When the case of the missing butt cheek came knocking, I was digging into some leftover chicken cacciatore. Sinatra at the Sands was blasting so I didn’t hear the knocks.
“Giuseppe Antonio Luigi Fettuccini!” Ma yelled from the foyer. “There’s a nice lady here who’s spent too much time on operating tables. Put a tie on before you break your mother’s heart with another missed opportunity.”
I clipped on my polka dot bowtie. Ma hates that one, but Mario DeFonte kissed me during prom ‘cause of it so I don’t listen to her.
Ma wasn’t wrong. The lady did have a big bandage on her schnozzola. I kicked her a chair, but she didn’t sit.
“I can’t!” she cried like a kazoo.
“I got another cushion, lady,” I said.
She sobbed. I didn’t understand why she didn’t pop a squat.
Ma called me on the tin can-string phone, our secure line.
“Zipzipzipzipzip culo,” Ma said.
“What?” I yelled into the can.
“She doesn’t have a booty,” Ma yelled through the wall.
The lady fainted. I threw an apéritif on her face to wake her up.
I didn’t care how she lost her booty. I’m a big-boned small businessman with a very tight schedoolie. My afternoon espresso and cigar was waiting for me at Tommy & Maria’s. An Aperol Spritz down her gullet got her moving.
“Lady, I have somewhere important to be,” I said. “Not here picking you up off the floor.”
“Doctor, I came to you for your discretion,” she said. “You solved my cousin’s dilemma involving…cream cheese.”
“Were they the one with the corn problem? Lotta cobs in that case.”
“No, cream cheese, not creamed—It doesn’t matter. What matters is your discretion in tracking down my…”
She started to turn around, but I waved no. I don’t understand my generation’s obsession with booty. I got a booty. Ma’s got a booty. The lady’s got no booty. Ma sends me videos about how to lose my booty. Exercise doesn’t seem like a crime.
The lady turned around. Mamma mia! Only one meatball. But she’s got enough booty in her remaining cheek to compensate.
“Couldn’t you move the other one over a little?” I said.
“I’m seventy-five percent less of a human being without my left butt cheek,” she said.
I flipped on the taximeter on my desk. You gotta make every minute into money in this economy. It’s not like the days when I was a little boy with a full mustache and a knack for solving the neighborhood’s mysteries. I was Saint Anthony in exchange for lemon ricotta cookies.
“When did you last see your rear end, lady?” I asked.
“My name is Chloe, not lady,” she said. “I’m not a dog.”
Chloe hopped off the Parkway for a snack. She bought a bag of pretzels. Next thing she knew, she was in a median. No ransom note. No left butt cheek. No nothing.
“Which rest stop, la—Chloe?” I asked.
“James Gandolfini.”
I slammed my desk and made a sign of the cross. Ma did the same in the foyer. Chloe didn’t say “RIP” or nothing. I added a dollar to the meter.
“I need it back by Friday night,” she said. “My sister Kimmy and I are going out in Hoboken, and she’ll be such a bitch if I’m missing my butt cheek. Oh god.”
I added two more dollars to the meter for the tears.
“Don’t fret. I got this. I’m the best detective in Jersey. I’ll have it fixed before you can say abracadabra.”
“Abracadabra!” Ma yelled from the foyer.
“Stop eavesdropping, Ma!” I yelled back.
Chloe tied a shawl around her waist. It was like a loin cloth wrapped around a totaled hot air balloon, but I said nothing. The gentleman I am, I offered a cushion to go. She declined and left her number with Ma.
“She paid up front, Giuseppe,” Ma said.
“Ma, in the office, I’m Dr. Giuseppe. It’s on the door for Christ’s sake. Say, you in for a ride?”
***
Ma wasn’t in for a ride. She had a bridal shower to complain at in Lyndhurst. I whipped it to the crime scene in my vintage 2011 Caddy.
If I wasn’t gonna have my afternoon espresso and cigar, I needed to eat and investigate at the same time. Not hard for me.
The rest stop’s parking lot had few butt cheeks in it that afternoon. No stray ones neither. I didn’t expect the missing booty to rear-end me in the lot. But I did get rear-ended by none other than my archnemesis, Stewie Gotts.
Stewie had the nerve to be a criminal mastermind in my neighborhood. I shoulda known that when he stole bases in little league that he was gonna grow up to be a supervillain. He also insulted Ma’s lasagna at the church picnic. Total ratfuck.
“Dr. Giupeepee, the little boy found his lost bouncy ball an hour ago,” Stewie said. “Why are you still here?”
“Why are you here, Stewie? Stealing quarters from the gumball machines? I shoulda known you had something to do with my case.”
