Nazi Sharks!

by Jared Roberts

  I nodded my head in disbelief. A crazy story growing crazier by the sentence. His salad had reached its crazy conclusion and the Professor was rising from his seat, leaving me the tab.

  “Oh yeah?” I badgered.

  “I have a plane to catch,” he evaded, either unable or unwilling to answer my questions further. “My expertise is required in the scintillating locale of Shakatitt Beach, as it happens. Watch the documentary for the details and—the evidence!”

  I sat down and gazed at the empty plate of tofu salad left behind and calculated the tip. $3.25.)

  Chapter 21

  Factored Out

  The Sheriff emerged from his SUV like a clam falling from a gull’s mouth. A clam that doesn’t quite trust gravity works until it splats on a rock. The Sheriff didn’t splat, however. With his pipe preceding him like a dousing rod, it drew him straight to the Bubblegum Queens. The paramedics flagging him down deserve some of the credit, of course.

  Walker and Warren arrived not long after. Warren’s hands were nervously kept behind his back as he hurried to overtake the Sheriff, whose interrogation style, he imagined, wouldn’t be entirely unlike quicksand made of limburger.

  Edwina had been watching the lawmen approach, shivering in her blanket. Andrea’s head rested on her shoulder, staring blankly at the ground. This would be sexy, were they not traumatized. Edwina found herself thinking of the many, many times she had purposely overfed Mila’s Tamagotchi to death. Now she regretted it. She’d find a Tamagotchi on eBay and take good care of the digital beast. “I’ll do it for Mila,” she thought.

  The Sheriff took his pipe from his mouth after regarding Edwina for some time, then nodded. He pivoted to meet the approaching FBI agents. He had planned the pivot to be rather dramatic, but he lacked much of the nimbleness necessary.

  “I think he’s going to sneeze,” Walker noted, drawing a handkerchief.

  “Listen,” the Sheriff stated. “Ladies look pretty traumatized. Give ‘em that. Saw something already. Maybe a murder. Maybe an alien abduction. Maybe a shark-attack. Maybe—”

  Hearing the word ‘shark,’ Nikki began shrieking like a banshee with obscenely bad haemorrhoids. Steph and Edwina held her close and rubbed her arms to make her feel safe, in a comforting, womblike place. One of the paramedics, whose name was Ron Altofeel, placed his fingers to his temples and thought, “You’re safe, you’re safe, you’re in your happy place.” As he did so, Nikki ceased shrieking and she began instead sobbing into Steph’s blanket. Steph continued the comforting caresses over Nikki’s back. Ron Altofeel smiled a deep smile of self-satisfaction and returned to the driver’s seat, where he accidentally sat on a stick of beef jerky. “They will never know,” he thought, “it was I.”

  “It’s a fact now, Sheriff,” Warren growled, approaching the creaking old law enforcement machinery with indignation. To the Sheriff, he resembled a horribly mutated squirrel after a storm of peanut butter. “Fortunately for you,” he continued, “we went ahead and called in our expert. He’ll be here soon.”

  The Sheriff paced to the bloody, bubbling shore where one of Sherry’s feet had been regurgitated by a fussier of the Nazi sharks. He regarded the foot stoically, never having been much of a foot man.

  Warren and Walker exchanged glances of puzzlement and frustration, on Warren’s side, and disappointment on Walker’s. Walker was beginning to think this wouldn’t be their breakthrough into more sensible cases. He was tired of getting the weird cases. Also, he hadn’t adequately buttered his toast that morning and felt strongly that he had wasted the slices.

  “Yep,” the Sheriff at last agreed with nothing in particular. “Like I always told you, gentlemen. Couldas and beliefs and what-ifs—they’ll tickle you under the covers when you’re not looking and you wonder where those bumps came from ‘cause you ain’t seen nothing, but you know something got you. But facts. They’ll just come right up to you, right in front of your face, and give you a solid bite!”

