Erato.
Jules thought the name over and over as he drove toward the Trolley Stop Cafй. Erato was the last friend left whom Jules trusted. Erato could advise him, guide him through shark-strewn waters. He had a solid head on his shoulders-not much in the way of book learning, maybe, but reams of diplomas from the school of the streets. On top of that, Erato was a black man; he’dhave to have insights into Jules’s predicament that were beyond Jules’s reach. Jules had no choice but to finally play it straight with him-he’d have to take the risk of revealing to his friend the vampiric side of his nature that he’d kept secret for years.Erato can handle it, Jules told himself. He’d have to.
The notion of turning to Erato had come to him the previous night, after reading Doodlebug’s note had driven Jules into an almost mindless panic. He’d called Erato’s cell phone incessantly for three hours. But the frantic vampire had been continuously stymied by busy signals. Finally, exhausted by fear and frustration, he’d crawled back into his coffin and fallen into a sleep haunted by nightmares. Most of his evil dreams had Jules trapped on a sinking barge in the middle of the Mississippi, chained to the deck as hundreds of rats scurried across him to flee the sinking vessel.
Tonight Jules wouldn’t bother monkeying around with the telephone. He’d see Erato face-to-face. Jules turned onto the vestigial rump of Basin Street, a thoroughfare made famous by early jazz tunes, but nearly erased from existence by the creation of Armstrong Park thirty years ago. He passed the ugly concrete pile of Municipal Auditorium, site of wrestling matches, Mardi Gras balls, and Disney on Ice; recently it had been home to a minor-league hockey team and a failed casino. Just past the auditorium, a roadblock outside the First District police station blocked his progress.
Jules braked to a halt in front of a pair of police cruisers and stuck his head out his window. “What’s goin‘ on, Officers?”
A weary-looking cop motioned for him to turn around at the intersection. “Basin’s blocked off from here to Iberville. No through traffic allowed. Some kinda Night Out Against Crime demonstration. Cut over to Rampart Street if you’ve gotta make Canal.”
“Thanks, Officer.”
Jules started to make a left turn across Basin when he spotted what looked like Erato’s cab, parked in a closed gas station. He pulled into the lot, which was crowded with other parked cars. Sure enough, itwas Erato’s cab-there was that dumb-looking pair of sun-faded, pink fuzzy dice hanging from his rearview mirror.
Jules backed out of the jam-packed parking lot and rounded the corner onto Rampart. He found an open space beneath a live oak next to Armstrong Park; not the safest stretch of asphalt in New Orleans by any means, but considering the terrors he’d recently lived through, Jules didn’t give the neighborhood’s dicey reputation a second thought.
He walked past the police station and crossed the line of barricades. At least the presence of so many cops would ensure that he’d be relatively safe from ambush until after he’d had a chance to find Erato and talk with him. Finding him might not be so easy, however. The street and the grassy neutral ground in its middle were occupied by several hundred tightly bunched demonstrators. Most of them were waving their hand-painted signs at the police station and the cordon of cops; smaller groups were giving interviews for the benefit of a large contingent of reporters and cameramen. Other attendees were purchasing hot dogs and soft drinks from vendors who’d set up carts on the sidewalk outside the St. Louis Cemetery.
Now that he was closer, Jules was able to read the protesters’ signs.EQUAL JUSTICE FOR ALL, several read. Others read,MURDER IS MURDER, RICH OR POOR, orJUSTICE FOR HOMELESS VICTIMS. One elderly black lady had loquaciously painted her sign in tiny, carefully formed capital letters,A PINT OF POOR BLACK WOMAN’S BLOOD IS WORTH THE SAME AS A PINT OF RICH WHITE MAN’S BLOOD. Actually, Jules could quibble with this last sentiment; in his experience, a pint of a poor black woman’s blood wasmuch tastier and more filling than a pint of a rich white man’s blood.
Any lighthearted quips immediately evaporated from his mind as soon as he saw the T-shirts the demonstrators were all wearing. They featured the same grainy, laser-copied photo of Bessie that he’d seen on posters in the French Quarter and on shirts in Central City. Only this time they were emblazoned with the captionBESSIE AGAR, GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN.
Suddenly Jules heard a familiar voice calling him from the far side of the crowd. “Jules! Hey,Jules!
