"It's about murder," said Katz Meow.
Murder? I had trouble accepting the premise from such pillowy and succulent red lips.
I gave Katz the vampire once-over. A quick study of her eyes, the portals to a human's consciousness. Mascara clumped her eyelashes, making them seem like ragged penumbras around the shiny blue marbles of her irises. Her high-boned cheeks were round and perfect.
My gaze dropped to her neck, and I studied the hollows between the tendons of her throat, marking the choicest spot to sink my fangs and tap her jugular.
Should I fang her, there could be one of three outcomes.
If I only sucked her blood, I could modulate which of the enzymes in my saliva flowed back through the punctures. These enzymes deepened vampire hypnosis and could induce permanent amnesia, and make her swoon with orgasmic pleasure or writhe in searing pain.
If I sucked too much blood, I would kill her.
Or should our blood commingle after the fanging-especially through an open-mouth kiss as was done to me years ago-then she'd be damned to walk the earth as a vampire.
The low collar of her dress arced like a smile across her voluptuous cleavage. My eyes went back to hers, lingering for an instant in fleeting lust.
Morning sunlight illuminated my office.
Sunblock and makeup covered my translucent complexion. Katz didn't know I was a vampire. Humans couldn't know. They must never know. Superstition and skepticism protect us, the undead. The moment humans discovered we exist, they would hunt us down. Those vampires the humans didn't exterminate would be imprisoned and dissected. I had to be careful what cases I accepted as an undead private detective.
Katz fidgeted in the leather chair facing my desk, as if she sensed my wariness.
"Whose murder?" I asked.
Katz wrung her hands, the manicured white-tipped fingernails crisscrossing. "My friend Roxy Bronze."
"Never heard of her."
Katz reached into the large Gucci handbag-real or knockoff-resting by her ankle. Gold bracelets jangled from her wrist as she offered me a plastic DVD case.
The cover of the DVD showed Katz and a statuesque brunette, holding each other by the waist. Both wore matching black bikini bottoms and bolero vests, and stood on clear plastic stiletto slut pumps. They had wanton grins as lurid as what the DVD title blared in fluorescent green letters: SUPER-VIXEN SKANK FEST, VOLUME EIGHT. Printed across their respective muscular thighs were their names: KATZ MEOW and ROXY BRONZE.
Katz brushed a tangle of blond hair from her forehead and looked away. She tapped one of her wooden-soled clogs against the oak floor.
The reverse side of the DVD case was a collage of Ms. Meow and Ms. Bronze in what looked like a high-impact version of the Kama Sutra as they played together, with other women and sex toys, and an assortment of men with amazingly large penises.
I flipped the DVD over and examined the cover again. My gaze traced across Roxy Bronze's face. The narrow bridge of her nose, the pronounced dimples in her cheeks, a chin tapering to a neat point-this last detail emphasized the elongated outline of her face. Her smile curved up in a pronounced U, exposing a neat row of porcelain white teeth.
Roxy looked familiar. But from where? Maybe I had seen her picture somewhere else.
I handed the DVD to Katz.
Katz took the case and dropped it into her bag.
My mind held the images of Katz and Roxy screwing like farm animals. "You're a…"
She finished the sentence for me. "An erotic film actress."
Fancy way of saying she nuzzled crotches for a living. When receiving new clients, I was tempted to read their auras, since they betrayed much about what humans think. Auras were more expressive than facial gestures. But special contacts covered my eyes, hiding the tapetum lucidum-the mirrorlike retinas vampires share with other nocturnal predators-so I was out of luck. The contacts allowed me to appear human, though at the cost of diminishing my night vision and losing my ability to read auras and hypnotize prey at will.
"You live in L.A.?" I asked. We were in my Denver office, a long way from California.
"Yes, the Valley."
"What valley?"
Katz smirked. "San Fernando."
Of course. The San Fernando Valley was to porn what Maine was to lobster fishing. "Katz Meow is your stage name, I take it."
"It is."
"And your real name?"
"Katz Meow is my real name."
"Where were you born? A pet store?"
She sighed and said, "My real name is Wilma Pettigrew. I'm originally from Shelbyville, Indiana."
