Bloodsucking Fiends

by Christopher Moore

  “The euthanasia killer,” Rivera said.

  “So we’re assuming this was the same guy?”

  “Whatever you say, Nick.”

  “Two killings with the same MO and no motive. I don’t even like the sound of it.” Cavuto rubbed his temples as if trying to milk anxiety out through his tear ducts. “You were in San Junipero during the Night Stalker killings. We couldn’t take a piss without tripping over a reporter. I say we lock this down. As far as the papers are concerned, the victims were robbed. No connection.”

  Rivera nodded. “I need a smoke. Let’s go talk to those guys that got hit a the Laundromat a couple of weeks ago. Maybe there’s a connection.”

  Cavuto pushed himself out of the chair and grabbed his hat off the desk. “Whoever voted for nonsmoking in the station house should be pistol-whipped.”

  “Didn’t the President sponsor that bill?”

  “All the more reason. The pussy.”

  Tommy lay looking at the ceiling, trying to catch his breath and extricate his right foot from a hopeless tangle in the sheets. Jody was drawing a tic-tac-toe in the sweat on his chest with her finger.

  “You don’t sweat anymore, do you?” he asked.

  “Don’t seem to.”

  “And you’re not even out of breath. Am I doing something wrong?”

  “No, it was great. I only get breathless when…when I…”

  “When you bite me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you…”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Are you?”

  “No, I faked.” Tommy grinned.

  “Really?” Jody looked at the wet spot (on her side, of course).

  “Why do you think I’m so winded? It’s not easy to fake the ejaculation part.”

  “I, for one, was fooled.”

  “See.”

  He reached down and unwrapped the sheet from his foot, then he lay back and stared at the ceiling. Jody began to twist the sweaty locks of his hair into horns.

  “Jody,” Tommy said tentatively.

  “Hmmm?”

  “When I get old, I mean, if we’re still together.”

  She yanked on his hair.

  “Ouch. Okay, we’ll still be together. Have you ever heard of satyriasis?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it happens to real old guys. They run around with a perpetual hard-on, chasing teenage girls and humping anything that moves until they have to be put in restraints.”

  “Wow, interesting disease.”

  “Yeah, well, when I get old, if I start to show the symptoms…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Just let it run its course, okay?”

  “I’ll look forward to it.”

  Rivera held a plastic cup of orange juice for the mass of plaster and tubes that was LaOtis Small. LaOtis sipped from the straw, then pushed it away with his tongue. The body cast ran from below his knees to the top of his head, with holes for his face and outgoing tubes. Cavuto stood by the hospital bed taking notes.

  “So you and your friends were doing laundry when an unarmed, redheaded woman attacked you and put all three of you in the hospital? Right?”

  “She was a ninja, man. I know. I get the kick-boxing channel on cable.”

  Cavuto chomped an unlit cigar. “Your friend James says that she was six-four and weighed two hundred pounds.”

  “No, man, she was five-five, five-six.”

  “Your other buddy”—Cavuto checked his notepad for the name—“Kid Jay, said that it was a gang of Mexicans.”

  “No, man, he dreamin’; it was one ninja bitch.”

  “A five-and-a-half-foot woman put the three of you big strong guys in the hospital?”

  “Yeah. We was just mindin’ our own bidness. She come in and axed for some change. James tell her no, he got to put a load in the dryer and she go fifty-one-fifty on him. She a ninja.”

  “Thank you, LaOtis, you’ve been very helpful.” Cavuto shot Rivera a look and they left the hospital room.

  In the hallway Rivera said, “So we’re looking for a gang of redheaded, ninja Mexicans.”

  Cavuto said, “You think there’s a molecule of truth in any of that?”

  “They were all unconscious when they were brought in, and obviously they haven’t tried to match up their stories. So if you throw out everything that doesn’t match, you end up with a woman with long red hair.”

  “You think a woman could do that to them and manage to snap the neck of two other people without a struggle?”

  “Not a chance,” Rivera said. His beeper went off and he checked the number. “I’ll call in.”

