Silence of the Pugs

Boris felt his fur prickle the moment the steel door clanged shut behind him. The corridor outside the holding ward for homicidal lunatics smelled like bleach, cold coffee, and regret. His little paws clicked against the tile as he hurried toward the exit, Hannibal Lechter’s velvet-smooth voice still echoing in his ears. The meeting had yielded answers—but answers didn’t slow the ticking clock. Somewhere in Van Nuys, Buffalo Jill was sharpening her dreams with a knife, and Jonny’s elephant-like epidermis was already measured for the next addition to her chilling man suit.

Across town, Jonny hung in a nightmare cut straight from a pulp magazine cover. A dirt pit in a suburban basement. A single bulb swinging like a drunk with a secret. Above him stood Jill, looming over the edge, her shadow falling across him like a funeral veil. She was dressed down to a black tank top and the same model of blood red thong that Jonny had recently purchased at Victoria’s Secret to stuff in his mouth when he took his mid-afternoon naps.

“It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again,” Buffalo Jill crooned, voice syrupy and cruel. She nudged a bottle of Jergens toward him with the toe of her boot. The smell of cheap roses filled the pit as Jonny worked the lotion into his wrinkled hide. Truth was, he liked how the salve opened up his stubborn pores, but he’d written enough erotic fiction for publication on the Dark Web based on this very scenario to know that he had to stretch out the perverse torment in order to intensify the amorous climax. Jonny tilted his head back, eyes half-lidded with defiance and mischief, playing his part like a second-rate actor chasing a first-class curtain call.

“First,” he said, voice low and steady, “tell me how naughty I’ve been.”

Two Lunatics in Search of an Author

The plates were empty, the champagne was warm, and the kind of trouble that only shows up after dessert was already circling the table like a vulture with a reservation. Linda and Pussy slipped away toward the ladies’ room in a swirl of perfume and promises to get themselves ready to return to Casa de Jonny and give Jonny and Boris their Valentines Day gifts, a night of violent anal sex without lube.

Boris tilted his champagne flute and chased the last rebellious bubbles with his tongue. The little pug adjusted his white tie and tails like a diplomat preparing to start a war.

“Ever notice something, boss?” he muttered, voice low enough to dodge the waitstaff but loud enough to land like a brick. “We’re catnip to every dame in Van Nuys. Me — a pug with a vocabulary and a tuxedo, cruelly castrated before I was shipped across the Pacific. And you — a 64-year-old moron with a disposition like a cracked ashtray, dating a legendary pop star who looks 25 on a bad day despite her being born in 1946 and suffering from Parkinson’s Disease.”

Jonny blinked slowly, like a man trying to read a clue written in invisible ink. “What’s your point, Boris?”

Before the dog could answer, a thin man with a pencil mustache and a tragically ambitious French accent glided up to the table. The restaurant manager. He smelled faintly of garlic and deadlines.

“Messieurs,” he said, bowing just enough to suggest either respect or indigestion. “Monsieur Werker requests that you conclude this philosophical digression. He intends to dedicate several pages to… how do you say… your evening of bareback cornholing, and your existential debate is slowing the rhythm of the narrative.”

He clicked his heels and vanished toward the kitchen like a stagehand fleeing a spotlight.

Jonny stared at Boris. Boris stared at Jonny. The silence hung between them like a bad alibi.

Finally, the pug sighed, straightened his bow tie, and delivered the line like a verdict.

“My point, pal,” he said, “is that none of this makes sense… unless we’re just characters trapped inside a pulp crime novel.”

Ponderosa

The prairie sky bled red like a fresh wound as Jonny and Boris sat by a lonely campfire, boots stretched toward the flames, letting the smoke curl up into a sunset that looked like it had been poured from a whiskey bottle. A month riding the dust trails had taught them one thing — silence out here wasn’t peace. It was a warning. They turned around to see four men of about the same age on horses, but since one of them had gone prematurely gray, he was in charge.

“I’m Ben Cartwright and these are my sons Hoss, Joseph and Adam, although Adam will be leaving us soon because he’s a Drama Desk Award-winning Shakespearean actor and our adventures have gotten too ridiculous for him. This is our ranch the Ponderosa that we operate exclusively by ourselves, with only our cook Hop Sing to ease our loneliness. Who exactly are you strangers?”

“This is a RANCH?” asked Jonny incredulously. “It’s so big, we thought we were riding from one end of Texas to the other.”

“We’re from the future,” explained Boris nervously as he realized that the Cartwrights were between him and his Colt .45. “We took our time machine to check out the Old West. We didn’t mean to trespass.”

