by Matt Kincade
“That’s the place.” Jacob handed over a pair of binoculars. “Room fourteen. Truck’s still there. The manager says they pulled in around three thirty, and they haven’t left the room. The lights went out a few hours ago. Our guys here in the van can take care of it. When they get coffee in the morning, they’ll grab them and go. Easy peasy.”
Pablo frowned as he lowered the binoculars. “Why wait? Let’s just kick down the door and get them.”
“Seems too easy. This guy isn’t stupid. Why would he—” Jacob stopped and cocked his head, considering. “I mean, he’s dangerous. He’s a big-time vampire hunter. He’s a big name, you know? Seems safer to wait.”
A mocking grin spread across Pablo’s face.”Safe? Are you afraid?”
“Afraid? Of course not. It just seems like it’d be better to do it in the daytime.”
“Ah,” said Pablo. “Daytime. Now I see. You want to cut me out so you can take all the credit. I don’t think so. We go now.”
“Well, I mean, if you say so. You’re the boss.” Jacob undid his seat belt and put his hand on the door handle. “You wait here, and I’ll take care of it.”
Pablo shook his head. “Are you joking? I’m going with you.”
“I just figured, you know, you’re in charge now. Seems like you should be letting the underlings do the work.”
“Like I said, I’m going.”
“If you say so. But I’d feel better if you’d just stay—” Jacob’s coughing fit strangled whatever he was going to say next. The wet hacking went on and on. He coughed so hard he nearly retched. He could barely pause long enough to draw a breath. Finally, he stopped. He leaned against the steering wheel, gasping.
“Look at you,” Pablo said, sneering. “You’re pathetic. You can’t even breathe. In fact, I think you should stay here. I’ll take care of this.”
“No,” Jacob said. “I can—” The coughing started again.
Pablo raised a hand in protest. “Just stay here. That is an order. Don’t embarrass yourself.”
“Yes, sir,” Jacob managed.
As soon as Pablo left, Jacob stopped coughing. He straightened up in his seat, shook a cigarette out of his pack, and stuck it to his lower lip while he fished out his lighter. “Asshole,” he muttered.
Pablo climbed into the van. A minute later, he and four men, all dressed in black, crossed the road. As they approached the motel room door, they pulled out pistols and lowered masks over their faces. Pablo took the lead. The rest lined up on either side of the door, ready to pour through the breach.
Pablo slammed his foot into the door. Even with his vampire strength, it took two tries to kick in the thick motel door. Finally the jamb splintered and the door swung open. They rushed into the room, guns drawn.
“What the fuck?” said Pablo.
The room was empty. On the floor were two gallon jugs wrapped with tape. Wires led away from them. Toward the door. The smell of gasoline hung heavy in the air.
“Mierda…”
The antipersonnel mines detonated. Seven hundred bullet-size steel balls tore through the gallon jugs full of gasoline. A spray of flaming gas and shrapnel tore into the attackers at four thousand feet per second, ripping apart both the living and the undead.
They ran and fell, screaming, burning, dripping liquid fire. They rolled on the floor and pawed at themselves and still burned. Pablo went up like rocket fuel. The men burned slower but burned all the same.
The parking lot was a vision of hell. Men and cars burned. The screams of the maimed and the dying split the cool desert air.
Jacob didn’t flinch. He took a drag off his cigarette and watched the men and the monsters burn. He scanned left then right. “Where are you?” he muttered. “No way you’d miss a show like this.” He sat patiently. Faraway sirens wailed. A minute later, in a parking lot a quarter of a mile down the road, the headlights of a white SUV came on. It eased out of a parking lot and drove in the opposite direction, away from the flaming motel.
Jacob smiled thinly. “There you are.” He put his truck in gear and pulled out in pursuit.
As he shadowed the white SUV through the empty streets of Las Cruces, he dialed a number on his phone. “Señor?” he said, “I have bad news and good news. The bad news is, Pablo is dead. It was a trap. Yes, I tried to stop him, but he went ahead anyway. The good news is, I found the hunter. Yes. Yes of course. I will.” He hung up the phone.
