The disclaimer telling all of you that I don't own any Archer characters has died off. Another secret mission has come into my tiny mind. As the gang tries to get their foot in the door with exclusive Hollywood clients, things don't go so well. As we all knew it would.
Weekend at Donovan King's
"All right listen up!" Cyril snapped with an air of authority he rarely had. "We have a new assignment!" He looked at the other members of the agency lounging around in his office. Needless to say they weren't exactly happy to be there.
"For Christ's sake Cyril…" Mallory grumbled as she took a drink of scotch. "It's not even nine in the morning."
"And yet you're drinking," Cyril quipped. "Again."
"Technically she never stopped so…" Ray quipped.
"Oh put a penis in it Con-Ray Twitty!" Mallory snapped.
"You put a penis in it Ms. Mal-Content!" Ray barked.
"Don't talk to me like that you…" Mallory fumed.
"I'll talk to you any damn way I want!" Ray snapped. "You're not my boss anymore!"
"Exactly! I'm your boss!" Cyril shouted. "So zip it Heckle and Jeckle! That goes for the rest of you idiots!"
"And you just love reminding us every chance you get don't you?" Lana sighed.
"Yes," Cyril smirked.
"So what have you got for us this time Cyril?" Archer spoke up. "Besides an opportunity for you to order us around some more?"
"Actually Archer your mother found this client," Cyril said. "So Ms. Archer if you wouldn't mind taking over…"
Mallory began her presentation as the screen on the wall showed an image of a rather large well-dressed man in his seventies with a twinkling eye and white hair. "This is Donovan King. One of the most powerful producers of his day. He used to run several studios including Mount Para and Golden Gate which made several popular and Oscar winning films. He's also an old friend of mine."
"Hang on," Archer spoke up. "Mother is this guy a friend or a 'friend'?" He made quotation marks with his fingers.
"A little of Column A and a little of Column B," Mallory admitted.
"Ugh…." Archer rolled his eyes.
"Donovan and I started out acting together," Mallory snapped. "We met in the same acting class and had a friendship. When I became a spy and he became a director we parted ways but we kept in touch over the years. And now his life is being threatened."
"Who would threaten an over the hill producer slash director that hasn't made a film in over twenty years?" Cheryl asked.
"How do you know that?" Mallory snapped.
"Uh this little thing called research?" Cheryl told her. "Which is what I do now apparently."
"She googled up famous producers on the Internet because we're thinking of becoming actresses," Pam explained.
"So I know which ones are real, which ones are fake and which ones are has beens," Cheryl said smartly. "And this Donovan King guy is definitely on my has been list."
"Well you should know all about being a has been don't you?" Mallory snapped. "Miss Country Music Falling Star!"
"What?" Cheryl blinked.
"She doesn't remember any of that," Pam groaned. "Remember?"
"Oh right," Mallory grumbled. "Anyway his life has been threatened this weekend. Apparently he's writing some tell all book and he's worried about someone killing him."
"Again aren't most of the people he's writing about either dead or pretty much dropped off the face of the planet?" Cheryl asked.
"Look all he has to do is survive long enough to get his book to the publishers on Monday!" Mallory snapped.
"And he's promised us a very lucrative check if he does so," Cyril said. "So we're all going to stay at his mansion in the hills outside LA until the weekend is over."
"Hang on again…" Archer spoke up. "Mother, is this a real threat or a fake threat?"
"Be honest," Ray frowned as he folded his arms and glared at her. "For once!"
"Five will get you ten it's a fake," Pam said to Cheryl.
"Duh!" Cheryl rolled her eyes.
"Mallory…" Lana glared at her.
"Oh fine!" Mallory threw up her hands. "Maybe the threat is slightly exaggerated…"
"I knew it!" Ray groaned.
"Look he's an old friend who has a lot of money and it would be a feather in our cap if we succeeded in this mission!" Mallory barked. "And he probably has connections we can use!"
"She's right," Cyril nodded. "So we're going to treat this as if it was the real thing. FYI no one mention to Mr. King that the death threat isn't real. Especially you two!" He glared at Pam and Cheryl.
