Hot Dogs in Red Bank

Hot Dogs in Red Bank Final 10/21/25

A Clyde & Bo Story

© 2025 Christian J. Farber

All Rights Reserved

Mini Chapter One — Clyde Quits

Clyde left the Motor Vehicle job after Bo asked him to join his team in fighting crime.

“Put that finger-bang thing to real work,” Bo said. “We’ll solve important cases with my experience and your weird obsessions and compulsions.”

“Who else is on the team?” Clyde asked.

“I got guys up here,” Bo replied, tapping his temple. That was all Clyde heard.

After twenty-two years of mostly acceptable performance, Clyde submitted his perfectly typed and evenly spaced resignation letter. After being fired as a financial analyst at Kmart all those years ago, he had decided to knuckle down.

Anne drew the short straw and was responsible for arranging his going-away party. She ordered an ice-cream cake with See Ya Clyde written across the top. Candles stuck through clipped-off tire-air stem caps ringed the frosting—twenty-two of them, which Anne had stolen from Clyde’s garage one night in a fit of exasperation. For added flair, she placed a lone pickleball in the center of the cake.

Bo decided to attend, partly out of respect and partly because he wanted to meet the people who had endured Clyde for two decades. He arrived late, wearing a raincoat on a cloudless day. He shook a few hands, squinted at the cake, and muttered, “fuckin’ weird people,” as if that covered the whole room.

Clyde didn’t mind. He still had Bonnie, the old Chevy Impala, who he treated like family and parked faithfully outside. If anyone asked, Bonnie was his partner, alibi, and sometimes confessor.

When Clyde leaned in and asked Bo where their new office was located, Bo just growled and tapped his temple.

“OK,” Clyde thought. “That makes sense. Headquarters in his skull. I’ll set up the garage for board meetings.”

Mini Chapter Two — The Road

The party was winding down, so Clyde and Bo said their goodbyes and slipped out together. Bonnie waited at the curb, Clyde behind the wheel, and Bo took the passenger seat like he owned it.

“Don’t you have a car, Bo?” Clyde asked as he started the engine.

“Nah,” Bo said. “No license either.”

Clyde gripped the wheel a little tighter but decided not to press. With Bo, there were already more questions than answers, and Clyde preferred not to add to the pile.

They rolled onto the highway, the night stretching out smooth and empty, when Clyde slammed the brakes.

“Did you see that guy?” he asked, staring at the shoulder.

Bo leaned forward, casual as ever. “Yeah. Looked like he was about to cut across between the lights. People can’t read signs. Always in a hurry.”

“Did I hit him?” Clyde asked, then shook his head and accelerated.

“No, of course not. If you had hit someone, he’d be splattered across the hood of your car.”

Clyde turned, deadpan. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Bo said. “I think you’re dreaming.”

Mini Chapter Three — The First Case

Bo asked Clyde to drive him to the Red Bank bus station, just a few miles from the Motor Vehicles outpost. Clyde steered into town—a place reinvented more times than The Who’s “final farewell” tour.

“Drop me at the train station,” Bo said. “Same place. Bus, trains, and town lot. All the same mess, all toll plazas for the town coffers.”

Clyde pulled to the curb. Bo lingered a moment before stepping out, shoulders sagging under some private weight. To Clyde, he looked almost sad. Was he boarding a bus? Catching a train? Waiting for someone?

“Where you off to?” Bo asked, halfway out the door.

“I’m going back the way we came,” Clyde said. “See if that guy’s still on the road. Then home.”

“There is no one there, Clyde,” Bo muttered. “You’re gonna cause an accident looking for an accident you imagined.”

While Clyde circled doubts in his mind, Bo was already sniffing out the following case.

Someone had jimmied open the hot dog truck’s side door, tied the vendor to the driver’s seat, and cleaned him out—cash box, tin of sausages, a pack of rolls. He even took a dozen dogs, still bobbing in boiling water, and vanished, heading north on Route 35.

“Whole town’s talking,” Bo muttered. “It’s not every day you get hog-tied over hot dogs.”

Clyde frowned. “You think it’s connected to that guy on the road?”

Bo shrugged and turned his hat backward. “Naw. Maybe someone just got hungry and desperate at the same time.”

Mini Chapter Four — The Leaf

Clyde made it home after retracing his route to Motor Vehicles. He identified the spot where the man had stood. He drove by it twice, in both directions. Nothing. No shape, no smear, no sign of anyone struck and killed.

Satisfied enough, he continued on his way.

At home, he opened the garage door and started inside. He checked the Marzano tomato can full of tire valve stem caps, a nightly ritual, then turned toward the door. That’s when he noticed something on the front bumper of the Impala.

Reddish.

