65 Proof

by Jack Kilborn

  Jerome knocks an undetermined time later, and tells me I must give credit for the find to him, or he is sending the pictures to “National Geographic.” I am shocked, and cannot speak. He rants on and on, about how he’ll call the new species Homo jerome, and how it will make him rich and famous beyond his wildest dreams. I begin to cry.

  Myra busts in and takes a picture of this.

  DAY 4 — 12:54 pm

  I am now convinced, after sitting in the bathroom and thinking about it all morning, that Jerome must die. Myra too. I cannot be humiliated in front of the scientific world. Nor can I let the credit for such an important discovery go to someone else. The answer is murder.

  I go to Hertz and rent a large SUV. My plan is simple. I will run them over. Then back over them five or six times to make sure they are dead. I park the car behind a palm tree in front of the hotel, then wait for them to come back from the sight. Thoughts of being featured on The Discovery Channel fuel my thirst for vengeance.

  The second they step out of the cab, they’re pancakes.

  DAY 4 — 8:45 P.M.

  Myra and Jerome finally return to the hotel. My fingers sweat as I turn the ignition key, and the engine roars to life like a prehistoric beast—perhaps an Indricotherium transsouralicum, or a Doedicurus with a slight cold.

  Myra wraps her arms around Jerome and kisses him lovingly, as they both stand innocently on the curb, waiting to be flattened.

  I put the car into gear, and slam the accelerator to the floor. My mind is racing, but I foresee everything in slow motion: the look of shock on Jerome’s face when he sees me coming at him, the scream Myra will barely have a chance to let out, the crushed, bleeding mess of bone and sinew that was once my colleagues.

  I drive past them and keep on going. I cannot bring myself to do it.

  I am not a killer. I am an archaeologist.

  Who cares if I don’t get credit for this find? There will be other excavations. I will find other fossils. There is a big wide world out there, covered in dirt. Somewhere there is bound to be other extraordinary discoveries, and I will be there to make them. I and I alone will go down in history as the man who revolutionized archaeology, even if it takes me the rest of my life. I will bounce back!

  Nah…too much work.

  I turn the car around and level Jerome and Myra in mid-kiss.

  Homo jerome my ass.

  After they were flattened, I hit Reverse and backed up over their bodies. Twice.

  If only Leakey could see me now.

  I have a dirty little secret. Even though my books are compared to Janet Evanovich’s, I’d never read her until after writing Rusty Nail. I was invited into an essay collection about Evanovich’s character, called Perfectly Plum, so I read all the books back-to-back, then contributed this piece.

  By my count, Stephanie Plum has been involved in the loss or destruction of twelve vehicles at the time of this writing, which is 8:55 A.M., Eastern Time. But, in all fairness, I’m not very good at counting. Plus, I listened to two of the books on abridged audio, which is known for cutting incidental bits from novels, such as characterization and plot.

  Since I had nothing better to do today, other than to donate my kidney to that sick guy who paid me fifty thousand dollars, I decided to find out if, in the real world, could Ms. Plum get insured?

  Let’s take a moment to look at the phrase “in the real world.”

  Have you taken a moment? Good. Let’s move on.

  Since Stephanie Plum is a fictitious character, who lives in a fictitious place called Trenton, New Jersey, she isn’t expected to completely conform to all aspects of reality, such as car insurance, or gravity. Since I knew that this task before me would involve a great deal of painstaking research and determination, I immediately went to work. After work, I went to a movie. Then, a nap.

  Discouraged by my lack of progress, I called my neighbor Shelby, who knows a lot of stuff, such as why bottled water costs the same as bottled iced tea, even though it doesn’t have all the stuff in it that tea has. Such as tea. Quote Shelby:

  “Stephanie who?”

  The story would end there, except that I have a lot more to tell.

  My next course of action was to take my phone off the hook, because I kept getting obnoxious messages along the lines of, “Where’s that kidney?” and “You have to get to the hospital immediately!” and “He’s dead.”

