The Return of the Man of a Hundred Faces

Boris had been off his game from the jump.

The old spark in his eyes—the cold, calculating gleam that once cut through lies like a switchblade through silk—had dimmed to a flicker. His legendary ninja reflexes? Gone like last week’s rent money. He’d been slow on the uptake, distracted, scratching at the back door of destiny like a mutt who’d lost the scent.

But even a dulled blade can draw blood.

The last piece of evidence slid into the puzzle with a whisper, neat as a coffin lid closing. Bank ledgers. Payoff lists. Shipping manifests fat with sin. It painted the picture in bold, ugly strokes: Johnny Rocco had been running Van Nuys like a private kingdom of graft and gunpowder for twenty long, rotten years.

Jonny let the silence hang heavy before he spoke.

“It’s the hangman’s noose for you this time, Rocco.” His voice was gravel in a tin can. “Boris may not have been himself lately—needs his anal glands expressed, if you want the veterinary details—but he still brought home the bacon. You’re finished.”

Rocco’s usual smirk wilted. The color drained from his doughy cheeks. For the first time since Hoover was in short pants, the big boss looked small.

“I guess that’s it, gumshoe,” he muttered, voice trembling like a cheap alibi. “Go ahead. Slap the bracelets on me.”

Jonny stepped forward, cuffs glinting under the office light.

That’s when Rocco started laughing.

Not a chuckle. Not a nervous giggle. A full-throated, rafters-rattling cackle that made the blinds shiver and Jonny’s trigger finger itch.

Jonny glanced down at his partner.

The pug’s paw went to his face.

And peeled.

Fur came off like a Halloween costume. Underneath wasn’t Boris’ wrinkled mug—but the slick, smirking countenance of J.S. Merlin, failed matinee idol and greasepaint sorcerer. The Man of a Hundred Faces. A two-bit thespian with a thousand-bit talent for deceit.

“We had you dancing, mug,” Rocco sneered, confidence flooding back into his veins. He yanked a brass lever hidden beneath his desk.

The bookcase behind him split down the middle and swung wide.

Out stepped Big Tim—a tower of muscle and menace—holding the real Boris in a chokehold. A snub-nosed revolver pressed tight against the pug’s temple. Boris’ eyes were clear now. Clear and furious.

“You said one of us would meet his maker when this was over, Mr. Big Shot Detective,” Rocco said, adjusting his cuffs like he was already measuring Jonny for a pine box. “You just didn’t figure I had a master of disguise on retainer. Merlin here played Boris better than Boris plays Boris.”

Merlin gave a mocking bow.

“Too bad,” Rocco went on. “You had a nice run. Headlines. Wisecracks. Expense accounts. But every hero’s luck runs dry.”

He turned to the hulking silhouette in the secret doorway.

“Ice ’em both, Tim.”

The revolver’s hammer clicked back.

And in that tight, breathless moment between life and a toe tag, Jonny M. realized something about Van Nuys—

The city always keeps one more secret in its pocket.

The Cynical Detectives

The four biggest gumshoes ever to haunt Van Nuys had no business breathing the same stale air, but there they were anyway — Philip Marlowe with his tired eyes, Sam Spade with a jaw like a busted brick, and the local legends, Jonny M. and Boris Pug. Fate, cheap clients, and a pair of heartbreakers across the alley had shoved them into the same crummy room at the Motel 6, watching silhouettes dance behind flickering blinds while the neon sign outside blinked like it had a nervous condition.

Five hours of surveillance will make saints swear and sinners hungry, so the boys called a truce with the telescope and broke out lunch. Marlowe swigged rye that smelled like paint thinner. Spade chain-smoked filterless Camels until the room looked like a house fire. Jonny and Boris demolished enough Taco Bell to qualify as a controlled demolition. When the wrappers settled, the talk got heavy — the kind of confessions that only come out when the world’s gone quiet and the job’s already chewed you up.

“She said the Black Bird would buy us a new life,” Spade rasped, striking a match that shook just a little. “All I had to do was ice Cairo and the Fat Man and we’d be sipping something cold south of the border. Turns out I was just another name on her hit list. Promised I’d wait for her until she got out… but the hangman beat me to it.”

Marlowe gave a humorless grin. “A general hires me to babysit his wild daughter, next thing I know I’m knee-deep in a story with more twists than a busted corkscrew. Everyone lies, everyone loses, and I end up patching my heart together with spit and baling wire.”

The two old pros looked over at Jonny and Boris, expecting tragedy served neat. The boys exchanged a glance — the kind priests share when a confession gets weird.

