Banana Hammock (26 page)

“How do things look, Sal?” I asked.

“Not good, Harry. I’m going to try to plea bargain for only three life sentences.”

“But it’s only a hearing, Sal.”

“Trust me, Harry.”

I trusted Sal about as much as I liked him. And I hated Sal. But I didn’t really have a choice, unless I represented myself. And I’ve only been dressing myself for two months.

I would just have to hope for the best. Sal genuflected and we left the chapel.

Chapter 8

To make a long story short, I was acquitted. Sal had a nervous breakdown in court and the judge decided to just drop the whole matter and break for lunch. I took a cab back to my apartment and wasn’t surprised to find Mrs. Tatas gone.

But she did leave a note. It told me to meet her at Chez Guevara for a six o’clock dinner reservation. And it was signed Mrs. Bertram P. Niss. So I finally found out who I was looking for. That was the break I needed.

I looked up Bertram’s name in the phone book and called up his house to see if he was home. He wasn’t. This was going to be harder than I thought.

I had a few hours before dinner so I decided to try and get some leads. So I left my apartment and went over to “Fat Louie’s” to see… Fat Louie. He was in the back, eating a Fat Louie Burger. If anyone knew the streets, it was Fat Louie. If anyone knew fresh produce, it was Fat Louie. We went back a long way, and were like brothers.

“How you doin’, Fat?”

“Fuck you.”

“You know where Bertram P. Niss is?”

“No. Get out.”

“Nice talking to you, Fat.”

“Keep in touch.”

I left “Fat Louie’s” feeling optimistic. I wasn’t any closer to finding Bertram P. Niss, but at least I wasn’t Fat Louie. I decided to approach the situation differently, and went to sleep.

Unfortunately, I was driving at the time, and I ran over a Cub Scout Troop practicing CPR in a parking lot. Rather than be sent to jail again, I dumped their bodies into the retention pond and spread towels and suntan oil along the shore to make it look like a swimming accident. Then I began tracking down leads again, though my spirits were considerably dampened for the next two hours.

Chapter 9

Seven years ago, I had a minor crisis when I thought I was the reincarnation of Fatty Arbuckle. That flashed back into my mind as I sat at a table in Chez Guevara, watching some fat broad stuck in the revolving door. How fat was she? She was so fat, she got stuck in the revolving door. But I wasn’t there for the entertainment. I was waiting for Mrs. Niss and her big tatas to join me for dinner to discuss my recent developments. Since we had last met, I discovered some startling evidence that would conclusively prove Jimmy Carter was an alien from the planet Bonzo. Unfortunately, I had learned nothing concerning her missing husband. But she didn’t have to know that.

She arrived a fashionable six hours late, wearing a slinky pink silk wrap that hugged her curvaceous body, along with a smile. She obviously expected good news. Oh well. She sat down on the mashed potatoes I had left on her chair.

“Oh. How stupid of me to leave those mashed potatoes on your chair. We better go to my place and soak that dress.”

She was noticeably impressed by my clever ploy to remove her from her clothing. Now all I had to do was wait for the Mickey I slipped in her drink to take effect. Unfortunately, she noticed it, and ordered another drink without a mouse.

So the only way I was going to get her unconscious was to match her drink for drink, or hit her with a ball-peen hammer. And I left my hammer at home.

Fourteen drinks later, when the welders were almost done removing the fat broad, I had discovered that trying to Mrs. Niss drunk was like trying to get Mr. Rogers hard. I gave up and decided to lay my cards on the table.

“Want to play elevator?”

“How do you play?”

So I showed her my shaft. Then I asked her if she was going up.

“I’m not that kind of woman.”

“Why? Do you have a penis?”

“No. I’m married.”

Then it hit me. Why she had gone from coy to prude in less than twelve hours. I should have known it right away. It was the old
hire a private investigator then set him up for the murder of the husband and collect the insurance
scam. When all the while, she was the one that killed him.

“Where did you hide the body?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t play innocent with me. You killed him. Right? Am I right? You did it. Right?”

She laughed villainously. “Yes, I killed him. He had a life insurance policy worth more than the merchandising rights to Star Wars. And you’re going to take the fall for it. While you were here waiting for me, I put his body in your apartment along with some revealing pictures of him and Jim Bakker. It will look like you tried to blackmail him, he didn’t go for it, and you killed him with your gun.”