  Then I went to the Pleasant Happy Valley Assisted Living Facility (Now with 14% Less Elderly Abuse) to meet with renowned Stephanie Plum Scholar Murray Christmas. That’s his real name, and though it may seem odd, it isn’t nearly as odd as is sister’s name, Groundhog Day. Murray attempted to be cooperative, but being a hundred and three years old, he’d forgotten much of the minutiae, such as his own name. After much patience, and some help from his nurse to understand his drooling wheezes, I got nowhere. So I have no idea why I’m telling you this.

  But when the nurse left, I looked through his personal effects, and got a real nice gold watch.

  This opens up a large topic for serious discussion, which I am merely going to skip.

  After pawning the watch, I pulled out my trusty phone book and began calling insurance companies. After eight calls that went nowhere, I decided I needed a better plan than giggling and making fart sounds when someone answered. So I decided to try talking.

  Here are some of the conversations I had. My name has been changed to protect me.

  CALL NUMBER ONE

  ME: Do you sell car insurance?

  INSURANCE MAN #1: Yes.

  ME: My name is Julie Pear, and I’m not a fictitious character. I played a hand in destroying twelve cars in my last thirteen books. Will you insure me?

  INSURANCE MAN #1: I need more information.

  ME: I like the color red, and dogs.

  INSURANCE MAN #1: I meant about your driving background.

  ME: I also like Rob Schneider movies.

  INSURANCE MAN #1: I’m sorry, we can’t insure you.

  CALL NUMBER TWO

  ME: Hello?

  INSURANCE MAN #2: Can I help you?

  ME: My last four cars have exploded, but it wasn’t my fault. Can you insure me?

  INSURANCE MAN #2: How did these cars explode?

  ME: definition of explosion

  INSURANCE MAN #2: Well, you’re welcome to come in and we can give you a quote.

  ME: How about I give you a quote instead? How about, “This was no boating accident!”

  INSURANCE MAN #2: Excuse me?

  ME: That was from Jaws. I loved that movie. I still get scared taking baths.

  INSURANCE MAN #2: You’re an idiot.

  CALL NUMBER THREE

  INSURANCE MAN #3: Making rude noises like that is very immature. (Pause) I know you’re still there. I can here you giggling.

  CALL NUMBER FOUR

  ME: I want a large thin crust, sausage and extra cheese.

  PIZZA GUY: That will be fourteen ninety five.

  After all of this hard work, I only knew one thing for certain: if Stephanie Plum were a pound of bacon, she’d sure be a clever one. I’d pay a lot of money to see a talking pound of bacon in high heels. A lot of money.

  The next thing on my to do list, after a good scratch, was attend an insurance convention. The convention brought many to tears, due to a chemical leak that gave most attendees second degree burns.

  Quote Harold Barnicky, one of the attendees: “Those little crackers they had, the ones with the spinach and cheese—mmmm-mmmmmmmm!”

  Personally, I preferred the three bean casserole, which was inappropriately named because I counted at least a dozen beans, and counting isn’t my strong suit.

  But none of this effort brought me any closer to the end of this essay.

  Undaunted, superfluous, and proselytical, I decided to try a more direct approach, because even though I’m a writer, I’ve always wanted to direct.

  So I wrote an impassioned, persuasive letter to the largest auto insurer next to
my house. The letter brilliantly detailed the whole sordid tale, and was perhaps the greatest thing I’ve ever written on a cocktail napkin. Without permission, here is the company’s reply:

  We CARE Auto Insurance

  WE INSURE EVERYONE!™

  8866 Haknort Lane

  CHICAGO, IL 60610

  (847) 555 - AUTO

  To: Margaret Apples

  Re: Recent Insurance Inquiry

  Ms. Apples—

  When my father began We Care Auto Insurance 64 years ago, he had a grand dream: To supply auto insurance to everyone who needed it, regardless of their driving record or accident history. He wanted to be the insurance company for the common man—-the senior citizens with senility issues, the veterans missing important limbs, the narcoleptics, the mentally retarded, the unrepentant alcoholics.

