Tiny Idaho frowned. “Naww. The ballistics would be all off. Besides, the bullets’d probably shatter before they left the barrel. How about some kinda souped-up crossbow?”
Jules flinched slightly. “Eh, maybe. But don’t call it across bow-and it can’t be shaped like no cross, neither.”
Forty minutes later, Jules left Tiny Idaho’s shop with everything necessary for the remote and precise release of laughing gas. Jules gave him thirty dollars as a down payment. After a lengthy discussion, the gadget man said he’d have a prototype “handheld wooden-projectile launcher” ready for Jules’s inspection by the end of the week.
Jules carefully loaded the equipment in his trunk. He climbed into the Lincoln and started its rumbly engine. Before he yanked the transmission stalk into drive, the scream of a jetliner shook the night. For a brief second the plane was silhouetted against the yellow orb of the moon. Jules’s right hand drifted across to the old metal footlocker resting on the seat beside him.
He opened the footlocker’s lid. Tenderly, he smoothed a decades-old crease out of his cloak, rubbing the rough, dusty cloth between his forefinger and callused thumb. He smiled. In just another few nights jetliners wouldn’t be the only great winged things darkening the moon.
Three and a half hours later Jules piloted his Lincoln through the empty stall spaces outside the French Market and parked behind the Palm Court Jazz Cafй. It was relaxation time. And catching the second set of Theo “Porkchop” Chambonne’s midnight jam session of traditional jazz fit the bill to a T.
Some RR was definitely called for. The trip to Kenner had been unsettling, a frightening vision of the strip-mall horror that had sprung up outside New Orleans. Then there had been the trip across the Causeway… twenty-four nerve-racking miles with nothing but a slender guardrail between him and the black depths of Lake Pontchartrain. That old wives’ tale about vampires and moving water might just be a myth, but even so, the idea of being surrounded by so much water gave him a case of the jitters.
Setting up his equipment inside the American Veterans Union Hall had gone surprisingly easily (once he’d found the place). The building was set a good way back from Highway 190, half hidden in a patch of piney woods, perfect for Jules’s purposes. The thin plywood door had a puny lock, which busted easily in Jules’s huge paw. The meeting hall was nothing more than an oblong room with a low ceiling, a plain podium, and stacks of folding metal chairs leaning against the walls. Jules quickly located a broom closet, which held his canisters of laughing gas very nicely.
But now it was definitely time for some RR. A small group of black men, all dressed in sweat-rumpled suits, stood beneath the music club’s rear overhang, talking and laughing, their faces lit by the orange glows of stubby cigarettes. Musicians, not vampires, Jules told himself; they were all right. He recognized the slight, elderly man at the center of the group, even though it had been months-years, maybe? — since he’d last heard him play in person. That beak-shaped nose, combined with the tufts of fuzzy white hair that peeked from the edges of his brown fedora, was a dead giveaway.
“Chop!” Jules called, waving vigorously. “Hey, Chop! You on break?”
“Yeah. Who’s that?” Porkchop Chambonne turned to stare at the hulking figure approaching him from the street. He tipped back his fedora to get a better look, and his watery eyes widened. “Oh mah Gawd, boys, it’s Mr. Bingle, come to pay us a visit!”
Being mistaken for the Maison Blanche department store’s round-headed Christmas snowman wasn’t exactly flattering; still, Jules was overjoyed to see his old friend. “No, Chop! It’s Jules! Your old pal, Jules Duchon!”
The elderly trumpet player’s willowy forearm vanished between Jules’s huge hands as the vampire vigorously greeted his friend. The other musicians, all much younger than their bandleader, either backed away from the pair or were innocently elbowed into the gutter by Jules’s sidewalk-hogging enthusiasm.
“JulesDuchon? Why ain’t you out drivin‘ your cab?” Chop backed out of Jules’s smothering half embrace and looked him up and down. “What’s with the outfit? You got yo’self a new gig? Doin’ kiddie parties or somethin‘?”
“Naww. I’m just comin‘ back from a costume party. My cab’s in the shop, so I’m on temporary vacation. How the hell’ve you been?”
“Oh, all right, all right. Doin‘ as well as an eighty-year-old trumpet player with fake chompers can hope for, I guess. But me, I ain’t doin’half as well asyou.” He walked slowly around Jules, clucking appreciatively and shaking his head. “I swear, you neverchange, do you? Oh, maybe a little bigger here and there. But not a wrinkle. Not a gray hair on yo‘ head. And you’skept all yo’ hair! When did we first meet? Lessee… I was just a kid startin‘ out on Bourbon Street, no older than Leroy there”-he pointed at the taller of the two school-aged sidemen-“why, that was back during the early days of WW Two-”
Jules smiled and shook his head. “No, Chop, that was mydad, JulesSenior. I’m JulesJunior, remember? We been through this before.”
