by Tim Kizer
For your information, they had regular guns, too—an acquaintance of Alex’s friend provided them with two unregistered Glock 17 pistols.
“I guess they’d never heard of you until they saw you at my house,” said Frank. “Besides, if they had Alex, they would have searched his place, and you said that there was nothing missing from his apartment.”
“You’re right.” Marilyn nodded. “You know, your wife’s cousin never mentioned Alex. He talked about you the whole time.”
Frank opened the shoulder bag and laid the items from the bank deposit box out on the table. “I had this in my deposit box.”
“What is it?” Marilyn asked, looking over the GPS device.
“It’s the tracking device I used to track my wife’s car.”
Yes, he had recognized the tracking unit as soon as he had seen it back at the bank. He had remembered placing it under the rear bumper of Kelly’s BMW three or four times to find out where his wife had gone on her night outs. On the second Friday night in April the device had helped him track Kelly’s car down to the parking lot of the Mantra Lounge nightclub in downtown Buffalo. It took Frank only five minutes to find his wife on the dance floor next to Tony, whom he didn’t recognize at first.
“Kelly? What are you doing here?” he asked. He didn’t have to give an Oscar-worthy performance as he faked surprise since the room was dim and the music was blaring from the speakers.
“I’m here with my cousin Tony. What are you doing here? I didn’t know you liked clubbing.” Kelly stopped dancing and pulled him away from the dance floor so they could hear each other better.
“A buddy of mine brought me here.” He waved towards Alex, who had come to the club at his request to act as his excuse. “I just got bored sitting at home.”
Tony joined them a few moments later.
“This is my husband Frank.” Kelly kissed Frank on the cheek.
“I remember him.” Tony shook Frank’s hand. “We’ve met a few times before.”
Frank’s mind immediately registered that Tony’s hand was as warm as any other human hand, not that he’d expected it to be stone-cold.
Then Kelly introduced Tony and went back to the dance floor.
“You are staying at Josephine’s place, right?” said Frank as he and Tony walked to the bar counter.
“Yes, I am.” Tony smiled. “I guess you remember me by this.” He pulled the left leg of his jeans up halfway to his knee, revealing the prosthesis. “It’s hard to forget a one-legged guy.”
A short while later, Alex told Frank that he was going to hop to another club with a friend he had just bumped into (which was a lie Alex had made up to disappear) and asked if Frank wanted to join. Frank told him he was staying at Mantra Lounge with his wife.
They left the club at half past one in the morning. On the way to the parking lot, Tony asked Frank if he wanted to join him and Kelly the next Friday night.
“I hope you don’t mind me using Kelly as my chauffeur,” he said. “Josephine doesn’t trust my driving, and neither do I.”
Frank gladly agreed.
Did he hang out with Tony the next Friday? Yes, he did. They went to the Pyramid club that night, and Frank didn’t even have to drive: Kelly had volunteered to serve as the designated driver for both of them so that her dear husband could drink as much as he wanted. It later turned out that the carpool idea belonged to Tony.
During that outing at the Pyramid Frank spiked Tony’s drink with a very generous dose of Midazolam, a popular date rape drug, to find out if they could knock the vampire out with a sedative. The result of his experiment was disappointing: when Tony left the nightclub, the drug had been in his system for more than two hours, yet the man was as energetic and alert as ever. Even though this discovery was certainly bad news, there was a bright side to it. Frank and Alex finally had evidence that Tony was no regular human being.
“Where did you get this?” Marilyn waved the fake driver’s license. “Michael Hogan. Did you pick the name?”
“Alex got it for me. Just in case. And I have no idea who picked the name.”
“I like the sound of it. Michael Hogan.”
A few moments later Marilyn’s cell-phone rang. Marilyn glanced at the phone screen and said, “It’s Graham. Should I answer?”
Frank nodded.
Chapter 15.
THE TEAM
1.
