Sweeter Than Wine

by L. Neil Smith

  I said, “There are many reasons why this story could be complete bullshit.”

  “You could be right,” Quinn agreed cheerfully. “Now where was I? Oh, yeah—his company, who built a single-action sixgun around the empties and beat Smith & Wesson to the market by several months in 1957.

  “This gun was made in that year.”

  17: FACE RECOGNITION

  “A good End cannot sanctify evil Means; nor must we ever do

  Evil, that Good may come of it.”—William Penn

  “Yes,” my dentist said. “I’m ashamed to admit it, but I do have a couple of surveillance cameras at my office. Insurance company made me put them in—liability. Outside, too, where people park. Why do you ask?”

  Holding the phone to my ear, I nodded at the others in the kitchen, indicating that there might be pictures of this Deabru character, when he’d shown up out of nowhere to interrogate my dentist.

  “Because,” I told T.W., “we’re trying to find out more about this clown who’s been asking questions about me. I have someone else here who’s seen him—two someone elses, in fact, and another one who may have known him a long time ago. If you have photos, it might help a lot.”

  T.W. said, “Well, I have the disks, right here. Standard stuff. You can read them in any decent computer system. Would you care to come over and get them, or should I bring them to you, after office hours?”

  It was fairly obvious which way he’d prefer. I gave it about five seconds’ thought. “It’d probably be less crowded if you brought them over. I think there may even be some barbecue left. It’s from Brother Lem’s. There’s nobody here but us chickens, T.W.—and a lovely young lady I’d sure like to introduce you to.” Well, she looked like a young lady to me. She felt like one, too, for that matter. Was it Groucho Marx or George Burns who said, “You’re only as old as the person you feel”?

  He said, “And everybody there knows that you’re...knows your secret.”

  “It’s Quinn and Quyen,” I told him, “the Kowalskis, who’ve played poker with you the first Thursday of every month for the past three years. They’ve known about me longer than you have.” Anton played poker with us, too, but he didn’t know, although I was beginning to wonder why. “As for the young lady, she has the same...secret that I do.”

  “The hell you say! Who does her teeth?”

  ***

  “Okay, here’s the part where I come into the waiting room after Dolly’s decided that she’s afraid of this guy and can’t really deal with him.” T.W. took another bite of the rib sandwich he’d composed and, totally fearless when it came to getting barbecue sauce in somebody else’s keyboard, leaned closer to the monitor. “We could see his face a lot better if they hadn’t mounted the damned cameras up so high.”

  “You’re supposed to take your hat off when you come inside,” I objected. I know, small farm town boy. If I looked my age, I’d be dead.

  Quinn snorted. “Who knows from hat etiquette any more?”

  “I doubt they ever did, in New Jersey,” said Qyuen.

  “There is not one serious bone in any of your bodies.” Surica complained. She’d been listening to us bantering back and forth for hours and apparently gotten tired of it. “You people are all so...American.”

  “Not all of us,” said Quyen.

  “Yeah, the sticker on her ass says ‘Made in Ho Chi Minh City’.” Quinn.

  I said, “It’s how we’ve learned to solve problems, Surica. And it’s what keeps us from screaming and throwing things. Forget that, or suppress it, you’ve got people on the rooftop with rifles, shooting at random pedestrians. Actually, we’ve got those, too—America, land of opportunity and diversity. You’re sure this is the guy you knew as the Warden?”

  She took a while to reply. “I am sorry, my love. I promise that I’ll try to learn. This jocular method of yours seems to work, or we wouldn’t be looking at these pictures now. And yes, that is the Warden—Deabru himself. Seeing him like this is probably why I became cross with you. It brings back certain memories I was much happier doing without.”

  “I hear that.” Forty-five years, afraid, isolated, virtually buried, cold and starving every minute, surrounded everywhere by death. And this guy held the keys. It would have made me a bit testy, myself.

  Or turned me into a standup comedian.

