Warren Ellis - Crooked Little Vein

“You look tense,” Trix said. “Have a cigarette while we’re waiting for whatever we’re waiting for.”

“The lighter flame will screw up my night vision.”

“Huh,” she said, thoughtfully. “You’re a real detective, aren’t you?”

“What did you think I was?”

“A cute, crazy guy who just fell into a crappy job. I don’t think it ever occurred to me that you were, you know, a real detective. Knowing about things like night vision sounds like real detective stuff.”

“Well, at least I’m still cute.”

“I like funny-looking guys.”

“Oh, thanks.”

She giggled and hugged my arm. “You are just too easy to tease. Look. The cattle are waking up.”

They were. And starting to move. Scattering. There was motion in the middle of the herd. Something running. I squinted, leaning in.

There was a naked man among the cattle. Silver hair in the starlight. Deep lines in his face when he moved out of the shadows of cows. Thin and leanly muscled, he sprinted between the frightened cattle, zigzagging wildly.

He stopped sharply as one cow moved diagonally in front of him. And then sprang like a jungle cat, landing on top of the beast. There was something in his hand that sparkled in the starlight. Wire. He drew it between his fists and made a looping motion under the cow’s throat.

The naked old man garroted the cow with great industry, bringing it down. Hard muscles in his upper arms worked under gray skin. The cow twitched, shat itself, and died.

The old man clambered over the carcass and began to suckle at the dead beast’s udders. Then crouched, face shiny with corpse-milk under the stars, threw his head back and howled like a wolf into the night.

We silently returned to Bob.

“That’s Old Man Roanoke taking his nightly exercise,” Bob whispered. “G. Gordon Liddy gave him that garrote.”

Wedrove back to the hotel in silence. Bob said he felt well enough to drive, so we stood there as he jammed himself back behind the wheel of the car and took off. We watched his car fishtail down the street and, a block and a half down, bury its front end in the door of a sports bar. Bob slumped out of the car door onto the street like a harpooned whale as the engine caught fire. Many large men came out of the bar with a surprising array of impromptu weaponry in hand.

“Fuck it,” I said, and went inside.

“I’m going to stay here a minute,” said Trix.

“You want to help him?”

“No, I want to see what they do to him. I’ll be up in a minute.”

There was someone waiting for me in the hotel room.

“So you think the Roanokes have it?” the White House chief of staff said, tying off in the armchair in front of an evangelist channel on the TV.

“Oh, God.”

“That’s good, Mr. McGill. Very good. We didn’t know that. As you’re probably aware, my president can’t run for office again, unless we. Ha ha. Unless we change the Constitution. Can you imagine if Junior Roanoke had gotten to Washington? If he’d filled a room with the lawmakers, the great and the good, stood there at his lectern, opened the book and slammed it down? The Founders didn’t imagine a time of radio and television. Politics was done in real time, with physical crowds. Just showing the people the pages on television, or reading them on radio, won’t work. People have to be in the presence of the book, for its acoustic effect to work. If he’d ever been able to address serious audiences, the outcome would have been terrible. I don’t think the Roanokes fully understand what they have.”

I flopped into a chair. “What do you want?”

“I’ve gotten you an appointment with the Roanoke family for tomorrow morning at eleven. If they have the book, you’re empowered to make them an offer of ten million dollars for it, contingent upon their permanent silence concerning its existence.”

“I see.”

“If they refuse, you’re to use your cell phone to call 555 555-5555. Let it ring twice, and hang up.”

“That’s not a real number. 555 is the fake area code Hollywood movies use.”

“We gave it to them. It works for us. Ring twice, then hang up.”

“What happens then?”

“A fuel-air bomb of some description, I believe,” he said, injecting himself with something brown and lumpy. “It’ll look like the gasoline reservoir under their ranch went up, they tell me. Eleven o’clock, then. Good hunting, Mr. McGill.”

He stood up to leave, shakily. “Oh, and don’t worry, I haven’t taken heroin in your hotel room. I have a cage of genetically modified green monkies that express anticancer pharmaceuticals in their feces. Once a day, I have to inject dilute monkey turds. But it’s better than dying, yes?”

“I’d have to think about that.”

“Mmm. I imagine you would.”

At the door, he stopped again.

“One more thing, Mr. McGill. The girl.”

“Is none of your business. You’re just the client. You don’t get a say in how I do my job or who I spend time with.”

“Aren’t we scrappy these days, Mr. McGill?”

“I’ve not been in the best mood lately, for some reason.”

“You don’t enjoy your work, Mike. It is very sad. The girl, Mike, is a crazed omnisexual vaginalist with a string of lovers from genders they don’t even have names for yet. She’ll break your heart, Mike. Take my advice. Get your own room, put your pants on backward, and wear boxing gloves. It’s good for you. Trust me. I’m the White House chief of staff.”

He drifted out the door like a handful of black feathers cast on a winter’s breeze.

