On the way up to 55th I made a plan for myself. Get the woman's story and lay off whatever errand she needs run until next week. Get the hell back downtown, go to the school and pick up where I left off last night before I got waylaid. See if I can pick up that musky sex scent the girl zombie had and find it anywhere else in the building or the streets nearby. That's not a dime-a-dozen scent. And all the while keep my eyes peeled for whoever the Coalition has creeping around. And if all else fails pick up Philip again. Nice plan, should have got me somewhere. Then I found out I was meeting with Marilee Ann Horde.
She's drinking ridiculously expensive designer vodka on the rocks. I accept a glass of the same. -You come highly recommended, Joseph.
— I get the job done. But I'm surprised Mr. Predo would recommend me to you.
She smiles just a bit.
— And yet.
— Uh-huh. Look, Ms. Horde.
— Marilee.
— This isn't really my kind of job.
— What kind of job is that?
— The kind that takes place in your neck of the woods.
— And what is my neck of the woods, Joseph?
I look at her sitting there. Coy and quiet, a stylish thirty-three-year-old beauty. She's wearing a tailored summer suit in a subtle rose shade and a crisp linen blouse, her only jewelry the engagement ring and wedding band on her left hand. The stone in the engagement ring not the usual Upper East Side two-carat-plus rock, but a tastefully sized blue-while in a deco platinum setting. Her hair appears to be naturally golden, and she has its length twirled up and pinned neatly to the back of her head, just three perfect strands dangling to frame her face and accent her ivory neck. Her ivory neck. I take a large swallow from my drink and lean back in my chair.
— Have you taken a look in the mirror lately, Ms. Horde?
— I said you should call me Marilee.
— Yes you did. Have you taken a look in the mirror lately, Ms. Horde?
— Yes.
— What would you say is your neck of the woods?
I look down at myself, the old suit, rumpled shirt and scuffed shoes that I dug up for the occasion.
— And what would you say was mine? And would you say, based on this, that I am the man for your kind of job?
She puts her drink down on the table.
— Actually, I would say this is exactly why you are the man for my job, Joseph. You see, my daughter has run away again, and I believe she is to be found in your neck of the woods.
She leans in, close to me.
— As you put it.
The cocktail waitress comes by and Marilee orders us another round.
This is taking too long. I figured blackmail. I figured drugs. I figured this woman would have some nasty little problem that needed to be swept up. I never figured missing children. I never figured Marilee Ann Horde.
The Hordes are one of New York's original families, one of the few dozen that make up Manhattan's true society. Their money came from the usual sources, oil, timber, and rail, but these days they're better known for their biotechnology holdings and HCN, the Horde Cable Network. Marilee Ann Dempsey's family was more than a few steps down the food chain, quite a bit more I gather. But she apparently made up for it with style enough to draw the attention of Dr. Dale Edward Horde, the only son and heir to the house of Horde, as well as founder and CEO/ Chairman of Horde Bio Tech Inc. They've been married for fourteen or fifteen years and are one of those Manhattan couples who get plenty of publicity, but all skillfully crafted and honed. No Page Six blurbs for the Hordes. What it all means for me is that I can't shine this on. I have to find the damn kid, which means I have to sit here and listen to the whole story instead of being out looking for the carrier. So our second round shows up and I try not to be too fidgety while I listen to her.
She's leaning back now, holding her drink in her lap with her right hand, occasionally stirring the ice with her index finger.
— Amanda has done this before. As a small child, she's only fourteen now, but as a very small child she frequently hid in closets or in the garden until someone found her. A way of getting attention. Not that she lacked, but she enjoyed scaring us. She would do it in public places as well, museums, stores; just disappear. At first we would panic and search high and low. When we realized it was a game to her, we resolved to wait her out, wait for her to get bored or lonely and come out of hiding. But she didn't. I once spent an entire day in Bergdorf's wail ing lor her to come out, and she never did. She stayed hidden inside a rack of dresses until we found her just after the store had closed. But she never ran far, Joseph, just somewhere hidden so she could watch us look for her. Then last summer she ran away for real. Not all that far as it turned out, but farther than before. When we first noticed her missing we were a bit surprised, my husband and I. It had been some time since she had last played her little game. But then we realized she was truly missing. We searched the town house, we had our Hamptons house searched, as well as the Hudson River estate. After two days there was no sign. We thought she might have been kidnapped. We called the police, but no one got in touch with us about a ransom and, frankly, the police were little help. Eventually, after some days, we hired a private investigator my husband has had occasion to employ. He found her almost two weeks later. She was living in the East Village, camping the kids call it. They go down there in their worst clothes and live on the street and panhandle and sleep in the park and pretend to be homeless. I guess.
I nodded. It was true, there were more than a few well-off kids slumming on Avenue A in the summer. When the real squatters found them out they usually kicked the shit out of them and sent them home to mommy and daddy.
Marilee takes a sip and plays with her ice some more.
I make a little grunting noise and she looks up.
— Yes?
— No offense, but you seem pretty calm about your daughter being missing and all.
She nods.
