Jon Wesick

I, the Hammer

“What kind of sick bastard would run over a retired police dog?” I stared at the trail of blood the golden retriever had left on the pavement as he’d tried to crawl to sidewalk.

“I know you and Duke were close,” Captain Rex Barkless said.

“He saved my life in Nam. Lost his leg jumping out of the Huey I was flying to deflect a surface-to-air missile. I can understand killing a cat because cats suck. But a dog?”

“You know, most cat owners don’t even like guns.” Barkless touched the Glock on his hip.

“Not even, Betsy?” I removed the .45 from my shoulder holster. “I’m going to find who killed Duke and put a few dozen slugs in his testicles.”

“Not if I get him first, Mallet.”

“I don’t have to follow the rules that coppers do. Besides, I’ll save the taxpayer the cost of a jury trial.”

“How much you want to bet I’ll get him first?”

“Steak dinner?”

“You’re on.” Barkless walked to the squad car.

***

“Sorry for your loss, ma’am,” Barkless said to Duke’s bereaved dog mom.

“He was a good boy. Would you like a cup of herbal tea?” Hortense Hamentaschen struggled to rise from the floral-upholstered chair with doilies on the arm rests. She was in her late seventies with bones thin as number-two pencils. Hortense limped to the kitchen. After banging pots, she returned with a teapot and cups. “Would you like milk?”

“I take mine straight, just like my women.” I drained the cup of boiling chamomile in one gulp. 

“Did anyone want to hurt Duke?” Barkless tried to hide his frown as he sipped the herbal tea.   

“Oh.” Hortense held in index finger to her chin. “I can’t think of anyone.”

“Cut the crap, granny!” I backhanded her, sending Hortense’s dentures flying into the potted plant. I drew my .45 and held it under her chin. “Duke was a friend of mine. When I find his killer, I’m going to put a half-dozen slugs in his genitals, pour molten lead in his eyeballs, and make him listen to Miss Edna Chilblains, author of the epic poem Robinson Crusoe and that Damn Hangnail. The same goes for anybody who gets in my way. Now, spill it!”

“Sometimes he’d board the number forty-seven bus and ride it down to Hickenlooper’s Tavern on Delirium Street. Everybody loved him and the bus driver let him ride for free.” Without her dentures, Hortense slurred her words. “He also worked as a therapy dog at the pediatric cancer center.”

“Looks like I’m one step closer to that steak dinner.” I holstered my .45 and spoke to Barkless. “I’ll hit the hospital. You check out the bar.”

***

When a police officer makes detective, the taxpayers pick up the tab for his theme song. A private investigator with a movie deal might get the studio to buy him something like Harlem Nocturne. With my budget, I had to raid the public domain. I chose a kazoo playing the 1812 Overture and added a recording of a few rounds from my .45 for the cannon blasts. When driving in Texas, I’d even shoot a few holes through the roof of my rented pickup. Anyway, the theme played in the background as I drove to the hospital. I parked my Camaro in the emergency room zone and walked through the sliding doors. Juvenile malingerers, who’d shaved in a pathetic attempt to avoid working in the coal mines, roamed the pediatric cancer ward on the second floor.

“Names Mike Mallet.” I showed my PI license to the receptionist. “Give me the medical records of every patient you’ve treated in the past decade.”

“Sir, you’re not a policeman and have no authorization of subpoena medical records.”

“This is my authorization!” I drew my .45 and held it to her face.

“Security!”

Two sumo wrestlers wearing traditional mawashi ran up the hall. Even though both outweighed me two-to-one, I didn’t need my .45. I hit the first with a roundhouse punch that spun his head like an ultra-high-capacity, refrigerated centrifuge and dropped the second like a watermelon off a sixty-story building with a punch to the gut. A nurse who was watching fanned her neck with a prescription pad.

“Ooh, it’s getting moist down there.” She rolled her panties over her ankles and handed them to me. “Hold on to these until I finish my shift. The name’s Buttercup, Honey Buttercup.”

