B007JBKHYW EBOK

by April Campbell Jones

  “I’ve been in there.”

  “Ivan?”

  “The car.”

  We followed the sleek, black sports car to The Loop, if ‘follow’ is the right word. Sylvie stayed so far behind him I was sure we’d lost him on several occasions; but she remained calm and cool, always picking up his tail lights again as if she knew where he was headed. Which, as it turned out, she did.

  Again we parked across the street. A much wider street this time, busy with dinner traffic that included more than few fancy sports cars of its own.

  “’The Trottery’,” Sylvie said nodding at the swirling cursive of neon above the long, stylish bistro across from us.

  “Nice.”

  “Best steaks in town. Priciest too.”

  Ivan didn’t bother with the parking attendant; he nosed his black Italian monster right in front of a fireplug and stepped out. He was carrying a small but heavy-looking power briefcase.

  “He parked right in front of a—“

  “Want to make odds on his not getting a ticket?” from Sylvie.

  No, I thought to myself, I wouldn’t want to make odds on anything concerning this guy.

  Our prey (yeah, right!) disappeared through the beveled-glass and deep mahogany double doors, slipping the uniformed doorman a bill without looking at him, the doorman nodding silently.

  We waited five minutes.

  Ivan reappeared and climbed back into his chariot. Vroom, and we were off again.

  Four more stops. Two more restaurants, a high class bar, and a higher class hotel. We waited across the street.

  “Who’s in the hotel?” I whispered.

  “Could be anyone,” Sylvie said, “the vice president’s in town this week.”

  I looked at her. She didn’t seem to be joking.

  Fifteen minutes and Ivan was out again with his briefcase—slam, varoom.

  “How much money do you suppose he collects?” I said as we merged with traffic.

  Sylvie tossed her shoulders. “More than congress makes all year, I expect.”

  “All of it dirty, of course.”

  “Which, the money or congress?”

  “You’re funny.”

  “Am I?”

  I nodded at the windshield. “Are we going to the lake?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Another restaurant?”

  She shook her head. “No idea. Never been this route before. Funny…”

  “What?”

  “What you said earlier about Kolchek’s lack of bodyguards. I never thought much about it before but there is a lot of money in that briefcase. Why wouldn’t he just use one of his people to collect for him?”

  “Maybe he doesn’t trust anyone.”

  Sylvie scoffed. “Everyone in town’s afraid of Ivan Kolcheck, including the mob.”

  “Afraid doesn’t mean trustful,” I said. And she gave me a sideways glance.

  Ten minutes later we pulled up before a line of darkened warehouses lining the south wharf.

  It was so black around there it actually took us a minute to find Ivan’s car.

  Sylvie parked a good block away from it and cut the engine. I got out.

  “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” Her voice held real fear, enough to make it crack a little.

  I pulled open the driver’s side door, looked down at her. “You know what this place is?”

  “No idea.”

  I put my hand out to her. “Then let’s go find out.”

  “You’re crazy, Ed! It’s too risky!”

  “Sylvie, it’s going to be risky if I’m ever going to convince you about the vampires.”

  She hesitated, big eyes growing bigger as she accessed the dark windows of the warehouse. “You think he’s meeting other vampires in there?”

  “I don’t know. Mitzi doesn’t think so.”

  Sylvie turned to the dog in the back seat. “How do you know?”

  “Because she always warns me when vampires are around and the only one she smells so far is Ivan. But that doesn’t mean they won’t show up. Come on, Sylvie, I can’t have you risking your life if you don’t know what you’re really up against.”

  She finally got out of the car.

  Even in the dark I could see she was trembling, and it wasn’t from the night breeze.

  We were halfway to the big steel door when the floor level windows of the warehouse flared with light abruptly. Sylvie jerked to a halt just short of stepping into the just-appearing rectangles of illumination across the macadam in front of us.

  “They’ll see us!”

  I took her arm. “No. They’ll be blinded by the inside lights, and Mitzi smells no guards around the perimeter. Come on.”

