CHAPTER 14: A PENTOTHAL ENEMA
I awoke hanging upside down in a harness with what looked like warm rice pudding dripping languidly through a bag into my colon. The interrogation room was white with a greasy albumin finish, and no sooner had I opened my eyes than the third degree began.
"Alright, Doolan, where did you come from and what do you want from Vice?"
The Lieutenant didn't look any smarter from this angle and my brain was unscrambled enough to know he wouldn't like my M.O. any better than before.
"I wanted some make-up tips from Sgt. Onassis here," I said, getting a swift kick in the face in exchange.
"Careful, Doolan," chimed in Saltpeter, "that's a pentothal enema. One false word and we'll know it."
"Before you went out you said something about the Equalizer. Are you some kinda amateur stereo thief, Doolan?"
"If I may Sir, the Equalizer is Death -- the Great leveller. But why dwell on that, Doolan? Shit is so much...cleaner."
This psycho babylon was starting to chafe where the bag hung and I was running low on patience. Then I heard something weird crackle out over the police band radio. Routine disturbance at a place called the Mars Bar on Avenue B. It was the name of the owner that caught my ear and spun my head, though.
Geek Pederast -- a snotty delinquent I'd busted and set free for some useful information a long time ago and a whole world away. I knew if anyone down here had a lead on a twelve-year-old Martian girl or the elusive Ms. Romilar it would have to be him. If Natasha found him first, though, things wouldn't be too pleasant on the Lower East Side of his skull. Meanwhile, I had to get gone.
"The Equalizer signs my paycheck on the Red Planet."
"Then the Kremlin has its crimson tentacles in this too?"
"You got me all wrong, Comrade."
Veins started popping out on the Lieutenant's gummy forehead and rage threatened to blow a hole in the metal plate on top of his skull. He wagged a chubby finger in my face.
"You'll fry, Doolan, and that's a promise!"
I didn't hesitate. I bit two of his doughy fingers clean through and spat them like daggers right between Sgt. I's double-O's. The howls of pain from the pair of them before they lost consciousness made my blood run like molten lava.
"Get me out of this contraption or I'll wipe you ass with cold steel," I snarled at Saltpeter, and he did it. I just wished he would have washed his hands first.
Now, at least there was a glimmer of hope in this wretched panacea. When I first joined the Korps we busted a ring of small time hoods for putting acid in the water supply, then making a fortune in black-lights. I remember laughing at their greasy pompadours, but the rhythms that spilled from their transistor radio made my heart palpitate from the minute I laid ears on it.
I made sure that the kid with the crazy moniker got off with an order of experimental relocation, destination You Know Where. In return, Pederast spilled a few choice beans concerning Natashas' operation. If he was running a dive down here I figured it was high time for a nitecap, and maybe a bottom or two. To this mystery.
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CHAPTER 15: "DON'T LAUGH, YER MOTHER'S IN THE TRUNK"
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