Jimmy Plush, Teddy Bear Detective Page 2

  “Beat it, Plush,” said the cat in a high nasal New York huckster voice, “You know you isn’t welcome here, not after what you did!”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know that I isn’t welcome, Mittens. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

  “Well now you know, Paddington, so scram!”

  I decided to ease up on the tough guy detective stuff for a second. This guy was every bit as abrasive as I was and there’d be no sense starting anything. My temper hadn’t done me a whole hell of a lot of good lately.

  “Listen, Mittens, I’ve got a big problem and I need your help. If you can’t help me out this city’s gonna get filthier and stay filthier. There’s a rumor going around that somebody’s helping Vic Halperin from the shadows. Somebody with furry connections. You don’t want to mess with angry Furries and how long do you think it will be before you starting poking around and get caught by a better class of thug than Johnny Hideous and Skinny Valentine? Think about it, kitty cat!”

  The cat did think about it, writing several lines of Qs as he sank down into his spot.

  “As much as I, and anybody else in this town who’s smart enough to count to three, I’ve gotta say, you have a point Plush. Guy like me gets into trouble all the time. Lots of tight squeezes, danger around every street corner. One day, Mr. Bartender starts slippin’ fells gin with a knockout drop chaser and then, bang I’m on the trail and they’re on my tail. Dangerous work, Plush. So, I tell ya what, I’ll give you the lowdown on the Furries in town, even though I don’t like ya, and I want it to be known again, I don’t like ya. You’re a walking cold sore, Jimmy Plush and you make people regret ever knowin’ ya. If I hadn’t lost my body in a game of checkers with a cat, I’d have shot you by now, but I’m glad I didn’t, because more Furries ain’t good for anybody, more Furries always mean more trouble, don’t they, Plush? So I’ll tell ya, I’ll…”

  Bang!

  The cat went silent and fell from his spot on the typewriter, reacting quickly, I reached for my gun, realizing somebody had come in while the cat was ranting, took aim and shot him and that somebody now had to be on the run. I could see the culprit running for the door, a guy in a penguin suit. Hopefully, all that padding wouldn’t protect the back of his knees.

  It didn’t. He fell down right away, and it would be hard for him to get up. Particularly if I stood on his spine and pistol-whipped him in the back of his furry penguin head three or four times. Which I did. And he didn’t get up. I ordered Chang inside and the two of us retrieved Mittens and the penguin thug. The thug went in the trunk and Mittens got the back seat next to him. Only difference was Mittens was going to the hospital and the penguin thug was definitely not.

  “When you drop off Mittens, take me to Jean’s, Chang.”

  “Certainly, most honored Jimmy Plush, but I don’t think she’ll be home.”

  “That’s the point. She’s got sewing needles and a bag of cotton.”

  Chang trembled a bit.

  “You’re starting to sound like the real Jimmy Plush.”

  “What was that?” the groggy, wounded Mittens mumbled, revealing that he might just pull through.

  “I’ll explain another day.”

  “Savin’ my life almost makes up for what you did to me,” said the cat, “almost.”

  So we brought the cat to the hospital. I couldn’t stick around to find out if he’d pull through because I had some business with the guy who shot him. Some very unpleasant business. We dragged him into Jean’s house and tied him to a chair in her kitchen. I climbed onto the counter and grabbed a sharp knife, while Chang peeled the penguin suit off the hood. Underneath it, he was even less to look at. I could see why he wanted so much to be cute.

  His eyes opened to find me standing on the table brandishing a kitchen knife. I had also lain out the bag of cotton and Jean’s sewing kit.

  “I need some information,” I said matter-of-factly.

  “I don’t know nothin’!”

  “Aww, I wouldn’t say that. You know how to shoot a cat. You also know that an orange beak is better than that ugly, scrunched up pug nose of yours. That’s not nothin’. I know lots of people who know less than that.”

  The penguin thug spat at me.

  “I’m not tellin’ you nothin’!”

  “See? There we go. Now we’re communicating better. There’s a difference between the two things.”

  “Yeah? What it is, bear?”

