by AnonYMous
As he sat luxuriating in his self-pity, his cell phone rang. It managed only two rings before he pulled it from the pocket of his sweatpants and answered it.
‘Yo. Sanchez here.’
‘Hey Sanchez, it’s Rick. Rick from the Olé Au Lait.’
‘Hey, man. Bit late for a social call, ain’t it?’
‘Got news for you, Sanchez. That Jessica woman you were askin’ me ‘bout the other day? I got the info you were wantin’.’
Sanchez sat up straighter on his stool. ‘Yeah? You really found out who put the missing-person ad in the paper?’
‘Not exactly, buddy, but she came in here earlier with some big guy. They looked like a couple. I got his name, if you’re interested?’
‘Hold on, I gotta get a pen.’ Sanchez put his beer and the cell phone down on the bar beside The Book of Death, which was still open at the page he’d turned to. There was a black ballpoint just on a shelf of glasses at the back of the bar. He reached over the counter at full stretch and picked it up between the tips of two fingers. Then, sitting back on his stool, he scribbled across one of the blank pages of The Book of Death to see if the pen was in working order. He was relieved to find that it was. He picked up the phone and said ‘’Kay. Go on,’
‘The guy’s name is Rameses Gaius. Big fuckin’ dude he is too, man.’
‘Rameses Gaius?’ Sanchez thought hard. It wasn’t a name he recognized, but some quick research on the Internet might throw up something on him. First things first, though. Wedging the phone under his ample chin, he used the ballpoint to write the name down on the blank page of the book in front of him to make sure he didn’t forget it. ‘Thanks, Rick. Anythin’ else I oughta know?’
‘Yeah. That woman, Jessica? Her last name is Xavier, apparently.’
In all the time that Sanchez had known Jessica he had never managed to find out her last name, so again with an Internet search in mind he wrote her full name beneath that of Rameses Gaius in The Book of Death.
Rameses Gaius
Jessica Xavier
‘Thanks again, Rick. Guess I owe you that bottle of liquor?’
‘Damn straight you do, Sanchez,’ Rick replied sharply.
‘What’ll it be, then?’
‘Jack Daniel’s. I’ll come by an’ pick it up tomorrow.’
‘Okay. Let me write that down so’s I don’t forget,’ said Sanchez. He scribbled the ‘J’ down on the page beneath the names of Rameses Gaius and Jessica Xavier. Then he had a thought. Jack Daniel’s was expensive stuff; maybe a compromise could be reached?
‘Rick? You sure you wouldn’t prefer a bottle of Jim Beam?’
THE END (maybe … )
Footnotes
Four
* Which is actually the introduction to Richard Strauss’s tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra. Sanchez didn’t know that, though. He wouldn’t have given a shit, either.
Forty-Five
* It is a curiosity of vampire physiology that their corpses do not always decompose in the same way. After the slaughter in the Nightjar, some remains smoked and flamed briefly before being reduced to ashes; others deliquesced, stinking horribly, melted and seeped through the floorboards; still others simply lay where they had fallen, awaiting the course of natural decomposition.
Sixty-Eight
*Very, very deep indeed.
