Category: Cadaver

Jonny & Boris Meet Hack Werker

Nobody in Van Nuys was surprised when Robert Vestal was found dead on his living room floor one lazy Monday morning.

The discovery was made by his housekeeper, who had been working for Vestal long enough to know two things about the man: first, he was rich, and second, he was widely hated. Vestal had spent a lifetime double-crossing every two-bit hood in town and breaking the hearts of every floozy who had ever been foolish enough to trust him. By the time he finally caught a bullet, most people in the city figured it was simply the bill coming due.

What was surprising was what happened afterward.

Jonny and Boris of the Jonny & Boris Detective Agency soon learned that Vestal had anticipated his own violent end. In a final gesture that was equal parts arrogance and gallows humor, the crooked financier had set aside a tidy sum in his will for the two detectives—on the condition that they bring his “inevitable murderer, whoever it turns out to be,” to justice.

It sounded simple enough.

The trouble was that everyone in Van Nuys had a motive.

Vestal had cheated gamblers, swindled businessmen, blackmailed politicians, and jilted more women than a traveling magician. Half the town had wanted him dead, and the other half would have happily held his coat while someone else did the job.

Somewhere in that crowd was the killer.

But only one of them had pulled the trigger.

“I don’t have a clue,” Boris admitted, which was a rare confession for the sharp-witted pug detective. “Everyone in this berg hated Vestal’s guts, including you and me. How are we supposed to narrow down the list of suspects?”

Jonny leaned back in his chair and stared gloomily at the ceiling.

“This whole thing reminds me of one of those terrible detective novels,” he muttered. “You know the kind. Written by that awful pulp fiction writer. I forget his name…”

“Hack Werker?” suggested Boris, who was the more well-read of the two partners.

“That’s him!” Jonny snapped. “He writes those idiotic mysteries where you don’t know who the killer is until the last five pages. Then suddenly it turns out to be some minor character who wasn’t even introduced until the end of the book.”

Boris nodded thoughtfully.

“Yes, those are pretty bad.”

Jonny sighed.

“I’ll bet HE could figure out the ending to this ridiculous plot.”

For a moment the office fell silent.

Jonny looked at Boris.

Boris looked at Jonny.

Then, as if by some mysterious act of detective inspiration, identical light bulbs seemed to flick on above both their heads.

“Hack Werker lives in an old van parked behind the Shakey’s Pizza Parlor on Laurel Canyon Boulevard,” Boris said, already reaching for his fedora.

Jonny raised an eyebrow.

“That’s a long shot.”

Boris settled the hat firmly between his ears and headed for the door.

“Partner,” he said, “this case is ridiculous enough to call for desperate measures.”

He paused at the doorway and grinned.

“Besides,” the pug added, “I’ve got a powerful craving for greasy pizza and mojo potatoes.”

And with that, the two detectives set off to consult the one man in Van Nuys who might know how their strange mystery was supposed to end.

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.”

The Murder of Gomer Pyle

The Van Nuys Motel 6 collected corpses the way a cheap bar collects regrets—quietly, without ceremony. So the badges dragged their heels. But when Jonny and Boris heard the name of the stiff over the police radio, something cold crawled up their spines. Gomer Pyle. Marine Corps. One of their own.

John Law was still absent when they arrived, but it didn’t matter because since the death took place in a hotel, it was under the jurisdiction of the Hotel Dick. At the Van Nuys Motel 6, that meant Dutch Winsett, a man Jonny and Boris knew too well. They all went to detective school together and while Jonny and Boris graduated with honors at the top of the class and became legendary shamuses, Winsett came in dead last and landed here, king of mildew and broken vending machines. When they walked into the crime scene to see Gomer hanging by his belt around his throat from the ceiling fan, the scowl on his face when they walked in said he remembered every ranking on that final scoreboard.

“Well, well,” Dutch sneered. “Van Nuys’ favorite miracle workers. Hate to disappoint you, but there’s no grand conspiracy. Pyle checked in alone, got bored, got experimental. Breath-control play gone wrong. Case closed.”

He lifted two pieces of evidence like a magician revealing cheap props—a bottle of Jergens lotion and a box of Kleenex Ultra-Soft.

“Wait a minute,” said Boris. “You think that Gomer was playing with his pud using LOTION? When we did circle jerks in ‘Nam,  he’d douse his wang in Hellfire Hot Sauce from his hometown in Mayberry.”

“And Kleenex ULTRA-SOFT?” said Jonny. “He’d call you a pussy if you cleaned up with anything less than sandpaper.”

Boris hopped onto the nightstand, nose twitching as if sniffing out a lie. “This wasn’t an accident,” he said quietly. “Someone staged this.”

Jonny’s trench coat flared as he turned toward the door. “Only three hitters in Van Nuys could make a murder look this pathetic.”

