Category: Detective

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 13th is a Friday

Jonny knew the day was cursed the moment his morning Scotch missed his mouth and soaked his brand-new shoulder holster. A man can forgive a lot, but wasting good Scotch was a crime against civilization.

Things only got worse.

Their latest client—the poor sap who’d finally been proven innocent of skimming city money—celebrated the good news by hanging himself in his cell before the paperwork was dry. Then the doc gave Jonny the cheerful bulletin that the pounding behind his eyes wasn’t a hangover or a tumor.

Late-stage syphilis.

Just the kind of news a guy wants before lunch.

So Jonny did what any reasonable private dick would do: he dragged Boris into the nearest dive bar to drown the day in something brown and dangerous.

That’s when he saw her.

She was perched on a barstool like trouble carved out of red silk—hair like a four-alarm fire, legs that seemed to go all the way to Sacramento, and eyes that could make a bishop pawn his halo.

Jonny was trying to cook up a line that didn’t sound like it came off a greeting card when the redhead slid off the stool and walked straight over.

“I live next door, handsome,” she said, voice smooth as contraband whiskey. “How about you come upstairs for a drink and a few hours of violent anal sex?”

Jonny nearly broke the land-speed record for standing up.

But Boris, who’d seen enough sucker plays to write a textbook, narrowed his eyes.

“What’s that gonna cost him, Red?”

“The name’s Harmony,” she purred. “And I don’t charge for my pleasure. Not with the right fella. I make my money other ways.”

Boris studied her face the way a card shark studies a deck. The pug knew a lie when he heard one. This didn’t sound like one.

Ten minutes later they were in Harmony’s loft.

Jonny stripped down like a man auditioning for a romance magazine and stretched out across the bed, practicing a few seductive poses he’d picked up from questionable cinema. Boris planted himself at the foot of the mattress with the evening paper and the expression of a dog who expected disaster.

Harmony drifted into the bathroom.

“I’ll be ready in a second,” she called. “Might want to stretch those hamstrings.”

Jonny grinned like a lottery winner.

“See, Boris? Life turns on a dime. Couple hours ago I had the worst day of my life. Now I’m about to split that lovely lady’s butt cheeks in half.”

Boris suddenly froze.

His eyes were glued to the newspaper.

“Oh my god,” he muttered. “Look at the date.”

“Relax,” Jonny groaned. “I’ll pay the cable bill when we get home. Britbox isn’t going anywhere.”

“No, you idiot,” Boris snapped. “It’s the thirteenth.”

“Yeah, and?”

The pug slammed the paper down.

“Friday the thirteenth! The universe has rules, pal. One of them is that nothing this good ever happens to you on a day like this.”

Jonny laughed. “Old Wives’ tale.”

The bathroom door opened.

“And I used to be a wife,” Harmony said pleasantly as she stepped out.

The redhead was smiling.

She was also holding a pistol pointed straight at Jonny’s heart.

“These days,” she continued, “I’ve got a new line of work.”

Jonny’s grin melted.

“Hired assassin,” Harmony said. “Mob pays very well.”

Boris slowly lowered the newspaper.

“And tonight,” she added sweetly, “I’m cashing a very generous contract.”

The gun didn’t waver.

Jonny sighed.

Just his luck. Friday the thirteenth.

Noir in the Age of Climate Change

The night hung over Van Nuys like a damp overcoat nobody wanted to wear.

It was 11:30 p.m. in March, and the thermometer outside a pawnshop on Ventura Boulevard insisted it was ninety-six degrees. The Valley baked like a cheap pie left too long in the oven. But Jonny M. always played whatever part fate cast him in to perfection, right down to the costume. That meant a wool three-piece suit, a trench coat heavy enough to stop a .38 slug, and a fedora tilted low enough to make a choirboy suspicious.

The sweat ran down his spine like a criminal fleeing the scene, but Jonny didn’t notice.

He was staring into the most beautiful pair of eyes he’d ever seen.

They belonged to Ingrid.

Ingrid the Swedish knockout. Ingrid with cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass and lips that could make a bishop forget the Ten Commandments. And right now those lips were close enough to make Jonny forget every case he’d ever worked—except the one that had just wrapped up behind him.

Across the street, the gallows creaked in the warm night breeze. Robert Vestal’s murderer was still doing a slow dance at the end of the rope.

Hardest case Jonny and his partner Boris had ever cracked. Every crook, skirt, and two-bit chiseler in Van Nuys had wanted Vestal dead. But only one had the guts to pull the trigger.

