Pillbottle Legacy by Jon Wesick

Pillbottle Legacy by Jon Wesick

I scrolled through the Profit and Loss from Business menu to enter deductions. It was April 14 and a warm spell had melted last week’s blizzard into a muddy quagmire that would dissuade any tech billionaire from launching a cyber-truck blitzkrieg. As usual, I’d left my income taxes until the last minute. Schedule C asked for my Hyundai’s yearly mileage so I searched the pile of papers until I found a smudged oil-change receipt from 2011. I trudged down the stairs to the parking lot to get my current odometer reading.

“One-hundred-ninety-seven thousand five hundred thirty-three miles,” I repeated as I climbed the stairs because I’d forgotten to bring a pen. “One-hundred-ninety-seven thousand five hundred thirty-three.”

When I saw the woman in my office, I forgot about standard mileage rates, depreciation, and cost accounting. She wore a police uniform and was looking at the wreckage of Morris Pillbottle Investigations’ receipts spilling out of the file cabinet. Her biceps were big as watermelons, her eyes were blueberries floating on cups of mashed potatoes, and her hair was the color of squash, the yellow kind not that green stuff.

“Daddy!” She crushed me in a bear hug and lifted me off the ground. “My name is Nebula and I’m your daughter.”

& & &

“Looks like I’m getting better.” I displayed the target with a pattern of bullet holes, wide as a pizza that could feed twelve, to my lover.  

Her name was Starry, Starry de Cisis, and our passion was hot as Bush’s rhetoric about Saddam.

“Morris, I need to tell you something.” Starry drew her Colt Delta Elite, fired nine rounds in a third of a second, swapped mags, and fired another eight. All seventeen bullet holes could fit in an amoeba’s belly button. “The State Department made me cultural attaché in Kuwait. I leave in three days.”

“Don’t go. My job at Blockbuster pays enough to support both of us and mortgage rates have never been lower. You can be a stay-at-home mom and help end to America’s plummeting birth rate.”

“It’s not about the money. It’s about the mission. If I don’t tell Kuwaitis about The Punisher, Collateral, Sniper 3, and Chronicles of Riddick, who will?” She looked at her watch. “I have two hours until Brazilian jujutsu class. Take me back to your place and give me thirty seconds to remember you.”

& & &

“You just get bailed out?” Lieutenant Filefolder asked.

“Waiting for my long-lost daughter.” I scratched the seat of my pants gone soggy from sitting on the police station’s steps. “Officer Nebula de Cisis. We’re having lunch.”

“Yeah, a father will do anything to protect his little girl.” Filefolder held his fedora over his heart. “If you ever need to waterboard her ex-boyfriend or poison her sexist boss with radioactive polonium, the department’s got your back. Enjoy your lunch.” Filefolder returned to his office to continue the manhunt for the grilled-cheese bandit.

Speaking of lunch, Nebula should have been here by now. My phone rang.

“Morris Pillbottle, we have your daughter,” an electronically disguised speaker said.

“Daddy, he has a gun!” Nebula’s voice cut off as if someone stuffed a cauliflower in her mouth.

“If you want to see your little girl again, you need to deliver a summons to Aguacate Amarillo, better known as El Guaco,” the kidnapper said.

“You can’t be serious,” I replied. “He’s the most dangerous smuggler in the Americas.”

“I’m serious as a heart attack.”

“That’s a clichéd metaphor. How about something more original?”

“It’s not a metaphor. It’s a simile because it uses like or as. A metaphor would be something like, ‘My love is a red, red rose.’”

“There you go with the clichés again. This conversation isn’t going any further until you give me something original.”

“Okay, I’m serious as psoriasis.”

“That’s not very serious.”

“It is if you suffer from it. Tick tock, Pillbottle. You have seventy-two hours.”

& & &

“Sign here.” The delivery man handed me an envelope.

I slit it open and examined the document inside. El Guaco’s ex-wife was suing him for back dog support of Roxy, the pit bull. I returned to my desk and rested my size-twelve oxfords next to the rolodex to consider my options.

El Guaco had made his fortune when tariffs tripled the price of avocados, sending the cost out of reach. Entrepreneurs sprung up to feed America’s guacamole addiction, an addiction no amount of watery celery-and-tomatillo puree could satisfy, by sailing the oily fruit across the Gulf of America in military-surplus U-boats. Of all the smugglers, El Guaco was the most ruthless, clawing his way to the top of the food chain with depth charges, assassinations, and bribery. Nevertheless, prosecutors risked their lives to build a case against him. After a plea deal and promise to never do it again, El Guaco surrendered to authorities. They sentenced him to five years in a private prison, built to his specifications. The facility included hot tubs, water beds, tennis courts, wet bar, and a professional kitchen that served wagyu beef, Ibérico ham, and Long Island duck. El Guaco got to choose his guards so he selected only his most loyal sicarios. There was no way in or out without El Guaco’s permission but he had one weakness, improv comedy.

