by Jim Cogan
*
I had to flag down a cab to get back to my apartment. Once there I called the office to let Lydia know I was running late - she was suitably unimpressed, then I grabbed a quick shower and headed out again.
I always parked my car a block away from my apartment, just to make it generally harder for people to keep tabs on me. As I turned into the street where my car was parked up I noticed someone quite blatantly staking it out, no doubt waiting for me to make an appearance. He was a skinny guy, late twenties, neatly attired – not muscle but definitely mob. If it had simply been a tough guy I’d have not been so cautious, tough guys are almost always pretty damn stupid. No, it’s always the more innocuous looking goons who are the ones to worry about – in my experience they’re almost always smarter than tough guys, and often what they lack in physical presence they make for by being either ruthless or downright psychotic. However, in my desire to give this guy a wide berth, I’d taken my eye off the bigger picture. I should have realised there would be more than one guy on me.
“Hey!” Boomed a familiar voice from somewhere behind me. I glanced round and saw the burly figure of Hugo, some fifty yards away and bearing down on me fast. His call had alerted the guy watching my car, the two of them began to close in on me in something akin to a pincer movement.
I bolted up the nearest side street then around the first corner. Now, having lived in this neighbourhood for many years I should have known every little rat run – but God damn it if I didn’t run straight down a blind alley with a dead end. From a strategic point of view this was a massive faux pas on my part, I was not only outnumbered but also cornered in a location that was secluded enough to ensure that there would be no witnesses.
“Get your fuckin’ hands up in the air where I can see ‘em, Mr Jerome.”
I turned around to see the skinny guy with the foul mouth, gun drawn at the ready, walking confidently towards me. Hugo skulked along behind him, trying to look menacing. This time, with the disadvantage they had me at, he sort of almost managed it.
“I’ve met Hugo, there, but I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure before?”
My hands were up and I didn’t have many options, so I went for small talk and close proximity.
“My name is Luigi, Mr Jerome. As I’m sure you’re aware, I too work for Gianni Vitalli. Hugo came to see you yesterday and made it clear that you ought to keep your nose out of a specific piece of Mr Vitalli’s business. You only get one warning from Mr Vitalli, then he calls me in and things get real nasty.”
He’d gotten within ten feet of me – still too far away.
“Now, Luigi, I’m sure we can come to some sort of understanding here, right?”
Eight feet and still closing.
“The only thing you need to understand is this, Mr Jerome. You didn’t heed the warning and now you’re going to face some painful consequences.”
Six feet. Almost.
“You’re gonna’ learn a vital lesson today - you do not try and bullshit the mob, you hear me?”
He was real close now, within range, and thankfully Hugo had stayed back a little and hadn’t drawn his gun. I’d practiced this quite a lot but had never previously tried it out in the field. If I wasn’t quick enough then the most likely eventually was that I was about to get shot at point blank range – that probably wouldn’t end well.
“Ok, Luigi. Here I am, you got me – so I look like a chump. Well, you’d better get it over with.”
I stood there, hands raised, but elbows bent. I studied Luigi’s body language – it was like a poker game, I was just waiting for that moment – I was waiting for him to blink...
In one fluid movement I threw my left hand towards the opening of my right hand coat sleeve – within which I made a point of always keeping a short iron bar concealed. It was about a foot long and was held in place by a by a stitched sheath of material, strong enough to keep it there but easy enough to rip loose. Once I felt my hand grip the end of the bar I yanked it clear of my sleeve and swung it in an arc that lined up with the barrel of Luigi’s revolver.
I was just quick enough, Luigi was able to discharge a single shot from the weapon but the impact of the bar had knocked his aim out, the bullet whistled past my head by a fraction. I must have caught his trigger finger too because the gun then flew from his grasp.
I hastily reversed the swing of the bar into a forehand smash against the right side of Luigi’s face, then swung again to inflict a sweet backhand smash to the left side of his head. The bar had only a small amount of mass, but combined with the force I’d managed to generate and the element of surprise, it was enough to stun Luigi and send him in to the floor in a crumpled heap.
Now I had to get past Hugo. I figured his reactions would be slow, so I ran straight at him. He was fumbling for his still holstered gun, but I had mine drawn already. Now, I had no desire to murder anyone, not even a mobster who would happily have beaten me to a bloody pulp, so I didn’t shoot to kill. Instead I aimed my gun downwards – Hugo was a big man, and judging by the size of his shoes, had very big feet. I pulled the trigger and sent a slug straight through the toecap of his right shoe.
It was unorthodox but it had the desired effect, Hugo let out an agonising yell and hit the floor clutching his foot, blood oozing from his shoe. I’d hazard a guess that the shot must have severed at least one toe and made a God-awful mess of the others.
I bolted past him and was out of the alley in seconds, I knew I had to put some serious distance between me and the scene.
I made it back to my car, jumped in, floored it and made good my escape.
*
The question was, ‘where do I go now?’ In all honesty I really hadn’t a clue. The mob were officially after me, which meant I had to lie low for a while. My apartment would be under surveillance, I didn’t have any family living nearby and although I had a lot of acquaintances, there were very few people that I genuinely trusted. And I sure as hell couldn’t go to the office, not in broad daylight at least...Then a thought struck me.