Now justice had its pound of flesh.

And Jonny was about to collect his reward.

Ingrid leaned close, her voice soft and sad like a violin playing in a smoky bar.

“But what about us?”

Jonny tipped his hat back and looked at her like a man studying the last good thing in a rotten world.

“We’ll always have Tarzana,” he said. “We didn’t have it. We lost it… until you came to Van Nuys. Then we got it back last night.”

Her eyes shimmered.

“When I said I would never leave you.”

For a moment the whole world held its breath.

There was only one thing missing.

Rain.

A proper farewell like this needed rain—sheets of it, cascading down like the heavens themselves were crying into their whiskey. But the Valley hadn’t seen so much as a drizzle in thirty years. Not since the refinery went up on Oxnard Street and chased the clouds away like unpaid bookies.

Jonny leaned in anyway. Some moments were too perfect to wait for weather reports.

He stuck out his tongue, ready to seal the deal—

—and felt a drop of water land on it.

Then another.

Within seconds the sky opened up like Niagara Falls. Water poured down in thick romantic sheets, soaking Jonny’s trench coat and plastering Ingrid’s hair to her perfect face.

Jonny blinked.

He slowly looked up.

Perched on top of a nearby streetlamp was Boris—the toughest pug detective in the San Fernando Valley—holding a garden hose fitted with a chrome shower head. The anthropomorphic canine grinned down through the artificial monsoon like a plumber who’d just fixed the world.

“Mother Nature may not have shown up for you,” Boris called down in his gravelly accent. “But I’ve got your back.”

Jonny smiled.

Across the street, a handful of unlucky stiffs stood sweating at a bus stop in the brutal heat, wearing the least amount of clothing the law would allow. They watched the rain-drenched lovers with the bitter envy of empty souls who knew romance had passed them by.

Jonny didn’t care.

He grabbed Ingrid, pulled her close, and planted a kiss that would’ve made the devil himself take notes. His nicotine-stained tongue dove into her mouth while the fake rain danced across their heads like confetti at a crooked wedding.

Sure, he was losing the most beautiful woman God ever put on this lousy planet.

But Jonny still had the most perfect partner a guy could ask for.

And in Van Nuys, that counted for everything.

The Mystery of the McNuggets

The warehouse crouched at the edge of Van Nuys like a guilty secret, its windows blacked out and its steel doors hanging half open as if the place had tried to confess and then thought better of it. Jonny and Boris stepped inside, their footsteps echoing through the dark like a pair of warrants nobody wanted served.

The smell hit first—grease, chemicals, and something else that made the back of your brain itch.

Jonny’s eyes adjusted to the gloom and then stopped dead.

Across the floor stood a tall figure in yellow and red, lit by the flicker of industrial lamps. The face paint, the grin, the circus colors—it was Ronald McDonald himself.

But what made Jonny’s jaw tighten wasn’t the clown.

It was the hair.

Perched proudly atop the clown’s painted skull was a luxurious brown toupee. Jonny knew that rug the way a safecracker knows tumblers. It was the very one that normally crowned his own noble dome.

Which meant the ridiculous red clown wig now stuck to Jonny’s head like a practical joke from a sadistic barber wasn’t a mistake.

It was theft.

Jonny’s fingers curled slowly.

Boris, meanwhile, had locked onto the man Ronald was talking to.

The pug’s breath caught in his throat.

Some faces fade with time. Others burn themselves into your memory like a branding iron.

This one had a name.

Dr. Jacob Merlinski, DVM.

The butcher of Boris’s youth.

Years ago, when Boris had stepped off the boat from Korea and onto the hopeful concrete of Ellis Island, they told him the American Dream came with paperwork. Forms. Regulations. And one small surgical procedure.

“There are already too many dogs in this country,” the officials had said with bureaucratic smiles. “If you want to stay in the Land of the Free, you’ll have to give up the equipment that makes more of you.”

And so Boris, young and hopeful, had been wheeled under bright lights and cold steel by the very man now standing across the warehouse floor.

Dr. Merlinski.

The pug felt phantom pain just looking at him.

“It’s for the greater good,” they had said.

But now Boris noticed something else.

A conveyor belt.

It rattled across the warehouse like a mechanical confession. Hundreds—no, thousands—of freshly hacked-off doggy ballsacks slid along the belt in a grisly parade of lost legacies.

They disappeared into a humming stainless-steel machine.

Ronald and the doctor watched the process with the satisfied chuckles of men who thought they’d beaten the system.

