Hardboiled Jesus
Author: John Rickards
Date: 2016-06-06T23:00:00+00:00
Description: Someone is killing mobsters in brutal and hideous ways, and it's up to the city's best cop to find the killer, even if his extreme methods put him at odds with his superiors. That cop is Jesus Christ. Yes, that Jesus Christ. No longer a simple carpenter's son, nowadays he's a pulp hardboiled detective with a quick mouth and quicker fists! This short story (around 4,000 words) contains violence, swearing, more swearing, violence, a handful of sexual references, more swearing and, finally, more violence. It shouldn't be read by children, the religiously sensitive or people of a generally nervous

Legal Guff

Copyright John Rickards 2012. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License. You’re free to share this work with others however you want, and to remix or create derivative works from it. Just give an attribution to the author, and don’t use it for commercial purposes. Enjoy!

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1.

It was cold that night. The mist was a cloud of ice too fine to fall, clinging to the iron frame of the bridge like it was afraid of heights. The body dangling from the center of the span seemed to suffer no such phobia. Naked, bloody and bruised, it spun slowly in the breeze, the electrical cord that bound it creaking like a ship under sail.

‘Damn it, JC, this is the fourth guy in as many weeks.’ Lieutenant Dryden spat over the rail, into the water. ‘Always the same.’

‘Right pinkie removed, knifed through the heart, some shit carved in his forehead?’ A cigarette lighter flared in the night, showing the scar on the back of the smoker’s hand before winking out again.

‘You got that right.’

‘So why am I here? It’s Peterson’s case.’

‘Peterson?’ The lieutenant shook his head. ‘That limp sack of shit couldn’t investigate his way through an open door. Chief says this is yours now. The mayor’s getting antsy, says he doesn’t want another mob war.’

‘The mayor thinks this is a mob thing?’

‘Aren’t they all?’

‘The mayor doesn’t have a fucking clue. We got an ID on the body?’

‘You’ll love this: Tony Klimowicz.’

The two men watched as a police Zodiac maneuvered into position beneath the stiff and a team of four began the difficult process of cutting him down. Klimowicz had been a greasy fuckbag and it was a sure bet that no one on the force would be shedding a tear for him.

‘Tell me you’re going to put a stop to all this, JC. Tell me I can say to the chief that he can sleep easy at night because we’re on it.’

‘I love it when you beg, Lieutenant.’

‘Fuck you. Jesus, you’re the best guy I’ve got.’

‘Just don’t give me any bullshit about how I work, OK? Not this time. Chief wants this closed, it’ll be closed. One way or another.’

Dryden thought for a moment, then shrugged and turned towards his car. ‘Mob guys. Who gives a shit, huh?’

Below, the body of Klimowicz fell free as the last of the cord was severed. He dropped onto the sheet held out by the cops like so much dead Polish sausage. For a second his head rolled back and a quartet of what looked like Greek letters slashed into his forehead showed red in the halogen glare.

It was cold that night. It had been cold that other night, back in Jerusalem, when they’d come for him. Mist hanging in the air as the soldiers dragged him away. In all the years that had passed since, he’d never expected to see the word ‘INRI’ in circumstances like this.

Jesus Christ ground the stub of his cigarette out on the sidewalk and headed for his car.

2.

Klimowicz had worked accounts for Chalky Spiegelman, at least once he’d stopped beating hookers for money and kiss-assing mid-level mobsters. There was no telling if his recent occupation had anything to do with his death, but Jesus figured it wouldn’t do any harm to find out from the horse’s mouth. If Spiegelman hadn’t done it himself, chances were he might know who did. If not, well, it never hurt to give a guy like that something to worry about.

The White House nightclub on 72nd was pretty exclusive. You had to be rich, dumb, crooked, or some combination of all three to make it in. Getting an audience with Chalky himself, though, that took something special.

‘Sorry, cop. It’s a private party and you ain’t invited.’ The bouncer was big. Real big. Like the mutant offspring of Orson Welles and a dumpster.

‘I’m hear to speak to Mr Spiegelman.’

The bouncer’s buddy was smaller and slicker. Clearly the brains of the duo. A bald weasel in a suit. Said, ‘He doesn’t speak to people.’