Whatchu doin‘ round here?“
Erato pushed his slightly pear-shaped form aggressively through the press of bodies, ducking beneath signs and barely avoiding collisions with sauerkraut-and-mustard-laden Lucky Dogs on his way to Jules’s side. “Man-oh-man, you are about thelast body I’d expect to see here,” he said, breathing a little hard after his dash across Basin Street. He grabbed Jules’s paw with both his hands. “You want a T-shirt to wear? Some of the ladies in the group are pretty big, y’know, so maybe I can find one in yo‘ size-”
Jules had the dizzying, unreal feeling that he was a contestant on a new TV game show, a mean-spirited amalgamation ofCandid Camera,This Is Your Life, andThe Twilight Zone. “Forget the T-shirt, Erato. I’m only here ‘cause I been lookin’ for you the last twenty-four hours. I was headin‘ over to the Trolley Stop when I saw your cab. What’s goin’ on here with all these people? And how come you’re involved?”
“It’s National Night Out Against Crime-you knew that, right? All over town, neighborhood associations, homeowners, are gettin‘ together and havin’ barbecues. Makin‘ it clear to the criminal element that the lights areon and somebody’s watchin’ the streets, y’know? But it’s not just people with homes that are the victims of crime, see. An awful lot of the victims of robbery and murder are those folks what don’thave a home-”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Jules said in a rush, “but what does this have to do withyou?”
“You know what it says in Scripture-‘There but for the grace of the Lord goes me’? Well, for a few years now I been a volunteer for this program sponsored by the cab companies and the Social Service Department. It’s called C.A.H.R.T., likego cart. Stands for ‘Cabbies Assisting Homeless Residents with Transportation.’ I pick up homeless folks from the shelters and give ‘em rides to jobs or services or the hospital, all for fifty cents a ride. So over the months I got to know a buncha them pretty well-you’re a cabbie yo’self, you know how folks talk when they’re in your backseat. Some of these folks, I’ll be pickin’ ‘em up for weeks and weeks, and then they’ll up and disappear without a trace. Happened often enough to start worryin’ me. So I decided to help organize this demonstration here, to make the cops pay attention to crime against the homeless.”
Jules felt himself reddening. How many of those “disappearances” had he been responsible for over the past few years? Dozens? He didn’t even want to venture a count. Hearing his buddy talk this way hurt worse than falling on his face from two stories up. He grabbed Erato by the shoulders. “But whyBessie? Why the T-shirts? Why the posters? Why have I been seeing that woman’s face all over town?”
Erato’s thick eyebrows lifted in surprise. “What? You knowed Bessie?”
Jules tried applying the brakes to his emotions. He hoped Erato hadn’t noticed him blushing. “Uh, a little. I gave her a few rides.”
“Oh yeah? Well, Bessie was-is,gotta remember to sayis — a very special lady. That woman had nothing, y’know? But every time I gave her a ride, all she could talk about was what she needed to be doin‘ for other folks. Walking donated groceries to old folks too sick to leave their homes. Watchin’ the kids of moms tryin‘ to work and get off the welfare.” His face darkened. “It just pisses me the fuckoff that the cops pay more attention to statues gettin’ stolen from cemeteries than when some homeless woman like Bessie Agar goes missin‘-like her life ain’t worthshit- ”
Jules felt as small and repulsive as a booger smeared on a dinner plate. Erato must’ve noticed the profoundly distressed look on his friend’s face, because he gripped Jules’s shoulder and said, “Aww, I’m sorry to bring you down like that, man. I shouldn’t have gone off on a tear. Hell, Bessie could still turn up, y’know. There’s still hope.”
“Yeah, she could still turn up,” Jules parroted in a flat, mechanical voice. In his mind’s eye, he saw Bessie’s rich red blood pooling on the plastic sheet covering the floor of his Cadillac, and her skin fading from a rich chocolate brown to a dull, lifeless gray. He saw the gun in his hand, and the neat little hole the small-caliber bullet made in the base of her skull, and how her body floated like a big pool toy before sinking into the murk of Manchac swamp.
A TV reporter standing on neutral ground motioned for Erato to come do an interview. Erato shouted that he’d be over in a minute, then turned back to Jules. “Say, buddy, you said before that you been tryin‘ to track me down. Sorry for bein’ hard to get a hold of-I been real busy makin‘ sure we’d have a good turnout tonight. What can I do for you? I gotta say, it’sgreat to see you up and around. You had me kinda worried with your lyin’-in-the-piano-box shtick. Gladthat nonsense is over and done with. So whatchu need?”
