Banana Hammock Read online

  More shrugs and confusion.

  “The one pooping in the field!”

  My victim said, “That’s me.” After wiping with a nearby plant, he pulled up his black pants and offered his hand. I didn’t take it, because it had crop all over it.

  “Can, I help you, Brother?” he asked, polite and peacefullike.

  “You and your non-violent stance make me sick,” I said. “Who do you think you are, going around, not hitting anybody? Tell me something, braniac, how would we defend this great country of ours if the whole world suddenly turned into pacifists?”

  “Your beard is coming off.”

  “Don’t sass me,” I said, slapping that non-threatening look right off his face. I braced myself, waiting for him to hit me back. He didn’t. But even if he tried to, I wasn’t worried. The guy had to be at least ninety years old.

  I slapped him again.

  “That’s for beating your wife, you peaceful old man. Shame on you for picking on someone who can’t defend themselves.”

  “My wife is dead, Brother.”

  This made my fury even furiouser. “You killed her? You heartless, God-fearing man of the earth!”

  “Say, Brother, what’s going on here?”

  I looked around, and saw the Amish had surrounded me. I don’t scare easily, except during scary movies and lightning storms and being in rooms with too many minorities. Diversity was another way of saying put your wallet in your front pocket. But being surrounded by pacifists made my heart turn into ice.

  Well, actually, my heart didn’t really turn into ice. If it did, I’d be dead. Then I couldn’t be telling you this story in the first person.

  “Back off! Everyone! This man here cheated on his dead wife, who hired me.”

  I pointed at Lulu, but she’d vanished.

  “What did you do with her body, you gray-bearded bastard!” I slapped him again.

  “See here, Brother,” said one of the younger, healthier-looking Amish. He seemed about my age and height, so I backed away from him.

  “Keep your distance,” I warned him. “I’m not looking for a fair fight.”

  “There must be some misunderstanding. Why don’t we go inside and discuss this over some apple pie?”

  I laughed. “You think you can bribe me with three slices of pie with homemade ice cream on top? Who do you think I am? Some sort of pie lover?”

  Should Harry accept the pie? If so, click here.

  Should Harry keep beating defenseless Amish ass? If so, click here.

  It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

  A sexy vampire wife!

  However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighborhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

  “My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”

  Mr. Bennet—who was a SEXY VAMPIRE!—bit her on the neck and bled that nosy bitch dry. Then she became a vampire, and they had hot vampire sex, sucking each other in ways that made them both go, “Oooooo, that’s nice.” They even installed a mirror above the bed. But that didn’t really do much.

  Then the sun came up and they both caught on fire turned to dust.

  The end.

  To go back to the Harry McGlade story, click here.

  To read The Ugly Duckling Does Meth, click here.

  It was so beautiful out on the country, it was summer—the wheat fields were golden, the oats were green, and down among the green meadows the hay was stacked, and so was the farmer’s daughter, Roxy, whose breasts were the size of country hams, but without the brown sugar glaze. There Roxy sulked about in her shiny pleather jacket and torn black fishnets, scowling a lot, fiddling with one of the five piercings in her right eyebrow. Roxy was a Goth, and had so many piercings that magnets would leap off the refrigerator and stick to her face when she walked past, which made her scowl even more. Yes, it was indeed lovely out there in the country, but to Roxy it might as well have been a diaper landfill, judging by the unhappy expression on her face.

  Roxy was a meth dealer.

  In the midst of the sunshine there stood an old manor house that had a deep moat around it. From the walls of the manor right down to the water’s edge great burdock leaves grew, and there were some so tall that little children could stand upright beneath the biggest of them, though none of them knew what the word “burdock” meant and had to look it up in the Nook dictionary, just like you’re about to do. In this wilderness of leaves, which was as dense as the forests itself, denser even than a Mongoloid child dropped down a flight of stairs, a duck sat on her nest, hatching her ducklings. She was becoming somewhat weary, because the welfare check hadn’t come yet, and she needed a snort of ice soon or she was going to chew off her own face.

  Then, Roxy hooked her up, and so began a downward spiral that soon had her giving handjobs for fifty cents down at the old folks’ home, losing her teeth, and eventually overdosing and dying in an alley, rotting in a pool of her own feces. Seventeen elderly men came to her funeral, which was actually quite nice. They served little cakes.

  The end.

  To go back to the Harry McGlade story, click here.

  To read Huckleberry Finn: The Director’s Cut, click here.

  You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly—Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

  Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave. Then we got rip-roarin’ drunk and blew the cash on whores. Tom’s was so old her hips crackled like fried pig skins, and mine had sores on her feminine parts that smelled like rotten chicken feet. Now I got me some sores too, ’ceptin’ they’re on my slappin’ stick, which bleeds when I pee. Hurts, too. Like someone is shoving a maple branch up the piss hole and twistin’ it hard.

  Then some men came and hung Miss Watson’s slave, Jim.

  Also, my Pap raped me in the bum.

  The end.