‘What is he, a mute? Must make it real fucking hard for him to send out for pizza. He’s going to want to talk to me. Tell him from me that it’s about Tony, and if he don’t already know what that means, he’s sure as shit gonna want to.’

‘I ain’t telling him shit.’

‘You want me to bring a squad down here to ID your clientele, check them for drugs, priors, STDs? How much business you think you’d lose, a bunch of cops hit this place?’

The weasel sniffed. ‘Fuck you. We’re paid up with the Narcs.’

‘You ain’t paid shit to me, and I’m in a hurry.’ Jesus wedged his face an inch from the little guy’s, pressing him back against the door. ‘You go tell Mr Spiegelman what I said, or your life won’t be worth a shit in the river.’

The weasel glanced nervously at the bouncer and said in a nasal whine, ‘Don’t let him go nowhere.’ Then he vanished into the club.

A couple of minutes passed, giving the bouncer the chance to practice his looming and run through his complete repertoire of steely gazes. It didn’t have much effect, save to make him a decent windbreak for Jesus when he lit a fresh Marlboro.

Then the little guy returned. ‘Follow me,’ he said.

Inside, the club was dark and smoky. A wall of noise and strange odours. Red-lit half-moon faces, a sea of shapes and curves and movement almost impossible to break down into individuals. The weasel crossed the dance floor and stepped into a door marked ‘STAFF ONLY’. Down a flight of steps, the noise above muffled, deadening all the while. Through a second door, into a room empty save for two guys in suits who announced their presence by kicking the back of Jesus’s knees as he entered and drawing pistols.

‘I told you Mr Spiegelman doesn’t talk to cops,’ the weasel said. ‘Boys?’

One of the suits slammed the butt of his pistol into the base of JC’s skull, sending him slumping forwards.

‘Now we gotta kill you ‘cause you weren’t gonna take no for an answer. Dumb fuckin’ cop.’

JC’s foot lashed out and up, catching one suit square in the balls and doubling him over. JC spun, launching himself at the other. A jab from his left slammed the guy’s hand into the wall. There was an almighty crack when his finger jerked the trigger as his digits convulsed in pain.

‘I died for your sins, you fuck.’ Jesus crashed his fist into the guy’s face, splitting his nose and ramming his teeth into his throat. ‘Show a little fucking respect.’

The guy dropped to the floor, choking and dazed. Jesus stomped on the other one’s head. Enough of a sickening crunch to know he wasn’t going to be causing anyone any more problems. Then he rounded on the weasel, who was cowering in the corner.

‘Where the fuck is Spiegelman, motherfucker? You take me to him right now or you’re a dead man.’

The weasel glanced past him, at the bloody mess by the door. ‘What… what happened to “turn the other cheek”?’

Jesus hauled him off the ground by his lapels, dragging him level with his blood-flecked beard. ‘I move with the times. Screw with me again, you fucking cockmonkey, and I’ll rip your nuts off and choke you to death with them. Clear?’

3.

‘Christ, man, you had to make such a mess? People come here to have a good time, baby.’

Jesus dropped into the chair opposite Chalky Spiegelman and waved at a waitress. Spiegelman, for his part, nodded at the pair of suits watching over him and they visibly relaxed. He regarded Jesus over the top of a Russian cigarette while JC ordered a mineral water with plenty of ice.

‘Good time, Chalky? You wouldn’ta known it from the welcome I got. Tell your people to offer me a drink and take my coat, and maybe next time no one gets their face fucked up.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind. So how can I help the boys in blue today?’

The waitress placed Jesus’s drink in front of him and beat a hasty retreat. He watched her ass wiggle into the crowd, then made a theatrical wave over the top of the glass. The liquid promptly turned a deep amber. ‘Kentucky’s finest.’ He knocked back a glug. ‘Can’t beat the good stuff.’

‘Anyone ever tell ya you could make a killing in the catering business?’

‘I could make a killing butt-fucking your sister and selling the footage over the internet,’ Jesus said.

‘That road’s already well-travelled, baby.’

‘I thought that pimply ass of hers looked familiar. Let’s talk about Tony Klimowicz.’