  The unambiguous embodiment of cold-blooded facticity, that mass of muscle and teeth that exists for its own sake, exploded like a volcano from the damp sand under which it had disguised itself and compressed its massive jaws around the Sheriff’s brittle upper torso. He snapped like an animal cracker and continued to be crunched to tough, bloody pieces in the shark’s jaws. The sounds of his own body crunching like a Werther’s Original struck the Sheriff’s ears with a peculiarly dreamlike reality, as did the gushing of his own blood into his face. It all seemed less real than anything he’d ever experienced. And yet, it was the most undeniably factual reality before him.

  “Y’see,” he burbled as he drowned in his own blood and shark-spit. QED.

  Before the astonished eyes of the FBI agents, a second shark bashed itself ashore to consume the still-standing legs of the Sheriff like an after-dinner mint. The sound of the brittle, old legs would resound for decades in the traumatized ears of the onlookers and not one of them would ever eat a chocolate-covered locust. Ron Altofeel absently ate the jerky he’d found and wondered, “Did I cause that?”

  Warren drew his pistol and pointed it defensively at the ocean as the first shark reared its Nazi head above the surface. With a sound like a pound of beef striking a dog in the face, the shark coughed and expelled from its gullet a mysterious, black object. The object twirled through the air and landed two inches from Warren’s foot: the Sheriff’s pipe.

  Like an exclamation point in the sand, the pipe ended the moment and the girls began screaming in horror. Paramedics administered sedatives, even Ron Altofeel, with syringes this time.

  “Damn,” Warren muttered.

  “That was both ironic and disturbing,” Walker noted, staring at the pipe.

  “We need that expert. And the army. Correction: the goddamn army.”

  Chapter 22

  The Bubblegum Queens Grieve

  and There Are Amusing Pop Culture References

  “It’s all my fault!” Edwina wailed to the girls as Steph and Nikki packed their bags.

  “No,” Andrea comforted.

  “It is! I might as well have dislocated my jaw, grew a few extra rows of teeth, and chomped her myself!”

  “Come on!” Andrea demurred, forcing Edwina’s head to her shoulder for a cry. “That’s not true and also kinda stupid.”

  They were fully clothed. That’s how depressed they were. Gone were the t-shirts and bikini bottoms. Sexy had been drowned in tears and eaten by the sharks of grief. Alas!

  “It’s true!” Edwina shouted. “I’m just a huge sharkbitch.”

  With that, Edwina did begin sobbing. She always cried when she was called a sharkbitch, but never more than when it felt so true.

  “Yeah, Eddie,” Steph agreed, “don’t say that. Not only does it make no sense, it’s not true. The Cherry Bombs caused the trouble. And they got what was coming to them.”

  “Nobody deserves that…” Edwina replied.

  “You’re right… I’m sorry.”

  “What about Hitler?” Nikki asked, looking up from her panty-folding with sudden intensity.

  “Well, okay,” Steph replied. “Sure.”

  “I read a bit about Hitler,” Andrea stated. “Can’t say I care for the man. Not at all.”

  “Thanks, guys,” Edwina told the Queens, wiping her eyes. “But I still feel like a major bitchstorm.”

  “Even if Mila were with us—the competition’d still be over,” Steph pointed out. “We’re the only team left. And y’know, if the competition had been not getting eaten by sharks, we’d be winners.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Nikki asked.

  “I mean, why aren’t you all packing?” Steph rephrased herself.

  “We’re languishing in grief.”

  Edwina threw herself on the motel bed in which Wilt Chamberlain had once bedded over twenty women. He’d had an hour to kill. She absently fondled one of Mila’s Goonies socks, the face of Chunk staring at her accusingly. Just last night Mila had playfully stuff
ed one of her breasts into the 90% cotton tube. Never again. Edwina had been responsible—Mila followed her ideas everywhere and Edwina did nothing to protect her. Would you have let Sloth get slowly eaten by sharks, Chunk? What about that Asian Goonie? No, I didn’t think so.

  “It won’t do any good packing,” she said at last with a sigh. “The FBI agent guy said he’d have to ask us some questions. Tomorrow.”

  “I’ve watched a lot of X-Files episodes,” Andrea stated, “and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s in cahoots with the sharks.”

  “No, you’re just in shock,” Edwina explained patiently. “Nobody says ‘cahoots’ anymore.”