  “Ed—“

  “You can do this, Sylvie. Trust, remember?”

  She finally let me guide her to the building where the dull rectangles of light morphed into bright squares just below the windows. I pulled myself up on a packing crate against the wall and took the first peek over the sill.

  The interior at first appeared empty and definitely dusty. Then I made out Ivan’s shoeprints on the concrete floor leading to about the center of the room. Then I made out Ivan. He stood with his back to us, black briefcase in his right hand. A throng of about twenty or so dark-coated men emerged from rear-building gloom, all in tailored suits, expensive Italian shoes. Each was the size of a small mountain, lined up like linebackers. The quarterback was in the middle—ten suits on either side—sitting just before them at an ancient wooden table, cigar in hand. A heavy set man with a thick crown of hair and small glasses that didn’t go with his broad, muscled face stepped forward.

  “Goons,” Sylvie whispered, rising slowly beside me.

  “Not the one in the middle,” I whispered back.

  “No. That’s Tommy Frazetti.”

  “You know him?”

  “Know of him.”

  “Mob boss?”

  She shook her head. “Pretender to the throne, I think. I’m not sure but…”

  I squinted at her, trying to stay back from the light, confident Mitzi—waiting below--would growl a warning if anything untoward came our way. “But what--?”

  “…from the look of him--his posture--I don’t think this is the group Ivan expected to see tonight.”

  “Oh?”

  She swallowed a knot of fear. “Just a guess. Damn. I wish we could hear them.”

  “I can hear them,” Mitzi said below me.

  “And—“

  “They’re not the guys Ivan expected to see tonight.”

  I looked down at her. “Thanks. Now tell us something we don’t know.”

  Mitzi cocked her head in the dark. “Metal or aluminum sheeted walls in there…lots of reverberation--echoes. Hard to read the mood, but I’m not feeling a lot of love loss from either side.”

  I peered back through the window. Ivan was discussing something with the guy at the table. His black briefcase was now placed atop it. Opened.

  “Anything now?” I asked Mitzi.

  “Not clear…but I distinctly heard the short guy—“

  “He’s sitting at a table.”

  “—distinctly heard him say, ‘go fluff yourself.’”

  “Fluff?”

  “That may not be an exact translation.”

  There was sudden movement within the big room.

  The leader, Frasetti, was standing now, puffing angrily on his cigar, little glass lenses shining. And now he was flinging Ivan’s briefcase back at him brusquely. Fearlessly.

  “Oh, shit,” Sylvie and I said in unison.

  Two of the linebackers each put a hand in their coat pockets as a warning.

  Ivan just stood there saying nothing, not moving.

  After a while the guy at the table began smiling. Then he began laughing. Not a pleasant laugh. He glanced around at his goons and some of them joined in.

  Ivan watched them quietly.

  Then, composed and unruffled, Ivan bent and retrieved his emp
ty briefcase.

  He took two steps forward, spoke to the guy at the table and held out a hand for him to shake. The guy at the table grinned and put his cigar out in Ivan’s palm.

  I was the only person within proximity who didn’t gasp when Ivan didn’t react to the red hot cigar. The only person including Sylvie who wasn’t at all surprised when everybody else in the warehouse stopped laughing and stared incredulously at Ivan’s upheld palm.

  “What’s going on?” from Mitzi.

  “He was just offered a cigar,” I told her.

  “And—“

  “He declined.’”

  After a few minutes the Frazetti guy was smiling again at Ivan, telling him “Pretty neat trick,” if I read his lips right.

  Ivan smiled back and placed his briefcase back on the table, opening it again.

  Frazetti stopped smiling.

  He shook his head once at Ivan’s bravado—then turned and nodded to his men.

  I saw what was coming and clamped my hand tight over Sylvie’s mouth.

  It probably wasn’t necessary.

  The ensuing roar from all those handguns going off at once would have masked any scream.

  Ivan just stood there in the face of it. You could see the back of his coat flapping and tattering from the force of that lead whipping through him, but, the vampire himself, of course, remained upright.

  It got very smoky very fast.