“Nothin‘, Erato. You’re a real busy man tonight.” Turning back in the direction of his car, he couldn’t even meet his friend’s eyes. “Forget about it. It was nothin’ at all. Have a good rally, huh?”
“Uh, sure thing!” Erato yelled after him, sounding more than a little confused. “Let’s get together next week at the Trolley Stop and talk about that C.A.H.R.T. program, okay? Maybe I can get you to volunteer with me?”
Jules didn’t even attempt a reply. He pretended not to have heard his friend, and concentrated on pushing through the crowd. Just six weeks ago, learning about the C.A.H.R.T. program, with its convenient supply of unsuspecting homeless victims, would’ve seemed like manna from heaven. Now the thought of what he would’ve done with that knowledge made his stomach churn.
Jules trudged toward Rampart Street, his feet heavy as concrete slabs. Although he was surrounded by hundreds of people, he felt achingly alone.
The big vampire drove aimlessly for a while, barely noticing things like stop signs, traffic lights, and pedestrians. Driving in the shadow of the elevated expressway grew uncomfortable-the massive steel buttresses looming above him reminded Jules of the relentless fate hanging over his head-so he turned off onto Tulane Avenue.
Too late, he realized where he was. “Jeezus, my life’s runnin‘ in a big fuckin’ circle,” he whispered harshly to himself. To his left, silhouetted in moonlight, loomed the Romanesque towers of St. Joseph’s Church. His childhood church, and the same house of worship he’d found himself drawn to the night he’d submerged Bessie’s body in the muddy waters of Manchac swamp.
The massive front doors were open, beckoning him inside. He parked on the other side of the street and walked across Tulane Avenue’s six lanes. A sign posted on the church’s front lawn announced that the church was conducting special evening Masses during the Night Out Against Crime.
Jules felt a desperate, burning need for-what? Forgiveness? Absolution? Redemption, maybe? Whatever this nebulous but powerful need was, he knew that he felt scared, abandoned, sick of being who he was, and terribly, terribly alone. More than anytime since he’d been a little boy, he wanted someone stronger and wiser than he was to tell him everything would be all right. Even if it wasn’t true.
He just wanted to hear it.
He squinted to avoid seeing the crucifixes outside and walked into St. Joseph’s. Almost immediately, he felt his skin begin broiling; it felt like the sunburns he used to suffer at Lake Pontchartrain at the start of summer, right after school had let out. He avoided the baptismal font like another man would avoid a pool of boiling lava. The big church was empty.Must be between Masses, Jules told himself. More surprising to him was the dull drabness of the tall stained-glass windows. After thinking about it a minute, he realized that in nearly all his memories of this church, the windows had been made radiant and beautiful by the sunlight streaming through them.
He wanted to go somewhere he hadn’t been since he was twenty years old. He wanted to sit in the confessional booth. The green light above the booth’s door was lit. He grabbed the handle, then let go as if a cobra had bitten him. The handle felt as hot as a glazed pot fresh out of the kiln. His attempt at entry had left the door slightly ajar, however, so Jules gingerly pushed it open with the toe of his shoe.
The booth was much smaller and tighter than he remembered it being. He barely fit on the kneeler, and his knees were jammed into his overhanging stomach. The church was air-conditioned; still, Jules felt like a king cake baking inside a McKenzie’s Pastry Shoppe oven. Sweat coursed down every square inch of his body, but it failed to cool his burning skin. The stale air inside the booth was soon clouded with white, oily smoke.
After a moment, Jules heard the wooden door on the other side of the screen slide open. He waited for the priest to say something, but then he remembered that the parishioner always speaks first. Embarrassed, he tried to recall the proper opening words.
“Uh, forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been… let’s see… eighty years since my last confession; maybe eighty-five years. Lemme think here… uh, I have purchased pornography-”
“Excuse me, my son. Surely you realize that smoking is not permitted in the confessional booth.”
Jules was slightly stunned at having been interrupted midconfession by the priest. “But I’m not smoking, Father.”
“I smell smoke.”
