He was trapped in his own clothing. It was like being smothered by a collapsed tent. He beat his wings furiously-yes! yes! I’ve got wings! — expressing a small mammal’s instinctive horror of confinement.
“These pants are empty, Chuck!”
“I can’t believe it! I simply can’t believe it!”
“Hey! There’s something crawling around inside the shirt-”
Flapping blindly, Jules managed to poke his snout through the waist of his shirt. His weak eyes were dazzled by the strobing glare of the flashlights. But he saw an avenue of escape-the Caddy’s door was wide open, and between the patrolmen’s shocked faces and the car’s ceiling were several feet of clear airspace. Jules spread his wings wide, tensed his tiny leg muscles, and sprang off the seat.
He fell in a flapping tangle onto the Caddy’s transmission hump, landing on his ears and rolling heavily across the floor and onto the damp grass outside. Dazed and bruised, he scrambled to avoid the patrolmen’s dancing feet, dragging his rotund body across the grass with clawed wings.
“Holy Jesus! It’s some kinda bat!”
“Bat, hell! It’s a nutria with wings!”
How had everything gone so wrong? He had to get away-one solid kick could put him in Charity Hospital for months. Frantically beating his wings against the ground, he scurried in a zigzag toward the trees that shaded the tot lot, barely avoiding a fusillade of blows from steel-toed boots and nightsticks. He reached the gnarled roots of one of the live oaks and dug his claws into the tough bark, pulling himself up the trunk as fast as his wings would take him. His tiny heart beat like a trip-hammer.What a time for a heart attack! It’d be just my shitty luck!
“It’s crawling up the tree! You want we should go after it?”
“Naw. Don’t bother. Just let the goddamn thing go. I’m beginning to think this was some kind of gag.”
Jules reached a thick branch about ten feet above the ground and was finally able to rest. He felt nauseated and dizzy. He flopped forward into a hollow in the branch, his flaccid wings drooping over the sides. But his keen ears continued eavesdropping on the conversation below.
“A gag?” the first patrolman said. He was dressed in a gray uniform and wore a gray cap that saidCAJUNCOP NEIGHBORHOOD SECURITY. “What do you mean, a gag?”
“You know-a prank. I’ll bet it’s those damn SAMMYs from Tulane. Those frat brats are always up to no good.”
“What, you mean the fat guy was some kind of balloon or something?”
“Could be. I’ve heard of crazier stuff.”
“So who’s that guy with the bloody neck who’s sleeping in the backseat? He don’t look like no frat boy.”
“Maybe he’s an alumnus. Who knows? I say we call the real cops and let them sort it out.”
The first patrolman grunted. “Okay, Chuck. You radio it in. I’ll keep an eye on things here. And if that damn bat-thing comes down out of the tree, I’ll kick the shit out of it. Maybe it’s the frat mascot, huh?”
Jules could do nothing but gather his feeble strength and wait for them to go away. The wait was interminable. His painfully sensitive ears were assaulted by the incessant buzzing of thousands of insects, which gave him a pounding headache. Chuck took the security car, a puke-green Chevy Cavalier, and returned half an hour later with two cups of coffee. The aroma of stale gas station java made Jules’s headache even worse. Then an NOPD squad car showed up. The cops managed to revive Jules’s passenger, who mumbled a few incoherent phrases about rude cabbies and nasty smells before being gently led away to the squad car. One officer gathered the empty clothes from the backseat and removed Jules’s wallet from a pant pocket. He also took the Taxi Bureau certificate from its holder on the dashboard.
The bitter coup de grвce came with the arrival of a city tow truck. Jules watched helplessly as his beloved Cadillac was dragged off to the NOPD impoundment lot.
An angry squeak grabbed Jules’s attention away from his captive Caddy. A rat, large but barely half Jules’s size, glared at him from where the branch met the trunk. Apparently Jules was occupying its nest. In no mood to take shit from anyone anymore, Jules hissed vociferously at the rodent, until it finally realized it was outmatched and ran away.
With a stolenDON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP! flag draped around his ample midsection (he’d pulled it down from a flagpost at the New Orleans Yacht Club), an exhausted, human-shaped Jules dragged himself through the front door of Russell’s Marina Grill. A well-coifed young man intercepted him before he could cross the foyer.