“Mike Mallet.” 

She was blonde as a bottle of Riesling, the dry kind because I don’t like mine too sweet, and her breasts were buoyant enough to keep a shipwrecked sailor afloat. 

“See you at eight, Mike Mallet.” Honey wrote her address on back of a Viagra prescription as if unaware that I never needed it.

Even though I missed out on bracing the kids, I judged my one-on-one with Honey would be more productive. When I left, I found a meter maid was placing a ticket under my Camaro’s wipers. I slugged her in the chin and left her unconscious body in a wheelchair by the emergency room’s entrance.

***

 “Do you know what a nymphomaniac is, Mike?” Honey let her nightgown slip off her shoulders.

“Yeah, a woman who can almost keep up with me.” I tossed my fedora on the bedside table.

“Oh Mike, I’ve made love to astronauts, Navy SEALs, Olympic athletes, and the entire Dallas Cowboys football team but I’ve never had a real man.”

“Then get ready, baby.” I slipped out of my shoulder holster and pleasured her thirty-seven times until she begged for more. I did her nineteen more times. Then I rocked her world with three hundred eight orgasms until she begged me to stop. I gave her a few dozen more for good measure.  

“Oh Mike, I brought you those medical records.” Honey got out of bed and returned with a pile of folders tall as Godzilla.

“Thanks, sweetheart.” I slapped her on the ass. “Now how about getting me a snack?”

***

Aside from sick kids using a lot of painkillers, the medical records were a bust. Sure, the pastor’s wife had chlamydia and the pictures of the DA’s genital warts might come in handy but there was no way to move my investigation forward so I took a drive to Delirium Street. 

“My name’s Mike Mallet.” I flashed my PI license at the bartender. “Show me your business records for the past twelve years.”

Hickenlooper’s Tavern seemed like a wholesome place with drunks passed out in their vomit and two bikers going after each other with pool cues. 

“Sir, you’re not a policeman,” the bartender said. “You have no authorization to subpoena financial records.”

“This is my authorization!” I drew my .45 and held it to his face.

I heard growling from a back room and kicked open the door to encounter the seedy underbelly of canine corruption. I’d always thought that painting of dogs playing poker was the artist’s fantasy but here I encountered it in real life.

“Show me your dog licenses and rabies certificates.” I fired my .45 into the ceiling to get their attention. Then I heard a familiar voice.

“Mikey, Mikey! You wouldn’t want to begrudge a few hardworking canines the chance to blow off a little steam.”

It was George Kolaczki, a retired English teacher who supplemented his pension from the Penobscot School District by loan sharking.

“You know this dog?” I showed Kolaczki Duke’s picture.

“Yeah, he played Texas Hold’em sometimes.”

“Was he into you for any money?”

“Hey, the game’s for entertainment. We only play for dog biscuits here.”

“Let me tell you something.” I shoved my pistol in Kolaczki’s nose. “Duke was a friend of mine. When I find out who killed him, I’m going to give him a sulfuric-acid enema, fit him into a poison ivy jockstrap, and make him listen to Edna Chilblains.”

“I taught Great Expectations in high school for twenty-seven years. You don’t scare me.” Kolaczki yelled, “Luka!”

A snarling Doberman in a luchador mask burst into the room. I kicked him in the nuts and he collapsed into a whimpering pile of emasculation.

“See you around, Kolaczki.” I adjusted my fedora to a proper thirty-degree angle and left.

***

  Honey took me to a strip club called the Habanero Narwhal. The name was slang for a kink that anyone with a capsaicin sensitivity shouldn’t attempt. I sat at a booth with my date and placed my fedora in my lap. A barmaid with breasts shaped like killer whales approached.

“Care for a drink?” 

“Vodka and baby seal blood, garnished with a Carolina Reaper. I want that baby seal clubbed fresh. None of that bottled stuff.” 