"Fine! Jesus!" Pam rolled her eyes. "Blab a hundred and fifty different plans and nobody lets you forget!"
"Forget what?" Cheryl looked confused.
"The second verse to the Star Spangled Banner Cheryl!" Ray said sarcastically.
"Wait the national anthem has a second verse?" Cheryl blinked.
"Just shut up all of you!" Cyril snapped, his patience getting thinner. "I need you all on your best behavior if we are going to pull off this mission!"
"We're still doing this?" Lana was stunned. "Even though it's a fake threat?"
"Well then it will be an easy assignment!" Cyril snapped. "All we have to do is keep him alive this weekend! How hard is that?"
Seven hours later…
"Apparently it was harder than I thought," Cyril pinched his nose and closed his eyes in frustration. "CONSIDERING HE'S NOW DEAD!"
Donovan King was indeed dead. And wearing only his boxer shorts on a pull out bed in a dilapidated guest room. Which the entire agency that was standing in the room noticed that it was not befitting of the luxurious manor they had assumed he would own.
Well not all of them were standing there…
"I can explain…" Pam said as she sat on the edge of the bed wearing only her bra and panties.
"I don't think you need to," Ray groaned. "It's kind of self-explanatory what went on here."
"Pam! How could you?" Lana barked.
"Yeah I didn't think the old guy was capable of it," Cheryl remarked.
"He wasn't," Pam quipped.
"Pam why?" Cyril was frustrated.
"Well he was a producer," Pam explained as she put her clothes back on. "And since I'm thinking of becoming an actress with Cheryl I figured…"
"Stop!" Archer held up his hand and winced in disgust.
"That's what he said!" Pam laughed. Then she frowned. "Literally…Right before he passed out."
"Oh dear god…" Cyril groaned.
"I didn't even do that much to him!" Pam protested. "I was only half way started when he screamed and passed out! I though he was one of those guys who…You know? Erupted his volcano before the villagers could give him a proper sacrifice."
"He was," Mallory remembered. "That's one of the reasons I dumped him."
"Yeah he had no clue what he was doing," Pam agreed. "I thought he would be a lot better than he was."
"Donovan was a genius in a lot of ways but in the bedroom he was an idiot savant without the savant," Mallory admitted. "I felt so bad for the women who had to lie on his casting couch. On the other hand it's not like they had to do that much work…"
"Speaking of work," Cyril interrupted. "Can we focus our attention back to the mission here? You know? The one where we were going to be paid to keep this man alive which we obviously failed at!"
"And how were we supposed to stop Pam from having sex?" Archer asked.
"You really can't once she puts her mind to it," Cheryl admitted. "Not that I'd ever want to but…"
"Stop right there!" Cyril groaned.
"That's what he said!" Pam quipped.
"Phrasing," Ray quipped.
"Will you idiots shut up and help me figure out what we're going to do?" Cyril yelled. "How are we going to get paid after this fiasco?"
"I'm not so sure we were going to get paid in the first place!" Ray added.
"What do you mean?" Mallory asked.
"Look around woman!" Ray snapped. "You said this guy lived in a mansion. Last I checked mansions had more than one floor and didn't have used pizza boxes cluttering up half the rooms!"
"I thought you said this guy had a lot of money!" Archer shouted at his mother.
"I think the key word in that sentence is had," Lana sighed. "I mean just one look at this place should have been our first clue Donovan didn't have that much money."
"I thought this was supposed to be a mansion?" Ray asked. "This place looks so depressing even Sylvia Plath wouldn't commit suicide here."
"I'm suspecting Donovan may have exaggerated his financial state," Mallory grumbled. "Which now that I recall is typical of him."
"And to think you two drifted apart," Ray quipped. "When you obviously had so much in common."
"Well here's something we all have in common!" Cyril snapped. "What are we going to do with a dead body?"
"I'm telling you all this right now! I am not doing a 'Weekend at Bernie's' thing!" Archer snapped. "I'd like to think that's one movie I don't want to imitate. Again."
"Again?" Ray did a double take.