  “If you don’t know nothin’, I could torture you all day and nothing would come out. But, if you just won’t tell me anything than I could probably extract something.”

  The penguin thug coughed out a nervous fake laugh.

  “Ha! That’s rich comin’ from the teddy bear. You ain’t got the balls!”

  I’m not certain if I had ever intended for this to be a bluff, but if I had, that possibility was gone now. As any man would be who lacked genitalia, I was awfully sensitive. I grabbed the knife with both hands and with all my teddy bear strength, I made a long cut in his bare chest.

  “You Furries. You make me laugh. Walkin’ around, pretending to be what I am. It’s insulting. It’s hilarious, too. I’m gonna give you what you want. Chang, stuff ‘im.”

  My chauffeur’s yellow skin turned pale.

  “Mr. Plush…”

  “Take the cotton and stick it in the hole, Chang. Then sew it.”

  The penguin thug’s eyes widened. They must have looked enormous to Chang.

  “Please, mister, you can’t…”

  Chang gave his customary bow.

  “As you wish, most honored Mister Plush.”

  So, Chang stuffed the wound with cotton and sewed it shut. The penguin thug made several noises I never expected to hear out of a man or a penguin. I glared at him with my round, black plastic eyes. I knew he couldn’t see any expression behind them, but from the look on his tear-stained face, I could tell that he knew I was glaring and he knew I wasn’t above cutting him again.

  “I do know somethin’ and I’ll tell ya.”

  “You don’t say? I’m glad, because Chang could easily undo all those stitches one by one…”

  “Halperin’s working with a man from outta town who just started coming around. He knew this town was ripe for plucking. Halperin could be scared, could be shaken down. Halperin’s a coward underneath the whole Mandarin act.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know. And I mean that literally. Stop stalling. I am not a patient little bear.”

  “His name’s Kewpie Doll Steve.”

  “Better. If he were in the phonebook, that is. Chang, undo the stitches.”

  Chang once more gave his customary bow. He elongated it, seeing that this time I actually was bluffing.

  “Wait…you don’t gotta do that. The Monogram Marshmallow factory’s a front for his hideout.”

  Great. Kewpie Doll Steve was hanging out at the Monogram Marshmallow factory. The worst part of having lost my memory is having to rediscover what a stupid town I lived in one day at a time. There were towns where it was hard to solve a mystery, where it took a smart man and not a guy willing to torture idiot henchmen for answers. There were towns where furry prostitution wasn’t a criminal calling. There were towns outside the protectorate of crotchety teddy bears. Somehow, I still felt attached to this one and it bugged the hell out of me.

  I juggled my failures in my head like so many oranges; I had failed as a writer and failed as a gambler, so I failed as a person and traded bodies with Jimmy Plush, I had failed as a man not convincing my girl to get out of Halperin’s press-on nailed grasp, I had failed as a detective when I got knocked out and left Lillian Benzedrine to Halperin’s very limited mercies. She was probably somewhere dressed up as a French poodle to amuse out-of-town businessmen as her husband dangled in a chair over a vat of acid. My conscience was in the same position and there were scissors at the rope. Snip. Splash. Stab. I plunged the knife deep, penetrating his heart as all the disappointments had mine.

  I waited f
or Chang’s reaction. I wanted him to shake his head in disappointment. I wanted him to cry or tell me I’d gone too far and he should’ve been spared since he gave me the information he needed. But Chang had worked for the real Jimmy Plush, who had done things Chang refused to tell me about, who had done things that made Chang grateful for me, as bitter as I could get and as sick as could I be of his small outbursts of impertinence in the midst of fawning loyalty. Chang wasn’t surprised.

  “Your orders, Mister Plush?”

  I sighed.

  “Finish the job, Chang. We need to send a message; we need Halperin to know that Jimmy Plush is no fool, no weakling and isn’t going to be pushed around.”

  So Chang and I got to it. It took hours, stank like nothin’ else I’ve ever smelled and we had to buy a lot more cotton and give Jean’s kitchen quite the scrubbing, but it was worth it. Halperin would get the message now, and I wouldn’t have to do this again. Hopefully. I can’t say I was that crazy about the whole experience. We dropped off the corpse outside J.L Wong’s and drove like the wind for the Monogram Marshmallow factory, where Kewpie Doll Steve or somebody who knew where he was should have been.

