Chapter 1
William McGruff cracked his bride of four years across the mouth with the back of his hand and sent her sprawling across the tiny living room in their fifth floor walkup in Flatbush.
Judith, McGruff's missus, flailed her arms uselessly as she hit the faded sofa backwards and promptly tumbled over it backwards, landing on the floor with an audible thud. Already she could feel the blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.
"Open yer yap to me like that again, woman," the beefy, ruddy faced cop thundered, reaching for a nearby fifth of Cutty Sark, "and you'll get worse. A whole hell of a lot worse."
Bill McGruff, a nine year veteran of New york's finest, settled his rapidly spreading girth into his favorite chair and paid his wife no more heed. He uncapped the bottle of Cutty and took a healthy swig.
Judith wiped the blood from her cut lip and rose to her feet. She was a pretty blonde of twenty with a smooth, white complexion, upturned button nose and high cheekboned face that invariably turned heads on the crowded Brooklyn streets. Neither the rigors of city living nor the verbal and physical tirades of her drunken husband seemed to ever effect her beauty.
"I didn't mean to piss you off, Bill," Judy said meekly. "I was just trying to tell you that Mrs. MacGruder was here today sniffing around for the rent. Said we was three weeks behind, and..."
"Next time, tell the old bitch she can stick the rent where the sun don't ever shine."
Judy fell silent, knowing from past experience that any continuation of this conversation was useless. Bill was already half drunk, and there was nothing to be gained by further nagging. The daughter of six generations of cops and the wife of another, Judy was no stranger to either their traditional irish tempers and perpetual boozing. She accepted the physical punishment as a matter of routine; how many times had she seen her own father, in the depths of a drunken rage, bloody her mother's lip?
Still, Judy persisted. Bill would be roaring drunk by the time Walter Cronkite flashed on the tube and of use to no one. And there was still the little matter of the rent. It was easy for Bill to dismiss the landlady's demands; he was out pounding his beat every day while she was left at home to deal with the old battle-ax.
"Mrs. MacGruder threatened to serve notice on us," Judy told her husband. "I think she's really serious this time, Bill. She says the value of this apartment has risen two hundred percent since we signed the lease, that she could get three times the rent we're paying. Says the neighborhood's changing for the better and we should be grateful for having a roof over our heads and pay the rent on time. Said we were two weeks behind last month and almost a month behind before that..."
"I don't give a rat's ass!" Bill thundered, hurling the empty Scotch bottle against the wall, where it shattered into shards inches from a framed picture of the Virgin Mary.
"Bill!" Judy gasped, and had time for no further reply as Bill descended on her.
"I spend ten hours a day kicking spic and nigger ass," Bill growled, his thick fingers curling around Judy's throat," and the last thing I wanna hear when I get home is shit outta you, woman!"
Judy made no effort to subdue her husband, knowing that any resistance on her part would spur Bill into an even greater violent rage.
As she felt his fingers squeezing around her gullet, Judy let her body go limp. One of Bill's hands came up from her throat and connected with her face.
Judy landed on the sofa, but not for long. Bill lifted her up by the lapels of her blouse and dragged the helpless housewife to her feet. The back of his hand connected with her cheek again and then, in rapid fire succession came a steady series of backhanded slaps that forced her head backwards and forwards.
"I'm horny," Bill announced, and Judy could see the bulge in his pants as she slid to the floor. He would force himself on her once more as he did night after night during the course of their four year marriage.
Bill unzipped his fly and reached into his the pants of his uniform. His rapidly swelling cock pulsed excitedly in his massive hand. Drunk or sober, Patrolman Bill McGruff never had a problem getting it up.
He grabbed Judy's long blonde hair and forced her face into his crotch. She felt his hot cock, slide and slimy like a snake, slither against her cheek.
"Suck it, bitch," Bill roared, and Judy promptly obeyed, knowing the penalty if she refused.
She took her husband's mammoth organ between her lips and flicked the tip of her tongue against it. Bill held her head firmly now, shoving his hips back and forth, sliding his throbbing pecker deeply into her mouth.