‘I hear he couldn’t take life no more. Cord round the neck and off the side of a bridge. It’s a tragedy.’

‘Right. Probably stabbed himself in the heart before he jumped, too. Just to make sure.’

‘A depressed mind is a terrible thing, man.’

‘I suppose he also cut a message into his forehead because he didn’t have a pen handy to write a suicide note.’

Spiegelman leaned forward. His expression stayed cool, but everything else about him screamed interest. Interest, and, suddenly, worry. Fear. But what the hell made a creep like Spiegelman afraid? ‘Now what kind of message would that be?’ he said. ‘Guess it weren’t a long one, not unless Tony was going bald.’

‘It said “INRI” in Greek lettering. You having trouble with anyone from that part of the world, Chalky? Some guy you fucked with one too many times decided to send you a warning?’

‘I’ve never fucked with any Greeks, baby. Fucked plenty of them, but none of them ever wanted payback afterwards. It ain’t anything to do with anything to do with me, if you see what I mean.’

Jesus swallowed the rest of his drink. ‘If that’s the case, I guess I’ll be leaving. I’ll see you when it’s you we’re cutting down from a bridge with your bare ass flapping in the breeze.’

‘Woah there, baby. I didn’t say I couldn’t help you at all. Go to one-twenty-five 91st Street. There’s a fixer called Stefanovic who might know what the score is. Two hours; he won’t be back until then. He’d be the guy to talk to, not me. Guess I don’t need to tell you to come alone.’

‘Cops like me usually do.’

‘You should work on that. Get out more. Meet some girls.’

‘Is your mother free this weekend?’

‘You couldn’t afford my mother.’

‘I’ve got a cock you could demolish walls with. Everyone gives me a discount when they see it. Even your mother. Be seeing you, Chalky.’

4.

The address turned out to be a boarded-up undertaker’s store with a couple of grimy tenements above it. Somehow the building hadn’t been condemned yet, but then it was one of those neighborhoods where no one gave enough of a shit to care. Anyone bringing a bulldozer down here would have to post armed guards just to stop the locals stealing it, anyway. Jesus could hear his wallet crying for the safety of home just looking at the place.

There was a crumbling nametag that read ‘Stefanovic’ next to one of the buzzers. When Jesus pushed it, the door was opened by a chubby guy in a check shirt who looked like a down-at-heel accountant. He eyeballed the street behind Jesus like he was expecting to see an armed battalion in hiding. Said, ‘Come in.’

Stefanovic led Jesus through to what had once been the mortuary at the back of the undertaker’s. From the looks of things, it now doubled as a makeshift office and front room for the tubby fixer. Stefanovic looked edgy, and Jesus was planning on getting down to business fast when someone came up behind him and shot him in the back of the head.

The echoes were still fading, his body freshly slumped on the floor, and everything was about to go an utter and final black when he heard Stefanovic yelling, ‘For fuck’s sake! You nearly covered me in fucking brain matter, Jimmy. You and Frank put him in the fucking sack and try not to make any more mess, y’hear?’

Jimmy and Frank had just laid out the body bag while their boss sucked nervously on a cigarette in the background when Jesus’s eyes flicked open and he punched Jimmy square in the balls.

Frank yelled, ‘What the fuck? What the fuck?!’ Face pale as ice, fumbling for his gun but somehow failing to get a grip on it. Jesus rose to his feet, dabbed at the blood running from the back of his head, and shot him in the kneecap.

As Frank sunk to the floor, screaming in pain, Jesus kicked him in the head and cracked the butt of his pistol into his Adam’s apple like he was breaking open a walnut. His second shot blew the back of Jimmy’s head out through the front and temporarily masked the horrible choking noises from the floor, and then Jesus was standing in front of the open-mouthed Stefanovic with eyes like burning coals.

‘You got any idea how much that fucking hurt?’ he said.

‘But you… but…’

‘Because I can show you if you want.’

‘But you… we shot you,’ Stefanovic stammered, cigarette still dangling from his lips, slowly turning to ash.

‘They nailed me to a fucking plank three days and stabbed me in the chest with a spear and that couldn’t keep me down. Maybe you heard about that?’