“You love that trick, don’t you, Josephine?” said Nico, Tony’s younger brother, who was a vampire, too. He had arrived from Minneapolis with his two ghouls, Travis and Jake, three days earlier to visit his sibling. Even though the brothers loved each other very much—they had no other blood relatives left alive—they didn’t hang out often and usually never spent more than a week together. They took extended, sometimes decade long, breaks between their gatherings for the same reason President and Vice President flew in different planes: they were afraid of getting killed together, either in some freak accident, or in an assassination plot.
“I can’t get enough of it,” she replied.
“I’ve never seen it before,” said Albert.
“Oh, it’s magical. You’re going to love it, bud.” Graham patted Albert on the back.
Nico had always scheduled his visits around full moon days, which was the only time of the month he could show off his amazing ability to turn into a bat. This transformation was a spectacular sight to behold and very few vampires possessed such a talent. Tony used to do this trick occasionally for fun, but had abandoned it after losing his leg. Nico’s tragic death shed the light on his reasoning; Josephine wished Tony had given Nico this tip while his brother was still alive.
Tonight was a full moon. They had come to the Chautauqua Lake area to spend a few hours away from the city and maybe snatch a cute girl or two for Tony and Nico. There was no particular final destination; they had just been driving around, absorbing the night scenery. Soon after Nico turned into a bat and soared into the sky, cheered by Tony, Albert, Travis, Jake, and Graham, Josephine felt thirsty and went back to their cars—Ron’s Ford Expedition and the rental Toyota RAV4—to have some soda.
Josephine was standing by the Ford, staring down the dark road, when Kelly’s father’s Dodge Ram pickup truck showed up in the distance. By that time, she had stopped trying to follow Nico’s aerobatics and was simply waiting for the gang to come back to the cars. It usually took Nico half an hour to fully enjoy the pleasures of flying, and Josephine estimated that the fun was going to be over in ten minutes. When she heard the piercing screech of the Dodge Ram’s tires, she was a little surprised since she couldn’t figure out why the hell the driver had hit the brakes. Remaining in the lane, the truck stopped about thirty feet away from the Ford Expedition. While leaving the engine and the headlights on, both the driver and the passenger got out of the vehicle and huddled by the radiator grill. It was that moment that Josephine remembered that there had been a distinct bumping noise shortly before the driver had braked.
Her mind feverishly trying to make sense of the situation, Josephine headed for the Dodge Ram. Once the truck’s license plate became visible, she immediately memorized it. She had a bad premonition.
“It's a bat,” one of the men said. “It’s just a damn bat. Leave it there, George. Let's go.” The man returned to the passenger seat.
“I’m coming,” replied the driver.
“Is everything okay?” Josephine asked, staring at the driver—that was the first time she had seen Kelly’s father.
“Everything’s fine, Ma’am. I seemed to have hit a bat or maybe some ugly bird.” George slowly raised his right foot and kicked the bat’s remains off the grill. Then he proceeded to give the bat another boot to remove it from the road. “Take care, Ma’am.” George turned around and got back to the truck.
It didn’t take Josephine too long to realize that this man had just killed Nico: the thing that had collided with the Dodge Ram was twice the size of a regular bat. Keeping an eye on George’s truck, which
was quickly pulling away, she hopped behind the wheel of the Expedition and went after Nico’s killer. As she passed Shermans Bay, she called Graham and told him to run the Dodge Ram’s license plate whenever he had a chance. Then she called Tony and asked him if Nico was with them.
“We can’t find him,” replied Tony. “I hope he didn’t get lost. You don’t see that well when you’re a bat, you know.”
Josephine told him to search for a bat’s body by the rental Chevrolet and then confirm to her if that was actually Nico. Six minutes later, Tony informed her that the roadkill bat was indeed his brother.
“Don’t worry. I’m following the fucker who did it as we speak,” Josephine said.
