The Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade

by Aimee Bender

  Angry and bleeding, but not down for the count, Skinny charged me and, though he wasn’t the stronger of the two, I was still a teddy bear. I realized now would be the time to make use of some of the Chinese fighting arts that my chauffeur Chang was training me in, fighting arts used by the real Jimmy Plush to put thugs like these in their places. The Angry Hamster Kick was perfected by vicious Shaolin dwarves for just these occasions. Sure enough, one good quick Hamster Kick used Valentine’s momentum and size to cave his ribs in on themselves.

  Since the two thugs would be more eager to get to a hospital than finish me off, I untied Mrs. Benzedrine and brought her out to the limo for delivery to her husband, who had tried to open a competing Chinese restaurant across the street from Vic Halperin’s gaudy Chinese pleasure palace, J.L Wong’s. Vic Halperin had never liked competition and David Benzedrine’s mother was actually Chinese. As well as hating competition, Halperin hated the Chinese since his greatest desire in life was to be one of them. I pitied Benzedrine, since inheriting this body left me on Halperin’s bad side from day one, and like him there was nothing I could do about what body I inhabited. Unlike him, I owned a gun and was training in the Chinese fighting arts. For a race of wisecracking chauffeurs and crooked restaurateurs, those Chinese sure know their fighting arts.

  I proudly brought Mrs. Benzedrine to the door and rang the bell. Nothing. Knocked. Nothing. Something stank. I worked the knob and it turned out the door was open.

  “I’ll go in first, Mrs. Benzedrine. I think something’s going on.”

  My chauffeur rolled down his window, perfect to the beat. It was uncanny how he did that all the time.

  “Should Chang accompany most honored Mr. Plush inside?”

  “Stay out here and wait.”

  “As you wish. But Chang is not sure…”

  “Wait outside and be ready if I don’t come out.”

  “Yes, Mr. Plush.” Chang mumbled what must have been something rude in Chinese. I’ll have to learn to speak slanty someday and take him by surprise. Someday.

  Chang was right. Chang has an awful habit of being right. I opened the door, walked into the sitting room, and a walrus shot me in the chest. It was probably just a furry dressed as a walrus, but I still didn’t expect to be shot in the chest by anything resembling a walrus. A squid, also definitely a furry, walked into the sitting room with a hand drill. Luckily, I black out from pain easily and am something of a fainter. Otherwise, I would have felt something nobody should ever feel.

  When my eyes opened, I was disappointed but not surprised that the first thing I saw was the long, arrogant, wrinkly face of Vic Halperin, “the Pale Peril” as he’s often called. The squinty eyes, the long, skinny fake moustache, the awful goatee, the cheap fez on his head. Halperin was no easier to look at than he was to talk to. He ran his press-on nails over what I now understood to be a gaping hole in my stomach, proudly exploring its contours. I’m grateful that teddy bears don’t bleed or vomit, because otherwise I’d be doing plenty of both things. He backed off, so I could look at the two Furries who knocked me out cold. And appreciate that Chang and the Benzedrines were all tied up beside me.

  Chang’s head was hanging.

  “Chang apologizes to Honored Mr. Plush. There is no counter for squid-style martial arts.”

  “That’s all right, Chang,” I said, mortified that all my stuffing was hanging out, “the cotton comes out of your next check.”

  Halperin cleared his throat and as expected, began a lengthy reprimand in his deep voice that was as far from being Chinese as he was, maybe more because it didn’t have a cheap kimono and a fez to hide behind.

  “Jimmy Plush, we meet again, detective, but this time, the advantage is of course my own. I’m sure that you were finally able to put Skinny Valentine and Johnny Hideous in the hospital, but as you can see, I have taken on a higher class of thug, men who can’t be outwitted by a two-bit stuffed bear who likes to stick his nose in the wrong honey pots.”

  It took a lot of willpower not to laugh. I restrained myself not out of any kind of fear of Halperin, but out of the knowledge that laughing would make more of my stuffing start to fall out.

  “How do you know it was me?”

  “Mr. Plush, you have a very familiar face.”

  “Common too. You ever been to F.A.O. Schwartz?”

  Halperin liked to banter, but was always quick to get steamed. I wanted him to be off balance and give me some kind of advantage. It didn’t work.