Old man Cartright calmly dismounted while Hoss and Adam boxed in the boys with the horses as Little Joe retrieved Boris’ pistol. The patriarch gave the pug a disinterested glance and then fixed a long, cold look at Jonny.

“Time machine, eh?” said Cartwright as he stroked Jonny’s cheek with his gloved hand. “I’ll say this…they make ‘em with REAL pretty mouths in the future.”

The Streets of Van Nuys

The office clock coughed up midnight like it was clearing its throat. Down on the street, Van Nuys flickered and sweated, a neon-lit petri dish where trouble bred fast and morals went to die young.

Jonny sat behind his desk at the Jonny & Boris Detective Agency, a whiskey neat sweating in his hand, watching the city glow through the window. For once, he was on the right side of the glass—dry, warm, and safely out of reach of the creatures crawling out from under their rocks. The night shift was clocking in: working girls chasing rent money, reefer peddlers chasing bad dreams, zoot-suited punks with too much attitude and not enough sense. Fallen dames strutted past streetlamps in fishnets and stilettos, dressed like regret and daring the world to blink first.

It was a rare thing—peace. The kind that makes a detective suspicious.

That’s when the door opened.

Boris padded in, all four paws businesslike, his face set in that grim, no-nonsense way that meant Jonny’s evening was about to go south. He didn’t waste time with small talk. He never did.

“Grab your trench coat,” he said. “And my leash.”

Jonny sighed, already reaching for the hanger.

“I gotta go out and pee.”

Fast Food from a Pug’s Butt

The Chief of CONTROL looked like a man who’d been arm-wrestling Armageddon and losing on points when Jonny and Boris stepped into his office. His shoulders sagged, his eyes were bloodshot, and the cigarette in his hand had burned down to the filter without him noticing.

“The Reds finally did it,” he said, voice flat as a toe tag. “They’ve perfected the Super Atomic Bomb. One week from today it drops on Van Nuys. That’s curtains. Final show. End of the world as we know it.”

Jonny frowned and glanced down at Boris. The pug adjusted his fedora and blinked, unimpressed. “What’s the holdup?” Jonny said. “Put us on the airfield. We’ll wreck the bomb before it wrecks us.”

The Chief stared at them like they’d just suggested stopping a hurricane with a cocktail umbrella. “Nothing,” he said, jabbing the air with a trembling finger, “NOTHING is more destructive than that bomb. It’ll scrub humanity off the map for hundreds of miles. There is no stopping it.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Jonny said calmly.

Boris smiled. A slow, knowing grin—the kind that usually meant someone, somewhere, was about to regret their life choices.

“Parachute us in,” Jonny went on, “with a duffel bag full of McDonald’s new McCrispy sandwiches. Boris eats them all.”

The Chief opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“When that toxic pseudo-meat hits his pug colon,” Jonny continued, “it’ll brew up a stink so powerful it’ll de-atomize anything within range. Steel, concrete, Commie science—gone. Those red-hot eggheads planned for everything except one thing.”

He nodded toward Boris.

“A pug’s large intestine.”

The room went quiet. Somewhere, a clock ticked like it was counting down to doomsday.

Finally, the Chief sighed, defeated. He picked up the red phone—the one reserved for bad ideas and worse necessities—and dialed Washington.

“Get me transport,” he said. “And order a crate of McCrispys.”

Happy National Poop Day!

Most Valuable Pug

The Seahawks’ locker room had the feel of a morgue ten minutes before the toe met the leather. Steam curled off the showers like cigarette smoke in a bad dream, and every man in uniform wore the same long face. The word had come down that morning like a body off a bridge: Glenn Simon, their All-Star wide receiver, had been pancaked in a freak Zamboni mishap. One minute he was the king of the end zone, the next he was a smear on the ice. Morale went with him.

Coach Mike Macdonald paced the tile like a priest with no faith left. He tried to sell hope the way a bookie sells sure things. “I know you think nobody replaces Glenn,” he said, voice echoing off the lockers. “But I know one guy who can.”

That’s when they noticed the stranger. Quiet. Small. Already pulling on pads at Simon’s locker like he owned the place. Fawn-colored fur. Short legs. Cold eyes that had seen worse things than a fourth quarter blitz. Boris Pug.

The room went dead silent until quarterback Sam Darnold let out a laugh sharp enough to cut glass. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he sneered. “Simon was a stone-cold killer. That mutt’ll be a grease spot before the—”

He never finished. Boris moved. One second he was a dog in a jersey, the next he had Darnold folded up in a ninja death grip that looked like it had been outlawed in three countries. The air left the quarterback’s lungs in a wet cough. Boris eased off just before the man’s windpipe gave up the ghost and let him crumple to the floor like a losing hand.