“Sir! I’m very sorry, sir. We can’t serve you inside unless you’re wearing shoes and a shirt. Would you like to place a take-out order and wait for it on our patio?”
Jules considered asking the greeter ifhe’d like to place an order for a knuckle sandwich, express delivery, but he stopped himself. Instead, he took a deep breath and rearranged the flag around his middle. “Look. I’m not here to eat. I’m a cabby, and I just been robbed. That’s why I’m wearing this flag instead of a fuckin‘ Brooks Brothers suit, okay? If you’ll be so kind as to spot me thirty-five cents so I can make a call, I’ll gladly herd my fares to your fine establishment here for the next year. Deal?”
The young man considered this for a second or two, then dug into his pocket and handed Jules a quarter and a dime. “The pay phone’s by the men’s room in the back.”
“Thanks.”
Jules avoided meeting the stares of the paying customers as he made his way to the phone. He clutched the two ends of the flag with his right hand as he lifted the receiver and hugged it awkwardly between his shoulder and chin. One phone call-he had to make it count. He dialed Erato’s cell phone number. He was tremendously relieved when his friend’s familiar baritone voice answered.
“Yeah? Hello? Who is this?”
“It’s Jules. I’m at Russell’s by the lakefront. I’ve gotta ask you to come pick me up.”
“Jules? Whassa matter? Your Caddy break down?”
“Caddy got stolen. Everything’s gone. Damn robber even took my clothes. I’m standing here talking to you wearing a goddamn flag, if you can picture it.”
“Aflag? I’ll be right over. This I gotta see.”
Once outside, Jules didn’t have to wait long before a familiar tricolor Town Car rounded the corner and pulled into an empty handicapped parking space. Erato put his window down and leaned out, his wandering lazy eye eagerly taking in the spectacle.
“Hey! Who’s your tailor, my man? I gotta getme a outfit like that!”
“Fuck you, Erato. Thanks for coming so quick.”
“You was lucky. I was droppin‘ a fare only five minutes from here when I got your call. Get your ass in the car, already.”
Jules clambered in. He reluctantly admitted to himself that the Lincoln had a nice, spacious rear seat. “Take me straight home,” he said in an exhausted, defeated voice. “You know the way.”
Erato backed out and headed for West End Boulevard. “What? Don’t you want me to take you by the police station first? You’ve gotta report what happened, man. Give them cops a chance to catch those motherfuckers.”
“No. Straight home. I seen enough of cops tonight to last me a lifetime.”
They took the interstate until they reached Esplanade Avenue. They drove along the grand, crumbling old Creole boulevard, following the edge of the French Quarter until they reached Elysian Fields. Jules’s depressed musings were interrupted by a sudden exclamation from Erato. “Hey!” His friend dug through a pile of cassettes in an open shoe box on his front seat. “I got somethin‘ here that’ll cheer you right up. This tape’s by a new blues guy named Mem Shannon. He’s a cabby, just like us. It’s calledA Cab Driver’s Blues. Is that perfect, or what? Take it. It’ll do your sufferin’ soul some good, believe me.”
Jules examined the cassette. Its cover pictured a handsome, somewhat heavyset young black man, dressed in a cabby’s uniform, leaning against a dark gold taxi. “Aww, Erato, I can’t take this offa your hands. It’s
brand new. Musta cost you fifteen bucks or so.” He tried handing it back.
Erato wouldn’t take it. “No, you keep it, man. Right now, you need it lots more than I do. I’ll just pick myself up another copy.”
A few minutes later they turned onto Montegut Street. The street, with its weed-strewn lots and graffiti-covered, termite-eaten shotgun houses, looked even more desolate than usual. On a normal night Jules would feel happy and secure driving through his old, familiar neighborhood. But tonight he felt scared, vulnerable, and alone.
They pulled up the narrow concrete driveway in front of Jules’s garage. Erato put his transmission in park and leaned back over his seat. His face was creased with concern. “You gonna be okay? You want me to come in for a few minutes?”
Jules mustered a smile. “Naww. I’ll be fine. Thanks, Erato. Thanks for everything.” He patted his friend on the shoulder, then opened the door to get out.