"There was an incident early in Sterling's spy career with a Canadian diplomat," Mallory sighed. "Don't ask."
"Which was not my fault, Mother!" Sterling glared at her.
"How was I supposed to know he had a heart condition?" Mallory shouted.
"It's frightening how many of your boyfriends die!" Ray snapped.
"How many more men are going to fall into your Vagina of Death?" Cheryl snapped.
"My vagina didn't kill this one!" Mallory pointed at Donovan and then glared at Pam.
"Technically mine didn't either," Pam corrected.
"Stop!" Cyril shouted. "I don't want to know the details. Look we have to do something!"
"We have to call the police," Lana said.
"If we do that we won't get paid!" Mallory shouted.
"We're not going to get paid anyway! He's dead!" Lana barked. "Who's going to pay us? I'm pretty sure his family won't!"
"Donovan doesn't have any living relatives," Mallory told her. "Or servants. Or friends. Or acquaintances. Apparently when you've spent a lifetime of screwing people in the business they take it personally."
"Then that makes his death even more ironic," Cyril groaned. "Plus we can't call the police. Because there will be an inquest and if it comes out that Pam humped a client to death…"
"That would definitely put a crimp in our business," Ray realized. "So what do we do?"
"I could always turn him into a cyborg," Krieger suggested. "Of course I'd have to replace a lot of parts but…"
"NO!" Archer barked. "We're not doing that!"
"Then why did you bring me here in the first place?" Krieger snapped.
"A question I ask myself every day…" Mallory groaned.
"So what are we going to do?" Pam shouted.
"Let me think damn it!" Cyril shouted.
"If we did that we'd be here all weekend!" Mallory snapped. "And considering it's going to be over 90 degrees I don't really want to spend it with a dead body!"
"Yeah that will really stink up the place," Pam admitted.
"This is what we are going to do! The first thing we do is look around for anything valuable!" Mallory told them. "Money, jewels! That tell all book he said he was going to write! Anything!"
"So we're going to burgle his home?" Lana was stunned.
"Well we can't exactly go down to the bank and cash a check from him now can we?" Mallory barked.
"All right everyone fan out and look," Cyril ordered. "There's only like seven rooms in this house so it can't take that long!"
"Great," Ray grumbled as they went to do so. "Now we're a low budget Bling Ring."
Cyril and Mallory were left alone in the room. "Should we uh…Cover him up or something?" Cyril asked nervously.
"Will you calm down and relax?" Mallory ordered. "For god's sake Cyril this isn't exactly your first inconvenient corpse!"
"Oh God this isn't our first inconvenient corpse!" Cyril groaned when he realized the truth in what she said.
"The one thing in our favor is that it looks like we're the first people to visit this dump in God knows how long," Mallory winced at the state of the place. "I see dust bunnies in the corners that are older than Cheryl."
"Maybe someone should stand lookout for the cops?" Cyril suggested.
"What cops?" Mallory protested. She started rifling through a stack of bills on a nearby table. "Repo men probably but not cops."
"Let me guess," Cyril groaned. "Those are final notice bills and he's in debt up to his lifeless eyeballs isn't he?"
"Unless there's a Publisher's Clearing House winner notice in here…" Mallory rifled through them. "No there's not so…"
"So it's more likely debt collectors will come up here," Cyril groaned. "Are you sure he had no next of kin?"
"He had four ex-wives and a ton of mistresses but no children," Mallory told him. "And all his family died off years ago. So we're safe from lawsuits."
Her nose crinkled as she looked around. "But not from dying of thirst. I'd forgotten the man was a teetotaler. He had no problems with drugs, prostitutes or anything else he could sniff up his nose! But God forbid he have a sip of alcohol! Now I remember why I dumped him!"
"This detective business is not going the way I thought it would," Cyril groaned.
"Gee, one of my idiot son's idiot ideas carried out by his gang of idiots isn't working out," Mallory mocked. "What a shock."
"Oh and like all of your plans and schemes go without a hitch?" Cyril snapped. "You're the one who got us mixed up with the CIA in the first place! We were doing just fine before you…Well maybe not exactly just fine but still…"
"Just start looking through drawers and everything!" Mallory ordered. "Maybe we can find something valuable in this room?"
