Pauli

                            PAULI

 Pauli Alertari aka" Ronson" was five feet seven inches tall and weighed three hundred and ten pounds. He had with slick black hair. He sprayed expensive colognes on himself. He still stunk ten minutes after his shower. His wife hated him and charged him for sex. His children disliked him. His mistress had chronic allergies and had no sense of smell. His bosses tolerated him because he got his bad debt collections accomplished. He did not break kneecaps with a baseball bat. He carried a can of Ronson lighter fluid with him at all times. 

  On his first visit to a loaner he would squirt the lighter fluid on the debtor’s crouch and say, “It doesn’t hurt does it? I bet it feels kind of cool. Next time it will feel hot, real hot. It gets that way with my beautiful gold lighter. I will be back in five days, have the money.”

 Pauli would then wave his nine hundred dollar gold butane lighter in the air. On his second visit the money was in an envelope waiting for him. As a capo he only answered to one man and the one man answered to five bosses, so it can be said he was well connected. 

His only real accomplishment in life was in grammar school, He was an expert marble shooter, Whether the game was circle or watermelon he would come home five days a week with hundreds of marbles he had won fair and square. Early on he realized marbles were not worth much, so he stole hubcaps and automobile hood ornaments, which he would then sell to his peers who  would put them on a chain and ware around their necks. Bentley, Rolls Royce, and Jaguar brought in top dollar.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         His father was in prison serving thirty-five years for murder. His voluptuous mother existed by being nice to the mob. His older brother was found floating in the Hudson River with his penis in his mouth, It was said that he made advances to the boss's wife. Even though Pauli’s stomping grounds were New York and New Jersey he was sent down to New Orleans on a debt collection job. He arrived by plane on Friday afternoon. The big game was on Saturday afternoon, the next day.

     Known to no one, Pauli Allaterri was a pedophile. That Saturday before the game, Pauli went to the beach. He saw a young boy sitting on a boardwalk bench. He sat down beside him and began to fondle him. The boy's mother was on the beach and called him to come join her, the boy did. Several feet behind the bench where Pauli and the boy had been sitting and unbeknown to Pauli, was Cynthia Carson. She sold refreshments from a pushcart. She had observed what Pauli had done. That night at Crazy Charlie's Bar she sat at a table with five of her friends. 

 “ You guys won’t believe what I saw today,” said Cynthia

 ‘What did you see,” Cynthia’s friend Perry asked?

Her other four friends looked at Cynthia.

   “ I was working the boardwalk as usual and went toward the concrete 

bench on 34th Street. You know where the steps go down. There was a fat man with 

slick black hair sitting close to a little boy. Maybe the man would buy some ice 

cream. The fat man’s right arm was around the boy’s shoulders and his left hand 

was in the little boy’s bathing suit. I could not believe what I saw.”

    “Go on,” said Perry.

    “Just then a woman on the beach called, Come down here and stop 

wandering off. The fat man turned around and saw me and got up and hurried out 

of my sight. I looked for a policeman and naturally there was none. The nearest 

life stand was two blocks away.”

    “ Then what,” asked Perry? 

    “ I ran pushing my cart for three blocks and finally got to one of those 

policemen’s on a bicycle. I told him what I had seen”.

The policeman said to me, describe what he looked like.”

     “ I told him, fat with slick black hair, short, and I could smell some 

funky cologne he wore. The policeman took his phone from his belt and called 

somewhere. He said something like, I have a TX three five three to report, something like 

that.”

:“Well, then what,” asked Perry?

“He said that I had been very helpful, He asked for my phone number and 

my address in case I might be asked to make an identification in a line up. He then told me I could go back to my job.”

     “Lets go to my car, drag the strip and see if we can find him. Finish your beers and let’s go,” Perry said to Marshall and Craig

     Marshall and Craig stuck out their right hand with their thumps facing up.

     “ If you find him, what are you going to do then,” asked Cynthia?

     “ Don’t worry your pretty little head what we are going to do.”

 Cynthia's back faced the bar, four feet away on a barstool directly behind her sat a muscular male, about six feet tall with blonde hair

He got up went to his hotel room and went to work on his computer for twenty minutes. This man also had a master's degree in computer science. He then went to sleep. 

He had a fifty-yard line seat for the big game tomorrow.  

Au enjoyed the game. That evening, he had some business to take care 

of.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

The Saints had just won the Super Bowl and Bourbon Street was the devil's 

playground with drunken revelers packed together like sardines in a can. 

That Saturday evening, around 11:45p.m. Pauli was sitting in the last booth in 

Nathan's Bar with his back to the crowd, a can of Ronson lighter  fluid was on his booth’s table. He was waiting for Jake the Snake Bernstein. Jake, who all by himself had lost five hundred and thirty thousand dollars in twenty minutes at an Indian reservation casino. Some old timers said it was a record. No one to their knowledge had ever been that unlucky or that stupid.

     When the waiter came over to see if his esteemed patron, Pauli, needed a 

refill on his Johnny Walker Blue he began to hyperventilate and fainted. 

There was an ice pick planted squarely at the middle and in the top of Pauli 's 

skull. Blood poured down on his ears, eyes, and nose and into his open mouth.

 The bar emptied in six minutes, no one saw anything. The shaft of the ice pick 

was gold plated.

  This sent a shock wave message to the Mafia bosses in the United States .

Jake the snake was innocent, because at the time of the murder he was trying to post bond for a DUI. The hierarchy of the world's crime lords, from Columbia, Japan, Russia, to France, no one knew anything.                                                                                                     

The Mafia bosses sent out a fifty thousand dollar contract for the capture, only alive for the killer. The buzz spread around the globe from street thugs to contract killers, to retired Special Forces to ex CIA agents. Contract killers who had ego problems met together, formed alliances to work together and share the booty.   The New Orleans police department after months of strong-arming every known underling in their jurisdiction gave up and requested help from the FBI. No federal law had been broken therefore no help-good riddance.

 As months passed and nothing was discovered crime bosses of the world began to worry. In the whole world's scheme of things this was miniscule, or was it. Jewelers estimated the ice pick had to be specially made. The gold used alone would have cost one thousand dollars, 55plus the craftsmanship. For the first time in the history of the world, crime bosses united to catch this man or woman.