Crooked Little Vein

“Buy me vodka and you’ve got a deal.”

We took a cab to the Shark Bar, a block down from CBGB, where they skinned anyone who complained about cigarette smoke. The barman wore the scalp of a Straight Edge punk boy from San Jose as a hat. It was going yellow and crunchy around the edges despite frequent applications of handcream, but the lovingly tended brush of peroxide mohawk was as thick and lustrous as the fur of a pedigree cat.

Trix was twenty-three, lived in the Village, and had three girlfriends and two boyfriends. She was therefore the one who had my missing share of sex, as well as apparently four other people’s. She was a little defensive about that, possibly because she was talking to a straight guy with short hair in a suit with a sign floating about his head blaring NO GIRLFRIEND. “Polyamory doesn’t mean I’m a slut. It just means I have a lot of love to give and I want a lot of people in my life.”

She had problems with men. “Most guys are wired for one-way monogamy. You only sleep with them, but they jump someone else any time a chance to stay in practice raises its head. Plus, I’m very multiple.”

“As in…?”

“Multiple orgasms. I get off fast and often. Which means any guy fucking me feels like James Bond. Which means that they don’t want anyone else to feel like James Bond.”

“Or-gas-em. I’ve heard of those. Is that with other people?”

She laughed, which I liked. “So tell me what ‘the usual’ is.”

I groaned, checked my glass. Groaned again.

“Vodka later. Talk first. Dish, secret-agent man.”

“The usual is that…well, I met someone the other day who put it well. I’m a shit magnet.”

She arched a drawn eyebrow.

“There are eight bars around this block. I naturally find the one where the barman accessorizes with human headskin. I follow up one lead on this case and I find fifty people furiously masturbating over recut Japanese monster movies.” I told her the ostrich story, which had her rolled up with laughter.

“This is just lousy luck, though. It can’t happen to you all the time.”

“That’s the thing. It does. Every case I’ve had since I opened up business on my own. Never happened when I worked a desk. It’s something to do with my direct interaction with the world. I’m a shit magnet. I’m everything that never happened to anyone else.

“Here’s one. I was hired on a missing-persons gig. A sixty-five-year-old terminally ill man had walked out of the hospital and vanished. The family wanted me to find him. Turns out he’s joined an old people’s suicide club called Sinner’s Gate. Sick old people intending to kill themselves to escape indignity. Only Sinner’s Gate members believe they led bad lives and have no right to a painless exit.

“I found him in a shithole off the Bowery, in a room with a vacuum cleaner. You know what degloving is?”

She shook her head, nervous of the story.

“I walked in and he put his penis in the vacuum cleaner and switched it on. Ripped the entire skin off his penis instantly. That’s degloving. The pain and shock overloaded his nervous system, causing an immediate and massive heart attack that killed him stone dead on the spot.”

“Jesus Christ, Mike…”

“Big old fat naked dead guy flopped over a vacuum cleaner that was still chewing on his dick. This is my life, Trix.”

She looked at me. Direct eye contact, a little creasing of her mouth. I realized it was pity.

“Next round’s on me, Mike.”

She came back with doubles and sank back into her chair.

“So tell me,” I said, absently calculating how much more I should have, “what’s NULL stand for?”

“National Union of Lizard Lovers.”

“I guess I could have worked that one out.”

“And you call yourself a detective. Tell me about this case of yours.”

“Promise not to laugh.”

“No.”

“Okay…I’ve been asked to find an old book that was apparently written by some of the Founders immediately after drafting the Constitution.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Apparently you weren’t supposed to. It was lost from a private collection back in the 1950s and the new holder of the collection wants it back.”

“Tell me what this has to do with NULL.”

I pulled the black handheld computer from my inside jacket pocket. “According to the very cold trail, NULL obtained it a couple of years ago while blackmailing a mayoral personage, and then traded it to a businessman in return for an infinite lease on that building.”

“Not Rudy?” She laughed.

“No idea.”

“And you know Donald Trump owns a lot of property in SoHo, right?”

“…naaah.”

She leaned in, grinning. “Damn, this is interesting, though. Where did the book go next?”

I opened the handheld and powered it up. The way she looked at it broke at least two Commandments. “That’s one of the new Sonys. You know how much those things cost?”

“Um…no. I had a Palm when I was with Pinkerton.”

She snatched it off me. The screen lit her eyes like lanterns. “It’s got a camera!”

“Where?”

“This lens in the hinge. You didn’t see it?”

“I, ah…I just thought it was, you know, a high-tech hinge.”

Trix smiled at me. “Tard.”