“My gun?”

“Yes. I took a slug out of one of the Japanese tourists you shot when you were trying to protect me from the car I hired to shoot blanks at us in front of your apartment. Then I just substituted your bullet for the one I used to kill my husband. That’s the one in his chest right now.”

“You won’t get away with this.”

“Oh no? By now, the police are probably at your apartment and they’ve got all the evidence they need to put you away for life.”

Boy, did I feel stupid. She set me up perfectly. I should have known, especially after seeing Body Heat. I was always a sucker for the ones with big cans. Worst of all, even though I solved the case, I knew I probably wouldn’t get paid. At times like this, I wish I had gotten that sex change operation.

“So what happens now?” I asked.

“Now, we say goodbye. If you hurry, maybe you can make it to the border. I’ve got a date with an insurance company.”

She got up to leave, but I unsheathed my .44 and yelled after her. “Me making it to the border has nothing to do with you being alive or not.”

She turned around and laughed. “You couldn’t hit a legless elephant from ten feet away.”

Then she looked at my gun and froze.

“How do you like my new telescopic sight?” I asked.

And with that, I blew her head off. It was a shame. I never even got a chance to feel her up.

A waiter looked at me inquisitively.

“The lady will get the check,” I said, and then left.

Chapter 10

I never did get arrested for killing her husband. The bimbo made one mistake. When she was putting the slug from my gun into her husband’s body, she lost her wedding ring in the bullet hole. So I didn’t really need to kill her, but it felt good. Besides, she was a tease. And that was the defense I used when I stood trial for her murder. The judge understood, and I only got sentenced to twenty hours of community service. Now, every Friday, I become troop leader for a group of Boy Scouts. This week I’m going to teach them how to cop a feel and pretend it was an accident.

Sometimes private investigation isn’t pretty.

The end.

To restart the Amish adventure,
click here
.

Cub Scout Gore Feast

A Bonus Short Story by J.A. Konrath & Jeff Strand

“Isn’t this when you start telling scary stories, Mr. Hollis?”

Hollis grinned, staring at the boys around the campfire. Cub Scouts, none of them older than ten. For some, the first night they’d ever spent away from their families.

“Are you scouts sure you want to hear a scary story?”

“Yes!” they chorused.

“Even though it’s dark and we’re all alone in the spooky, menacing forest?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Hollis sat down on his haunches. His face became serious.

“Okay, I’ll tell you a scary story. Scary because it’s the absolute, hand-on-my-heart truth. You’ve all heard rumors about Troop 192, how they disappeared without a trace not too far from here, right?”

Several of the boys nodded.

“Well, the rumors were wrong. There were
lots
of traces of Troop 192. There were traces all over the place…on the ground, up in the trees, by the lake, maybe even under where you’re sitting right now. Imagine if you took a blender, like the kind your mothers use to make smoothies, but it was a
giant
blender, maybe…I dunno, eighteen feet high. And then you dropped the entire Troop 192 into it, and accidentally left the lid off, so that when you pressed the ‘blend’ button they sprayed all over the place. That’s what it looked like.”

“I heard it was just one kid who went missing,” said Anthony.

Hollis shrugged. “If you think one little kid has that many guts inside of his body, more power to you, but I was here. I saw it. It was
gross
.”

“My mom said they found him the next morning. He was playing Nintendo.”

“Oh, well, I guess your mom is in a position where she was allowed to accompany the law enforcement agencies on their search, huh? Did she somehow become deputized without anybody hearing about it? Do Hooters waitresses typically get to tag along on searches for missing children?”

“She works at Olive Garden.”

“Whatever. She wasn’t there on the night of the investigation. I’m telling you that it was the entire troop, and their insides were strewn as far as the eye can see.” Hollis made a grand gesture with both arms to emphasize the extent of the carnage. “And do you know who got blamed for it?”

Several of the scouts shook their heads.

“Madman Charlie. Oh, they arrested him, and sent him to the electric chair the next morning. But it wasn’t Madman Charlie. When Troop 192 was massacred, he was off murdering a young woman in a completely different county. No, Troop 192 wasn’t slaughtered by Madman Charlie. They weren’t even slaughtered by something…human.”

