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
“What’s going on, Trix?”
“It’s a pumping party, Mike. It’s a party where male-to-female transgendered people with
“Hey, look, she wanted it,” Purple-streaks said.
Trix slapped her, hard. “It’s
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
“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.
Chapter 37
Trix and I gave the cops an edited version of our reason for being there. The attending officers from homicide were a couple of old bulls of the type that I’m always comfortable dealing with. Macabre as it may have seemed, I needed to get a look around the house, and I laid it out for them.
We got to talking, and they in turn laid things out for us.
They knew Alexis was a hooker. His/her pimp was well known to them. Tim Cardinal, Teflon Tim, from whom all useful charges slid. He was a common-or-garden pimp with extraordinary luck. You get old bulls like these two talking about the ones who got away and it’s like asking your grandfather about the war. Trix and I were lucky we had nowhere to be.
After a while, and the potted history of Teflon Tim and the five murders he’d wriggled out of, the pair agreed that we could do a quick sweep of the house for the book. The case was as clear-cut as it got, we weren’t going to mess with the investigation, and they got a favor in New York City owed them in the future. Connections and under-the-desk favors count for a lot.
Alexis didn’t have a lot of stuff, and it was a small place. After an hour, we were certain that the book wasn’t there.
“This thing’s valuable, right?” said one of the detectives.
“Kind of,” I said. “Very old. A collector would pay top dollar.”
“Well, you know who’s got it, then. Teflon Tim.”
“You think?”
“Sure. He’s not dumb. Talks like a lawyer. And for a pimp, he’s not an absolute fucking prick, you know? I bet he took the book in return for paying her rent for six months or something.”
“Yeah,” said the other. “Freeing up the cash for her to pay her buddy to shoot her ass full of caulk.”
“That makes a disgusting kind of sense,” I said. “So where do I find Teflon Tim?”
Chapter 38
There’s a fucked-up shitpipe in the men’s room,” said the bouncer as we slid through the knifemarked door into the bar. The place stank of weed and puke and shit. Two ceiling lights out of every three had been smashed out, jagged glass glinting in the fixtures.
“We’re looking for Muppet,” I said, as the two cops had suggested.
The bouncer looked us over, distaste in his big stitched-up face. “Business or pleasure?”
“Strictly business.”