Jules waved his arms around, trying to disperse the smoke, but his exertions only made his skin burn faster. “Uh, yeah-I came from a bar, see, a real smoky bar-not that I wasdrinkin‘ or nothin’… me and my pals, we were havin‘, uh, a Bible study session in the back…”
“Please, my son, do not add to your sins. Just stub your cigar out. I realize the terrible power of nicotine addiction, but surely you can wait until after you’ve completed confession.”
“Uh, okay.” Jules made a noise with his foot like he was stubbing out a cigar on the floor. “Back to what I was sayin‘ before… my sins… I have purchased pornography on, uh, numerous occasions. I used the pornography to commit, y’know, onanism. On, uh, numerous occasions. I have fornicated-although the last time I did it, I didn’t go all the way. I have thought disrespectful thoughts regarding my mother. Oohh, this is a bad one-I had sexual intercourse with a dog.”
“Adog?”
“Yeah, but there were extenuating circumstances. Getting away from the whole sex thing, Father, what I really came to talk to you about is this-is it a sin to kill for food?”
The priest paused before responding. “Are you telling me that you killed someone and stole their food?”
“Uh, no. Not exactly. What I’m talkin‘ about is killing some-, uh, somethingand eating, uh, part of it. That’s what I done.”
“I see. Before Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, they ate only the fruits and plants that were permitted them; they were vegetarians. However, once they committed Original Sin, carnivorousness became part of the natural order of things, and since then man has been permitted to eat of the lower animals. However, if you have stolen an animal that belonged to another and slaughtered it for food, this could be considered sinful. Not for the act of eating meat, but for the act of theft.”
Jules coughed. His throat was parched, and the oily smoke from his own skin was irritating it even more. “That’s not it, either. See, I’m sort of a hunter. I hunt to eat. Only… well… I don’t hunt lower animals. Not exactly.”
“Whatdo you hunt?”
Jules sighed heavily. “People. Human beings.”
“You huntpeople and youeat them? You’re telling me you’re a cannibal?”
“No, Father,” Jules said hastily. “I don’t wanna give you the wrong idea. I don’teat people, not really. How can I explain this, in some way that’ll make sense to you-? Okay. Here goes. I drink people’s blood. I’m a vampire.”
The priest was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was angry and dismissive. “The confessional is no place for pranks or jokes. Please take your warped ‘sense of humor’ somewhere else and leave this booth for those who truly wish to use it.”
The door behind the screen partition began to slide shut. “Father, wait! I’m not bullsh-, I mean I’m not feedin‘ you any baloney here! I reallyam a vampire! That smoke you smell-that’s not from a cigar, it’s myskin that’s burning! I’m burning because I’m inside a church! I swear to the Big Guy in Heaven I’m tellin’ you the truth!”
The door stopped sliding shut. Jules pressed his advantage. “Father, I couldshow you stuff. I can change into a bat. Or a wolf. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. Or you can take a crucifix and press it against my skin. It’ll brand me like an iron right outta the fire, honest truth so help me-”
“Stop. I’m willing to take you at your word. Whatever else, I believe thatyou honestly believe what you are telling me.”
Jules sucked in a deep breath, then slowly exhaled. “Thanks, Father. That’s really white of you. I mean that.”
“Hrrmm…” The priest cleared his throat. Jules had the sudden realization that he might not be speaking with a white clergyman. “How about telling me why you decided to enter the confession booth tonight? That’s not usual behavior for a vampire, is it?”
“No… it’s not.” Jules wiped his forehead with his sleeve. Flecks of parched skin, gray as ash, drifted down through the smoky air.“It’s just that… Father, I don’t think I’m gonna be on this earth much longer. I think I’m gonna get killed, and this time it’s gonna be permanent. I’ve drained a lotta folks over the years… to live, to survive. I always explained it away by tellin‘ myself I’m no worse than the hunter who loads up his deer rifle, then goes out into the woods to bring home some venison. But lately-well, just tonight, this friend of mine, a good friend, he told me some things-and I can’t look at it in the same way no more. All them killings, they’re eatin’ me up inside. I don’t wanna go down to the grave with all that on my conscience.”
“How many people have you killed, my son?”
“In the last eighty, eighty-five years… I’ve gotta figure about two fangings a month, sometimes three… minus the thirty-odd years I worked for the coroner’s office… I’d hafta estimate a thousand to twelve hundred.”
Jules heard a soft choking sound from the far side of the screen. “Have you-have you ever tried subsisting on the blood of lower animals?”