Chapter Eight
Morning sunlight poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the diner. The roof swept upward at a rakish angle, cutting a diagonal line of shade across the wall. The textured stone wall outside glowed pink in the eastern light. A single palm tree swayed gently in the hot desert breeze. Inside, the place was a fantasy in Formica and chrome. A row of piston-like stools stood in front of an art deco curved counter, behind which a cook in a white paper hat peered out from his stainless-steel kingdom. A generic Eisenhower-era soundtrack piped in through tinny speakers.
Alex sat across from Carmen at an oversize booth, both of them sipping coffee from white ceramic cups. The seats were upholstered in blue-and-white vinyl. The white Formica tabletop featured little boomerang patterns. Alex’s cowboy hat rested on the seat beside him. He leaned against the windowsill and glanced out the window. He and Carmen were dirty, tired, and disheveled. They could have been mistaken for a couple recovering from a night of hard partying.
“When’s your friend supposed to show up?” asked Carmen. She finished her coffee and set the cup at the edge of the table.
“He gets here when he gets here,” said Alex. “Mack never was much for schedules.”
A bored-looking waitress came by and refilled their coffee. Carmen peeled the foil off a tiny plastic cup of cream and poured it in the mug.
“Have you ever been here before?” Carmen said, as she looked around at the bric-a-brac lining the walls.
Alex shrugged. “Maybe once or twice.”
“Seems like your kind of place.”
He grinned. “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” He fiddled with the nonfunctional tabletop jukebox, which was flanked by a chrome napkin holder and a glass bottle of ketchup. He looked out the window again. “There he is.”
A blunt-nosed Winnebago lumbered into the parking lot, light brown with darker-brown stripes running down the side. The RV turned a ponderous circle and came to a stop, taking up an entire row of parking spaces.
The side door opened, and Mack stepped out into the sunshine. He wore a tangled mane of salt-and-pepper hair tied back in a ponytail. Three days’ worth of equally salt-and-pepper beard stubbled his face. He slid on a pair of black Wayfarer sunglasses and glanced both ways as he stepped off the bottom step. A red polo shirt, blue jeans, and battered sneakers completed the ensemble. He held a cardboard accordion file as he strolled across the parking lot, through the foyer, and past the hostess stand.
Alex raised his hand and waved.
“Alex! How the hell are you, you son of a bitch!” Mack clapped Alex on the shoulder and slid into the booth next to Carmen. “Who’s your friend?” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Is the drought over at last?”
“She’s…ah…” Alex scratched his neck.
“A client,” Carmen finished.
“A trainee,” said Alex. “Mack, Carmen. Carmen, Mack.”
Mack gently took her hand. “A pleasure.” He chuckled and looked around. “Jesus, Alex, where do you find these places? It’s like I’m in a goddamned episode of Leave It to Beaver.”
Alex shrugged. “They got good shakes.”
“I don’t know if Alex mentioned it to you, but he’s got a giant hard-on for cheesy nineteen-fifties Americana like this shit.” Mack gestured to the Elvis poster on the wall. “The man would blow the King if he could.”
Alex sipped his coffee and raised an eyebrow. “Elvis was a good lookin’ man.”
“And the music! Sweet Jesus, the bubblegum crap he listens to! Makes me want to stab my eardrums with a pencil
.”
Alex leaned back and smiled. “That’s really somethin’, comin’ from a man thinks Kraftwerk is the best band of the century. Lemme tell you, shit he listens to sounds like a toolbox in a clothes dryer.”
The waitress reappeared. Carmen ordered a waffle, while Alex and Mack both got the pancake plate. When the waitress left again, Carmen said, “So, are you two about done? Are we going to talk business here?”
“Impatient, isn’t she? But okay. The lady calls the tune.” Mack picked up the cardboard accordion file and undid the elastic closure. He pulled out a handful of papers. “So I ran down the names and the addresses you gave me, Alex—for starters, the place you called the factory, otherwise known as Consolidated Aggregates. A very legitimate business producing actual gravel and decorative stone. Belongs to a private trust called Monesco Holdings. They don’t give out much information, but I did find a tangental connection to a man named Gabriel Garcia.” Mack held up a picture. “Look familiar?”
