Crooked Little Vein

He flipped his tennis racquet from right to left so he could shake hands with me, a wide soft grip. His eyes locked on to mine for a couple of seconds, judging. He wasn’t stupid. He was letting me think I was stronger than him, and checking my reaction.

“Mike McGill. Good to meet you. I’m here on behalf of a client about a rare book we believe entered your possession a few years ago, purchased from a police officer in Ohio…?”

Roanoke’s oddly boyish, rubbery face stretched into an easy grin. “That old thing?”

“I’m empowered to offer you a significant sum to obtain it.”

“Well, hell, son, we should go to my den and talk about it. C’mon back.”

He stopped, on one foot, and looked back over his shoulder. “No girls.”

Trix rolled her eyes. “I’ll be in the car. With the engine running, Mike.”

Chapter 31

Down two flights of stairs, through some heavy doors, into a bare concrete corridor lit by caged lamps hung from the walls, to a steel hatch that Junior spun the wheel of with practiced ease.

“This is the den?”

“Daddy doesn’t like it when I call it the bunker. Bad associations with the past, he says. So, well, whatever keeps the old man happy.”

Inside was a dark, warm space from the 1950s. Baseball pennants pinned to rich wood-paneled walls, old globes and maps, Tiffany lamps, an antique radio, and a bar straight out of a Rat Pack musical.

“Drink?” Junior said, walking over to the big mahogany desk at the far side of the room.

“No, thanks. I’d like to get straight down to business, if I could.”

“Businessman? That’s good. What’s your business, Mike?”

“A book you possess. A, um, an alternate Constitution of the United States.”

Behind the desk, he was opening its deep central drawer. “Ah,” he said, with rueful knowledge. “That old thing.”

“I represent someone who wants that book very badly. I’m empowered to offer you ten million dollars for it. But the deal has to be struck today.”

His eyes widened and his mouth shrank. “Today?”

“Yes, sir. This is a matter of the utmost urgency to my client.”

“That damned book.” He sat down heavily in the big leather chair behind the desk. “I tried reading it once. It was the strangest thing. I dropped it down on the desk, right here, to read it, and it was like my goddamn eyeballs were bugging out. I didn’t understand a word of the text but I couldn’t stop reading it. And Daddy wanted me to use that damned thing…” He trailed off, looking down into whatever was in the open drawer, out of my line of vision.

“With your father, um, out of commission, I was hoping you could help me.”

“I wasn’t ready to be president. I’m going to be. But I wasn’t ready then. And I’m not ready for this today.”

“No offense, Mr. Roanoke, but you need to be ready for this. This is extremely important.”

“Gimme…gimme a second,” he whispered. And withdrew an old gas mask, the full-face kind that has the airtank and compressor hanging from the thick pipe connected to the mouth of the mask. I noticed that the bottom of the tank had been sawed off, and stepped in to see what he was doing.

In the deep drawer was a small mountain of cocaine. The only thing it was missing were gulls nesting in the crevices. Tony goddamn Montana would have quailed at the sight of it.

Junior shoved the open end of the tank into the white pile and flipped on the compressor. Enough coke to kill a flock of young tyrannosaurs was sucked up into Junior’s head. He ripped off the mask and shrieked. Bloody residue dripped out of the tank and back onto the pile. Eyes bulging, he looked down at the smashed heap of marching powder. “My God! I see Jesus! I see His Face in these Satanic drugs! I am Saved! Glory Be!”

He looked at my face and laughed. “Relax, sport. I’m just practicing. I’m going to be president one day. It’s important to get these things right.”

“The book—”

“Fuck the book. I’ve just had a religious conversion. Were you impressed?”

“I kind of expected you to be a religious man, in any case,” I said, looking for something heavy.

“Ringo says religion is a political tool,” he honked, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to claw through to his sinuses.

“Who’s Ringo?”

Junior wrenched open the left-hand drawer in the desk and ripped from it a scrawny-looking cuddly toy with its eyes plucked out and awful stains on its mouth.

“This is Ringo!” he exulted. “Ringo is my friend!” He clutched the scabby thing to a chest already pebble-dashed with cocaine, bloodclots, and snot.

My back bumped into the door. “And…he says things, does he?”

“Yeahhhhhh,” Junior sighed, stroking Ringo’s stomach in a disturbingly sexual way.

“Okay. He speaks to you. That’s fine. However, I’d appreciate it if you could save the conversation in your head for later and address the matter at hand.”

“Ringo could speak to you, too.”

“Yeah,” I said. I gave a halfhearted wave in the direction of the stained object in Junior’s fist. “Hi, Ringo.”

“No,” Junior intoned, unsmiling. “You have to press his stomach.”

“Why?”

“You have to. You can’t leave until you’ve pressed his stomach.”