One of the youngest scouts, Billy somebody, raised his hand. No doubt because he was too terrified to hear more.

“Billy, are you too terrified to hear more?” Hollis asked. “Because that’s okay. Nobody here will judge you.”

“No, Mr. Hollis. I have to go to the bathroom.”

Hollis sighed again. “Go ahead, Billy. But don’t go too far away. Anyway, there’s something inhuman in these woods. Something that hungers for human flesh.”

Theolonious raised his hand. Probably wet himself he was so scared.

“Do we have any more hot dogs?” Theolonious asked.

“You already had three.”

“Jimmy ate the one I dropped on the ground.”

“Jimmy didn’t come with us on this trip.”

“Well, okay, I ate it, but it wasn’t as good as the two that didn’t get dropped on the ground. Can I please have another one?”

“This inhuman creature,” Hollis said, ignoring him and raising his voice, “slaughtered Troop 192 on a night very much like tonight. It cracked open their bones and sucked out the marrow, and slurped up their intestines like spaghetti, then flossed its sharp fangs with their muscle fibers. And rumor has it this insatiable monster still hunts in these very woods, on the night of…” Hollis paused for dramatic effect, “the
full moon
.”

“Was it a Dracula?” Cecil asked.

“Draculas don’t rip people up,” said Anthony. “Draculas just look unhappy a lot, and kiss girls like in that movie my sister watched seventeen gazillion hundred times.”

“Those were dumb Draculas,” said Cecil. “But there are cool Draculas, like in
Lord of the Rings
.”

“Those were orcs.”

“Not those! The other ones!”

“That was a Kraken!”

“The horrible creature,” Hollis said, standing tall and raising his arms over his head, “was a werewolf!”

“I thought werewolves just took off their shirts a lot like in that movie with the Draculas.”

Hollis shook his head. “In real life, werewolves like to crack open the rib cages of little boys with their sharp claws and bite their still-beating hearts right from their chests. That’s what happened to Troop 192.”

“If they were attacked by a werewolf,” said Anthony, “wouldn’t they become werewolves?”

“Not if their bodies were shredded and thrown around all over the trees and lake and ground. If you’d been paying attention when I started telling the story you could have caught that little detail.”

“What if a werewolf bit a skunk?” Theolonious asked. “Would it become a werewolfskunk?”

“A werewolf wouldn’t bite a skunk,” Hollis said.

“Why not?”

“Why
would
it bite a skunk? Would
you
bite a skunk?”

“I wouldn’t bite a skunk today,” said Mortimer, “but if I was a werewolf, I think I’d bite a skunk if there was one sitting there. You’d have to bite it gently, y’know, so that its whole head doesn’t come off, but I think, y’know, werewolves can bite gently when they want to, even though they usually don’t. They couldn’t use their whole jaw or, y’know, anything like that, but if they just used their front teeth and didn’t close them all the way, I think they could bite a skunk without its head coming off.”

The other cub scouts murmured their agreement.

“Y’know,” Mortimer added.

“And what if the werewolfskunk bit a deer?” asked Theolonious. “Would it turn into a werewolfskunkdeer?”

“I want to know how one werewolf ate all of Troop 192,” said Cecil. “How big is a werewolf’s stomach?”

“Haven’t I already explained that twice?” asked Hollis. “The werewolf didn’t eat their whole bodies. He ate the best parts, then scattered the rest of them all over the place so that the kids couldn’t turn into little werewolves. Do you want a demerit? Do you?”

“I need toilet paper!” Billy yelled from the woods.

“Use leaves!” Hollis hollered back.

“I tried! They’re all stuck to me!”

Fredrick raised his hand. “Would a werewolfskunkdeer try to eat people? Or would it just forage for nuts and berries?”

“You don’t even know what ‘forage’ means,” said Silas.

“It means to search for provisions.”

“Well, you don’t know what ‘tourniquet’ means!”

“Yes, I do. We learned about them last week. It’s that thing you twist around your arm or leg to stop bleeding.”

“Well, you don’t know what ‘hypothesis’ means!”

“
Silas
! Enough!” Hollis clenched and unclenched his fists a few times. “Anyway…”