  I can’t say I was at all shocked to find “Halperin’s” gunsels Tusky and Bernstein guarding the back door. Might be a big city, but it was a pretty damn small world. Much as I wanted a piece of that walrus, stuffing that penguin had slightly eased my thirst for revenge, and I was thinking clearer.

  “Chang, you take down the walrus, I’ll take the squid.”

  Chang was concerned.

  “You realize there is no counter to squid style martial arts.”

  “I do, Chang.”

  “And you are angry at the walrus…”

  “Don’t worry about me, Chang. I’m sure it will all work out.”

  I sprang from the car and put a bullet right between Bernstein’s eyes. There was no counter to squid style martial arts, but as of yet the Chinese really hadn’t come up with a way to get around being shot in the head. Having untied the Gordian Knot with my gun, Chang readied himself for the walrus’ charge. Tusky could have countered the Chinese fighting arts as well, but was, as I suspected, blinded with grief and anger at the death of his lover.

  Poor Tusky charged directly into a move whose name Chang says translates roughly into “Gilded Battle Axe Fist”. The walrus vomited out a big fishy mess and then imploded. Made me wonder why Chang had never chosen to do that before. It would have made things much easier.

  Of course, it wasn’t that easy. The ruckus of the exploding walrus and the vanquished squid attracted some attention. Plenty of attention. The door burst open and there were all manner of Furries on the other side of it, from neon yellow opossums, to perpetually smiling wolves, from angry rats to loveable mandrills to cartoonish chipmunks to placid, Zen tortoises. There were some fifty of them pouring out of there, but we were ready to make some fur fly.

  High on our victory, we took them three, four at a time; me letting bullets fly, tripping up a pink cow with a low kick as I shot a badger in the eye. With the Gilded Battle Axe Fist and the Decapitation Kick, Chang went through a pair of cuddly coyotes without blinking an eye and then brought the fear of God into a young tortoise that fled surprisingly fast. I took a few punches, dodged a few bullets, but I gave better than I got, because I’m Jimmy Plush and there ain’t no walking stuffed animal in this town, real or fake that can stand up to me when I’m angry and I’ve just put a bullet in the head of somebody who I thought was unbeatable. Plush heads and the real heads underneath them littered the alley outside the Monogram Marshmallow Factory. There’s nothing like the scent of fake fur, hot lead and spilled guts in the night to prove you’re a real man.

  “Chang, you’ve redeemed yourself,” I said to the chauffeur, “but I need you to stay in the car.”

  “Mr. Plush, who knows what kind of ambush…”

  “I think the ambush is over. I’m going in to investigate and hopefully find Kewpie Doll Steve.”

  “As you wish, most honored Mr. Plush.”

  Like I said, in some towns mysteries are tough to solve and it takes a real smart man to unravel it all but this ain’t one of the towns. Criminals, God bless ‘em, were usually found exactly where you expected to find them, completely unafraid of being undermined by the likes of myself or the frequently absent police department. Emerging from the shadows, walking past two large inflatable sculptures of Murray, the Monogram Unicorn was a figure about my size.

  As he stepped into the light, I saw how eerily Kewpie Doll Steve looked like a she. Like my own empty plastic eyes, his showed no feeling, but looked a bit flirty on account of the long, curled eyelashes and nonexistent eyebrows. His huge, infant lips had been painted red, which was the color of the short, checkered dress he wore. The ensemble was completed by a pair of little white party shoes. The illusion broke when he laughed a heavy cigar-burned laugh.

  “This is him? The guy who brought down my men? Who gives Vic Halperin trouble? You’re a riot, Jimmy Plush. You’re just as much of a joke as me!”

  I squeezed off a shot at the doll, but now of all times, the gun clicked “sorry, out of ammo”.

  “Don’t worry, Plush. I don’t have a gun. Don’t need one either, teddy bear!”