“Give us twenty-four hours,” Boris called over his shoulder. “We’ll drag your killer into the lobby ourselves.”

The door slammed behind them just as the distant wail of sirens finally crept into the parking lot. Tears welled in Dutch’s eyes at the realization that Jonny and Boris had once again made a fool of him…but he swore that THEY would be the fools in the last chapter.

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.”

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!

Monkeyprints on the Ceiling

“Robert Vestal was the most hated man in this rotten burg,” Jonny said, flicking a finger toward the stiff cooling on the floor. Boris rode his shoulders like a bad idea, nose inches from the ceiling, muttering to himself about cracks in the plaster only a professional lunatic could love. “Any one of his enemies would’ve paid good money to see him dead—and most of ’em already had.”

Linda and Pussy, the dames the boys had dragged along in hopes the night would end softer than it started, traded looks sharp enough to cut glass. “But the nice police detective said the place was sealed,” Linda said. “Doors locked. Windows bolted. Nobody could’ve gotten in.”

“No HUMAN could’ve gotten in,” Boris snapped, finally peeling his eyes off the ceiling. “That’s where the badge boys stop thinking. They stare straight ahead and never bother to look up. If they had, they’d have seen the monkeyprints—right there, crawling out of the air vent. Same prints made by JoJo, Vestal’s pet macaque and the only beneficiary of his dirty little empire. Congratulations, gentlemen. Your killer likes bananas.”

Pussy screamed before the echo had time to settle. They all turned and saw JoJo in the doorway, Vestal’s own pistol clutched in his hairy paw, barrel steady, eyes cold. He thumbed back the hammer with a neat little click.

“Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Pug,” the monkey said, smiling without warmth. “It’s a real shame the four of you won’t live long enough to enjoy it.”

Jonny’s Island

Boris shook the salt from his jowls and watched the last bubbles of the S.S. Jonny Pals wink out like bad ideas at dawn, the sea around them littered with the bloated punctuation marks of a voyage gone wrong. Survival, he knew, was about priorities, and priorities were about people. He cleared his throat and laid it out like a crooked hand of cards. Pussy was a given—some things in this world were as fixed as gravity. The movie star with the Frankenstein jawline didn’t blink before calling dibs on the brilliant professor, citing destiny, chemistry, and the simple math of ego. Everyone nodded, because in a crisis people believe whoever sounds most confident, even if he’s wrong.

That left the odd scraps, and that’s when Linda cut in, braids swinging, red gingham bright enough to insult the sun. She chose her boyfriend Jonny…’s pal Eddie with the cool efficiency of someone picking the only lifeboat that hadn’t sprung a leak, and she didn’t bother sugarcoating the reasons. “No offense, Jonny, but you’re pretty damaged and I don’t think you’ll survive more than two weeks in the wild. Plus, you cheat on me in every other Hack Werker novel with whatever hot celebrity has a birthday that day, so it’s not like I owe you anything. “ Jonny felt the verdict land like a sap to the kidneys. Boris made it official with a wag of his paw and a tone that brooked no appeal: couplings set, pecking order established. Jonny, freshly demoted to island mule, got the worst of it—dragging the dead from the shallows while the living sorted their futures. The sea smelled like rust and regret, and as Jonny worked, he couldn’t shake the feeling that being unfuckable was the least of his problems.

Happy heavenly birthday to Bob Denver!

Jonny & Boris Meet Bulldog Drummond

Jonny’s grin stayed plastered on his face as they crossed the threshold of Scotland Yard, but it had the stiffness of cheap glue. The murder of Robert Vestal still rang in his ears like a cracked bell—shot clean through the heart on some manicured English estate, a heart Jonny had always assumed Vestal rented rather than owned. The chief inspector, all tweed and clipped vowels, laid it out with the solemnity of a man announcing the weather: they’d be sharing the case with a local bloodhound named Drummond, who’d been tracking it from the English side of the pond. Jonny knew the name. Ex–army, thrill-seeker, a legend in rain-soaked pubs and police files. The constable leaned in and lowered his voice. “Good chap, Drummond. Made quite a name for himself in the canine corps.” Jonny blinked. “Did you just say CANINE corps?” The word hung in the air like gun smoke.

The answer padded in before the question could cool. Drummond entered without a sound, Limey incarnate, every inch the Empire right down to the jowls. He was a bulldog—no metaphor, no exaggeration, just a solid, breathing slab of British beef with a detective’s stare. His eyes locked on Boris and lit up. “Smashing to finally meet you, old boy. After years of chasing villains with homo sapiens, I thought it time we dogs showed them how it’s properly done. Care to see the murder scene?” He turned, already moving, a paw clamped around Boris’s arm. “Your assistant can take notes.” Jonny bristled as the pug was hustled away, the thrill draining out of the room. Scotland Yard suddenly felt colder, and Jonny had the sinking feeling this case wasn’t going to let him enjoy a single damn thing.