Jules sighed. “I been there, Father. Believe me. Been there and tried that. Way back in World War One, right after I became a vampire, I tried doin‘ the patriotic thing and not munch on my fellow Americans. Instead, I put the bite on anything I could get my hands on-stray dogs and cats, mules, even a dairy cow once. I found out it’s like tryin’ to live on water and crackers-boy, did I feel like shit after a while. Later on, after Pearl Harbor, I tried the same thing again. Thought maybe I’d tolerate it better, since I’d been a vampire longer. No such luck. But I found a better way to be a good American-the docks and factories were teemin‘ with fifth columnists, filthy spies and saboteurs… I ate good during the war.”
“Help me to understand-is human blood absolutelynecessary for you to survive? Or is it a substance like heroin, a drug you’ve become addicted to? If you had to, could you subsist on the same foods ordinary humans eat?”
Jules didn’t care for the direction their discussion was taking. All he’d wanted to do was confess, get his assignment of penitent prayers, receive absolution, and leave as fast as possible. “No, Father. I can’t eat no normal foods. Not for the last twenty-five years or so. They won’t stay down. They shoot out both ends-it’s amess, believe me.” His conscience stung him like a nestful of aroused wasps; he wasn’t telling the Father a big, fatlie, not exactly, but he was withholding a good part of the truth. “Eh, I guess, y’know, I suppose I need to qualify that a little. I can’t eat no normal foods while I’m in myregular shape. There’ve been a few times-really rotten, low times, times so lousy I don’t even wanna think about them-when I been forced to change into a wolf and scrounge around for some scraps or dog food to eat. I guess I been able to tolerate solid foods good enough those few times-”
“So then, conceivably, you would be able to survive by-ahem-changing into awolf whenever you feel the need to eat?”
Jules sensed himself sliding down a slippery slope. “Well, eh, it’s possible, maybe, just not realprobable — ”
“Indulge me a moment-you could subsist on solid foods, and drinking human blood would no longer be necessary?”
“Look, Father, you’re takin‘ me into real uncharted territory here. What you’re suggestin’ has never been tried for any long period of time-and besides, it’sway beneath my dignity as a vampire. If you’ll excuse me sayin‘ so, you askin’ me to dothat is like me askin‘you to screw a nun. It just ain’tdone. No vampire in America would even look me in the eye if they knew I’d donethat kinda eatin’. Well, practically no vampire. Anyway, I don’t know why we’re even discussin‘ this, seein’ as how I probably won’t be eatin‘ or drinkin’ anything much longer.”
When the priest spoke again, Jules could tell he was on the verge of slamming the partition door shut. “I’ve been very patient. Exactlywhat do you want from me?”
Jules tried to make his tone as respectful as possible (considering that his lips were beginning to blister). “Father, I thought that wasobvious. My mother, bless her soul, raised me in the Church. I’ll admit I ain’t been the greatest Catholic the last eighty years or so, but it hasn’t been my fault. I just want the same thing any parishioner wants when he walks outta the confession booth-a list of ‘Hail Marys’ and rosaries to say, so I can get this awful weight off my shoulders. I’ve done what I’m supposed to-I’ve come in here and told you all the crummy stuff I’ve done. I’ve confessed, and I’m not even on my deathbed yet. I want you to ’poof‘ me, Father, so that I’m sin-free when I sail off into the Last Roundup.”
Jules felt satisfied with himself. His plea had been heartfelt, spiritual, and well worded. But suddenly the Father’s voice took on that hair-raising, Satan-slamming resonance that Jules recognized from theOmen movies. “There is no penance unless the sinner intends to sin no more. Will you foreswear the drinking of human blood and dedicate the rest of your unholy existence to the service of Christ?”
“Aww, c’mon, Father, we just been through this. I said I’m sorry. I just want to clear my slate, that’s all. Look, I never had no choice over whether I became a vampire or not-”
“Insincere penitence is like unto blasphemy in the eyes of our Lord. Vampire or not, you defile this holy church with your lies and deceptions. Get out. Do not return here until you are ready to sin no more.”
The priest closed the sliding door with a resounding smack. “Father, just a few ‘Hail Marys,’ that’s all I’m askin‘ here-”
“Out!Getout! Leave at once, or I’ll have the policethrow you out!”