Stewie shuddered like Uncle Luigi during his eighth heart attack. He hates me calling him Stewie. If I had his number, I’d ring him up every ten minutes to make him jiggle with rage.
“I suppose you’re here about the garbage cans,” Stewie said.
“Suppose I am. You nicking the cans, Stewie?”
He hit his ketamine inhaler and wobbled like a stuffed turkey on a catwalk.
“I don’t care if you’re skimming the cans,” I said. “I’m looking for something you definitely stole.”
“Well, Doc, I was in bed the whole morning. You can ask your mother about it.”
I held my stick of hard salami under his nose.
“Get that gross shit away from my face,” he said.
“Ma’s name isn’t gonna pass your crusty lips again, capisce? I could fuck your father and your mother, you know that?”
“They’re both dead. Good luck banging them, Doc.”
“I know you stole that somewhat nice lady’s butt cheek!”
A laugh then another puffsky. A white van pulled up and consensually abducted him. I could hear his snores from the other side of the lot. My prime suspect was k-holed.
I dug through the garbage cans until the seagulls got too beefy. Those sky rats followed me around like I was made outta sour cream and onion chips. My stomach grumbled.
The usual old folks were in the dining area, midway to see some famous cornfield before they kick the bucket. The truckers were comparing tattoos they copped while tweaking. Seeing a ragged stick-and-poke Buddha made me scratch the branding I got when I went undercover for the milkmen’s union. There was a clown there too, but as long as she wasn’t following kiddies into the potty, she was safe, for now.
More importantly, my lunch options laid before me like game show doors kicked off their hinges. I settled for a burger from an alleged king. I grabbed a crown. The crown didn’t fit too well over my fedora, but I felt special. I sent a selfie to Ma. She sent back a voice message.
“You’re supposed to be scoping out the crime scene. I would’ve found the perp by now. Marone.”
I scanned the room again. Could that geezer be hiding a butt cheek in his walker? That truck driver could easily stow it in his leather vest. Is this a revenge plot from the custodian whose whole day is butt cheeks? The possibilities were endless.
The clown sneezed. As she was pulling out about a hundred hankies, out flew a scalpel. I picked it up and handed it to her. It’s not good to leave scalpels laying around, them being sophisticated prison shivs and all.
“You dropped this,” I said.
“Um thanks, sir, um. I like your, um, crown.”
“Thank you. Say what’s a clown doing with a scalpel in a rest stop dedicated to the greatest hunk of Italian manhood since Babe Ruth?”
The clown tore off her wig.
“You caught me, officer,” she sobbed. “Take me away.”
“Clown lady, I ain’t a—ain’t gonna take you away, as long as you answer my questions.”
“Anything. I can’t go back to jail again. I’m claustrophobic. It’s impeded my career as a clown. It’s why I have to moonlight as a surgeon: to pay the bills my red nose can’t.”
“I think your priorities are…never mind. So you’re working for Stewie Gotts, huh?”
“Stewie who?”
“So you know one of his aliases!”
“I don’t know a Stewie. A Drewie, yes. He’s a lion tamer that moonlights as a venture capitalist. But not a single Stewart. Clown’s honor.”
I knew not to trust her. Clowns have no honor. Just rainbow wigs and lies.
“Who’s your boss then?” I asked.
“I don’t have one. Well, the ring master, but she doesn’t know about any of this so please don’t tell her.”
“How do you get your, uh, appointments?”
“I get a text and show up with my kit.”
“Who texts you?”
“I don’t know. I got the gig through a friend of a friend.”
I cracked my knuckles to intimidate her, but she yawned.
“What did you do with the booty?” I asked.
She stood up to look over my crown-fedora.
“Would you please sit down? I can’t interrogate your stomach.”
She didn’t sit down so I yanked one of her zebra print suspenders. It shocked the shit outta me. I saw my life flash before my eyes. Too many strombolis, not enough calzones.
“I handed the ass off to an old man who dipped when you sat down, pig!”
She sprayed my face with seltzer, which wasn’t too bad ‘cause I like the stuff. I reached for her fuzzy socks, but she was outta there. Everybody was too busy posting my pain online to help me up.
When I got vertical, I looked over at the old folks. The geezer with the walker had split. He wasn’t far. He shoulda invested in an electric scooter.
The geezer hip-checked a girl, making her drop her peppermints everywhere. I fell once. Okay, twice. But on the third try, enough mints stuck to my shoes that I slid after him.
Outside he got obstructed by a gaggle of construction workers smoking boges.
“Stop, you booty thief!” I yelled.
“You ain’t even a real cop,” the geezer said.
I tackled him like a Giants linebacker has done in a decade.
“Cops can’t do that without being put on mandatory vacation,” I said. “Or this.”
