The Manaforta stared at the hairy grama and sighed. The small patch of wildgrass was all he had to look at since the Muellersavus had placed the moolah-moolah washing, ex-campaign manager under cave arrest four months earlier. The hairy grama bent over, quivering in the slight breeze. The big, clumsy foot of a dinosaur flattened the wildgrass in one stomp, giving the Manaforta pause. It was the Rickyprisongates.
“Ricky? What are you doing out and about?”
“I flipped on you.”
“I, uh … understand your devotion for me is head over heels but — wait a minute. You … flipped?”
“That’s what the Muellersavus called it.”
“But, how could you?”
“The Muellersavus reminded me — you know I have trouble remembering things, Paulie — because we’ve been making things up for so long. Darned if he doesn’t know we were over in Ukrainia pumping up the Yanukovych for so long. The Muellersavus said if I filled in some of the blanks on this thing called an investigation timeline? … Well, he’d let me see my wife and four little dinos. You want me to see my wife and little ones, Paulie. Don’t you?”
The Manaforta was apoplectic.
“You chose family over moolah-moolah? You really have flipped, Ricky. What kind of lying, fraudster dino are you?”
“The kind that doesn’t get home much? You never met the Rickyprisongatesmissus. She told me I owed her the next 11 years. You should’ve seen the scary look on her mug. But she did say something nice about me. Do you know what she said, Paulie?”
“Spare me.”
The Rickyprisongates took this as his cue.
“She said she was happy I spent some of the moolah-moolah on our dino tots’ education tuition, so they could be smarter than me. Speaking of smart, the Muellersavus showed me some new math.”
“Oh?”
“He had 38 charges against me yesterday. Today I only have two. That’s a lot less. Can we celebrate?”
“Celebrate?! You’re throwing me under the Priebusunderbus!”
“Don’t be mad. The Muellersavus said I just needed to talk about you. Don’t you want me talking about you, Paulie?”
“No!”
“Oh.” The Rickyprisongates paused to consider why his long-time mentor was visibly upset.
“Maybe I should go back and tell him …”
“No!”
“The Muellersavus, he said this is all a game. He said I flip and then you flip. I like games, Paulie.”
The Rickyprisongates stared with wondering eyes at the simmering Manaforta. Several seconds passed. Finally the Manaforta snapped.
“Why are you looking at me like that?!”
“Aren’t you gonna flip, Paulie? It’s your turn.”
“It is not!”
“Well, whose turn is it then? The Muellersavus said all roads lead to us. I like being popular. Don’t you, Paulie?”
More hot steam from flaring nostrils.
“I want you to think very carefully now, Ricky. What exactly did you tell the Muellersavus?”
“Well I told him about your swell pal, the Danarohrabacher … and that legal dino, the Alexvanderzwaan. Didn’t he help us out on the hokey story you wrote up for that Mr. Nice Guy dino, the one that Yanukovych was trying to keep in jail. I told him they paid you four million moolah-moolah for that one.”
“I’m so glad you could help him out.
“I thought you’d be happy.”
“The meeting. Tell me you didn’t tell him about the meeting, Ricky.”
“The meeting? For some reason, I was able to remember that. You should’ve seen his face when I told him how at the end, when you shook all the Russodino hands, you told them you would personally deliver the Crookadillary dirt … I mean, the Sanctionsaurus dirt … to the T-Rump.”
The Manforta clutched his chest and keeled over in a dead faint.
His plodding prodigy hovered over him.
“Paulie?”
The big, dumb dino didn’t realize his mentor had passed out.
“Paulie? Are we big fish or little fish? You know me, I forget. Paulie?”
David Belisle 