When he found himself back out on the trash-strewn sidewalk, Tulane Avenue looked even more desolate and abandoned than before. Jules kicked an empty can of Dixie Beer into the street, then brushed flakes of dead skin from his arms and neck.
“Boy, he sure was in a snit,” Jules muttered to himself. “Maybe the altar boy had a headache last night.”
He was immediately sorry that he’d said it. His head involuntarily jerked sideways as he pictured his mother hauling off and slapping his face, every one of her ninety-eight pounds behind the blow.
It was a fortuitous hallucination. While his head was cockeyed from the imaginary blow, Jules’s gaze fell upon the billboard mounted on the roof of the furniture store across the street. A mariachi band played in front of an outdoor cafй, the musicians grinning ludicrously big grins, as if they were all hooked up to IVs brimming with tequila. Continental Airlines was advertising new direct flights to Mexico City and Cancъn.FLY TO MEXICO CITY FASTER THAN YOU CAN DRIVE TO MORGAN CITY, the billboard commanded.
Like a bursting grenade, the name hit him.Doc Landrieu! Hadn’t Doc Landrieu practically begged him to move to Argentina and become an assistant in the doctor’s liposuction practice? Hadn’t his old boss enticed him with visions of grateful Latin women and endless supplies of delicious fat-laden blood?
Sure, he’d put the doc off at the time. Having just escaped from five nights of hell in Baton Rouge, Jules had been in no frame of mind to even consider leaving New Orleans again. But that was then, and this was most definitely now. Going off with Doc Landrieu was the perfect solution. Even if Argentina had its own indigenous vampires, Jules wouldn’t have to worry about turf battles, because he and Doc Landrieu would be harvesting their own supply of blood in a nonintrusive, completely private fashion. They wouldn’t be stealing resources from anybody.
He stood on the desolate sidewalk and thought about it some more. Hooking up with the doctor would ensure Jules a constant supply of those miraculous antidiabetes pills; a good thing, especially since he was down to his last two or three. After a year or two of their working together, the doctor could probably come up with a cure for him, making the pills unnecessary. Argentina wasn’t New Orleans, but it would be all right.
Jules crossed the street to his car with a renewed sense of purpose. Maybe he’d bombed in St. Joseph’s, but salvation was only a ten-minute drive away.
The Mid-City side street next to the Jewish cemetery was silent and empty of people when Jules pulled up in front of Doc Landrieu’s house. No Night Out Against Crime block parties were going on in the neighborhood. The street lamp on the corner was out, leaving the otherwise well-tended block in uncustomary gloom.
In contrast, Jules’s mood was bright as the midday sun in Buenos Aires. He’d decided on the drive over that he would invite Maureen to fly south with him. Relief and happiness had swelled his heart with a sense of forgiveness; he was sure they could work out their differences in the big open spaces of Argentina, freed from the pressure-cooker atmosphere of New Orleans. And wouldn’t Doc Landrieu be thrilled to remove not one buttwo vampires from his home city!
Brimming with eager anticipation, Jules rang the doorbell. While waiting for Doc Landrieu to come to the door, he continued grinning like a kid who’d just won a shiny ten-speed bicycle. But Doc Landrieu didn’t come. Jules rang the bell again. The house remained dark.
He checked the driveway. Doc Landrieu’s car was there. Maybe he was down in his workshop and hadn’t heard the bell? Jules squeezed past the doctor’s car and circled to the back of the house. No lights shone through the narrow windows of the basement workshop.
Maybe the doctor had gone to bed early. That had to be it. He was a heavy sleeper, perhaps, and the bell wasn’t loud enough to wake him. Or maybe the bell was busted. Sure. It could be any of those things.
Whatever the deal was, Jules sure couldn’t wait for morning to talk with his ex-boss. It was kind of rude to wake the old man up if he was sleeping, but considering how eager Doc Landrieu had been to take Jules away from New Orleans, surely the doctor wouldn’t get too miffed over missing a few hours of shut-eye.
With his vampiric strength, Jules was certain he could knock a heck of a lot louder than any doorbell. Hoping he wouldn’t crack the door’s fresh coat of forest-green paint, he rapped the stout wood panels.
Yielding to his assault, the door swung open.
Jules was frozen with surprise. He hadn’t hit itthat hard. Not hard enough to bust the lock. Not even hard enough to dislodge the latch. Someone had left the door only partially shut.
Jules pushed the door the rest of the way open. “Doc Landrieu? Hey, Doc? It’s Jules Duchon.”