“The office. Lydia. Shit!”
I pulled over at the first public phone booth I came to and dialled as quickly as I could. To my relief I heard Lydia’s voice.
Despite her protests I convinced her to close the office, lock it up good and tight and get herself home. I promised to pay her in full and told her to wait a few days, just until things calmed down, I’d be in contact when I’d sorted everything out. She was mightily pissed at me, but I could live with that as long as she was safe and sound.
*
Obviously, things had moved a lot quicker than I was expecting. I felt reasonably safe, at large on these familiar streets. However, you need cash to survive on the streets, and lots of it. I did happen to have rather a lot of cash at my disposal, but annoyingly, it was sitting in the safe in my office.
And so it was that as darkness enveloped the city that night, I approached my place of business, not as I usually did - via the very public front entrance, but having parked up a couple of blocks away, utilising a very obscure route indeed.
It’s a bit of an in joke amongst PI’s, sneaking into one’s own premises undetected is something of an occupational hazard – we humorously refer to it as ‘conducting a self enema.’
I was very proud of my particular stealthy route. I’d put this in place a few years back and tested it out every six months or so, just for such an occasion as this.
Firstly, I entered Old Al’s Late Night Diner over on the far side of my block to my office. $5 in Old Al’s top pocket got me into the back of the premises, through the kitchens and out into the rear courtyard. At this point I had to scale a four foot brick wall, and then I was in the rear courtyard of the premises that my office was located in. A quick ascent of the fire escape – two short flights, then in through the fire escape door and I was outside of my office.
I quietly slipped my key into the front door lock and turned it anti-clockwise, I felt the subtle shift of weight
as the bolt was withdrawn.
I entered extremely cautiously, gun at the ready – I didn’t expect to find anyone, but the mob had the resources – they could quite easily have obtained a spare key for my office – I could not discount the fact that they could have guys already in there waiting for me.
The reception area was deserted, but something caught my attention right away. Through the frosted glass on my office door I could clear see the mild illumination of my desk lamp. Lydia would never have left that on, she was obsessive about things like that. So – someone else had been in here, could they still be there?
I inched as silently as I could towards my office door. Just as I reached it, there came a voice from within.
“Good evening, Mr Jerome. Please do come in, I can assure you it’s only myself in here, and I am not armed.” It was a female voice, sultry, yet authoritative.
I was concerned that she could be trying to play me, there could be a dozen mobsters waiting for me either side of the doorway. But I decided to throw caution to the wind – if they were there then surely they’d have jumped me by now? Once again, I decided on the bravado approach, this was my freakin’ office after all. I holstered my gun, casually opened the door and strode inside.
And there, reclining in my own chair, with her immaculately toned long legs crossed and high heeled feet perched on my desk, was as true a femme fatale as ever there could be. Breathtakingly beautiful, with wide, alluring eyes and precisely styled blonde curls, she was an absolute knockout.
“Hello, Mr Jerome, I’ve been expecting you. My name is Shelley Valance.”
CHAPTER 7
“You can put the gun away, Mr Jerome, there’s only me here and I don’t really do firearms.”
“No offense intended, but you’ll just have to forgive me for being slightly paranoid,” I said as I made a cautious sweep of my office.
“You can search me if you like?” I had to hand it to her, a doll that can find time to be flirtatious while someone has a gun trained on her is a cool customer indeed.
She began to rise – it spooked me a little and I levelled the gun to her remarkably pretty face. Her skin was extraordinarily pale, where the light from my desk lamp shone upon her cheeks it resembled to texture of fine porcelain. And yet, it didn’t look like she was wearing any kind of makeup, she looked so natural, but fragile at the same time. Then I noticed her eyes – like two giant emeralds, the deepest, greenest eyes I’d ever seen – I felt compelled to simply stare at them.
“Easy, Tiger,” she said, grinning slightly, as she raised her hands, palms open, “just letting you have your seat back, okay?”
I blinked a couple of times, it allowed me to look away from her and bring me back to my senses. Satisfied that we were alone, I lowered my gun and beckoned her to sit on the chair in front of my desk, where my clients usually sit. We rotated our positions around the desk, eventually ending up in what I considered to be the natural order. I slunk gratefully down into my own, familiar chair, and a small semblance of my composure began to return. I placed my hand, containing the gun, in a somewhat more neutral position resting on the table in front of me – pointing away to the corner of the room, but clearly visible. I didn’t want her to forget about it.
“Feel better? Can we get down to business now?” She said, slowly descending into her chair, elegantly making herself comfortable.
“Hold up, sweetheart. I want to know how you got in here. My PA locked this place up, and the door was locked when I arrived, yet here you are. My PA and I are the only people who have a key for that door. So what does that mean?”
“Well, you obviously are in possession of your own key, so I must either have accosted your PA and relieved her of the other key? Or possibly I might have climbed in through your open window, there?”