Carmen stared at the photo. She inhaled sharply. A wave of panic knotted her stomach. Her hand unconsciously found the line of stitches on her neck. “I met him,” she whispered.
“That’s the vamp we whacked the other day,” said Alex. “His real name is Rafael.”
Mack nodded. “Thought so. Now, Monesco, interestingly enough, was incorporated more than a hundred years ago. It has its thumb in about every industry in the state. They have quarries, gravel plants, cement factories, farms, shipping firms, waste-management companies, you name it. Very large. Lots of money. Very private. And, coincidentally, they own lots of businesses that could make a body disappear.”
With a gambler’s flourish, he fanned out a stack of documents. “It’d take me hours to walk you through where all this money goes, and I know poor Alex doesn’t have that kind of attention span. So I’ll give you the abridged version. They have their income hidden well. Unusually well. In fact, the money trail goes cold right here.” He pointed to a letterhead that read, “Law Offices of Manuel Sandoval.”
“This guy, Manuel Sandoval,” Mack continued, “oversees all the money that comes in. He administers the trust and makes all cash disbursements. Privately. He pays all the taxes and handles the company’s PR. And get this. At one time, the law office was called ‘Law Offices of Sandoval and Sons.’”
“So?” said Carmen.
“So that was in the 1850s”
“So Manuel is, what, the great-grandson?” asked Carmen.
“Great-great-grandson. Apparently he has kids, but none went into the family business. This one firm has been administering the interests of Monesco Holdings for almost two centuries.”
“This Sandoval cat…” said Alex. “Think he could he be a vamp? Could he actually be the original Sandoval, just switching out identities every generation? We’ve seen that sort of thing before.”
Mack scratched his chin. “It’s possible. If he was, it’d be a damned good trick. All the wives, kids, grandkids, they’re all there in the official records. Not that it’s impossible. I’ve seen setups almost as good.”
“Only one way to know for sure,” said Alex.
“Exactly. And that’s where you come in, my shit-kicking throwback friend.”
“Yep, you hide out in that RV and play on your computer,” Alex said, “and I’ll go out and risk my ass again.”
“Damn right,” said Mack. He grinned to reveal coffee-stained teeth. “Hitting is for crazy assholes like you.” He turned to Carmen. “Sure you want to hang out with this loser? You don’t look like a hitter to me. Maybe you’d rather come keep me company in the RV.”
Carmen gave him a puzzled look. “Hitter?”
“Jesus, Alex, are you teaching this girl anything? Hitter. One who hits. In the hunter community, there are…specializations of labor. Me, for example, I’m a researcher. I’m no good at the messy stuff. I do forensics, research, analysis, computer junk. Science junk. We also have facilitators, people who supply guns and cars and IDs and so forth…anyway, Alex is a hitter. That’s the kind of hunter who actually goes out in the field. Kicks down doors and lops off h—”
The waitress arrived with three plates. Mack shuffled his paperwork together and slid it back into the folder as the waitress set down their food. Mack asked for a bottle of Tabasco, and the waitress returned with it a minute later. He poured it on his pancakes. Carmen made a face.
“So where were we?” said Mack. He shoveled a heap of red-hot pancakes into his mouth.
“I think you were mentioning how I’m a dumb hick that does all the dirty work and takes all the risks, while you talk big and sit in your camper, whacking off to Internet porn.”
Mack grinned and turned to Carmen. “Right. Exactly. And while I’m pleasuring myself to videos of Japanese teenagers, Alex is out kicking vampire ass. He finds information. Phone numbers, hard drives, documents, names. Then he gives them to me. I process said information, and I give him more information in return. Other names, other addresses. He takes that information and goes and kills vampires. The circle of life is complete.” He turned to face Alex. “Speaking of which, what else have you got for me?”
“In the bag,” said Alex. He used his boot to nudge a satchel under the table toward Mack. “Couple laptops. Couple phones. Little somethin’ to cover operating expenses.”
Mack grinned again, revealing those coffee-stained teeth. “Alex, you’re a prince. A redneck, shit-heeled prince.”