“Geez, that’s rough,” Jonny said, shifting in his chair. “Wish I could say the same, but my girl’s a twenty-five-year-old rock star who treats me like I hung the moon. Doesn’t even blink that I bang a different new hot chick every third or fourth case.”

Boris nodded, paws folded like a philosopher. “And my lady? Alley cat with a taste for trouble and a heart like dynamite. Plenty of dames throw themselves at me, but when you’ve got perfection waiting at home, why shop around?”

Spade and Marlowe traded a look — two hardboiled knights suddenly feeling like a couple of high school nerds who were given atomic wedgies by the co-captains of the football team.

“Don’t sweat it, fellas,” Boris added with a crooked grin. “Luck comes and goes in this racket. Speaking of which… anybody want to watch me light up Jonny’s Taco Bell farts?”

Outside, the neon flickered again, and somewhere in Van Nuys another bad decision was already warming up.

The Bonus

The crowd already knew how the cards were stacked. Still, the applause hit like a freight train when Johnny Rocco — the silk-suited emperor of Van Nuys — cracked open the envelope and read the name inside.

“Big Tim.”

Flashbulbs popped. Cigars glowed. Somewhere in the back, a trumpet wailed like it had a gambling problem.

The giant Neanderthal lumbered to the stage, all shoulders and menace, and accepted a solid gold bust of his own ugly mug like it was a communion wafer. Rocco draped an arm around him, smiling the kind of smile that never reached his eyes.

“N’yeah, see?” Rocco purred into the mic. “You’ve earned yourself a little reward. Any dame in Van Nuys. Name it.”

It was a tradition — a greasy ritual that had followed every Mobster of the Year for two decades. Usually, the winner picked some unlucky trollop who was working off her father’s gambling debt at one of the mob’s brothels. Easy. Predictable. Disposable.

But Big Tim didn’t play by anyone’s script.

He reached into his coat and held up an album cover — “Hasten Down the Wind.” His thick finger jabbed at the woman on the sleeve.

“Her,” he grunted.

The room went colder than a morgue drawer.

Linda.

Jonny M.’s girl. Off-limits. Untouchable. The kind of name that made wiseguys suddenly interested in their shoes.

Rocco’s grin froze, but he kept his voice smooth as aged bourbon. “You got taste, kid. Real class. But Linda’s a closed book. How about a sweet little nineteen-year-old redhead workin’ off her ma’s bar tab down at the Erwin Street cathouse?”

Tim’s eyes turned reptilian — the kind of stare usually only saw in National Geographic specials on Nile crocodiles. He shoved the album cover inches from Rocco’s nose.

“HER.”

Chairs scraped. Glasses clinked. Half the room calculated the distance to the exits, expecting the air to fill with hot lead any second.

But Rocco didn’t flinch. He studied the cover like a man reading tomorrow’s headlines, then let out a slow, wicked chuckle that slithered through the crowd.

“Well,” he said, voice low and dangerous, “looks like it’s gonna be her.”

He leaned closer, eyes glittering with bad ideas.

“Now let’s figure out how we make that happen.”

Boris’ Brain

The laboratory smelled like hot copper and bad decisions. Professor Morlock’s laugh bounced off the tile walls like loose change in a tin cup as he flipped open Boris’ skull with the smug precision of a butcher who knew he’d already been paid. Under the surgical lights, the pug’s gray matter glistened—every wrinkle a promise of genius Morlock had chased across continents and crime scenes.

He lifted a chrome ice-cream scooper from a tray of wicked-looking instruments and thumbed the lever like a gambler testing a loaded die.

“Finally,” he rumbled, voice deep enough to shake the beakers. “Boris’ beautiful brain meets Jonny’s scandalously perfect chassis. Homo Sapien Perfecto. After that, I run the mold through my cloning rig and stamp out a thousand flawless operatives. Imagine it—an army that never sweats, never doubts, never says no. God, I love progress.”

The scooper hovered over Boris’ exposed thoughts, one heartbeat away from turning brilliance into spare parts.

Then the lab door exploded inward.

A jet-black Tom Ford boot landed first, stiletto heel biting into the tile like punctuation at the end of a threat. Linda stepped through the smoke with twin silver Glocks steady in her hands—one aimed at Morlock’s forehead, the other at a part of his anatomy that didn’t enjoy sudden surprises.

“Show’s over, Professor,” she said, voice cool as a morgue drawer. “Drop the toy.”

Pussy slipped in behind her, eyes sharp, tail twitching with contempt. “You missed a detail,” she said. “Sure, Boris has the perfect brain. But you forgot the primordial goo sloshing around inside that skull.”

