Category: Detective

The Dressers

The highbrow crowd in Van Nuys—fur coats draped over hollow hearts—had already written Jehoshaphat Merlin’s obituary in permanent ink. Eighty-three years old, a bullet lodged in his skull, he’d gone down mid-soliloquy while playing Romeo like time had forgotten him. It should’ve been a perfect curtain call. But death took one look at Merlin and passed. The old tragedian clawed his way back, and when Jonny and Boris dragged his longtime dresser Robert Vestal, his would-be killer, to the noose, Merlin repaid the favor the only way he knew how—by announcing another farewell. King Lear, Van Nuys Performing Arts Center, World Theater Day. The faithful few came crawling back, clinging to the myth like it might still breathe.

Jonny and Boris didn’t trust the invitation, but they took it anyway. They figured maybe the old buzzard had discovered gratitude in his second life—maybe a handshake, maybe a couple of comp tickets if the planets lined up just right. Instead, they got Merlin in his dressing room, marinating in greasepaint and ego, wrapped in velvet like a relic that refused to stay buried. His voice rolled out in that baritone of his, stretching words until they nearly snapped. A “luminary” like him, he said, needed protection in a cesspool like Van Nuys. Since Vestal swung, he couldn’t keep a dresser longer than a fortnight. So he offered the detectives a job—valets and bodyguards, no extra pay, no gratitude, no illusions.

Boris gave it a moment, head tilted, the way he did when he was trying to find the upside in a bad deal. He said it might be worth a shot—two weeks in show business, keeping an eye on a company that had been taking potshots at its leading man all tour long. Merlin didn’t like the tone. Said he was a harsh master, the kind that broke men and called it discipline. Seventy years serving Shakespeare, and no one had ever met his standards. Then he lowered the boom, voice turning soft and deadly. He promised them one thing: after two weeks in his employ, the two miserable souls who despised him most in the entire company would be Jonny and Boris.

In Van Nuys, that wasn’t a warning. It was prophecy.

The Grand Slam Scam

In Van Nuys, power wasn’t measured in money or muscle—it was measured in how fast you could get a booth at the Denny’s on Sherman Way. The city’s two-bit kings and third-rate royalty waited months for a shot at those cracked vinyl seats with a view of the flickering Van Nuys Drive-In sign next door. Even Snow Mercy—top trigger for the mob and the kind of dame that made traffic forget where it was going—could only muscle her way in twice a month. That changed when she latched onto a name that opened doors like a skeleton key: Thurston Howell VII, heir to the fabulous Lovey Howell fortune. After that, she was ringside every night, carving into a Moon Over My Hammy within earshot of the legendary wits of the Denny’s round table—Bro Joe, Robin Greenspan,  and the rest of the breakfast intelligentsia—firing off wisecracks like they were getting paid by the syllable.

Howell. You read that right. Old money, deep pockets, and the kind of pull that made waitlists disappear. He hired Snow to ice Robert Vestal when Vestal got cute and tried to take a bite out of Howell Industries. Snow did what she always did—clean, quiet, no witnesses but the ghosts. Then Howell tells her to celebrate. Brunch. Same place. Same day. In Van Nuys, that’s like asking for sunshine at midnight. But thirty minutes later, there she was, elbows on the table, staring down a Grand Slam like it owed her money. That’s when she knew—this guy wasn’t just connected. He was magic.

Only magic’s a funny thing in this town. Turns out the real Thurston Howell VII was cooling his heels under house arrest in a Glendale villa, wrapped up in a sweetheart deal with the Feds. The guy Snow was splitting pancakes with? A ghost with a badge. A federal suit wearing Howell’s name like a rented tux, dipping into his bank account and his social circle to get close—real close—to the deadliest woman in the Valley. Close enough to map the underworld, piece by piece, until there was nowhere left for it to hide.

It took a special kind of agent with the guts, charm and finger trigger to sell a ticket to the high wire act he was attempting, and he needed a special kind of partner running the box office.

Jonny M. and Boris, your audience is ready for the show.

Bad Hair Day

This novel was inspired by a 1946 movie called Lady in the Lake, in which the action unfolds entirely through the camera, which represents the eyes of detective Philip Marlowe voiced by actor Robert Montgomery (whose face is only shown in once scene where Marlowe is looking in a mirror). Hack was watching the movie when Jonny came in with a new haircut which his barber cut 1/16th of an inch too short, so it stood up like the Bride of Frankenstein.

We told Hack that the gimmick would never work in a novel, since it lacked the visual component of a movie, and he gave up on it two-thirds of the way through, devoting the last 75 pages t0 yet another rambling account of his abusive father. But his publisher needed a new Hack Werker book so he just had Hack expand the anal sex scenes in chapters 6 and 14, and it wound up selling well in the Bible Belt.

Secretary’s Intuition

Van Nuys was a sewer with streetlights—only difference was the sewer didn’t pretend to be anything else. Jonny and Boris trusted exactly three things in that town: each other, the cruel certainty that tomorrow would be worse than today, and Rosie.

Rosie had been holding down the front office for six months, ever since Boris waved the white flag and admitted he couldn’t juggle case files and coffee orders at the same time. They’d nearly given up on finding help when she blew in like a Jersey hurricane—brassy, blonde, and talking like she wrote the rules of the universe in her spare time. Trouble was, she usually did. Half a year later, the joint ran like a watch, and the boys didn’t ask questions. They gave her free rein with one standing order carved in stone: any gorgeous dame looking for help jumped the line. No exceptions.

Rosie didn’t argue. She’d taken to the boys like a mother hen with two particularly dim chicks. So when Jonny and Boris hopped a train east to dig into the murder of one Robert Vestal, Rosie stayed behind to mind the nest—and the door.

That’s when she walked in.

The brunette.

The kind of face that made trouble look like a good idea.

She wore a Groucho Marx getup—fake nose, bushy brows, the works—but it didn’t hide much. Especially not the kind of figure that made honest men consider a career change. Rosie gave her one long look, then went straight to business, fingers already rattling the typewriter keys like gunfire.

“Name?” she asked.

“Wonderly,” the dame said, voice soft enough to make lies sound like lullabies.

And then she sang.

A sister gone missing. A bad hombre named Floyd Thursby. Dark alleys, darker intentions, and just enough fear in her voice to grease the wheels. Rosie kept typing, eyes sharp, not buying a ticket but enjoying the show.

When the story ran dry, Rosie yanked the paper free, smooth as a card shark dealing the ace.

“Two-fifty a day, plus expenses,” she said. “One week in advance.”

Miss Wonderly didn’t blink. She peeled off the cash like she’d done it before—too many times. Rosie took it, locked it away, and slid the contract across the desk.

The brunette reached for a pen.

Rosie stopped her with a look that could crack glass.

“Do me a favor, sister,” she said, voice sweet but lined with steel. “Sign your real name. Saves me the trouble of retyping when the truth finally shows up.”

The dame hesitated.

Rosie leaned back, folding her arms.

“And while you’re at it,” she added, “ditch the comedy mask and tell me why you’re REALLY here. Because when my boys walk through that door tomorrow, I don’t like sending ’em chasing ghosts.”

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.