I kicked him in the gut. Mints flew off my shoes, beaning the smokers. They groaned. The geezer groaned. I was gonna be groaning in a few if I didn’t wrap this case up soon.
“Where’s the stolen booty?”
“In your fat head, moron fake-cop.”
When they heard cop, the construction workers shuffled away.
As I was about to interrogate the geezer, Escalades rolled up. Goons hopped out. One bopped me in the kisser.
While I was channeling a karate video Ma sent me, the other goons tossed the geezer into an Escalade like a bag of elderly garbage. I took five more punches to the face before they sped away.
The construction workers shuffled over.
“Hey boss, you want a cig?”
“You got a cigar? An espresso?” I asked before I went night-night.
***
I woke up in the kitchen of Tommy & Maria’s. I woulda preferred the smell of sizzling sweet sausages waking me up. What I got was a dish towel to the dome.
“Get up, Giuseppe!” Maria yelled. “You’re blocking the Caesar salad dressing!”
“It’s Dr. Giuseppe, Maria! You know that.”
“I know you’re a royal pain in the ass.”
Tommy strolled in carrying dirty dishes.
“Maria, leave our best customer alone,” he said.
I tried doffing my fedora at Tommy, but it was gone along with my crown and my pants. I was too sore to cover myself. But it was just Tommy and Maria and ten cooks. They’re like my family, except I pay them.
But they usually treat me well, Maria’s towel slaps notwithstanding. Whenever I was stumped on a case or needed another lunch, I’d end up at their fine establishment. They didn’t have many customers ‘cause of their “attitude problems.”
Tommy placed a meatball sub at my head. Better than Vicodin. Maria went to go scream at a crying baby. Tommy poured us each a limoncello. I held mine to my sore forehead.
“Doc, why’s a union’s worth of laborers dropping you off at our doorstep? You scared the Vittolos. They’re connected so they shouldn’t be so squeamish, but still.”
I told Tommy the truth, except I added a few KOs to my stats.
“A butt cheek?” Tommy asked. “Who’d want one of those?”
“I got an ass man on my hands.”
“Or an ass woman. Chicks like booty too. Maria, for instance.”
A plate shattered against the kitchen door.
“I’ll kick your ass right here, right now!” Maria yelled at a customer.
“See what I mean?” Tommy said, grabbing a dish towel and joining the fray.
I ate my sub slowly, listening to the curse words from the old country that I hadn’t heard since my first communion. My fedora and pants were in the oven, but my crown was gone.
I called Ma to fill her in. But she knew already, as always.
“Maria posted you on Facebook. Whatsa matter with you? I’ve discovered more about this case online than you have with your pantsless antics!”
“I’m wearing pants now, Ma. I was during the fist fight too.”
“Never mind about your pants. You know who’s got alotta Facebook friends? Me. You know who doesn’t? Chloe. She’s got seventy-six. I checked all the photographs of her booty. She’s got too many of those. There are twelve guys who like all the booty photographs.”
“Pics, Ma. Booty pics.”
“You’re testing my patience, Giuseppe. You’re lucky I don’t paca-paca on your culi through the phone!”
I ordered another meatball sub to keep my mouth occupied.
“Eleven of the likers are too poor for Escalades. The other one looks like a nice boy. But you know who doesn’t look like a nice boy?”
She texted me pics of a blonde woman with big…earrings.
“Something’s not right about this lady,” Ma said.
“Why you don’t trust her, Ma?”
“I just know these things, Giuseppe. Like I know that Mario DeFonte was the best shot of me having grandkids. If you didn’t fuck that up, we’d have child assistants like Sherlock Holmes. You wouldn’t need to be my sidekick.”
“Hey! My name is first on the business cards!”
Ma texted me an address.
“I had to agree to see a Marvel movie with Chief Inspector Russo to get you that address. You better drive over there ASAP!”
C.I. Russo was barely Italian, but he liked taking Ma out. When my dad left for Thailand, he started dropping by. He’d been trying to put a ring on Ma’s finger since. He was kinda like my father. And me and Ma’s main business rival. Besides Stewie Gotts, but he’s on the other side.
I slipped a third sub into my jacket pocket and ducked out the back door. No car, only a stinky dumpster. I walked around front to find my ride with a busted headlight.
I looked inside the restaurant to see Maria pouring chianti on a beaky guy’s toupee. The other customers were eating calmly. The food was too good to flee. I finished my third sub before the GPS started sweet-talking me.
***
I got stuck in traffic so I double-checked Ma’s work. Sydney Ladon, single, liked Def Leppard too much. She was the kind of woman guys take out loans to buy Porsches for. Her being single at forty-five meant she was a lone wolf like me and Ma or crazy.
I missed the exit twice, but when I got there I wished I had more than my stick of hard salami. Sydney had one of those bougie McMansions. Kept her Christmas lights on year ‘round. Bonkers, for sure.