Her lips closed around it. She lavished her tongue all over it, coating it with saliva. Bill was moving her head back and forth now, his pecker sliding in and out of her mouth as Judy lapped anxiously.
"Eat the bird, bitch!" Bill growled again, the effects of the hooch spurring him on to an even greater rage.
Judy sucked madly, lapping eagerly at her husband's pulsating organ. She brought her hands up and gripped the mighty pole at the base, tickling Bill's nuts with the other.
She tried to keep from trembling with fear. When Bill was in his cups, he was capable of anything.
Bill suddenly jerked Judy's head away from his crotch. She tumbled backwards against the sofa.
"You can't suck cock for shit, woman," Bill snapped drunkenly. "Looks like I'm gonna hafta teach you a lesson again."
Judy began to quake with fear.
Bill quickly unbuttoned his blue shirt and yanked off the black tie he despised but was required to wear. He slipped out of the shirt, his belly sagging under the weight of his undershirt.
His hands dropped down to his pants. With swift efficiency, he slid the leather belt from around his waist and wrapped it around his hand.
"Crawl," Bill ordered. "I wanna see you crawl into the bedroom, you useless slut!"
"Bill..."
"Crawl!" he bellowed, and Judy knew that he meant business.
Judy obeyed.
On her hands and knees now, she crawled slowly across the carpet and suddenly felt the stinging lash of her husband's leather belt striking her buttocks, a faded pair of Levi's her only protection.
"No good slut," Bill muttered, following her along the floor. "Probably fucking every man in Flatbush when my back is turned. Aren't ya?"
Judy continued to crawl.
"Aren't ya?" he thundered again.
"Bill...I'd never..."
"Fuckin' lyin' bitch!" he roared, and struck her rump again with the belt. "Take off those jeans! I'm gonna teach you not to lie to me, ever!"
Bill kicked her in the butt with the tip of the shiny leather workshoes he wore and sent her sprawling flat on the floor, the piles of the carpet tickling her nose.
On the floor below the McGruff apartment, Chester Cheerstrap, a sixty year old sanitation worker, was slurping his wife Sadie's split pea soup. Above his head, the hanging light fixture began to tremble above the dining room table. Several chips of white plaster fell from the ceiling and landed in his soup. Chester ate on, unconcerned.
"Sounds like old Bill McGruff is kicking his wife again," Sadie commented, checking the lambchops as they sizzled in the oven. "Third time this week."
"Fourth," Chester said between slurps. "Wish he wouldn't bat the wife around so much. Makin' cracks in the ceiling."
"Think we should call the cops?" Sadie asked. "He may go and kill her one of these fine days."
"McGruff IS the cops," Chester replied. "Anyway, I don't wanna get involved. What a man does with his old lady is his business and nobody else's."
"Still," Sadie said, "it don't seem right his missus should suffer just 'cause the man's on a toot."
"Stay outta it, Sadie," Chester told his wife.
"It doesn't involve us."
Judy, of course, knew better than to expect any help from her neighbors. As was the New York custom, they ignored screams and later pretended to ignore the black eyes and welts when they saw her in the hallway or at the mailboxes in the building's foyer.
Bill McGruff continued kicking his wife's behind as she crawled painfully down the hall. She had wiggled out of her jeans, at Bill's command, and now winced as she felt the shag scraping against her bare knees.
Bill gave her butt another crack of the belt and chortled happily. That would keep the slut in line.
"Never give your wife an inch," Bill's father had always taught him. "If she gets outta line, beat her good. Sure, she'll go 'round sportin' a black eye or two, but remember: the second a broad gets you by the balls, she won't stop squeezin' 'em till the cows come home."
Bill remembered his father's words now as he watched his sexy wife crawl helplessly across the living room. He'd put the fear of God into her in the four years they'd been married; there was little doubt who was the boss. As Ralph Kramden was so fond of saying, "This is MY castle, Alice! You are nothing but a peasant."