I didn't blame her for changing names. Katz Meow conjured silk lingerie and Porsches. Wilma Pettigrew, gingham aprons and Buicks. "Ms. Pettigrew, where did-"
"Please, Felix," she interrupted, "Mr. Gomez, I mean, don't call me Ms. Pettigrew. I hate that name." Her voice took on a flat, nasal quality, as if the mention of Wilma Pettigrew took her from Southern California and back to her midwestern neighborhood. "I'm Katz. Katz Meow. Ms. Meow. But never Wilma Pettigrew."
I acknowledged her request with a nod. "Very well… Ms. Meow, where did this murder take place?"
"L.A.," she said. "Hollywood, to be specific."
"And you've come to Denver. You couldn't find someone out there willing to take the case?"
Katz held her gaze on me.
"Or that you trusted?"
"It's both," she replied.
"What about the police? There had to be an investigation."
"There were cops and paperwork, a real dog and pony show. They said it was probably a holdup gone bad, claiming Roxy was at the wrong place at the wrong time. But I know their story was a sham."
"What makes you sure?"
Katz's voice sharpened. "Roxy had enemies. Powerful enemies."
What kind of enemies could a porn star have? A jealous lover? Drug dealer? A mobster pimp? Any one of these was an easy mark for the police or a young district attorney eager to add a scalp to their trophy belt. Perhaps the problem was that Katz couldn't let go of the tragedy.
Katz kept quiet. Her radiance faded and she looked like a plucked flower starting to wilt.
I perused my notes scrawled on the desk blotter calendar. This month I had the usual: cheating spouses, embezzlement, insurance and workers' comp frauds. Every assignment was in the bag. I needed time alone with the offending parties to zap them with vampire hypnosis and pry out the necessary info. With that knowledge I'd slap together incriminating evidence. Cases closed. Checks in the mail.
Now Katz comes with her tales of a murder conspiracy. I thought of the porn business as attracting the addle-brained. A bunch of neurotics who accumulated problems the same way a dog's hairy ass collected burrs. Maybe Katz needed counseling, rather than my services.
"Ms. Meow, this is the way I see it. You've lost a close friend under random and tragic circumstances. Perhaps, instead of me, you should seek another kind of professional help…"
Katz jerked upright. "What are you getting at? That I need therapy? Well, I don't." Her complexion had been peaches and cream; now it was red as sunburn. She lifted an envelope from her handbag. "What I need is for you to find out who murdered Roxy and why." The tone in her voice became tough like gristle.
I took the envelope.
What did this involve? Murder. Pornography. And all the twisted threads that bound them. Suppose Katz had a legitimate case? "If I agree to help, I'd have to go to California. This investigation would be expensive."
Katz's eyes narrowed, as if my comment insulted her.
I opened the envelope. Inside was a cashier's check for $100,000. I felt my eyebrows rise.
"I see you made this out to me. How were you so sure that I'd take the case?"
"I knew you had to."
She replied with such naive confidence that I stifled a laugh. A hundred thousand bones was a lot of money but not enough to buy me. I waved the check. "Is this your money?"
"Every penny."
Katz had come a long way to ask for help, and I needed a moment as I considered her case. I swiveled my chair around and looked out the window.
A pickup truck pulled up to the burrito stand across the street. My office was at the corner of Tennyson and Forty-fourth in northwest Denver, on the second floor above the entrance to the Oriental Theater. The neon sign of the theater, a gigantic phallus with letters spelling ORIENTAL down its length, was fixed outside my window. At night, the sign swamped my office with a fiery orange glow.
This murder case was an opportunity far beyond snagging cheating spouses or insurance chiselers. I ticked over my reservations. Travel to California. Unfamiliar territory. Dealing with humans I didn't know. The money was tempting, but I didn't need it. I didn't want the challenge-I had nothing to prove to anyone. I couldn't think of a reason to take the case.
I swiveled back and faced Katz. "Why me?"
"You won't believe this, but it's true." Katz glanced over one shoulder to the closed door of my office. She leaned over the edge of my desk, and her eyes filled with sincerity. "It's because Roxy's murder involves vampires."