When she opened the door, I wasn’t surprised to see a pink revolver pointed at me.
“I knew you’d find me, detective,” she said. “Chloe can’t live a minute without her precious ass.”
“I want no trouble, Sydney. Just hand over the butt cheek, and you’ll buy me dinner, okay?”
My stomach was grumbling again. Spaghetti seemed the best cure for both of us.
“Get off my porch!” she snapped.
I stepped inside.
“Not what I meant, but okay.”
She kept her gun on me as we inched toward the living room.
“Can I have some coffee?” I yawned.
The adrenaline wasn’t making up for the lack of afternoon espresso.
“Um, I only have decaf,” she said.
Like I said: crazy.
I waved away her offer. I sat on the cream leather couch and reached for the remote. The Yankees were playing. I wanted to check the score before I got shot.
But when I picked up the remote, Sydney cocked the hammer. I let it fall to the ground. The clatter made her fire a shot above my head.
“Detective, don’t test me,” she said. “Do you know how hard it is to get Grade G silicone? Of course you do or you wouldn’t be here. You also must know I’ve been on the Grade G transplant list for years. Years! I spent my thirties thirsting for it, taking trips to the Dominican Republic to follow-up on rumors.”
“I heard the DR’s nice,” I said.
“It’s a wonderful country, but I couldn’t enjoy it without a perfect ass.”
This poor woman. So fucking beautiful but so fucking nutters.
“Up the stairs to my bedroom!” Sydney yelled.
“Sydney, no matter how much I look like one, I’m not one of those stripper cops.”
Another bullet cracked the wall behind me.
“Move it!” she snapped, wiggling the gun too loosely for my liking.
I made it up two flights of stairs before needing a breather. Shoulda watched those pilates videos Ma sent me. Though if I moved quicker, I died quicker.
While she struggled with the fingerprint scanner, I reached for my secret weapon. But the lock whirred and dinged too quick.
Her bedroom was like a bouncy castle except a bit deflated. One step in and I sank up to my waist in the gooey quicksand. Sydney strolled to her bed without breaking a sweat. Or taking her eyes off me.
“How does it feel, detective?” she said. “Exquisite? I know. But alas it’s only Grade H silicone.”
“Ain’t there a valley of this shit somewhere? Why you need to steal—”
“I liberated that Grade G ass cheek. Those who get so few likes on Facebook don’t deserve expert-level asses!”
I couldn’t argue with that fucked up logic.
When I was in silicone up to my nipples, I started saying my prayers. I didn’t remember all the words, but it’s the thought that counts. I sunk deeper while Sydney called the clown-surgeon to get the rate on chopping me up.
She was negotiating when a window exploded.
“You don’t fuck with the Fettuccinis!” Ma yelled, firing madly.
The squishy shoot-out didn’t last long. Sydney ran outta bullets real quick after wasting all those shots scaring the shit outta me. C.I. Russo crashed through another window. He had to tie Sydney’s wrists with his shoelace ‘cause he left his cuffs in the car.
Ma yanked me out before I drowned.
“I had to save you again, Giuseppe,” she said.
“It’s only like the sixth time, Ma. Besides, I had my secret weapon.”
I patted my pockets for the salami. It was stuck in the silicone.
“See! Why’d you guys gotta ruin my escape?” I said.
“‘Cause you brought gabagool to a gun fight, Giuseppe,” C.I. Russo said.
He handed me over to the EMTs. The guy worries about me too much. In the ambulance Chloe was already conked out for the emergency transplant. I ate a sleeve of pizzelles. Only then could I start searching for the missing butt cheek.
A McMansion full of cops and no one found shit. None of the badges thought to check inside the cuckoo clock. You can hide at least three booties in those things.
“You okay to drive?” C.I. Russo asked. “I can get an officer to drive you back.”
“They’ll waste half an hour at Dunkin’ Donuts,” I said. “I got an espresso and a cigar and maybe a shot of sambuca waiting for me.”
“You shouldn’t smoke those cigars. You and your mother both.”
Ma lit a Cuban.
“Crazy lady had good taste in stogies,” Ma said.
C.I. Russo tried stopping her from posting her rappelling video on Facebook.
“Freedom of Speech, Russy,” she said, blowing a smoke ring in his face.
I gagged. C.I. Russo thought I was choking on residual silicone and grabbed me.
“I’m fine,” I said, unhooking his heimlich. “Ma’s just being gross,”
I kissed Ma on the cheek and drove away happy that I’d saved the day, one butt cheek at a time.
[Image Credit : Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash]
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Latest posts by Dan Dellechiaie (see all)
- The Case of the Missing Butt Cheek - April 21, 2026
I like it. A lot.