I jumped on their table, took aim and shot Muffinhead Howard before he could cock his shotgun. I didn’t like the idea of my guts inside of four different pillows, thank you very much. There were crumbs and blueberry ink everywhere and the blackjack game stopped for a whole ten seconds.
Bulgy laughed nervously.
“You think that scares me, Plush?”
“It scares me,” said Spanky Ritz.
His brother slapped him.
“Shut up, this is serious!”
Spanky blew a surprisingly convincing raspberry at his living sibling.
“You know, dad never loved you!”
“You shut up!”
Growing tired of sibling rivalry, I reunited the act with my custom teddy bear .45, which I then fired at the ceiling to get the bar’s attention.
Bulgy vomited on himself. Then sat up and tried to act tough again.
“I’m not scared, Plush! I’m not telling you nothing!”
I ignored him.
“Anybody here eating spaghetti?” I yelled.
A nervous little man brought me a plate, heaping with sauce and meatballs. Bulgy laughed. Nervously. The only way a guy being interrogated like this could laugh.
“Trying to bribe me with food? It won’t work.”
I picked up a fork off the table, jammed it into one of Bulgy’s big fat eyeballs and yanked hard. It was not a pretty sight, but luckily for Bulgy he only caught it from the left. I took the fork with Bulgy’s fat right eye on it and twirled it around in the spaghetti. I pointed my gun at Bulgy’s face as I moved the fork toward his mouth.
“Eat up, have a nice juicy meatball.”
Realizing he wasn’t ever going to get the eye back in and a moment of degrading and nauseating himself again was better than being dead, he agreed and began enjoying the worst mouthful of spaghetti he’d ever eaten. I waited until he was finished before gestutring toward his left eye with the fork.
Unless you want seconds, you’re gonna talk. I wanna know why the cops broke the deal with Halperin, I wanna know what’s under that giant black cloth and I sure as hell wanna know where they took my girl. You’d better talk fast. That empty eye socket’s really disgusting.”
Bulgy threw up on himself once more.
“Is this the thanks I get? I serve you a perfectly good eyeball and you throw it right back up! Let’s see if the other one tastes better.”
“Townsquare Vanzetti,” he blurted out.
“Could you be more specific? Are you tellin’ me something or are you ordering more pasta?”
“He’s under the big black tent. He’s gigantic and he’s come to help Vic Halperin reclaim some of his territory.”
“So why would he be handing Furry hookers over to the police?”
Bulgy shrugged.
“Maybe they don’t know who belongs to Halperin and who belongs to Kewpie Doll Steve.”
“Would he have a reason to kill Horskowitz?”
“Maybe. A lot of people had reason to kill the horse. Halperin, Kewpie Doll Steve, the police themselves. He put me away for a year, if it wasn’t for me tasting bad that would have been the end of me.”
I didn’t bother to say goodbye. I’m sure everyone was heartbroken, but I had to get to the “carnival”, see if something more sinister than a little hanky-panky in the tunnel of love was going down. When I got there, the pinstriped quintuplets were standing guard as before.
“Good day, sir,” they said in unison, “is there something we can do for you?”
“Yeah, there is. How much for a ticket?”
They whispered among themselves. Didn’t look as if many people tried to get into this carnival.
“Six thousand dollars,” they said, their tones very adamant.
“Seems like a lot of money for a carnival.”
“Yes, it is. So leave.”
“Must be a hell of a carnival, though.”
“No, it’s quite awful.”
I drew my gun and shot the quint in the chest. Either I draw fast or he thought I was going for my checkbook. As he reeled in pain from the gunshot wound, his brothers charged me, halberds in hand.
“Hell of a town this is,” I said, as I jumped, flipped and shot at them at the same time, “guy can’t go to the carnival without fat miscreants attacking him with obscure medieval weaponry.”
With the knowledge I had of the Chinese fighting arts and my impressive skill with my custom teddy bear .45, it was only a matter of seconds before I caught the injured one in the heart and another one of them in the leg. When this one hobbled his way into the path of a karate chop to the base of the spine, the three surviving quints decided they might just get cooperative.
