Fat White Vampire Blues

by Andrew J. Fox

  “Like glass, baby.”

  “Yeah, you’d better be.” She reached over and smoothed the wrinkles from the shoulders of his robe, then brushed a stray thread from his cheek with a surprisingly gentle flick of her fingertips. “Heh. You actually look pretty good in that robe of mine. But I guess we’d better get you some new clothes of your own.”

  Jules allowed himself to smile, even as he fought to ignore the small-scale tropical disturbance in the pit of his stomach. “Yeah, I guess we better, seein‘ as how you just burned up the last set of clothes I had to my name.”

  They drove up Canal Street to Krauss’s. The grand old department store at the corner of Canal and Basin, just outside the French Quarter, was in the final months of its “Going Out of Business” sale. Jules and Maureen had both shopped there often over the years, due to the store’s tradition of late closing times and its well-stocked Big-and-Tall (Men’s) and Youthful Stouts (Women’s) Clothing Departments.

  Jules parked his Lincoln behind the store, within spitting distance of the vaguely menacing apartment blocks of the Lafitte Housing Project. Slamming his creaking door shut, he couldn’t help but notice how much at home his car looked against the backdrop of boarded-up windows and exposed, broken pipes. A gust of wind blew through the parking lot, and Jules pulled his reluctantly borrowed wig lower around his ears to keep it from blowing away. The edges of his muumuu were lifted up around his trunklike thighs so that for a second he looked like a Daliesque Marilyn Monroe standing over the subway grating inThe Seven Year Itch.

  Maureen noticed Jules’s pained expression. “Oh, like I told you, there’s no need to get all embarrassed. This dump’s going out of business any day now, so it’s not like you’ll ever be seeing any of these salesclerks again, anyway.” She grabbed his hand and hustled him toward the rear entrance. “And besides, ‘Julia’ my dear, with you in that getup, there’s much less chance of some unfriendly bat-boy noticing that you’ve come back into town.”

  Jules grabbed back his hand. “Whoa whoawhoa! This is a one-time-only deal! You can’t expect me to trick myself up like some goddamn Bourbon Street transvestite every time I leave your house-”

  “Oh, I wouldn’tdream of demanding that of you, Jules. There’s too much danger that you might take to it and begin raiding my wardrobe. No, we’ll only take these more drastic precautions until I can drill it into that thick skull of yours that you need to call in some help. And youknow who I mean.”

  Jules was about to demand some further explanation of Maureen’s cryptic remark when they were swept into the human maelstrom waiting inside. The department store’s shelves and racks looked like they’d been ransacked by looters. Or maybe locusts. Dozens of shoppers scanned price tags for red slashes and enticing markdowns. Jules stared at the elderly cashiers furiously pecking away at their equally elderly mechanical cash registers, all relics of the Swing Era, and remembered when his mother had brought him to shop and gawk here on Krauss’s opening day, more than a hundred years ago. Looking around him, he was surprised by how little the store had changed. New Orleans had managed to hold on to its musty, familiar, comforting haunts much longer than most other towns, he told himself. Even so, this would soon all be gone: the horseshoe lunch counter on the second floor, next to the Shoe Department; the odd little fourth-floor section that juxtaposed candles, hand-dipped chocolates, and nautical knickknacks; and the clerks who knew their favorite customers better than they knew their own families.

  Maureen gave his arm a powerful yank. “Comeon, Jules! You lollygag much longer and they’ll toss you out with the old mannequins. I’m due at the club in a little over an hour, and so long as I’m your meal ticket, you’d better not make me late for a shift!”

  The Big-and-Tall section was tucked away in a corner of the Men’s Clothing Department on the first floor. Jules noted with relief that its racks were a bit less depleted than racks elsewhere in the store.

  A frazzled-looking salesman, his wrinkled tie drooping at half-mast, approached them. “Can I help you ladies with anything? Shopping for a husky husband or son? We’re runnin‘ great closeout specials on safari suits.”

  Jules cleared his throat. “Actually,” he said, “we’re shoppin‘ forme.”

  The salesman, who’d obviously served a wide range of customers in his years on the floor, barely cocked an eyebrow.