He hurried over. A red leaf had stuck there, plastered by road dust. He peeled it off, relief and dread twisting together. For a moment, before the veins of the leaf revealed themselves, he was sure it was blood from the man he’d run down on the way to Red Bank.

Clyde stepped back, willing himself to move on. But the pull was too strong. He circled back to the bumper and checked several more times. The result never changed, but neither did the urge to confirm it again—and again. And again.

Finally, he made it to bed, the leaf clenched tight in his fist. He squeezed it all night, the fragile thing crumbling slowly as he drifted in and out of uneasy sleep.

In the morning, he found pieces of the leaf in his hair, on the pillow, and scattered across the floor beside his bed. Still, he wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t hit the man. In time, the doubt would fade, only to be replaced by some other absurd event.

Such is life with OCD.

Mini Chapter Five — Bon Von Jové

Bo had a hidden nightlife.

In Red Bank, a famous rock musician had opened a restaurant to help the poor and needy. Bon Von Jové had stormed America with his band from Germany many years before, and he had tremendous success. His kitchen now fed many who needed help.

Bo arranged a deal with him: he would clean the floors at night in exchange for a bed to sleep in, a chest of drawers for his clothes, a TV, and a chair with an overhead light.

“Seems fair to me,” he would say.

On this night, he swabbed the floors, cruised a few porn sites, then read several pages of the Bible. Somehow, he believed ending with the Good Book erased any sins he had stacked up.

⸻

Mini Chapter Six — Clyde’s First Day

The weekend passed, and Clyde and Bo hadn’t spoken. Neither of them had a cell phone; they thought it was a terrible expense. Besides, without family, who would they call?

Bo caught the bus that dropped him within walking distance of Clyde’s house. He arrived well before sunrise and crouched in the bushes across the street. When he saw Clyde open the garage door, he barked, “Hey, good morning!”

Clyde nearly jumped out of his shoes.

“Let’s go find a place for some food and talk about this hot dog robbery,” Bo said. He grinned, then added, “By the way, did you figure out if you killed anyone last night?”

“I guess I didn’t,” Clyde said, still shaken, “but it sure felt real.”

Bo reached over and plucked a red leaf from Clyde’s hair.

They drove Bonnie to a local diner and set up shop in a booth. Clyde took out a notepad and was ready to write down anything important. Bo shook his head and ordered food, which didn’t make Clyde’s list. Clyde just had coffee. They decided to go over and talk to the Hot Dog guy.

Mini Chapter Seven — The Hot Dog Guy

In Red Bank, near the train station and just a stone’s throw from Bon Von Jové’s restaurant, there’s a parking lot about two hundred feet long and a hundred feet wide. On one end sits a big white van dating back to the late 1970s. Painted across the side: Try It, You’ll Like It.

It’s the Hot Dog Guy’s truck—some even call him the Super Secret Hot Dog Guy. A business that’s been there nearly every day for over fifty years. Boiled dogs, sausage sandwiches—good, cheap, and fast. All the locals know it, and all of them love it. A town staple if there ever was one.

The current owner is the son-in-law of an old Italian man who ran the place until retiring to Florida. Nothing much changed after the handoff. Prices creep up every couple of years, but there’s still nothing expensive about the food.

Young Don runs it now. He was setting up for the day when Bo and Clyde arrived.

Mini Chapter Eight — Young Don

Clyde and Bo rolled into the parking lot where the Super Secret Hot Dog Guy parked his van. Young Don was setting up shop for the day. The water was boiling, and he dropped handfuls of Sabrett hot dogs to heat through.

He looked up and said, “Hello, can I help you?”

Bo arrived first while Clyde stopped to pick up his notebook, which he had dropped.

“Yeah,” Bo said. “Two dogs with ketchup, mustard, onions, and relish.”

Clyde passed—he wasn’t about to eat hot dogs at nine in the morning, not right after several cups of coffee. He was obsessing about something he had read: One is six hundred have red hair and blue eyes. He thought he had blue eyes, but hadn’t checked as long as he could remember. He added it to his to do list in his notepad.

Bo took a bite, chewed once, and then opened the conversation. “We heard you got robbed here yesterday. Tied up, everything stolen by some creeps. You okay?”

“I am. The world sure has changed,” Young Don said.

“I agree with you. I’m a private investigator. The police asked me to work your case. This here’s my partner, Clyde.”

Clyde wrote that down as if he needed to remember his own name.

The three men discussed the robbery in detail. Once Bo felt they had covered all the elements, he asked, “Do you have any idea who might’ve been behind it?”

Don shook his head. “Hard to say. They wore masks. Identifying them won’t be easy.”

