It had been ten long, sometimes lonely years since Jules had seen Maureen last. He’d stayed away a decade out of deference to her feelings, irrational though they might’ve been. Now he was about to step onto her turf again. He had no choice. Only she could tell him how to reach the High Krewe of Vlad Tepes. She’d just have to understand.
Jules rubbed his eyes and yawned. He’d had a lousy day’s sleep. No amount of scrubbing and bleach had been able to completely remove the stench of urine from his coffin.
He paused on the sidewalk in front of Jezebel’s Joy Room to stare at the photographs of the dancers. He wanted to be sure that Maureen still worked there before he committed himself to climbing the stairs. Jezebel’s was on Iberville between Royal and Chartres, a stretch of the upper Quarter that had managed to avoid the rampant gentrification that had pasteurized most of the rest of New Orleans’s central tourist zone. The club’s surroundings had changed very little since the early 1960s, when the last few legitimate burlesque houses had died off and been replaced by bump-and-grind joints. This was a block respectable tourists rushed by on their way to the House of Blues or Cafй du Monde, averting their eyes from the yellowing photographs of naked female torsos.
Jules quickly scanned the contents of Jezebel’s come-on display. It didn’t take long to find her.Yup; that’s Maureen, all right. None of the photos inside the roach-eaten display case showed any of the women’s faces. The picture of Maureen, however, was unmistakable. Unlike all the others, it was a charcoal sketch, almost Fauvist in its primitive vitality. The caption beneath the sketch announced in bold lettering,ROUND ROBIN-BIGGEST EROTIC ATTRACTION IN THE QUARTER-YOU WON’T BELIEVE YOUR EYES! Staring at her picture brought a flood of memories crashing down on his head. Some good, some not so good. The picture was wrinkled from the oppressive humidity, and its edges had begun peeling away from the cork backing of the display case. If the sketch were true to life at all, then Maureen’s torso had grown even more monumental than it’d been ten years ago.
Generic disco music blared from cheap speakers in the second-story room high above, making the heavy air throb around Jules’s blunt head. He gathered his courage and pulled open the front door. Jezebel’s was at a competitive disadvantage compared with the clubs located right at street level. It lacked the free and effective advertising of a front entrance, which displayed flashes of the goods inside to curious passersby every time the door swung open. Jules waddled into the landing. The stairs were steep and narrow, lit by a single naked lightbulb. His fleshy nostrils twitched. The aroma inside the foyer was a barroom classic-stale beer mingled with cigarette haze and a hint of drying urine. Lately, it seemed he couldn’t escape the scent of piss.
Three minutes later, a veritable eternity of agony for his joints, Jules reached the second-story landing. The pounding in his ears obliterated the soulless, mechanical music howling from the speakers above the gaudily lit stage. His knees felt like huge, swollen beefsteak tomatoes, bruised, squeezed, and pinched by hundreds of manic shoppers at some pre-Easter sale at Schwegmann’s Giant Super-Market. But when he caught sight of who was on stage, Jules immediately forgot all about his knees.
Beneath a glittering, revolving disco ball, Maureen danced like some fantastic vision from an antediluvian, pre-Weight Watchers world, a fertility goddess who’d be worshiped by a tribe of blue-eyed albinos. As she danced about the stage with almost supernatural grace, every part of her-her hips, thighs, belly, double-dimpled arms, buttocks, jowls, neck rolls-shimmied and gyrated in time with the music, an unceasing undulation of fleshy movement. It was hypnotic. Jules estimated that she had packed on at least two hundred additional pounds since he had last seen her.
He made his way, as quietly and unobtrusively as he could manage, to a table near the back of the club. He wasn’t as invisible as he’d hoped to be. When he was just halfway to his destination, Maureen’s eyes snapped open, as if from a trance. Her placid face dissolved into a mask of horror and abject humiliation, as Jules was treated, along with every other patron in the club, to the astounding spectacle of Maureen’s immense, chalk-white body turning scarlet red.