  Jules ended up walking to the cash register with three safari suits (two in mauve, one in lavender-the more popular colors were long gone), two pairs of drawstring pants, a black-and-gold checkered suit coat, a parcel of lime-green and melon-colored Oxford shirts, and a red velvet vest that even Maureen had to admit looked rather stylish on him.

  But his best purchase by far was the wonderful trench coat that the clerk dug out of back stock for him. It was a near-exact copy of the famous garment worn by Humphrey Bogart inCasablanca. Even better, it had the intriguingly exotic pedigree of having been manufactured in the People’s Republic of Poland.

  While they were standing in line, Jules nudged Maureen with an overstuffed shopping bag. “Say, what’d you mean earlier about me needin‘ to call in help?”

  She glanced back at him, her eyes flashing with irritation. “I meant just that. It’s pretty clear. You need help.” She glanced nervously at the mostly black crowd, then pulled Jules out of line to an isolated corner. “Thestaying alive kind of help. You can’t keep wandering around the city by yourself like some big goofy clown looking for the rest of the circus. You need someone who’s good at figuring things out. You’re not exactly a rocket scientist, you know.”

  Jules felt himself redden all over. Maureen, for reasons known only to her impenetrable female mind, had just launched a direct assault on his self-esteem. “What? Are you sayin‘ I’m notsmart enough to solve my own problem? Hey, maybe I wasn’t head of the class in arithmetic, but when it comes to good ol’ common sense, I gotplenty, sweetheart. Look, I got through World War Deuce, didn’t I? The navy wouldn’t have hadhalf as many landing craft on D-Day if it weren’t for me and Doodlebug puttin‘ the bite on them saboteurs-”

  Maureen’s eyes flashed with triumph.“Exactly!”

  “Huh? ‘Exactly’ what?”

  “You just said it yourself. You didn’t fight those saboteurs all by yourself. It was you and Doodlebug.”

  “Well, yeah, sure. But he was my sidekick. He didn’t reallycount. I kept him around for laughs. I mean, his biggest job was when he used to run to the corner while we were on stakeout and get me coffee.”

  “Don’t you fool yourself. I was around back then, too. That ‘kid’ was thereal brains behind the Hooded Terror. You would’ve tripped over your own cape without Doodlebug around. You need him now more than ever.”

  Jules wasn’t smiling. “Yeah? Well, read my lips, Miss Know-It-All.No Doodlebug. No. Doodle. Bug. Ain’t gonna happen.”

  Maureen’s voice softened, and she batted her eyes at Jules in a way that might almost be construed as coquettish. “Oh, I don’t see why you have to be sostubborn. After all, you and Doodlebug were such good partners during the war. And besides, I’m sure the two of you would work together even better now,” she said, playfully running her fingertips along the seam of Jules’s muumuu, “now that you have evenmore in common.”

  “Why, you-!”

  A few minutes later, after Maureen had paid for all of Jules’s purchases with her platinum charge card, a thoroughly chastised Jules fumbled through his newly purchased pockets for his keys and opened the passenger-side door for her. “Look, Mo, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to blow up in front of all them cashier ladies. I really,really appreciate all you’re doin‘ for me.” He waited patiently for her to latch up her seat belt, then carefully closed her door and hurried back to his own side. “Say, you wanna maybe go over to the Trolley Stop for some coffee before your shift? I’d get to show off my new duds, and I could introduce you around to some of the guys.”

  Maureen sighed with exasperation; her long, heavy breath left a c
ircle of vapor on the passenger window. “This is a perfect example of what I was talking about before. You crow about all this ‘common sense’ you supposedly have, and then your first decision is to go straight to the one place where people know to find you. The one place in the whole city Malice X iscertain to have a lookout watching for you. Do I need to spell it out any more clearly?”

  “Nope.” Jules felt himself redden again as he backed out of Krauss’s parking lot onto Basin Street. Much as he hated to admit it, Maureen had a point. He couldn’t just fall back into his old life as if nothing had happened.

  “Just drop me at the club,” she said. “As is, makeup’ll have to be a rush job tonight.”

  Jules crossed the seedy boundary of North Rampart Street and entered the Quarter. On Iberville, two preteen boys savagely kicked a third and peeled off his expensive basketball shoes while a pair of tourists holding half-drained Hurricanes watched.

