This novel is about greed, violence, and the bizarre humor that can accompany both.  Wolfgang Badersault, a corrupt contractor, shorts materials used to reconstruct the Liberty Bridge in Pittsburgh, and after the job is completed, the bridge falls down, carrying a car and its driver into the river.  The driver’s body is never found.  The driver’s widow sues Badersault after one of his foremen tells her of the contractor’s fraud in repairing the bridge, and Badersault attempts to scare her into withdrawing her lawsuit.  She doesn’t discontinue the suit, and so Badersault takes more extreme measures, but the widow hires Sam, Nick, and their Akita, Ronin, who manage to prevent Badersault’s people from killing her. 

In retaliation, Badersault brings in more muscle, namely the psychopathic assassins Whipdick and Jo Bob Smith, to assist Bartholomew Morengeone, the in-house killer, who needs help. 

Here is a chapter in which the two new assassins hired by Morengeone spend a few days together before getting down to work.

From Liberty bridge is falling down

    Bartholomew Morengeone recruited two assistants, Alphonse Whipdick and Joe Bob Smith, both experienced killers and sociopaths who had worked with him  before.  They were staying on the Badersault estate in the gardener’s quarters until Morengeone could find them a more suitable place in Pittsburgh.  For the last two days, they had been playing poker, and they were beginning to get on each other’s nerves.

Alphonse Whipdick sat at a table in the gardener’s outbuilding dealing a game of five card draw.  Joe Bob Smith sat across from him and picked up the cards as Whipdick dealt them.  Whipdick was an American Indian of unknown origin.  He wore a red bandana tied around his head with his long, shiny black hair hanging straight down.  He was of ordinary build, trim, in his thirties, and his face was creased and weathered.  He had the profile of the classic Indian warrior.  His dark eyes moved slowly, almost cautiously, on each side of his hawk nose, and he never smiled.  He wore a bullwhip clamped to a carabineer on his belt.

Joe Bob Smith, on the other hand, was a West Virginia boy.  He was emaciated.  No one could tell his age.  It could have been twenty or it could have been fifty.  Or maybe he was sixty.  The skin was stretched tight on his face, almost as if he were dead and the fluids had evaporated from the body, leaving only the skin taut against the bones.  His cheeks were especially prominent, and his blue eyes stared with fixed attention from holes surrounded by puckered skin.  He was five-ten and weighed a hundred forty pounds, but that was only when he was dressed in his steel toed shoes and three sweaters.  He smoked without interruption and was always cold.  His hair was a fringe around the sides and back of his head.  A Camel cigarette dangled from his thin lips.  His nickname was Juicy Fruit.

“Why they call you Whipdick?” Joe Bob drawled, taking two cards and sucking in smoke from a Camel.

“It’s my name,” the Indian said.

“That’s purely unfortunate,” Joe Bob said, blowing smoke out his nose as he pulled a card from the middle of the fan of cards and placing it on the end.    “I guess you must’a got whipped by your own dick,” he guffawed.  “Haw, Haw, Haw,” trailing off into coughing and hacking. 

“Queens over eights,” the Indian said.

“Fuck you,” Joe Bob said, throwing his cards in the middle of the table.

“Your deal,” the Indian said.

“What yew like best to do, when yer not cheatin at cards?” Joe Bob drawled, shuffling.

Whipdick thought for a while and then he said, “I like to kill white men.”

Joe Bob stopped shuffling, looked at Whipdick, started shuffling again, and said, “Well, ah’l be a motherfucker,” the blue eyes inside his dead face flashing at the Indian.

“Yeah,” the Indian muttered, moving his cards around in his hand, “Most you scrawny crackers fuck your mothers, I hear.”

“You’d prably have trouble hearing without no ears,” Joe Bob glowered, dragging on his cigarette and blowing the smoke in Whipdick’s direction.

“Why they call you Juicy Fruit?  You look like you all dried up,” Whipdick said.  “You about as juicy as a sand dune.  Haw. Haw. Haw.  Sand dune.”

“Ah ain’t no sand dune, Shit Stain,” Joe Bob said.

“You dry as a dead rat, been layin in the sun all week,” Whipdick smirked.