Mini Chapter Nine — Errol Pup

Eatontown sat a few miles from Red Bank, close enough that news of the hot dog caper drifted across the border like smoke. ETown still paid for a dog catcher—not “animal control,” not “pound officer,” just a guy with a net. The rest of Jersey laughed about it, but ETown clung to tradition.

The man with the net was Errol Pup. His name sounded like a bad joke, but nobody was laughing the day an alpaca got loose and strutted down ETown’s Main Street. It marched past McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A without so much as a glance, jammed traffic for half a mile, and forced Rita’s Gelato to shut its doors for the “season”—in the middle of July.

Errol wasn’t on the scene. He was in Key West, drinking himself sideways and sitting in the front row at the Miss Nude Over 60 contest. He had a habit of trusting bottles more than people, making his decisions and excuses cheaper. His friends led him on a week-long drunk, and when he came back, he came back unemployed.

His line to the council was quick:

“I catch dogs, not alpacas.”

Nobody bought it. ETown was embarrassed, and Red Bank was listening. A dog catcher who disappeared on duty, drank hard, shrugged off responsibility—that kind of résumé traveled fast. When the hot dog caper made headlines, Errol Pup wasn’t just the guy who lost an alpaca. He was starting to look like the man who might lose his way into crime.

Mini Chapter Ten — Broadcast

In Key West, Errol Pup wasn’t drinking alone. His wife, Muffy, was proud of her accomplishment.

“I love it that men still get off to me,” she said.

Unfortunately for Errol and Muffy, images of their Key West adventure returned north to the Red Bank borough council. One councilman’s son got hold of them and thought it would be hilarious to broadcast the photos across the side of the police station, which, ironically, used to be the town church.

For nearly a week, every night, the building lit up with Errol and Muffy in all their glory. The council declared “all hands on deck” to scrub the images. The urgency was doubled because the police station-slash-church sat directly beside a Catholic high school.

Back in his own orbit, Clyde had shifted obsessions. He stopped worrying about his eyes and hair color and became preoccupied with Apple charging cords. Could they be used to strangle someone?

He was reminded of the woman who had been suffocated with a pickleball a few months ago. He owned at least two of every charging cord Apple ever made. But what if one were missing? What if someone had stolen it and used it as a weapon?

“You never know,” he muttered, rechecking the drawer where he kept them.

He even read about an old woman in Intercourse, Pennsylvania, who had died under mysterious strangulation circumstances. Clyde wondered, What if it was one of mine?

And so, the cycle of doubt spun on.

⸻

Mini Chapter Eleven — The Catch

Bo and Clyde decided to drop in on Young Don and Molly after they returned home from Key West. Molly was still celebrating her victory as Miss Nude USA 60+.

“I’m tired, hungry, and horny,” Young Don said, reaching down and grabbing his junk in what he thought was a lustful gesture Molly would appreciate.

She gave him a look. “Just once, it would be nice if you kissed me, told me you loved me, and wrapped your arms around me. You’d get laid more often if you were like that.”

Young Don, forever the confused lover, muttered back, “Those are your boobs and your ass all over the internet—broadcast on the side of the church-slash-police station in Red Bank. If you get off helping others, get off. I just want my fair share.” His voice was so low that only he could hear it.

Molly turned, tugged down her shorts, and slapped her bare ass as if declaring, Come and get it.

As Don sauntered toward her, Bo stood at the glass screen door, getting a fine look at the exchange—and Molly’s ass. Clyde decided it was something worth recording. He lifted his phone alongside Bo’s head, camera aimed straight through the glass.

Bo brushed against the door with his raincoat, the button making a dragging sound. Don spun around.

“Put that phone down! What the hell are you doing?”

Startled, Clyde fumbled the phone, which slipped neatly into the oversized pocket of Bo’s raincoat.

That’s when Clyde spotted an Apple charging cord hanging from the kitchen counter. A long red streak ran its length. His chest tightened. Blood?

He stepped around Bo, opened the door, and walked inside. On his way to grab the cord he brushed against Molly’s ass. She only smiled and gave him a playful pat on his as he walked by.

Clyde yanked the cord from the socket, ran his thumb and forefinger along it, and just like Bill Murray in Caddie Shack, who tasted the residue fearing doody, and determined it was indeed a Baby Ruth Bar.

Clyde concluded it was not blood. His mind told him instantly.

It was ketchup—commercial-grade Heinz. With a faint tang of relish.

He raised the cord like evidence and declared, “This came from the Hot Dog Guy’s truck. The stolen dogs. Case closed.”

Clyde stepped to the center of the kitchen, hands raised, and said, “Bo, please inform these two of their rights—and remind them that anything I say can and will be used against me.”

Bo smiled. “I got it from here, big guy. Nice work.”