Coyote. The one Katz Meow mentioned when she had come by my office in Denver. The one who had summoned me.
Coyote held up his empty hands, his thin wrists extending through the frayed cuffs of the threadbare denim jacket. He smelled like he'd been sleeping in an onion shed. "Well? Aren't you going to ask me questions?" He tapped his temple. "Or are you a mind reader, ese?"
I let go of his jacket and eased the sedan against the curb. I removed my sunglasses and contacts. Coyote's aura surrounded him like a calm orange penumbra.
"How'd you unlock the doors?"
"I've been around." His eyes reflected a lupine shine. He spoke with a thick Chicano barrio accent. "Gave me time to learn some tricks."
Since Coyote pronounced his name as if it were in Spanish, I did the same.
"Coyote, how do you know me?"
"I've heard about you, Felix Gomez." He drawled my name. "Vampire detective. Military veteran. Killer." Grinning, Coyote narrowed his eyes. "The only one chingon enough to handle this."
Chingon, that meant I was a bad mo-fo. "You said I could handle this. Which is?"
Coyote swept a hand across the urban landscape and the dark shadows cast by rows of old buildings with rusty fire escapes. "This. Los Angeles."
"Meaning?"
"First we go, vato." Coyote flicked his hand to the front, motioning that we move back into traffic. His fingernails were greasy like a backyard mechanic's.
"No. Answer my questions, then we go."
"Vamos a comer." He rubbed his belly and smacked his lips. "If you're not hungry, then you can watch me. We'll talk then." His fangs extended, meaning a blood meal.
Coyote directed me south on San Pedro through the Jewelry District, which despite the name was a shabby place populated with cheap stores whose signs alternated between Spanish and Chinese.
"You've seen him, no?" Tentacles snaked from Coyote's aura.
"Who?"
"Cragnow." The end of each of the tentacles on Coyote's aura sprouted spikes. The spikes curled onto themselves like fingers making fists. "He's a scary dude."
"I gathered that."
"Be careful. You're not the first to have come here."
"Are you talking about the agents from the Araneum?"
"Simon. They didn't last long." Coyote extended a thumb and pressed it against his sternum. He then drew a finger across his throat. Meaning, they were impaled and decapitated. His aura tentacles stiffened and trembled.
"How many agents?" I asked. "When?"
Coyote shrugged. His aura tentacles formed question marks. "Quien sabe. Four. Maybe five since last year."
"How do you make your aura do that?" I asked.
"You like, huh? It takes practice."
"I'm sure. Why did you send for me? Are you from the Araneum?"
Coyote laughed, a guffawing that turned into a series of howls. His dirty sneakers beat against the floor as his aura pulsed in tempo to his hearty convulsions. He stopped laughing and wiped his eyes. "That's a good one, vato."
"I didn't realize I was a comedian. What's the joke?"
"The Araneum won't have anything to do with me. We don't see ojo a ojo." Coyote used his fingers to spread his eyelids. "They think I'm crazy."
We drove under the concrete tangle of the freeway exchange.
"Really?" I nudged him away and wondered if the Araneum was right. "Why did you send for me?"
"Because Cragnow is messing with catastrophe. He and humans have made a pact."
Vampire-human collusion. The real reason for my mission. My kundalini noir buzzed with anticipation for the fight before me. "Describe this pact."
"There are humans close to Cragnow. Humans who are not chalices. He doesn't bother to hide his true nature from them, and they don't fear him."
I remembered Rachel, the receptionist at Gomorrah Video. She knew about family, meaning us vampires.
Rosario's conversation came back to me.
… taking over Southern California…lifting humanity to a new partnership with the unseen realm… the next step in social evolution…
My kundalini noir coiled tightly, as if to protect itself against a chill.
"Felix. What's up, bro?" Coyote's gaze traced around me as he read the state of my aura.
"Coyote, why do you care what Cragnow does? Has he wronged you? Is this about vengeance?"
"I want to get back at Cragnow, I'll put a dead catfish inside the hood of his Hummer." Coyote's aura made undulating stink lines. He held his nose and waved away an imagined odor.
"Then explain your motive."
"Because, vato, I've seen what humans can do. We can't underestimate their viciousness and ingenuity. Cragnow may think he controls them-I don't know what bargain he's made-but it is a marriage with doom."
"Sounds like you're speaking from experience."
"Too much experience." The points of Coyote's aura trembled like reeds before a wind. His expression melted into a somber mask. "Our best defense is not supernatural powers but remaining unseen. Cragnow has compromised that. Our hope, my hope, is that you and I can stop the damage. Porque, si no"-because, if not-"we vampires are destined for extinction."
"Is this your quest?" I asked. "Are you Don Quixote?"
"If I am, then you're my Sancho Panza, and you're too skinny to be him."
"You summoned me through…"-I had to think of her name-"Katz's friend. Rebecca Dwelling. Human."
"That was the best way," Coyote replied. "Rebecca knows about vampires. She's a chalice. I told her that you could help Katz."
"How do you know Rebecca?"
"Wait and I'll show you, vato."
"As a chalice Rebecca is forbidden from revealing her awareness about the undead," I said. "If the nidus leader won't enforce that, the Araneum will."
"The local nidus no longer fears the Araneum."
"I've figured that out. So, did Cragnow kill Roxy Bronze?"
Coyote shrugged. His aura dimmed. "That's a big question, no? Answer that and you'll start to solve everything."
The twin mysteries of my trip-the conspiracy behind Roxy's death and vampire-human collusion-remained parallel yet far apart.
"Why didn't you contact me directly, Coyote?"
"Because I needed to slap you in the face to get your attention. Would you have listened to a loco vampire like me? Or to a beautiful woman describing the great secret?" Coyote wagged a finger. "I know you like the ladies, Felix."