My office window was always left a tiny bit ajar, I liked to keep the place cool and let the fresh air in. Someone with extremely dainty arms could conceivably slip one through the gap and lift the latch to open the window fully and permit ingress, and Shelley Valance was nothing if not dainty. But getting the window open, that was the easy bit. We were only on the first floor, but the window ledge was still a good twenty feet above the sidewalk – which is why I never worried about leaving that window open all the time. It would require a ladder or a grappling hook and rope, neither of which were in evidence. Not forgetting that she was wearing a formal business suit jacket, a smart, snug fitting knee length skirt and high heels - not exactly practical attire for scaling the outside of an office block. Suddenly I felt uneasy. I levelled the gun at her again.
“If you have done anything to hurt Lydia I will-.”
“Your little friend is fine, Mr Jerome. I know what you’re thinking, but, believe or not, I did get in here via the latter means rather than the former.”
“Bullshit.”
“Well, whatever. You can call her when I’m done here and check for yourself, anyway – I do not have all night, Mr Jerome, I’m going to talk now and you are going to listen, okay?”
“Wait a sec-.”
“Shut up, please.” It takes something pretty special to put me in my place like that. I’ve faced off people wielding knives, machetes and guns, but none of them had ever brought me down quite as comprehensively as that. I think it was the sheer confidence and authority in her voice – she didn’t shout, she didn’t sound stern, but there was something almost ethereal in her tone that commanded compliance.
“Right, I’ll keep this brief. I don’t know exactly how much of what’s going on you’re actually aware of – but my associate, Mr Gianni Vitalli, thinks you know far too much.”
“So the goons he keeps sending after me are telling me.”
“Yeah, about that - you put two of them in the hospital today, that was really stupid, you know that? Gianni is pretty pissed at you over that, he would have been happy with letting you off with just a warning – if you could just keep your nose out of our business, but you didn’t heed that. Then, you could have gotten off with a mild beating, no permanent damage, but you sure made certain that wasn’t going to happen. So now, well, you’re a dead man walking, aren’t you, Mr Jerome?”
“If you say so,” I grinned. In truth I didn’t need her to tell me how much deep shit I was in, but I sure as hell wasn’t let it show.
“Oh come on. The next guy Gianni sends after you won’t be some goon in a suit. He will be a professional hitman, someone who has probably killed dozens of people. You will not see it coming and you will be able to do nothing to prevent it.”
“So, something tells me you aren’t this silent assassin that I should be so worried about. Just why the hell are you here, Miss Valance, what’s your angle?”
“Simple, Mr Jerome. I don’t like you, no offense intended, and to be fair, I like you even less having met you. But you are resourceful, reasonably intelligent, you know the city well and you know how to find things out. A guy like you would be pretty useful to me, considering the kinds of idiots that Gianni has on the payroll. You could be a valuable asset to the little enterprise I’ve got going on here.”
“Excuse me, are you trying to offer me a God damn job?”
“I’m making you an offer, yes.”
“And what exactly is your little enterprise all about?”
“Wow, you’ve been digging and digging, you’ve pissed off a mob boss to such an extent that he wants you dead, and you still don’t truly know what’s going on, do you?”
“I know about the heroin.”
“Oh that, a necessary evil component in a much larger scheme.”
“I know that lots of people have been going missing, strange trucks are ferrying bottles of blood out of the city – of which the driver of one of these trucks inexplicably exploded in front of a load of cops when exposed to sunlight just the other day, and I know that although Vitalli is the big man, word is that you’re really the one pulling all the strings here. Care to fill in the blanks?”
“Very wel
l, Mr Jerome, seeing as it could cost you your life, I guess you might as well know the full picture – I’d hate for you to die without knowing what you actually died for,” she allowed herself a little girly smile.
“My, how sweet of you,” I replied, in as ironic a tone as I could muster.
“Indeed. The heroin - my people smuggle it into the country. And we are very adept at making sure it gets here – more so than any mobsters have ever been, and in much greater quantities. We ensure a steady supply is getting out onto the streets. It’s good shit, it commands a good price and the profits we make get reinvested into the important arm of the business. Blood.”
“Okay, I was with you up to that moment, what’s the deal with the blood? My source said something about it being all mixed up – all different blood types. I’m no doctor, but I know from a medical perspective it’s useless, so who the hell needs blood like that?”
“My kind need blood like that.”
“What?”
“We go out at night and we find the absolute dregs of society, people with no ties – people who won’t be missed. We kidnap them, we drug them so they’re docile, we keep them alive through intravenous feeding and we harvest their blood in large quantities. That blood then enters our supply network, being dispatched to our outlying communities. I guess you’d call us bloodrunners, Mr Jerome.”
I just stared at her. She was talking so matter of fact about this whole business. After a long pause I finally broke the silence, “Lady, you are shitting me, right? You’re telling me you and your kind are actually-.”
“Vampires, Mr Jerome. I don’t care much for the term, but essentially that is exactly what we are. We need to feed on human blood to survive. And we aren’t fussy – who it comes from, their health, blood type, none of that matters – stick it all in a vat, mix it up, it’s all good stuff to us. And we are highly photosensitive, hence the reason we only come out at night – otherwise we are prone to the unfortunate fate that the driver you spoke of suffered. Otherwise we are pretty much immortal and considerably stronger, faster and most definitely smarter than humans.”