‘But… you had to be buried and shit for days before you came back.’

‘It’s been two thousand years, shit for brains,’ Jesus said. ‘I’ve learned a few tricks since then. Now start fucking talking right now. I’ve got a splitting fucking headache and you’ve completely fucked my best suit, so unless I hear a whole lotta truth spilling from you double-quick I’m going to make Hell seem like a fucking holiday camp. I’ve always wondered if cutting off one of a guy’s testicles and feeding it to him would make him more inclined to answer questions. You better not give me a reason to find out. What the fuck is going on?’

Stefanovic could barely speak fast enough. His tongue kept tripping up. ‘We had to. We had to do that. He wants you, see? He’s been putting weight on everyone, Spiegelman, everyone in the business, saying he wants you. He wants revenge or some shit. And when people don’t play ball with him he fucking kills them and leaves them dangling for the crows. Spiegelman, he says he needs to do this, to get you here, and give you to him so he’ll stop. It’s the only way he’ll stop. Please…’

‘Who?’ Jesus hissed, eyeball to eyeball with the snivelling fixer. ‘Who’s after me?’

‘No, please, he’ll kill me.’

‘I’ll fucking kill you if you don’t tell me, and I’m right here. He’s not.’

Suddenly there were screams from the street outside. A man’s voice, shrieking in pain and terror. Jesus grabbed Stefanovic by the neck and hauled him out the front door, his gun in his other hand.

‘It’s him,’ Stefanovic mumbled. Jesus could smell the fixer’s piss.

On a rooftop across the street, a hideous figure was dangling the bloody form of another of Spiegelman’s goons from its right hand. A man, completely naked, like his victims had been, skin raked with slashes and slathered in blood. His eyes were wild and white in the moonlight, and he stared down at Jesus with a hostile insanity so intense it practically blew him back into the building.

‘YOU! You did this to me! You’ll pay, motherfucker. Oh, now you’ll PAY!’

Jesus blinked once, twice, in disbelief. The face, crazed, mutilated and gore-drenched as it was, was familiar. ‘Fuck,’ he whispered. ‘Lazarus.’

5.

Jesus dropped Stefanovic and let the little shit scurry away. Across the street, Lazarus let go of the dead goon. The corpse spattered against the sidewalk like a sack full of blood-red jelly. Jesus watched as the naked figure of Lazarus shinned down a drainpipe and jumped to the blacktop.

Beneath the blood and slash marks, his features were still those of the man he had known all those years ago back in Bethany. But his eyes were white pits of insanity and fury, and nothing human remained within them.

‘Hey, Laz,’ he said, lighting a cigarette. ‘Long time no see.’

‘No fucking shit.’

‘How’s things?’

Lazarus stalked towards Jesus, fists clenched so hard that blood began to well from where his fingers dug into his palms. ‘How do you fucking think? This is all your fault, you sack of shit. And now you’re going to pay.’

‘Right,’ said Jesus, and shot him in the face. Blood, bone and brain matter splattered across the street. Jesus lowered his gun and took a long drag on his cigarette.

Then Lazarus took another step forwards. ‘Nice,’ he snarled. ‘But thanks to you I can’t die. You never fucking think before you go laying on fucking hands, do you?’

Jesus brought the gun up again, aiming for his kneecaps, but then Lazarus pounced on him. He was a huge man, body a mass of corded muscle slick with blood. One hand clamped around Jesus’s wrist and pounded his hand against the asphalt, sending waves of pain shooting up his arm, the other clenched around his throat. Lazarus slammed his forehead into Jesus’s, driving it back into the road’s surface, and hissed again, ‘Now you’ll fucking pay for what you did.’

‘You can’t…’ Jesus fought for breath. The big man’s weight was crushing his chest and he could feel his muscles screaming for oxygen. ‘You can’t… kill… me either.’

‘I don’t have to. You’ve got no idea what I’m planning for you. I’ve been wading through this city’s filth, trying to get you. Killing mobsters who didn’t want to play. Now you’re mine, and I can do what I want with you.’

