Sweeter Than Wine

by L. Neil Smith

  Outside, people wearing raincoats and carrying umbrellas hurried by on the sidewalk, occasionally illuminated by flashes of lightning. Some stopped when they saw the light and warmth inside the restaurant. Even for a vampire, it was a swell place to be on a rotten day like this.

  I chuckled. “Sanctuary, is it?” And when Anton nodded, laughing behind the big napkin he was wiping his mouth with, I added, “I had a hunch.”

  Anton grimaced. The client was bewildered. Probably never heard of Quasimodo.

  “I suggested to our party rapist that he go there for a while—a couple of years—to confess and contemplate his sins and make proper atonement. I’m pretty sure the monks down there can help him with that. They’ll keep him busy, anyway. He was so grateful he left me this.”

  From my coat, I pulled the big Buck General #120 hunting and camp knife I’d brought to show them and laid it on the table. It had a fairly thick seven and a half inch Bowie-shaped blade with a “clipped point” (which is what made it a Bowie) and a fuller, or “blood-gutter” ground into each side along the back. The handle was black phenolic or something like it. The double guard with its red spacer and the pommel were a highly polished aluminum, and there was the heavy black leather sheath. For a long time, the 50s and the 60s, it had been the only truly big knife manufactured in America. Thousands of them had been sent by worried parents to sons in Vietnam. Nifty. I’d always wanted one.

  The client looked down at the table, horror in his eyes. “You didn’t—”

  I could see Anton, considering the same thing. The waitress came by and filled our coffee cups again before I could give them an answer and relieve their tension, which, to be honest, I’d sort of been enjoying.

  “No, but I certainly thought hard about it. Where he’s going, he won’t need them. But rapists, deprived of their implements, often find other implements, and he won’t be thinking much about women, in any case.”

  “He won’t?” The client looked confused. Anton just looked curious.

  “No, he won’t. I persuaded the guy to give women up for a while.” I tucked the knife back into my inside coat pocket. “And Anton, here, will tell you that I can be a fairly persuasive individual when I need to.”

  “You can?” the client asked.

  “He can,” said Anton.

  “Yes,” I said, “I can.”

  ***

  Patrick said, “The truth: you cured my mother’s cancer, didn’t you?”

  To our right, the ever-peculiar Chickn Bitz emporium filled that end of the local mall with the overwhelming smell of boiling cooking oil. All you can eat for fifty bucks, or some similar kind of deal, exclusive to those who have taken Jesus as their personal savior. I have always thought it was an extremely bad idea to mix religion with business. I wondered what kind of deal they would have offered a vampire.

  A chicken-fried stake?

  On the other hand, the ambience here had to be better than at the other end, where perfume stores and bath shops collaborated with the odor of burned coffee from an enterprise calling itself “Leaves and Beans”, to violate the Geneva Convention against the use of chemical weapons.

  From the speakers, high overhead, we couldn’t avoid listening to a bubbly, lighthearted, Muzak-style interpretation of “Blowin’ in the Wind”.

  How many malls must a man walk down...

  Just now, Patrick Varick walked beside me, along one of the longer axes of New Prospect’s Rocky Mountain Mall, a sort of pitiful thing these days, with every other shopfront chained and shuttered, thanks to a national economy mortally wounded by both political parties. To Surica, of course, given a personal background of misery and privation exceeding even that of the rest of Soviet-era Romania, the place probably looked like Disneyland. She shopped ecstatically as I tagged along.

  Patrick had called my cell and joined us.

  I raised my eyebrows. The boy’s father must not have told him about our recent talk. I stopped, not wanting to get too far ahead of Surica, who had gotten sucked over the event horizon of a women’s shoe store.

  “Here I thought you just wanted to come and ogle my new girlfriend before you head back to the Academy. You gotta admit, she’s plenty ogleable.”