Linda smirked without lowering her aim. “A few hours of Boris’ galaxy-level intellect tangled up with Jonny’s… unique cranial sludge? Your super-soldiers wouldn’t conquer the world. They’d be glued to cheap editing software, cranking out ridiculous pulp covers and binge-watching black-and-white panel shows on YouTube at three in the morning.”

Morlock froze, the scooper trembling in his hand. The fantasy drained out of his eyes like liquor from a cracked glass.

“An army of Jonny M.’s that can THINK,” he whispered, horror creeping into his voice. “Sweet mercy… I’d have doomed civilization to endless bad ideas and worse fashion. History would’ve called me the second-greatest monster alive, right after Donald Trump.” He swallowed hard, shoulders sagging. “Forgive me. I nearly made the world an even stranger place.”

The lab lights hummed. Boris snored softly under anesthesia. And for once, even a madman looked relieved that someone had kicked the door in before the scoop came down.

In the Custody of Dogberry

Jonny and Boris were excited when they learned that they’d have to travel to Messina to investigate the murder of Robert Vestal. But instead of a relaxing trip to Sicily, they’d be slugging it out in the backwaters of Messina, Alabama — a place where the humidity clung to your skin like a bad alibi and the locals looked at outsiders the way a junkyard dog looks at a mailman. Vestal’s murder had dragged them across the country, but the only thing getting slaughtered so far was their patience.

They’d barely set foot on George Wallace Boulevard when trouble clocked in. Jonny had been absent-mindedly giving Boris a bellyrub outside the diner — a perfectly innocent moment by Van Nuys standards — when a deputy named Verges with a badge too big for his brain wandered over. One look at their drivers’ licenses and the man’s eyes narrowed like a pair of cheap blinds.

“California, huh?” he muttered. “That may be the world capital of homosensitivity but perversion ain’t legal in these parts.”

Ten minutes later they were cooling their heels in a holding cell inside the sheriff’s office, labeled in chalk as Community Protection. The air smelled like old coffee and older grudges.

Sheriff Boscoe Z. Dogberry made his entrance like a man auditioning for a play he couldn’t read. He spoke in grand flourishes, dropping ten-syllable words where a simple grunt would’ve done the job. Illiterate maybe, but determined to sound like a dictionary that had swallowed a thesaurus.

Boris stepped forward first, all lab-coat dignity wrapped around a pair of fawn-colored paws. “Look, Sheriff,” he said, sliding a hundred-dollar bill between the bars like a peace offering. “I know it looks unusual — a human and a pug working together — but there’s no funny business. We both have girlfriends. I date an alley cat named Pussy, and Jonny is in a relationship with the 25 year-old version of rock star Linda Ronstadt. So you see that there’s nothing weird going on.”

Dogberry squinted at the bill as if it were a snake that might bite. “Pray thee, fellow, peace,” he declared. “I do not like thy look, I promise thee.”

Jonny sighed. The sheriff’s stilted speech sounded like it had been chewed up and spit out by a tractor. Boris glanced at Jonny, then added two more hundreds to the stack, crisp green confessions fluttering in the stale air.

“O villain!” Dogberry barked, puffing up like a rooster with delusions of grandeur. “Thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption for this!”

Jonny coughed to hide a laugh. Boris didn’t even try; the pug just fished out two more C-notes with a weary flick of his paw. Dogberry’s eyes gleamed. He snatched the money, unlocked the cell, and pocketed the evidence of his own moral flexibility. “If you’d coughed up that much at the beginning,” the sheriff said, straightening his crooked badge, “you could’ve saved all of us a lot of time. What do I look like, an ass?”

My Three Love Babies

You could’ve shaved with the edge of the silence that hung over Casa de Jonny that afternoon. Boris stood beneath the dusty ceiling fan, a stack of DNA paternity reports trembling between his fawn-colored paws while the air smelled faintly of cold coffee, old cologne, and regret. The little pug’s brow folded into worried creases as he traced the labyrinth of numbers and genetic hieroglyphics like a priest reading bad news from a crooked bible.

Jonny didn’t bother looking at the paperwork. He studied the three young mugs planted in his living room instead — strangers who’d knocked less than thirty minutes earlier and brought trouble with them like a storm rolling in off Ventura Boulevard. Each kid was a ghost of a woman Jonny wished he’d forgotten: Rosie, Davida, Lisa — three walking disasters whose names were etched into his memoirs under a chapter titled Women Who Should’ve Come With Warning Labels. Their sons carried their mothers’ eyes and posture, but the rest… that was all Jonny. The rasping hyena laugh. The sloped Neanderthal brow. The faint aura of a man who believed soap was a government conspiracy.

