Crooked Little Vein

“Please come inside. We have a security procedure to complete before I can introduce you to Mr. Roanoke. He’s extremely protective of his family’s safety, as I’m sure you can understand.”

We were taken out of the sun into the main residence’s cavernous, galleried hallway. A female security agent was produced, and she and Menlove patted Trix and me down, ran fingers through our hair, and requested to see our teeth. Trix was looking around the place as best she could, rolling her eyes from side to side—and then coughed out, “Holy shit!”

“What?”

“Please regulate your language in here, ma’am,” the female security agent said.

“Eat me. Mike, look at the goddamn galleries!”

Running alongside the staircase, and across the landing gallery, was a long row of mounted, stuffed animal heads. Nothing special, you see that a lot—I don’t want to sound jaded, but Old Rich Guys all went to the same fucking interior decorator or something—and my eyes just skipped over them. “What about them?”

Trix grabbed my head and turned it in the direction of that which was vexing her most. “There. Look.”

“…well, that can’t be real.”

“Mike, the guy has a dolphin head stuffed and mounted on his wall.”

“There’s no way that’s real.”

“Mike, this bastard cut Flipper’s head off and put it on the wall.”

“Maybe Flipper had it coming.”

“Mike.”

“How the hell do you remember Flipper, anyway? Flipper was caught in a tuna net before you were born.”

“I saw reruns as a kid. And you take that back about the tuna net. Look up there. My God, I think that’s a kitten head next to it.”

Menlove was looking uncomfortable. “Perhaps we can go through to the living room.”

“No, no, give us a minute here. I know that’s a moose, but, next to it there…would you know if that’s a white tiger?”

“It might be. Mr. Roanoke will be free to speak to you in just a few moments.”

“And that there. That’s a seal, isn’t it?”

“Oh my God, Mike. Roanoke has a seal head on his wall.”

In fact, the longer we looked, the more animals we identified, and none of them really belonged on a polished wooden base and hanging on a wall. Even the moose. Because it turned out it was a reindeer. And someone had applied rouge to its nose.

“Yes. That was me. My daughter was naughty. I told her that I had killed Rudolph and mounted him in my gallery, and so there would be no Christmas.”

Old Man Roanoke, tall and lean and lined and surprisingly easy to recognize with all his clothes on. Flanked on one side by a security agent, and on the other by a male nurse. He was in blue jeans and a work shirt, which is another weird quirk of Rich Old Men. Just one of the guys here. Blue jeans and a work shirt, salt of the earth, working man like yourself. Like they’re somehow uncomfortable about being rich enough to sleep in a bed made of vaginas being pulled around the town at night by a fleet of gold-covered midgets.

I don’t go into situations like this in the best of moods in any case. But I found myself becoming unusually irritated. Trix, God help her, was practically vibrating with rage just simply by being there.

The male nurse cleared his throat. “I’m uncomfortable with this interview at this time of the day. So, please, let’s get on with it. Mr. Roanoke is in something of a delicate medical balance.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You’re ill?”

He grinned the way lizards should grin; slow and lazy, like a lizard early on a cold morning. “I have Roanoke’s Disease.”

“You’d think you would have seen that coming,” Trix said.

Roanoke scanned Trix quickly and then shot Menlove a filthy look. “There’s a girl in here, Mr. Menlove.”

“We’ve checked her out, sir. She actually has a very small penis. Like a baby boy’s. Undescended testes.”

“Okay. Good. Like your agent there. Seems to be an awful lot of that about. Must be the water the poor people have to drink. They do drink water, don’t they?”

Menlove straightened, moved behind me. “I hear they can’t afford water, sir, and drink something called Mountain Dew.” Leaned in and hissed in my ear, “Just roll with it, please. This is my life. This is how I have to live. Help me out.”

I stepped to Trix, gave her hand a quick sharp squeeze. She flicked her eyes to mine, read me, and shrugged.

“Ah,” Roanoke said. “You would be McGill. Would you like to see my garrote, McGill?”

I decided not to mention that I’d already seen it in action. “I’m really just here to discuss a rare book that your family purchased a few years ago from a police officer in Ohio.”

He pulled the garrote out of his pants pocket. “This garrote,” he said, dangling it in front of his eyes like a stage hypnotist’s watch, “was fashioned from the guts of Sand Gooks.”

“Sand Gooks.”

“Oh yes. They hunt me. I have fought the Sand Gook for thirty years or more. They know my name. Their men are impotent with hate and their women smell like a baby’s graveyard.”

“Mr. Roanoke really should be in bed,” the male nurse said.

“I need that book.”

“Yes,” Roanoke croaked. “I know who you work for. Menlove! Did you check under their car?”