  “That’s very funny, Mr. Plush, but the fact is, something must be done about you.”

  “Give him to me,” the walrus furry cooed. “He’s so beautiful, so soft. I could have so much fun with him…”

  The squid crossed his arms.

  “I don’t think he’s so special.” There was a hint of jealousy in his voice, but I didn’t want to think about it.

  “We could both have him, and it would be a delight.”

  “I suppose we could. He is beautiful.”

  “His fur has a lovely texture…”

  Now I was starting to get afraid. Halperin was the kind of scum that would hand me over to his gunsels to have god-knows-what done to me. He also appreciated these guys more than he did Hideous and Valentine, even though they’d only been in his service a little bit. I hoped I could either get out of here before they did or lose enough stuffing to die so I wouldn’t have to experience their plush flippers and tentacles on me.

  “You see, Mr. Plush, what happens when you interfere with me? I’m sure you don’t want Tusky and Bernstein to have their way with you, do you?”

  “I must confess I would not.” I tried to say it with my tough façade intact. I’m pretty sure I didn’t pull it off quite right.

  “So stay out of my way, or you’ll be left to serve as a kind of toy which you were not intended to be.”

  “All right. I’ll lay off your operation.”

  Halperin applauded softly.

  “Excellent, Mr. Plush. Tusky, Bernstein, untie Plush and my countryman.”

  The walrus and squid complied.

  “I hope to see you later,” the walrus whispered in my ear. I hoped I never would.

  I eased into my modified limo, feeling like I’d been hit by a truck full of lightning being driven by my girl and the man she was making time with.

  “Chang,” I said to my chauffeur, “that was demoralizing.”

  “I cannot apologize enough, most honored Mr. Plush.”

  “Funny you say that, Chang. That was just enough. Next time we go against Halperin, I hope there won’t be any squids involved,” I choked a little, “or walruses. God, I hope there aren’t any walruses.”

  “The squid and walrus’ success means there will be more of them. Maybe the time has come that for once you keep your word and leave Halperin alone.”

  I didn’t like hearing that, especially coming from a Chinaman who was working for me. Chang had a tendency to say the wrong thing, particularly when it was the right thing. One of the few joys in my life of teddy bear detective inadequacy was messing with Halperin, especially since I had just gotten an innocent man and his wife killed for opening a Chinese restaurant on the wrong side of town. On the other hand, next time we squared off, I’d have to face Halperin’s Furries. I didn’t like losing and I didn’t like admitting that I couldn’t win. Chang had done something impressive: found a spot where I was even more vulnerable.

  “It’s your fault I got in this mess, Chang. Don’t tell me whose cage I can rattle and whose I can’t! This little bear’s got teeth, Chang and don’t you forget it.”

  The argument ended abruptly when we both noticed the same thing: there were more furry girls on the streets. Usually they were rare and hard to pick up, but now there were squirrel girls and skunk girls and kitty cat girls and even killer whale girls peddling their wares everywhere. First Halperin employs Furries, now every pimp in the city must be doing it. Something didn’t add up.

  “You remember there being so ma
ny Furries in this town, Chang?”

  “I can honestly say, Mr. Plush, that I do not. I have never seen two prostitutes dressed as turtles arguing over which lamppost to lean against in my life.”

  “Smells like Halperin.”

  Chang shot down my theory immediately.

  “Mr. Halperin has been running the flesh trade in this city for years. Why would he just now put more furry girls on the streets, most honored Mr. Plush?”

  “You’ve got a point Chang. Let’s go to Jean’s. There’s nobody else I know who can patch me up and tell me about Furries in this town.”

  “A most wise suggestion, most honored Mr. Plush.”

  We drove to Jean’s. She answered the door in her evening clothes, somehow having figured I’d come by. Her evening clothes happen to be a tight, head-to-toe fox suit. Somehow she pulls it off. I never bought into that Indian shamanic totem stuff, but that suit makes me wonder from time to time.

  Being a teddy bear kind of blunts the impact of a near-fatal wounding. Most guys show up with their guts hanging out, their girlfriend faints. Me? It’s always the same:

  “What have you done this time? Let me get my sewing box…”

  “Your compassion moves me to tears.”

  “Your sarcasm bores me to tears. Come in and sit down on the bed.”

  So I did and she began to sew. As you can imagine, it hurt like hell, but not so bad as a gutshot does.