  Cavuto pulled up. “Go ahead, I’m going back in to talk to LaOtis. Meet me outside emergency.”

  “Take it easy, Nick, the guy’s in a body cast.”

  Cavuto grinned. “Kind’a erotic, ain’t it?” He turned and lumbered back toward the LaOtis Small’s room.

  Jody walked Tommy up to Market Street, watched him eat a burger and fries, and put him on the 42 bus to work. Killing the time while Tommy worked was becoming tedious. She tried to stay in the loft, watched the late-night talk shows and old movies on cable, read magazines and did a little cleaning, but by two in the morning the caged-cat feeling came over her and she went out to wander the streets.

  Sometimes she walked Market among the street people and the convention crowds, other times she took a bus to North Beach and hung out on Broadway watching the sailors and the punks stagger, drunk and stoned, or the hookers and the hustlers running their games. It was on these crowded streets that she felt most lonely. Time and again she wanted to turn to someone and point out a unique heat pattern or the dark aura she sensed around the sick; like a child sharing the cloud animals flying through a summer sky. But no one else could see what she saw, no one heard the whispered propositions, the pointed refusals, or the rustle of money exchanging hands in alleys and doorways.

  Other times she crept through the back streets and listened to the symphony of noises that no one else heard, smelled the spectrum of odors that had long ago exhausted her vocabulary. Each night there were more nameless sights and smells and sounds, and they came so fast and subtle that she eventually gave up trying to name them.

  She thought, This is what it is to be an animal. Just experience, direct, instant, and wordless; memory and recognition, but no words. A poet with my senses could spend a lifetime trying to describe what it is to hear a building breathe and smell the aging of concrete. And for what? Why write a song when no one can play the notes or understand the lyrics? I’m alone.

  Cavuto came through the double doors of the emergency room and joined Rivera, who was standing by the brown, city-issue Ford smoking a cigarette.

  “What was the call?” Cavuto asked.

  “We got another one. Broken neck. South of Market. Elderly male.”

  “Fuck,” Cavuto said, yanking open the car door. “What about blood loss?”

  “They don’t know yet. This one’s still warm.” Rivera flipped his cigarette butt into the parking lot and climbed into the car. “You get anything more out of LaOtis?”

  “Nothing important. They weren’t doing their laundry, they went in looking for the girl, but he’s sticking with the ninja story.”

  River started the car and looked at Cavuto. “You didn’t rough him up?”

  Cavuto pulled a Cross pen out of his shirt pocket and held it up. “Mightier than the sword.”

  Rivera cringed at the thought of what Cavuto might have done to LaOtis with the pen. “You didn’t leave any marks, did you?”

  “Lots,” Cavuto grinned.

  “Nick, you can’t do that kind of—”

  “Relax,” Cavuto interrupted. “I just wrote, ‘Thanks for all the information; I’m sure we’ll get some convictions out of this,’ on his cast. Then I signed it and told him that I wouldn’t scratch it out until he told me the truth.”

  “Did you scratch it out?”

 
; “Nope.”

  “If his friends see it, they’ll kill him.”

  “Fuck him,” Cavuto said. “Ninja redheads, my ass.”

  Four in the morning. Jody watched neon beer signs buzzing color across the dew-damp sidewalks of Polk Street. The street was deserted, so she played sensory games to amuse herself—closing her eyes and listening to the soft scratch of her sneakers echoing off the buildings as she walked. If she concentrated, she could walk several blocks without looking, listening for the streetlight switches at the corners and feeling the subtle changes in wind currents at the cross streets. When she felt she was going to run into something, she could shuffle her feet and the sound would form a rough image in her mind of the walls and poles and wires around her. If she stood quietly, she could reach out and form a map of the whole city in her head—sounds drew the lines, and smells filled in the colors.

  She was listening to the fishing boats idling at the wharf a mile away when she heard footsteps and opened her eyes. A single figure had rounded the corner a couple of blocks ahead of her and was walking, head down, up Polk. She stepped into the doorway of a closed Russian restaurant and watched him. Sadness came off him in black waves.