“Well, you need anything, you just call me on my cell phone, okay? Day or night. Hey! How are you set for cash? The Caddy insured? I could, y’know, ask some of the guys down at the Trolley Stop to pitch in. We could get some kinda benefit going. Maybe Mem Shannon would play!”
Jules carefully, respectfully shut the Town Car’s rear door. “Don’t you worry about me none. I’m flush. Me, I always land on my feet. I’ll be in touch, pal.” He remembered Maureen’s final words from two nights earlier. “Hey, you watch your ass, okay? Don’t let no shitheads takeyour cab. ‘Cause I won’t be able to come rescue you, least not for a while.”
Erato smiled. “Sho ‘nuf! God bless, Jules. You be good, you hear? And let me know what you think of that tape.”
Jules stood and waved as Erato backed out of his driveway. He walked to the curb and watched the massive Lincoln disappear down Montegut Street. Only when the cab was out of sight did he open his front door, still not repaired from Malice X’s invasion, and go inside.
His living room was hot, musty, and silent. He turned on a lamp. Its weak bulb cast long, ominous shadows over the room. As if on cue, his stomach emitted a tremulous moan. He stumbled to the couch and collapsed.
What to do now? He stared at his alabaster belly, which rose from the couch like a mountain of refined flour. Its lower extremities pulsed and jiggled as his gut sent out distress signals. Maybe the solution to his weight problem was to crawl into his coffin and stay there until he either wasted away to nothing or his gut, in desperation, devoured the rest of him.
His eyes fell upon his mother’s portrait on the mantelpiece. He tried looking away, but her stern, Victorian gaze held him fast.Son, I didn’t carry you in my belly for nine months, nourish you from my breast for another thirty-six, and watch over you until the day I died so that you could be a quitter.
For the second time in as many nights, Jules felt himself blush from head to toe. He forced himself to sit up. Then he picked up the nautical flag from where he’d dropped it on the floor. He read the embroidered inscription again.DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP!
Jules climbed the stairs to his bedroom, pulled on a pair of briefs, and selected his best trousers, shirt, and jacket from his closet. Then he tied a bright yellow-and-green polka-dot necktie around his collar. He was many things, a lot of them no good. But he was no quitter.
Out on Montegut Street, he began singing French-Irish drinking songs in a slurred tenor. He affected an inebriated, stumbling gait; given his many infirmities, this wasn’t hard at all. After a few minutes of weaving along the middle of the empty street, he detected hurried footsteps coming toward him from a side alleyway. He stopped singing.
An unpleasant voice broke the stillness. “Hey, Slick! Shoney’s Big Boy! Wait up! I got to talk wit‘ you!”
Ah, music to his ears. He turned and zigzagged unsteadily toward the dark alley. The black man approaching him carried a switchblade in one hand, and what looked to be a bag of fried pork rinds in the other. He was shirtless, his ebony skin glistening with sweat. Multiple rolls of fat hung over his faded jeans. Jules’s saliva glands went into overdrive.
Come to Papa,Jules thought.Fuck the goddamn diet. And while I’m at it, fuck Malice X, too.
Laissez les bons temps rouler!
Let the good times roll!
At last, the night was kind to him. But for Jules Duchon, the good times would not roll for long.
FIVE
The Third District police station on Moss Avenue didn’t look like a government building at all. From the outside, the spacious complex, with its horse stables and neatly parked rows of large white sedans, looked like an upscale jockey club. Several horses whinnied nervously from inside the dark stables as Jules crunched across the gravel parking lot.
He rubbed his aching posterior as he ruefully remembered his public bus ride from his neighborhood to the station, along Esplanade Avenue. He hadn’t been on a public bus in more than thirty years, and this ride had reminded him why; aside from being way too cramped for a person of his magnitude, the stale air inside had smelled of rancid chicken grease and the bodily odors of dozens of people who’d been standing in ninety-degree heat waiting all day for buses.Erato’s cab would’ve been waymore comfortable,Jules thought as he approached the front entrance.But some things you just can’t drag your buddies into. And stealing my stuff back from the New Orleans Police Department is definitely one of those things.