I needed to form an improv troupe fast. Since this was a suicide mission, I didn’t want to enlist friends or even strangers. No, I needed lowlifes, whose deaths would benefit society, and I knew just who. Gilbert Giza was one quarter of a trio of criminals I’d tangled with in the broccoli caper. Choosing them meant I’d have to put up with a pompous ringleader, sniveling sycophant, and amnesiac bully but at least they were doomed.

“Giza, this is Morris Pillbottle. I got a tip on an eighteen-carat-gold kohlrabi the Knights Templar once paid in tribute to the Duke of Anchovy. Pack your steel-toed huaraches and call the fat man. We’re going to Mexicali.”

& & &

“Bienvenidos.” The guard returned our invitation to the fat man driving our van.

“Bien dicho señor. I admire a man who keeps his finger off the trigger when intimidating guests.” The fat man, Sydney Greengrocer, placed the invitation in his lapel pocket and put the van in gear.

Bighorn sheep with TEC-9s, mule deer with MAC-10s, and coyotes with 1911s glared as we drove toward the main house. We passed a soccer stadium, wave pool, working guillotine, and a pony before a chupacabra in mirrored sunglasses directed us to our parking spot. Guards, carrying 12-gauge shotguns and Ruger Mini-14s, escorted us up a marble staircase and into a ballroom complete with lights, sound system, and disco ball. Velvet paintings of Elvis, Pancho Villa, and dogs playing poker lined the walls giving the room an air of gas-station opulence.

“’We can’t afford a giant, talking aardvark,’ the director told me. The damn philistine didn’t get the point. The giant, talking aardvark symbolizes humanity’s struggle against an uncaring universe. I told Iñáritu that I’d take my movie elsewhere,” a member of the previous improv group said as they left the stage.

El Guaco sat behind a mug of tequila in the front row. At first glance, I would have confused him with any narco on a miniseries. His toothbrush mustache was dark as mole oaxaqueño, his chin was shaped like a chicken thigh, and his skin was the color of a flour tortilla. El Guaco marked a form with a pencil before motioning at us with a cigar as big as a giraffe’s leg.

“Can I get a suggestion of an object from the audience?” I asked.

“Pistola,” A guard waving an AR-15 said.

“Cocaína.”

“Su entierro.”

“I heard snowshoes.” Since our troupe had little practice, I stomped around in the sketch we’d rehearsed. “Hey, these snowshoes look like tennis rackets.” I took one off and volleyed an imaginary ball back and forth with Giza while the fat man played referee.

“Out of bounds!” the fat man yelled.

“It was in!” I pretended to throw my racket. “Your mother wears pickled onions.”

“Well said, sir. I admire a man who attempts a metaphor despite an IQ lower than the Kola well.”

“It was a simile.”

“No, a simile uses like or as. Now get back in the game. The score is four-love.”

“Love!” My eyes settled on Giza and we began to tango, not the ballroom version but the Argentine one with little heel kicks.

“Hey, can polar bears play, too?” Waldo burst onto the stage.

“A bear!” The fat man, Giza, and I ran leaving Waldo to deliver his monologue.

“Why must I suffer from hatred when all I want is to be accepted? Sure, I’m a relentless, man-eating carnivore who will stop at nothing for a meal of fresh meat but judging an animal by the length of their fangs or six-inch claws is wrong. Can’t we all get along?”

We returned to the stage and enveloped Waldo in a group hug. As I disentangled myself from the fat man’s sagging triceps, my mukluks caught in my throat. Wearing a silk gown, Starry de Cisis sat by a man with a hole in his cheek. I couldn’t let on that I knew her so I continued with the show. After a few minutes, we took a break and I caught up with her by the sneeze guard.

“Starry, this is no place for a cultural attaché. These men are dangerous.” I dug guacamole out of a molcajete with a corn chip and then ate another. “Get out while you can.”

She went back to her table without acknowledging me. El Guaco began to look impatient, the last thing anyone wants. I returned to the stage and set up four chairs.

“Welcome back, everyone. I understand we have a master improv player in the audience.” I pointed at El Guaco. “Please welcome Aguacate Amarillo to the stage!”

