Crooked Little Vein (7 page)

I
f
you think I’m telling you about having sex with Trix, you’re insane.

I
think it’s finally going down,” Trix said.

I took a look. “Yeah. You no longer have girl-balls.”

She gave that little tinkling giggle and snuggled into my arm. “I have decided that we need to do that more often.”

“Fill our bits with salty water?”

She bit my nipple. “No. The other thing. Although, you know…”

“No chance. One-time thing. I’m not carrying my nuts around in a wheelbarrow for you.”

“And I thought you liked me. Didn’t you have to make a phone call?”

“Shit. So I did. Someone distracted me.”

“So it’s all my fault now?”

“Absolutely.” I kissed her hair. “I’ll call him later. He’ll still be awake.”

“Who do you need to talk to?”

“Bob Ajax. Guy I knew back in my Chicago days. He moved to San Antonio a few years ago. A little local knowledge might help.”

“You don’t look happy about it.”

“Oh, I like Bob fine. He’s a good guy. What bothers me is who we have to go and see.” I sighed, tried to relax. “Doesn’t matter. Not right now.”

“No. It doesn’t. You stay right here. How long since you last got laid?”

“Well, I remember saying, Mr. Lincoln, when am I going to meet a nice girl?”

“Seriously.”

“Since my girlfriend left me, pretty much. A few years.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish.”

“A few years? I would have died. It would have healed over.”

“If you check the condom, you’ll find a bunch of gray pebbles in the end.”

“Oh, that’s gross.”

“You bring out the best in me. I need a cigarette.”

Cold and sticky, wobbly knees, rooting around in my jacket, something occurred to me. Because I can’t just leave things alone.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why this.”

She coiled around onto her front, feet on the headboard, and considered me. “I think I want to meet your ex. And kill her for whatever she did to your brain.”

“No, really. Was it just because…?”

“Because what? Because your dick was full of brine? Because when I’m horny I just jump into bed with the first available live body?”

“No,” I lied, because when she put it like that I sounded like an asshole, and that couldn’t be right. “I just…You weren’t interested in me like…that.”

She stared. “Oh my God, Mike.”

“What? You came for the thesis and the job. I know that. That was the deal, I’m not pissed or anything.”

Her eyes were like saucers. “You. Are. Such. A. Retard.”

“What did I do now?”

“Mike. I wanted to kiss you the first time you made me laugh. But you’re always so…freaked out. By
everything
. Mike, you’re a really nice guy who made me laugh and you wanted me to go on an
adventure
with you. You think that happens to me, you know,
ever
? Do you have any idea when anyone last wanted to talk to me for what was in my
head
?”

I stood there like an idiot with the cigarettes in my hand, unable to think of anything worth saying.

“I’m not getting through to you, am I?” Trix smiled.

“…um.”

“Okay. Easy-reading version. I wanted to spend time with you and see what happened. I am kind of a big slut, but I don’t give it away for candy bars. I sleep with people I really like. I really like you. I am not here for the money or the thesis. I am here because I really like you, and because you took me on an adventure with you. How’s that?”

“…big slut?”

“Come here.”

I went back to the bed, forgetting the smokes. She reached up, grabbed me by my nipple, and pulled me down.

“Here’s what’s going to happen. We are going to continue our trip for as long as it lasts. We are going to learn about each other and be together. We are going to be friends. We will go back to New York and we will still be friends. And we are going to have sex, you know, a
lot
. Because that’s what I do with my very best friends because it makes us closer and because it is fun. You will agree now.”

“Yes.”

“There. See how easy that was?” She flipped me onto my back and looked at me thoughtfully. “Hm. We may need some ropes.”

“…oh my God.”

“God can’t help you now, Mike. There’s only me here.”

B
ob
? It’s Mike McGill.”

Bob had acquired a bit of Texas in his accent.

“Mike! Jesus, man, it’s been years! How you been?”

“I followed you out of Chicago. Set up on my own in New York.”

“Good for you, man. Always said you were the smartest guy in the agency. So what’s up?”

“You still in San Antonio?”

He laughed. The laugh had a bit of edge in it. I filed that away, nervously.

“Sure. You need something?”

“Listen, me and my partner need to fly down there today and do some digging. Any chance you could give us some local knowledge?”

“Damn, I’ll pick you up at the airport. Got a flight yet?”

I’d already booked tickets by phone, and gave him the details. That was that, and we hung up.

“Huh,” I said, standing over the phone.

“Problems?” Trix said from the bathroom.

“I don’t know. He didn’t sound right.”

“Define.”

