Banana Hammock (14 page)

“Sit before you fall over,” I told him. “Put you head on this semi-clean towel here.”

I patted a rolled-up towel. Penis dropped the scalpel and walked up to it.

“Your pet is getting amorous with the towel,” Talon said.

“Just the inside. You’ll have your head on the outside.”

Talon weaved over to the chair and managed to sit down without falling over. The elephant was really going at it, his tiny elephant hips a blur. After a few more thrusts he trumpeted and walked away.

“I want a new towel,” Talon said.

“You’re such a little girl.” I tossed the towel over my shoulder and placed a pillow on the table. “Head down, princess.”

Talon complied, resting his ear on the towel. Just a few inches away, Penis stared at him. It was a prurient stare. His trunk extended and he sniffed Talon’s nostrils.

“Get him off the table,” Talon said. “I don’t trust him.”

“He’s fine. He won’t hurt you.”

“He looks like he’s sizing me up.”

“Don’t worry. He’s got a long refractory period.”

“Off the table, McGlade.”

“Fine. Sheesh. You’re some kind of animal hater, you know that, Princess Talon?”

“I want my nose to remain a virgin.”

I grabbed Penis (the elephant) and set him on the floor. Then I picked up a bottle of iodine.

“First I’m going to sterilize the area. Then it might get a little, um, uncomfortable.”

Talon sat up, suddenly. “Hold on a second. This entire section… what was the point?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“This excerpt. It seemed like nothing more than one big advertisement for the Joe Kimball novel,
Timecaster
.”

I shook my head. “That’s not true. This section was essential for solving the Amish mystery.”

“No, it wasn’t. It’s just a lame attempt to sell more Nook ebooks.”

“Nook is the future, you know. But
Timecaster
will have a paperback release as well as a Nook release, in 2011. It will be followed by a sequel,
Timecaster Supersymmetry
. Both novels are filled with sex, laughs, sci-fi gadgetry, and me, Harry McGlade the Third.”

“Now you’ve stepped over the line from product placement to blatant self-promotion.”

“You’re a timecaster. You should have seen this coming.”

“Get out.”

“It’s my house. You get out.”

“I mean get out of this excerpt.”

“Konrath might also write a Timecaster children’s book called
Timecaster Disaster
. It rhymes, like Dr. Seuss. Want to hear a verse?”

“No.”

“He saw into the past, and a bad guy kicked his ast.
”

“That’s terrible. And we’re done here.”

If you want to get back to the Amish adventure,
click here
.

To put Harry in the middle of the ebook Endurance by Jack Kilborn,
click here
.

To start over at the beginning,
click here
.

To read some rejected Dr. Seuss titles,
click here
.

So I jumped out the window.

Now I’m dead.

Thanks a lot, jackass. Way to bow to peer pressure.

To start the adventure over,
click here
.

To return to the previous section,
click here
.

Through the magic of
Write Your Own Damn Story
technology, I went back in time a few sentences. Again.

“Mr. McGlade! After this whole ordeal, don’t you see what amazing companions canines are? A dog can enrich your life! All you have to do is give him a chance.”

I mulled it over. How bad could it be, having a friend who never borrowed money, stole your girl, or talked behind your back?

“You know what, Mr. Thorpe? I may just give it a shot.”

When I got home a few hours later, I discovered my new best friend had chewed the padding off of my leather couch. So I took him to a new home with a new family, who ate him.

The end.

To interview some Amish people,
click here
.

To go back to the beginning,
click here
.

To return to the previous section,
click here
.

Bored with that damn Amish case, I went back to my office and waited for another client to come in. One did.

“I want you to kill the man that my husband hired to kill the man that I hired to kill my husband.”

If I had been paying attention, I still wouldn’t have understood what she wanted me to do. But I was busy looking at her legs, which weren’t adequately covered by her skirt. She had great legs, curvy without being heavy, tan and long, and she had them crossed in that sexy way that women cross their legs, knee over knee, not the ugly way that guys do it, with the ankle on the knee, though if she did cross her legs that way it would have been sexy too.

“Mr. McGlade, did you hear what I just said?”

“Hmm? Yeah, sure I did, baby. The man, the husband, I got it.”

“So you’ll do it?”

“Do what?”

