Johnson said, “Yes, I am. These are my friends Johnson Johnson and his illicit lover, Clarice—”
“Shut up, Johnson,” Clarice said. She pointed at Virgil, who was drying a plate with a dish towel, and said, “This is Virgil. The big lug is Johnson. I’m Clarice. You want a beer? Or hot cider?”
“I’d kill for a cider,” the woman said. She pulled off a knitted ski hat and unbuttoned her parka, which looked about two hours old. She was tall and solidly built, in her late thirties or earlyforties. She had dark brown hair with a flamed tint the color of an international orange life jacket. Striking, with a Mediterranean complexion, dark eyes and eyebrows. Gold nose ring, a short white scar on her chin. She was wearing skinny jeans, a wool turtleneck sweater, and on her feet the worst possible winter shoes, thin-soled flats.
Clarice picked up on that and asked, “Where’re you from?”
“Los Angeles,” Griffin said. She took the unoccupied kitchen chair and dropped into it. “I haven’t been this cold since... I’ve never been this cold. My butt feels like an ice cube, my toes are freezing off...”
“If you’re gonna be around here, honey, you’ll need some different shoes—and I mean like right now—or you could lose those toes,” Clarice said. “When you’re done with Virgil, I’ll tell you where you can get some.”
“Thanks. I want to wind this up and get back to L.A.,” Griffin said.
“What are you doing?” Virgil asked. “I didn’t get an exact description of the problem.”
“Virgil’s down here to solve a murder,” Clarice said. “It’ll take him a week or so.”
Margaret Griffin seemed not impressed: “A murder? What happened?”
Johnson told her, and she asked, “How’d she get in the river? As far as I could tell, the river is a solid chunk of ice.”
Virgil nodded at her. “Excellent question. I will ask that tomorrow morning first thing. Now, what are you doing here?”
“Trying to serve a federal cease-and-desist order,” Griffin said. “I’ve been here a week, and I get nothing but the runaround, including from the sheriff. I was out to where I think the targetmight be, a place called CarryTown, and a man came out of his mobile home and said if I kept sneaking around I could get hurt.”
“That’s not good,” Clarice said.
Virgil: “What are you trying to get stopped?”
Griffin said, “I represent Mattel, the toy company. Maker of Barbie dolls.” She accepted a microwaved cider from Clarice, popped open her briefcase, and pulled out a Barbie doll—a nude one.
“A regular old Barbie,” Clarice said. “I had about four of them when I was growing up. They broke a lot.”
“Seeing one naked makes me feel kinda funny,” Johnson said.
“You put your finger right on the problem,” Griffin said. “It’s not a regular Barbie.” She turned it over to show them a series of small holes drilled in Barbie’s back. And, below that, a pink plastic button.
“What does that...” Clarice began.
Griffin pushed the button, which operated a tiny digital recording. Barbie said,“Ohh, God. Ohh, God. Give it to me harder! Give it to me, big boy, harder. Ohh, God, you’re so big, don’t stop...”
That went on for a while, then Barbie’s orgasm ran out of steam, ending with a vocalErp. They all stared at the doll for a minute, Johnson finally saying to Clarice, “Some sonofabitch has recorded us, babe.”
“In your dreams,” Clarice said.
“Battery-operated,” Griffin said. “They call this one the Divine model because she says, ‘Ohh, God. Ohh, God.’ There’s a Negative model that says, ‘Ohh, no. Ohh, no,’ and a Positive model that says, ‘Ohh, yes. Ohh, yes.’”
Clarice said, “There’s probably a fake orgasm one that says, ‘Ohh, Johnson. Ohh, Johnson.’”
Johnson said, “Funny.”
Clarice laughed merrily and said, “It really was. Sometimes, I slay myself.”
—
Will you guys take this seriously?” Griffin said. She looked around at them. “Somebody up here is manufacturing these things by the hundreds, the recorder components shipped in from China. They call them Barbie-Os. We leaned on a few Internet retailers and they pointed us at Trippton. I asked around, and nobody helps much, but I eventually came up with a name—Jesse McGovern. Can’t find her. Nobody seems to have heard of her. But how could you run an operation that makes hundreds of these things, in a town the size of Trippton, and nobody knows her?”
“You know what I think?” Clarice said. “I think you have the wrong town. Between me and Johnson, we’ve lived here most of our lives. If there was a Jesse McGovern in town, we’d know her.”