She stumbled out of her dance routine like a punch-drunk boxer, then ran as quickly as her doughy legs would carry her to the side of the stage and theEMPLOYEES ONLY exit, covering her face with her hands. Jules frowned. He hadn’t anticipated his presence having such a dramatic effect on her. What was it with women, anyway? Jules had figured she’d be surprised, maybe even shocked, by his sudden reappearance. But shouldn’t she be happy to see an old friend again?
Another dancer hurried onstage as someone fumbled with the tape player and two employees stripped the black curtains from the mirrors surrounding three sides of the dancing platform. Compared with Maureen, the new girl was decidedly ordinary, apart from silicone-enhanced breasts. Jules overheard a few of the other patrons mumble with disappointment; several got up to leave.
Jules fidgeted for a few minutes while he tried to watch the new dancer. She wasn’t much good. Half the audience had cleared out since Maureen had made her abrupt exit.
The floorboards to the right of his table creaked. He heard a bemused, exasperated sigh, one he remembered all too well. “Hello, Jules.”
“Hey, Mo. Pull up a chair?”
“Sure. Long as I can find one that won’t bust when I sit down.”
She had dressed herself in a custom-made kimono, yards of black silk embroidered with green, purple, and gold dragons. Her long, frizzy blond hair was pulled back from her face by three glittery purple clips. Despite the forlorn, heavy sag of her alabaster jowls, Jules thought she was as beautiful as he’d ever seen her. As beautiful, even, as she’d looked the first night he’d met her, the last and only time he’d gazed at her with human eyes.
She settled herself uncomfortably on an armless chair, which protested but did not give way. “So what’ve you been doing with yourself?”
“Oh, y’know, the usual. Livin‘ the life.”
“The afterlife, you mean.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
Her hard, cold stare unnerved him. He looked away, forcing himself to watch the clumsy, plastic-boobed dancer still trying to make a go of it. When he glanced back, Maureen was still staring at him. “I felt you come in, you know,” she said. “When I first started dancing, I felt a little tingle behind my eyes, in my sinuses, like the start of a headache. So I knew you were downstairs, pacing back and forth in front of that sketch of me, trying to decide whether or not to come up. That damn tingle got worse with each step you climbed. I kept hoping I was wrong. But I wasn’t. I can always sense when the ones I made are around. I’m like a bitch with her goddamn puppies.”
Jules tried to think of something to say. He stared at his fingers, splayed on the table like white cigars. He’d always hated the way Maureen could nail him with a look, making thirty seconds feel like a century of deafening silence.
“Goddamn it to hell, Jules,” Maureen whispered fiercely after a few seconds of deadly quiet. “Didn’t I tell you never to come see me again? Didn’t I?”
Jules finally found his voice. He wished he could still drink whiskey; his throat could use it. “Mo, that was ten years ago. I thought, y’know, maybe you’d changed your mind by now. Lord almighty, I’m practically the only relation you got in the whole world. Why’re you holding this heavy grudge against me, baby? What’s so awful about seeing me once every ten years?”
Maureen remained quiet for a few long seconds, smiling ruefully. “You just don’t get it, do you? Naww. Of course you don’t. You’re a goddamnman.” She sighed heavily. “I’ll try to explain. Look at that stage, Jules. What do you see? Aside from a drug-addled bimbo with thousand-dollar tits, I mean.”
Jules considered all possible answers before replying. He really didn’t want to make her any more angry than she already was, not if he could possibly avoid it. “Uh, I dunno. Mirrors?”
Maureen smiled and slowly nodded her head, like she was trying to teach a retarded child the alphabet. “That’s right, Jules. Mirrors. But when I’m dancing on that stage, do you see the mirrors?”
“No. They cover them up with velvet.”
“And why do they do that?”
“ ‘Cause it’s part of your act. You insist on it.”
Maureen waved her pudgy hand in a brisk, circular motion. “Andwhy do I insist on that?”
“Uh, ‘cause it’d freak out the clientele to not see you reflected in any of those mirrors, right?”