El Guaco shook his head while the crowd chanted, “Guaco! Guaco! Guaco!” Then blushing, he jogged to the stage while his sicarios cheered.

“We’re going to play a game of Hitchhiker. Each of us will display an emotion. Sydney will be angry, El Guaco happy, I’ll be paranoid, and Giza sad. We’ll start with Sydney driving alone. When he picks up a hitchhiker, everyone in the car will display that character’s emotion. After he picks up the last hitchhiker, we’ll leave in reverse order.”

The fat man took the driver’s seat and scowled. 

“Get off the sidewalk! Damn kids. And that goes for dogs, too! I’m late to pick up my fare and I despise a man who can’t show up on time. In this case, that means me. Here’s my passenger.” He pretended to pull over.

El Guaco entered laughing.

“Sorry, I’m late,” the fat man said. “On the plus side, I ran over eleven pedestrians and beat my old record.”

“Congratulations! I remember my eleventh murder. Let’s celebrate with tacos.” El Guaco pretended to hand some over.

The fat man smacked his lips but didn’t turn his head sideways. Dripping salsa in his lap would have also added to the realism. He pulled over for me.

“Drive.” I sat in back and took out an imaginary device. “Scanning for bugs. We’re clear.”

“Who’s after you?” the fat man asked.

“Who isn’t? FBI, CIA, KGB, DEI, EPA, USDA. It’s an alphabet soup of covert surveillance, my friend.”

“Let them show themselves and I’ll ask them to say hello to my little friend.” El Guaco patted the bulge under his linen suit.

“I had a friend once.” I looked under my seat. “Until the aliens took him.”

The fat man pulled over and Giza got in sobbing.

“My dog died.”

“How old was he?” I asked.

“Eighty-seven.”

“Taken too soon. What did he die of?”

“His parachute failed. Otto’s ears always perked up whenever watching extreme sports so I gave him a surprise for his birthday. I even wired the pressure sensor that was supposed to open his parachute. He was so happy when I tossed him off the Sears Tower and then…”

“If I wasn’t so sad, I’d introduce the parachute maker to my little friend.” El Guaco patted the bulge.

“KGB took my friend away,” I sobbed.

“I thought it was aliens.”

“KGB are aliens.”

“The only cure is the hair of the dog.” Giza pointed. “There’s a pet store. Let me out.”

Back to paranoid, I continued with, “See that flying saucer with a hammer and sickle? They’re on our tail. Take this while I distract them.” I handed El Guaco the summons. “Make sure it gets to Art Bell.” I bailed out of the imaginary car.

“Pretty good, huh?” El Guaco mimed eating. “You know what makes me even happier than tacos? Buying a new pony after a murder. Let me out at this pet store.” El Guaco left an angry fat man alone.

“Damn it. He didn’t leave me a tip.”

“Thank you everybody.” We took a bow. “We are the Sideways Lowlife Regiment and you can see us on Thursday at The Rusty Opossum in Tehachapi.”  

I hurried toward the exit believing the others would follow. The fat man grabbed my elbow.

“There’s a little matter of the gold.”

“Of course.”  The fat man had the van’s keys so I resigned myself to playing this suicidal game out. “It’s upstairs in his bedroom.”

“Puta madre!” El Guaco slammed his fist on the table, knocking over his tequila. He must have read the summons.

In half the beat of a hummingbird’s wing, we were looking down the barrels of a dozen M16s.

“I think we have a more pressing problem,” I said.

& & &

“Gentlemen, don’t leave. The entertainment is just beginning.” El Guaco approached the stage. “Surely, you have played No P. You’ll play a scene and the first person to use the forbidden letter gets eliminated, and I do mean eliminated.” El Guaco drew a Glock 17 from his shoulder holster. “Tonight, we’ll use W. To make it more interesting, the last one remaining gets to live.” He turned to the crowd. “Can I have a suggestion for a location?”

“The Hindenburg!”

Giza gulped patchouli oil from his hip flask to settle his nerves. Waldo simply stared. It was hard to tell if or what he was thinking after that piano had landed on his head.  The fat man and I stepped forward.

“Great flight, huh?” I said.

“Do I have time for lunch before it lands?”

“I don’t have the information about the time you and I arrive.” I pretended to look at a tiny clock attached to my arm. “Maybe an hour after one.”

“Smartly said, sir. I admire a man that tries to trick me into stating the number before three.” The fat man dabbed his forehead with his sleeve. “Hot in here,”

“If you think it’s hot now, hang on until the hydrogen catches fire.” My mouth dropped open as I realized I’d failed.

El Guaco lifted his pistol.