  To go back to the Harry McGlade story, click here.

  To read the Book of Genesis with Zombies, click here.

  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be zombies: and there were zombies. And the zombies spread across the land, riding around on dinosaurs, eating people and turning them into more zombies. And then the dinosaurs also became zombies. And then Cain slew Able, and ate him, and they both ate Moses, which angered the Lord, because there was no eating on the Sabbath.

  And on the seventh day, God rested. And He hasn’t been back to work since.

  Then the Jews killed Jesus, and seized control of the media and the banks.

  Also, the earth is only five thousand years old.

  To go back to the Harry McGlade story, click here.

  To file a formal complaint about this ebook, click here.

  To quit this case and have Harry take a different case about private schools, click here.

  Bored with the Amish, I put that case on hold and went back to my office to take a new case.

  “Cute kid,” I said.

  The kid looked like a large pink watermelon with buck teeth and bug eyes. If I hadn’t already known it was a girl, I couldn’t have guessed from the picture. What was that medical name for children with a o
verdeveloped heads? Balloonheadism? Bigheaditis? Melonoma? Freak?

  “She takes after her mother.”

  Yeeech. My fertile mind produced an image of a naked Mrs. Potatohead, unhooking her bra. I shook away the thought and handed the picture back to the proud Papa.

  “Where is Mom, by the way?”

  Mr. Morribund leaned close enough for me to smell his lunch—tuna fish on rye with a side order of whiskey. He was a thin guy with big eyes who wore an off-the-rack suit with a gold Save The Dolphins tie tack.

  “Emily doesn’t know I’m here, Mr. McGlade. She’s at home with little Rosemary. Since we received the news she’s been… upset.”

  “I sympathize. Getting into the right pre-school can mean the difference between summa cum laude at Harvard and offering mouth sex in back alley Dumpsters for crack money. I should know. I’ve seen it.”

  “You’ve seen mouth sex in back alley Dumpsters?”

  I nodded my head in what I hoped what looked like a sad way. “It isn’t pretty, Mr. Morribund. Not to look at, or to smell. But I don’t understand how you expect me to get little Rotisserie—”

  “It’s Rosemary.”

  “—little Rosemary into this school if they already turned down your application. Are you looking for strong-arm work?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  I frowned. I liked strong-arm work. It was one of the perks of being a private eye. That and breaking and entering.

  “What then? Breaking and entering? Some stealing, maybe?”

  I liked stealing.

  Morribund swallowed, his Adam’s apple wiggling in his thin neck. If he were any skinnier he wouldn’t have a profile.

  “The Salieri Academy is the premier pre-school in the nation, Mr. McGlade. They have a waiting list of thousands, and to even have a chance at attending you have to fill out the application five years before your child is conceived.”

  “That’s a long time to wait for nookie.” But then, if I were married to Mrs. Potatohead, I wouldn’t mind the wait.

  “It’s the reason we took so long to have Rosemary. We paid the application fee, and were all but assured entrance. But three days after Rosemary was born, our application was denied.”

  “Did they give a reason?” Other than the fact that your kid looks like an albino warthog who has been snacking on an air compressor?

  “No. The application says they reserve the right to deny admittance at their discretion, and still keep the fee.”

  “How much was the fee?”

  “Ten thousand dollars.”

  Ouch. You could rent a lot of naughty videos for that kind of money. And you’d need to, because those things get boring after the third or fourth viewing.

  “So what’s the deal? You want me to shake the guy down for the money.”

  He shook his head. “Nothing of the sort. I’m not a violent man.”

  “Spell it out, Mr. Morribund. What exactly do you want me to do? Burn down the school?”

  I liked arson.

  “Goodness, no. The Salieri School is run by a man named Michael Sousse.”

  “And you want me to kidnap his pet dog and take pictures of me throwing it off a tall building, using my zoom lens to capture its final barks of terror as it takes the express lane to Pancakeville? Because that’s where I draw the line, Mr. Morribund. I may be a thug, a thief, and an arsonist, but I won’t harm any innocent animals unless there’s a bonus involved.”

  Morribund raised an eyebrow. “You’d do that to a dog? The Internet said you love animals.”

  “I do love animals. Grilled, fried, and broiled. Or stuffed with cheese. I’d eat any animal if it had enough cheese on top. It wouldn’t even have to be dead first.”

  “Oh.”

  Morribund made a face, and I could tell he was thinking through things. I glanced again at his Save the Dolphins tie tack and realized I might have been a little hasty with my meat-lovers rant.

  “I had a dog once,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “Never tried to eat him. Not once.”

  I mimed crossing my heart. Morribund stared at me.

  “This all seems terribly familiar,” he said.

  “Did you read Jack Daniels Stories by J.A. Konrath? This was one of the many hilarious cases in that excellent collection. Only $2.99 on Nook. Do you have a Nook? All smart, attractive, successful people have Nooks. So perhaps you don’t have one.”

  “You sound like a shill for Barnes & Noble.”