“What do you want?”
“I want to talk to Vanzetti.”
“There is no such person, this is a carnival.”
I stood my ground.
“You know there is and you know I’m willing to kill to talk to him. Show me your boss.”
“Well done, Mister Plush, the stories of your detective skills are not exaggerated.”
One of the quints pulled a small radio out of his pocket.
“This is Number three at the carnival, Mister Vanzetti has business.”
A small squadron of tiny airplanes brought down hooks to lift the black cloth, revealing a man big enough to be passed off as a small carnival. He was less of a man than a series of enormous folds and wrinkles underneath a white robe that it must have taken a village to sew. Beside him was a telescope pointed upward. I glanced through it and could see a confident, judgmental aristocratic face. He was wearing a red fez that might have been a danger to low flying aircraft. Next to the telescope was a telephone that connected to a series of cables coiled around a large scaffold. At the top of this scaffold was a horn shaped earpiece.
I picked up the telephone. What came out should have been something like “I know what you’ve done, you sonofabitch and I don’t care how big you are, I will rip out your heart and feast on it!” What came out was less assertive.
“Hello? Mister Vanzetti?”
“Well look at this,” said the giant mobster in a thunderclap voice, “Jimmy Plush, the world’s only teddy bear detective. To what do I owe the honor?”
“You owe the honor to two dead mooks and three thugs smart enough to play my game. You’d do well to think like the latter.”
“You’re an impertinent little bear, Plush. I dislike impertinent little bears and I dislike threats. Threats against someone of my....” he chuckled to himself, so I knew what was coming next.
“…Stature are nothing but tiny little insects to be swatted away. I can swat you away so easily, Plush. I can swallow you whole, I can send you miles away just by breathing on you. Why should I do anything for you?”
He was right. He was the size of a mountain, I was the size of a toddler. Why should he be afraid of me? It would take an elephant gun to shoot this guy, and by an elephant gun I mean a gun that fires elephants.
“Because I’m the size of a small child and I’m still willing to mouth off. So I must know something that you don’t about my giant killing capabilities.”
He laughed a truly patronizing laugh.
“You don’t frighten me, Mr. Plush, but you certainly amuse me. I’ll answer your questions, gumshoe.”
“Okay, tell me why Halperin’s girls keep getting caught by the cops.”
He growled a little. Well, as much as a man his size could do anything a little.
“Cops? What do you think I know about cops? All I know is I like to squash ‘em. That Chief Inspector bugs me. I don’t deal with the cops in this town and Vic Halperin’s a friend of mine. Townsquare Vanzetti is good to his friends and death to his enemies, he does not allow his associates to be taken to prison and eaten. Good day to you, Mister Plush, lest you yourself clog up my bowels with cheap fabric.”
A lot of people have made a sucker out of me in my time but I can usually tell when somebody’s lying to my face. This guy wasn
’t lying to my face. This guy would eat any cop that went near him and would expect any redblooded American to do the same thing. He was genuinely enraged at the idea he’d be in league with the local constabulary. As bold as I was, I wasn’t going to accuse a giant crime boss of lying to me, especially when I was almost completely certain he wasn’t. I didn’t know who was behind Jean and Kate’s murder anymore, which should have made me angry. It didn’t. Common sense told me that it’s in anyone’s best interest for the object of their vendetta to not be several stories tall.
“Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Vanzetti. Don’t eat anyone I wouldn’t eat.”
I returned to the limo to find Chang unconscious in the driver’s seat. Before I could open the door and get a closer look, I felt a tiny sting in my back and I was starting to get real drowsy real fast. Both the fighting and the questioning had been pretty leisurely, so I deduced that it was some kind of narcotic that had me tuckered out so quickly. There was a dart sticking out of my back. Before I could get out, I was out cold.