Black lights were dancing in front of his eyes when Jesus snapped his knee up and back as hard as he could. He heard Lazarus grunt with pain and the grip on his gun hand loosened for a microsecond. Jesus whipped it free of the big man’s grasp and plunged his thumbs into Lazarus’s eyeballs.

‘You ain’t gonna do shit to me, you fuck,’ he growled. He squeezed, gripping the big man’s head as hard as he could, and then with a horrible liquid popping sound both eyes burst. Syrupy fluid sprayed over JC’s thumbs.

Lazarus howled like a wounded beast and slammed Jesus’s head once, twice, against the blacktop. But blind, he was incapable of protecting himself as Jesus punched him twice in the head and then slammed him aside, breaking his hold, with a final uppercut to the chin.

Before the big man could regain his footing, Jesus whipped out his cuffs and locked his hands together behind his back. Then, still wheezing, he recovered his pistol. He watched Lazarus struggle unsteadily to his feet, then shot him in the knee.

BLAM.

The big man collapsed again. He thrashed on the ground, helpless to prevent Jesus blowing out his other kneecap.

BLAM.

The hole in the back of Lazarus’s head was already knitting together and Jesus knew he didn’t have much time. He hauled the snarling Judean over to his car, trussed him up as securely as he could, and tossed him in the trunk.

Preston Plaza had once been a tiny square of greenery struggling to survive in the thin petrochemical light of the city surrounded by tiny neighbourhood stores. Had been up until six months ago, when the bulldozers had moved in. Now it was an untidy and uneven square of sand and rock peppered with stacks of building supplies and machinery that would together grow the gleaming fifty-storey edifice of Preston Towers out of the dirt.

Tomorrow, they’d fill in the foundations: deep, dark holes lined with stone and steel and surrounded by hazard tape. The concrete would pour in, girders would be set in place, and construction would begin.

Tomorrow, Lazarus would be consigned to the history books again.

Jesus looked down at the cuffed and bound figure lying at his feet and shook his head. Most of the wounds had already healed over, and Lazarus’s muscles stood out like tree roots as he strained against his bonds. Jesus lit himself another cigarette and bent down to take the tape off his captive’s mouth.

‘You got any last words for me, Laz?’

‘Fuck you,’ Lazarus snarled. ‘Fuck you. You did this to me. You did this.’

‘I brought you back from the dead, you sack of shit. And you were fucking glad for it. So were your fucking family.’

‘My family? My family?’ Lazarus’s voice choked and tears sparkled at the corners of his eyes. ‘I loved my family, and thanks to you I had to watch them fucking die. All of them. Everyone I knew and loved. Everything I held dear. Over and over and over again. Motherfucker. You brought me back and now I can’t die and for two thousand years I’ve had to face that. Knowing that if I allowed anyone into my life I’d have to face losing them again. And that if I didn’t, I’d always be alone.’

His face filled with hatred as pure as only two millennia of distillation can produce. ‘”Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” You piece of shit. You fucking piece of shit. You’ve got no fucking idea what I’m going to do to you, how I’m going to fuck up your life as much as you fucked mine. You’ll wish for death too, you motherfucker.’

Jesus stared at him in silence for a moment, eyes unblinking. Then he slapped the tape back over Lazarus’s mouth and kicked him over the edge, into the pit. He watched the big man vanish into the depths, then turned back towards his car.

‘Show a little gratitude, Laz,’ he said. ‘I saved you, remember?’

Afterword

Welcome to - and thank you for reading - the updated edition of Hardboiled Jesus (subtitled Vengeance Is Mine in its original form). This version includes the never-completed fragment of the putative second story, of which I am simultaneously proud and ashamed: The Root Of All Evil. Which is a lot ruder, since it’s about penises. I’m half-sure I never finished it because I don’t know how I’d top the opening, which is somewhere between one of Chip Zdarsky’s wonderful One Page series and a bucket of joy. And penises. Joy-penises, laughing and giggling as they squirm like eels.

Anyway.