“Irish Cream.” Honey fingered my hatband.

The naked girls chewing mukluks backed by a chorus of howling malamutes wasn’t my thing so we left to ransack bodegas in a search for million-Scoville hot sauce. As we stepped out the front door, I heard squealing tires and turned to see a Lincoln Town Car speeding toward us.

“Get down!” 

I shielded Honey with my body as a man in the passenger seat leaned out the window and tossed a thesaurus at us. His throw went wide and the heavy volume embedded into the strip club’s brick facade. I drew my .45 and fired six rounds at the receding taillights. 

“Are you okay?” Honey asked.

“Yeah.” I holstered my pistol. “A certain loan shark with a name like a pastry is going to get it.”

***

“Do you have a reservation?”

“I’m Mike Mallet here to fix your rodent problem and that rat’s name is George Kolaczki.”

I muscled my way through the crowd and found Kolaszki at a table by a window with a view of Jupiter City’s skyline. A cornucopia of mayhem lay on the tablecloth. A Japanese hotpot simmered atop a blue flame, cheese fondue bubbled like the La Brea Tar Pits, Korean barbecue sizzled atop a portable grill, and a waiter ignited brandy atop a serving of Steak Diane. The cowboy, ninja, Viking, and pirate who served as Kolaczki’s bodyguards sat at a separate table, eating shish kebab on foot-long, metal skewers.

“I came to return this.” I dropped the thesaurus in the hotpot and splashed hot dashi on Kolaczki’s lap.

The loan shark recoiled from the table as the cowboy stood and reached for his six-gun. I threw a fondue fork overhand and it sunk three-inches deep into his eye socket. Before the Viking could draw his longsword, I flung the burning brandy into his eyes, used the pan to block three throwing stars, and brained the ninja into dreamland. Using one of the skewers as an epee, I scored first blood against the pirate before knocking him out with an uppercut.

“This is for Duke.” I held Kolaczki’s face in the boiling fondue until he drowned.

“Excuse me, sir.” A waiter approached with a lighter and chafing dish. “Does Mr. Kolaczki still want the Cherries Jubilee?”

***

 “What kind of sick bastard would run over a grieving dog mom?” I stared at the trail of blood Hortense had left on the pavement as she’d tried to crawl to sidewalk and began to wonder if I’d been wrong about Kolaczki.

“Two killings in one week.” Barkless fanned sweat off his face with his fedora. “You think they’re connected?”

“All I know is that when I find the killer, I’m going to use his intestines as dental floss.”

“Detective, you might want to see this.” A uniformed officer pointed to some broken glass.

I touched my finger to the liquid and gave it a sniff. 

“Rectum Rooter Hot Sauce. I’ve got to go.”

***

 “Mike, I wasn’t expecting you so early.” Honey peeled off her halter.

“It was you all along. Wasn’t it?” I stepped toward her. “I didn’t put it together until just now. You skimmed painkillers from all those kids. Duke was a drug-sniffing dog and he found you out so you killed him.”

“Mike, you’re scaring me.” Honey took off her bra and stepped backward.

“You paid the dog mom to keep quiet but she got greedy so you bumped her off, too.”

“I had to, Mike. I needed that money to pay for male escorts but I don’t need them anymore now that I have you. We can move away together to someplace in the country with a hot tub and waterbed.”

She stepped backward but I was relentless as a steamroller chasing Gumby and Pokey.

She reached behind her for a dildo on the coffee table and swung it so hot sauce from our last fetish flew into my eyes. I bent over in agony as she battered me about the head with the heavy latex but she couldn’t resist my manliness and our struggle turned into a BDSM session.

“Give it to me, Mike. Give it to me.”

I gave it to her all right, a .45 slug right in the guts.

“How could you do this to me, Mike?”

“Killings too good for you.” I strapped her to the easy chair with duct tape, put a tape of Edna Chilblains’s epic poem on repeat, and turned up the volume to cover Honey’s screams.