Category: The Mob

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.”

Witness from the Grave

You could have heard a pin drop when Madame Cherepakha took the stand. Jonny and Boris had seen her testify at many trials and she always had a strong impact on juries. Her showmanship was in top form as she took the crystal ball she had purchased at the Hollywood Magic Store, said a few “magic words” in her Native Russian that sounded to Jonny and Boris like pig latin, and a cloudy image in the glass of a figure wearing a trench coat fired a gun. “Ve do not hef such creetures in my country,” she said in a thick Bela Lugosi accent,  “but here you call it a…”

“A pug?” asked Big Tim’s attorney Atticus Finch. The psychic shook her head as a gasp came up through the spectators’ gallery and every member of the jury glared at Boris as if they were seeing him for the first time…and they were disgusted by what they saw. The twelve hicks from Van Nuys took one look at a conjuror’s trick from a novelty store and were ready to throw evidence from six months of detective work in the dumpster so that they could execute one of the great heroes of the city. Boris sat stiffly, his jowls slack, his eyes wide and wounded—not with fear, but with the kind of disbelief that comes when the world you saved starts sharpening the axe. Cherepakha’s magic show was finished, and Jonny and Boris would have to pull their own rabbit out of a hat…and now.

The Ride-Along

The studio brass made their decision with the same casual ruthlessness they used when choosing which actors to send to pasture: they picked up the option on the Jonny & Boris Detective Agency picture. A real prestige number, they said. A velvet-rope crowd-pleaser. And for something like that, only one name could tower above the marquee in foot-high lights—Gable. The king of MGM himself, all teeth and tailored charm. Jonny didn’t give a damn who played him on the silver screen, but the studio cared plenty, so they hauled Gable out to the mean streets of Van Nuys for a “ride-along,” the kind they thought toughened up their leading men. He even brought along his brand-new bride, Carole Lombard, because in Hollywood the honeymoon never ends—it just gets new lighting.

Boris took one look at the pair—Gable in a fresh suit still creased from the wardrobe department, Carole smiling like she was hosting a radio charity drive—and he knew trouble had come knocking with a florist’s ribbon around its neck. Gable carried himself like a hero in a three-reel newsreel, but beneath the movie-star jaw he had the constitution of a cream puff you’d find in a Chinese bakery window. And that was rotten news, because this was the night Boris had promised Big Tim—yes, THAT Big Tim—that he’d finally knock a certain rival’s face clean off his skull and send it skipping down Victory Boulevard like a misplaced hubcap. It was hard honest work, and Boris doubted Clark would stomach the sight of his own shadow once things got messy. The man was built for close-ups, not close quarters.

But Jonny wasn’t worried—not about the job, not about the King of Hollywood, not about anything except Carole. She might’ve been a starlet to the rest of America, but to Jonny she was something rarer: a woman who’d spent so long propped up on a golden pedestal she forgot what real hands felt like. She’d married Gable thinking he was the last of the real men, a walking slab of swagger, but one brush with Van Nuys grit made her see the truth—he was just another studio mannequin, painted heroic for the paying customers. Then she spotted Jonny leaning against the streetlamp, a modern-day Neanderthal with a moral compass held together by scotch tape and bad intentions, and she knew in that instant that her Hollywood dreams were about to get trampled under the boots of something far more dangerous: the real thing.