I first wrote HBJC because I was keen on the ludicrousness of taking a renowned pacifist good guy and making them into a violent, abusive hardboiled detective. The only two that jumped to mind were Jesus and Gandhi, and Jesus’s best lines are a lot more famous. The idea of him punching out a guy’s teeth while yelling “I died for your sins, you fuck” still tickles my funny bone today, proving just how terribly childish I am. (I should note that while I have no doubt that some people could and will take offence at the portrayal of JC, I’d (futilely) ask them not to; it wasn’t written to offend, but to amuse. Even its most ardently Christian readers have managed to make it through with nothing more than a chuckle and an odd look in my direction.)

The story appeared a long time ago in Out of the Gutter magazine, and then their later Worst Of… anthology. Good stuff. I used the money to buy myself a lovely big golden calf to live in, but I had to move out because it kept being struck by lightning.

Down the years I’ve more or less fallen out of the habit of writing comedy shorts - whether that’s a good thing or not I suppose depends on whether or not you enjoyed this one (or its even more NSFW successor). If you did then your tears of disappointment shall be like soothing rain to me, gently washing my ego and buffing it to a glimmering shine. If you didn’t then screw you, I never liked you anyway.

- John

HARDBOILED JESUS & THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL

(Bonus: HBJC 2, Unfinished)

Jesus had finished rubbing his cock between the Chinese prostitute’s oiled tits, had done with having her fondle his nutsack and asshole with her tongue while she fingered herself, and was fucking her like a jackhammer, all eroticism cast aside, when the call came. He barely broke rhythm as he fished his cell phone out of his discarded pants pocket and hit ‘call’.

‘JC?’ It was the lieutenant. ‘I need you to drop what you’re doing.’

The hooker, whose anglicized name was apparently ‘Lucy’, began to scream like a fox in heat and slap the bed with her hands, bucking against him in a frenzy. Jesus couldn’t tell if she was really coming or only pretending, but he didn’t care; he couldn’t hear the phone.

‘Baby, shut the hell up,’ he said, slowing his stroke. ‘I’m talking here.’

‘What the name of sweet living fuck are you doing?’ the lieutenant asked. ‘Actually, forget I said anything. I don’t want to know.’

‘Sure.’ Lucy was still writhing, but had clamped her mouth shut.

‘Get over to Belmond Mansion in Russian Hill. Talk to an old man called Carmichael. He asked for you in particular to work a case. Something serious must’ve happened there.’

‘I don’t know him.’

‘I know he could buy himself a fair-sized country if he wanted to, and the chief said not to fuck this up. And to be discrete. I guess they must be golfing buddies or something. Otherwise I’m as much in the dark as you.’

‘I’ll get on it.’

He hung up and tossed the phone aside. Grunting now, he slammed harder and harder into Lucy for another minute, sending her practically epileptic with faked orgasmic delight. Then he whipped his cock out of her and proceeded to masturbate furiously over her chest until he climaxed, spraying glistening, holy sperm across her breasts.

She lay there, panting, as he hauled on his clothes and tossed a couple of hundreds on the sweat-sodden sheets. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘You don’t give me much of a tip? I always do extra for you.’

He shrugged and reached for the door. ‘Tip?’ He nodded at the sticky fluids clinging to her skin. ‘Sell your story to Dan Brown. He’ll make you famous.’

Jesus didn’t hang around to hear her response.

Russian Hill was so rich a city financier wouldn’t have been able to afford the ground rent on one of the birds’ nests in the trees lining its streets. Old houses, old money, old people. It was the most lifeless district in the city if you didn’t count the sprawling Green Valley Cemetary. Even if you did, it would still have been a photo finish. People only seemed to move there after spending their first eighty years making, or inheriting, a fuckton of cash elsewhere, like they needed somewhere quiet to retire to after spending a lifetime raping the rest of the world for all it was worth.

Belmond Mansion was a typical ten-bathroom mausoleum. By the time Jesus had climbed out of his car, a portly butler had opened one of the massive main doors and was holding it. Inside, the place was massive, cold and heavy on the marble. It had alcoves like most homes have family photos or light switches. Jesus felt the urge to flick his cigarette into one of them just to dirty the place up a little, but someone this rich would probably have specially-trained cigarette monkeys or cleaning robots or Father-knows-what and it’d be a futile gesture. He cursed to himself.