  “You should really stop messing with Halperin.”

  And not as bad as a lecture either.

  “The man’s a crook and a bully. He deserves the trouble I give him.”

  Jean rubbed her nose against my forehead.

  “But do you deserve the trouble he gives you, baby?”

  Maybe if it wasn’t for the fact that Halperin was Jean’s employer I wouldn’t be so scornful of him. Then again, it was money I owed him that made me sell my body to Jimmy Plush. It was between how he helped me end up as a teddy bear, how he was party to Jean leading her secret life of waitressing and crime and how he helped her make a fool out of me on account of it. I was no fool, but Halperin helped her think she could make a fool out of me and that was enough to make me hate him all over again for who he was. I might have actually started to like this girl if I could trust her—and I wanted to like her so much.

  “No matter what happens to me, Vic Halperin gets no quarter.”

  “You shouldn’t talk like that, Jimmy. Halperin’s a big, dangerous man in this town!”

  “And I’m a small, dangerous bear, Jean! I’m not gonna be scared of anybody, you hear me?”

  Sure I meant it, sure the bravado was real, but it was still a bit much. Being three feet tall and having no penis makes a man want to overcompensate. Dripping cotton from a gaping chest wound makes a man angry. In the future I would have to remind myself that my tough guy private dick outburst count was getting to be a bit high.

  “I’ve got to go.”

  I mustered the best sad teddy face I could. I was a pretty sad teddy.

  “You sure?”

  I was hoping this might go where it usually went when I was getting patched up. I lack equipment, but Jean rubs me against all the right places and it feels nice. I could use a rub against all those places, because believe me, they could be oh so right and my day had gone oh so wrong.

  “I’ve got things to do.”

  I knew what she meant. Waiting tables to help Halperin run numbers, unloading crates of fake name brand cereal, plucking balls of opium so that the poor sods at the den hidden behind J.L Wong’s were shortchanged. Things to do. Bad things to do. I was gonna find out what and break my word to Halperin as I always did, possibly getting the ever-loving shit beaten out of me like I usually did. Didn’t matter. I was tired of this.

  “All right. Dinner Friday?”

  “Maybe. I might be busy.”

  “Suit yourself. No fuzz off my balls. Thanks for the patch job.”

  “Any time.”

  “Yeah sure, any time.”

  I sulked my way out to the car and sat down.

  “Chang…”

  “Conceal the car, wait for Jean and follow her?”

  “Yes, Chang. Do we do this that often?”

  Chang didn’t answer. He knew he was already on pretty thin ice thanks to the incident with Tusky and Bernstein. We waited and a car picked her up. It drove around in circles for a while to avoid a tail, not knowing Chang’s Chinese Shadow Driving skills would be more than enough to evade them. Shadow Driving was a recent addition to the Chinese Fighting Arts, but not an altogether unwelcome one. The car stopped and let her out. I didn’t like what I saw.

  Jean immediately began a brutal slap fight with a fat girl dressed like a squirrel for the use of her lamppost. In this city, a girl doesn’t use a lamppost for reading light.

  “So there you go, Chang,” I boasted. “Definitive proof.”

  “That your girlfriend is a prostitute?”

  “I’m trying to objectively appraise the situation, Chang. Thinking about that too much will inhibit me. Jean works for Halperin, though. The Furries are on the street, one furry works for Halperin, therefore the Furries are Halperin’s.”

  “I am still not convinced.”

  “Is there anybody else who might know something then, Chang?”

  His voice got more solemn than usual.

  “Yes, most honored Mr. Plush, but he hates you.”

  “Doesn’t everybody?” I didn’t like the notion, but its veracity could hardly be disputed.

  “Okay, Mr. Plush. Just don’t expect him to cooperate much. Also, I must warn you, Mittens O’ Hara is... unusual.”

  “Nothing’s going to surprise me in this town.”

  Except that is for an office dominated by a large typewriter. And a fat tiger cat whose porkpie hat rested uncomfortably atop its fat head. There was a slip of paper that read “press” on it. The cat sat down on various keys to type out something in enormous letters. It was a surprise, I’ve gotta say. I had thought Halperin was the last animal left in this town. As soon as it spotted me, it hissed.

  “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 start 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.

  “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. React
ing 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 laid 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.”