— Well as I say, it's not exactly new to us, and it's only been a few days. But more to the point, we know she's OK.
— How's that?
— She's been withdrawing money from her account.
— That could be anyone with her card and code.
— Yes, she used her card at first, but her last two withdrawals were in person from a teller. It was her. They require photo ID.
— When and where was the last withdrawal?
— The Chase at Broadway and Eighth, two days ago.
— How much?
— Two hundred.
— How much does she have access to?
— She can withdraw up to a thousand a week, but never more than two hundred a day. If she wants more she needs her father or me to cosign.
— And she's taken two hundred every day she's been gone?
— Yes. First with her card, and the last two, as I said, from a teller. Perhaps she lost the card.
— OK. Did you bring a picture?
— Yes.
She lifts a pocketbook that matches her suit from the floor, finds the picture and passes it to me.
Her mother's eyes and neck, but the resemblance stops there. The girl in the photo is decked out in head-to-toe black with white pancake makeup on her face, hair dyed black, black lipstick, black eye shadow and black nail polish. Jesus fuck, she's a goth. Marilee sees something in my face.
— Yes, Amanda does have something of a fascination with the undead. So really, Joseph, you can see why it is I called you.
I look up from the photo, and Marilee smiles ever so sweetly.
I've been outed. Dexter Predo has outed me.
It's a given that a woman like Marilee has some sense of how things work, the exchanges that take place behind, beneath and above the scenes in Manhattan, the give and take of power. It is for that kind of favor brokering that the Coalition is known to a select few outside the Clans. But the fact that I have been outed by Predo indicates that she is operating at a much higher level of awareness, a level of knowledge at which most people are murdered to keep them silent.
There are people that know about us. But they are few and most play a specific role. There are the Van Helsings, the righteous who stumble upon us and make it their mission to hunt us down. The Renfields like Philip, who glom on to us, half servile and half envious. The Lucys, both male and female, who have romanticized the whole vampire myth and dote over us like groupies. And the Minas, the ones who know the truth and don't care, the ones who fall in love. Van Helsings are killed, we use the Renfields and the Lucys to serve us and insulate us from the world. Minas are rare and precious beyond value. There is only one way to know if you have a true Mina: tell her or him what you are and what you do to stay alive. Not many make that final cut.
Then there are the few men and women with true power and influence who know us. These are the ones to be feared. These are the ones the Coalition deals with and the Society hopes to sway. But the Society's goals will never be realized. We will never live in the open unless it is as freaks or prey. The people who might guide us out of obscure myth will never risk their positions and reputations to say to the world, Hey, look, vampires are real!
And Marilee is one of them, a person who knows, and knows I know she knows. And so on. And here she is in the Cole having a drink with me in public. And if I had any doubts before, I now know for certain that if I ever have the opportunity to drag Dexter Predo into the sun, I will do so gleefully.
She fishes an ice cube out of her drink, pops it in her mouth and crunches it.
— You see, Joseph, I know what you are, but I'm still not certain what it is you do. Are you a detective of some kind?
I'm still the deer in the headlights, just staring at her as she chews on ice.
— Joseph?
I blink once, slowly.
— I'm a man, does things, gets things done. I'm a handyman. Someone has a problem they maybe call me and I maybe help to take care of the problem. Sometimes that means I'm a detective, I guess, but I don't have a license or an office or anything.
She nods.
— What about a gun, do you carry a gun?
— Sometimes.
— Now?
— No.
— And what about the other things you do? I know about them in theory, but details are hard to come by. Mr. Predo and the few other Coalition members we have met are so circumspect. I stare at her.
— What about those other things, Joseph?
— We can't talk about that here.
She inhales deeply, exhales.
— It's just that one hears the most fascinating stories. Is it true for instance about your sense of smell? Is it as acute as a dog's? Can you, for instance, tell what scent I used this morning?
— I can smell it.
— Do you know the brand?
— No. But it's lavender oil.
— You'd recognize it if you smelled it again?
— Yeah.
— Hmm.
— If you don't mind, Ms. Horde, I'm not very good at parlor tricks.
— We should talk about these things sometime, we really should.
— Ms. Horde.
— Yes?
— Your daughter?
— What about her?
— She's missing.
— Yes, she is.
— What did you mean that she is fascinated with the undead?
She takes another cube of ice from her drink, just sucking it this time.
— Just that. She is somewhat fascinated by the undead, and the dead for that matter. You have eyes, she's a goth. She and her friends, they are all interested in anything macabre.
— But when you say undead, do you mean in the abstract or in a literal sense? What I mean is…
— How much does she know?
--Yes.
— Nothing. I don't know what you're accustomed to, Joseph, but it's not as if I make a habit of meeting with. . your people. This is an aberration. Dale and I and some others in our circle know, but we would hardly go about sharing that information. It would tend to brand us as something rather more than eccentric.
She smiles and licks the ice in her fingers. I can't quite get her. She's no Van Helsing, definitely not a Renfield, and lacks the proper sluttishness to be a Lucy. But she's something, she is definitely something. I slug down the last of my drink.
— Two more things.
— Of course.
— The name of the PI that found her last time?