Bill lashed out with the belt again, the shiny metal buckle striking the exposed flesh on her buttocks. Judy wailed in pain this time as she felt the warm trickle of blood running down her ass-cheeks.
"It's good enough for yer," Bill cackled.
"Please...Bill....no more," Judy gasped.
"Shuddup, slut," Bill snapped. He was out of control now, totally shitfaced and looking for trouble. "Fuck the mailman, willya?"
He struck her again with the belt. Judy lay wimpering on the floor, hot tears of pain streaming into the carpet.
Bill showed no mercy, he jerked her violently onto her back and in one swift motion ripped her blouse apart, her firm breasts heaving, the pointy nipples glistening with sweat and tears.
"Filthy slut," he growled and was atop her in seconds. He grabbed her left tit and began squeezing it. Judy howled in pain, which only seemed to increase Bill's uncontrollable rage.
He sank his choppers into her firm nipple and sucked it while squeezing the other. His fingers found the nipple and he pressed it between them, turning it a dark shade of red.
"Bill...stop!" Judy wailed.
"The fuck I will!" Bill replied, and rolled her over onto her stomach. That ass was too good to resist, Bill mused as he took his cock in his hand. Though he kicked the shit out of his pretty young wife every time he saw fit, he was still proud that she had kept her good looks and figure even though he had allowed his gut to sag down over his belt, which usually brought gales of laughter to any nigger purse snatcher he found himself chasing in the course of a workday.
Without bothering to lubricate his blood-engourged cock, he grabbed Judy by the hips and rammed his meat up her pooper. He slapped her asscheeks hard, leaving a huge red welt.
"Aurrrggghhh!" Judy cried in mortal agony. She felt her husband's nine incher plunging deep into her anal cavity, accompanied by slaps to her ass.
"Gooood girl," Bill moaned, sliding his dork deeper into her. Lord, but the woman was tight in the ass, the soft flesh of her anus caressing the underside of his cock. Brown velvet, his partner Schwartz called it.
Beads of sweat rolled down Judy's face as her husband continued to humiliate her. What she'd done to deserve this latest episode, she didn't know, not that it mattered. Of late, Bill didn't need much excuse.
"Tight....so fuckin" tight," Bill groaned. He swiveled his hips, his cock gyrating around inside of her.
And slapped her ass.
"So tight..." Slap.
"Fuck the mailman, willya?" Slap.
"Suck that asshole on the second floor's dick, willya?" Slap.
"Vote for Mondale, willya?" Slap.
Each slap was a new adventure in pain.
And how, Judy wondered as her husband continued slapping her asscheeks, did the bastard know she'd voted for Mondale?
As her ass turned the color of pickled beets, the pain increased twofold with each additional thrust of bill's hips.
His cock plunged deeper into her rectum, although the slaps were less and less on the mark as Bill's head started spinning from the half bottle of Cutty, not to mention the half dozen or so he'd had after his shift.
Judy knew from experience that Bill had enough left in him for one quick orgasm before passing out cold.
True to form, Bill grabbed her asscheeks and pressed them together, squeezing his throbbing cock between them. Hot jism barrelled out the tip of his pecker, spewing into her enflamed butt-hole.
"Eeeep!" Bill cried, pumping his load into her. Cum seemed to gush out of him in rivers. Bill McGruff fucked his share of fifty dollar hookers along his Times Square beat, but not even the most seasoned pros could make him come like his own wife.
As his wife's asshole sucked the last of his load, Bill patted her left cheek gently.
"Good girl, honey," he panted, and proceeded, true to form, top pass out, falling into a lifeless heap on the floor, his pants around his ankles.
Judy lifted herself sluggishly to her feet and made her way into the bathroom, where she examined the damage in the mirror.
Her cheeks were very red from the slapping, but at least those were not in view of the public. It was the cut on her lip, already swelling and puffy, that worried her, not to mention the black ring that was growing around her left eye.
Bill was in rare form, Judy thought as she stepped into the shower. Steam filled the tiny bathroom as she washed off Bill's love juice.
