Category: Law and Order

Red Latex

Black Latex was such a success that Hack quickly wrote this sequel about the birth of the Jonny & Boris Detective Agency. It’s arguably one of Hack’s best written books, although sales were disappointing because of a lack of his signature anal sex scenes in the narrative. It was a mistake that he swore never to repeat.

They tossed Jonny M. and Boris out of the Van Nuys Police Department like yesterday’s garbage — no pension, no ceremony, not even a lousy handshake. The brass said they didn’t “fit in,” but everybody knew the truth: they were the only clean pair of badges left in a precinct slick with grease and booze. Jonny took it like a man out of luck, cigarette trembling in his lips as the neon light of “Van Nuys Liquors” blinked across his face. Boris, his loyal pug partner with the instincts of a bloodhound and the patience of a saint, just squinted and growled low. That night, in the back booth of a Chinese diner off Sepulveda, Jonny scrawled “JONNY & BORIS DETECTIVE AGENCY” on a cocktail napkin — their new badge, self-issued.

Meanwhile, the city kept rotting. The weak were still prey, and the strong were still taking their cut. But now there were two guardian angels in the gutter, watching from the shadows. They weren’t saints — not by a long shot — but they were the last line between Van Nuys and hell itself. Word got around fast that if you were in trouble and couldn’t trust a cop, you called Jonny & Boris. The phone never stopped ringing, and neither did the trouble.

Then there was Snow Mercy — the kind of woman you don’t forget even when you’re trying to. She’d been the city’s silent savior in black latex, a one-woman storm of vengeance and stilettos. But when Jonny and Boris got canned, she shed the darkness like an old skin. The catsuit turned red, slick as blood and twice as dangerous. It wasn’t just a fashion statement — it was a declaration of war. She worked alone now, and rumor had it she didn’t trust anyone, not even the men who once saved her from a bullet in the back alley behind Club Babylon.

But the mob remembered her all too well. They grabbed her one rainy night, thinking she was the bait that would finally break Jonny and Boris. Only they didn’t know Snow Mercy like the boys did. By the time Jonny traced the ransom call, the mob warehouse was already on fire, and Snow was walking out — heels clicking, hair singed, but eyes cold as chrome. The boys arrived just in time to see her toss a lighter over her shoulder. “I didn’t need saving,” she said, and vanished into the smoke. Jonny lit a cigarette, Boris barked once, and the city of Van Nuys exhaled — for now.

Black Latex

Hack wrote this as an origin story of how Jonny and Boris met as a couple of honest cops who tried to maintain their souls in the most dishonest city on earth. It contradicted every book he had written about them up to this point but it’s a surprisingly good read:

Van Nuys was the kind of city that wore its sins like cologne — thick, cheap, and impossible to wash off. Neon lights flickered over broken sidewalks, and the smog hung low like a dirty secret no one wanted to confess. Jonny M. was one of the last honest cops left in the precinct, a man whose knuckles were as scarred as his conscience. He’d seen every shade of bad this town could throw at him, but he kept showing up anyway — tie crooked, jaw set, heart still stubbornly human. When Internal Affairs stuck him with a new partner, he figured it was another joke. But Boris wasn’t your average partner. He was a pug — short, stout, and dead serious — with eyes that had seen more evil than most men could stomach and a nose that never missed a lie.

Together, Jonny and Boris patrolled the mean streets where sirens were lullabies and justice came in bruises and barked warnings. The crooks laughed when they first saw the duo — until Boris caught a gunman by the pant leg in a liquor store sting and refused to let go. Word spread fast through the underbelly: the man with the cold stare and the dog with the sharper instincts were making the rounds. They didn’t play politics, didn’t take bribes, and didn’t scare easy. In a precinct where every handshake came with a hidden deal, Jonny and Boris were the only ones still working for the badge, not the payoff.

It wasn’t long before the city started biting back. One humid night on Vanowen, a bullet meant for Jonny shattered the glass beside him, and Boris leapt before the echo died. When the smoke cleared, the shooter was on the pavement, whimpering louder than the pug’s growl. Jonny lit a cigarette, rain dripping off the brim of his patrolman’s cap, and looked down at his partner. “Guess we’re still the good guys,” he muttered. Boris just snorted, tail twitching like a punctuation mark in the dark. And together, they walked into the night — two honest cops in the dirtiest town on earth, keeping Van Nuys from devouring itself one busted jaw at a time.