— Chester Dobbs.
— Huh.
— You know him?
— Of him. Why didn't you call him again?
— To be honest, we did. He said he would look into it, but then called back the next evening and told us that his caseload was simply too great.
I try to feature a PI turning down a case from a cash cow as fat as the Hordes. I fail.
She's watching me.
— And the other?
— Hmm?
— The other of the two things?
— Oh, where did he find her the first time?
She finally bites down on the cube she's been sucking.
— Some abandoned building, a school I think it was, around Avenue B and Ninth Street. She was squatting in the basement with some other kids.
She looks at my face, which I'm sure looks like I just got kicked in the gut.
— Are you all right, Joseph? Is there something wrong?
I don't shake hands. I don't say goodbye. I take a pass on all the social niceties and get the hell out of there and into a downtown cab.
It's not her. I take a closer look at the picture while I ride the cab downtown, and I'm sure Amanda Horde is not the shambler chick I took care of the other night. Thanks for small blessings.
The school is as it was last night. Cop car parked out front on freak watch, police barricade across the entrance. I go in the same way as before. The wall is a little tougher this time with my ribs still healing from Hurley's beating. The roof door I left open last night is still ajar. I go in. Same graffiti, same rats, same breeze, same smells. I reach the ground floor and go to the killing room.
The scents are slightly faded, but essentially unchanged except for the additions of Hurley's and Tom's. The absences I had been so focused on when I got coldcocked have been lost as the other odors have drifted and diffused within the room. But the musk is still there, that disturbing sweaty aroma with its hint of sex and desiccation. But I'm not here for that. I'm here for the girl.
I leave the room and hunt around until I find a door leading down to the basement. It's black down there. I close my eyes tight and feel my pupils expand in response to the lack of light. I open my eyes and walk down the stairs into the complicated shadows below.
The smells are different here. Dust and damp concrete dominate with an undertone of heating oil, and rank human sweat laced throughout. A thin stream of light trickles in from the door above. Rough shapes emerge from the gloom. I skirt a pile of rotting cardboard boxes stuffed with molding textbooks, turn a corner and pass the open door of what was once the boiler room from which the oil smell creeps out. There are human smells here in thick, stale profusion. Some may be recent, but the chaos of odor keeps me from sorting them. The sweat stink I smelled on the stairs intensifies as I open a door into what used to be the boys' locker room. Most of the lockers have been removed, but in a corner I make out a dingy pile of what smells like cast-off jockstraps.
I would prefer not to announce myself to anyone lurking down here, but I'm going to have to use some light or this will take all night. From my pocket I pull a tiny Maglite. I close my eyes and switch the flashlight on, twisting the barrel until I know the light has reached its softest focus, and then opening my eyes to little slits. The illumination is sparse and gloomy at best, but to me it might as well be a flood lamp. I hold the light out away from my body so that anyone who might want to take a shot at me will blow my hand off instead of putting one in my belly.
With some visual cues to attach the smells to, it becomes easier to sort the old ones from the new. The gym smells of the boys' locker room get parsed from newer odors. I follow those fresher traces and find an abandoned shooting gallery in a storage room half-filled with broken desks.
The floor is scattered with used needles, candy bar wrappers, empty crack vials and sheets of flattened cardboard that have been used for mattresses. The scents here are fresher than those in the locker room. Chemical tang of heroin and crack, piss and crap in a corner, cheap tobacco from generic brand cigarettes, and dry blood. It's spattered on the floor in a couple spots, but that's not too unusual in a shooting gallery. The cop smells are here as well. They must have been down here when they searched the building. But something else. Hell, it's in here, too. I trace it to one of the cardboard mattresses: that rotting sex-musk from the goth shambler. Stronger here, as if some of the stains on the cardboard might be sexual in origin. As if this was the place where the living fucked the dead.
I catch a glimpse of something on the back of the door; I push it closed. It's a Cure poster. I take a closer look at the walls, and in a couple places I find tacks with the corners of torn-off posters still trapped beneath. I rummage in some crumpled paper stuffed into a bag that someone had been using as a pillow, and come up with a couple more tattered posters. The Dead. Morrissey. That tears it. Your average junkies and zombies aren't too big on interior decorating. Figure this was the same room the Horde girl and her friends were squatting in last year. After they got moved out, the junkies moved in.
I take another look at the blood. Couple days, maybe a week old. This could be where the goth shambler infected the fashion junkies she was with. Hard to say. Maybe she came down here, knew it as a hangout for squatters and campers and came here with some dull message in her brain telling her she could get food here. Maybe the junkies found her here and raped her and. . No, it doesn't float, neither of them were carrying that smell. But something happened here. Something worse than the usual. And in a place like this the usual is pretty lucking bad.
Not that any of it gets me any closer to the carrier. Or the Horde girl.
Done with the school, I walk over to Tompkins and dig up Leprosy. He's hanging out in the corridor of benches claimed by the squatters. It runs between the kiddy park and the chess tables where most of the junkies hang out. He sees me and starts to bark at me almost before his dog does.