“I was trained by the Korean Dark Lords of Justice,” Boris said softly, straightening his pads. “I think I can handle your little game.”

Nobody said a word after that. Boris went back to suiting up. The players exchanged looks—slow smiles creeping in, the kind gamblers wear when they realize the deck is stacked and the house is about to go broke.

Murder at the Ballet

It was the kind of night Van Nuys polished its shoes for. The annual arrival of the Robert Vestal Ballet Company always drew the city’s top hats and bottom lines—bankers with waxed smiles, councilmen with wandering eyes. Slumming among them were two guys who usually worked the alleys instead of the aisles: Jonny and Boris. They didn’t belong to the upper crust, but they’d bought tickets anyway. Tonight wasn’t about culture—it was about Dévyon DuMon, an old friend from Paris, cleared by their legwork when a Dali masterpiece went missing and everyone needed a villain with good posture. DuMon danced like a gardenia-scented hurricane, all jitterbug and perfume, too sweet for the detectives’ taste—but the Bro Code said you show up for your pals, even if it means five hours of tights and tragedy.

They were well into hour five when the ballet took a hard left into hellfire—DuMon leaping offstage in some double-cabriole heroics to save his lover Andromeda from Cerberus or damnation or whatever the program said. Jonny and Boris had been trading naps when a gunshot cracked the air like a bad alibi. The house gasped. A scream followed. Then Robert Vestal himself staggered into the lights, a fresh bullet signature stamped on his forehead. He tried to say something—“DuMon… DuMon’s to blame”—and then he folded, bleeding into the boards that had made him rich.

The detectives were onstage before the applause could die. Boris went to work, eyes sharp, mind sharper. Jonny did what Jonny did best—offered comfort to the two hottest ballerinas in the vicinity in the hopes of getting a three-way going later that night. Too late for Vestal. Boris checked his watch to mark the time of death just as DuMon pirouetted back onstage, blissfully unaware. That’s when Victoria Page, the prima ballerina and Vestal’s lover, broke like cheap glass. “He did it!” she screamed. “Dévyon hated Bobby from day one—ever since I told him I wouldn’t touch him while Bobby was still breathing!” The crowd buzzed. Boris shut it down with a look. “Everyone’s a suspect,” he said. “Including Jonny and me.” Then his gaze settled on DuMon, hard and cold. “But I’ll admit—right now, it sounds like you pulled the trigger.”

Happy National Ballet Day!

A Twist of F8

Eight years ago today, I drove to the customs area of Korea Airlines and picked up the little dude who would soon become my best friend. The good folks at Pug Rescue of Korea called him Bruce, but that was a handle I never cared for so I rechristened him Boris and we began a series of adventures that turned my new buddy into the legend he was always destined to become. Eight years later, my heart overflows with gratitude that fate (and the Pug Rescue of Korea) brought us together.

I told Hack that story and he cranked out this stupid novel. I guess it was a nice gesture.

The Big Winner

Gentleman Dave slid the pot across the felt like he was pushing a coffin into the ground. “Time to take a breather,” he said, his voice worn smooth by a thousand bad beats. Boris raked in the chips, but Jonny didn’t notice. His eyes were glued to the doorway, where trouble had just put on heels and walked in wearing a smile that could bankrupt a saint.

“That’s Davida Bourland,” Dave murmured, dealing the cards like last rites. “Queen of the Strip. Looks like a payday, plays like a funeral. Don’t sweat it, though—your stack wouldn’t catch her eye. But your pug? He’s right up her alley.”

Davida’s radar locked on Boris and she drifted over, all silk and smoke, a shark in a Gucci handbag. “Hey, big spender,” she purred, lashes fluttering like alibis. “I know a few places where money disappears real nice.” Boris gave her the once-over and thought about a certain cat back in Van Nuys—the kind of pussy you don’t trade in for cheap thrills. “Take a hike, sister,” he said. “You’re barking up the wrong dog.”

Davida smiled like she’d already won and reached into her bag, pulling out a Milk-Bone like it was a loaded gun. “Shame,” she said. “I’ve got a whole case of these at home. Gets awful lonely.” Boris cracked. Gentleman Dave caught Jonny’s eye and flashed a grin that had seen too many endings. “She knows every angle, pal. Keep your eyes open. Your friend just sat down with the deadliest player in the joint—and the house always remembers.”

Happy birthday to our friend Davida Bourland!