“Hold on!” Starry stepped forward. “I have a more amusing penalty. Make the losers eat Rectum Inferno Hot Sauce.” 

“Bring the table!” El Guaco commanded.

Sicarios set up a table and two chairs. One added a basket of tortilla chips while another set out a handful of hot sauces.

El Guaco sat across from the me, placed his pistol on the table, and pointed to the hot sauces. “How are you with spicy food?”

“Rye whiskey deadened all the nerves in my tongue.”

“We’ll start with a mild Habanero at half a million Scoville units.” El Guaco pointed his pistol at the mildest sauce. “Please.”

I drizzled an orange sauce onto a tortilla chip and coughed from the fumes. Habaneros lit up my mouth like a road flare on a deserted highway but the heat faded leaving an aftertaste of broken glass and burnt rubber. “Not bad.”

“How do you earn a living from improv?” El Guaco asked.

“I didn’t spend eleven years at Second City to sully my art for the sticky fingers of commerce. It’s a side gig.”

“Next is ghost pepper at one-million Scoville units.”

My tongue caught fire like an abandoned skating rink with a ten-million-dollar insurance policy.

“What is your day job?”

“I dispense justice when the cops can’t.”

“We’ll skip the scorpion pepper and Carolina reaper and go straight to pepper X at two-and-a-half-million Scoville units.” El Guaco gestured toward the bottle.

More flames, more tears.

“A vigilante wouldn’t stoop to process serving so you must be a private detective. What motivated you?”

“My father is celebrity acid head Timoth Pillbottle. After radicals busted him out of San Quentin, we fled to his compound in Bali where the perfume of hashish filled the air and topless women, their sleek bodies brown from the sun, played beach volleyball all afternoon.” A stalactite of snot oozed from my nostril but I couldn’t find a tissue. ”On Sundays, we drove the Jaguar to the waterfront to buy Barramundi and prawns as big as your fist for our servants to cook. My only escape was an old Firesign Theater record I played on the gramophone. I spent hours listening to Nick Danger and dreamed of becoming a private eye on the mean streets of Sommerville, Massachusetts to escape my father’s nitrous influence. When Indonesia extradited him, I grabbed my opportunity.”

“Pure capsaicin. Sixteen-million Scoville units.” El Guaco pointed at the next bottle.

I forced myself to swallow the tortilla chip from hell. Like Dante it descended to the ninth circle of my intestines. I held my stomach but my guts could not escape eternal damnation.

“Why did you come here?”

“I was never much of a father. Always too busy hiding behind copying machines with a telephoto lens or searching public records until dawn to pay attention to the daughter I didn’t know I had. When rogue divorce lawyers kidnapped my little girl and demanded I give you that summons, I had to act. As a dog father to a pit bull named Roxy, you must understand.”

“I am not that dog’s father!” El Guaco slammed his fist into the table. Then a cruel grin replaced his rage. “Rectum Inferno, made with resiniferatoxin, at sixteen-billion Scoville units.”

A man in goggles, mask, and nitrile gloves poured a smoking liquid into a bowl and backed away. I picked it up, smiled at El Gauco, and put its contents in my mouth. Then I spit the inflammatory fluid into his eyes. He screamed and covered his face with his hands. This gave me the chance to snatch his pistol.

“Anybody moves and he dies!” I held the Glock to El Guaco’s head and dragged him out of the chair. “Get the van!” I told the fat man.

“Drop it!” I heard Starry yell. There were gunshots and a Wilhelm scream but I couldn’t see a thing.

I kept hold of El Guaco while the others guided me out of the building to the van. Once inside, someone took custody of the smuggler. I collapsed in back for the miserable drive. With eyes clamped shut, I heard the ratchet of a hand brake as we swerved around a corner and felt the pulp of limes and papayas as we drove through fruit carts. A dozen tractors with flashing red lights met us on the American side of the border. The Department of Agriculture took El Guaco away.

& & &

I woke with a yogurt IV in my arm and an arrangement of lollipops, shaped like brass knuckles, by my hospital bed. My digestive tract felt like a molten-steel brush coated with hydrofluoric acid had gone through it a hundred times.

“So, you’re awake.” My roommate set down his crossword puzzle and tuned the TV to Fox News. “You missed the president’s speech.”

My cell phone buzzed. Glad for any distraction, I answered.

“Morris, it’s Nebula.”

“Sweetheart, you’re safe!”

“Thanks for getting me away from those awful divorce lawyers.” She paused. “There’s no easy way to say this. I got the DNA test back. You’re not my daddy after all.”

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Jon Wesick 2025