Dogs are amazing creatures, they can sense things, smell things that people never will. But they can't smell the Vyrus inside me, and Leprosy's dog can't smell shit. His nose is all smashed up from getting it kicked in. No, Leprosy's dog barks at me because he's a mean and vicious bastard that tries to tear the throat out of anyone who doesn't happen to be Leprosy himself.
— Fuck off, fuck face.
— Good to see you too, Lep.
The other squatters check us out. Some of them give me a little nod and some others drift away, hoping I won't notice them. As a rule I don't like squatters, but some I like a lot less than others and they know it. Leprosy jerks his dog's choke chain a few times.
— Shut the fuck up, Gristle!
He hauls on the leash until Gristle is standing on his hind legs, straining to get at me, his barks choked down to bloodthirsty growls. It's a pretty good trick on Lep's part seeing as he's all of five two and weighs in around ninety pounds, while Gristle is the product of some bizarre crossbreeding experiment that matched a rottweiler with a wolverine.
— I said fuck off, you're pissing off my dog.
— I don't know about that, Lep, I think I may be turning him on. Look, he has a hard-on.
It's true. Desperate to eat me, Gristle is still choking himself on the leash, clawing at the air with his front paws, his massive dog wood pointed straight at me.
— Down, Gristle! Put it away!
Some of the other squatters are laughing now and Leprosy is getting more pissed. He looks over at them and lets out some slack on the leash. Gristle lunges again, but this time it's at the squatters. They jump back and Lep gives a thin smile. Truth is they may be more afraid of him than of the dog. He's a scrawny little fuck, but he's probably twice as crazy and dangerous as the mutt.
— Stop fucking around, Lep. Tie the dog up and we'll take a quick walk and then the two of you can be back together.
He looks at me and glares, but he drags Gristle over to the fence, ties the leash to the iron bars and starts walking toward the kiddy park. I stroll alongside of him while the dog barks and whines in the background.
— I told you not to come around here anymore, Pitt, my dog hates you. You keep showing up and I'm gonna let him off that fucking leash one day.
— Your dog hates everyone, and if it ever gets off that leash and comes at me I'll kill it dead and you'll be out your only friend. Now tell me about this chick.
I show him the picture of Amanda Horde. He takes a quick look and passes it back.
— She's OK. I'd do her.
— Yeah, if she'd ever let your nasty ass near her.
— Shiiit. Goth chicks are ill for Leprosy. Goth chicks gotta have what Leprosy's got. Especially campers like that bitch. They gotta hit it with Leprosy. It lends au-then-ti-city to the squatting experience. As it fucking were.
— So you know her.
— Seen her around, she was camping like last fucking summer.
— You hook up?
— Naw. Camper bitches may crave what Leprosy has, but he denies them his shit. I take their money and drugs and might let one suck my dick, but Leprosy won't never luck one of them bourgeois fucking cunts.
— So what about this summer, you seen her around?
He stops walking. We're by the kiddy park now. We stand next to the sign on the gate: NO ADULTS ALLOWED! PARENTS AND GUARDIANS ONLY. This is meant to keep the pederasts outside the fence so they can only watch the action within. It's too late for kids now, but any number of the creeps drifting around the park might be child molesters. If only I could smell that.
Leprosy is staring at the empty playground equipment.
— I used to come here when I was a kid.
Lep is about sixteen.
— Yeah?
— Yeah, before my folks moved us out to Long Island. I loved the park. That's why I came here when my dad kicked me out.
Lep ran away a couple years back to get away from his dad. You guess why.
— Hey, Lep.
— What?
— I look like a piece of toast to you?
— No.
— So stop trying to butter me up. You want money, tell me you want money.
He smiles.
— I want money, fuck face.
I reach in my pocket, dig out a twenty and give it to him.
— So you seen her around or what?
He frowns at the twenty, but stuffs it in his pocket.
— Maybe.
— Don't fuck with me, that's all the cash you're getting tonight.
— I mean maybe I saw her, but I'm really not fucking sure, OK?
— Tell me.
He leans against the rails of the fence and scratches himself under a T-shirt that might have said something once, but now is just the same washed-out gray-green of all squatter clothes.
— So, like a week or two back we got a little beer bust going at a squat on C. You know, bunch a us pooled our change for some forties, and Fat Stinky Pete had a sack of hay and we were just getting all fucked up. So you know Yankee Dan, right?
— The skinny Cuban kid always has the Mets hat?
— Yeah, guy loves the Mets like life so we call him fucking Yankee. Pisses him off. Anyway, Yankee is kind of a weasel and nobody can really stand the fucking shit bag and now here he shows up un-in-fucking-vited and he's towing these fucking campers with him. I mean, they got all the right shit on and their hair is five different colors and their lips are pierced, but the clothes are from Urban Outfitters and their piercings are too clean and the dye jobs are two-hundred-fucking-dollar-a-pop deals from some Upper East Side fag salon. So we know what's up even if Yankee is a fucking retard. Like the standing policy on this shit for any self-respecting punk is to stomp these pieces of shit, but we're pretty fucked up and feeling all mellow and besides we're out of beer and campers all have cash. So we give Yankee and these turds a bunch a shit, but we let 'em stay after they go out and grab some more forties and another sack.
