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.
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!”
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.”
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.”
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.”
Boris and Jonny got the summons like a bad hand at a crooked table. Rufus T. Firefly’s office smelled of panic and cigar smoke, and the Dictator for Life was pacing like a man who’d misplaced his spine. “I’ve got sour news, boys,” Firefly said, voice cracking like cheap shellac. “You fled here to dodge that lunatic Donald Trump, and now he’s kicking down our door. The orange windbag’s declared war on us for our helium reserves. As if he didn’t already sound ridiculous every time he opened his mouth.”
Boris cocked an eyebrow and scratched his jowls. “I thought our spiritual ringer, Sister Ana of Armas, handed him her Nobel Peace Prize to keep his beady little eyes off our goofy gas.” Firefly snorted. “The man’s got the memory of a three-day-old gnat. He forgot. That’s why you’re here. Boris, you take the northern front and try not to get us all killed. Jonny—your job’s heavier. Sister Ana is the soul of this tin-pot republic. She breathes, we breathe. You get her south to our friends. It won’t be pretty, but you’re the only mug I trust to pull it off.”
Jonny opened his mouth to protest the partner split when the door swung open and the good sister walked in. They’d heard the hymns about her kindness and charity, but none of them mentioned she was built like trouble with a halo slapped on top. Boris clocked it instantly—Sister Ana froze when she saw Jonny, her angelic face melting into the same hungry look every Van Nuys tramp gave his pal when she’d already picked out the motel. The pug had seen that look a hundred times. It always ended the same way—wrinkled sheets, bad decisions, and regrets that didn’t last past breakfast.
The pleasure ship’s infirmary looked like a crime scene where the weapon was cheap liquor and bad judgment. Passengers were draped over cots and trash cans, retching like they were trying to cough up their souls. Perry Gordeaux, the baby-faced pre-med working the voyage as an assistant medic, wiped his brow and shook his head. “That’s what happens when you guzzle chocolate martinis till dawn,” he said. “Even Doc Merlin went down swinging. I handed him our last barf bag five minutes ago.”
“I’ve never known Doc to drink,” said Jennifer Brooks, the ship’s head nurse—tall, gorgeous, and built like trouble. “But with him out cold, it’s just you and me holding this circus together.” She lowered her voice. “Lucky for us, Boris Pug is a passenger. Not licensed, but he knows more medicine than anyone with a diploma. Unlucky for us, that means his owner Jonny M. will be sniffing around. So forgive me if I keep my back to the wall—he’s got wandering hands.”
She barely finished the sentence before fate kicked in the door. Boris and Jonny were suddenly there. Jonny flashed Jennifer a grin that belonged in a police lineup, already making her skin crawl, but Boris was all steel nerves and cold logic. “Our last port of call was Freedonia,” the pug said. “Did any of the passengers engage in anal sex with a proboscis monkey?”
“Probably a few dozen,” Jennifer said, swatting away Jonny’s creeping hand. “That’s the main attraction.”
Boris’s eyes darkened. “This isn’t simple alcohol poisoning. All that monkey business brewed a virus mean enough to crack the world wide open the moment we dock anywhere civilized.” He paused. “I might be able to cook up an antidote. Long shot. But to get the key ingredient…” He looked at Jennifer. Then at Jonny. “You’ll have to merge bodily fluids. The old-fashioned way.”
The infirmary groaned. The ship rolled. And somewhere out at sea, the end of the world cleared its throat.
The snow came down like a bad alibi, thick and merciless, smothering the Alaskan night while old Merlin paced his cabin atop a hoard of gold, counting it and cursing the world. The fire cracked. His voice did too. “The Lord sees you,” he snarled, scripture dripping from his tongue. “He sees the men staring at you with lust in their hearts.”
Nancy—too alive for a dead place like this—smoothed the short white slip she wore and met his glare without blinking. “Who do you blame for that, Dad?” she said. “You dragged me into this frozen nowhere where the ratio’s five hundred men to one woman. If you ever looked up from praying, you’d see every guy within ten miles already thinking it.”
Merlin answered the way cowards do. He shoved her out into the storm, slammed the door, and let the lock speak for him. Snow soaked silk. Cold gnawed bone. Then, through the howling white, came the clean ring of sleigh bells—and out of the blur emerged a dog sled pulled by the one creature mean enough to laugh at a night like this. Boris of the Yukon was coming fast.
The big moment finally slunk into the room like a bad debt. Under the hot lights, the entrants in the Miss Jonny Pal Beauty Contest squirmed in their postage-stamp bikinis and duct-taped dreams, sweat shining like cheap varnish. Jesse Merlin—once a golden-throated crooner back when jukeboxes still mattered—lurched toward the microphone. Alimony had chewed him down to the bone, and now he paid the tab by hosting carnivals like this. He blinked, steadied himself, and tried to sound sober. The “Jonny Gals,” as the socials had christened them, traded one last round of razor-edged glares, smiles sharp enough to draw blood.
Merlin cleared his throat and sang out the verdict. “Pussy Cat.” The room froze. The stage went quiet enough to hear hearts misfire. The judges hadn’t crowned a silicone siren with a smile bought on credit—they’d handed the gold to a common alley cat. An alley cat who just happened to be the girlfriend of Boris Pug, second in command of the Jonny Pals and a permanent fixture in Van Nuys. The sash swallowed her whole, a sunburst of satin ten sizes too big, while her influential canine beau bathed her with that famous tongue of his. Out front, the lovelies’ eyes went red. Whispers slithered through the crowd. The word “fix” made the rounds like a loaded gun, and the also-rans decided right then they’d prove it.
