Dirk Malloy Mysteries
4. My Mother Calls Me Killer Wiggins

The Story

Homemade macaroni cheese bubbled on a TV tray. Thick, manly hands scooped a spoonful of smoking faux cheese to a sturdy pair of lips. Lips that had taken too many punches, said too many harsh words, pronounced too many syllables that you have to put your mouth in an O shape for. Lips that belonged to a hard man.

His hard eyes stared at a TV set. An entertainment news show. Hatred for the beautiful people flashed in his brain. Random pulses of aggression throbbed like a strobe light. But the pleasure of steaming macaroni cheese overwhelmed the hatred. His swollen jaw gingerly chewed, moving the food in a rhythmic circle as if a spirograph picture was being drawn on his inner cheek. The previewed mid-season replacement TV show looked momentarily intriguing. He swallowed. The intrigue disappeared as blood rushed to his stomach.

“Lanley” the motherly voice of his mother pealed from the kitchen. “How’s the macaroni, Lanley?”
“Momma! The name’s Killer Wiggins. Okay? The macaroni is perfect as always. You know it’s the only thing that keeps me, you know, normal.”
“I feel the same about my prune bran muffins” she said, sitting down on the couch. “They’ll be ready in five minutes if you want one.”
“I have to go” Killer Wiggins said finishing the last mouthful. “Got a job, some city official asking for too much bribe money.”
“Should you be eating your macaroni before that?” his mother enquired, nosy but concerned.
“Sure thing Ma. It takes care of the urges, but this is work. I need to be clear”, Killer Wiggins smiled warmly at his mother. For a moment all was right in his world.

Later that night, Killer Wiggins returned. The job was done and the money earned. A pest had been squashed like a fly sprayed with fly spray. But something was amiss in the apartment. The TV was playing. A meaningless mid-season NBA game. Killer Wiggins’ mother never watched those.

He ran into the living room and found his beloved mother dead on the couch. A hole gaped back at him like a disbelieving child. Her heart, the heart that gave all those macaroni dinners that extra special taste, was nothing but a fine bloody mist feeding the dust mites in their shag pile carpet.

Dirk Malloy On The Case

Malloy was nervous. Clients didn’t usually ask to meet him out at the tar pits. But he needed work, and if he was going to get knocked off, a tar pit would be a pretty decent place. At least there was a possibility that one day aliens would drag his bones out and research him like he was some sort of big wheel in the story of evolution. No one had given his body a thorough examination since his late, beloved Barbara picked leeches off his back in their ill-conceived erotic trip to the Louisiana swamps. If there was a rumble tonight and he had to kill someone he was damn sure going to carve “I am a chump” in their left femur before tossing them in the tar.

Malloy had parked a mile away and walked cautiously to the pits. He found a sturdy tree with a good view, crouched behind it and killed thirty minutes by thinking of as many of the Smurfs as he could. His game was disturbed by a large man dragging a corpse past him towards the farthest tar pit. Malloy waited five minutes, and when no one else appeared he pulled out his gun and followed.

It was pitch black, but Malloy could follow the moonlight glinting off the man’s neck sweat. When the man stopped Malloy redundantly said “Hold it”. The large man put his hands up and turned around.
“Malloy, right?” the man said, putting his hands down. “I’m Killer Wiggins. I called you. I need your help.”
Malloy didn’t lower his gun. Behind Wiggins’ broad shoulders he could see a pile of corpses.
“Tell me what you need” Malloy said, trying to sound confident.
“Someone killed my Momma. I need to know if it’s one of them.” Wiggins said, pointing at the dozen corpses piled up behind him. “I’m good at the killing. But I’m no deducter. Maybe one of them did it, maybe none of them.”
Wiggins’ bulk was making Malloy’s gun feel tiny. Malloy stared at him trying to decide whether to shoot, run screaming like a girl, or just jump in the tar pits now.

“I need you to tell me so I can stop. My momma, she made me macaroni.” Malloy looked confused. Killer Wiggins thought this was bravado so offered up some exposition. “She put my special powder in it. Without it, knowing my momma’s killer is out there, I can’t stop.”
“I’m a private investigator. My business is capturing murderers, not aiding and abetting them” Malloy didn’t say. He actually said “Uh, right. Okay. That will be super neato”.

Malloy wrote down the names of Killer Wiggins’ victims before helping to throw them in the tar pit. As Malloy walked back to his car he could barely bring himself to look up. He wasn’t a God-fearing man, but he felt that maybe Barabara or those aliens were looking down on him, disappointed, betrayed.

Malloy realised he had to rationalise the situation faster than he’d ever rationalised before. “I’m faced with a pile of corpses and a giant lunatic I don’t want to piss off. Someone did kill his mother, I suppose I should find out who. It can’t hurt to start with the suspects my honourable client has thoughtfully prepared for me. Man, is it good to have a client who knows exactly what they want, comes to meetings prepared…”

Malloy Investigates

Two sleepless days of adventure, danger and romance later Malloy went to Killer Wiggins’ apartment with notes on the twelve victims.

“Okay Wiggins, here’s the run down” he said, flipping through his note book:

“1. Hank ‘Face Plate’ McCooler didn’t kill your mother. His mob buddies had thrown him in an elaborate medieval maze because he was stealing their cuff links. He’d only just escaped and was having a pancake breakfast when you killed him.”