  I picked up my Leonard Riggio Rocks My World coffee mug and took a sip of cold joe. “I don’t shill for any corporations. Even corporations as efficient, inexpensive, and customer friendly as BarnesAndNoble.com. You can get seventeen J.A. Konrath ebooks for under three bucks each. But we’re getting a bit off track here.”

  When Morribund spoke again, his voice was lower, softer.

  “Headmaster Sousse, he’s a terrible man. A hunter. Gets his jollies shooting poor little innocent animals. His office is strewn with so-called hunting trophies. It’s disgusting.”

  “Sounds awful,” I said, stifling a yawn.

  “Mr. McGlade,” he leaned in closer, giving me more tuna and bourbon. “I want you to find out something about Sousse. Something that I could use to convince him to accept our application.”

  I scratched my unshaven chin. Or maybe it was my unshaved chin. I get those words confused.

  “I understand. You want me to dig up some dirt. Something you can use to blackmail Sousse and get Rheumatism—”

  “Rosemary.”

  “—into his school. Well, you’re in luck, Mr. Morribund, because I’m very good at this kind of thing. And even if I don’t find anything incriminating in his past, I can make stuff up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can take pictures of him in the shower, and then Photoshop in the Vienna Boy’s Choir washing his back. Or I can make it look like he’s pooping on the floor of the White House. Or being intimate with a camel. Or eating a nun. Or…”

  “I don’t want the sordid details, Mr. McGlade. I simply want some kind of leverage. How much will something like that cost?”

  I leaned back in my chair and put my hands behind my head, showing off my shoulder holster beneath my jacket. I always let them see the gun before I discussed my fees. It dissuaded haggling.

  “I get four hundred a day. Three days minimum, in advance. Plus expenses. I may need to bring in a computer expert to do the Photoshop stuff. He’s really good.”

  I took a pic out of my desk drawer and tossed it to him. Morribund flinched. I smiled at his reaction.

  “Looks real, doesn’t it?”

  “This is fake?”

  “Not a single baby harp seal was harmed.”

  “Really?”

  “Well actually, they were all clubbed to death and skinned. But the laughing guy in the parka wasn’t really there. We Photoshopped him into the scene. That’s the beauty and magic of jpeg manipulation. Look at this one.” I threw another photo onto his lap. “Check out that bloody discharge. And those pustules. Don’t they look real? It’s like they’re going to burst all over your hands.”

  Morribund frowned. “I’ve seen enough.”

  “Want to see one with my head on Brad Pitt’s body with Ron Jeremy’s junk?”

  “I really don’t.”

  “How about one of a raccoon driving a motorcycle? He’s wearing sunglasses and flipping the bird.”

  Morribund stood up.

  “I’m sure you’ll come up with something satisfactory. When can you get started?”

  I fished an appointment book out of my top drawer. It was from 1996, and only contained doodles of naked butts. I pretended to scrutinize it.

  “You’re in luck,” I said, pulling out a pen. I drew another butt. A big one, that took up the entire third week of September. “I can start as soon as your check clears.”

  “I don’t trust checks.”

  “Credit card?”

  “I dislik
e the high interest rates. How about cash?”

  “Cash works for me.”

  After he handed it over I got his phone number, he found his own way to the door, and I did the Money Dance around my office, making happy noises and shaking my booty.

  Things had been slow around the agency lately, due to my lack of renewing my Yellow Pages ad. I didn’t get many referrals, because I charged too much and wasn’t good at my job. Luckily, Morribund had found me through my Internet site. The same computer geek who did my Photoshop work was also the webmaster of my homepage. Google “Chicago cheating spouse sex pictures” and I was the fourth listing. If you Google “naked rhino make-over” I was number two. I still didn’t understand the whole keyword thing. That’s probably why Morribund thought I was an animal lover.

  A quick check of my watch told me I wasn’t wearing one, so I looked at the display on my cell phone. Almost two in the afternoon. Time to get started.

  I booted up the computer to search for the Salieri School and Christopher Sousse. But instead, I wound up on YouTube, and watched videos of a monkey in a funny hat, a fat woman falling down the stairs, and a Charlie Brown cartoon that someone dubbed over with the voice track to Goodfellas.

  After wasting almost an hour, I went to MySpace and read all of my messages from all of my friends, all of whom seemed to work in the paid escort industry.

  After that, I checked my eBay bids, my Hotmail account, and added a new entry to my blog about the high cost of parking in the city.

  After that, porn.

  Finally, I located the Salieri School’s website, found their phone number, and dialed.

  “Salieri Academy for Exceptionally Gifted Four-Year-Olds, where children are our future and should be heavily invested in, this is Miss Janice, may I help you?”

  Miss Janice had a voice like a hot oil massage, deep and sensual and full of petroleum.

  “My name is McGlade. Harrison Harold McGlade. I’d like to enroll my son Stimey into your school.”

  “I’m sorry sir, there’s a minimum five year waiting period to get accepted into the Salieri academy. How old is your son now?”