  Patrick was insistent. “Don’t deny it, J. I know what you are. I know exactly what you are. It seems like I’ve always known. It was obvious. It was also excruciating. Here I was, a little kid whose father’s best friend, my ‘uncle’, was a real live vampire, but who couldn’t brag to any of his friends—um, unless you object to being called—”

  “An ‘undead American’?” Political correctness had come to the United States Air Force Academy earlier than to most other places. “Or maybe you think I might prefer ‘reflection deprived’ or ‘differently cuisined’?”

  “’Hemoglobinically challenged.’” He laughed. “How about a vampire with—”

  I shook my head. “With a heart of gold?”

  “With a heart, anyway. Maybe a soul, too, like Angel on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I don’t know how to thank you, J. And I’m talking for Amber, as well. She knows about you, too, see? She’d tell you herself, but I just put her on a plane back to college. Our mother’s going to live.”

  I sighed, partly wondering when lovely Surica was going to free herself from the spider web no woman can resist. It was way past lunchtime, and, not very far away, I could smell a tiny little hole in the wall shop that peddled the best damned miso soup in all of New Prospect.

  Like I said, food: my favorite dish.

  He said, “Your girlfriend—you’re right, she’s damned ogleable. Is that a Russian accent she has, or what? Maybe it’s Transylvanian. She’s a vampire like you, isn’t she? I don’t know how I know, but I know.”

  The kid knew too much, but had never had trouble keeping his mouth shut.

  “Romanian,” I said. “Surica’s Romanian, originally. Look, Patrick, your dad and I have had this talk already. No expressions of gratitude of any kind are required. It’s just this simple, really: I love your mother, too, in a nauseatingly wholesome, brotherly kind of way. And I owe her, a lot. You guys, the four of you Varicks, are the only family I have. You can thank me by not telling anybody else, if you can avoid it.”

  “You’ve got it, Unc.” He winked. Just then, Surica emerged from the shoestore carrying a pair of big plastic bags full of cardboard boxes.

  “Okay,” she told us, looking extremely pleased with herself. “I’m finished for now. And I’m famished. What’s for lunch? Is that miso I smell?

  The overhead had just broken out into a jaunty, upbeat version of “Eve of Destruction”. I should probably have paid better attention to that.

  ***

  Patrick exchanged a few polite words with Surica, then, possibly sensing that we wanted to be alone—or maybe it had more to do with getting back to the Air Academy—excused himself. We took Surica’s treasure over to the food court, bought a couple of bowls of miso, some crispy noodles to have with it, and a family order of yakatori to share.

  We talked. There was a shop near the entrance that didn’t sell anything but chocolate in one form or another. Surica told me she was crazy about chocolate, one reason, she said, she’d chosen that fondue place for our first meeting in sixty-five years. Sometimes it feels as if my brain won’t function without my Minimum Daily Requirement of chocolate. I wondered if all vampires are like that, or it was just us.

  Surica: “You’ll never believe what I found in that shoe store, my love!”

  “Six-inch stilettos,” I ventured, “with padlocked ankle straps.”

  “Silly,” she replied. “How could a person walk in something like that?”

  She knew perfectly well. She had slipped one shoe off and was toe-playing with my ankle under the table. Playing it straight, I said, “They’re not meant for walking, sweetheart. Not very much, anyway.”

  “I see,” she replied. “Perhaps I should reconsider, then.”

  I said, “Perhaps you should, my dear. But I
seriously doubt that you’ll find anything like that in New Prospect, especially at the mall.”

  “How very sad. A vanilla mall. Is that why they’re going out of business?”

  I laughed. They’d had a Frederick’s of Hollywood here, but it hadn’t lasted. And Victoria’s Secret is that her stuff is pathetically ordinary.

  We continued eating, me thinking thoughts that only began with six-inch stilettos with padlocked ankle straps, and, well, who knew what she was thinking. The way she looked around at the sparse crowd, it was more than possible that another trip to the library was in order.

  Suddenly, she froze, transfixed at something she was seeing over my shoulder. “Don’t turn,” she whispered hoarsely. “It’s him—the Warden!”

  I did turn, but by that time, he was gone.

