Chapter 25

Bob ate the entire damn thing, but was paralyzed afterward. After some cajoling, we arranged to briefly borrow a wheeled office chair from the restaurant’s back room, and trundled him out to the parking lot in it. He was still sucking scraps of flesh off the horn, and bellowing that he’d showed them, he’d showed them all. Oh, and that the chef was a whore.

“Fuck this,” I said. “Get the keys from him. I’ll drive. We’ll dump his crazy ass in front of the hotel and pay someone to move him or kill him or something.”

“This is how you treat your friends?”

“He’s a nutbag, Trix. Look at him.”

“Whooooores,” said Bob.

“There you go. Get the fucking keys.”

Trix patted him down and found the keys in his inside jacket pocket. “Thank God,” she groaned. “I wasn’t up for checking his pants.”

Bob studied her with one eye, oddly drunken. “Mike never had the pretty girls before. How does he get the pretty girls now? I’m a goddamn Texan.”

“You always talk to your buddies’ girls like that?” she frowned, tossing me the keys.

I nearly dropped them.

“That’s how I get into trouble.” Bob teared up. “I’m so lonely.” And, just at the point where we softened, he added, “Whooooores.”

I opened up the rear door and tipped him into it.

“What about the chair?”

“Leave it here. They called that rump well done? If I’d poured my beer on it to wake it up it could’ve skated its way home in that damn chair. Get in.”

“Oooh. Masterful.”

“I’ll spank you right here in the parking lot.”

“Promises.”

“Just get in the car.”

As we pulled out of the parking lot, Bob seemed to pull out of his meat fugue a little. “Left at the lights. Something I want to show you.”

“Whores?”

“No. Roanoke.”

I looked for Trix’s take. She shrugged. “It’s what we came for.”

I took us left at the lights, and a handful more directions took us out of town. The dark came in hard. Trix looked up out of the window. “Stars,” she said. “You don’t see so many in New York. You don’t realize.”

“Kill the lights,” said Bob, “and pull over here.” We did, by a low wooden fence.

“Get out and look into the field.”

“What are we looking for, Bob?”

“You’ll see.”

The night air was warm. The fence surrounded a large field littered with sleeping cattle. We wandered to the fence, put our feet on it, and waited.

“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.”

Crooked Little Vein
titlepage.xhtml
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_000.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_001.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_002.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_003.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_004.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_005.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_006.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_007.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_008.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_009.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_010.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_011.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_012.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_013.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_014.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_015.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_016.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_017.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_018.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_019.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_020.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_021.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_022.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_023.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_024.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_025.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_026.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_027.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_028.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_029.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_030.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_031.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_032.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_033.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_034.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_035.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_036.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_037.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_038.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_039.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_040.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_041.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_042.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_043.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_044.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_045.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_046.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_047.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_048.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_049.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_050.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_051.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_052.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_053.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_054.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_055.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_056.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_057.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_058.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_059.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_060.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_061.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_062.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_063.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_064.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_065.html
Crooked_Little_Vein_split_066.html