“Yes, Jules. Very good. And guess what? If none of the clientele can see my reflection, neither can I. I haven’t been able to look at myself in a mirror or a photograph for more than a hundred years. But you know what? That’s been a good thing. A very good thing. Especially during the last five decades or so. I feelblessed that I can’t look at myself in the mirror. I am the luckiest fat woman on earth, Jules. But you come waltzing in here, after ten years, and you know what you are to me? You know what you are?”
Jules had figured it out. But he didn’t want to say it.
Maureen sighed again. No exasperation this time. Just sadness, a sadness weightier than the two of them put together. “Amirror, Jules. You’re my goddamn mirror.”
She took a deep breath, and her eyes moistened and seemed to soften. She reached across the table and took his fleshy paw between her hands. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “You were abeautiful man. Such a beautiful man. You know that? When I saw you that night, standing in front of the French Opera House on Canal Street, I knew immediately that you were the one. The one I wanted to give eternal unlife to. So I could spend the rest of eternity looking at beautiful, gorgeous you.”
Whoa!Maureen had never talked to him this way before. Not even back in the days when they were first together. What in hell could he say to that? “You were beautiful, too, Mo,” Jules said, a little haltingly. “Baby, you’restill beautiful.”
Maureen let his hand drop to the table. “Don’t bullshit me, Jules. I know exactly what I look like. I look at you, add some frizzy blond hair, make the tits and hips a little bigger, and there I am.” Her scowl melted into a melancholy frown, and she touched his hand again. “Jesus. It breaks my heart, honey, to see what you’ve done to yourself. It really does. If I had known, eighty years ago, what would become of you, I wouldn’t have bitten you. I would’ve just let you be.”
Jules felt his stomach do a double somersault with a half twist. If Maureen pissed off was bad, then Maureen on the verge of tears was a million times worse. “Mo. It’s gonna be different. You’ll see. I’m going on a diet. That’s, uh, that’s one a the things I came here to tell you.”
Silence. Deafening silence. Maureen stared at him as if he had just sung a Chinese opera. “This is ajoke, right? You tried, in your pathetic little way, to cheer me up. A joke. Right?”
“No, baby. I’m dead serious. I made up my mind last night. I’m gonna come back here six months from now, and you won’t recognize me. I’ll behalf the man I am now.”
“Oh. Youare being serious. You crazy, predictable, baboon’sass. How many times have I heard this shit from you, Jules? Do you have anyidea how many times I’ve listened to your identical bullshit?”
“Aww, Maureen-”
“Don’tyou ‘Aww Maureen’me. I’mwise to you, Jules Duchon. Why do you think I put you out on your ear ten years ago? You never change.This is the reason you came up here tonight?This is the reason you’ve trashed my routine, got me docked a night’s pay, and probably loused up my whole week? To repeat your sorry old ‘I’m-going-on-a-diet’ bullshit?”
Jules took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly through his nose. “Well, actually, I came to ask you, uh, a little favor, see… but it’s not bullshit, what I just said. I’m at the end of my rope, baby. I think I might be getting diabetes, or maybe something worse.”
Maureen tried pushing herself away from the table, but instead her chair remained firmly planted and she shoved the table into Jules’s gut. She rose awkwardly from her chair and smoothed the wrinkles from her kimono. “I think you’d better leave now. I can’t continue this conversation any more. It’s hazardous to my mental well-being.”
A waitress in a spangled bikini hovered expectantly over Jules’s shoulder. “Set’s almost over, dearie,” she said to him. A gold tooth in the middle of her false smile reflected the glare of the stage lights. “You gotta buy at least one drink. House rules.”
Maureen glowered at her coworker. “Samantha, can’t you see we’re in the middle of a conversation here?”
The waitress placed her tiny fists on her not-so-tiny hips. “Well, it looked to me like you was leavin‘, Maureen. Ex-cusea girl trying to make a living. You make your rent by wiggling around onstage an hour a night. Me, I don’t move the drinks, I’m out on my ass faster than you’d sunburn on Panama City Beach.”