“Nothing ever got to Bob. He was Teflon—everything just slid right off him. Stuff only ever came out when he was drunk. He sounded…not stressed, but edgy. Not like Bob.”

“Been a while since you saw him, though, right? I think I like being your partner, by the way.”

“Well, what the hell else was I going to call you? I couldn’t tell him you were my girlfriend or anything.”

Waited.

“No, you couldn’t,” came her voice.

Shit.

“Friend-with-benefits doesn’t sound too professional, either,” she laughed. Making damn sure I had no idea where things stood.

She tripped out of the bathroom, flames around her eyes. “So what’s the plan, boss?”

“Bob’ll pick us up, we’ll find a hotel, and he’ll give us some background on the next visit.”

“Which is?”

“Ever heard of Roanoke Oil?”

Her face set. “Yes, I have. Serious eco-criminals.”

“I didn’t know that. Well, we’re going to have some fun. Because the thing was bought from our briny friends by the Roanoke family.”

“Oh, wow. That’s interesting. How long ago?”

“Three years, I think.”

“Wow. You know one of the Roanokes tried to take a stab at the presidency last time around?”

A few things went click click click in my head. And, I don’t know, call it an aftereffect of the exfiltration of vintage semen, call it suddenly becoming uncomfortable with only ever having told her part of the story, call it what you fucking like, I don’t care. But I asked her to sit down, and I told her what the book really was. Told her what I’d been told it was and what it was for.

After a while, she blew out a breath and said, “Holy shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Holy
shit
.”

“You said that.”

“What do you think he wants it back for?”

“Well, I don’t think it’s a magic book. I think it’s a little bit of history that he wants safely swept under his own carpet, rather than floating around out in the world.”

Trix stood up. Sat down again. Thought for a moment. Stood up. “Can I have one of your cigarettes?”

I handed her the pack and the lighter. There was memory in her fingers as she lit up. I felt bad for bringing on a relapse. She sucked the smoke down, and coughed it back out in big blue puffs. “What the fuck are these?”

“They’re organic.”

She looked at the pack. “You smoke cigarettes called ‘American Ghost’? Jesus, Mike. Organic
what
? Dead bodies?”

“Feeling better?”

“No!”

“Oh.”

She stabbed the cigarette to death in the ashtray. “Mike, I’m working for the White House.”

“It’s an
adventure
.”

“It’s the
government
.”

“It’s their money we’re spending. It’s their money I’m giving you. They are paying for our
adventure
because, well, they’re nuts and they think there’s a magic book on the loose in America. It’s not a magic book. It’s a faintly embarrassing antique that they are handing over stupid amounts of money for me to attempt to return to them. That said—”

Trix found my eyes. “—that
said
, one of the Roanokes tried to take a stab at the presidency last time around.”

“Yeah. So you said. What happened?”

“The guy couldn’t get on the ballots. Had worse problems than Nader. Spent a lot of money, but it all fell apart. Indymedia called it Bush Envy. See, what threw people was that he had no experience at all, in anything. He made Ross Perot look like JFK, you know? No one knew what made him think he could win. But, what I’m now thinking
is
, see, if he had the thing, the book, an actual honest-to-God whole other draft of the Constitution…”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah
. If he’d managed to get into the political fight, he could have, I don’t know, shown it off, or used it as secret leverage…”

“Hold on.” I quickly lit myself a cigarette. “You’re a bit ahead of me. Mentioning him running for office, that put up the red flag, because it’s the first political connection to the book I’ve had so far. But you think it could actually leverage someone into office?”

“Don’t know. I mean, if your guy honestly believes it’s full of…what? Precepts by which America can be healed? If your guy believes it, maybe someone else is crazy enough to. A book that can save America, signed by all the Founders…”

“…hell. That’s interesting. That’s really interesting. We need to get on a plane.”

“Hell, yeah,” she said.

A
t
the departure gate, a drunken airport security woman was handing out box cutters to the passengers.

“My asshole boyfriend’s in San Antone,” she slurred, pressing the plastic handle, sticky with beery sweat, into my hand. “Take over the plane, drop it on the fucking Alamo.”

Trix and I dropped the things into the nearest wastebasket. I looked back to see a team of cops lay into her with batons. “I’m white, you bastards!” she yelled, until one of them shot her with a Taser. The cops gathered around and silently watched her flop around on the floor like a fish out of water.

“Just another day out at the zoo,” Trix whispered. “Keep walking, Mike.”

B
ob
Ajax was waiting for us in the arrivals lounge at the San Antonio airport. Huge and fifty, with a grin like he’d just cheated God out of his savings.

