Category: Damsels in Distress

The MacGuffin

The call from the Chief of the Super Secret Service usually came the way bad news always did—hard, fast, and at an hour when decent people were asleep and crooks were just getting warmed up.

Most times, it meant Jonny M. and Boris Pug got dragged out of bed, stuffed into some rusty government tin can with no windows, and shipped halfway around the world. One day it was a rat-infested alley in Istanbul. The next it was Pacoima, which wasn’t much of an improvement. So when a stretch limousine rolled up to the Jonny & Boris Detective Agency shortly after lunch, both detectives knew trouble had graduated to a higher tax bracket. Twenty minutes later they stepped into the Chief’s office.

Boris removed his trademark gray fedora and flicked it toward the hat stand. The hat spun through the air like a silver dollar tossed by fate and landed perfectly on the hook.

“What’s with the limo, Chief?” Boris asked. “You trying to burn through some leftover budget money before the accountants catch on?”

The Chief didn’t smile. That was a bad sign.

“Money won’t matter if you fail this assignment,” the Chief said.

His voice had the weight of a tombstone. Jonny felt a chill crawl up his spine.

Outside the window, Van Nuys baked beneath a hazy afternoon sun. The city looked innocent from up here. It always did. Like a pickpocket attending church. The Chief folded his hands.

“We’ve learned the mob has set its sights on the one object that’s held humanity together for the last thousand years.”

Silence filled the office. Even Boris looked interested.

“If they steal it,” the Chief continued, “the planet will explode from the core outward.”

Jonny blinked. “Holy Jeez. What exactly does this thing do?”

“That’s the problem.”

The Chief crossed to a cabinet and pulled out a dusty bottle of 1945 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. It was the kind of wine that cost more than Jonny’s first three cars combined. He uncorked it.

“We don’t know what it does.”

The Chief poured himself a glass.

“We don’t know what it looks like.”

Another sip.

“We’re not entirely sure where it is.”

Jonny stared. Boris stared. The Chief stared back.

“But we know one thing.”

The room felt colder.

“It is absolutely essential to the survival of every living creature on Earth.”

The Chief drained half the glass.

“For the next forty-eight hours you’re looking at nonstop violence, gunfights, double-crosses, international criminals, violent, kinky sex with a variety of gorgeous women and possibly one dude, and enough trouble to keep a cemetery in business for a decade.”

He leaned forward.

“And if that object isn’t sitting on my desk exactly forty-eight hours from now, humanity is finished.”

The words hung in the air like cigarette smoke.

Boris reached into his coat pocket and produced a cigarette. He realized that he’d picked the wrong week to quit smoking.

“Does this incredibly important object have a name?” he asked.

The Chief turned toward the window. Below, Van Nuys sprawled across the valley like a beautiful mistake. The three men had spent years trying to save it from gangsters, politicians, and real-estate developers. So far they’d had mixed results.

He took another swallow of wine and gazed into the distance. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper.

“The MacGuffin.”

Trip Fiction

Hack wishes to make it clear that this novel is entirely a work of fiction and is not inspired in any way from an episode involving a dinner companion’s shoe getting caught in the carpet of the restaurant and sending said dinner companion on their ass in full view of a large group of people. Hack has no knowledge of any such event taking place.

Her Supple Body

The first week of the month was Boris the pug’s personal trip through purgatory.

That was when he and Jonny sat behind their battered desks in the Jonny & Boris Detective Agency and faced the only criminals in Van Nuys they couldn’t outsmart—unpaid bills. They came in thick as flies on a corpse. Rent. Electricity. Office coffee. Ammo. Tailor. And a polite but increasingly threatening letter from a fellow who specialized in repossessing shoulder holsters.

Boris pawed through the stack with a sigh that rattled his whiskers.

“We’re the best gumshoes in the Valley,” he muttered around the cheap cigar clenched between his teeth. “So how come every month we’re choosing between paying the electric company or the guy who sharpens our bullets?”