"Hey! I'm the boss now!" Cyril snapped. "I give the orders!"
After a pause he said. "So start looking through the drawers and closets," Cyril ordered. "Maybe we can find something valuable in here?"
"Idiot…" Mallory grumbled as she went to do so. "I'm surrounded by idiots!"
Not even ten minutes later the gang met in the living room. "Any luck?" Lana asked.
"Yes, unfortunately all of it bad," Cyril sighed.
Mallory added. "Nothing worth stealing in the guest bedroom. How about the rest of the house?"
"We only found seven hundred fifty three dollars and forty two cents," Archer told his mother. "And a couple of rings probably worth a couple hundred."
"Three dollars and the forty two cents were in the couch cushions," Krieger remarked. "I found fifty three cents in his coat pockets. And some nice handkerchiefs that I'm keeping."
"They're probably dirty," Cyril pointed out.
"So I'll just wash them!" Krieger snapped. "The handkerchiefs I mean."
"The most valuable things in his closet are the moths," Archer remarked. "His clothes are too big and too badly made. I wouldn't even give them to Woodhouse to clean my shoes with. And don't get me started on this guy's shoes!"
"No credit cards in his wallet," Lana admitted. "Just ten dollars and a bunch of IOU's."
"What about his Oscars and awards?" Mallory asked. "He used to have a shelf full of them!"
"He probably hocked those years ago," Pam showed them. "And he did according to all these pawn shop stubs."
"I found his manuscript," Ray took out some papers. "If you can call it that."
"Let me see," Mallory took some. "I can barely read this chicken scratch! Hang on…"
"To spare your eyeballs I'll recap," Ray told them. "It's basically some paragraphs about some dates he went on and then a few pages of him writing about how he should add explosions in later."
"That's what it says all right," Cyril said as he looked at one of the papers. "I think…"
"So he was faking the whole tell all book thing too?" Mallory groaned. "I should have known! This is just like that screenplay he never got around to doing! But he shopped a fake one around until some idiot producer gave him a chance to direct a low budget film."
"Again! Information like this would have been useful before we took this assignment!" Cyril shouted. "Okay fine. The money we can use for the agency and we can probably get some cash if we pawn the jewelry after a few days. It's not much but it's better than nothing."
"Maybe we can pay for groceries for a week?" Archer rolled his eyes. "But that still doesn't explain how we're going to get away with a dead body in the place!"
"Well…" Krieger began.
"We're not taking the body back with us Krieger!" Cyril snapped.
"Aww…." Krieger pouted.
"Well…" Mallory thought aloud. "This house is isolated in the hills. No neighbors. And in disrepair."
"Yeah I mean the wiring in this place is a joke," Krieger scoffed. "And all these old magazines and stuff. That's a fire hazard right there."
"Uh huh…" Mallory began to think.
"Oh no…" Ray could see where this was going.
"I mean this place is basically a fire filled tragedy just waiting to happen," Krieger went on.
"Oh Lord…" Ray groaned. "I know where this is going…"
Several hours later…
"The fire burned into the night," A female reporter spoke on the large screen TV at the agency. "Claiming the life of director/producer Donovan King, once known as the Man with the Golden Touch."
Images of a huge fire burning down a house were shown as well as firefighters putting out the blaze. The female reporter went on. "King was best known for directing several award winning films such as Murray's Song, The Nightshade Girls, I Gave Up My Career For This, and Snowball In Hell…"
"Which is probably where that bastard is right now if there's any justice in this world," Mallory remarked as she took a drink as they all watched the news.
Everyone looked at Mallory. She just sniffed. "Trust me, I'm not the only one in this town with that sentiment."
"I still feel a little bad about torching the place and letting him lie there," Lana admitted.
"What were we supposed to do Lana?" Cyril snapped. "Hold his hand until the firemen came?"
"We let the fire burn long enough before reporting an anonymous tip to the fire department," Archer explained. "And by the time the firemen got there all the evidence of us being there was gone."
