Before Boris could answer, there was a sharp rap on the dorm room door. He and Jonny quickly threw on their wigs and long nightgowns and gave each other the thumbs up that they could safely pass for their female alter egos “Jonna” and “Boreen’” The pug opened the door to find Chloé, the bespectacled brunette who had bonded with Jonna, shivering at the door wrapped in only a small bath towel.
“With all the murders going on in the dormitory,” she said to Boris, “I didn’t want to sleep alone tonight. Is it alright if I sleep with Jonna?” Then she turned to Jonny. “But I forgot to bring my nightie from the murder room, so I’ll have to cuddle up to you in the nude. Is that okay?” Boris shot Jonny a concerned look. This would be crossing a serious ethical line, but by refusing her they might lose her hard-earned trust. But before the pug could say anything, his partner was already in bed, raising a corner of the blanket that beckoned the scantily clad beauty to join her confidante.
“Hop in,” said Jonna with a puzzling wolf-like grin.
It was three in the morning, the hour when the streetlights flicker like dying stars and the only things awake in Van Nuys are the rats, the sinners, and the poor mugs paid to clean up after them. Jonny M. swaggered onto the scene like he was arriving at a Hollywood premiere rather than a sidewalk soaked in yesterday’s blood. While he kept himself occupied tossing charm grenades at the gorgeous lady cop assigned to the case—Officer Jane Law, the kind of knockout who could stop traffic and maybe even a raging bull—Boris crouched over the mutilated stiff with an expression that would curdle fresh milk. The little pug detective’s face had never exactly been a picture of joy, but tonight it was uglier than a politician’s promise.
Boris didn’t need more than a glance to know what he was looking at. The deep lacerations ripping across the victim’s torso weren’t the work of some dime-store switchblade or a hopped-up mugger with brass knuckles. No—these were the calling cards of something far more primal. Razor-sharp claws. The kind only an angry tomcat could wield with enough fury to send a man to meet his maker early. The pug lit a cigarette, letting the smoke curl around his thoughts like a lazy fog creeping over a cemetery gate. He was just reaching for his magnifying glass when Jane Law strolled over, heels clicking like a countdown to doom.
“You can put that toy away, Boris,” she purred. “We’ve already got the culprit.” Boris looked up, squinting through a ribbon of smoke, and saw her holding a pair of heavy steel shackles. On the other end of them stood a sexy tomcat in a little black dress, wide-brim hat, and eyes wide with terror. But this wasn’t just any feline femme fatale—they’d dragged in Pussy, Boris’ own girlfriend. His Camel hung from the corner of his mouth as he took the longest, slowest drag of his life. This wasn’t just another corpse on just another crooked night in Van Nuys. This was a frame-up, and unless Boris could crack the case wide open, Pussy was headed straight for a date with the hangman’s noose.
Jonny watched the Packard fishtail down the alley, exhaust coughing like a dying bullfrog, the blonde bombshell behind the wheel shrieking at her sister/daughter/niece/second cousin in that high-strung way that made every vertebra in Jonny’s spine beg for mercy. She’d been nothing but trouble from the moment she waltzed into the agency flashing those baby-blue peepers and waving a retainer check big enough to pave over her neuroses. But it was Jonny’s ex-partner on the force—a tall drink of nitroglycerin whose slow burn around him could’ve been detected by airport security—who made the next move. She raised her service piece for a polite little “stop or I’ll shoot” communiqué… only the communique went rogue, zipped through the dawn haze, and rearranged the dame’s golden noggin into something resembling a seven-layer dip left too long on a picnic table.
When the smoke cleared and the three of them gathered round the wrecked beauty, Jonny felt a jig bubbling inside him like champagne in a thin glass. She’d been a headache, sure, but sweet saints of the city, what a dish. He’d even bragged—loudly and to anyone within earshot—about the time he’d done the horizontal hula with her. Now, with her skull looking like a Jackson Pollock study in red, he couldn’t exactly break into a victory Charleston in front of gawking bystanders clutching their shopping bags and moral expectations. Jonny’s face needed to broadcast “tragic remorse,” but his soul was performing a conga line, and that was a tricky two-step to pull off without coaching.
Luckily, Boris knew his partner’s heart was made of equal parts confetti and ratchet straps, and he’d taken precautions. From the shadows stepped a lone trumpet player—Boris’ doing—blowing a low, mournful note that told Jonny exactly what emotion he ought to paste across his mug. With the horn’s wail guiding him, Jonny mustered up a look of deep, operatic angst while privately debating whether to stream some trashy reality show or the latest Bill Burr standup special on Netflix that night. Boris padded close, laid a steadying paw on his partner’s shoulder, and whispered the words that deepened Jonny’s fake grief just enough to fool the crowd and maybe, just maybe, fool himself.
Boris the pug stood under the flickering streetlamp, his trench coat collar turned up against the chill and his flat little muzzle buried in the evening edition. The headline screamed “KILLER SEDUCTRESS STILL AT LARGE,” and the dago-print ink was still wet enough to smudge on his paw pads. He’d been tracking the story for days—some doll-faced angel of death drifting through the city’s dingiest gin joints, batting her eyelashes at the kind of mugs nature had already punished, then capping them between the peepers the moment they thought they’d hit the jackpot. According to tonight’s sheet, she’d just punched two more one-way tickets to the Great Beyond and slipped clean through the fingers of the boys in blue. Boris felt his tail twitch. A sultry murderess with a taste for hopeless saps? Yeah… that was exactly Jonny’s brand of trouble.
The pug snapped the paper shut and tossed a glance down the boulevard, knowing instinctively his partner was out there somewhere making eyes at the wrong woman. Jonny had a history of tumbling headfirst into a dame’s dimples and asking questions only after the funeral arrangements. Boris could almost smell disaster creeping on the breeze—sweet perfume laced with gunpowder and heartbreak. He broke into a trot, muttering under his breath. If this killer cupcake was half as good at playing the love-and-lead routine as the papers made her sound, Jonny was already on her dance card. And Boris needed to reach him before she decided to end the song with a bang.
Meanwhile, across town inside Jonny’s favorite watering hole—a joint where the barstools leaned like retired prizefighters and the jukebox coughed up sad saxophones—fate was already rolling snake eyes. An angelic devil in high heels sauntered in, all curves, confidence, and the kind of smile priests warn you about. Brigid O’Shaughnessy. Jonny took one look and felt his heart hiccup; she was the most luscious dame he’d clapped eyes on… at least since yesterday afternoon. As he nursed his virgin piña colada and rehearsed a dozen suave greetings he’d never say out loud, she marched straight up to him and purred, “My name’s Brigid. Let’s go back to my place.” Jonny thanked the heavens for his generous slathering of Hai Karate aftershave—liquid courage for the romantically doomed—and in less time than it takes a bartender to blink, he was following her out into the night, utterly unaware he was strolling hand-in-hand with the headline Boris was racing to outrun.
Hack claims that this novel is based on a real woman he knew who would murder any man after having sex with him once. His publisher John Kane has admitted that he knows the woman and that she’s been married for 30 years to the same man by whom she has three children and that Hack made up the lie to explain why he refused to have sex with her when, in reality, it was she who refused to have sex with him. It’s a pretty good book though, with a nice subplot about a lonely clown.