The house was quiet. Jules’s fingers fumbled along the wall until they located the light switch. The front parlor was unoccupied, but seemingly undisturbed. The big-screen television and stereo set were still where he remembered them. So the house hadn’t been burglarized. Maybe the doc was getting forgetful in his advanced age?
“Doc?” he called, louder than before. “It’s Jules. Hate to wake you, pal. But I decided to take you up on your offer.”
Still no response. Jules walked deeper into the parlor. Behind the sofa, between the edge of an expensive Persian rug and the hallway leading to the study and the kitchen, he found a brass floor lamp. It had tipped over and fallen onto the hardwood floor. Shattered pieces of colorful Tiffany glass were scattered across the polished teak.
Jules felt his heart sink. His boots crunched bits of broken glass. Dreading what he might find, he checked the kitchen, then the study, turning on lights as he went. He climbed the stairs, fear making his heart pound more unbearably than exertion ever had. The three upstairs bedrooms were empty and mute, betraying no traces of violence.
There was only one place left for him to check. He descended the stairs to the first-floor basement, where Doc Landrieu had his workshop and lab. Halfway down the stairs, the odor hit him. Jules’s last, brittle hopes disintegrated. After eighty-plus years in the vampire business, he knew the stench of decaying flesh all too well.
He found Doc Landrieu stretched out on his main worktable. His clothing and loose folds of his skin had been pinned to the table with long, skinny nails, as though he were a beetle on a high school biology dissecting tray. Broken lengths of glass tubing, tubing that the doctor had used for distilling his compounds, projected from his corpse like the quills of a porcupine.
Transfixed by this desecration of a man who had been his friend and mentor, Jules stumbled closer to the table. The unfrozen part of his mind noted that the fragments of glass tubing had not been driven into the doctor’s body haphazardly. The entry points had been chosen very carefully, sited to intersect with major veins and arteries. Dried residue of blood marked the inside of each hollow piece of glass.
Straws. That’s what the glass tubes had been. His killers had sucked Doc Landrieu dry, like a shared ice cream soda.
Something had been forced into the doctor’s mouth. Something dark brown and roughly egg shaped. Half of it still protruded from his dead, blue lips. Jules stared at it. It was a coconut. A small, painted coconut. It didn’t make sense. Not until Jules pulled it from his friend’s mouth and saw what was painted on it.
It was a Zulu coconut. Not a true Zulu coconut, but a close facsimile of that most prized throw from New Orleans’s oldest black Mardi Gras krewe. It was painted just like a real Zulu coconut, a dark smiling face with white rings around its eyes and mouth. The only difference from the authentic article was that this Zulu coconut had fangs.
Jules had seen many dead bodies during his long sojourn on earth. Hundreds of them. But apart from his brief viewing of his mother’s lifeless body before he had consigned her plain pine coffin to the damp earth of the paupers’ cemetery, Jules had never seen a friend’s corpse before.
Doc Landrieu’s grotesquely disrespected body expanded until it filled Jules’s entire field of vision. Staring into this horrible abyss, he saw his own future. He had three antidiabetes pills left; they were jangling in a little plastic pill bottle in his pocket. When they were gone, he would degenerate back into the arthritic, breathless, almost immobile hulk he’d been five weeks before. He would be a sitting duck. They would catch him without even breaking a sweat. They wouldn’t be satisfied with simply killing him. He would be humiliated. He would be disgraced. He would be put on display.
His fleshless skull would be mounted on a spear, a painted coconut jammed between its jaws.
Jules hadn’t been back to his old place of employment in years. He pushed open the heavy, art-deco doors that led into the morgue’s examination rooms, and the overwhelming odor of formaldehyde sent thirty years of memories cascading through his weary brain. He’d never had any reason to come back here after he’d retired; with all the changeovers in city administrations, none of the staff working there now would even remember him. With one important exception. One employee would still remember Jules, and after Doc Landrieu’s demise, only he could prevent Jules from becoming a helpless, crippled target.
Marvin Oday owed Jules a big favor. As the first black employee above the level of janitor hired by the coroner’s office, and then only at Doc Landrieu’s insistence, Oday hadn’t had any friends among the otherwise all-white technical staff. With the exception of Jules, that is. Jules knew what it felt like to be the odd man out, so he’d befriended Oday and shown him the ropes.