In the shower, Judy examined her nipples. There were matching sets of bite marks on either nipple.
It's my own fault, Judy thought. That's what I get for starting in with him when he's bending his elbow at McGinty's Bar.
No, there was no use even talking to Bill McGruff when he was in that condition. Booze, as it did with his father and brothers before him, turned him into a violent drunk.
Judy stepped from the shower and toweled off. Sitting wasn't going to be much fun for the next week, and the black eye would be explained away as another fall on the subway steps, though no one bothered to ask how it happened much anymore.
Judy padded into the chilly bedroom and dressed quickly and silently, not that the big slob would wake up. Bill, she knew, was out for the night and would, as he had half a dozen times in the last two months, wake up to a thumping hangover and an empty apartment.
Judy packed quickly, throwing a few needed items into the overnight bag she kept handy. Going home to Mother's was getting to be a routine.
Bill snored like a lumberjack on the living room floor as Judy stepped over him into the kitchen. She reached for the phone to call the local cab company, then decided to check her financial status first. She peeked inside her wallet; it contained only three dollars and some sticky change at the bottom among the unwrapped Lifesavers. Not enough for a cab ride to Bensonhurst. It was the subway or nothing.
Nearly two hours later, Judy walked along Bay Parkway up to the grimy apartment house where her parents lived. The roar of the elevated train filled her ears as she entered the building. Mr. Cannoli from the second floor was walking his dog, an aging poodle named Rembrandt who walked like he had jockitch.
"Hello, Judith," Mr. Cannoli greeted her, trying to avoid eye to eye contact. "Say hello, Rembrandt."
Rembrandt replied by piddling on the lobby floor. Mr. Cannoli grinned sheepishly and dragged the dog away.
Having surrendered the housekeys to her parents' apartment three years before, Judy was forced to buzz her way into the building.
"Whozit?" the screeching voice of her mother boomed over the tiny intercom. Judy pressed the "talk" button. "It's me, Ma," Judy replied. "Buzz me in." "What are you doing here?" Mrs. McPugh wanted to know. "It's after eleven."
"Bill beat me up again, Ma," Judy said back, "and this time I'm leaving for good." "Judith, how many times..." "Ma," Judy said, "buzz me in already. I don't wanna talk about this in the lobby, for Chris-sakes!"
"Your place is home with your husband," Mrs. McPugh screeched back. "For better or worse..."
"Ma, he gets loaded and knocks me around like a punching bag... will you buzz me in, dammit!"
"I can't, Judith," Mrs. McPugh said.
"Ma, this is my home, for Chrissakes!" Judy screamed.
"WAS ya'mean," Mrs. McPugh replied. "You can't keep running home every time you have a little fight with your husband."
"Little?" Judy asked incredulously. "Ma, he nearly killed me this time."
"Bill's a good man," Mrs. McPugh told her daughter. "Sure he takes to the bottle now and then, but what cop worth his salt don't? No, missy, you march right back to Flatbush and no more banana oil about yer husband." Having come from the old school, where abused wives suffered in silence, Mrs. McPugh had little sympathy for her daughter's plight.
"Ma, I can't take it anymore. Buzz me in, Ma, please."
"You go on home now, Judith...here, now you see what you've done? You've woked up your father..."
The intercom went dead, and Judy knew better than to try again, her mother was stubborn and Irish.
The lobby door flew open and a stocky, sixtyish lady breezed in. She had a blue beehive hairdo, wore skintight jeans, high heels and had dyed red hair. Heavy red lipstick was smeared across her mouth, and her makeup looked like it was applied with a cake decorator.
"Hello, Mrs. Rabinowitz," Judy said, her face turned away. "I can't seem to find my key..."
"Not to worry, I have one," Mrs. Rabinowitz said. "I know how it is. Murray says if I forget mine one more time, he's gonna staple 'em to my forehead." She cackled and whipped a key chain out of a suede purse the size of a kangaroo's pouch. As they rode up in the elevator, Judy tried to shield her face from view. Mrs. Rabinowitz however, missed nothing.