Maureen jammed her bosom into the waitress’s tray, spilling a shot of bourbon onto a pile of cocktail napkins. “Get the hell out of my face, Samantha. I’ll pay for his drink later.Okay? ”
Samantha cast an appalled look at the spilled drink and backed away. “Ohh-kay, Maureen. Whatever you say. You’re the big-assstar around here. But you don’t have to be such abitch about it.” She stalked back to the bar.
Jules eyed the empty space on the table, next to his right hand, which would ordinarily be occupied by a cup of thick, steaming coffee. “Hey. Maybe I wanted to order a joe.”
Maureen redirected her withering glare on him. “I don’t give a flyingshit about your caffeine addiction-” Her tirade stopped in midsentence, like a wildfire suddenly deprived of oxygen. She sank back into her chair and wearily rested her forehead on her palms. “You said there was something else, didn’t you? Something you had to ask me. A favor.”
“Uh, yeah. Alittle favor.”
She sighed. “You’re like a crotch itch, you know? You show up at the worst times, and you won’t go away until you’re thoroughly scratched. Spill it. You’ve got two minutes, max.”
“I need some information, okay? That’s all. I need to get in touch with those vampires you used to live with before you went solo. The ones with the big compound somewhere near the parish line.”
Maureen’s thick makeup crinkled with surprise. “The High Krewe of Vlad Tepes? What the hell do you need to see those highfalutin assholes for?”
Now it was Jules’s turn to sigh. “To get a rogue off my back.”
“A rogue?”
The story began spilling out of him like a flash flood. “He was waitin‘ for me at my house last night. Busted up my door somethin’ awful. He threatened me. Threatenedme, in my own house! Wants to push me outta town. He pissed all over my coffin, and now I can’t get the damn stink out-”
“Slow down. Who is this you’re talking about? You’re not making much sense.”
Jules took a few seconds to gather his thoughts. “There’s a rogue vampire in town. A colored guy. Young. A real badass. He says he’s got a whole army of other vampires backing him up, and they’ve been watching everything I been up to. He told me I better stop fangin‘ black folks, or else he’s gonna have his goons lean on me. Can you believe this shit?”
Maureen was silent for several seconds. Her cheek twitched. “What’s-what’s his name? This rogue?”
“What the hell does that matter? His name? It sounded like that crazy preacher guy from the sixties. Like a girl’s name… Alice. Malice X.”
Maureen turned her head away suddenly and glanced at the empty stage. “Acolored vampire, you say?” Her fingers tightened on the edge of the table. “Where do you think he’s in from?”
“He says he’s from here. New Orleans born and bred.”
“That’s impossible. No one here would’ve made him.”
“Youargue with him. I’ll send him over to your place the next time he drops by for a chat.”
Maureen looked back at her companion. Jules noticed anxiousness in her eyes. Maybe even fear. “Do you think he’s on the level? About having an army of vampires, I mean?”
Jules considered this. “An army? Well, I dunno. But it makes sense that he’s got others with him. He knew too much about me and where I been to be working on his own.”
Maureen’s face brightened, as though she’d experienced a sudden revelation. Her voice returned to the motherly, half-cajoling, half-commanding tone he knew so well. “Have you thought about maybe doing what he said? Laying off the colored victims?”
“What?Whose side are you on?”
“Yours, you big dummy. Weren’t you just bragging to me five minutes ago about how you plan on going on a diet?”
“Well, yeah, sure, but-”
“Well, how do you think you got so damn fat in the first place? Me, I’ve been a vampire twice as long as you have, so I’ve had a lot more time to earn my blubber. But you, you’ve always preferred the colored victims. Always said they were tastier. Do you know what those peopleeat? Fatback. Pigs’ knuckles. They fry theirvegetables, for Varney’s sake! You want to slim down? If you do-if you really,honestly do-then this is the best thing that could’ve happened to you.”