“2. Luis ‘Screw Loose’ Santiago appeared to be logged into his Warcraft account at the time of your mother’s murder, but further investigation found that it was just his Chinese gold farmer. Even further investigation then revealed that he was in the local jail for chasing the mayor’s cat.

“3. From phone records I found that Sandra “Santana” Sampson was trying to win a radio phone-in contest for tickets to Quiet Riot.”

“4. Mischka “Glastnost” Yuleuv was getting soundly thrashed in a nationally televised air hockey tournament. Did you know he knocked ‘Face Plate’ out in the regionals? Interesting coincidence.”

“5. Fela Mira Toko was volunteering in a focus group for Happy Hippo Cookies. He found the cookies “sugary but bland” and he said the packaging “is eye catching, but sets off my twitchy eye, so would likely not buy”. He also listed his age as 24, which I don’t believe for a second.”

“6. I found out why they call him Igor “The Screamer” Janus. At 17 he was hit on the head with a bottle at an Iron Maiden concert and lost all ability to communicate in anything other than a Bruce Dickinson-esque scream. There is a point to this. At the time of your mother’s murder his neighbour said she heard him trying to order a seafood pizza.”

“7. I can see why you suspected Alfie O’Rielly, but it turns out he just didn’t want to tell his friends he was performing a pan pipe recital at a retirement home in Buffalo. Apparently he’d been bragging that he was going to master the much harder uilleann pipes, and couldn’t confess that he’d failed.”

“8. Barry Siffman doesn’t appear to have any link to you, your mother, or the criminal underworld. He had the misfortune of looking a lot like Hank “Face Plate” McCooler and he was wearing the same style of Edmonton Oilers track pants.”

“9. Hawker Mallory was busy editing the Wikipedia page on King Canute when your mother was bumped. When you killed him he was fixing up some vandalism on it, but he never had a chance to press ‘save’. It still says that King Canute beat Koko B. Ware at Wrestlemania IV.”

“10. Samuelson Takanaka was lining up for the Antiques Roadshow. He had an old painting of a duck he thought was by James Ensor. Bad news: apparently he always wears about $40,000 of jewellery, so we probably shouldn’t have just dumped him in the tar pit without robbing him.”

“11. Bobby “The Weeb” Ferugnio. has taken the secret of what a “weeb” is to his grave. He’s also taken the secret of what he was doing up a tree outside Lou Ferrigno’s house when your mother was killed.”

“12. Talula. She was your worst guess. First, she was getting a perm at the time of the crime. Two, she was a tourist from Ireland. Third, she’s a chihuahua.”

“Those are yours. In the course of my investigations I was forced to kill:”

“1. Paulino “Baracuda” Barbuda for trying to fly an explosive-filled helicopter into my head.”

“2. Jameson “The Golden Pompadour” Prodeser for spiking my drink with laxatives and putting piranhas in the toilet.”

“3. Artus Buntington III for telling me I wasn’t good enough to join his country club and then trying to cut my arm off with a circular saw.”

“4. Salvatore “One Name” Smith for attempting to kill me by a drive by shooting at the indoor go kart track”

“And no, none of them offed your mother.”

Wiggins became unsettled. “What do we do? I’ll go kill some more people, shall I?” “First, you really should bury your mother’s body. I’m so close to puking on your carpet right now” Malloy said, covering his nose as he looked at the now bloated corpse sitting quietly on the sofa.
“You leave my Momma alone. I’m paying you.”
“Yeah, well, that’s just unhygienic. I mean look at the wound, it’s…”

So Who Did It?

“…it’s…” Malloy said, to connect this paragraph to the one above. “Why is there blood all over this room?”
“Because my Momma got shot.”
“Yeah, through the chest from the front. Damn it.” Malloy got up and stormed to the kitchen.

Malloy threw open cupboards, overturned saucepans, and tasted the marinade on a juicy steak. “Killer Wiggins, why, tell me, do you keep shot gun shells in the onions?”
“I’m a killer, you never…”
“And why, dear God to you have a tazer in your skim milk?”
“That one I can explain…”
“Does even a hit man really need poison tipped arrows in the knife block.”
“Maybe that’s…”
“Anyway, your mother died because you’re keeping gun powder in the bran muffin mix. Seventeen people, Wiggins, because you felt some insane need to hide razor blades in the cookie dough. Cookie dough I was about to snack on.”

Killer Wiggins lips quivered as he attempted vainly not to cry. All the anger, hatred, and murderous rage welled up in one powerful explosion of sorrow. Like a kidney stone passing, Killer Wiggins expelled the pain. He blubbered self-pityingly. “You probably don’t like seeing a grown man cry, do you?”
“I don’t mind”, Malloy said.
“I need some macaroni. Now!” Wiggins screamed, holding on to the bread maker for balance.
“Forget it, the nurses at the asylum can make it.”

Malloy dialled the police station, trying to ignore Wiggins’ babbling. “I always asked my mother to call me Killer Wiggins. She didn’t know I’d wind up killing her” Wiggins babbled in the way Malloy was trying to ignore.
“Thanks for the rather overstated wrap up” Malloy said as he tried to explain the case to the police over Killer Wiggins’ hysterical screams of remorse.

What’s next for Dirk Malloy? Murder at the World’s Fair? Violence at a Free Tibet rally? Romance in Rio?

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