The machine whirred.

Ground.

Pressed.

Breaded.

A chute opened.

Golden nuggets spilled out onto a tray beneath a heat lamp.

Boris stared.

His already oversized eyes widened until they looked like two dinner plates staring into hell.

McNuggets.

Chicken McNuggets.

The truth landed on him like a freight train full of broken promises.

He hadn’t been welcomed to America.

He’d been processed.

His crown jewels… sacrificed on the altar of fast food.

Deep fried.

And served with tangy barbecue or honey mustard.

Boris’s lip curled back, revealing teeth that hadn’t forgotten how to bite.

Beside him, Jonny slowly cracked his knuckles.

The clown laughed.

The doctor laughed.

But they hadn’t noticed the two detectives standing in the shadows yet.

And if there was one thing Van Nuys had taught Jonny and Boris, it was this:

Nobody laughs forever.

Heisenberg

The door didn’t just open—it exploded.

Boris hit it with a shoulder like a runaway freight train and the cheap wood shattered inward. The two partners stormed through the splinters and stepped into a chemical kingdom that smelled like sin, ammonia, and fast money.

The meth lab spread across the room like a mad scientist’s fever dream—glass beakers bubbling, burners hissing, coils of tubing twisting like snakes in a medicine cabinet from hell. Blue crystals glittered on trays under the lights like a jeweler’s display for the damned.

The lab boys scattered.

They skittered for exits, trapdoors, and side halls like cockroaches when the kitchen light flips on. One dropped a flask that shattered like a gunshot. Another dove through a half-open door.

Jonny didn’t even blink.

Neither did Boris.

They weren’t here for the roaches.

They were here for the king roach.

Across the room stood a man in a yellow HazMat suit, still as a corpse at a wake. Calm. Waiting. Like he’d been expecting them all along.

Jonny walked toward him slow and easy, the way a man strolls up to the gallows when he knows someone else is wearing the rope. His Glock came up smooth and steady.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked.

The man tilted his head. Behind the mask you could almost hear the smile.

“Oh, you know,” he said softly. “You all know exactly who I am.”

He leaned forward a fraction.

“Say my name.”

Jonny squinted at him.

“Do what?”

The detective scratched the side of his jaw like a man trying to remember where he parked his car three hangovers ago.

“I don’t… I don’t have a damn clue who the hell you are.”

The man stiffened.

“Yeah you do,” he said, a little sharper now. “I’m the cook.”

Silence.

“I’m the man who killed Gus Fring.”

Boris snorted.

“Bullshit,” the pug growled. “Cartel got Fring.”

The yellow-suited figure cocked his head.

“Are you sure?”

Boris glanced up at Jonny.

Jonny looked like a man who’d just realized he left the stove on in another life. He slowly shook his head.

The man straightened, confidence swelling in his voice like a brass band warming up.

“That’s right,” he said. “Now…”

He pointed at himself.

“Say my name.”

The room hummed with burners and boiling glass.

Finally Boris spoke.

“Heisenberg.”

The man spread his arms like a conquering emperor.

“You’re goddamn right.”

But the pug wasn’t finished.

“Werner Heisenberg,” Boris continued calmly. “Father of quantum physics. Author of the uncertainty principle. Winner of the 1932 Nobel Prize.”

The yellow suit froze.

“You also ran the Nazi atomic program during World War II,” Boris went on, straightening his tie. “And after the war—”

“All right, all right!” the man snapped, waving his hands. “They get it now.”

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 Return of the Man of a Hundred Faces

Boris had been off his game from the jump.

The old spark in his eyes—the cold, calculating gleam that once cut through lies like a switchblade through silk—had dimmed to a flicker. His legendary ninja reflexes? Gone like last week’s rent money. He’d been slow on the uptake, distracted, scratching at the back door of destiny like a mutt who’d lost the scent.

But even a dulled blade can draw blood.

The last piece of evidence slid into the puzzle with a whisper, neat as a coffin lid closing. Bank ledgers. Payoff lists. Shipping manifests fat with sin. It painted the picture in bold, ugly strokes: Johnny Rocco had been running Van Nuys like a private kingdom of graft and gunpowder for twenty long, rotten years.

Jonny let the silence hang heavy before he spoke.

“It’s the hangman’s noose for you this time, Rocco.” His voice was gravel in a tin can. “Boris may not have been himself lately—needs his anal glands expressed, if you want the veterinary details—but he still brought home the bacon. You’re finished.”