Jules mulled this over. Could Maureen be right? Maybe this whole awful experience was really a blessing in disguise? “Well… well, maybe…”
But then he thought about his coffin again. His coffin, streaked with drying urine. All the helpless indignation he’d experienced in the past fifteen hours came boiling to the surface. “No.No way! I can’t let that little asshole get away with that shit. You weren’tthere, Mo. It wasn’tyour coffin he pissed on. My own house! This whippersnapper has the nerve to bust into my own house and try and muscle me around! Well, Jules Duchon don’t knuckle under to nobody. The High Krewe’ll tell that little snot-nose where to get off. You gonna give me that address or not?”
Maureen’s voice dropped fifty degrees. Celsius. “If you’re so bound and determined to make an ass of yourself, heaven forbid I should stand in the way. Just don’t come crying to me after those buzzards give you the bum’s rush.”
She gave Jules the address he was looking for. He wrote it down on a ragged little pad of paper. She volunteered some additional information, the lines of a poem that would act as a code to get him through the gate.
She grabbed the pad away from him once he was done writing and checked it for accuracy. “All right.” She flung it back at him. “Now get the hell out.”
Jules felt a great, big lump grow in his throat. He didn’t want it to end like this. Until he’d actually been sitting across from her, he’d barely realized just how much he’d been looking forward to seeing her again. “Look, Mo, about what you said before-y’know, layin‘ off the colored victims… I’ll think about it, okay? One way or another, I’m gonna slim down. For you and me both. Have a little faith in me. Just alittle. Huh?”
Her voice was flat as a bottle of Big Shot soda left open for a week. “Sure, Jules. You’ll come back in a year. Or five years, or ten. And you’ll be bigger than a house. We’ll both be. The people around here eat the most fattening crap in the world. And we eatthem. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it’ll stay. Good night.”
He could tell from her voice that there was nothing more he could say. He scooted back from the table, which was poking painfully into his liver. He pantomimed a tip of his hat to Maureen, but she had already turned away and started walking back to the stage door.
Jules tried shrugging his shoulders. The gesture felt false, somehow. He started shuffling toward the exit. At least those damn stairs would be easier to get down than they’d been to get up.
He was halfway to the door when he heard her voice behind him. “Jules. It’s a different world out there than it used to be. Watch your ass, honey. Okay?”
Leaning on his cane, he swiveled back around and smiled a winning smile. “As big as my ass is, baby, it’s impossiblenot to watch it!”
He was pleased with himself. That had been a good line to exit by. But as he made his way cautiously down the steep steps, her parting words of warning made him uneasy. And unlike a crotch itch, the uneasiness wouldn’t go away, no matter how much he scratched it.
Next stop, Bamboo Road,Jules thought to himself.
In all his years as a cabdriver, he’d never had the opportunity to drop a fare off on Bamboo Road. Not too surprising-the folks who could afford to live there either drove their own imported luxury cars or hired chauffeurs to drive them.
As he neared the address, he drove past acres and acres of aboveground marble crypts. Metairie Cemetery was the largest, most elaborate “city of the dead” in all New Orleans. Its crypts and miniature cathedrals housed the earthly remains of Confederate heroes, several mayors and governors, and much of the royalty of the Krewes of Rex, Comus, and Proteus. Jules estimated that even the smallest crypt in Metairie Cemetery was worth more than all the houses on his block of Montegut Street added together. Here and on neighboring Bamboo Road, the dead did well for themselves.
Jules turned off Metairie Road onto the loose gravel path, shadowed by ancient oak trees, that led to his destination. He parked his Caddy a dozen yards from where the path ended at an iron gate. Perhaps it was due to the abundance of trees and shrubs that lined the drive, but the air became tangibly cooler as Jules approached the lordly stone wall that surrounded the mansion and its outlying buildings and gardens.
When he reached the gate, Jules pressed what he assumed was a doorbell on the stone gatepost. To his surprise, a small door at face height slid open, revealing a glowing picture tube. A second later, a man’s face filled the screen. He appeared to be in his late sixties and was dressed in a butler’s livery.
“Yes? What can we do for you?”
The face didn’t look entirely natural; it was too smooth and regular. Jules wondered whether it was a computer-generated image. In any case, the man’s (or image’s) patronizing tone made Jules’s ears burn. He looked for the camera that he assumed was pointing at him. He couldn’t see any lens, but he figured the butler could see as well as be seen, so he squared his shoulders before replying. “I need to talk with Krauss, Katz, and Besthoff.”