“Kill the man that my husband—”

I held up my hand. “Whoa. Hold it right there. I’m just a plain old private eye. That’s what is says on the door you just walked through. The door even has a big magnifying glass silhouette logo thingy painted on it, which I paid way too much money for, just so no one gets confused. I don’t kill people for money. Absolutely, positively, no way.” I leaned forward a little. “But, for the sake of argument, how much money are we talking about here?”

“I don’t know where else to turn.”

The tears came, and she buried her face in her hands, giving me the opportunity to look at her legs again. Marietta Garbonzo had found me through the ad I placed in the Chicago phone book. The ad used the expensive magnifying glass logo, along with the tagline, Harry McGlade Investigators: We’ll Do Whatever it Takes. It brought in more customers than my last tagline: No Job Too Small, No Fee Too High, or the one prior to that, We’ll Investigate Your Privates.

Mrs. Garbonzo had never been to a private eye before, and she was playing her role to the hilt. Besides the short skirt and tight blouse, she had gone to town with the hair and make-up; her blonde locks curled and sprayed, her lips painted deep, glossy red, her purple eye shadow so thick that she managed to get some on her collar.

“My husband beats me, Mr. McGlade. Do you know why?”

“Beats me,” I said, shrugging. Her wailing kicked in again. I wondered where she worked out. Legs like that, she must work out.

“He’s insane, Mr. McGlade. We’ve been married for a year, and Roy always had a temper. I once saw him attack another man with a tire iron. They were having an argument, Roy went out to the car, grabbed a crow bar from the trunk, then came back and practically killed him.”

“Where do you work out?”

“Excuse me?”

“Exercise. Do you belong to a gym, or work out at home?”

“Mr. McGlade, I’m trying to tell you about my husband.”

“I know, the insane guy who beats you. Probably shouldn’t have married a guy who used a tire iron for anything other than changing tires.”

“I married too young. But while we were dating, he treated me kindly. It was only after we married that the abuse began.”

She turned her head away and unbuttoned her blouse. My gaze shifted from her legs to her chest. She had a nice chest, packed tight into a silky black bra with lace around the edges and an underwire that displayed things to a good effect, both lifting and separating.

“See these bruises?”

“Hmm?”

“It’s humiliating to reveal them, but I don’t know where else to go.”

“Does he hit you anywhere else? You can show me, I’m a professional.”

The tears returned. “I hired a man to kill him, Mr. McGlade. I hired a man to kill my husband. But somehow Roy found out about it, and he hired a man to kill the man I hired. So I’d like you to kill his man so my man can kill him.”

I removed the bottle of whiskey from my desk that I keep there for medicinal purposes, like getting drunk. I unscrewed the cap, wiped off the bottle neck with my tie, and handed it to her.

“You’re not making sense, Mrs. Garbonzo. Have a swig of this.”

“I shouldn’t. When I drink I lose my inhibitions.”

“Keep the bottle.”

She took a sip, coughing after it went down.

“I already paid the assassin. I paid him a lot of money, and he won’t refund it. But I’m afraid he’ll die before he kills my husband, so I need someone to kill the man who is after him.”

“Shouldn’t you tell the guy you hired that he’s got a hit on him?”

“I called him. He says not to worry. But I am worried, Mr. McGlade.”

“As I said before, I don’t kill people for money.”

“Even if you’re killing someone who kills people for money?”

“But I’d be killing someone who is killing someone who kills people for money. What prevents that killer from hiring someone to kill me because he’s killing someone who is killing someone that I…hand me that bottle.”

I took a swig.

“Please, Mr. McGlade. I’m a desperate woman. I’ll do anything.”

She walked around the desk and stood before me, shivering in her bra, her breath coming out in short gasps through red, wet lips. Her hands rested on my shoulders, squeezing, and she bent forward.

“My laundry,” I said.

“What?”

“Do my laundry.”

“Mr. McGlade, I’m offering you my body.”

“And it’s a tempting offer, Mrs. Garbonzo. But that will take, what, five minutes? I’ve got about six loads of laundry back at my place, they take an hour for each cycle.”

“Isn’t there a dry cleaner in your neighborhood?”

