With renewed determination fueled in part by Doc Landrieu’s miracle tablets, Jules walked purposefully in the direction of Royal Tobacco and News, downtown’s most discreet late-night source of newspapers, cigars, and pornography. The walk from Maureen’s stoop to the newsstand was only four and a half blocks, but the streets were shadowed and desolate, mostly comprising warehouses and parking garages unused at night. Ordinarily, Jules wouldn’t have given such surroundings a second thought; or, if he did, he’d be feeling happy twinges of anticipation as he searched for an isolated derelict to drain dry. But tonight, these abandoned blocks felt vaguely menacing. He couldn’t walk more than three steps without glancing back over his shoulder.
Jules sighed with relief when he reached the one hundred block of Royal Street. This stretch of Royal, just off Canal Street, bustled with people. Sure, the people who hung out there tended to have lengthy police records and suffer from unusual venereal diseases, but Jules wasn’t in any mood to be picky about company.
As he walked past the Funland Amusements Arcade, whose window was plastered with anti-loitering signs in seven different languages, a mustachioed black man wearing a fringed buckskin jacket stepped out of the entranceway and blocked the sidewalk.
“Hey, man, you need a prepaid calling card?”
“No,” Jules answered.
“Turkish cigarettes?”
“No.”
“Diet pills? I bought up a good stash of Flabovate just before the FDA banned it, man.”
Jules frowned. “You need a fat lip to go with that big fat hat of yours?”
“Uh, no.” The man faded back into the shadows. Just beyond the arcade’s blinking lights, Jules paused to glance back, wanting to see what rap the huckster would lay on the next sucker to walk by. But the huckster was gone.
Royal Tobacco and News was a narrow, cluttered storefront with a pull-down corrugated metal shutter for a front wall, hardly bigger than a kiosk. It sat next to a bedraggled aid station for foreign sailors; the plastic-wrapped magazines in the back of the newsstand had supplied far more assistance to sailors than any employee of the aid station ever could. Apart from an ever-varying parade of newspapers and magazines, the newsstand had hardly changed in the last fifty years, which was one reason why Jules loved it. Even with its open front, the place smelled like an all-night poker game. It was a home away from home.
The newsstand’s owner and only employee sat in a battered office chair behind a wood-paneled counter, smoking a cigar and reading an issue ofAlfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. The small man’s outstanding feature was his nose, which, scarred by a profusion of ulcers and melanomas, bore a startling resemblance to a topographic map of Peru.
“Hey, Philip, how’s it goin‘?” The white-haired owner looked up from his magazine. “Oh, hey, Jules! I was just thinkin’ about you earlier this week.” His badly chapped lips formed a puzzled frown. “Although I’ll be damned to hell if I can remember why.“
“Don’t rack your brain too hard. Say, you got anyTimes-Picayune‘s left?” The salesman cocked a wry eyebrow. “You upgradin’ your class of readin‘ material? Yeah, I got a few left. They’re out in front.“
“How about yesterday’s edition?”
“I might have some stacked out back by the Dumpster. Why?”
“I’m lookin‘ for one story in particular, and I’m not sure what day it got written up. You mind diggin’ me out one of them papers from yesterday?“ Philip scowled. ”Goddamn customers with their goddamn special orders…“ Two minutes later, Jules was busily unsticking damp pages of newsprint from one another. He found the story he was looking for in the local section of a fragrant newspaper from the Dumpster. He smoothed down the page on Philip’s worn wooden counter and began to read.
Knight Supporters Hope to Spark Run with Rally by Vicki Hyman, St. Tammany Bureau
Supporters of white supremacy advocate and perennial political candidate Nathan Knight plan to rally in Covington in the hope of luring their preferred candidate into the race to fill two open St. Tammany Parish Council slots. Knight, who in the last decade has mounted unsuccessful campaigns for the U.S. presidency, a U.S. Senate seat, the Louisiana governorship, and the position of Louisiana commissioner of agriculture, has in recent years limited his public activities to appearances on his weekly radio show, promoting his Web site, and conducting occasional real estate seminars. He currently resides in Covington. The organizer of the rally, who declined to be named, stated, “The St. Tammany Parish Council has suffered for years from a leadership vacuum. They need Knight. Only a leader of the caliber of Nathan Knight has a prayer of maintaining the high quality of life that sets St. Tammany apart and makes it a haven for decent, Christian families.” The rally will take place at the American Veterans Union Hall in downtown Covington and is scheduled for 9:00P.M. on Wednesday. Organizers expect a crowd of at least 200 supporters and have extended an invitation for Knight to attend. Knight’s plans regarding participation in the rally could not be verified.