  ***

  The next morning, the rain was back, so I didn’t need my duster and Stetson. Thumb drive in hand, I went directly to see Anton at his office.

  “So I wondered,” I finished up my spiel, “If you could somehow get these photos into the Homeland Security face-recognition database.” I don’t like the fact that they have it—the whole thing makes me wonder why we bothered to fight the Nazis in Europe and Communists in Asia—but since they do, why not use it for good, instead of evil? Of course that’s exactly the “reasoning” that perpetuates these things.

  “He’s been stalking a friend of mine. We know what he is, what he does, but not his real name. If it helps, he’s probably an illegal immigrant.”

  So was Surica, for that matter.

  Anton looked me in the eye. “You watch too much TV, Giff. In the first place, this generation of feds sees local law enforcement as the enemy, same as they view the people in general, only moreso. As a consequence—and in the second place—the use of databases like that is highly restricted and closely monitored. This state may be about to lose its governor over an alleged misuse of the NCIC database.”

  I’d heard about that. Good riddance.

  “It’s true, the illegal immigrant angle might grease the skids a little, but I’ll need more information, a lot more, before I can do anything.”

  I nodded. “Then I’ll be your huckleberry.”

  “Huckleberry Hound?” he asked, confused.

  “No. Val Kilmer. Doc Holliday. Tombstone.”

  “Oh, yeah. The little silver cup.” He pushed himself away from the old oak table that served him as a desk, pulled his Glock .40 out of a drawer, and grabbed his jacket from a matching stand “Let’s take a walk.”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  I was surprised that our walk took us, not further into the town, as such excursions usually did, often over to Starbucks or someplace similar, but away from it, down to the river that runs alongside the city, where they’ve built a scenic concrete walk. People come here to pick wild asparagus when it’s in season, and the kids like to catch crawdads at the edges of the stream. Presently, however, we had it to ourselves.

  Anton said, “I just wanted the privacy to thank you properly, Giff.”

  He’d surprised me again. “Thank me?” I responded lamely.

  He stopped and turned to face me. “For what you did for Priscilla. Our deal, though she denies it, is that I’m supposed to die in her arms. Thanks to you, buddy, life will go on being worth living. Don’t deny it. I know exactly what you did, Giff, how you did it, and why it worked.”

  “But how—” I was honestly dumbfounded.

  “Guy works nights, doesn’t need much sleep, can’t bear the light of day, wears sunblock, a long coat, and a big floppy hat, seems most active on heavily overcast days like this, and is sickened by the smell of garlic—Pris caught that one a long time ago—and heals terminal cancer in ten minutes. Gimme a break. I am a detective, after all.”

  “Sure, Anton, You’re the Chief of Detectives.”

  “I’m chief of three detectives, including myself. And you’re a vampire.”

  I sighed. “How long have you known?”

  “Ten years, maybe more. Once I figured it out, I kept an eye on you, but you didn’t appear to be hurting anybody. You came to me more frequently with information than for favors—in fact, this may be the first time you’ve asked me for anything. Bodies weren’t showing up in the river with dual punctures in their necks. In fact, N.P. has a lower crime rate than it has any right to, statistically, a minutely higher life expectancy, and noticeably fewer nasty diseases. Maybe it isn’t all of it y
our doing, pilgrim, but you’re sure as hell doing something.”

  We walked on in silence for a while. Then: “Not the first time I’ve asked for a favor, Anton. There was the business with the library books.”

  He laughed. Ten or twelve years ago, a new Chief of Police had decided to help the city library by getting warrants to search the homes of the desperate criminals whose library books were overdue. I had two, but I figured I couldn’t afford to have a bunch of cops and librarians rummaging through my closets and turning my drawers upside down. Anton and some of his brother officers had convinced the idiot they had better things to do. He’d backed off grudgingly, and at the request of somebody he would never remember, resigned shortly afterward.

  And so did the head librarian.

  “You knew about me—your wife knew—and yet you didn’t arrest me.”

