My eyes flutter open after two hours of restless quasi-sleep. The cycle begins again, alone in my bed, sunlight threatening from the curtain edges, splitting headache. However, this iteration feels slightly different. The angles are a little sharper.

The hour is a bit earlier. The sheets are still wrinkled where Qarin had slept, the bed still damp from early morning sex. The post club hours had been raw and physical. My inebriated state had prolonged intense moments of passion into thick, sweat fueled hours of torn clothing, marked flesh and playful asphyxiation. She was unstoppable. Eventually, I had to feign sleep to avoid long-term injury.

I hear Qarin and the cat fighting in the other room. The cat hates Q. Q has given up trying to win him over. Instead, she matches his viscous hissing with her own ear-piercing howl. The confrontation escalates in volume and pitch until Q eventually gives in, and storms off. How do I normally sleep through this?

The front door slams. A few minutes later, the cat swaggers in triumphantly.

“I don’t know man. It looks like she may be around for a while. You may want to make nice.”

He turns his head gently to one side affecting a look of questioning pity.

“All right, the odds are still in favor of me fucking things up at any moment. I’m just saying it wouldn’t hurt to let here win a shouting match or two.”

In response, the spiteful feline turns his back on me and disappears back into the other room. He is off in search of an abandoned whiskey glass or an unattended sunbeam. I follow a few paces behind, determined to take on the day. Qarin has aided my cause by replacing the morning daiquiri with iced coffee. Damn this girl is good. After Irishing the coffee up a touch, I get down to work.

I dig up my ancient laptop and slap it on the living room table amongst the stacks of photos. As the machine grinds its way through startup, I notice the cat has randomly chewed the corners of several of the photos. I assemble the tattered images and lay them out in a row. I hope to gain some interspecies insight from the weird little guy. However, after a few minutes sorting them and staring at each one from off kilter, cat like angles, his feline motivation becomes clear. Each one has had sticky bourbon spilled on it.

Fortunately, the computer sputters to life. I return the photos back to Rodriguez’s meticulously organized piles. Then, I load up the thumb drive full of NYPD case files and dive in. Most of it is noise. The bureaucratic compliance jargon and the lazy cop shorthand have leeched any drop of informative nuance from the data. Interviews with aggrieved kin or uninterested neighbors are informative only in their consistent lack of useful information.

After a third pass through, I can glean only that everyone involved is a few steps removed from someone on the occult scene. An ownership consortium named the Meridian Group own the club. A man named Faisal is listed as the group’s president but it is obvious even from his statement that he is someone’s stooge.

I decide to reach out for help. Rube went deep underground when the fiasco at the loft hit the tabloids. Disappearing for extended periods is not unusual for a man whose only constant axiom is that there is no such thing as paranoia. Fortunately, some emergency back channels were put in place after his last disappearing act.

From a drawer in the kitchen, I pull a yellowed promotional calendar from some long defunct Chinese take out. The margins of each month are filled with meticulously handwritten URLs. I apply a complex mathematic formula to the date and time of day to ascertain what site to visit. Eventually I type in handimandi.ru and let the page load.

Best I can tell through the bad in browser translation. HandiMandi is a forum for Eastern European transsexuals who are also home improvement enthusiasts. Even by .ru standards, it seems a little too obscure to be for real. Judging by the jarring amount of unintelligible grammar in the posts, wither the site is the world’s greatest spam-bot magnet or most of the traffic is shady bastards like me leaving obscured covert messages.

Scrolling through the topics, I feel bad for one particular pre-op ladyman in need of real advice on installing a bidet. Her topic has instantly filled with responses, but all are written in some pidgin l33t and are most likely offshore account numbers for blood diamond smugglers. I feel compelled to help. Unfortunately plumbing is far afield my area of expertise.

Using another complicated key formula, I’m left with a choice between a post on shady hormone therapies and another of ceiling plaster tips and tricks. I pick one at random, scroll to the bottom and do my unleash my best spam-bot impersonation:
User – UnkleDick:

Make hers sheik in exxxtacy from your strong hardness. 100% Complete Natural – Need intel re: Meridian Group – never laughing again – and Club El Cambion take anything you have – ACT NOW!!! .Fifty pills 35 dollas.