When I awakened, I was tied to one of three tables. There was a policeman standing at one of the others picking the intestines out of a dead whore dressed as a praying mantis. The suit had been ripped open so he could get at the organs he needed, but he’d kept the head on her. It was probably for the best that there were no holes in the big red velour compound eyes for a person to see out of for real. The cop was dripping with blood and shit and there was a big smile on his ravenous piggy face. On the third table, a cop was on top of a second dead whore. This one’s suit had once been a pig, but it had been torn open and the head removed. He was thrusting viciously into her as he ripped skin off her face with his teeth.
I had a feeling I would not relish what was going to happen to me next. This feeling was validated by the arrival of one of the quintuplets I had seen guarding the giant tarp.
“You should have stayed out of this. Now you’ve gone and antagonized the police. We endured your foolishness for so long without having to step in and now, we’ll have no more of it. Don’t panic, Mr. Plush, we’re not going to kill you.”
“Who’s panickin’?” I couldn’t quite muster the Jimmy Plush bravado as I said it.
“Officer Berry, get the plaid and the scissors.”
The piggy faced cop who’d been eating the mantis-hooker reluctantly abandoned his cannibalistic activities.
“Hmmph, I’ve gotta do everything around here!”
He sashayed toward a file cabinet in a fat, stupid, effeminate, waddly fashion. He soiled himself and laughed at the stench of stinking human flesh diarrhea. This felt like another one of those situations in which a good faint would save me a lot of misery. So, I fainted.
When I woke up, I saw that first of all, my right arm was made of pink plaid. It was terrible to have a plaid right arm. All around bad news. Before I could come to terms with this bad news, I had to face other bad news. I was tied to a beef jerky stick to be fed to the Chief Inspector. The Chief Inspector was another man so enormous, he took up an entire side of the street. I would’ve suspected the Chief Inspector could be none other than Townsquare Vanzetti, but his stylish raincoat and wool trousers gave the illusion of an upright man instead of a shady robed and fezzed criminal. At least this time I’d be eaten by an American instead of some grubby foreigner. So would Chang who was also tied to a beef jerky stick and wouldn’t have to wait long after I was devoured to be eaten. The Chief Inspector took me in his giant, smelly hand and raised me slowly up to his mouth.
As the hand lifted me up to the Chief Inspector, I noticed there was something funny about his fake moustache, something real funny. I might not be much of a detective, but I made the connection pretty quickly; see, a few weeks ago, somebody broke into the zoo and stole a Brazilian furred anaconda, a gigantic hairy snake that spends most of the year hibernating, a snake big enough to serve as a fake moustache for a man who takes up an entire side of the street. All Vanzetti had to do was lift the snake up to his lip and it would sleep on his face, serving as a fake moustache (with the help of some double-sided tape.) Thus, all I would have to do to prove to the coppers that the man they worked for and the man they were chasing was to reveal to them that Vanzetti’s moustache was actually a giant snake. He stole my life, so I was going to steal one of his.
I let the hand bring me up to the giant’s mouth, but instead of just letting myself get eaten, I made a well timed jump onto the moustache, which I began beating savagely. Brazilian furred anacondas might sleep deeply, but they don’t sleep through a flurry of well timed and surgically executed attacks utilizing the Chinese fighting arts. The snake woke up and it was mad. It wriggled free of the double sided tape, dropped down onto the Chief Inspector’s lip and attempted to buck me off its back. Should have worked since I was a three foot bear and it was a furred anaconda but one of the twelve pillars of the Chinese fighting arts is balance. I kept on its back as it slithered along the Chief Inspector’s lip and pounded it ferociously.
It came to realize that it wasn’t going to knock me off by bucking, so it decided to rear up its ugly furry, snakey head to swallow me whole. I took this opportunity to take a truly stupid risk, to try to get it to the fall to the ground, revealing it as a fake. The snake struggled valiantly, but I struggled even more valiantly and had all the rage a teddy bear with a plaid right arm has at his disposal. Giant snake or no giant snake, the advantage was mine.