  His name was Philip. His friends called him Philly. He was twenty-three. He had grown up in Georgia and had run away to the City when he was sixteen so he wouldn’t have to pretend to be something he was not. He had run away to the City to find love. After the one-night stands with rich older men, after the bars and the bathhouses, after finding out that he wasn’t a freak, that there were other people just like him, after the last of the confusion and shame had settled like red Georgia dust, he’d found love.

  He’d lived with his lover in a studio in the Castro district. And in that studio, sitting on the edge of a rented hospital bed, he had filled a syringe with morphine and injected it into his lover and held his hand while he died. Later, he cleared away the bed pans and the IV stand and the machine that he used to suck the fluid out of his lover’s lungs and he threw them in the trash. The doctor said to hold on to them—that he would need them.

  They buried Philly’s lover in the morning and they took the embroidered square of fabric that was draped on the casket and folded it and handed it to him like the flag to a war widow. He got to keep it for a while before it was added to the quilt. He had it in his pocket now.

  His hair was gone from the chemotherapy. His lungs hurt, and his feet hurt; the sarcomas that spotted his body were worst on his feet and his face. His joints ached and he couldn’t keep his food down, but he could still walk. So he walked.

  He walked up Polk Street, head down, at four in the morning, because he could. He could still walk.

  When he reached the doorway of a Russian restaurant, Jody stepped out in front of him and he stopped and looked at her.

  Somewhere, way down deep, he found that there was a smile left. “Are you the Angel of Death?” He asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “It’s good to see you,” Philly said.

  She held her arms out to him.

  CHAPTER 21

  ANGEL DUST

  The bed of Simon’s pickup was full of beer-sodden Animals enjoying the morning fog and speculating on the marital status of the new cashier. She had smiled at Tommy when she arrived, driving the Animals into a psychosexual frenzy.

  “She looked like she was being towed through the store by two submarines,” said Simon.

  “Major hooters,” said Troy Lee. “Major-league hooters.”

  Tommy said, “Can’t you guys see more in a woman than T and A?”

  “Nope,” said Troy.

  “No way,” said Simon.

  “Spoken like a guy who has a live-in girlfriend,” said Lash.

  “Yeah,” Simon said. “How come we never see you with the little woman?”

  “Seagull!” shouted Barry.

  Simon pulled a pump shotgun from under a tarp in the truck bed, tracked on a seagull that was passing over, and fired.

  “Missed again!” shouted Barry.

  “You can’t kill them all, Simon,” Tommy said, his ears ringing from the blast. “Why don’t you just cover your truck at night?”

  Simon said. “You don’t pay for twenty coats of hand-rubbed lacquer to cover it up.”

  The shotgun went under the tarp and the manager came through the front doors of the store. “What was that? What was that?” He was scanning the parking lot frantically as if he expected to see someone with a shotgun.

  “Backfire,” Simon said.

  The manager looked for the offending car.

  “They were heading toward the Marina,” Tommy said.

  “Well, you tell me if they come back,” the manager said. “There’s a noise ordinance in this city, you know.” He turned to go back into the store.

  “Hey, boss,” Simon called. “The new girl, what’s her name?”

  “Mara,” the manager said. “And you guys leave her alone. She’s had a rough time of it lately.”

  “She single?” Troy asked.

  “Off limits,” the manager said. “I mean it. She lost a child a few months ago.”

  “Yes, boss,” the Animals said in unison. The manager entered the store.

  Simon ripped a beer from a six-pack ring. He held another out to Tommy. “Fearless Leader, another brew?”

  “No, I’ve got to get home.”

  “Me too,” said Simon. “I’ve got to clean the bird shit off the beast. You need a ride?”

  “Sure, can we stop in Chinatown? I want to pick something up for Jody.”

  Simon shook his head. “You worry me, son. Men have been pussy-whipped to death, you know.” He downed his beer and crushed the can. “Out of the truck, girls; Fearless Leader and I have to shop for tampons.”

