Chapter 37 No One Stops Dirty Pete
No One Stops Dirty Pete
Dirty Pete’s pre-rolls wuz scattered across the coffee table with the yearbooks, and Big Mikey’s mom was out, so everyone was smoking and they were so, so stoned.
They’d cracked a window in the kitchen but there was no way the house wouldn’t reek like skunk weed by the time she got home but who gave a fuck, they’d be too high to care, and what was she gonna do anyways, get all high and moral when she was always out giving up ass?
Taz spun his phone nervously on his knee. They’d just hung up with Manny and man did Manny have his panties in a knot.
“‘We got the cameras,’” Finn-Finn said. “‘We got the dicks.’” He slapped B-Roll’s leg. “That’s some funny shit, man. Funny shit.”
Finn-Finn’d bought, like, all the Corn Nuts for a taste test, so the bags were lined up next to the pre-rolls.
They were drinking triple sec ’cuz it’s all Mikey’s mom had in the cabinet and it tasted like the love child of an apricot and an orange.
Gross as fuck, especially outta paper Dixie cups, but it’s what they had except for NyQuil Cold & Flu and that shit supercharged Taz’s clonidine in a way that was seriously no bueno.
“Barbecue, man.” Mikey was chewing with his mouth open, had bits of Corn Nuts in his beard. “No question.”
“Barbecue tastes like BO smells,” B-Roll said. “Jalapeno Cheddar all the way.”
Mikey said, “We can go straight to RedLite with our content.” Content. He liked acting all professional. “Set up our own account and shit. Can’t we, Taz Devil Man?”
Taz had looked into it. It’d be a pain to take over from Manny but he knew how.
Set up vendor account and reg, route identity verifications through disposable emails, deal with commission fees and integration capabilities.
He’d cut the vids in Adobe Premiere Pro, could cycle thirty-day free trials through anonymous Simon Mall gift cards to dodge having to pay for it.
Technical specs for the upload would be easy AF ’cuz no one gave a shit if porn was shot on a potato or filmed in 8K.
Payments could go through VenSend and they’d split up the cash.
All they had to do was keep the content flowing.
But the thing was? He didn’t want to. Didn’t want to go through with it. Not since Blanca and B-Roll. He didn’t know what was happening to him. In this world? Getting soft was not an option.
He said, “Yuh.”
They had the stack of torn-out yearbook pages with the product circled, Blanca from Forest Hills peering out from the top.
It was like she was looking right at Taz.
B-Roll had her lined up for Friday night still.
She was so pretty in her school picture with that sweet smile and Taz’s brain glitched to—
—Other Blanca, Third-Grade Blanca lying next to him on her stomach, rubber band at full draw, ready to snap some army men off their shoeboxes, and she smiles at him and he smiles at her, and she leans over and kisses his cheek, and they’re kids really, just kids, and he feels—
—he felt … He doesn’t know what he—
“We worried?” Finn-Finn said. “We worried ’bout this Manny shit?”
“Nah,” B-Roll said. He was playing Kings of Karnage with the volume low and he was shooting up motherfuckers and they did that blood-splat-on-the-camera-lens thing, which was cool. “Bring it, bitches.”
“The scary fucking friend, though. What about him? What about him?”
Mikey snorted. “Scary to Manny. Manny’s a pussy. Like, one step from a gray suit.”
Taz’s phone lit up with notifications—bink bink bink—all the shiny little apps tallying and tallying, 27,238 unread emails, three hundred something texts, and the socials all blinking and chiming, numbers hanging off every icon like Christmas ornaments.
But he couldn’t focus. Not with Blanca looking up at him.
She had a six-year-old sister she looked after. Fucked-up parents with marriage therapy on Friday nights. She did homework and shit.
“I think we should pass on this Blanca chick. Not worth it.” Taz was shocked that he’d spoken. The words were out there now, floating in the air like in a cartoon.
“The fuck, Taz? The fuck?” Finn-Finn said. “She’s perfect.”
“I’m starting to think you like this little bitch,” B-Roll said. “Starting to think we gotta worry about you, little man.”
“Nah, nah. Fuck that.” Taz was shaking his head too hard, like a little kid. “Just thinking business plan. We got plenty of White On Brown already and—”
Mikey tossed another handful into his mouth. “Ranch. Ranch is solid, too. Sometimes you gotta stick to the classics.”
“Mexican Street Corn,” Finn-Finn said. “Duh.”
Now a Kings of Karnage commercial was rolling on Taz’s phone and it was weird seeing it here while B-Roll played it out there, like worlds colliding and shit, which is how it felt inside Taz’s chest with the Blancas.
“Mexican Street Corn’s outta bounds,” Mikey said. “We’re going with the classic suite. You can have Chile Picante con Limón”—he brought a shitty accent hard, which cracked them up—“but Mexican Street Corn’s, like, a specialty flavor.”
“Yeah, fag,” B-Roll said. “No specialty flavors.”