“And you’re a creepy, dirty old man with questionable personal hygiene.”
His fork still in hand, Mack laughed and gave a regal nod. “You know me well.”
“Oh, yeah, one other thing,” said Alex. He pulled two small ziplock bags from his pocket. “We found this shit on the bottom of a vamp’s shoe,” he handed over the tiny baggie full of gunk, “along with this bit of label. If you could figure out where either of ’em came from, we’d be much obliged.”
Mack examined the gunk and the label, then tucked the baggies into the satchel. “Not much to work with there. But I’ll send it along to a botanist friend of mine, and we’ll see what we can find out.” He shoveled some more food into his mouth. “So did you hear about that motel room that exploded last night? All over the news.”
“Naw, hadn’t heard about that,” Alex said through a mouthful of pancakes. “Crazy ol’ world.”
The conversation died out for several minutes. The only sound was the ambient clatter of the diner, and Buddy Holly crooning from the cheap speakers. The three ate their meals in silence, washing it down with coffee and orange juice.
***
Across the street, in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven, Jacob sat in the cab of his truck, a pair of binoculars trained on the restaurant. When his phone rang, he answered without putting down the binoculars.
“Yes, señor,” he said, “the hunter and the girl are meeting with an associate. It seems to be another professional. I’ve been asking around. The man’s name is Alex Rains. He’s apparently an up-and-comer in the hunter world. Rumor has it he’s the one who took down Alejandro last year. The woman? No, I don’t know where she fits in. Nobody seems to know about her. Look, Don Carlos, I can take care of this right now. Three bullets and…” He sighed and put the phone back to his ear. “I understand that. It’s just a risk. We could end this now and not have to worry…Yes. Of course. By yourself. I understand. I’ll keep track of them. And what about the associate?” Hearing the response, the man broke into a smile for the first time. “Yes, Don Carlos. I can do that.”
***
The trio walked to the parking lot together. At the door of the RV, Alex and Mack shook hands and hugged. “Take care of yourself now, all right?” Mack said.
“Back atcha, man. You keep diggin’, and I’ll keep kickin’ ass. Lemme know what you find.”
“Will do, man. Will do.” Mack turned to Carmen and started toward a hug then stopped awkwardly when she didn’t respond. He held out a hand, which he accepted. “It was a pleasure meeting you,”
Mack said.
Carmen nodded. “Likewise.”
The RV went one way; Alex’s SUV went the other. In the cab of the truck across the street, Jacob watched the screen of his tablet computer as two dots diverged on a map.
***
By that afternoon, Carmen and Alex were parked in the largely empty, shaded parking lot of a mortgage brokerage in Alamagordo, across the street from Sandoval’s law firm. It was a modern, nondescript office, in a modern, nondescript office park. Pleasantly green but minimal landscaping formed a border between the sidewalk and the tinted windows of the law office. Occasionally a professionally dressed man or woman entered or left, driving away or arriving in a luxury car.
Alex put down his binoculars and picked up a manila folder on the seat between him and Carmen. He opened it and looked at the photograph that was held there with a paper clip. It showed a man, probably in his sixties, wearing a navy business suit. He was hale, bald and unashamed of it, his expression one of aloof self-assurance.
“It seems like you mostly sit outside buildings and watch people through binoculars,” said Carmen.
“That’s right.” Alex raised the binoculars again. He held a milkshake in a paper cup between his legs. The engine hummed smoothly, and cool air poured from the air conditioner vents. “Usually more so. This is a rush job, on account of your sister. Most times, I’d a stake out a place for longer. Less surprises that way.” He picked up the milkshake, adjusted the straw, and slurped the last dregs of chocolate out of the cup.
“We’ve been waiting here for hours. We should be doing something.”
“Well I wanted to go to the Pistachio Museum, but you said—”
“I don’t mean the damned Pistachio Museum!” Carmen slammed her hand against the dashboard.
“Well, what then? You got a better idea?”
“I don’t know. We should go in there. Tie people up and beat answers out of them. Something.”
“You’re actin’ like he’s got your sister in his desk drawer or somethin’.”