  “Well, at first I thought you were like those poseurs in Denver, playing weekend sucky-neck to compensate for their cubicle farm jobs. But the deeper I looked, the more I became certain that you were—that you are—the real thing. And it isn’t against the law to be a vampire.”

  “I guess that makes us even in a way. You kept my secret, and I was able to help your Priscilla. Of course it’s not like I had any choice.”

  “About being a vampire? I understand that.”

  “No, I mean Priscilla. I know she means everything to you. She ought to. She deserves to. She’s everything a wife and mother—a woman in general—ought to be. The fact is, I was always a little envious—”

  “Was,” Anton seized upon the word. “And now? This new girlfriend of yours—the one my wife is dying to meet—she’s one, too, isn’t she?”

  I didn’t bother asking how he knew I had a new girlfriend. He’d just give me a smug expression and tell me he was a detective again. “A wife and mother? Not yet, but I have hopes. A woman in general? I’ll say she is! But no details, please. I’m not the kind to kiss and tell.”

  “But you are the kind who will make jokes on his deathbed—provided that he ever dies, that is. You know exactly what I’m asking, Giff.”

  “Is Surica (that’s her name, by the way) a vampire? Yes she is, Anton.”

  “What I wanted to know, is she The Woman? By which I mean the one who—”

  “Brought me over. Elementary, my dear Varick, that she is. As silly as it sounds, she’s my sire. I promise I’ll tell you and the mem’sahib all about it sometime, since you seem to know everything else.”

  He said, “So how old are you, Giff—just curious, don’t mean to pry.”

  “You’re a detective, Anton, you were born to pry. I will be 90 years old this December 15, born in 1920, brought over in 1944. My girlfriend, she’s just a little bit older, born on the Romanian-Serbian border in 1711, brought over in 1728. But the character we’re looking for, the guy who’s looking for us, is the genuine longevity champ.”

  “Oh, yeah? How old is he?”

  “We don’t know. In some ways, we’re both a little afraid to find out. The oldest name he’s known by is from the oldest language in Europe, maybe even from a time when it was the only language in Europe.”

  “Basque.”

  “Say, Anton, you really are a detective!”

  18: LIFE GOES ON

  “The face of evil is always the face of

  total need.” —William S. Burroughs

  “But now he’s disappeared,” she wailed, “and I want my money!”

  The trouble with having a job is that it continues to need doing—or insist on being done—even when you’d rather be doing other things.

  “Please try to remain calm, Mrs. Gumbeiner,” I said, riffling through the thick manila folder she had handed me. “You just tell me the facts. I’ll make some notes and give you an idea of what I can do.”

  After sailing along more or less calmly for quite a number of years, my personal boat had been rocked recently by a number of events and revelations I didn’t really have a handle on yet. My “family”—by which I mean the circle of individuals who know and understand my “condition” had suddenly more than doubled, with the addition of four Varicks, Anton, Priscilla, Patrick, and Amber (all of whom, it turned out, had known about me all along) and, above all, lovely, lithe Surica.

  In many ways, this was a good thing. Quinn and Qyuen Kowalski and my dentist T.W. Beemort are fine folks, good company, and T.W, has a charming inclination to try and fill an inside straight. But if you grew up in the very model of a small American town, like I did, and the life you’ve lived for the past 65 years has been as solitary as mine, the more people sitting around the Thanksgiving table the better.

  “I’ve got myself the very best attorney in Denver,” my would-be client informed me. “He won me sole custody of my son Augustus and an extremely reasonable settlement, considering. After all, I’d abandoned a promising career to marry Morton and carry and raise the child the man thoughtlessly fathered on me. And then, when Morton disappeared, utterly without a trace, he sent me straight to you. The attorney, I mean.”

  “And you’d like me to find him.” I could do that if I had to.

  “No, I want you to hunt him down like the animal he is, and—”

  “Kill him?” Yes, sometimes a sense of humor is your only life preserver.

  She blinked. “Don’t be ridiculous!” Maybe I’d been wrong about her and was about to face moral condemnation. “How can he pay me if he’s dead?”

