing toward a particular side in the never-ending dispute on whether or not the teaching of creationism violates the First Amendment’s free speech clause. Plaster also includes interesting views about famous books and their possible ties to social issues, such as feminism and populism. In particular, I appreciate Plaster’s artfulness, which includes bold musical notation, of illustrating the reactions of a church congregation and protestors on both sides of the heated debate.

Laugh out loud moments, clever word play, sardonic comments, ambiguous phrases, similes, metaphors, perseverance in the face of adversity, biblical quotes to back up beliefs, and sharp-witted jokes directed at politicians add to the overall appeal of this ingeniously titled riveting satire. Plaster keeps the tension steadily building until it culminates into a momentous and contentious public event that leads to a thought-provoking ending.

BROKLA - reviewed by Amy Lignor for Feathered Quill, May 2019

We begin with the ever-vigilant—and slightly angered by the establishment when it comes to granting her a story that will win her the Pulitzer—reporter by the name of Henrietta. For those who have been reading this series, leap for joy that this amazing female protagonist is back and better than ever. For those not following Henrietta, the heck with you. No, just kidding, jump on board so you don’t miss this one!

From a small town, she is pure Oklahoman when it comes to her spirit and desire to “be all that she can be” in the journalistic world. This time around, she is filled with glee, considering that her boss, Nigel Fleetwood, at the local newspaper she works at – SCENE – has offered her what she feels is a juicy assignment, one that will perhaps bring her the fame she has longed for all this time. Readers sit beside Henrietta at a Town Hall Lecture Series (one that will bring back memories for all small-towners, like myself). Her assignment? She is to cover the Lecture Series and soon finds herself delving into the life of a “top secret” colonel who has a resume of monumental proportions. We’re talking about a “think tank” expert from a foreign government who’s using his time in the ‘spotlight’ to speak about a variety of subjects that include prophesies about how the United States will fare in the future. But he is not the only one Henrietta meets up with. Sitting at the table with Colonel Top Secret is Agent X; his job is to interpret the horrendous and dastardly predictions that this foreign military leader is voicing.

We proceed on a trip of monumental (and extremely humorous) proportions, as the author—through his memorable cast of characters—takes on a great deal of issues and makes them not only more interesting, but also sheds new light on points of view that need to be heard more often. To name a few: the U.S. headlines that have brought about controversy since Trump has taken office; a possible secession of one pretty large state that would make the U.S. map look more than a bit ridiculous if it were to happen; and even sports subjects, such as the intense rivalry between the Lone Star State and Oklahoma when it comes to their shared passion of football.

From Henrietta’s never-ending fight to be the best at what she does, to the never-ending Sooner fight song which is prevalent in this tale, every “battle” Simon Plaster takes on makes you want to stand up and salute. Webster’s defines satire as a “trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm to expose and discredit vice or folly.” Some reviewers, readers, and others call Simon’s work satirical. I believe that doesn’t fully fit the bill. For me, there are authors who are so good at what they do they have become kings or queens in their specific niche (i.e., the ultimate King in the realm of horror). When it comes to Simon Plaster, to me, he has become the King of satire, and no one should miss a word of it.

Quill says: Sarcasm (done well) equals a happy life. By reading the unforgettable Henrietta’s stories, you are on the right path to absolute happiness.

Link : https://featheredquill.com/brokla-a-t...