  Just when depression threatened to drive the girls into an intensely erotic frenzy of lesbianic kissing and caressing, an unexpected knock at the door saved the day.

  Edwina rose suddenly. Had they found her? After all this time? She approached the door and gazed through the peephole. Looking awkward and adorable in his all-red three-piece suit, Reynolds waited with his hands behind his back. He must have something behind there, something, perhaps, to cheer her up. Hopefully it’s not a shark, she thought. Or the complete series box set of Moonlighting.

  Edwina opened the door, struggling not to let her smile of relief show too much at such a time of grief. The other Queens stared at him as though he were a clown with a massive erection.

  “Hi,” Edwina stated cleverly.

  “I—I came to say, first,” he stammered, “that I’m sorry about your teammate. My dad—Kevin Costner—wanted me to tell you, ‘She swam like a seal pup and died like one.’”

  Reynolds drew a lovely bouquet of gas station flowers from behind his back and presented them to Edwina, who passed them to Steph, who passed them to Andrea, who passed them to Erika, who passed them to—who was that woman, anyway? The girls, at any rate, approved and withdrew their undeserved prejudice. For now.

  “I also wanted to say, umm,” he looked nervously to the other girls, but realized quickly his apology would have to be public. “I’m sorry about the other night, Edwina. She was lying and I should’ve—I guess it doesn’t matter now, since she’s really, really dead. But I like you. I like you more than I liked my childhood dog, Waffles. He and I would do everything together. He saved me from a burning building. We built a treehouse, just the two of us. Even without thumbs, Waffles helped. One day a bus full of German tourists turned him to liverwurst.”

  “I know,” Edwina said from behind her mask of intense blushing. “About the lying, I mean. Not waffles. That was depressing.”

  “I’d like to take you out, take your mind off sad things, put them on happy things—like me.”

  “I don’t know…”

  Somehow it didn’t seem right. One could even say it felt wrong. Mila had just been eaten. Waffles was dead. She hadn’t really come out of shock. And the girls—they depended on her like kittens on a particularly milky teat.

  “You should go, Eddie,” Nikki said. “It’d do you good.”

  “You’d just be moping in here with us otherwise,” Steph said.

  “Waffles would want you to do it, Eddie,” Andrea pointed out.

  “Alright, you’re right,” Edwina relented after some hesitation. “Let’s go, Ryan.”

  Edwina winked at him and he winked back a stiff, belabored wink, “Alright, Deezen. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 23

  Freedom

  To a dwarf, the horizon would be obscured by the enormous, weathered mountains that thrust into the air over a curvaceous, smooth plain. No dwarf being present, we can see they’re the tits of the two murdered Pussy Willows, sticking up like wild cacti, only much more inviting to the touch.

  “Not a shark,” the medical examiner explained to Warren and Walker. “That’s for sure.”

  The examiner cringed after saying ‘That’s for sure,’ awaiting the cantankerous discourse on the necessity of sticking to the facts, the impossibility of certainty, and some aggressively incomprehensible similes. But nothing happened. Nothing at all. In fact, other human beings were nodding. They…they agreed!

  “I didn’t think it was a shark,” Warren said. “I suspect it’s the serial killer. There are signs of his MO, right?”

  The examiner felt a warmth deep in his torso, a glow that overtook him and yet he had no idea what to do with it. They were suspecting things. Doing something to signs—was that? Yes, it was. Interpreting! Yes! Yes, there are signs of an MO! But—can he say that? What would happen?

  “Oh yeah,” he said cautiously, “I’d say there’re signs. Sure. Lots of ‘em.”

  “Well?” Warren pressed.

  “Yeah, signs.”

  Warren looked at Walker, who was staring at his own fist. He exchanged a helpless glance with Warren, then got back to business.

  “Did you find anything interesting?” Warren urged, coaxed even. “Feel free. Please. The Sheriff is coming out some shark’s ass right about now.”

  “Yeah!” the examiner blurted, a little ashamed of his enthusiasm. “Yeah! You’re right. I’m free! Free! To perform deductions, inductive reasoning—” seized with the moment, the examiner grabbed Warren by the shoulders “—syllogisms; to follow intuition, assumptions, even—oh my god, even theories! Free!”