Jules’s mind raced.Two hundred white supremacists? All gathered together like presents under a Christmas tree! It could work… sure it could work! Sure! Who could be better for me to recruit than nutcases who already hate black folks?
He smiled at the obvious brilliance of his brainstorm. An army of two hundred white supremacist vampires would make Malice X shit his skintight leather pants; Jules would be in a position to demand any sort of deal he wanted. Nobody would ever dare fuck with him again. And Maureen would have to be impressed. Diet or no diet, she’d justhave to be bowled over by his victory, eager to take him back as her coffin-mate again.
Now that Action Plan Step One had been dispensed with, Jules remembered Action Plan Step Two. “Hey, Philip, any good nudie stuff come in recently?”
“Ah-ha!” the salesman exclaimed. “That’swhat I was tryin‘ to remember! Funny you should ask about nudie books. I got somethin’ really special fer you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Hang on a sec. I gotta dig it out from under the counter.” He disappeared beneath the counter for a few seconds, then reappeared with a folded-over brown paper bag. “This is the last one I got. Maybe the last one in the whole city. I swear, I never had a book fly off the shelves like this one. Y’know, withBig Cheeks Pictorial, I usually order four, maybe five copies a month. It’s a pretty regular seller, but it’s noHustler. But this sucker I’ve had to reorder twice, and last week my distributor said the whole run’s gone. I knew you’d love it, so I pulled the last one and stuck it under the counter, figurin‘ you’d be in sooner or later.”
Jules opened the bag and took out the magazine. The enormously voluptuous blond woman on the cover lay on a leopard skin draped over a red leather couch. But the kitschy props surrounding her faded from Jules’s attention like mist, leaving only a vision of luminosity. Her ivory white skin was flawless, glowing with an inner light. Her tremendous, gravity-defying breasts seemed shaped by a master craftsman, perfectly symmetrical, her nipples shining like pink jewels. Beneath them, three gorgeous tummy rolls descended like a stairway to paradise.
It was the same woman Jules had seen two weeks earlier in the Trolley Stop Cafй. The woman who had enjoyed her whipped-cream-covered pancakes so provocatively.
“Y’know, usually fat women don’t do nuthin‘ fer me,” Philip continued, “but I gotta admit, I took one look at this one, and my fuckin’ trousers were like a Boy Scout tent fer an hour.”
Jules dug eight dollar bills out of his wallet and slapped them down on the counter. “Philip, you’re good as gold.”
“Yeah. Well, you enjoy it, my friend. That soggy newspaper you can have fer free. See you next month.”
“Sure thing, pal. Take care.”
Jules could hardly wait to get back to Maureen’s house. Not only because of his new magazine, either-all those cups of coffee he’d downed at Doc Landrieu’s had him needing to piss like a racehorse. Why ohwhy hadn’t he used the bathroom before he left?
He still had that nagging sense of being watched. To be safe, he really should stick to the busiest, most populated streets. This would mean a zigzag course back to Maureen’s house, maybe eight or nine blocks.
But Jules wasn’t sure he could last that long. He didn’t want to have to spend $4.50 in some dive bar on a beer he couldn’t even drink just for the privilege of using the bathroom. The direct route to Maureen’s was only four and a half blocks. Those four blocks were some of the most desolate in the Quarter. On the upside, if he just couldn’t hold it anymore, he could pee in an alleyway without worrying that some cop would drag him down to the station for indecent exposure.