The coppers were astonished to see the Chief Inspector’s moustache fall to the ground – hard, with me on top. There it lay, twitching and dying from the fall. This was not the sort of behavior people expected from a moustache. It was confusing, and when confused, cops usually charge at people with their nightstick. One of the policemen on the scene began to do so.
“Wait!” I shouted, holding up my arms.
“You killed the Chief Inspector’s moustache. Why should I wait?”
“Because if you look at the Chief Inspector’s face without the moustache, you’ll find he’s Townsquare Vanzetti.”
The policeman put his hand on his chin and lit a pipe. He was the type of policeman that liked to smoke a pipe when he was thinking.
“Perhaps I should examine this through the telescope.”
“That’s a very bad idea,” said the surviving quintuplets, “you don’t want to do that.”
The policeman took his hand off his chin and looked into the telescope, shaking his head in disbelief at what he saw.
“My god, this is horrifying!”
“What is it?” asked one of his cohorts. The surviving quintuplets were shaking in their boots.
“Why, it seems that the Chief Inspector was none other than our archenemy Townsquare Vanzetti!”
The other policeman, upon hearing this, fainted dead away, their fragile, unbalanced minds unable to take the truth. It wasn’t just fear of the cops that kept people from going to them for help. The human flesh was starting to get to their brains. The policeman dashed to the car, pursued by the surviving quintuplets. Chang, who had just regained consciousness and untied himself plowed through the other two quintuplets like a Chinese lawnmower…well, maybe not like a Chinese lawnmower because when Chang did it, it worked, and a Chinese lawnmower probably doesn’t work at all. Whatever the case, the quintuplets were down and the cop had reached his car.
The policeman returned moments later with a few more policemen and a small band of mobsters and lowlives. They took turns looking up through the telescope and were all hopping mad to find out that Vanzetti had turned out to also be the Chief Inspector. This kind of deception would not stand in the sensible, honest world of organized crime. They left and returned with more thugs and some shopkeepers angry that they were paying protection money to the police, which would not stand. All of this of course, led to total chaos and a large mob assembling.
It looked as if most of the town’s citizenry had gathered with torches, pitchforks, rocks, guns, cars and trucks. A hook and ladder company, several catering vans an
d a small squadron of airplanes had assembled along with several hundred representatives to stand against the colossus of corruption that had played everybody for saps. I decided it was best not to watch the fruits of my labor but instead to get to a safe distance. Probably a good idea because a guy like Vanzetti hitting the ground and getting dragged into the ocean by half the town was a real ruckus, and at three feet tall, as much as I love a ruckus, there’s a good chance I’ll get squished, immolated or torn to shreds during it.
The next day when whatever was done to Vanzetti by the vengeful city was done to him and everybody could get their bearings again, there was a knock on my door. It was a cop, cap in hand, face contrite. I was in no mood to see any representatives of law and order from this town.
“Get off my property,” I said, brandishing my gun in the tacky plaid right arm the cops had given me.
“I’m here to make you an offer, Mister Plush.”
I yawned. I laughed. I yawned again. I fired my gun in the air.
“Are you offering to get the hell out of my sight?”
“Well, umm…no sir.”
“Then chances are, I’m likely to decline your offer.”
The cop laughed.
“Well, sir, I don’t think you are. It’s a doozy of an offer.”
Hmm. Something better than leaving me alone? Was he going to hang himself when he was done leaving me alone? Were he and his colleagues going to jump into the ocean?
“Okay, then, what’s goin’ on?”
“With the Chief Inspector exposed as Townsquare Vanzetti and Horskowitz, the best candidate for the job dead now, we’d like for you to take on the job.”
Me? Representing law and order in this city? A bit farfetched. I had often fought on the side of the angels, but both law and order had never been a part of my methods. Especially not now, after the law had taken Jean and Kate from me. Chief Inspector Plush didn’t sound good at all. It wasn’t going to happen.
Jimmy Plush, Teddy Bear Detective Page 7