— The girl, Lep.
— Yeah, I'm fucking getting to her.
He feels at his pockets for cigarettes that we both know aren't there. I pull out my pack of Luckys, pass him one and we both light up.
— So Lep is feeling good. And one of these camper chicks, she's digging his vibe and starts rubbin' up against it and shit. Now, like I said, these sluts from Uptown are gluttons for the real thing. They want to fuck in the dirt and get come on and shit so they can go back to fucking prep school and tell their friends about all the freaky shit they got into. Like they can all buy whatever the fuck they want, so having the latest Britney Spears CD or this year's Porsche means shit. But fucking some scabby squatter in a basement with ten people watching, that's a fucking social coup. So Lep, he's not gonna give this bitch the satisfaction, but she's pretty hot and I ain't had it for a bit so I tell her she can suck it, and down she goes.
— I can't tell you how charming this is. Now how about the girl, was it her?
He shakes his head.
— No, not that slut, but maybe her friend.
— Her friend?
— Yeah. See she finishes her job and Leprosy does his business and she's still into it, but Leprosy is not, and I repeat, not going to stick it in this cunt. So she says, what if it's her and her friend. Well, Leprosy has been around, but this piques his curiosity. So I ask her what friend and she points to one of the other camper chicks in the room. Well I check out that chick and she's OK, but Leprosy has his principles and I let this slut know it and tell her if she wants to set up a three-way or pull a train there are other guys around who don't have Leprosy's moral fiber. But at the time I think to myself that the other chick, she looked familiar. And now you show me that picture, I'm thinking to myself that that might be it, that chick might be the one in your picture.
— Might.
— Well, the hitch here is that the chick in the squat, she didn't have any makeup on. Now the chick in the picture, I saw her last year no doubt, and she always had all that ghoul shit all over her. But this chick in the squat? Not even nail polish. So it might have been her, but you see my fucking problem.
I nod.
— If she's around and it's the girl from last year, there are people who would know, right?
— Sure.
— Find out, Lep.
He raises his eyebrows.
— How fucking much is it worth?
— It's worth a lot. It's worth saving me a lot of hassles. Which means it's worth keeping me happy and keeping you from getting hurt. So find out for sure if it was her and then call me at Evie's bar. Now go get your dog before it kills itself or eats someone.
I turn and walk away and Leprosy shouts after me.
— Sure thing, Pitt. Hey, me, I'm at your fucking beck and call, right, fuck face? Hey, I got an idea, why don't you go check out Realm? I hear all the hot young goths hang out there.
He laughs and I keep walking. Leprosy is a little fuck, but he'll do as I tell him. He'll do it because he owes me. He remembers the time his father came cruising in here from Long Island to get him. Comes rolling up in his stockbrokers' standard-issue Lincoln Continental and storms into the park like he owns it. Leprosy spots him and tries to run, but his dog gets off the leash and goes after the bastard. Dad doesn't even break stride, that dog runs up and he smashes the toe of his wingtip right into its nose, which is how Gristle lost his sense of smell. The dog drops, bleeding all over the concrete, and dad starts after Leprosy. Me, I'm sitting on a bench smoking, like I do, and maybe this is none of my business, but I got involved anyway. I beat the fuck out of the ass-raping son of a bitch, made his nose match the dog's. I did that for free, but it doesn't mean Leprosy doesn't owe me.
“Bela Lugosi's Dead.” It's like their theme song. I'm hip-deep in Realm, watching crowds of black-garbed teenagers with pasty faces “dance” to Bauhaus. Back in my day goths were all these mopey, alienated, semi-suicidal kids. Pretty much your average teenagers, just dressed in black. Back then they were mostly hooked into the music: The Cure, The Smiths, Bauhaus, The Damned, a little Depeche Mode. Now it's gotten all tangled up in fetishism and S&M. So here's what it's like inside Realm. Over here you got your video screens showing clips from Nosferatu intercut with scenes from some tape of people getting their genitals pierced. Over there you got your brass chandeliers scavenged from junk shops around the Tri-State area, draped in black cheesecloth and illuminated with red lightbulbs. Along the walls you got your innumerable mirrors, brass framed and also draped in black cheesecloth. In point of fact, most everything here is draped in black cheesecloth, including half the patrons. Up on that stage you got your fetishist couple performing a rather tame S&M act. He's strapped to a big rusty steel X, wearing nothing but a black leather G-string. She's in the obligatory thigh-high boots and corset, and is sticking alligator clips connected to a car battery onto his nipples, shocking him when he fails to call her “mistress.” Which is most of the time. Hot, right? Could be, except they're both middle-aged, seriously overweight and balding. Nonetheless, they're drawing a pretty big crowd, so who's to say their booking agent doesn't know what he's doing.