Taz needed to get outta his head, away from Blanca.
He needed to get numb. He toked deep, held the smoke in his lungs.
His vision was getting wobbly at the edges and he couldn’t remember if he’d not taken Adderall or taken it twice but he figured the former so he blew out the smoke, popped another, washed it down with triple sec syrup.
“Wha’oud we do anyhow?” His words were slurry. “’Bout th’ Manny thing.”
B-Roll fired and fired, fingers jamming on the remote, grenades flying, jaw clenched, eyes all don’t-fuck-with-me intense like they got. “Hunt the hunter.”
“How would we find him?” Finn-Finn said. “How?”
“Through the bitch.”
“How’da we track her down? We don’t even know who she is. We don’t even know.”
“I got her DNA sample right here,” Mikey said, and everyone cracked up at his gesture.
“Gross. Gross. You’re fucking gross.”
“I am Dirty Pete’s cousin,” Mikey said, smiling big, and Taz could see the pride beneath because Taz always noticed shit like that. He got it, though. Dirty Pete was next level.
Taz was higher than the Empire State. His stomach was boiling with acid, weird, so he did another shot to settle it down, took another hit since pot helped with nausea and shit.
His phone was up again in front of his face and he was swiping through TikTok—flick flick flick—trying to distract himself from—from what? It didn’t matter. It wasn’t working.
“Original flavor, man. It’s where it’s at. I keep coming back to it.” Mikey emptied a bag into his mouth, Corn Nuts spilling everywhere. B-Roll passed Taz a pre-roll over his shoulder called Green-Eyed Wombat—sativa? hybrid?—and he took a long-ass hit and everything got swimmy.
“Wait! Wait! I got it! I got it!” Finn-Finn stood up and fell over but no one even laughed, they were too far gone except for B-Roll, who kept smoking NPCs in Karnage like it was nuthin’, and Finn-Finn stumbled off somewhere, lost in his own high.
Taz’s phone slipped through his fingers, bounced on the dirty-ass carpet. It took a lotta focus to lean forward on the couch and pick it back up.
Then Finn-Finn was standing there, swaying, holding something, something blurry.
Taz said, “Huh?”
“Her wallet, man. We have her wallet.”
And Taz squinted and saw it was a girl’s wallet, one of the longer ones to hold all their tampons or whatever. And Finn-Finn turned it inside out and a bunch of shit rained down on the Corn Nuts and the pre-rolls and the torn-out yearbook pages.
Taz picked something up outta the mess. A state ID.
He squinted at it. It was the chick from the subway.
Anca Dumitrescu.
There was an address, too.
He had another weird impulse—that he should hide the license, make it go away. Make it all go away.
But before he could do anything B-Roll grabbed the ID outta his hands and looked at it and then passed it around.
“The fuck kinda name’s Dumatreshka?” Big Mikey said.
Finn-Finn grabbed it next, pecked in the last name on his phone. “Romanian, man. It’s Romanian.”
They laughed at that ’cuz what were the odds.
“We could do White On Romanian,” Mikey said.
B-Roll said, “Romanians are white, you dumb motherfucker.”
Taz’s coordination was wobbly. What if he barfed right here, barfed all over the yearbook pages, and then they’d haveta throw them out and—
Finn-Finn was talking to him.
Taz said, “Huh?”
“I said, ‘What d’we do?’”
B-Roll had his back to them, working the remote with both hands. “We could snuff her.”
“Huh,” Taz said. “Nhnn.”
“Kill her,” Finn-Finn said. “Like kill kill her?”
“Why not?” B-Roll said, shoot-shoot-shooting on the game. He accidently smoked an innocent, a mom pushing a stroller on a crosswalk, and the screen flashed red, but who cared, there were more bad guys pouring out of an Escalade behind her and he lit those mofos up like Christmas.
“Dunno.” Finn-Finn shrugged. “Dunno.”
B-Roll said, “I mean, just if we have to.”
“No.” Big Mikey held up a Corn Nut and stared at it with one eye scrunched up like he was a jeweler or some shit. “Nope. I’m definitely changing my vote back to barbecue.”
“We don’t really kill people, though, ya know,” Finn-Finn said. “I mean, ya know?”
Big Mikey popped the Corn Nut into his mouth. “Let’s deal with the scary fucking friend first. He’s the threat.”
“How do we find him?” Finn-Finn said. “How?”
B-Roll said, “Track her to get to him.”
Taz’s phone alerted and it was some fucking viral news text alert that people somewhere were doing genocide but he remembered another text alert from earlier that’d said the other side was doing genocide. The words were blurry. He stared at the screen, trying to make sense of anything.
“Then what?” Finn-Finn said. “We take him out?”
“I could call Dirty Pete,” Mikey said.
That brought a hush. Dirty Pete was a big deal and you didn’t take his name in vain.
“He’s dirty,” Finn-Finn said. “He’s so dirty.”