"And all that remains are ashes, a charred corpse," Krieger added. "And enough evidence of faulty wiring to satisfy even the most skeptical CSI team."
"Are you sure?" Cyril asked.
"Yes, I'm sure!" Krieger snapped. "God it's not exactly the first time I had to cover up a dead body with a fire! Or start a fire that looked like it was started by faulty wiring!"
"Oh dear God this isn't the first time you've done this," Cyril realized.
"First?" Ray quipped. "Krieger must be well into the double digits by now."
"Triple digits if you count all my clone experiments," Krieger admitted. "And a few other ones…"
"Don't think I want to know," Ray groaned.
"You don't," Krieger admitted.
"Well this has been another disastrous mission," Mallory grumbled.
"That was your idea!" Cyril glared at her.
"You're blaming me for this?" Mallory snapped.
"Yes!" Cyril shouted. "Why is it every time we do something for an old boyfriend of yours…?"
Lana added. "Or an old friend of yours…"
"Or a friend of a friend of yours," Archer added.
"Or just some guy you want to bang," Pam added.
"Something goes wrong and we get screwed!" Cyril finished. "And not in the fun way."
"I'm not the one who screwed us out of a mission this time!" Mallory shouted. "Pam's the one who killed him!"
"Yeah Pam!" Cyril glared at her. "Thanks a lot!"
"Oh like that never happened to any of you?" Pam snapped. "Remember Mrs. Upton in the elevator Cyril?"
"Oh yeah," Cyril remembered. "That's right…"
"And I know at least three of your honeypot missions ended up with a dead broad in your bed!" Pam pointed out to Archer.
"Technically not in my bed," Archer corrected. "But I do see your point."
"And Ray…" Pam began.
"Yeah, I remember," Ray winced. "To this day I'm still banned from the Bronze Bull gay cowboy bar."
"And remember when you Ms. Archer had that guy you were entertaining late one night and he died right on your desk!" Pam went on. "So you had to get me, Krieger and Cheryl to…"
"Yes! Yes! I remember that!" Mallory interrupted.
"I don't!" Archer barked. "Wait a minute…Was that when you gave me your desk because you had to get a new one?"
"Why do you think that was?" Pam asked.
"AAGGGGHHH!" Archer shuddered violently. "Thanks a lot Mother! Now I'm going to have another nightmare to add to the vault!"
"And how many people have died because of Krieger?" Pam pointed.
"Well not for having sex," Krieger added. "Most of them anyway…"
"Most of them?" Ray did a double take.
"There was an incident way back with Fisto Roboto and one of my interns," Krieger coughed.
"Don't want to know…" Ray groaned.
"And there was the time I had sex with Barry after I led him to the safe house," Cheryl spoke up. "And he killed Ms. Archer's KGB ex-boyfriend. Although technically I didn't have sex with the KGB boyfriend…I guess it still counts that he died because I had sex."
Everyone looked at Cheryl. Cheryl looked back. "What? I didn't want to be left out of the conversation!"
"Well I don't want to hear Donovan King's name ever again in any conversation!" Cyril groaned. "As far as anyone else is concerned, this weekend never happened!"
"By the way how many hours do we get credited for this?" Archer asked.
Cyril looked at him incredulously. "You want to know how many hours it counts for your PI license for burglary, covering up a death and arson?"
"Those hours only count if you use them for stopping or solving crimes!" Lana shouted. "Not committing them asshole!"
"Oh…" Archer blinked. "I see your point. So this whole weekend is a bust."
"Pretty much yes!" Cyril said sarcastically.
"Not necessarily," Krieger pointed out. "We got almost eight hundred dollars for the agency. And I got some nice handkerchiefs out of this."
"Oh well then that does make it worthwhile!" Lana said sarcastically.
"It does doesn't it?" Krieger clearly didn't get the hint.
"How many times have we had to resort to arson to cover our tracks?" Ray groaned. "Seriously, how many? I've lost count."
"I know it's at least ten," Cyril groaned. "Maybe fifteen?"
"The more things change the more they stay the same," Lana groaned. "As in the more our agency changes the more of the same kinds of destruction we cause!"