  “Pull!” Troy shouted.

  A half dozen beer cans arced into the air. The shotgun came out and Simon pumped out two quick shots. The beer cans fell to the parking lot unharmed. The shotgun went under the tarp. The manager came through the front door.

  Simon said, “I saw it, boss. Was a baby-blue ’72 Nova with a stuffed gerbil on the aerial. Call it in.”

  • • •

  Jody’s hands were covered with a greasy dust: the remains of Philly. The body had decomposed to dust in seconds after she finished drinking, leaving a pile of empty clothes. After staring at the pile for a moment, she shook off the shock and gathered the clothes into a bundle which she carried into a nearby alley.

  The blood-high raced through her like an espresso firehose. She leaned against a dumpster, holding the clothes to her breast like a security blanket. The alley tilted in her vision, then righted, then spun until she thought she would be sick.

  When the alley stopped moving, she fumbled through the clothing until she found a wallet. She opened it and pulled out the contents. This bundle of rags had been a person; “Phillip Burns,” the license said. He carried crinkled photos of friends, a library card, a dry-cleaning receipt, a bank card and fifty-six dollars—Phillip Burns in a convenient, portable package. She pocketed the wallet, threw the clothes into the dumpster, then wiped her hands on her jeans and stumbled out of the alley.

  I killed someone, she thought. My God, I killed someone. What should I feel?

  She walked for blocks, not really looking where she was going, but listening to the rhythm of her own steps under the roar of the blood high in her head. Philly had spilled into her shoes and she stopped and sat on the curb to dump him out.

  What is this? she thought. This isn’t anything. This isn’t what I was before I was a vampire. What is this? This is impossible. This isn’t a person. A person can’t reduce to dust in seconds. What is this?

  She took off her socks and shook them out.

  This is fucking magic, she thought. This isn’t some story out of one of Tommy’s books. This isn’t something you can experiment with in the bathroom. This is not natural, and whatever I am, it isn’t natural. A vampire is magic, not science. And if this is w
hat happens when a vampire kills, then how are the police finding bodies? Why is there a guy in my freezer?

  She put on her shoes and socks and resumed walking. It was starting to get light and she quickened her pace, checked her watch, then broke into a run. She’d made a habit of checking the time of sunrise every morning in the almanac so she wouldn’t be caught too far from home. Five years in the City had taught her the streets, but if she was going to run she had to learn the alleys and backstreets. She couldn’t let anyone see her moving this fast.

  As she ran, a voice sounded in her head. It was her voice, but not her voice. It was the voice that put no words to what her senses told her, yet understood. It was the voice that told her to hide from the light, to protect herself, to fight or flee. The vampire voice.

  “Killing is what you do,” the vampire voice said.

  The human part of her was revolted. “No! I didn’t want to kill him.”

  “Fuck him. It is as it should be. His life is ours. It feels good, doesn’t it?”

  Jody stopped fighting. It did feel good. She pushed the human part of her aside and let the predator take over to race the sun for her life.

  Nick Cavuto paced around the chalk outline of the body as if he were preparing to perform a violent hopscotch on the corpse. “You know,” Cavuto said, looking over at Rivera, who was trying to fend off a reporter from the Chronicle at the yellow crime-scene tape, “this guy is pissing me off.”

  Rivera excused himself from the reporter and joined the Cavuto by the body. “Nick, keep it down,” he whispered.

  “This stiff is making my life difficult,” Cavuto said. “I say we shoot him and take his wallet. Simple gunshot wound, robbery motive.”

  “He didn’t have a wallet,” said Rivera.

  “There you have it, robbery. Massive blood loss from gunshot wound, broke his neck when he hit the ground.”

  The reporter perked up. “So it was a robbery?”

  Cavuto glared at the reporter and put his hand on his thirty-eight. “Rivera, what do you say to a murder-suicide? Scoop over there killed this guy, then turned the gun on himself—case closed and we can go get some breakfast.”