Crooked Little Vein

I thanked him and we headed to the bar. The guy the cops called Muppet was there, all right. Hair like red yarn, red eyebrows that you’d need a whip and a chair to put in their place, eyes that stood out of his face like someone had slipped boiled eggs into his sockets. Wearing a wifebeater so old and thin that you could see his ribs through it, so scrawny you could practically see his heart behind his ribs. Jogging pants covered in tiny little burn holes and stinking of dope, and shiny new running shoes.

We ordered drinks and watched him for a little bit. I wanted to get his measure. Every few minutes his pocket played the riff from “Axel F,” and he fished a cell phone out from it. It always came out with scraps of tissue stuck to it by velcro snot. He’d rattle off numbers in a reedy voice and then shove it back. Take a few deep pulls of beer. Repeat.

The fifth time the phone went back, I approached him. Muppet immediately fixed me with awesomely bloodshot eyes.

“You’re Muppet?” I said.

“Muppet,” he agreed.

“Cop,” he said.

“Private detective. There’s no trouble here. I’m looking to talk with Tim about buying something he recently came into possession of. Straight business deal, no cops, no angles.”

“Tell Muppet. Muppet tell him.”

“I get to talk directly to him tonight, you get a finder’s fee. My client authorized five grand.”

His red eyes wheeled about in his head. “Fifteen.”

“Ten.” Which was the number I was going to start with, before I got a look at him.

“Now.”

“When I’ve got what I want. I can’t get the cash out of the client otherwise.”

“Now.”

“Can’t do it.”

“Now.”

“Forget it,” I said, and turned away, collecting Trix’s hand in mine.

“Where you going?” Muppet whined.

“Cops,” I said. “I was keeping them out of it, dealing on the level. But if you’re going to be a prick about it, I’m going to talk to a couple of friends on the force. They’ll pick him up on a bogus charge and put him in a cell long enough for me to talk to him. My buddies will split eight grand, which leaves two for me as a little bonus. And when Tim asks exactly who fucked up to the extent that he’s spending a night in a cell with some AIDS-infested assrapist, I’ll tell him it was you. I’m dealing straight with you, but I’m not going to be fucked with.”

Muppet folded in on himself, scowling. “Muppet sad.”

“Have a nice night,” I said, and started walking.

“Okay,” he piped, pulling his phone.

“You’re funny when you try to be a hardass,” Trix whispered. I trod on her foot.

Chapter 39

Christ, I want a gun,” I heard myself say.

The address Muppet gave us, after an interminable time on the phone where he explained the situation to Tim Cardinal in the style of fucking Sesame Street, appeared to be an abandoned water utility plant. Huge filthy pumps stood dead, there wasn’t a light on in the place, and it all felt like trouble.

“You think he’s maybe a touch paranoid?” Trix smiled.

We found the open door to the main building, as described by Muppet. There was a heavy flashlight laid on the floor waiting for us. I switched it on and lit up a place that looked like it’d been abandoned with two minutes’ notice. Mugs of coffee still on tables, overflowing with vivid green mold. In the messroom, fungus crawled off plates left midmeal, skewed cutlery half-buried in the moss. Here and there, coats still hung on hooks.

We had our instructions. We went down. Rusted metal staircases rung dissonantly. The wet stone floors deadened all the sound. Even our footsteps rang wrong.

Two levels down, we found the door we were looking for, an X roughly scratched into its steel. There was an odd light beyond. I went through first, shifting my grip down to the base of the flashlight so I could use it as a blackjack if necessary.

The door was an access point to a wide, wet, stinking tunnel. My attention was drawn to the floor. The light came from a couple of dozen shake-and-break green glowsticks tossed on the ground.

And I was looking at those instead of everything else.

Trix yelped.

I turned. There was a gun muzzle pushed into her eye.

A tall, thin man with bad skin and eyes like a doll’s was behind her, one arm around her throat, the other pressing a gun into her eye.

“The thing about cheap bullets,” he said, “is that they’ll shatter on the inside of her skull. I can shoot her through the brain and the bullet will not emerge out of the other side. My name’s Tim Cardinal. I understand you wanted to see me.”

Dead eyes. They didn’t reflect any light. Black and motionless. His smile was polite and without life.

“This was business,” I said.

His polite smile widened by a precise amount, as if he’d learned how to feign emotions in the mirror. “This is how I do business. I have no desire to kill her. But then, I have no desire to use toilets or eat food. They are simply things I have to do in order to live. So is this. You wanted to see me?”

“Trix, just relax,” I said. “We’re doing business here. He’s not going to have any reason to harm you.”

“You think he needs a reason?” she said.