Rocco’s usual smirk wilted. The color drained from his doughy cheeks. For the first time since Hoover was in short pants, the big boss looked small.

“I guess that’s it, gumshoe,” he muttered, voice trembling like a cheap alibi. “Go ahead. Slap the bracelets on me.”

Jonny stepped forward, cuffs glinting under the office light.

That’s when Rocco started laughing.

Not a chuckle. Not a nervous giggle. A full-throated, rafters-rattling cackle that made the blinds shiver and Jonny’s trigger finger itch.

Jonny glanced down at his partner.

The pug’s paw went to his face.

And peeled.

Fur came off like a Halloween costume. Underneath wasn’t Boris’ wrinkled mug—but the slick, smirking countenance of J.S. Merlin, failed matinee idol and greasepaint sorcerer. The Man of a Hundred Faces. A two-bit thespian with a thousand-bit talent for deceit.

“We had you dancing, mug,” Rocco sneered, confidence flooding back into his veins. He yanked a brass lever hidden beneath his desk.

The bookcase behind him split down the middle and swung wide.

Out stepped Big Tim—a tower of muscle and menace—holding the real Boris in a chokehold. A snub-nosed revolver pressed tight against the pug’s temple. Boris’ eyes were clear now. Clear and furious.

“You said one of us would meet his maker when this was over, Mr. Big Shot Detective,” Rocco said, adjusting his cuffs like he was already measuring Jonny for a pine box. “You just didn’t figure I had a master of disguise on retainer. Merlin here played Boris better than Boris plays Boris.”

Merlin gave a mocking bow.

“Too bad,” Rocco went on. “You had a nice run. Headlines. Wisecracks. Expense accounts. But every hero’s luck runs dry.”

He turned to the hulking silhouette in the secret doorway.

“Ice ’em both, Tim.”

The revolver’s hammer clicked back.

And in that tight, breathless moment between life and a toe tag, Jonny M. realized something about Van Nuys—

The city always keeps one more secret in its pocket.

The Cynical Detectives

The four biggest gumshoes ever to haunt Van Nuys had no business breathing the same stale air, but there they were anyway — Philip Marlowe with his tired eyes, Sam Spade with a jaw like a busted brick, and the local legends, Jonny M. and Boris Pug. Fate, cheap clients, and a pair of heartbreakers across the alley had shoved them into the same crummy room at the Motel 6, watching silhouettes dance behind flickering blinds while the neon sign outside blinked like it had a nervous condition.

Five hours of surveillance will make saints swear and sinners hungry, so the boys called a truce with the telescope and broke out lunch. Marlowe swigged rye that smelled like paint thinner. Spade chain-smoked filterless Camels until the room looked like a house fire. Jonny and Boris demolished enough Taco Bell to qualify as a controlled demolition. When the wrappers settled, the talk got heavy — the kind of confessions that only come out when the world’s gone quiet and the job’s already chewed you up.

“She said the Black Bird would buy us a new life,” Spade rasped, striking a match that shook just a little. “All I had to do was ice Cairo and the Fat Man and we’d be sipping something cold south of the border. Turns out I was just another name on her hit list. Promised I’d wait for her until she got out… but the hangman beat me to it.”

Marlowe gave a humorless grin. “A general hires me to babysit his wild daughter, next thing I know I’m knee-deep in a story with more twists than a busted corkscrew. Everyone lies, everyone loses, and I end up patching my heart together with spit and baling wire.”

The two old pros looked over at Jonny and Boris, expecting tragedy served neat. The boys exchanged a glance — the kind priests share when a confession gets weird.

“Geez, that’s rough,” Jonny said, shifting in his chair. “Wish I could say the same, but my girl’s a twenty-five-year-old rock star who treats me like I hung the moon. Doesn’t even blink that I bang a different new hot chick every third or fourth case.”

Boris nodded, paws folded like a philosopher. “And my lady? Alley cat with a taste for trouble and a heart like dynamite. Plenty of dames throw themselves at me, but when you’ve got perfection waiting at home, why shop around?”

Spade and Marlowe traded a look — two hardboiled knights suddenly feeling like a couple of high school nerds who were given atomic wedgies by the co-captains of the football team.

“Don’t sweat it, fellas,” Boris added with a crooked grin. “Luck comes and goes in this racket. Speaking of which… anybody want to watch me light up Jonny’s Taco Bell farts?”

Outside, the neon flickered again, and somewhere in Van Nuys another bad decision was already warming up.