“Mike Mc fucking Gill,” he bellowed. “Man, you’ve lost weight. New York City must be killing you.”

“Look at your goddamn stomach, man. You eat your last wife or something?”

“Bastard. And I see you’re hanging out with a better class of person these days.”

Trix read him in a second and gave him a sexy crooked smile. “Trix Holmes. Mike’s assistant.”

“Hell. I could use an assistant like you.”

“You couldn’t afford me, Bob.”

Bob laughed out loud. He’d always liked women who’d talk back to him just a little bit. “Girls with balls” were good. Women with an actual mind of their own who could prove him wrong in something were, of course, castrating bitches who should be drowned in bottomless wells. He’d heard of a place in Iceland where troublesome women were in fact drowned in a freezing bottomless well. Bob had once gotten inhumanly drunk and attempted to dig such a well outside the office in Chicago, using a stolen pneumatic drill and, in the final moments of his excavation, the head of a passing police officer. I helped him keep his job in the aftermath, and we’d been solid friends ever since.

Bob was still driving the same car: an immense, battered old Lincoln Continental that was held together by spit and a prayer. He slung our bags in a trunk already half-full with, in Bob’s words, “tools of the trade,” and then wrestled himself behind the wheel.

“One of those things looked like a harpoon, Bob. You do much whaling in San Antonio?”

“It’s a Persuader. Punches out door locks. Tool of the trade. You see the big black tube next to it?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s
the harpoon gun. Not loaded. Need to buy more ’poons. Because, y’know, I’m not as young as I was, and some of these bastards can run fast.”

“You harpoon people?”

“A bit.”

The Lincoln coughed and rolled out of the airport parking lot. It was warm, and the air conditioning smelled like something small and furry was trapped inside it, so I settled for rolling down the window.

“Yeah, sorry,” Bob said, reading my face in the rearview mirror. “There’s a rat stuck in here someplace. Little fuck is waiting for me to show weakness. He don’t know Bob Ajax.”

“Rats do that. How long to the hotel?”

“Forty minutes. So tell me about this job.”

“Short version? Mad old rich guy in D.C. lost an antique book, hired me to recover it. The paper trail led us down here. The Roanoke family.”

“Well,” Bob said, “I didn’t want to talk about it too much on an open line. But this might be the end of the road for you.”

Trix leapt on that. “Open line?”

“Damn right,” Bob shrugged. “You don’t screw around where the Roanokes are concerned. The two most dangerous things in the world are rich people and crazy people. The Roanokes are rich like pharaohs and crazier’n a snake-fucking baby.”

Trix shot me a look. I didn’t react. I knew Bob. And sure enough, his eyes were flicking to the rearview mirror, watching us. His shoulders tensed up.

“They have the wrong kind of friends all over Texas, lady,” Bob growled. “People owe them. They understand the modern kind of power. They don’t stand on high and wait for people to bring tribute. They spend their money and make sure everyone owes them something. You think people like that ever have less than a thousand wiretaps running at any one time?”

Looking absently out the window, I reached down and across, found Trix’s hand, and gave it a single sharp squeeze.

“I guess you’re right,” Trix said.

“Damn right,” Bob said, visibly relaxing.

“How long to the hotel, again?” Trix sighed.

Blank highway broke up into factories, housing, parking lots, stores. It didn’t look much different from Columbus. The press of cars grew tighter. Not a human body to be seen on the streets, such as they were.

“Does nobody walk here, or what?”

“Ah, well, you’ve come here at an exciting time, Mike. There’s a surplus in the city budget this year, so you know what we’re gonna do? We’re gonna pour us some sidewalks!”

“No sidewalks,” Trix muttered. Trying out the phrase on her tongue.

“You East Coast types,” Bob smirked. “You’re like little weakass colonies on the edge of Real America, you know that?”

“Walking makes us weakass?” I laughed.

“Fine for your cramped little towns like New York,” Bob proclaimed, sitting up taller in his seat. “But this is the big country, and we need big cars, and the space for ’em. This sidewalk thing, it just means we ain’t too proud to make things a little easier for our visiting cousins from Weakass Country. We’re big people like that.”

“You’re from fucking Minneapolis.”

“Texans are born, and Texans are grown, and they’re all Texans nonetheless. I fucking love it here.”

A few minutes later, he started crying, and had to pull over the car.

“They hate me,” he gasped between great painful heaving sobs, his big soft face contorted in agony. “God help me, Mike, they all fucking hate me like I was Hitler’s fartcatcher.”