Over by the stage you got most of the new school goths favoring latex and studs. On the other side of the room, grooving on the music and the bootleg bottles of absinthe they scored from some guy that just got back from Brazil, are the old-school crowd. These folks lean more toward velvet and lace with a healthy dose of leather thrown in. And worn close to the heart of each, you'll no doubt find a treasured, autographed copy of Interview with the Vampire. This is the vampire crowd, the ones who really get into the whole undead experience. Half of them have their own coffins and the other half are saving up. These are the ones who think getting turned into a vampire will be just like The Hunger. Lots of hot sex with Catherine Denueve, Susan Sarandon and David Bowie followed by a centuries long, lingering, tragic, but ultimately poetic death, which is also filled with lots of hot sex with Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon and David Bowie. And that's what makes these people such easy pickings for your average bottomfeeding Vampyre, because so many of them dream of being turned. But they don't know shit about the Vampyre, and what a pain in the ass it is to be one.
I grab a beer and eyeball the crowd. If Lep is right, Amanda Horde may have dropped the goth look. I push away from the bar and take a pass through the room. A couple chicks in full goth
Kabuki-face have the right build, but a closer look tells me they're not my girl. I hang out for another half hour, keeping a close eye on the door. No dice. This is a waste of time. It's not like I can flash the girl's picture around or hang up flyers. That would pretty much go in the face of the discreet job Predo and Marilee Horde want. I'll check the basement and blow.
Realm's basement is a dark warren of small rooms, each with its own ambience, as it were. There's the Victorian Room, crammed with old sofas and cast-off end tables, all of it illuminated by oil lamps. Next to that is the Murder Room, decorated like a suburban kitchen, but with fake blood splattered across the walls and ceiling, and body outlines taped on the floor. There's the Dungeon Room and the Padded Cell and the Mad Scientist Room. I stick my head into each, take a quick look at the inhabitants and move on. Suburban goths from Long Island are sitting around the Formica-topped table in the Murder Room playing quarters. The Dungeon Room is hosting an impromptu panel discussion on spanking. And so on. I duck out of the Padded Cell, where a guy is being strapped into a straitjacket by one of his buddies, and head for the stairs. Time to get out of here.
I catch a flash of white out of the corner of my eye, turn to see what it is, see nothing, turn, and then he's right in front of me, blocking the stairs.
He squints through the grimy lenses of his glasses.
— Are you alright, Simon?
I grunt.
— I asked if you were alright, Simon?
— Yeah, I'm fine.
Christ I hate it when people use my real name.
I size him up. He's just a bit shorter than me, but more pale and skinnier than a cancer patient with AIDS and a heavy speed habit. He's wearing baggy white clothes, sporting a shaved head, and I don't know his name. I don't know him at all. But I know where he's from and who he belongs to because he knows my real name. These fuckers always know your real name. I step around him and start up the stairs. He follows.
— Are you alright, Simon?
— I said yes, for Christ's sake. Now will you stop calling me that?
— My apologies, Joe.
I get to the top and make a beeline out the front door. The skeleton stays on my heels as I walk down the sidewalk away from Realm.
— Perhaps you have a moment, Joe?
— Perhaps I have a whole shitload of moments. Perhaps I have moments squirreled away all over the place, and perhaps I plan to keep them for myself. What of it?
He laughs.
— What are you laughing at?
— I've been told about your sense of humor, Joe, how you stumble over wisdom even as you mock it. Moments squirreled away. Indeed, that is how so many treat time, as if it is something to be hoarded rather than a phenomenon to be experienced.
— Are you fucking serious? Is this what you have planned for me tonight? Can I just give you a donation or volunteer at a soup kitchen or something and get you off my back, or do I have to listen to this shit?
— No, Joe, you don't have to listen to anything. You don't have to do anything. But die, Joe, we all have to die. Except one of us.
— Yeah, well I already did that so maybe you can fuck off now.
— There's trouble about, Joe Pitt.
— There's always trouble around. Way I figure it, trouble just runs around this town doing what it wants.
— You are in danger and in need of allies.
— Not as far as I know.
— You do know. You know about the one you cannot smell or see.
I stop.
— Who is it?
— It is not a who.
Oh, Jesus. It's gonna be a ghost story.
— Bullshit.
— It watches you.
Screw this. I start to walk. He doesn't follow.
— Give them my regards then.
— Daniel wants to talk with you.
— You tell Daniel to stay out of my business.
— You are being watched, Simon. Have a care.
— I told you not to call me that.
I turn back around, but he's disappeared. Of course. That's how these Enclave guys are, dramatic entrance, dramatic exit, and a bunch of crap in between. I start walking again, and try not to feel the little tingles on the back of my neck that make me feel I'm being watched.
Evie loves me. I know she loves me because she buys all my drinks for me. I know for lots of other reasons, too, but right now this is the most important one because I want to get drunk. I took a walk around the neighborhood, looking for any indication of the carrier and coming up empty. I cruised back through the park to check on Leprosy, but the other squatters said he had split right after I did. So I heaved a sigh, said fuck it and came over here to see Evie and have a drink.