His bladder didn’t let him debate too long. The direct route it was. Holding himself with one hand, his newspaper and precious magazine with the other, Jules headed west on Iberville Street as fast as his legs would carry him. Trying to distract himself from his most immediate problem, he thought about the woman on the cover ofBig Cheeks Pictorial. What had she been doing in New Orleans a couple of weeks before? Maybe she lived here? What a weird coincidence, his seeing her in the Trolley Stop and then buying a copy of her whack-off mag barely two weeks later. Her and that stack of flapjacks… nowthere was a woman who knew how to enjoy a meal. What an incredible sight that had been, a woman of her size and classy grooming eating massive quantities of fattening food with such sensual gusto-in public, yet! Man, if only Maureen could learn to be so relaxed about her size… what a refreshing changethat would be…
Something in the window of a parking garage attendant’s booth caught Jules’s eye. A flyer was taped to the inside of the window, with a picture of a woman on it. The caption beneath the image read,I’M MISSING-HAVE YOU SEEN ME? followed by a phone number to call. The photocopied snapshot was blurry, dark, and indistinct, but Jules was almost positive it was a photo of one of his most recent victims. Bessie. Hummingbird Bessie.
Naww, that can’t be right,he told himself.She was just some homeless lady. Nobody cared whether she lived or died. Nobody’s lookin‘ for Bessie. It must be somebody else.
But the thought that it might actually be Bessie on the leaflet wouldn’t go away. The suspicion haunted him like a pesky mosquito, fluttering against his nose and ears no matter how fiercely he tried swatting it away. The tiny hairs on the back of his neck stood stiffly. He had the queasy, prickly sensation of being followed. He passed other windows and telephone poles that had similar flyers taped or stapled to them, but he didn’t stop to look at any of these. Jules walked as fast as his chafing thighs would allow.
Three black men emerged from the shadows of an alleyway. One was dressed in a flashy sharkskin suit, with gold cuff links the size of golf balls. The second guy Jules recognized as the buckskin-jacketed huckster from the amusement arcade. The lead man, a couple of inches taller than Jules, wore a black cowboy hat with a silver medallion, snakeskin boots, black leather pants, and a Los Angeles Raiders starter jacket inlaid with gold thread.
What the hell is this?Jules thought as the three blocked his path.That dumb-ass cowboy huckster couldn’t sell me any shit on his own, so now he’s hunted up a couple of buddies to help part me from my hard-earned cash? This some kinda Texas-based pyramid scheme for black guys?
“Look,” Jules said, “I don’t want no diet pills, I don’t want no Turkish cigarettes, and I don’t want no prepaid calling card, okay?”
The lead man grinned. “Chump, you ain’t gonnaneed no callin‘ card. Unless you plan on makin’ calls from wherever it is dumb-ass bloodsuckahs go when they dead.”
The other two men smiled broadly, revealing sharp fangs.
Jules’s blood ran cold.“Oh shit-!”He tried dodging into the street, but the two henchmen were way too fast for him. They grabbed his arms and manhandled him into a nearby alleyway, nearly dislocating his shoulders in the process.
They slung him against a dirty brick wall like he was a rug that needed beating. The cowboy in leather pants took his sweet time walking into the alleyway after them. He was clearly enjoying this and wanted to make it last.
“Y’know, you is onestoo-pid white-ass muthahfuckah,” the cowboy said with relish. “Malice, he be happy as a pig in shit when he gets word tonight that you’s back in town. If it ain’t for some deal he got tonight down at City Hall, he be here hisself to do ya. But instead, lucky li’l me… I gets the pleasure.”
Sweat ran down Jules’s sides like rivers of ice water. He struggled against his captors, but they were just too strong. Easily as strong as he’d been as a young vampire, and there were two of them. The cowboy walked to a corner of the alleyway and picked up an empty wooden fruit crate. With hardly more than a quick flick of his wrist, he smashed it against the wall. What remained in his hand was a long, sharp, jagged plank, rusty nails protruding from its splintered length like shark’s teeth.
The cowboy tested the plank’s uneven point with his fingertip. “Heh. Guess it’ll hafta do.”
He stood in front of Jules, blocking what little light spilled into the alleyway. “Don’t know if ya still say yo‘ prayers, chump. If ya do, now’s a good time.”
Jules’s coffee-stretched bladder felt as though it would burst. For the second time in as many weeks, the faces of his friends and loved ones flashed on the big movie screen of his mind. Staring extinction in its ugly mug was getting to be a bad habit.
“Hold him tight now, boys. I miss, it get messy. And you don’t want no stains on them pretty outfits.”