‘Mr Carmichael is in his suite on the first floor,’ the butler said, leading him towards the stairs.

‘Big place, this.’

‘Yes. Sir.’

‘Have you worked here long?’

The butler paused and glanced back at Jesus. A look passed across his face, a kind of numb pain Jesus had usually only seen on war veterans and chat show hosts. Too long, it said. Every night I pray for death. ‘Nine years,’ the butler said.

Carmichael’s suite of rooms was part luxury apartment, part intensive care unit. It was furnished like the private rooms of a gentlemen’s club that someone had decided to decorate with a few million dollars’ worth of cutting edge medical monitoring equipment. Jesus couldn’t tell exactly what all the screens and numbers and lights were supposed to be checking, but he didn’t really care. This was Russian Hill, where the very rich came to die very, very slowly, wallowing in the disgust of the rest of the city.

There was a humming noise and Carmichael himself glided out of a bedroom in a wheelchair that looked like it had been designed by Jaguar. He was ancient, skin not so much lined as paragraphed, with about four surviving hairs, a thriving collection of liver spots and eyes like black holes.

‘Jesus Christ,’ the old man said. He had a voice like warm, sticky shit.

‘Mr Carmichael.’

‘So good of the Chief to send you. He and I have known each other for quite some time. We share a common love for watching men dressed in rubber Santa Claus outfits being brutally sodomised with garden vegetables. It’s quite a small social circle.’

Jesus made a mental note to perform the Miracle of the Scrubbed Brain later on and ground his cigarette out on the no-doubt highly valuable rug. ‘Let’s not pretend we’re going to be buddies, Mr Carmichael,’ he said. ‘I’m pretty fucking sure I’m going to hate you. Why am I here?’

‘I thought you told people to love everyone.’

‘I said ‘love thy neighbour’. You’re not my neighbour.’

‘On a policeman’s salary, I’m not surprised.’

‘Why am I here?’

‘Last night I had something stolen from me. The thieves killed two of my guards and somehow managed to penetrate my private vault, taking a particular item from my collection. It is vital that they be apprehended.’

Jesus shrugged and lit another smoke. ‘I’m more homicide than robbery, but I’ll see what I can do.’

‘It is imperative that my property be returned to me. Partly because it has considerable sentimental value to me, and partly–’

‘First,’ Jesus cut in, ‘what did they take? And I don’t see why you wanted me, a homicide detective, to go fetch some stolen property of yours. What’s so damned important?’

‘My penis. I want you to recover my penis.’

‘You’ve got the wrong guy for this kind of kinky shit,’ Jesus said. ‘You want a priest.’

Carmichael waved his one working arm and shook his head. ‘You don’t understand. My penis was in a sealed jar in my vault and has been since it and the rest of my body parted company in ’03. It has considerable sentimental value to me, and the jar itself is an antique.’

‘Finding stolen property’s a job for Robbery, you sick fuck. I’m a homicide detective. I’m not playing your weird little games.’

‘But this is a matter of homicide, Jesus.’

‘Your two dead guards don’t count.’

‘No, but doesn’t the rest of the city?’ The old man rolled the chair forwards until he sat level with Jesus’s navel. ‘I am eighty-four years old, and I have led a life replete with every form of perversion known to humanity. Involving man, woman or beast. I have travelled the world in search of the ultimate filth and degradation. Consequently, my body is home to a host of venereal diseases, infections and parasites; my wang, even more so. While I am now bound to this chair, and my member itself rotted from my body nearly ten years ago, I can assure you that the afflictions I and my genitalia have carried down the years would have killed me many times over were it not for my truly astonishing consumption of various narcotics.

‘These drugs – themselves quite lethal in the quantities in which I abused them - and latterly, these machines,’ he said, waving at the wall of monitors, ‘have protected me from the full horror of what I carry. The worst of it all was, of course, contained, held trapped, within my cock. My penis, you see, is quite incredibly toxic.’

By the Author

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Wishes (short stories)

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blog: namelesshorror.com
twitter: @nameless_horror
home: johnrickards.com

Table of Contents

- Legal Guff
- HARDBOILED JESUS
- Afterword
- HARDBOILED JESUS & THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL
- By The Author