Trixcame in. “I got the concierge to call the police. But the police beat Bob up, too.”

I was drinking. I have two drinking faces, I’ve been told. The Social Drinking face, and the I Need to Drink Until the Front of My Brain Dies face.

“What’s wrong?”

“We have an appointment with the Roanokes tomorrow at eleven.”

“How did that happen?”

“My client was here. He told me things.”

“He arranged it? Jesus.”

“Yeah.”

“You okay?”

I summoned a smile from somewhere. “Sure.”

“You want to come to bed?”

No. I wanted to get really fucking drunk and then stab myself repeatedly.

“Nah. We’re out of condoms. Forgot to buy any.”

She sat on the arm of my chair. “What makes you think we need any?”

“Not without condoms, Trix.”

“True. I don’t know where you’ve been. But not what I meant.” She rubbed her palm over the back of my hand. “I have hands. You have hands. You and me: it doesn’t always have to be about vanilla humping, Mike.”

“I like vanilla humping.”

“Come here. I’m going to rewire your vanilla little brain with my bare hands.”

Inthe middle of the night, I said, “You said you were my girl. To Bob. You said he shouldn’t talk like that to his buddies’ girls.”

“I did.”

“Are you my girl?”

“Do you want me to be?”

“Do you want to be?”

“Why would you want me to be your girl?”

“Because you’re smarter than I am. Because you see things I don’t. Because you make me feel good just by looking at me. Because you fit right in my arms.”

“Are you going to start singing?”

“And because sometimes I want to strangle you.”

“That can be hot.”

“I’m going to strangle you right now.”

“You can’t lift your arms.”

“…shit.”

“I’ve never been monogamous in my life, Mike.”

“I know.”

“I can’t do it.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“But you want me to be your girl.”

“If you want to be.”

“I like girls, too.”

“I don’t want to watch or anything.”

“I thought two girls was every man’s dream.”

“You’re my dream.”

“I don’t believe you said that.”

“I’m never going to admit I did, so get over it.”

She laughed, low in her throat.

“How’s this going to work, Mike?”

“There’s only one thing I want. For as long as we last. Because I’m a depressing realist.”

She tensed against me a little. “And what’s that?”

“Other guys, I’m always going to have a problem with.”

“That could be a problem.”

“Yeah. And I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. But the only thing I really want?”

“Yeah?”

“No matter what you do? Come home with me at the end of the night.”

And then she kissed me.

Ifthey don’t give us the book they’re going to blow up the ranch ?”

“Still want to come?”

Okay, so maybe telling her that was a mistake. I’d arranged for a chauffeured car to take me to and from the Roanoke ranch outside town, and had suggested to Trix that maybe she wanted to stay at the hotel while I worked.

“Yes I do! I’m not letting you go into that on your own!”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious! Jesus! They want to blow the place up if the Roanokes don’t hand over the book? Wouldn’t that blow up the book, too?”

“I’m figuring they worked that out and that they know something we don’t. Maybe it’s in a vault or something. Anyway, I don’t think this counts as adventure.”

She grabbed me by the back of the hair as I tried to put my pants on.

“I’m coming.”

“Yes yes okay fuck ow okay yes.”

“Good.” She went off to find her boots, muttering.

Came back. “Mike. They wouldn’t really …”

“The guy sat in that chair and injected monkey shit into his arm, Trix.”

“Yeah. Getting boots now.”

I counted off five seconds.

“He did what ?”

“Don’t be judgmental, Trix.”

Itwas a long drive out under an unforgiving sun. Even with the A/C cranked up in the rear of the car, I was regretting putting on the jacket and tie.

Trix was in boots, a short skirt, and a vest-top, showing off both sleeves of tattoos. “You think I’m covering up for the fucking Roanokes? I’m going to take a dump in their oven.”

“Hell, I don’t care. I need to look professional, you can look any way you like.”

“I like you in suits. You should get a new one, though. That one’s a bit frayed.”

“Oh, that’s not wear and tear. That’s where the rat would eat at it.”

“The rat.”

“The super-rat in my office. One time I put tinfoil on the floor outside his rat hole and hooked it up to a car battery. When he walked out on it, he should’ve lit up like a murderer on Old Sparky. But he stood up on his hind legs like Tony Montana in Scarface, you know? ‘I can take your fucking bullets.’ Soaked up every volt in the battery, jumped up on my desk and had sex with my sandwich until it dissolved. I hate that rat.”

“Sometimes I wonder how close to hospitalization or suicide you really were before I met you.”

“Three…maybe four hours.”

The Roanoke ranch came into view. It gleamed under the sun. The whole complex was painted a brilliant bone white. As we pulled into the driveway, I noticed half of a cow’s skeleton poking out of the lawn, jutting the way you see them sticking out of desert sand in Westerns.

A little farther down, there was a human skeleton sticking out of the ground in the same way. With a buzzard perched on it.