  I was glad for it for Sylvie’s sake.

  It helped conceal what came next, though what came next came so fast it would have been hard to follow in bright sunlight on a cloudless day.

  Ivan seemed to disappear in the smoke. For a moment I thought he actually fell down.

  Then Frazetti’s goons did began to topple over backward in almost rhythmic succession, not all at once, but like a neat row of dominos, or those bathing beauties in a Busby Berkley musical, choreographed and in formation as they dropped into the pool.

  They fell kind of slow, the gangsters, some of them with their gun arms still extended, some not, but nearly all with the queerest expressions, like a child who’s just been slapped and can’t imagine why.

  I don’t think a single one of them had the least idea what hit him. That a livid red line had opened across their Adam’s apples one after another, unseen and perhaps unfelt, even their astonished heads toppling backward faster than their bodies. It was as if Ivan were wielding a Samurai sword instead of merely those awful fangs.

  There must have been oceans of blood.

  But most of it didn’t start pumping in full force until after the headless bodies were on their backs and, thankfully, mostly concealed by the curtain of smoke. Still, I kept my hand firmly planted over Sylvie’s mouth, her eyes bulging like a stuck bullfrog’s above my fingers. Maybe I should have covered her eyes as well.

  And Ivan?

  Ivan never moved.

  Well…of course he moved, but I don’t think even Frazetti saw it. I’m not really sure he understood it, even after he heard the cement sack thuds of his men dropping to the floor behind him like nine pins.

  Then Ivan moved again—this time so we could see him.

  He leaned forward and pushed the open briefcase in front of Frazetti one more time.

  Frazetti just sat there staring at the tall vampire with his jaw hanging.

  “Give him the money,” I said.

  Maybe I even said it out loud, I don’t remember. But I didn’t really believe the fat, bespectacled mob chief had brought any money with him and I’m pretty sure Ivan knew that too, maybe even before he set the black case on the table to begin with. Hell, maybe even before he walked into the joint.

  I knew what was coming next, too—or had a fairly good idea of it—and I really should have pulled Sylvie away from that window. Even today I’m sometimes sorry I didn’t. It might have saved her some future nightmares. Certainly it would have saved her a lot of tortured vomiting, some of which nearly splashed on Mitzi.

  It began when Ivan leaned gently over the table and reached his long-nailed hand down the gangster’s throat…

  …and sort of went on from there.

  One thing about the whole mess really bothered me later.

  Okay, everything about the mess bothered me, and Sylvie a lot more, but one part specifically stuck in my mind after we’d jumped from the window ledge and run white-faced back to her car and locked all the doors securely and shrieked away into the safety of the night.

  I think I instinctively knew Ivan was a psychotic after what I saw him do on the rooftop of that hotel Halloween party. But even that didn’t prepare me for the cold, alien fury of what I saw that night. Basically, sparing you most of the gory details, Ivan gutted the would-be mob boss Frazetti from the inside out. Pretty much hollowed him out like a pumpkin. There were rivers of blood and yards of intestines flying everywhere, along with all the major organs of the human body, Ivan’s hand and arm moving so fast it looked like Frazetti was hanging there in the air spewing his guts skyward like an active volcano.

  What brought me up short was not just the internal workings being plastered over the warehouse walls. It was when the gangster’s still beating heart smacked us right in our faces–or against the window we were watching through, anyway. Stuck there for a slimy, dripping moment or two, then slid smearing down the glass until it plopping on the floor inside.

  I kept thinking while driving us home afterwards--Sylvie was passed out in the back seat, even Mitzi in a slight state of shock—I kept thinking the same thing over and over.

  Did Ivan throw that bloody thing at us on purpose! Like a grim joke? Was he aware?

  Did the bastard know we were out there?

  TWELVE

  Driving back to the apartment, Mitzi beside me in the passenger seat, my eyes kept jumping to the rearview. Expecting the fang-dripping vampire to come swooping down at our back window.