  “You want my best advice, Jules? You just stay put at my place tonight. Stay put andthink; come up with a plan before you run out somewhere and get yourself killed.”

  Jules was silent until he pulled up to the curb in front of Jezebel’s Joy Room. “Just one question before you go. Where am I sleepin‘ at the end of the night? You got a ’guest coffin‘ or somethin’?”

  Maureen hesitated before replying. “Look, you can sleep with me for a couple of nights-just until you get a new coffin built.”

  Jules smiled.“Really?”

  Maureen, pointedly, did not return the smile. “Now don’t you go reading anything into this! You have exactly two nights to get yourself a new coffin built. In the meantime, as you may remember, my bed is very large-it takes up a full room, in fact-so you and I willnot be sleeping in close quarters. Think the Petries, from the oldDick Van Dyke Show. One foot on the floor, buster.”

  “That’s okay with me, babe. Just as long as I got somewhere to sleep.”

  “Itbetter be okay. Because that’s the way it is.” She gathered her things and opened the door, which scraped loudly on the sidewalk. And then she surprised him by leaning over and awkwardly pecking him on the cheek.

  Jules waved out his window as he drove off in the direction of her Bienville Street home. But instead of putting his car in the garage, he turned onto Canal Street and headed west. Maureen was right about a lot of things. He would need to be at the top of his game to make it through even a week back in New Orleans. That meant getting as healthy as he could. No more aching knees. No more shortness of breath or incipient diabetes (or whatever the hell he was beginning to suffer from).

  There was only one man who could possibly help him. Only one man who both understood Jules and maybe had the medical smarts to figure out a cure for what ailed him. The man who’d signed his paychecks and fed him the blood of the recently deceased for nearly thirty years. Jules wasn’t sure that Dr. Amos Landrieu, onetime city coroner, was still among the living; after all, he’d been near retirement age when he’d been voted out of office twenty-three years ago.

  But so long as the Lincoln didn’t throw a piston on the way, Jules was determined to make this a night of reunions.

  The name on the mailbox in front of the big old Greek Revival-style house on Cleveland Avenue, near the Jewish cemetery, still readAMOS LANDRIEU, M.D. The doctor’s car, an aged but well-maintained Mercedes sedan, was parked in the driveway. Jules saw a light on in an upstairs bedroom.

  He hadn’t spoken with his old boss in more than fifteen years. After Dr. Landrieu’s comeback election campaign sputtered before it could even get off the ground, there hadn’t seemed much point to staying in touch. Jules regretted this now. The events of the past few weeks had taught him that you couldn’t have too many friends.

  The emaciated branches of the spindly trees in the nearby Jewish cemetery rustled with a sudden gust of wind as Jules gathered his courage to ring the doctor’s doorbell. Even after nearly three decades of working side by side, Jules had never been totally sure what his boss had really thought of him. Their interactions had always been short, direct, and work-related; clinical, in both senses of the word. Dr. Landrieu was the only human being in New Orleans who knew what Jules was. He knew about the victims whose blood Jules had drained. In fact, suppressing Jules’s appetite with the blood of the dead had been the main reason the doctor had kept him on as his assistant for so many years. How would the doctor react now, seeing Jules again after so long? Would he call the police? Or toss a basin of holy water in Jules’s face?

  Jules rang the doorbell. Half a minute later he heard footsteps descend the stairs inside the house. A light illuminated the foyer, and a second light flickered into dusty brilliance above Jules’s head. He sensed himself being observed through the peephole set in the middle of the oaken door.

  A moment later the door slowly opened. Dr. Landrieu was in a robe, standing a little more stooped than Jules remembered, the lines and folds shadowing his eyes a bit deeper, his hair whiter and more scarce.

  “Hiya, Doc,” Jules said. “Remember me?”

  “Jules Duchon. How could I forget you?” The doctor’s voice was tired and weak and resigned, the sound of gravel bouncing down a rusted old tin roof. His eyes were very round and very small, like a startled sparrow’s, and a large blue vein that crossed his left eyebrow pulsed strongly. His thin fingers traced the sign of a cross on his chest.

  Jules flinched, but he quickly recovered his composure. “Uh, Doc, can I come in?”

