Smoking Aunt Felecitina

by Gary Clifton

Dispatch sent a pair of cops to an alarm at the mansion of prominent attorney Harvey Cheatem. Thieves had managed to defeat the elaborate alarm, carrying off a small fortune in valuables, including some unusual items.

One officer flash-lighted the den fireplace mantel. “Amy, if that ain’t crack cocaine, I’ll buy ya’ a beer.”

She looked at the scattered. grainy residue. “I’ll bag and tag it. The lab says yes, this guy’s in trouble.”

The cops surmised that during the heist, the thieves had discovered Cheatem’s crack cocaine stash which had apparently been left in plain sight on the mantel. A small spill had resulted when the burglars examined the contents.

When Cheatem arrived, cops motioned him aside. “Sir, it appears the burglars found your cocaine on the mantel and—”

“Oh my Gawwwd,” wailed Cheatem. “These monsters have taken Aunt Felecitina’s cremation ashes. They were in an urn on that mantel.”

Despite the explanation, the cops submitted the sample to the crime lab. The lab squint dabbed a sample of the powder on his table, added a couple drops of re-agent and announced that although the scattered material was in some part, crack cocaine, the bulk of the sample was a material which appeared to be partially of human origin. He explained cremation remains, consisting partially of bone, would physically resemble ground-up crack cocaine. The cops realized that the thieves had indeed included Aunt Felecitina’s meagre remains in their haul.

Harvey Cheatem was well known to cops, not only as a heavy user and ruthless, unscrupulous lawyer who’d become wealthy springing dope dealers from the clutches of the law, but as a major player in a multi-city dope cartel operating across a wide swath of the U.S. and several countries south of the border.

Cheatem’s power was augmented several multiples by a stable of ruthless murderers he retained on call to deal with any mope with the stones to cross the not so honorable barrister. The thieves had absconded with one urn too many. Street chatter said that Cheatem had already ordered hits on the low-rent thugs who’d been foolish enough to invade the wild bull’s domain.

The whole affair generated enough gravitas to force the feds to venture out of their air-conditioned offices and look into Mr. Cheatem’s empire. No one could have predicted that the ensuing investigation would result in Cheatem’s conviction for racketeering a year later, resulting in ten years in Leavenworth. But now was now.

The local media blared the news live and in print — of the burglary and the tragic disappearance of Aunt Felecitina. No mention was made of course, of the actual market share he held in narcotics trafficking in a wide swath of the U.S. and points south.

Local TV stations carried a video of Cheatem standing in front of his mansion pleading for the return of Aunt Felecitina’s ashes. “She was the salt of the earth,” he repeated relentlessly. Against the advice of the police, Cheatem gave his home telephone number and address.

Two days passed. The story dominated the news both days. Cheatem’s telephone sizzled with a thousand schemes, hair-brained theories and bizarre ideas, but none of any use in locating Aunt Felecitina.

On the third morning,. an event came to pass, which while not exactly breathing life into the investigation, did rip the situation asunder by landing, so to speak, at Mr. Cheatem’s door. A hysterical Harvey Cheatem frantically telephoned the P.D., reporting a naked dead man on his front porch.

Big Harvey Cheatem, who’d ordered the dispatch of a dozen dealers, was concerned only that the dead chickens had come home to roost at his own address. “Send all the cops you got,” he demanded.

Cops arrived in numbers. The victim was naked, his hands and feet bound with duct tape. Amidst a plenitude of tattoos, the cadaver showed various cigarette burns and five bullet holes, including one between the eyes.

A cardboard box was beside the corpse. On the chance of a bomb or other booby-trap and the need for lab analysis, first responders left the box untouched.

Lab techs and the bomb squad were summoned. A bomb squad officer carefully opened the box. Inside was an urn, half-filled with grayish granular powder and a note scrawled in a primitive hand. One of the vinyl gloved lab techs read it aloud:

Mr. Cheetman, this hear dead sucker is Fast Fredy Bonham. He solt us this jug of fake white horse. We tried to use some before we saw on TV Fast Fredy had made his last damned mistake.You right, bro, Aunt Feleci-whutsie was plenty salty. No wunder the damned stuff didn’t burn so good. Couldn’t snort it wurff a damn, neither, bro. We sorry we smoked and snorted Aunt Feleci-whutsie, so we smoked Willie insted. Ya get it? We ain’t a wantin no truck with yu, sir. We gonna make up for it by hiren you nex time we get busted if you see fit to let us live for right now, sir.

My ol lady wrote this, cuz I cain’t write for crap.

So the miscreants had attempted to make amends; alas, in vain. Cheatem’s seemingly ill-timed release of the Aunt Felecitina saga was only fair warning to the thug world that any who crossed Big Harvey would soon be past tense. The writers of the letter of conciliation — they turned out to be three — were soon found dead in similar shape to the mope who had landed on Mr. Cheatem’s porch.

Harvey Cheatem was murdered with a shiv in the Leavenworth shower seventeen months later. Aunt Felecitina’s remains were somehow misplaced in the post-trial shuffle.