Jules wondered what his mother would think of him now-her only son, sneaking into a police station to commit a felony. Sure, he’d killed plenty of folks, but he never thought of that as acrime — that had been eating. Even his mother had accepted this; or she’d seemed to, anyway. It had been one of those things they’d never gotten around to talking about. During his early years as a vampire, whenever Jules had tried to relate to her the guilt his feedings were causing him, she would quickly turn on the radio, and instead of talking they’d listen to the New York Philharmonic orFibber McGee and Molly.
Inside, the station looked like most other city government buildings, except maybe a little cleaner. There were the downscale bureaucratic accents Jules remembered well from his nearly thirty years in the coroner’s office-faded, ugly wallpaper; framed photos of the mayor; and fluorescent lights that hummed annoyingly and made everyone look ghoulish (not just Jules, who looked that way in any kind of light).
Jules approached the front desk and coughed. The phlegmy sound made the petite desk clerk look up from the New Orleans Fairgrounds racing form she was studying. Jules was surprised; not that a city employee would be studying a racing form during work hours, but horse-racing season had been over since the spring. He watched her eyes widen for an instant as she took him in. But only an instant; her expression quickly reverted to studied boredom. “Yes? Can I help you?”
“Yeah. I got a call from somebody in your, oh, what’s it called, uh-y’know, where the cops store the stuff they grab from criminals?”
“Evidence and Recovered Items?”
“Yeah. That’s it. They asked me to come in and pick up some stuff of mine that got stolen.”
“Okay. You’ll need to sign in on this list here. And you’ll need to wear this visitor’s badge. Also, you’re gonna need to show some ID before Marvis will release your stuff to you.”
“Yeah, but what if what I’m here to pick up happens tobe my ID? Those thieves left me naked as the day I came into the world. I got a friend who’ll vouch for me. His cell phone number’s here in my pocket.”
The clerk looked infinitely disinterested. “Whatever. Work it out with Marvis.” She slid a clipboard across the desk.
Jules signed his illegible scrawl at the top of the paper, trying to ignore the coffee-induced rumblings in the pit of his stomach. He clipped the bright pink badge to his shirt pocket. “Thanks. So where do I need to go?”
“Down that hallway there. Fifth door on your left. Just past the ladies’ room.” Before Jules could even manage to maneuver himself through the gateway by her desk, the clerk had returned to studying her racing form.
Jules followed her directions, hoping he wouldn’t accidentally walk into the ladies’ room. The room he entered, markedEVIDENCE, was much larger than he’d expected. The air inside smelled of dust, machine oil, sweat-stained leather, and dried herbs. Except for a desk and a narrow walkway by the door, nearly all of the space was taken up by row after row of metal utility shelves. The floor and shelves were packed with bicycles, chrome-plated pistols, purses of all shapes and colors, cemetery statuary, wrought-iron gateposts, sawed-off shotguns, car stereos, television sets, computers, Mac-10 machine pistols, a grenade launcher, and the cleanly severed marble head of Jefferson Davis. It looked like an unlikely hybrid of a Royal Street antiques boutique and a St. Claude Avenue pawnshop.
Jules loudly cleared his throat and waited for the officer in charge to appear. A minute later he heard a loud rustling from the back of the room, and Sergeant Marvis Mancuso, a short, stocky, balding man who looked to be on the cusp of retirement, carefully picked his way through the tangle. “ ‘Evening! What can I do for you?”
Jules was disappointed. He’d halfway been hoping that Mancuso would be familiar to him, one of the cops who used to drop bodies off at the morgue. It would’ve made things easier. But he’d never seen Mancuso before. Now he’d have to rely entirely on his wits and on his long-untried powers of vampiric hypnosis. The thought made Jules’s stomach turn over like the contents of a cement mixer.
Jules leaned across the desk, putting his face as close to Mancuso’s as possible. “Me? I’m here to pick up my things. Wallet, shoes, shirt, belt, pants. The works.”
The officer stepped back from the desk to avoid Jules’s coffee breath. “Do you have your Form 108-B?”
“Form 108-B?”
“You would’ve received it in the mail. It lists what we recovered of yours. I’ll need to see that and a photo ID, please.”
How could he bullshit his way through this? Jules tried desperately to think, but his mind was blank as tapioca. This was the moment he’d been dreading all night. It was now or never. He took a deep breath, then stared piercingly into Mancuso’s watery gray eyes.
Fat White Vampire Blues Page 8