“Are the masters expecting your arrival?”
“No. But it’s important. I’ve got news they’ll want to know about.”
The butler’s expression didn’t change. “May I inquire as to the nature of your business?”
“Just tell them it’s important.” When the other man said nothing, Jules added, “I can’t talk specifics with the help.”
“Then I’m afraid I can’t let you in. The masters see no one without a prior invitation.”
Jules felt his face redden. “Look, Jeeves. I’m practically a member of the family. Iknow they’ll want to see me. You gotta know I’m a vampire, don’t you? I mean, take a good look through that camera of yours. Do you see my face? Or do I look like a bunch of empty clothes held up by wires?”
The face on the screen didn’t twitch a muscle. “Ofcourse I realize you are a member of the undead. But that makes no difference. Since you are incapable of enlightening me as to the nature of your business, I must return to my other duties and pray that you will have a pleasant evening.” He turned away from the screen. The concealed door began to slide back into place.
“Hey! Wait!” Jules grabbed Maureen’s poem from his coat pocket, hurriedly unfolded it, and started reciting as quickly as he could, before the screen was entirely closed.
“At end of day
In deepest night
We feel the thirst Spread wings, take flight
No power on earth
Deters our bite
Some think us cursed
But blessed we are With eternal life.“
Almost reluctantly, the metal panel covering the screen slid open again. For the first time, the butler’s too-smooth face betrayed an emotion: exasperation. “Oh, very well,” he spat. “I’ll let you in, and at least one of the masters will see you. Do try not to step on any of the roses in the garden as you come through.”
An electric motor whirred to life, and the thick doors of the front gate pivoted inward. The air that drifted out to greet him was scented with orchids, lilies, and exotic strains of roses. Jules stepped into the compound somewhat cautiously, half expecting a pack of guard dogs (guard wolves?) to descend on him. But the only movement within the front courtyard was the rising and falling of spurts of crimson-tinted water within a series of fountains leading to the main house’s marble front steps. Jules glanced at the colorful tile mosaic on the bottom of one fountain as he walked past. It was a medieval-looking portrait of a severe, wiry, bearded king on horseback, driving a long lance through a Turkish enemy’s chest. Jules recognized the portrait. It was Vlad Tepes of Transylvania.
He climbed the steps to the mansion’s grand front door. The butler opened it before Jules could lay a finger on the brightly polished wolf’s-head knocker.
“Please step inside,” the butler said, his face once more an expressionless mask. At least his kisser looked real in person, though. “Master Krauss is out of town, and Master Katz is otherwise engaged at the moment, but Master Besthoff will see you. Please follow me.” The butler shut the door, a massive fabrication of oak nearly ten feet high and a foot thick, with an effortless press of his fingers. The door shut with a resoundingboom. Jules followed behind him and stared at his guide’s stiffly erect back. So it had been a computer-generated image on the screen. Krauss, Katz, and Besthoff must be pretty high muckety-mucks in the undead community to have a butler who was a vampire, too.
The servant silently led Jules through gilded, marble-floored hallways lined with Italian Renaissance statuary and tapestries. Turning a corner, Jules half hoped to see twin rows of human arms jutting from each side of the hall, holding lit flambeaus in their ghastly white fingers. He was disappointed; there were only more tapestries of knights beheading swarthy Turks.
“Here we are,” the butler said, stopping in front of a gold-rimmed door. “The library. Master Besthoff is expecting you.”
Jules walked into the fanciest reading room he’d ever seen. No moldering paperbacks or pulp magazines here; the gleaming oak shelves were lined with thick leather-bound volumes, many of them in languages Jules didn’t even recognize. But even more impressive was the man who rose from a plush red leather reading chair in the center of the room. Well over six feet tall, with steel-gray eyes and carefully coiffed black hair tinged with flashes of silver, Besthoff didn’t look any older than his early forties, although Jules guessed he was probably centuries older than that. And he couldn’t help but notice that, in polar opposition to his own physique, beneath his host’s expensive Italian suit were the sleek shape and well-defined musculature of an Olympic swimming champion.