  “Then the game would be all over, wouldn’t it?” Dr. Landrieu said, smiling faintly. “According to the old legends, you can’t enter my home until I invite you in. Isn’t that so? But if I remember correctly, you didn’t play by a lot of those old rules. No, a lack of invitation on my part will not suffice to save me. I always expected, Jules, that when my time on this earth was done, the Angel of Death would wear your face when he came for me. Very well. You may come in. But do we have time for a final cup of coffee before you, eh, do your business?”

  Jules nervously rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Gee, Doc, you’ve got me all wrong. I’m not here to, y’know, fang you or anything. I mean, you’ve never done anything but good by me, so you’re probably the last person on earth I’d ever slake my thirst on. Well, one of the last, anyway.”

  The old physician’s breathing became more regular. “Then what brings you to my door, Jules? It’s not as though you’ve been in the habit of paying me impromptu social calls over the last two decades.”

  “I’ll cut to the chase, Doc. I need your help. All these years of livin‘ the New Orleans lifestyle”-he patted his bulbous stomach for emphasis-“they’ve caught up with me. My knees, my hips-practically every joint in my damn body feels like an exploding firecracker when I put any weight on it. Just crossing a street can make me winded. And to top it off, I think maybe I’m comin’ down with diabetes.”

  Dr. Landrieu’s eyes brightened with sudden interest. “Diabetes? What makes you think that? What sort of symptoms have you been experiencing?”

  “Well, I’m thirsty a lot more often then I used to be. Some nights, I’m thirsty all the time. And sometimes right after I, uh, feed, my heart goes all nutzo and my vision gets blurry. I been readin‘ articles about diabetes inModern Maturity, so I figure I sorta know what I’m talkin’ about.”

  “I see. This is very interesting. Most interesting, indeed.” Dr. Landrieu opened his door wider and gestured for Jules to enter. “Please come in. I’d like to perform some tests. Perhaps I can help you.”

  Jules’s face lit up like a sunrise. “Really? That’s great, Doc! That’s just great! Thanks!” He stepped into the foyer, then followed Dr. Landrieu into the living room, tastefully furnished with Victorian and Edwardian antiques. “Say, is that offer of a pot of coffee still good?”

  “Of course. It’ll just take a moment to prepare. But why don’t you hold off on drinking any until after I’ve extracted some samples from you? We wouldn’t want any caffeine or sugar to skew the results.”

&
nbsp; “Sounds right to me. What do we do first?”

  “Come downstairs with me. I’ve maintained a modest private practice since my,ahem, retirement from public service, and my instruments are down there in my office.”

  Jules clung tightly to the banister as he descended the steep stairs to the doctor’s office, wincing as each of his knees bore his full weight in turn. “Uh, Doc, not that I doubt you or anything, but will instruments that work on, y’know,normal people also work on me?”

  “That’s actually quite a good question, Jules,” Dr. Landrieu replied as he reset the weights on his clinical scale to zero. “But rest assured, the entire time you were working for me, you were somewhat of a hobby of mine. I was probably the only physician in the country with an on-staff vampire available to study. Do you recall the blood samples I took from you over the years?”

  “Sure. Every six months or so, you were stickin‘ me.”

  “And do you remember the reason I gave you for taking all those samples?”

  “Uh, yeah… it was somethin‘ about wanting to see if drinkin’ all that blood from dead people was havin‘ any effect on me over the long haul.”

  “Yes. That’s exactly what I told you.” He gestured for Jules to step onto the scale. “Come. Let’s get a weight on you. I’ll want to compare your present weight with the old charts I kept from thirty years ago.”

  Jules didn’t move. “Uh, Doc, I don’t wanna be a party pooper or nuthin‘, but that’s a real nice scale you’ve got there, and I’ll bet it cost you a bundle-”

  The doctor smiled. “Oh, you really needn’t worry. This being New Orleans, many of my patients are within fifty pounds of your weight. My scale is what you call ‘industrial strength.’ So hop onboard.”

  Jules reluctantly complied, gingerly stepping onto the scale one foot at a time to make sure its springs wouldn’t bust. Once his patient was standing firmly on the scale, Dr. Landrieu began pushing the steel weights steadily to the right. Three hundred, 400, 450 pounds, and still the scale’s nose remained glued in the stratosphere.