Crooked Little Vein

Chapter 36

As the sun went down, we left the hotel and walked a while on the Strip. Dancing fountains and robot pirates for an hour, among the tourists and the beaten-looking locals and the pimps and losers handing out cards and flyers for sex and porn.

No one in Vegas ever looks like they’re having fun.

An old colleague of mine from there once told me of his plan to return to Vegas and get rich. He was going to install slot-machine public toilets on the Strip. You’d have to put a coin in the slot and pull the lever to get into the toilet. And if the reels were not your friend? The door would stay locked. He envisioned great long lines of people dying for a piss and throwing handfuls of metal into the machine for the chance of taking a leak before their bladders exploded.

He works in advertising now.

We spent a while in a bar with the map—no escape from the ringing cacophony of the machines—and then headed back to the Freedom to pick up the car, a two-seater new-style MG that I liked the sound of. It was small and sharp, great for navigating through the Strip. Once we were off the Strip, though, parking-lot country unfolded before us, as far as the eye could see. We could have been back in Columbus, San Antone, or any other city.

It was dark when we found the address. A cheap-as-dirt area, a bungalow that was ten years old but looked ready to fall apart like a stack of cardboard in the rain. The lights were all on, and there were a bunch of cars parked around it, but it was weirdly quiet. It immediately felt wrong.

“I kind of wish I had a gun,” I said quietly.

“Why?” I made her nervous. Which was good.

“Something doesn’t ring right. I don’t know what. If I tell you to run, head straight back to the car, no argument. Okay?”

“Okay.”

We got out of the car. Something was bugging me. And I was also disturbed by wanting a gun twice in as many days.

It was getting darker.

There were voices behind the door, low and fast. I rang the door buzzer a couple of times. No one came out. I leaned on it.

A tall, florid-faced Latina with purple streaks in her hair and mascara streaks on her face ripped the door open.

“Are you the paramedics?” she shrieked.

“No. We’re here to see Alexis Perez.”

She went to slam the door. I put my foot in it.

“It’s very important.”

“No it’s not. She can’t see you.”

“Why not?”

She lost it. “Because I think she’s dying!”

I straight-armed the door open, knocking the woman down, and boiled through into the house. I just had to follow the voices.

There were four other Latinas in the kitchen and one on the floor, naked but for a bra, laying on her front and shaking violently. There were livid red pinholes on her backside. The four standing may as well have been laying down for all the use they were. They were terrified.

I shoved one out of the way, went down on one knee, and pushed the girl over into recovery position. There was foam on her lips and her eyes were rolling back into her head. She was making long, drawn-out creaking noises, her chest convulsing.

I looked up at them. “Who dialed 911?”

The one I knocked down stamped back into the room, big hands balled into fists. “I did, bitch.”

“Call them again. Her lungs are locking up. Anyone know if she has asthma or allergies?”

They shook their heads dumbly.

“Do any of you use inhalers?” Nothing. I rolled her all the way over into shock position, ripping off my jacket and balling it up to put under her feet.

It was then that I noticed she was a he.

Trix was at the kitchen sink. Anger shook in her voice. She said, “Who brought this shit in here?”

I got the jacket under the ladyboy’s feet and straightened up. There were large-bore needles in the sink, and canisters of something that looked like they belonged on a hardware store’s shelf.

Trix turned on them. “Come on. Which of you retards brought this shit in here and shot her up with it?”

“What’s going on, Trix?”

“It’s a pumping party, Mike. It’s a party where male-to-female transgendered people with acute fucking body dysmorphia who can’t fucking read”—she spat that into the face of the one who answered the door—“inject themselves with silicone to give themselves a more womanly shape.”

“Hey, look, she wanted it,” Purple-streaks said.

Trix slapped her, hard. “It’s industrial-grade silicone, you stupid fucking asshole! It’s caulk! It’s sealant! This is the shit you waterproof bathtubs with! They lubricate shit on oil rigs with this stuff!”

I looked down at the boy fighting for breath. “Oh my God.”

“Yeah,” Trix said. “It’s not sterile, it can come mixed with paraffin, and it can kill you in like half a dozen ways. It came up in a transgendered activism workshop I sat in on last summer. Pumping parties. Boys in dresses who want J-Lo’s butt.”

“What can we do?”

“She’s in toxic shock. And from the sound of her breathing, I bet you the stuff is migrating up into her lungs. It goes everywhere. How much,” she rounded on Purple-streaks again, “did you shoot into her?”

“Tonight, or in total?”

Trix got in her face. “He’s got a gun and I can own you with my bare fucking hands! How much?”

“Two thousand CCs each buttock. That was just tonight.”

The boy on the floor stopped breathing.

Trix and I both applied CPR, but it was no good. The lungs were full of industrial sealant. By the time the paramedics arrived, it was all over.

The one with the purple streaks sat on the floor by the sink, knees drawn up, saying nothing but “Oh, God, Alexis,” over and over again.

But Alexis was dead.