Besthoff flashed Jules a cold but correct smile and held out his hand. “Mr. Duchon? I am Georges Besthoff. I understand that you have news you wish to share with me?”
Jules shook the proffered hand. Besthoff’s grip was viselike. “Yeah. Uh, nice to meet you. Heard a lot about you. I’ve got me a problem, see, and I think it’s the kinda problem that maybe could affect both of us. So I was hopin‘ you and yours could give me some help. Especially since y’all are the senior vampires in the community.”
“I see.” He gestured to a Queen Anne-period couch facing the leather chair. Jules sat down as delicately as he could, afraid of damaging the fragile antique. Besthoff returned to his seat. “Shall I have Straussman make you a cup of coffee? Or would you prefer a brandy?”
So these vampires still had the stomach for alcohol? Jules wondered why his host didn’t offer a goblet of blood. Oh, well. “Uh, yeah, a cuppa coffee’d be great.”
Besthoff pressed a small stud set into the marble top of the end table next to his chair. “Straussman? Please bring a cup of coffee for our guest.” He turned his attention back to Jules. “I understand you recited part of ‘Night of Blood’ for Straussman. Only a small handful of persons have ever been exposed to that particular poem. My own composition, by the way. A product of my romantic younger days in Romania. Where did you find it? Not on the Internet, I hope?” He smiled briefly, his eyes never leaving Jules’s.
“Maureen Remoulade gave it to me. She’s a friend. She wanted to make sure I could get in to see you.”
Besthoff’s eyes ignited with sudden interest. “Ah, Maureen! The breakaway. I am surprised she still retains any memory of that poem, as I assumed she never intended to use it to return to us here. Tell me, is she still employed as a dancer at that so-called gentlemen’s club in the Vieux Carrй?”
“Yeah, she’s still packin‘ ’em in.”
Besthoff smiled. “What a spirited girl she was. I am almost sorry to see her reduced to her present state. But I could’ve predicted that she would fall to this. Indeed, I did, although she paid me no mind.” His host’s eyes drifted to a small portrait set between two towering bookshelves. Jules realized, with a start, that the willowy limbs and delicate cheekbones of the girl in the portrait belonged to a much younger Maureen; after so many decades of gradual expansion on both their parts, he’d forgotten she’d ever looked that way. Besthoff tapped his long fingernails on the end table. “But enough of nostalgia. What is this news you have to share with me, Mr. Duchon?”
Jules cleared his throat. He chose his words carefully, for maximum impact. “There’s a new vampire tryin‘ to muscle in on our territory. Ablack vampire.”
Besthoff slowly interlaced his long, slender fingers. “A ‘black’ vampire? Come, come, Mr. Duchon. There is no need to hide behind such euphemisms here. Please speak plainly.”
“All right. A colored vampire. Anyway, this wiseass little snot-nose says he’s got a whole army of other vampires behind him. You’ve gotta figure they’re all colored, too. This asshole-Malice X, he calls himself-he’s trying to scare me outta town. He barged into my house, messed up my coffin, and told me I couldn’t be puttin‘ the bite on any more black, uh, colored victims anymore. How’s that for nerve, huh?”
Jules leaned forward in his chair, eager to catch every iota of indignant outrage that he expected would soon darken his host’s face.
But Besthoff’s expression did not change. “And exactly how,” he asked calmly, “do you anticipate this could affect me and mine?”
Jules’s jaw dropped, but no words came out. He couldn’t believe what he had just heard. Maybe his host’s advanced years had left Besthoff with a hearing problem? “Er, Mr. Besthoff, maybe you didn’t, y’know, understand what I’m saying. This is some pretty heavy-duty shit I’m talkin‘ here. I mean, somewhere out there in the darker parts of town, there’s Lord-knows-how-many colored vampires who mean to push you an’ me out-”
Besthoff stopped Jules’s rant with a regal gesture of his hand. “No, Mr. Duchon. They mean to pushyou out.”