  The talking doll was quick and caught me off guard, he leapt like a jaguar, pinning me to the ground and punching me hard in the face. A guy like this was strong for the same reason I had to be strong: cause he looked nothing like a man. Cause he looked soft. As the punches rained down like brokers when the market goes south, I understood more than ever why I was so angry. I rolled him off me and took his position on top.

  His head squeaked with each of my blows, which left me wondering just what could be done to a guy like this. Could he be brain damaged? Could he be unstuffed? Not by a guy with no hands who doesn’t have anything to cut him with. I was out of bullets, too. I’d have to do something the criminals in this town usually didn’t require me to do and that was think. I got off him and danced around like a boxer, putting up my knuckleless dukes.

  Kewpie Doll Steve kicked surprisingly hard again, sending me flying backwards into the side of a marshmallow vat. It was hot. I moved away from it quickly, knowing my own flammability a bit too well thanks to a run-in with Skinny Valentine and a cigarette lighter a few weeks back. I scurried lightly up the ladder leading up to the vat, hoping Kewpie Doll Steve might be dumb enough to follow. Naturally, he took the bait.

  I scrambled up the ladder one step at a time, defending my position with punch after punch and from punch after punch. Every couple of hits, I would be nearly as oblivious as he was or lose my footing on the ladder, but then the plan would come back to me, along with the knowledge that there would be no other way to bring this guy down. Pathetic that I had to rely on a vat of hot marshmallows.

  We reached the top and I shuffled along the rim, balance aided by my relative lack of mass, his balance aided by the same. I risked my position to rush him and nearly fell in myself. Like Holmes and Moriarty, we were caught up in a moment of mortal struggle and almost plunged to the death together. Almost. My hands found the rim as he fell screaming into the white, hot gooey abyss. Awful way to go. I shuffled along the rim again until I reached the ladder and worked my way down to enjoy my moment of triumph.

  I should have known I was never that lucky. When I hit the ground, a bullet caught me in the back, bringing me down. I felt my consciousness start to puff out of my body like a wisp of smoke. I wish I wasn’t a guy who fainted so easily. The trenchcoated assassin left his hiding place and climbed gracefully up the ladder, reaching in, grabbing the marshmallow covered Kewpie Doll Steve from the pit of ooze and climbing down just as quickly as he climbed up. Before blacking out completely I caught a glimpse of the guy’s face. Just when I thought my day had gotten better, it went back to being a regular god-awful day in the life of Jimmy Plush, teddy bear detective. The face had been my own only a month back, the face of one Charles Hatbox, but behind the eyes
there was the bear with whom I’d traded bodies, that bastard, the real Jimmy Plush.

  Being a gumshoe is stressful. Being a gumshoe in the body of a three foot teddy bear is a hell of a lot more stressful than that. So I decided to take the day off for once. Since trading my body to that teddy bear bastard to pay off my gambling debts, the closest thing I’d gotten to time off was time spent face down in an alley unconscious. And unlike some people, I wasn’t there for leisure. I knew this day would start off with a couple of annoyances, but I thought it would end at that. The first one, I’d figured on. Having no private residence, I had a tendency to sleep in my office. I also had a lapdog of a Chinese chauffeur that had a habit of waiting outside with my limo ready to go and a tragic attempt at coffee in his hand. I stepped outside, and I was right. There was Chang with coffee staler than politics and pictures. I sighed.

  “Chang, where do they grow the coffee in China?”

  Even for a Chinaman, Chang went stiff.

  “They do not grow coffee in China, Most Honored Mister Plush.”

  I took the coffee from him. This was an important part of my morning ritual lately.

  “Do you wanna know why they don’t grow coffee in China, Chang?”

  He sighed. There was anger behind his slanty subhuman eyes.

  “Yes, Mister Plush. I would like to know why.”

  I tossed the coffee in his face as I did every morning. The coffee was piping hot. Good old Chang. Even confronted with certain scalding he wouldn’t serve me lukewarm coffee.

  “That is the worst damn coffee I’ve ever had. You run somebody’s laundry through the pot?”

  Chang folded his hands and bowed.

  “Humblest apologies. Does Most Honored Mister Plush require breakfast? Or to be driven somewhere?”