"Goodness, what happened, Judy?" she asked. "You look like you just kissed the headlights of a checker cab doing fifty."
"I fell on the subway steps," Judy mumbled. "I know how it is, believe me," Mrs. Rabinowitz replied, clucking her tongue. Having lived two flights above the McPugh's for nearly thirty years, she knew that Judy and her sisters fell down the subway steps a lot. Not surprisingly, all four McPugh girls, she remembered, all used the same excuse. Only Clarice, the oldest, ever used any imagination, once claiming that she'd fallen on the bus and hit the farebox with her eye.
"You got to watch it on the subway, all right," Mrs. Rabinowitz went on. "My Murray says it's a haven for filth and crime. Me, I wouldn't ride the train for all the tea in China, the last time I did, some crazy shlemiel opened his overcoat and showed me his poopek, like he was doing me a favor or something. It just goes to show you. When I was seventeen, I was afraid of poopeks. When I was thirty, I couldn't get enough of them, and now that I'm sixty-three, they're all over the place."
Judy nodded and escaped Mrs. Rabinowitz's fond memories, stepping into the hallway as the elevator doors opened on the third floor. Even as the doors closed again, Mrs. Rabinowitz droned on. Judy knocked on the door to the apartment she'd spent sixteen of her twenty years in. She heard her mother's footsteps stomping down the musty hallway toward the door.
"Judy, is that you? Who let you in?"
"Mrs. Rabinowitz," Judy called back. "Open up, Ma."
"I told you to go home," Mrs. McPugh said from behind the door. "I'll not be openin' this door just so's that husband of yours can come by tomorrow and rip it off the hinges like that last time, no ma'am."
"Ma, I'll be happy to argue any time, but not in the hallway, okay, so open up."
"Well..." Mrs. McPugh hesitated. "Yer can come in, but yer can't stay, Judith."
"Just open up, Ma."
Judy heard the deadbolt locks on the door tumble as her mother twisted them.
Judy stepped into the apartment quickly, before her mother decided to change her mind. The familiar smells of cooked cabbage, cigar smoke and cheap hooch assaulted her nostrils. She found them somewhat comforting.
Mrs. McPugh, short, squat and grey haired at fifty, examined her youngest daughter's face as she stepped inside.
"Humph," she grunted. "A shiner and a split lip. I seen worse, mostly on myself. For that you leave yer husband? What kind of a wife leaves her husband over a few left hooks?"
"The kind who like to live to a ripe old age," Judy replied.
She walked into the apartment and into the kitchen, where her father George McPugh, an older and fatter version of Bill, sat munching a bologna on Wonder Bread sandwich in his skivvies.
"Hi, Pop," Judy said.
"Don't 'hi' me, Judith," he grunted. "What'd you say to get Bill all pissy and the like? Musta been something bad if he done that to yer.".
"I didn't say anything to get him pissy!" Judy shot back. "And why the hell is it always MY fault when he beats me?"
"Cause yer always doin' shit to piss 'im off, that's why," Mr. McPugh bellowed, pieces of bread and Oscar Meyer's finest spewing from his mouth. Look at yer—married almost four years and no babies. Yer sister Muriel, God bless 'er, is only married six months and she has a baby."
"Babies are expensive nowadays," Judy replied, "and we can't afford one right now."
"And why not? It ain't like Bill's not making good money on the force."
"I didn't say he wasn't," Judy said. "Only we don't see any of it after Bill's finished with the three B's—booze, bimbos and betting."
"Man's gotta blow off some steam now and then," Mr. McPugh said. "You pound a beat on Forty-second and Broadway and see if yer don't. And if he gives you the back of his hand sometimes, well, it's probably comin' to yer. hell, I been knockin' around yer mither for damn near thirty years and she ain't never once complained, ain't that right Bridgett?"
"From yer mouth to God's ears," Mrs. McPugh replied, and crossed herself for good measure.