It's after midnight on a Sunday and the place is just starting to pick up. There's a late night hoedown-jam going on on the tiny stage and a few couples trying to two-step between the tables. Folks that work in the bars and restaurants in the neighborhood are getting off shift and coming in here to blow off steam. Evie likes working Sundays. She says it's the pros' night out. It's not as busy as Friday and Saturday, but she makes more money because these people know how to tip and most of them have Monday off so they're getting good and fucked up. And trust me, these people know a thing or two about getting fucked up.
Right now Evie is setting them up for the midget deadbeat I shook down the night we met. His name is Dixon and he turned out to be a pretty good guy other than being a degenerate gambler. I put another shot of Old Crow down my neck and take a sip off my Lone Star.
I can get drunk. It takes some seriously hard work because the Vyrus treats alcohol like any other poison and works quickly to neutralize it, but if I drink enough and I drink fast, I can get something resembling a buzz. And hey, no hangovers! The virtues of Vampyrism. Evie sidles back over to my side of the bar and refills my glass. She doesn't really need to do that since the bottle is right in front of me, but it's a nice gesture.
Every gesture Evie makes is a nice gesture because she's just that kind of girl. The kind I like to look at, but can't touch. I take another drink. She fills me back up. From the ground up she's wearing cowboy boots, low-cut jeans, a baby-doll T-shirt with the word TITS stretching tight as a drum across hers, and a smile that's all for me. I look her up and down and take another drink.
She fills my glass, takes a pull from the bottle and gives me the smile.
— So, can I come over tonight?
I bob my head up and down.
— Could be, could be.
She leans on the bar and puts her hand alongside my face.
— We could watch a movie maybe. Maybe play a little.
— A movie, hmm?
— Yeah.
She leans closer, puts her cheek against mine and flicks a tongue at my ear. I shiver. I almost cry. But I don't. Someone calls for a drink. Evie smiles at me and walks away down the bar. I watch her ass and take another drink.
This is what we do. This is what we do instead of sex. Not all the time, but some nights this is what we do. We flirt and tease. We slap and tickle. We go home and watch porn and make out. We jerk each other off through our clothes or sometimes we take them off and jerk off ourselves in front of each other. This is what we do because Evie will never take the chance of giving me her sickness, and it makes her feel guilty as hell that she won't fuck me, but that's just because she doesn't know that I'm afraid of giving her mine.
I don't know how to make a Vampyre. As far as I know, nobody really does. The Vyrus is certainly carried in the blood, but like HIV it might be in my come as well. I can't have sex with Evie because I might turn her into one of me, which would cure her, which would mean we could be together for… I take another drink.
Evie finishes up with her customer and wanders back over to me.
— So am I coming over tonight?
— I guess you are, babe, I guess you are.
— Cool. And maybe in the morning I can take you out for breakfast.
— Funny, you're a funny girl tonight.
Evie thinks I'm allergic to the sun. She thinks that because I told her I'm photosensitive and suffer from solar urticaria that would make my skin erupt in boils if I were exposed to sunlight. For that matter, that's what anyone who knows me well enough to know I don't go out during the day thinks. For that matter, I am allergic to the sun when you get right down to it.
She taps the tip of her index finger against the tip of my nose.
— I could make breakfast.
— And I could choke on it and die.
— Fuck you.
— You want breakfast I'll call someone and have it delivered.
— Well that's what I meant when I said I could make it.
— Silly me.
The phone rings and she grabs it off the back-bar. She talks to someone for a second then brings the phone over to me.
— It's for you.
It's Leprosy.
— What?
— Pitt?
— Yeah, what's up?
— I got something.
— What?
— Just come meet me.
— Is it the girl?
— No. I. Just meet me.
— Where?
— That garden on B.
— With the tower?
— Yeah.
— Don't fuck with me here, Lep. Is this solid?
— I'm not. Just meet me. Now.
He hangs up. I hand the phone back to Evie.
— Leprosy?
— Yeah. I got to go.
I stand up and realize I'm not packing. Not even a knife.
— You got that bat you keep behind the bar?
— Sure.
She reaches under the ice bin and comes up with a Frank Thomas edition Louisville Slugger. It's a big bat. She passes it to me.
— What's the matter?
— He didn't call me fuck face.
I walk away. She calls after me.
— I'm still coming over.
I stop and take a practice cut with the bat.
— Goddamn right you are.
And I walk out the door.
I'm pretty sure the guy who built the tower is crazy. At the very least he is amazingly skilled at being a pain in the ass. Used to be there were these little public gardens all over Alphabet City, a bunch of empty lots that people in the neighborhood split up into tiny plots for their flowers or vegetables or whatever. Nice if you're into that kind of thing. So these gardens were on land owned by the city, but Alphabet City was just a pit full of spies, niggers, junkies, queers, squatters, gangbangers and artists, so who gave a fuck. Then came the real estate boom. Pretty soon the city sells off all these lots and the gardens are paved over and another couple dozen yuppies have new condos. And once again, who really gives a fuck. But this garden on B is still there and so is the tower and the nut job who built it.