"And the L.A. nidus?" I asked. "Don't any of them care about what's happening?"
Coyote glanced to the outside mirror. "If you know about Cragnow's plan, you're either with him or you're ash."
"Why aren't you ash?"
"To the L.A. nidus I'm as invisible as a bum on a street corner. They don't see me because they don't want to. Sometimes being crazy and looking down-and-out is the best way to hide."
"Maybe you're not so crazy, Coyote."
He clicked his tongue. "Maybe not, Felix."
"How many vampires in the nidus?"
"It's not like I've taken roll." He straightened and raised a hand like a schoolboy. "Coyote. Present." He settled back. "I'd guess maybe a couple thousand. Hard to say. Many are just passing through."
A huge nidus, regardless. "How many work for Cragnow?"
"Maybe three hundred. More than enough to be dangerous. And they're all over, with the police, the government."
I needed an ally in this wilderness, and Coyote's frankness made him the best candidate. I offered a handshake. "So we're partners. You got a last name, or is it just Coyote?"
His hand was bony, like a paw. After releasing my grip, he closed his eyes and began to howl.
"Okay wiseass," I asked, "how do you spell that?"
Coyote barked for several seconds. He gave a smile of yellowed teeth. "Don't quote me. I could've been speaking Doberman."
"What's your last name in people talk?"
"Malinche," he said.
"As in the Malinche?"
"La Malinche," he corrected. "My mother."
"Dona Marina?"
"You know of another one?"
La Malinche. The Aztec maiden who served as translator and concubine for Cortes. The woman lauded by the Spaniards for her help in conquering Mexico. And reviled by many Mexicans as a traitorous whore. Yet others found her a compromised woman who had kept history from getting worse.
"She's your mother? Then you must be five hundred years old."
"Like I said, I've been around."
"So your father was the devil himself, Hernando Cortes?"
"Chale"-no way. Coyote recoiled from me. "Rather than settle down with her, after all she had done for him, Cortes kicked my mother out of his house, porque he already had a wife… imagine that? Cortes was not only a rapist, looter, and murderer; he cheated on his woman. Que verguenza."
"A real shame," I agreed.
"Before my mother was married off to Cortes's lackey, Don Juan Xamarillo, she had another boy."
Coyote let silence fill the void between us until I understood.
"You?"
"Simon."
"And your father was?"
"One of Cortes's soldiers." Coyote raised his hand in a mock toast. "L'chaim."
I had to think about his reply for a moment. Was he Jewish? Some of the Conquistadors had been Jewish. "You want me to believe that you are the son of a Jewish Conquistador?"
"I'm not asking you to believe anything. I'm only asking that you listen."
"Your father?" I asked. "A Jew?"
"Si. Many became Conquistadors to escape the Inquisition. Many still hide out of custom, pretending to be good Catholics in public. For some reason they call themselves marranos, though I don't understand why Jews would want to be known as pigs."
Coyote snorted like a hog, the nostrils of his thin nose twitching.
"When did you become vampire?"
"That was a long time ago, hermano." Coyote cupped his crotch. "About the time hairs sprouted around my chile. I sought a vampire to escape the torment of being the bastard son of a gauchupin." A Spaniard.
Coyote sighed in a way that made me pity him. Half a millennium had not been enough time to dilute his grief.
"There were legends of a jaguar man living in the jungle. He preyed on the lost and drank their blood. There was no one more lost than me, so I looked for him."
"Obviously you found him," I said.
"I wish I hadn't, carnal. There are agonies worse than dying." Coyote's talons and fangs shot out and his aura burned like a bonfire. He was vampire, the tormented drinker of blood, doomed to prowl the earth forever.
"I understand," I said.
"Consider, ese." Coyote's aura settled. His talons and teeth retracted. "When my mother was big and pregnant with me, before she was hitched to that buey Don Xamarillo, Cortez figured that Xamarillo had sampled her wares, while Xamarillo thought that Cortes had left her with a souvenir. These murderers were each too much the gentlemen to question the other's integrity. Had they known she bore the bastard son of a heathen Jew, they would have burned her alive. My mother could not keep me, the evidence of her sin. At my birth, she switched me with a stillborn baby. I was given away and raised by the poorest of the defeated indios. Even among them I was a pariah, an omen of what the future held for Mexico."
"And your father?"
"He died of plague. Some said it was divine justice for turning La Malinche into his little knish." Coyote smiled, the pallor of sorrow evaporating. "I also heard that my father died masturbating. His final words at orgasm were viva Mexico."
Coyote blinked uncomfortably. Driving under the intense California sun made my eyes water and burn as well. I replaced my sunglasses. Coyote fished a pair of shades from the breast pocket of his jacket. A paper clip held the left temple to the lens frame.
Coyote motioned abruptly as we neared a traffic light. "Here. To the left."
We headed east for several blocks along Vernon Avenue. I explained my investigation as it had progressed so far. Katz Meow and the Araneum had brought me to L.A. Now Katz was missing. And my two prime suspects-porn king Cragnow Vissoom and corrupt developer Lucky Rosario-were each looking over their respective shoulders and had asked me for help.
Coyote listened and nodded. When I was done he said, "Si. Mucha caca."
I knew that. A big help he was.
Coyote directed me into the parking lot of a bowling alley, a cinder block building bearing the name Majestic Lanes in faded plastic letters along the front. Trash littered the bottom of the walls and front sidewalk. Liquor bottles sparkled among the weeds. Cars crowded the spaces closest to the building. There was a muffler shop and beauty salon across the street.
I found a spot between a Jaguar and a Bentley, cars that looked as out of place here as would a pair of albino elephants. "Pretty fancy wheels for this dump. What's here?"
"Dinner," Coyote replied. "And a concert for the damned."
"Who's the damned?"
"We are," he replied.