Since Jules’s retirement, Oday had gone on for several advanced degrees, and he was now the office’s highest-level civil servant, second only to the publicly elected coroner. During the few years they’d worked together, Oday had always shown a marked preference for working the graveyard shift. Jules hoped this trait had remained constant.
For once, Jules was in luck. He found Oday in the gunmetal-gray office behind the examination rooms.
Jules knocked on the large window that separated the office from the closest examination room. The short, gray-haired chemist-physician looked up from his paperwork, and his eyes immediately widened with surprise when he saw his old coworker.
“Jules Duchon! Is that you?”
Jules walked through the door into the office. Despite renewing a friendly acquaintance, a circumstance he’d normally have treasured, his voice was leaden. “Hey, Marvin. Yeah, it’s me. How ya been?”
Oday stared at him with disbelief in his eyes. “Jules, you must be blessed with some of the mostyouthful genes on earth! I swear, you haven’t aged aday since the night you retired. You’ve, uh, well, you’ve put on a little weight since I saw you last, but then haven’t we all?” He shook Jules’s hand vigorously. “What brings you back here? You aren’t looking for your old job back, are you? Heh. I’m only a few years away from retirement myself, you know. Amazing as it seems. I was just getting started when you were still here, and now I’m gray-headed and ready to be put out to pasture.”
Jules removed the pill bottle from his pocket. “Yeah, it’s good to see you again, Marvin. But this isn’t a social call. I need to ask you a favor.”
“Sure. If it’s within my power, and it’s not unreasonable, I’ll do whatever I can for you. You have a dead body you need to get autopsied?” He smiled.
Jules didn’t return the smile. He placed the pill bottle on Oday’s desk. “You’re a chemist. I need you to analyze these pills. They’re a special kind of medication, and they’re real important to me. I can’t get any more from where I got them the first time. I need you to find out what they’re made of. If it’s possible, I want you to make more for me, or at least tell me where I could get it done.”
Oday raised an eyebrow. He frowned. “We aren’t talking about anillegal medication, are we? If not, I don’t see why you can’t take these to a pharmacist and get your prescription refilled-”
Jules cut him off. “They’re an experimental medication. Doc Landrieu came up with them for me. But he can’t make any more.”
“DocLandrieu came up with these for you?” Oday’s face relaxed into a grin. “How’s that old rascal doing? I’d heard that he was still fooling around with a chemistry set between rounds of golf. So now he’s in the medicine business? Let’s see… the last time I saw him was a couple of years back, at a charity fund-raiser. You’ve seen him recently, I take it?”
“Yeah. I’ve seen him.”
“So how come he can’t give you more of these pills he invented?”
Jules involuntarily grimaced. He felt lost in a poisonous fog. “It’s a long story. I can’t go into it. Look, Marvin, just analyze these for me, okay? I won’t ask you to make more for me. Just tell me what’s in them.”
Oday picked up the pill bottle and eyed it thoughtfully. “Well… I suppose there’s no harm in that. I can set aside some time later tonight, in fact. You’ll leave these with me?”
Jules took the bottle back from Oday. He popped the top off, shook out two of the white tablets marked with anA, and placed them on Oday’s desk. That left only one pill for him to take. One pill for tomorrow night. After that, he’d be at the mercy of some chemist somewhere. Or at the mercy of Malice X.
“Thanks, Marvin. You’re a good friend.”
“Yes. Well,you were a good friend, back when I needed one.” Oday sighed. “How can I reach you once I have your results?”
“You got a White Pages I can use?”
“Of course.” Oday opened up a desk drawer and handed him a phone book.
Jules looked up the number of the Twelve Oaks Guest House. “Try me at this number. I’m in cabin number four.” Then he thought to give him Maureen’s number, as well. There was always a chance he might have to seek refuge in her house. “If you can’t reach me at this bed-and-breakfast, try me at this friend’s number, okay?”
While he was writing Maureen’s phone number on a pad, Jules’s thoughts were tugged to Malice X’s final, mocking words of advice.Get some pussy while you still can. He’d taken the taunt as just another installment in a long series of threats. But after the obscenity that had been committed against Doc Landrieu, those words took on a different and awful significance.
The pen burst in Jules’s fist, splattering ink across the desk. A surge of terror-propelled adrenaline nearly exploded his heart from his chest.
“Maureen!”