  The examiner fell back from Walker, placing his hand on one of the cold, dead tits for support. He caught his breath, composed himself before the stunned FBI agents, and took control. “Well, then, okay, besides the signs—y’know, The Signs—I did find this tag.”

  The examiner held up a minute fragment of non-descript cloth with a piece of tweezers. Warren strained to make out anything of value on the tiny patch of fabric, then shrugged, unable to even verify it was a ‘tag.’ Something had once been written on it, sure.

  “This, good sir,” the examiner explained, “is the tag from a man’s underwear band. Fraying, old, nasty underwear—underwear that’s been worn and washed for years, despite being purchased from the bargain bin at a K-Mart.”

  “K-Mart?” Walker inquired.

  “Yes, no doubt. Now, the bimbo put up a fight—I’d say she put a lot of work into that body and she wasn’t gonna let it go easy. In the struggle, scritch! Off comes part of the killer’s underwear. He probably sustained a wedgie, very mild—I’m sure he had no trouble walking, even running away. In fact, if this underwear was as nasty and frayed as I suspect, it may also have been so loose and hole-ridden that it scarcely wedged at all, for practical purposes. May have even been a vaguely pleasurable wedging. At any rate, she got the tag off and he didn’t notice. If he did, he’d think—much as you did—that it was a meaningless fragment. It looks meaningless. But I took the liberty of scrutinizing the fibres individually and performed a statistical analysis on the likelihood of the letters of the alphabet matching each pattern of inking. It so happens, it’s highly likely that the tag once read, before all the wearing and relatively infrequent washing over the years, ‘Kevin Costner.’”

  “Costner?” Warren asked, wondering what quackery he’d just permitted. “The film star?”

  “Well, probably not,” the examiner said, at last putting the dramatically tweezed fragment back into an evidence bag—and not his turkey sandwich bag, as he’d done yesterday. “There’s actually a Kevin Costner locally. A Mexican chap. He was running the swim competition. As though he invited swarms of busty, young women with taut bodies—eager to get wet—to invade Shakatitt Beach. Nothing suspicious about that, right?”

  “Costner, eh?” Walker chimed in. “His performance in The Mothman Prophecies brought me immense joy.”

  “That was Richard Gere,” Warren argued. “Great film, though.”

  “Really? Then what was Costner in?”

  “You’re thinking of Dragonfly.”

  “Oh…” Walker realized, reluctantly, his partner was quite correct. “I didn’t care for Dragonfly. So it was Gere in Mr. Brooks?”

  “No, no, that was Costner. Playing a serial killer, as it happens. Indeed, maybe we should pay th
is Mexikevin Costner a little visit. If he offers coffee, Walker, we accept. But this visit will not be a social visit. It’ll be an investigative one.”

  Chapter 24

  Foul Balls

  “I’m glad I came,” Edwina told Reynolds. “For a few moments, I forgot a shark ate my best friend today.”

  She truly had. Yet, the conviction Mila’s death had brought her had never left her mind. Not a legal conviction, but an ethical one. She had spent so much of her life bouncing from one zany idea to another, never staying with any one fad, phase, or doomsday cult for long. “Look how much it did for Ben Franklin?” she once posed. Her next big idea had been to sail around the world naked. How could they do that now? No-one could use an astrolabe like Mila. Besides, wasn’t it Edwina’s crazy idea that had gotten Mila killed? Maybe she should stay put for a change. Sure, somewhere Ben Franklin was cackling. Let him. He’s dead anyway.

  “I’m glad you came, too,” Reynolds said, gripping her hand a little more tightly as they walked through the gently lapping surf on the moonlit beach. No-one else was there except a crab that had made a Polish boy cry earlier. The sea and the moon was all for them and it was beautiful—it was romance. “I feel I have a lot to make up for. Maybe you’ll let me keep making it up to you?”

  “Sure,” Edwina said with a blushing smile. “I’d like that. But, y’know, it doesn’t help that we’re strolling along the exact same stretch of beach where—”

  “You’re a very special girl, Deezen,” Reynolds announced suddenly, turning to meet her gaze. He’d never looked more Hispanic, nor less sane.