When they set up this garden they split it up into the tiny plots and everybody started growing geraniums and basil. Except this one guy was a sculptor and he didn't want to grow things on his plot, he wanted to build things. Pretty soon his little area is spilling tools and wood and mess all over the place and the gardeners are all getting pissed and want to kick him out. People are starting to threaten lawsuits and everything. Then they hit on a pretty reasonable compromise. They agreed that anyone who has a plot can do anything they want in that plot, as long as it doesn't reach anywhere outside of the plot. Everybody shakes on it. And then the crazy fucker builds the tower.
It's about six stories tall, made mostly out of wood, and looks kind of like the dilapidated skeleton of a very skinny pyramid. And wedged into every crack and hanging off of every plank and board, nailed to and dangling from every square foot of its surface, is a simply in-fucking-credible collection of crap. Old street signs, toilet seats, a jumbo model of an airliner, toys of every shape and size, a kitchen sink, several effigies, flags, and at least one huge stuffed giraffe. It sits there and looms over the entire garden, dominating the landscape. The one thing it most definitely does not do is reach a single inch outside the borders of its own tiny plot. You got to admire the pain in the ass that built this thing. As for me, I'm just hoping he built it well, because I'm already about ten feet up in the damn thing and if that dog jumps any higher I'm gonna have to go twenty.
It took me just a couple minutes to get over to that garden. No Leprosy. I walked around the fence for a minute, took the scent of the air and climbed on over. It's dark in there and the air is clogged with the rich, growing odors of midsummer, all that loam and sweet blossoms and bursting fruit and crap. Anyway, it wreaks havoc with my nose and as I try to sort it out I hear a little whimpering sound. I edge around a tiny stand of corn into the shadow of the creaking tower. Up against the wall of one of the tenements bordering the garden I see a dog snuffling at something and whining. I step around the corn.
— Hey, Gristle, hey there, boy.
His head whips around at the sound of my voice.
— Easy there, Gristle.
A growl starts up in the back of his throat.
— Let's not have any trouble here, boy. Easy. Where's Leprosy, huh? Where is he, boy?
Why am I asking the dog where Leprosy is? Fuck do I know. Seems like the thing to do. At the sound of Leprosy's name he starts to whine again and turns back to whatever it is he's interested in, and I know things are all fucked up.
— What ya got there, boy?
I take a step closer to get a look. Gristle's head snaps back around and the rest of his body follows. He doesn't growl or bark, just comes straight at me. I hold the bat out in front of me with both hands and his jaws clamp down on it instead of my throat. I hear his teeth crack the wood as he bites down, and his weight sends me flat on my back. He's on top of me, his teeth planted in the bat, jerking it back and forth, trying to tear it from me while he rips at my exposed stomach with his rear claws. I push out with the bat, forcing his body up into the air. He's got the skinny part in his mouth and the fucker might just chew right through it in another second or two. Up in the air, he's lost his leverage and can't get purchase to claw me. Any time now he'll let go of the bat so he can take another crack at my neck. I twist my body to the left and throw the bat, Gristle and all, to my right. He skips and slides in the dirt for a few feet. I follow through with my roll, scramble up to my feet, run three steps, the dog just behind me, and jump up into the tower with Gristle hanging from my ankle. I manage to kick him off before he can sever my Achilles.
And here I am, sitting up in the tower with that dog down below stalking back and forth, taking the occasional jump at me and not making a fucking sound at all.
Me, I'm not what you'd call an animal person. Dogs, cats, wildebeests, it don't really matter, I don't care for any of them. But I'll give animals this over people, they just do what comes
natural. Eat when they're hungry, sleep when they're tired, fuck when they're horny, protect their friends and kill their enemies. So I don't really want to hurt this dog, which is why I didn't take batting practice on his head in the first place. But getting down out of this thing without being chewed on is gonna be some kind of trick. I take out a cigarette and give it a smoke.
Gristle hasn't forgotten about me by a long shot, but instead of pacing back and forth just below me he's started covering the ground between the base of the tower and the thing against the wall. I pitch the stub of my cigarette and squat on one of the sturdier-looking pieces of lumber up here. Gristle looks up at me. The refracted light from a streetlamp turns his eyes blazing red. It's a good look for him. He turns to walk back over to the wall. I jump, land on top of him and wrap him up so that his legs are pinned beneath our bodies. He twists and writhes and wrenches his head around and snaps at the side of my face and misses and latches onto my left shoulder. He digs in. I get my hand on his throat and squeeze. He jerks his head a couple times, his teeth tearing my skin. I squeeze tighter and he starts to shudder and shake and finally pops his mouth off my shoulder and keeps it open wide and tries to breathe. I don't let him. It takes a while to knock him out, but he's still alive when I get up, and so am I. Pretty good deal for both of us.
Bruises are starting to form around the holes he put in my shoulder, but the blood has coagulated. I lift my arm over my head and stretch it out. It'll do. I pick up the bat and walk over to the wall to see what Gristle was so interested in. It's an old T-shirt, used to be kind of gray-green, but now it's mostly red. I give it a good smell, and you don't have to be much smarter than dirt to know it's Leprosy's.
In the farthest, darkest corner of the garden, where the walls of the two buildings that border it to the south and west meet, I can see an old steel basement trap. It's open. I drop Leprosy's shirt.