“A hassle. I’d have to write my name on all the labels, on every sock, on the elastic band of my whitey tighties, plus haul six bags of clothes down the street. You want me to help you? I get five hundred a day, plus expenses. And you do my laundry.”

“And you’ll kill him?”

“No. I don’t kill people for money. Or for laundry. But I’ll protect your guy from getting whacked.”

“Thank you, Mr. McGlade.”

She leaned down to kiss me. Not wanting to appear rude, I let her. And so she didn’t feel unwanted, I stuck my hand up her skirt.

“You won’t tell the police, will you Mr. McGlade?”

“Look, baby, I’m not your priest and I’m not your lawyer and I’m not your shrink. I’m just a man. A man who will keep his mouth shut, except when I’m eating. Or talking, or sleeping, because sometimes I sleep with my mouth open because I have the apnea.”

“Thank you, Mr. McGlade.”

“I’ll take the first week in advance, Visa and MasterCard are fine. Here are my spare keys.”

“Your keys?”

“For my apartment. It’s in Hyde Park. I don’t have a hamper, so I leave my dirty clothes all over the floor. Do the bed sheets too—those haven’t been washed since, well, ever. Washer and dryer are in the basement of the building, washer costs seventy-five cents, dryer costs fifty cents for each thirty minutes, and the heavy things like jeans and sweaters take about a buck fifty to dry. Make yourself at home, but don’t touch anything, sit on anything, eat any of my food, or turn on the TV.”

I gave her my address, and she gave me a check and all of her info. The info was surprising.

“You hired a killer from the personal ads in Famous Soldier Magazine?”

“I didn’t know where else to go.”

“How about the police? A divorce attorney?”

“My husband is a rich and powerful man, Mr. McGlade. You don’t recognize his name?”

I flipped though my mental Rolodex. “Roy Garbonzo? Is he the Roy Garbonzo that owns Happy Roy’s Chicken Shack?”

“Yes.”

“He seems so happy on those commercials.”

“He’s a beast, Mr. McGlade.”

“The guy is like a hundred and thirty years old. And on those commercials, he’s always laughing and singing and dancing with that Claymation chicken. He’s the guy that’s abusing you?”

“Would you like to see the proof again?”

“If it isn’t too much trouble.”

She grabbed my face in one hand, squeezing my cheeks together.

“Happy Roy is a vicious psycho, Mr. McGlade. He’s a brutal, misogynist pig who enjoys inflicting pain.”

“He’s probably rich too.”

Mrs. Garbonzo narrowed her eyes. “He’s wealthy, yes. What are you implying?”

“I like his extra spicy recipe. Do you get to take chicken home for free? You probably have a fridge stuffed full of it, am I right?”

She released my face and buttoned up her blouse.

“I have to go. My husband gets paranoid when I go out.”

“Maybe because when you go out, you hire people to kill him.”

She picked up her purse and headed for the door. “I expect you to call me when you’ve made some progress.”

“That includes ironing,” I called after her. “And hanging the stuff up. I don’t have any hangers, so you’ll have to buy some.”

After she left, I turned off all the office lights and closed the blinds, because what I had to do next, I had to do in complete privacy.

I took a nap.

When I awoke a few hours later, I went to the bank, cashed Mrs. Garbonzo’s check, and went to start earning my money.

My first instinct was to dive head-first into the belly of the beast and confront Mrs. Garbonzo’s hired hitman help. My second instinct was to get some nachos, maybe a beer or two.

I went with my second instinct. The nachos were good, spicy but not so much that all you tasted was peppers. After the third beer I hopped in my ride and headed for the assassin’s headquarters, which turned out to be in a well-to-do suburb of Chicago called Barrington. The development I pulled into boasted some amazingly huge houses, complete with big lawns and swimming pools and trimmed bushes that looked like corkscrews and lollipops. I double-checked the address I’d scribbled down, then pulled into a long circular driveway and up to a home that was bigger than the public school I attended, and I came from the city where they grew schools big.

The hitman biz must be booming.

I half expected some sort of maid or butler to answer the door, but instead I was greeted by a fifty-something woman, her facelift sporting a deep tan. I appraised her.

“If you stay out in the sun, the wrinkles will come back.”

“Then I’ll just have more work done.” Her voice was steady, cultured. “Are you here to clean the pool?”