At half past midnight, the Dodge Ram pulled up to the curb by a small one-story house at the south-east end of Jamestown, which, as they found out, belonged to George’s buddy Earl Bayley, and both men went inside, carrying the buckets that probably contained their catch. Josephine spent the next twenty minutes observing the house from her car and developing the plan of action. She let all the incoming phone calls go to voicemail in order to keep focused. When she started the engine, ready to join the gang, she had a full-fledged vengeance plan in her head.
George had to pay the ultimate price for murdering Nico, that was a no-brainer. However, there was a brilliant wrinkle: this fucker was going to die by the hand of the person he loved the most. Chances were George had a child, or a wife, or a sibling, or a mistress; after two cups of vampire blood, none of these people would have any trouble taking the old man’s life.
Two days later they had all information they needed to implement the plan. It turned out that George lived with his wife Jane in Rochester and that he had a daughter named Kelly, who resided in Buffalo.
Josephine vividly remembered the day they had fed George’s daughter her first pint of vampire blood.
“It's vengeance, my dear,” she said in a calm voice as she bent over the half-sedated Kelly, who was lying motionlessly on the gurney in the basement of her and Ron’s house.
Then Graham started carefully pouring Tony’s blood from the six-inch-tall shot glass into Kelly’s mouth. Josephine had to use her both hands to keep that mouth open: one hand was firmly placed on Kelly’s forehead to hold the woman’s head down and the other applied pressure to her chin. Kelly appeared disoriented, but not terrified, and obviously had no damn clue about what was going on, her drowsy eyes fixed on the sparkling glass. A few seconds later, Graham took a short break so that Josephine could close Kelly’s mouth to make her swallow the blood.
After the last drop of the vampire blood from the glass found its way into Kelly’s throat, they stepped away from the gurney and began to wait for the magic to take place. They left the basement highly satisfied that night: when the sedative wore off and she was able to string words together in a coherent fashion, Kelly asked for another glass of vampire blood and then eagerly drank it.
Six weeks later they murdered George. Nico had been avenged.
They slaughtered Jane just for the fun of it. Killing Kelly’s daughter Kathy a year later was not part of the vengeance plan, either; Kelly had finally gotten too tired of having this whiney shit machine around and decided that the drawbacks of having a cute young child far outweighed its benefits.
Yeah, that's how it was. The old man had had his dick chopped off by his own daughter for hitting a bat. The sad thing was, George had left this world without a clue as to why he had been tortured and killed. And even if she had explained to him that he had run into a vampire that August night, he would have probably thought she was deranged.
Yep. The old moron had gotten twenty five holes drilled in his body just for killing a fucking bat. By accident, mind you.
Talk about bad luck.
What happened to Nico’s ghouls? Travis volunteered to become a vampire, and Tony gladly granted his wish. Two weeks later, he and Jake went back to Minneapolis. Unfortunately, the pressures of the vampire life turned out unbearable for Travis, who wasn’t an epitome of mental fortitude to begin with: in his last text message to Josephine, just a year after Tony’s teeth had sunk into his jugular, he complained that he had gotten tired of hiding from the sunlight, that his two ghouls had been shot dead while trying to kidnap a young woman two days before, and that he saw no point in continuing to live. Josephine had never heard from him again since that message.
2.
A knock on the door took Josephine out of the memory trance. As she collected her thoughts, it crossed her mind that she might have been rinsing the same spot the whole time that she was revisiting the past. The bathroom door opened, and she heard Ron’s voice, “Josie, do you want to listen to Graham talk to Marilyn? He’s here.”
“Yes. Wait for me.”
“We’re recording the call, so you can listen to it later if you want.”
“No, I’m coming down. Don’t start without me.”
“Okay.” Ron shut the door.
Josephine turned off the faucets and got out of the shower cabin. Then she threw a towel on her shoulders, quickly wiped her hips with another towel, and put on her panties.
“Do you think she got the truth out of Frank?” she asked Ron as they walked downstairs.
“I sure hope so. She fucks him after all,” Ron said. “I was wondering if it’s time for us to talk directly to Frank. What do you think?”
Josephine shook her head.