Jules’s mind swirled like the spin cycle on a crapped-out washing machine. Straussman entered the library and set a silver tray holding a carafe of coffee, a sugar bowl, a small pitcher of cream, and a white china cup on the table near Jules’s elbow. For want of anything coherent to say, Jules snatched the cup from the butler’s fingers, poured himself an overflowing helping of steaming black coffee, and gulped three deep swallows.
The combination of anger and caffeine focused his mind somewhat. “Whadda ya mean,” he sputtered, “ me? You an‘ me an’ everybody else in this fancy palace of yours, we’re all in this thingtogether! How much simpler do I hafta make this? We’re allwhite,Caucasian,pale-skinned vampires-”
Besthoff stood. “Obviously, Mr. Duchon, there is much you do not understand.” He walked toward the door and gestured for Jules to follow. “Come. Let me show you something. Please, bring your coffee with you, if you would like.”
Straussman refilled Jules’s cup and handed him the saucer to take with him. Cup and saucer clattered noisily in Jules’s hands as he followed Besthoff. The butler opened a pair of leaded-glass doors, which sparkled with reflected gaslight, and Besthoff and Jules walked through a topiary garden to a second house. This other structure was much less elaborately embellished than the main house and only a single story, although still quite large.
Besthoff unlocked the front door with a massive iron key. Jules was surprised to enter a long, wide, open ward, lined with four rows of narrow cast-iron beds, which were covered with simple white starched sheets. Nearly all the beds were occupied. Soft grunts, moans, and wordless intonations filled the air as a crew of uniformed aides fed and tended to the prone figures.
“Welcome to our pantry, Mr. Duchon.”
Jules downed his last mouthful of coffee. “Your ‘pantry’? This place looks like one of Charity Hospital’s wards from eighty years ago.” He took a closer look at the people lying in the beds closest to him. Their eyes seemed too small and too widely spaced. Their arms and fingers were stunted, and their expressions were unfocused and oddly cowlike. “Who are all these people?”
“The assistants you see are all members of our household. With the exception of a few founding fathers, all who live here take their turns tending to the livestock.”
“Livestock? What? You mean the retards?”
Besthoff smiled. “The ‘retards,’ as you so charmingly put it, are the descendants of the inmates of an imbeciles’ hospital run by an obscure, impoverished order of French nuns. In 1873 the order was disbanded by Rome, and the sisters were faced with the morally devastating situation of having to turn their helpless charges out into the streets. Fortunately, Mr. Krauss, Mr. Katz, and I took heed of their plight. Never ones to turn our backs on opportunity, we offered to take over the care and housing of the imbeciles, at no charge to the Church or state. The imbeciles have been marvelously docile and tractable creatures. We’ve bred six generations of them since we took over their care.”
It took a few seconds for the full implications to sink in for Jules. As his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, he recognized the blood extraction equipment standing by several of the beds on the far side of the room. “You mean to tell me… you breed them for theirblood?”
“Of course. Why else would we house and feed more than two hundred imbeciles? We carefully control their diets, feeding them the proper nutrients to ensure that their blood is well balanced and healthful. Thus, the blood that we consume is considerably superior to that obtained from random victims. Especially those from the New Orleans area.” He glanced condescendingly at Jules’s more-than-ample gut and wryly smiled.
Jules was too occupied with conflicting emotions of revulsion, jealousy, and grudging admiration to realize that he’d just been slighted. Two hundred imbeciles-how many gallons of blood did that equate to in a year? He tried to do the math in his head, but the numbers overwhelmed him. “Sweet Lord almighty-what a setup you’ve got here!”
Besthoff smiled again. “I thought you might think so. Perhaps now you understand why we need not bother ourselves with the affairs of free-range vampires such as yourself. We of the High Krewe of Vlad Tepes evolved beyond the hunting-and-gathering stage well over a century ago.”
Straussman appeared at Jules’s elbow to retrieve the cup and saucer, and the rotund vampire was quickly and efficiently shown to the front gate.