  I couldn’t see much of Sylvie stretched out there on the back seat but I was more than a little worried about her. Sure, the idea had been to shock her--it was the only way I could be sure she’d actually make the leap of faith required to believe in contemporary vampires, seeing one in full action--but I hadn’t expected such a gruesome display from Ivan. The most I’d bargained for was some bearing of fangs and wild-eyed posturing, not a clinically accurate vivisection.

  My guilt-torn eyes jerked up to the rearview so often I had to dodge two oncoming trucks and an angrily honking SUV before Mitzi finally spoke up.

  “She’ll be fine, Ed. I checked her pulse before we got going—she’s isn’t in shock.”

  I hunched over the wheel in self-reproach. “Not physiological shock, maybe, but emotionally…I’m not so sure.”

  “She’s a strong girl. She’ll get passed it. You knew that instinctively or you wouldn’t have brought her along.”

  Mitzi shook her head thoughtfully under the strobe of passing street lights. “That Ivan, though…whew! I mean, a vampire’s bad enough, does he have to be a psycho-sadist to boot? Who turned him back in the day, Jack the Ripper?”

  I sighed exhaustion behind the wheel. “Alicia turned him. She was his mentor and initiator, remember?”

  “Yeah, well, I think he graduated the University of Alicia with honors and went on to higher levels of insanity. What was he studying before Alicia, pre-med? The claws on that guy—like scalpels. Did you see what he did to those goons? Beheaded them without even--”

  “I was there, okay! Let’s not replay it, huh? Anyway, how’d you see it—you were down below the windows.”

  “I can hear. And I know the sound of heads hitting the floor prior to their bodies--”

  “Can we change the subject now? I’m getting acid reflux! Listen, maybe we should take Sylvie to a hospital, just to be sure…”

  The poodle turned to me in the seat. “Yeah, that’s a good idea, Ed! And explain to some pimple-faced intern how she passed out during a vampire attack. Great idea!” She looked back at the windshield. “Where are you driving u
s, anyway?”

  I focused on the highway ahead, the flashing lights, swishing traffic. “I think…yeah, I’m sure I passed it.”

  “Passed what?”

  “Whatever landmark I was supposed to be looking for, I’m completely lost. Where the hell is Marina City?”

  “Get off at the next ramp. Unless you want to cross Lake Michigan underwater. I understand the view is marvelous, if limited. You better pull it together, Sport. Don’t let Sylvie see you like this. She needs you to be the strong, confident Ed Magee now.”

  “I think I lost him somewhere back in KC.”

  I took the ramp ahead and headed north again.

  “Listen, about Sylvie. All she knows for now is that you read minds—or I claim you do-- and that there’s a plague of rampaging fangers out there. Let’s not give her more to handle by mentioning you’re one of them, okay! A vampire poodle might be just the nudge that sends her over the edge.”

  “Probably a sound idea. Poor kid’s seen enough tonight to last a lifetime.”

  I glanced askance at my adopted canine. “Poor kid? You almost sound like you like her.”

  The poodle rolled her eyes heavenward. “Trust, Edward, trust! How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t trust her! It’s got nothing to do with like. I mean, look at her, who wouldn’t like her? She’s a sweetheart. She’s beautiful. Like Alicia was beautiful, maybe, but still beautiful.”

  “You don’t trust Clancy, you don’t trust Sylvie, you don’t trust The Count…who the hell do you trust? Do you even believe in me?”

  The dog said nothing.

  I finally turned to her.

  “On Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays,” she replied drily. “Turn right here on Sutton. That’ll take you to State Street and The Towers.”

  I shook my head. “How the hell do know all this stuff? You’ve never even been to Chicago.”

  “I’m a dog, Ed. A highly sensitive, keenly intelligent, exceptionally prescient—“

  “Dog. I get it.”

  We pulled into The Towers’ parking garage and found Sylvie’s space on the lower level.

  I cut the engine, came around to open the back door and found her sitting up dazedly in the back seat. I scooted in next to her. “Hey.”

  She blinked lazily at me.

  “You okay, kiddo?” I felt her forehead; it was cool.