I hit post then close the browser and wipe up my tracks. On my se3cod cup of coffee, I am too impatient to wait for a response. It takes a bit of trial and error before a spoofed Lexis account works but the fiddling is worth it. Rube would be proud. After a few dead ends, the degrees of connection between El Cambion and some moneyed and powerful individuals begin to narrow. Everything is still at arms length but I am not building a RICO case. I am just fishing for signs and signals in the static. The members of the Meridian Group reveal themselves as a few wealthy Upper East Side socialites with old world pedigrees and ancient cash stores.

When I get to the Department of Buildings documents, I remember what Rodriguez’s joke about the permit fine. When I pull up the violations file, I get a serious surprise. There, staring back at me through the poorly scanned documents, are the greasy fingerprints of Eon MacEndroe.

***

“Fucking MacEndroe and Starkings. I had to double check all my paths of investigation to make double sure I had not subconsciously contaminated the data. You getting me Ed?”

Nine hours into sorting intel, my eyes had given up and I had run out of coffee. I decided to pop down to the bar where I found my man Ed Asner with his elbow at the rail.

“At the end of the day The Meridian Group is a bunch of old school upper-east side occultists like my old boy MacEndroe. They all live within a few blocks of each other. The check to the DOB was cut from an account Mac and Starkey use for construction projects.”

Lou / Ed chewed the information over.

“What on earth do they want with a shady club in the boroughs?”

“Exactly Lou. Not only that, but from what I can tell, no cash ever makes its way to them. There have to be other motives.
A coincidence is rarely just a coincidence.”

“It’s a conspiracy. Is that what you’re getting at Dick? A conspiracy and your somehow involved?”

“I have to tell you Lou, I hate the word conspiracy. It gives the selfish actions of small minded pricks way too much credit.
But, I can smell a sinister cabal brewing from across the river. I’m not ready to say it has anything to do with me. But I am going to watch my fucking back.”

“A cabal: the artifices and intrigues of a group of persons secretly united in a plot.”

“Well yeah, Lou, that’s what I’m saying.”

“Meridian Group like the Carlyle group…” Ed / Lou’s words slow, as if read from a meticulously kept notebook. “… and the god damn Counsel on Foreign Relations. People deserve the truth about what really happened on that day in September. Who really paid those psychos to fly the plains? Who hired the crew to plant the c4? Who cashed in on those stock trades against the airlines?”

“Whoa, ease up friend. Ed, I love you man, but I told you an hour ago that I do not have the extra brain space at the moment for your exhaustive theories and ruminations on 9/11. Flooding my system with Scotch has not made me anymore receptive to your paranoid musings. So, I’m going to have to take a rain check on the truth for tonight.”

“I’m just saying Dick; it could only have been a controlled demolition…”

Asner is interrupted by the huge opening riff from Dancing With Mr. D as it pours out of an unseen juke box. Simultaneously, the unmistakable scent of young woman snakes it way through the stale bar air.

“Excuse me gentlemen, I have Snake Bites with your names on them.”

It is one of the L-girls, Liz I think, cradling a trio of shot glasses. The other girls circle around behind her, glasses raised in the air. All five of us throw the swill back with a flourish. The girls let out a raucous battle cry as empty glasses hit the bar.

“Q is tied up with work bullshit. She sent us with instructions to keep you out of trouble Swingshift. After consideration, we have decided to go rogue and take you out for a raging night of hedonistic debauchery. Step one; escape this mortuary with a happy hour you’ve fallen into.”

“Any room in our jail break party for my friend Ed here?”

“I’m afraid not Mr. Grant. My name ain’t Mary and I’m not in it for the spunk. Another time perhaps.”

And with that, Liz kisses Ed / Lou’s blushing baldhead and makes for the door.

I shoot Ed/Lou the old what can I say grin and shrug as Lauren and Lilly lead me out by each arm into the cool night air.

“You girls aren’t El Cambion members by chance?”

“Swingshift, are you fucking reading our minds?” One or all of them answers.

I have never been one to separate work from pleasure.