“There's no need to hurry just yet,” she said. “If Kelly’s alive now, she’ll still be alive a week from now.”
“Maybe you’re right.” Ron breathed a sigh. “Guys are kind of tired of waiting, you know. Besides, this arrogant asshole gets on my nerves.”
“I know. As I said, there's no need to hurry right now.” Josephine waved to Graham, who was sitting in a Louis XIV style armchair with a cell phone in his hand. “We should be focused on our main goal. We’ll have plenty of time to break his bones after we achieve that goal.”
They sat down on the sofa, and Graham exchanged glances with both of them, as if asking for permission to dial Marilyn’s number. Josephine gave him a slight nod, and he pressed the green call button at the bottom of the phone and then the speaker button.
“Wasn’t Al going to come over, too?” Josephine asked in a low voice.
“He did promise to come,” said Ron. “He must have changed his mind.”
Josephine waved her hand and said, “Okay, we won't wait for him.”
“He doesn’t trust Marilyn,” said Ron. “He thinks that she and Frank will just make up some bullshit story for Graham. Perhaps that’s why he doesn’t want to listen to her. He’s such a pessimist.”
Josephine settled back and crossed her legs, intently listening to the phone ringing. She was irritated that Marilyn was taking an awfully long time to pick up. Ron extracted a cigarette from the Dunhill pack and lit it up.
“Boy do I love smoking,” he said with a smile. “Thank God I don’t have to watch my lungs.”
“I read that it costs a hundred grand to treat emphysema.” Josephine cast an inquiring look at Graham and asked, “Are you recording this?”
Graham nodded.
“Hello,” Marilyn’s voice interrupted the silence. Graham lifted his right index finger, signaling Ron and Josephine to be quiet, and replied, “Hello. Do you know who’s calling, Marilyn?”
“I'll go get beer,” Ron whispered to Josephine and left the room.
“Who is it?” asked Marilyn.
“She doesn’t recognize you,” Josephine said to Graham. “She’s got to be faking it.”
“It's Peter,” said Graham. “Peter Warner.”
“I’m listening, Peter.”
Ron returned from the kitchen with a six-pack of Heineken in his hand. He put the bottles on the table and opened one of them.
“What a stuck-up bitch. ‘I’m listening, Peter.’” Josephine grimaced in irritation. “As if she has no idea why he’s calling.”
“She’s so dumb,” said Ron.
>
“Have you met Frank?” asked Graham.
“Maybe Al was right and she had told Frank everything,” Ron said. “That’s what I would do if I were in her shoes.”
“You think they’re working together?” said Josephine. “Not a problem. We still have enough time.”
“No, I haven’t seen him yet,” replied Marilyn.
Josephine exchanged glances with Graham and Ron. “Bullshit. Well, if they are both in on it, we’ll have to talk to Frank.”
“I knew from the very beginning that this bitch would spill the beans to him,” commented Ron.
“Why, Marilyn?” asked Graham. “You had two days to do it. Do you remember what I told you?”
“She must have told Frank the same day Graham spoke to her.” Josephine lit up a cigarette. “I hate dealing with women.”
“Frank was very busy. We just couldn’t find time to meet,” said Marilyn.
“You didn’t even have time to talk to him on the phone?” Graham asked. “Are you lying to me, Marilyn?”
“Does she really think we’ll buy it?” Ron chuckled. “She's taking us for idiots.”
“She sure does,” said Josephine. “Maybe we should ask her why she hasn’t been home the last two days.”
“She should have come up with something more plausible,” commented Ron.
“I can’t talk to him about his dead wife on the phone. It’s a very sensitive matter, Peter,” said Marilyn. “Besides, Frank’s been having headaches this whole time. You must understand that two days is not enough, Peter.”
“Do we look gullible to her?” Josephine said. “Or is she too arrogant?”
“Do you think they guessed that it was Graham?” Ron asked. “Yeah, Frank probably has Graham’s picture somewhere.”
“I bet they know it was Graham.” Josephine shook the ash off into the ashtray.