  Father believed everyone—-even those with heroin habits and cataracts the size of dinner plates—-deserved to be insured. For more than six decades, We Care Auto Insurance carried on this proud tradition.

  We have insured drivers with organic brain damage of such severity they couldn’t count past four. We have insured drivers with quadriplegia, who drove using a suck-and-blow straw. We have insured the legally blind, the morbidly obese, the legally dead, and Mr. Chimpo the Driving Baboon. We’ve even insured several Kennedys.

  Now, for the first time in our history, We Care Auto Insurance must turn down an application.

  Yours.

  While the law doesn’t require us to provide an explanation for the reason you aren’t being allowed into the We Care Auto Insurance family, I’ve chosen to write this letter to make something perfectly clear: We are not to blame, Ms. Apples. You are.

  While reviewing insurance applications, we compile statistics from several sources, which allows us to come up with monthly rates and deductible figures. When feeding your information into our computer database, our network promptly froze.

  We haven’t been able to reboot it.

  According to our information, you’ve been responsible for destroying more cars than any single driver in North America, and possibly South America as well.

  You’ve destroyed more cars than Carzilla, the giant robotic crane that tours with monster truck shows and eats cars.

  In layperson’s terms; you’ve destroyed a huge fucking butt-load of cars.

  There have been so many, I’m guessing you’ve lost track of them all. Allow me to refresh your memory.

  After your Miata was repossessed (which seems to be the only nice car you’ve ever owned) you played a hand in the explosion of a Jeep owned by a Detective Gepetto of the Trenton Police Department. This, unfortunately, was not the last automobile casualty Detective Gepetto suffered at your hands.

  Your next vehicle, a Jeep, was stolen. You’ll be pleased to know that a VIN search has recently located it, in a scrap yard in Muncie, Indiana. The odometer reading was well over 220,000 miles. Having escaped you, this Jeep led a full and possibly interesting life, without explosions, though your insurance company still had to foot the bill for it nonetheless.

  The blue Nissan truck you acquired shortly thereafter soon went to the big parking lot in the sky after being blown up with a rocket launcher. I must admit, I had to read the claim report three times before the phrase rocket launcher sunk in. I’ve insured several CIA operatives, a movie stuntman named Jimmy Rocket who specialized in pyrotechnics, and a scientist who actually worked for a rocket company (I believe they called him a rocket scientist) but none of them ever lost a vehicle to a rocket, missile, or any comparable exploding projectile.

  Your replacement car, a Honda CRX, was soaked in gasoline and burned. My record search was unable to turn up the name of the perpetrator, but might I suggest it was one of your previous insurance agents? That wouldn’t surprise me.

  Your name came up in several claims made by a company cryptically called Sexy Cuban Man. The claims included an exploded Porsche and a stolen BWM. Not content with that, you somehow also managed to burn down a funeral home. Did you get confused in the dark and mistake it for a car somehow?

  A Honda Civic, registered to you, was torched, and a Honda CRV registered to you was totaled, and then set ablaze. Why you bought another Honda is beyond my mental capacity, but you did, and it was promptly burned, along with another Sexy Cuban Man vehicle, by—and this is in your own words—a giant rabbit. Was Jimmy Stewart anywhere in the vicinity, pray tell? Or did this rabbit happen to have a basket of brightly colored eggs?

  Your next vehicle, a Ford Escape, didn’t escape at all. Again it was burned. Perhaps car insurance isn’t what you need. Perhaps you simply need a car made of asbestos. Or a Sherman Tank.

  Your next victim, a Saturn, was bombed. So was an SUV belonging to the unfortunate Joe Morelli. You also had a hand in the recent explosion of a Ford Escalade.

