Jonny and Boris were excited when they learned that they’d have to travel to Messina to investigate the murder of Robert Vestal. But instead of a relaxing trip to Sicily, they’d be slugging it out in the backwaters of Messina, Alabama — a place where the humidity clung to your skin like a bad alibi and the locals looked at outsiders the way a junkyard dog looks at a mailman. Vestal’s murder had dragged them across the country, but the only thing getting slaughtered so far was their patience.
They’d barely set foot on George Wallace Boulevard when trouble clocked in. Jonny had been absent-mindedly giving Boris a bellyrub outside the diner — a perfectly innocent moment by Van Nuys standards — when a deputy named Verges with a badge too big for his brain wandered over. One look at their drivers’ licenses and the man’s eyes narrowed like a pair of cheap blinds.
“California, huh?” he muttered. “That may be the world capital of homosensitivity but perversion ain’t legal in these parts.”
Ten minutes later they were cooling their heels in a holding cell inside the sheriff’s office, labeled in chalk as Community Protection. The air smelled like old coffee and older grudges.
Sheriff Boscoe Z. Dogberry made his entrance like a man auditioning for a play he couldn’t read. He spoke in grand flourishes, dropping ten-syllable words where a simple grunt would’ve done the job. Illiterate maybe, but determined to sound like a dictionary that had swallowed a thesaurus.
Boris stepped forward first, all lab-coat dignity wrapped around a pair of fawn-colored paws. “Look, Sheriff,” he said, sliding a hundred-dollar bill between the bars like a peace offering. “I know it looks unusual — a human and a pug working together — but there’s no funny business. We both have girlfriends. I date an alley cat named Pussy, and Jonny is in a relationship with the 25 year-old version of rock star Linda Ronstadt. So you see that there’s nothing weird going on.”
Dogberry squinted at the bill as if it were a snake that might bite. “Pray thee, fellow, peace,” he declared. “I do not like thy look, I promise thee.”
Jonny sighed. The sheriff’s stilted speech sounded like it had been chewed up and spit out by a tractor. Boris glanced at Jonny, then added two more hundreds to the stack, crisp green confessions fluttering in the stale air.
“O villain!” Dogberry barked, puffing up like a rooster with delusions of grandeur. “Thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption for this!”
Jonny coughed to hide a laugh. Boris didn’t even try; the pug just fished out two more C-notes with a weary flick of his paw. Dogberry’s eyes gleamed. He snatched the money, unlocked the cell, and pocketed the evidence of his own moral flexibility. “If you’d coughed up that much at the beginning,” the sheriff said, straightening his crooked badge, “you could’ve saved all of us a lot of time. What do I look like, an ass?”