  Hell hath no fury like a woman spermed.

  There was a downside to my broadened social life to be considered, however. No matter how good or kindly or well-meaning my friends and family might try to be, wasn’t it Mark Twain who observed that two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead? Or perhaps it was Benjamin Franklin. Or Catherine and Allison Pierce. Loose lips sink ships—and, historically, they’ve also gotten vampires burned at the stake.

  I said, “I know that it isn’t any of my business, but if you could answer a couple of questions, it might make it easier for me to do my job.”

  “Well...” she answered.

  I put my hands on the desk and leaned forward. “In what way is it good for your young son to grow up knowing that his father had to be physically forced to support him? If I’d been a kid, knowing that, it would have ruined my whole life. Mightn’t it be better just to let go and start over on your own? After all, there is that career you had, right?”

  A high school teacher I had once said that the hardest lesson to learn in life, growing up, is that other people are real. As real as you are. Some individuals never do manage to learn it. The second hardest thing, he said, is letting them go. Most people never learn that.

  “Are you kidding me? I was a telephone receptionist at a tire factory that got shut down! Anyway, just what right do you have to ask me—”

  “None whatever, Mrs. Gumbeiner, none whatever. I thought that I had explained that. I’m just trying to understand.” She was getting angry. I could hear her heart pound, see the pulses at her throat and temple, smell the alarm pheromones she was perspiring into my office. “Okay, you say that you were granted sole custody of your son Augustus. And I see that you have a restraining order against your ex-husband.”

  “Yes,” she said. “So?”

  I couldn’t lean forward further. “So why should he pay a hundred percent of the kid’s support if he shares zero percent of the kid’s life?”

  “But, but, but—” Outrage. I’d have to air the office out later.

  I pressed on. “If you have a hundred percent of the kid, then why shouldn’t you pay for a hundred percent of his upbringing? Of course I guess you’d have to get a job, and that might affect your alimony payments. Wouldn’t it make more sense to share the kid and his support fifty-fifty?”

  As a vampire, I try to maintain as low a profile as I can, without living in a cave somewhere and eating worms and bark. You might say that I am on the grid, but not of it. Naturally, I avoid politics like the plague, but that certainly doesn’t mean
I don’t have my own opinions.

  The trouble here, of course, was judges, full of law school drivel in no way connected with real life, and two centuries of the insanity of justification by precedent, giving away other people’s money, and destroying their lives, a process bound to continue until the American people rediscover the fact that a lamppost can serve more than one purpose.

  A wise man once asked, “What shall we have accomplished when we have made a law?” Or words to that effect. He goes on to point out that those who agree with the new law are most likely “obeying” it already, before it’s ever passed. Meanwhile, those who don’t agree with it will either obey it grudgingly, which is very dangerous in the long run, especially in a democracy, where nothing is ever really settled, or they will break it surreptitiously, a particular specialty of yours truly.

  What we will really have accomplished, says the wise man, is to have given more jobs to cops, and bought more guns and clubs—and these days, TV cameras. If law really worked, there’d be no need for it.

  But above and beyond everything were questions swirling through my mind about Surica, and what things would be like, now that we were back in each other’s lives. Having her around felt absolutely magical, and all I could hope was that it wasn’t too intolerable for her, either. Potentially, we had more future together than any ten average couples—we already had a record-breaking past—and I hoped, more than anything, that what seemed to me like a fragile miracle could last.

  I would do anything in my power to make it happen.

  But before I could get to cogitating any of that, there was this pesky necessity to eat, wear something besides road-killed squirrel skins, have a roof over my head, wheels under my feet, and various other means of shielding myself from outrageous fortune’s slings and arrows.

  Not that I was on my way to the poor house, exactly. Having seen Europe at the end of the war—World War II, I mean, not all those other wars that the highly civilized Europeans seem to have so many of—I started buying gold and silver whenever I could, and investing in the sort of slow, steady growth that only an immortal might benefit from.