  Records show you just purchased a Mini Cooper. Such an adorable car. I’ve included it in my nightly prayers.

  While the first few explosions might be written off as coincidence, or even bad luck, somewhere around the tenth destroyed vehicle a little light came on inside my head. I finally understood that no one could be this unlucky. There was only one possible explanation.

  You’re sick in the head.

  The psychiatric community calls your specific mental illness Munchausen’s by Proxy. A parent, usually the mother, purposely makes her children sick so she can bask in the attention and sympathy of others.

  I’ve decided that this is what you’re doing, only with vehicles. Rather than feeding little Molly peanut butter and bleach sandwiches, you’ve been deliberately destroying your own cars. All because you crave attention.

  But your warped scheme to put the spotlight upon yourself isn’t without casualties. I’m not speaking of your helpless automotive victims. I’m speaking of my wonderful company.

  Writing this letter fills me with sadness, Ms. Apples, for you have destroyed my father’s dream. For the first time in our history, we are rejecting an applicant. This comes at a great moral cost, and a great financial cost as well.

  Because of you, we have been forced to change our trademarked slogan, We Insure Everyone! Do you have any idea how much letterhead we have with that slogan on it? A warehouse full. And unless we hire someone (perhaps an immigrant, or a homeless person) to cross out the slogan on each individual sheet of paper, it is now land-fill bound.

  Ditto our business cards. Our refrigerator magnets. Our full color calendars we give to our loyal customers every holiday season. The large and numerous interstate billboards. And our catchy TV commercials, which feature the jingle written by none other than Mr. Paul Williams, naturally called, “We Insure Everyone.”

  What will out new slogan be? I’m not sure. There are several in the running. They include: “We Insure Practically Everyone,” “We Really Want to Insure Everyone,” and “We Insure Everyone But Margaret Apples.” I also like the slogan, “Why Can’t You Be in the Next Car You Blow Up or At the Very Least Get a Job at the Button Factory,” but that has too many words to fit on a business card.

  You have crippled us, Ms. Apples. Crippled us worse than many of the people we insure, including the guy with the prosthetic pelvis and the woman born without arms who must steer with her face.

  I hope you’re happy.

  As a public service to the world, I’m sending copies of this letter to every insurance agent in the United States. Hopefully, this will end your reign of terror.

  If it takes every cent of my money, every single one of my vast resources, I’ll see to it that you never insure another vehicle again. When I get done with you, you won’t be able to put on roller skates without the Feds breathing down your neck.

  Whew. There. I feel a lot better now.

  And though we aren’t able to insure you, Ms. Apples, I do hope you pass our name along to any friends or relatives of yours who are seeking auto insurance.

  Sincerely,

  Milton McGlade

  So there you have it
. Based on the minutes of hard work I’ve devoted to this topic, Stephanie Plum would not be able to get car insurance.

  In conclusion, if I had only ten words to end this essay, I’d have a really hard time thinking of them. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a kidney to sell on eBay.

  How to Tell the Difference

  A fluff piece for Crimespree magazine. I got a big kick out of writing this.

  Mystery is a broad genre, encompassing thrillers, crime novels, whodunnits, capers, historicals, and police procedurals. Two of its most bi-polar brethren are the tea-cozy, as typified by Agatha Christie, and hardboiled noir, best portrayed by Mickey Spillaine.

  But with the constant re-catagorizing and re-inventing of sub-genres, how can you, the reader, tell the difference?

  Fear no more! Here is a definitive set of criteria to determine if that potential bookstore purchase The Winnipeg Watersports Caper is about a gentleman boat thief, or a serial killer with an overactive bladder.

  If the book has an elderly character that solves crimes in her spare time, it is a cozy.

  If the book has an elderly character that gets shot seven times in the face and then raped, it is hardboiled.

  If the protagonist drinks herbal tea, and eats scones, it is a cozy.