“You know, Ahm pretty damned good with a knife.  I could stick a nine inch Bowie in one ear and have it come out the other,” Joe Bob said.

“Ah’l take three cards, dust bin.” 

“Take these, Moose fart.”

“ White men.  I kill em slow.  Poke out an eye.  Cut off their lips.  Finely, after several hours, I run outa things to cut off and they usuly just die.  Most of ‘em whimpering for their mommas,” Whipdick said.

“Ah hope you ain't got no ahdeahs bout killin me, cause ahl carve your worthless half-breed ass into strip steaks,” Joe Bob said. 

The Indian picked up his cards.

“I’d scalp you, but somebody beat me to it,” the Indian said, looking mischievously over his cards, then breaking out into a loud belly laugh.

“Just play them cards, half-breed.”

“Maybe I can still get that little part around the side,” the Indian said, breaking out into another belly laugh.

“Just keep at it Geronimo.”

“Yeah, but it would be hard to hang that little bit of hair on my belt.  It would fall off and the dogs would eat it.”  Another belly laugh.

“ I’m takin’ one card,” Joe Bod said.

“I’d kill you, white man, but you look like you already dead.  It’s bad luck to kill a dead man.  I bet you sleep in a coffin,” the Indian said.  “Give me three cards, White Face of Death.”

“Here you go you renegade motherfucker.  Three cards.  How come they ain't strung you up?”

The Indian picked up his cards.

“Ain't no white man can do it,” the Indian smiled.

“Ah can do it.  Ahl promise you that, you murderin dogshit.”

“Let’s see what you got, Foxturd,” the Indian said.

“Two aces,” Joe Bob said.

“Three threes,” the Indian said.

“How you cheat when a’hm dealin?  Deal the cards,” Joe Bob said.  “You sure yur name ain't Zipperdick?”

“You loco, white man.”

“Yeah, ah loco, but ah think you got yur dick caught in a zipper.  That’s why they call you Zipperdick.”

“I tell you why they call me Whipdick, White Devil.  I whipped a man to death with my dick so bad his momma didn’t know who it was.  And he was a little bastard about your size.  White motherfucker, just like you.”

“Wal, that’s the dumbest thing ah ever hear of.  Whip a man to death with yer cock.  My ass,” Joe Bob snorted, blowing smoke out his nose.

“Not only that, Mousefart, but when I sling my cock up over my shoulder and come down hard, it lop off what was the white bastard’s head.  The head went rolling down the sidewalk, and his momma, she runnin after it yellin, “Mah boy, Mah boy,” Whipdick sneered, arranging his cards.

“Ah take it back,” Joe Bob said, “Now that whut you just said was the dumbest thing ah ever heard.  The momma yellin “Mah boy, Mah boy,” and chasin the head down the street, and you standin there with yer cock over yer shoulder.  That’s pure fuckin dumb.”

“That’s the trouble with white men,” Alphonse said.  “They don’t know wisdom from a shriveled dick.”

“Ah thank whut musta happened is you shit yer pants, and you gone loco from the stink,” Joe Bob said.

Whipdick fingered the cards smoothly and dealt with expertise.

“I never ate me no blue eyes.  You wana pluck one out for me, Deathface, or maybe I just snap it right outa your head and eat it.”  He grinned.

Instantly, the table was upended and Joe Bob had a nine inch Bowie at Whipdick’s throat.  Whipdick had a Kelteck .380 at Joe Bob’s left eye.

The two men stood poised to kill each other as the door burst open.  Bartholomew Morengeone, hearing the yelling, the table being tipped over, and glasses crashing on the floor, exploded through the door.  “What the fuck,” Morengeone yelled, “I caint leave you two fuckers alone for five minutes witout you goin apeshit.”

“Back off nigger, Ahm gonna kill me a half-breed,” Joe Bob said.

“Stand back Sambo, this eye’s gonna blow right out the back of his head,” Whipdick hissed.

Bartholomew Morengeone walked over to the two antagonists and pulled the knife and the gun down simultaneously. 

“The idea, motherfuckers, is we kill other people, not ourselves.”

Steel City IV is available now at Amazon.com