Jonny folded his arms and waited. He didn’t need a scientist to tell him how this picture ended.

Boris finally lowered the papers. His voice came out flat, professional — the way it always sounded when a case went from messy to catastrophic. “No doubt about it, pal. These boys are the fruit of your loins. DNA like this doesn’t show up outside a zoo exhibit… and every strand points straight back to you.”

Jonny exhaled through his nose like a man signing his own death warrant. “All right,” he said, straightening his tie with grim ceremony. “Let’s skip the foreplay. I assume you three came here to whack me. Bad news — the only way through me is through Boris, and his betrayal fee isn’t exactly blue-light special material. And if you did scrape together the cash, my operatives would avenge my death, and some of them…are Vulcans.”

The boys traded confused looks.

“Kill you?” said Roscoe — Rosie’s loudmouthed, MAGA-loving kid — blinking like Jonny had just spoken Martian.

“That honestly never crossed our minds,” muttered Yitzchak, Lisa’s pale goth boychik, his eyeliner darker than a blackout curtain.

Wrong-Way Bourland, Davida’s linebacker-built prodigy, stepped forward and cracked a grin that felt disarmingly sincere. “We didn’t come here for revenge, old man. We came because after all these years… we finally wanted to meet our daddy.”

The room went quiet again — not sharp like a blade this time, but heavy, like the moment before a boxer realizes the fight he trained for isn’t the one he’s about to have. Boris glanced at Jonny. Jonny glanced at the boys. And somewhere deep in the cluttered chaos of Casa de Jonny, a detective who’d stared down killers without blinking suddenly looked like a man who didn’t know where to put his hands.

Stopover at Petticoat Junction

Hack intended to continue his series of novels inspired by 1960s TV sitcoms with this tribute to Petticoat Junction, a rural comedy best remembered for its opening sequence showing three smokin’ hot sisters provocatively bathing in a water tower over their mother’s hotel. Unfortunately, the story was derailed because the actor who played the character of Uncle Joe in the show bore an uncanny resemblance to Hack’s abusive father, so it devolved into a memory piece about how every time Hack started making out with a woman during his teenage years, his father inevitably appeared and tried to make it a three-way.

That Girl

The alleys behind Van Nuys’ Skid Row were a place the city forgot on purpose. Even the rats walked with their collars turned up, and the only law that lingered there came in empty bottles and bad intentions. If hell had a back door, it opened onto that stretch of broken asphalt — and that’s exactly where Jonny and Boris found themselves when word spread that a gentle drifter known as the Little Tramp had cashed in his last smile.

He’d been a fixture of the gutters, a sad clown with a hopeful grin, until somebody snuck up behind him and cracked a bottle across the back of his skull. The alley had swallowed him whole, leaving only a stiff breeze and a smell strong enough to make shopkeepers across the way start dialing numbers they usually ignored.

Boris sniffed the air, his wrinkled muzzle tightening like a clenched fist. “Body’s been here a week,” the little pug muttered, pacing slow circles around the chalky outline of what used to be a man. “Maybe longer. Without the complaints, we’d never have known he was gone. Right now, partner, I got nothing — no footprints, no witnesses, just ghosts and broken glass.”

Jonny didn’t like hearing that. Boris was the brain of the operation, and when the brain ran dry, trouble usually wasn’t far behind.

Trouble arrived wearing a dirty overcoat and carrying a half-empty bottle of rye.

Whiskey Tom drifted out of the shadows like a bad memory. The boys knew him well — a twitchy psycho with a taste for violence and cheap liquor. He led them to his cardboard palace tucked against a graffiti-scarred wall, only a few feet from where the Little Tramp had taken his last breath.

Boris leaned in close. “You said you saw the killer,” he said, voice low and steady. “Start talking.”

Tom’s eyes darted around like loose marbles. His lips trembled, but the words refused to come — until a flash of legs and spotlight glow spilled into the alley. A brunette stepped through the stage door of one of Skid Row’s seedy 99-seat theaters, all curves and confidence, a mini dress cutting through the gloom like a sunrise nobody deserved.

Ann Marie.

Van Nuys’ sweetheart. The girl with a smile bright enough to make the streetlights jealous.

Jonny tipped his fedora. Boris blinked twice, stunned silent — a rare event.

Tom’s bottle rattled against his teeth as he raised a shaking finger.

“That’s her … she’s the one who did it.” he croaked, voice thin as a cracked record. “That girl!”