  21: DANGER FOR LUNCH

  “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”—Hannah Arendt

  I couldn’t see the man who’d frightened Surica.

  But I could smell him.

  Leaping out of my chair, I did something I had never done before. In full view of whatever people there were to see it—admittedly not very many on a weekday Depression afternoon—I ran, as fast as I could.

  Following my nose, I crossed the food court at around forty miles and hour, ducking, dodging, even leaping over chairs and tables, and was out through one of the heavy doors in an instant—it took longer to get that damned door opened, adjusted as it had been to resist the Colorado prairie wind, as it had to run across the food court—and onto the opposite side of the mall from which we’d parked the PT Cruiser.

  Hopping up into the heavy luggage carrier mounted on somebody’s Land Rover, I steadied myself by clutching at a lamppost it had been parked too close to. It says here Colorado has twice the number of SUVs that are average in America. New Prospect has twice as many as that.

  I looked around, still smelling the apparition that was haunting my lady-love, but unable to see him or very much of anything else in the horrible glare of sunlight that had crashed down on my head. I was dressed properly for daytime outdoors, but it was still a shock, like emerging from a movie theater in the middle of the afternoon. When I climbed back down, I noticed that I’d left finger dents in the metal pole.

  I followed the scent—somehow it reminded me of boiled turnips—to the middle of the mostly empty parking lot and lost it. The guy had obviously gotten into a car and driven away somewhere. But why had he exposed himself like that in the first place? It had to mean something.

  I had a sudden, scary thought, and reentered the mall at only a slightly more sedate pace. Sure enough, it had all been a well-planned and timed diversion. Surica was still sitting at the little table where I’d abandoned her so precipitously. But now, sitting on either side of her were, respectively, a uniformed mall-monkey and city cop I knew.

  I plunked myself into the fourth chair, opposite Surica, and said “Hello, boys,” cheerfully. To Surica, I said, “What’s going on here, sweetheart?”

  People from eastern Europe tend to have the same attitude toward police officers that western Americans display toward diamondback rattlesnakes and black widow spiders. They have their reasons. At the moment, my girlfriend looked immensely relieved that I had come back to her.

  “They claim that they are acting for your immigration authorities. They claim I am an illegal alien, but they are carrying no documents to justify it. They wanted me to come with them, but I know what that means. I managed to persuade them to sit here and be quiet, but I can’t seem make them forget and go away. I’ve never had that trouble before.”

  I pushed the rent-a-cop a little. A young skinny guy sporting a flattop and bad skin, his mind was not as soft as he looked. Somehow, something had hardened him from the outside. He absolutely couldn’t be persuaded about leaving Surica alone, so I had to come around the back way.

  “You know,” I began as pleasantly and conversationally as I could, “I’ve always wanted to ask one of you private mall security guys a question.”

  “Go ahead and ask.” He looked at me exactly as if he were not under the influence of another mind, although the fact was undeniable. It was just as if a tower of Jell-O had steel scaffolding built around it.

  “Okay,” I replied, keeping my tone light. “Why would anybody ever choose to work for an employer that dressed them up like this, in a clown suit with a big shiny badge and an equipment belt, made them as conspicuous as all get-out, and then denied them the basic means of self-defense?”

  “What?” Was it mind-control or just natural stupidity? And did it matter?

  I tried to keep exasperation out of my voice. Surica was watching me intently. “Why wear a shoot-me-first suit, but no gun to go with it?”

  “Oh, that.” He sounded a little sad. “I guess because I need the job.”

  I nodded. “I hear that. You’re making minimum wage, here, right? You’d like to make more money? Of course you would.” I pulled out one of my business cards and took a ballpoint from his shirt pocket. “I want you to go to this address, and ask for Moe, the manager. Moe owes me a favor. If I ask him to, he’ll give you a job for at least twice the rate you make now, probably with more hours. Buy yourself a nice car, get yourself a girl, have a better life than you were headed for.”

  I gave him back his pen, and the card.