Lord, if only they’d let him piss before they killed him… his damn pants were so tight, they were squeezing the life out of him even without a stake through his heart. If he could loosen them just alittle With a wicked flourish, the cowboy twisted the stake over his head and behind his back like a pair of nunchakus. Then he advanced toward Jules.
Bowel-shriveling panic gave Jules a desperate idea. Clenching his eyes shut, he forced himself to think of the moon, the fat white full moon rising over a muddy levee…
“Boss, somethin’s happenin‘!”
“He’s changin‘! The muthah’s changin’!”
Jules’s bones melted and reformed like hot wax. Sinews twisted themselves into new shapes. His skin sprouted thick gray fur, as though he’d been dipped in Ultra-Rogaine.
“Hold him, you idjits! He still gots a heart! I can still git him!”
His massive belly lost some of its heft as it shifted to a more oblong shape. His previously constricting pants and underwear fell down around his suddenly thin hind legs. Released from its imprisonment, his coffee-engorged organ obeyed the laws of hydrodynamics and burst forth like a fire hose. Right in the cowboy’s leering face.
“Ugglbbuh! Fugghh!”
Stunned, the two henchmen loosened their grip on Jules’s forepaws. Jules fell heavily onto his back, still spouting like a broken hydrant.
“Look out!”
“Thesuit — fuckin‘ suit cost five hunurd-!”
“Awwshit-!”
Jules rolled onto all four paws and ran. Dragging his safari jacket and trench coat, he bounded across the cowboy’s prone body, stepping heavily on the fallen vampire’s chest and treating him to a final squirt or two. Then he was out of the alleyway and into the street. His still-pendulous belly bounced along the ground, smacking asphalt and ancient cobblestones. Greased lightning he wasn’t. But he was moving a hell of a lot faster on four legs than he would’ve on two.
Sure, he was moving faster-but where to run to? He couldn’t head directly back to Maureen’s house. Not only would that give away his hiding place, it would endanger her. He had to lead his pursuers in the wrong direction, then lose them somehow.
Behind him, multiple sets of running footsteps echoed off warehouse walls. Jules shook loose of his safari jacket and trench coat. Brand new. Maureen would kill him. He scampered around the corner, slipping and sliding in a puddle of spilled pineapple daiquiri, and fled toward Canal Street.
Even at this late hour, there were still people out-bums, doomsday preachers,
taxi drivers, and the occasional lost or foolhardy tourist. The scents were overwhelming, almost maddening. A toxic mйlange of sour sweat, bus exhaust, spilled beer, and beer piss assaulted his nostrils. Jules weaved in and out of the forest of legs, poles, and trash cans, trying to put as much distance between him and those pursuing footsteps as possible.
He didn’t go unnoticed.
“A rabid dog!”
“Filthy beast!”
“A sure sign of the End Days-”
“It’sobese!”
Closer. His hunters were drawing closer. No matter how fast he ran, their muttered curses grew nearer and louder, the pungent scent of his own urine on their clothing closer and stronger.
He bounded into Rampart Street without a glance at the stoplight. A late-model Oldsmobile Aurora swerved wildly to avoid him. Its neon running boards left glowing slashes in the night air as the heavy car plunged through the boarded-up display windows of the closed Woolworth’s five-and-dime on the corner.
Did that stop them-?
No. They were too fast. Too agile. Their footsteps still beat the asphalt behind him, closer than ever.
Gulping down yelps of terror, Jules caught the scent of what might be salvation. Could it be-?Yes! The Goodfeller’s Fried Catfish next to the Saenger Theater was still open! Three boys stood near the bus stop, their hands full of heaping platters of fish, the cardboard trays already soaked through with grease.
The black vampires were so close now. Jules leapt at the boys, knocking their platters from their hands. The trays of Goodfeller’s Fried Catfish, the greasiest substance known to man, scattered across the sidewalk behind Jules, coating the walkway with a thick scrim of deep-fry oil and slippery flesh.
“Hey, my food-”
“Watch it! Watch it!”
“Shee-yit-!”
Jules listened with tremendous satisfaction as his pursuers lost their footing, smashed into garbage cans (all emblazoned with the mayor’s smiling face), and tumbled into the gutter. He rounded the corner of the Saenger Theater, headed north on Basin Street for a block, then cut back toward the Quarter and Maureen’s.
Fat White Vampire Blues Page 15