Jonny leaned back in his chair, boots on the desk, tie crooked like it had given up on life.

“That’s the mystery of capitalism, partner.”

Right then the intercom buzzed like an angry hornet. Rosie’s voice crackled through, smoky and sweet with just enough New Jersey to put gravel in the vowels.

“You got a client, boys.”

Jonny didn’t look up from the bill that said FINAL NOTICE in letters big enough to be seen from space.

“Can it wait, Rosie? We’re busy deciding which creditors we can survive disappointing.”

There was a pause.

Then Rosie said slowly, “You’re gonna want to see this one, boss man. She’s a knockout.”

The effect was immediate. Jonny’s boots hit the floor. His tie straightened. A framed photo of his girlfriend Linda vanished into the desk drawer like it had witnessed a crime.

“Send her in.”

The door opened.

And in walked trouble wearing red.

She moved slow, like molasses trying to crawl back into the jar. The kind of slow that made a man forget his name and remember only his bad habits. The short strapless dress she wore was doing the Lord’s work trying to cover territory it had no business defending, and the high heels pushed her long legs up into the stratosphere like those inflatable tube men outside a used car lot.

Jonny was hooked before she took her second step.

She perched herself on the edge of his desk like she owned the place.

“How can we help you, Miss…?”

“Jane Public,” she said.

Jonny scratched his chin. “Public… Public… That rings a bell.”

Boris didn’t even look up. He was busy sweeping the unpaid bills into the wastebasket with one paw.

“Your father is disgraced City Councilman John Q. Public,” the pug said calmly. “Scheduled to face the hangman’s noose in a week. Shouldn’t you be visiting him before they drop the trapdoor?”

The brunette stiffened. “My father is innocent, Mr. Pug.”

Boris lit his cheap stogie. “Of course he is. I knew that the minute I read the first newspaper story. Problem is convincing the Van Nuys Police Department… especially since most of them are drawing a second salary from the mob.”

Jonny leaned forward with the grin that had gotten him slapped in twelve different counties.

“We can convince them.”

Boris nodded.

“Two hundred and fifty dollars a day plus expenses.”

Jane’s face fell. “That’s more than I make in a month. I work as a flexibility trainer and a lingerie model.”

Jonny wiped a bead of drool from his chin. “We offer special payment plans for dames like you. Just give me your spare key and I’ll stop by your apartment every night to update you on the progress of the case and engage in a few hours of violent anal sex.”

The poor girl looked like someone had asked her to swallow a grenade.

“B-but… I’ve never been with a man.”

Jonny waved a hand.

“That’s okay, doll face. Neither have I.”

Half an hour later she was gone.

Jonny jingled the spare key in his pocket with a satisfied grin.

“I’ll be visiting her humble flat at midnight,” he said. “Strictly professional.”

Across the room Boris dumped the wastebasket back onto the desk with a groan as the unpaid bills cascaded out like confetti at a bankruptcy parade.

“Great,” the pug muttered. “Another pro bono client.” He flicked ash into an envelope marked OVERDUE. “Looks like I’ll have to sing another sad song to the repo man to keep him from repossessing our shoulder holsters again.”

Jonny chuckled. He walked across the office and tossed Jane’s key into a fishbowl already filled with a dusty mountain of identical keys. Then he opened the drawer, took out Linda’s photograph, and gave it a gentle kiss before setting it back on the desk.

“I hear you, partner,” he said. “But sometimes you gotta find out how low a client is willing to go before you decide they’re worth helping for free.”

He picked up the phone and dialed.

“Now you work on the bills,” Jonny said. “And I’ll call the Van Nuys Chief of Police and ask him how much of the dirt we’ve got on him he’d like us to give to the newspapers… before he releases our client’s father.”

Across the desk Boris sighed.

Another case.

Another crooked city.

And not a single bill paid.

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.”