  The kid lit up. “Gee, thanks, mister. I’ll go first thing end of shift.”

  I looked at his nametag. “Do it now, Kevin. Think about that car. Think about that girl. They’re both out there somewhere waiting for you.”

  “I don’t know...” he hesitated.

  “Kevin, life is too short.”

  He got up. “You’re right, mister! I’ll do it!” And he was gone.

  I turned to Surica. “My old friend Moe—he’s from India and it’s short for something long and unpronounceable—runs a chain of dirty book stores. I saved him from being kidnapped by his relatives and forcibly married. He actually sells more DVDs these days than anything else. One of the few truly Depression-proof businesses I can think of.”

  Surica chuckled. “So what do we do with Officer Moon, here?” Apparently she could read nametags as well as I could. And she was pretty.

  I knew the guy was second generation Korean and a damned good cop. He’d come along shooting with Anton and me a few times and I’d tried the kimchee that his wife had sent with him for lunch. Sauerkraut is sauerkraut, I’m afraid, no matter how you try to dress it up. I’ve never really understood how people can stand the stuff. But it was worth a try. It usually is. I reached into my coat pocket for another card.

  “Hey there, Moon,” I spoke directly to the officer, looked him in the eye, and he came back to life almost like some kid’s electronic toy.

  “J Gifford. Nice to see you. What the hell have you been up to, man?”

  “Nothing much, lately. My detective business has been pretty slow—you know what the economy is like these days—so I had to take a part-time job as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. Here’s my I.D.” I showed him my plain old business card and pushed. “You’re instructed to turn this suspicious individual over to my custody immediately.”

  He brightened. “Happy to do it, J, if it means I can get back to work.”

  I nodded and smiled. “It sure does. And Moon?”

  “Yeah?” He’d gotten up, but he turned back.

  “This is a national security matter that we’re involved in, here.” I lowered the tone of my voice. “You can forget that any of it ever happened.”

  “Okay, I will. Nice seeing you, J.” And with that, Moon walked away.

  ***

  “What happened back there?” Surica finally let go once we go back into the car. She’d been steady as a rock, but was shaking all over now.

  “What part of what happened?” I asked. We stopped at a light and I took both her hands in one of mine, trying to catch her eye. I was worried.

>   “Why couldn’t I control those two men, J?” It pleased me to hear her use what passes as my first name. “What did you do that was different?”

  The light changed and we were off again. “It’s probably because they were already under control. I was able to break it because of familiarity. I know that cop Moon personally and I’ve known at least hundred of that poor security gink. Somebody had issued them their marching orders. Give you three guesses who, and the first two don’t count.”

  She looked puzzled. “Then why make them?”

  “It’s just an expression, kiddo. Romanian has no silly idioms of its own? But you were right about one thing. In the state they were in, those two would have hauled you away and handed you over to the Warden.”

  “You would have come after me,” she said, “and he would have us both.”

  “Something like that. You’d make a hell of a trophy. He’s probably been mad as hell for twenty years, since he lost you back in 1989.” I turned off the main drag and a few blocks up the feeder that led to the street I live on. “Although I can’t imagine what he’d want with me.”

  She grinned back at me. It was a nice thing to see. “Perhaps he is bisexual. Or simply gay, since he never did anything with me in that way.”

  “That you remember,” Turning into the alley behind the house, I said it before I could stop myself. Stupid, really. Between the sunshade and the headliner I pressed a button on the device clipped there.

  The garage door opened and I drove inside. It closed behind us with a slam. I planned to lock it down firmly before we went into the house.

  A long pause, then: “That’s something to think about—that I remember. I was that man’s prisoner for forty-five years. He could have done anything to me and made me forget it afterward, couldn’t he? The fact it’s never occurred to me before this isn’t a good sign, is it?”

  “Sorry, kid,” I said, and I genuinely was. I stroked her hair.

  “No,” she shook her head. “Truth, however terrible, is a value in itself.”

  “Who said that?” It was a solid, quotable quote.