The jazzman scrunched his mouth into a frown. “Yousure?”
Jules laughed, along with a couple of the sidemen. “Sure I’m sure!” He felt a twinge of guilt, like a rusty nail in his heel, upon deceiving his old friend yet again. But some things just couldn’t be helped.
The old man sighed, then took a long, hard look at the blunt, hand-rolled cigarette held between his fingers. “Yeah, I guess youis sure. Maybe I’m gettin‘ too old to be messin’ round with this stuff anymore.” He held the joint out to Jules. “Want a puff?”
“No, thanks. I just stick to coffee.”
“Yeah, you right. Jus’ like yo‘ pop.” He took a final drag before pinching it out. Then he placed the roach in a silver cigarette box he took from his jacket pocket. “Funny you should mention yo’ pop. Just earlier this evenin‘, I was reminded of my own pop in the weirdest of ways.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” He turned to his sidemen. “You boys go on back inside. I want to talk with Jules here a bit. I’ll be along in a minute.”
The old jazzman waited until the younger musicians had ambled around the corner before continuing. “I didn’t mention this story to none of the youngsters. Didn’t want ‘em to think I was ’touched,‘ y’know? But somehow, I got the notionyou’ll believe me just fine.”
Jules grinned and stepped closer to his friend. A pair of large cockroaches scurried out of his way. “You drive a cab in this town, there’s not much youdon’t believe.”
“I hear ya.” The jazzman sat down on a window ledge and fanned himself with his hat. “Well, my pop, he growed up in the Quarters, back when it was piss-poor Italians livin‘ here instead of all these tourists. And man, did he used to tell mestories! One that always stuck in my head, it was about the rats that live in the Quarters. These rats, they live inside all these two-hundred-year-old buildings we got here. Inside thewalls, see. They got it so good in there, they never need to come out. In fact, my pop, he told me there was whole generations of rats that lived and died without ever seein’ the sun. Imagine that! Generation after generation, they got whiter and whiter, those rats, livin‘ in the dark like that, until their skins got so white that you could look right through it. Rightthrough it, and see their hearts and lungs and stuff!”
“No shit?”
“Noshit. I never forgot that story. Well, just earlier tonight I be walkin‘ over here from my apartment, takin’ the same old route I always take, when I hear a noise from this alleyway. Sounds like trash cans bein‘ spilled over. I figure it’s some dog or somethin’. Just outta curiosity, I take a look down the alleyway. There, sittin‘ on top of one of them cans, be a rat big as my trumpet. Bad enough, huh? But it’s like no other rat I ever seen. I’m starin’ at it, andit’s starin‘ atme, and I can see its heart beatin’, and blood flowin‘ through its veins. Like its skin isglass.”
“It wasn’t no trick of the light, you think?”
The musician shook his head vigorousl
y. “No trick of no light, no sir. That rat was clear like a neon tube. And the whole while I was starin‘ at it, I had the sense my daddy’s ghost was standin’ there next to me, his hand restin‘ on my shoulder. That’s the absolute truth.” He stopped fanning himself and stared directly into Jules’s eyes. “There’s more strange stuff out there than you or me can imagine, my friend.”
Jules grunted his agreement.
Porkchop Chambonne glanced down at his watch. “Shee-yit! Time slipped away on me. I gotta git. You comin‘ inside to hear the second set?”
“I brought my ears, didn’t I? Lead the way, pal.”
They rounded the corner onto Decatur Street. The bandleader hurried through the Palm Court’s door and headed directly for the stage, where his sidemen were already playing an opening tune. Jules paused outside to slip on his trench coat; he didn’t want to distract attention from the band.
The stage was lit with red and green spotlights. The rest of the club, divided evenly between a polished oak bar and a restaurant seating area, was dimly but charmingly lit with glass-enclosed candles. Jules couldn’t make out faces among the audience; all he could see were silhouettes and hands clutching glasses of beer or wine. The place was about three-quarters full. The six-piece band wound down its rendition of “Chimes Blues,” leaping immediately into a rousing “Basin Street Blues” as Jules wormed his way through the crowded room to an empty table near the back.
The kids were good-damn good-but even the most precocious among them couldn’t touch the lyrical artistry flowing so effortlessly from their leader’s trumpet. Sixty-plus years of experience counted for something, after all. Jules listened, enraptured, as his friend slid sinuously into the famous blues first popularized by King Oliver and Louis Armstrong. That was just after World War I, back in the days of Jules’s youth. Maybe Chop didn’t have Oliver’s fiery aggressiveness on trumpet, and perhaps he couldn’t match Satchmo’s almost supernatural virtuosity, but he had a languid warmth all his own. As long as music like this endured, New Orleans would always be heaven for Jules Duchon.
At first he didn’t feel the soft hand that settled lightly on his shoulder. “Mind if I join you? The other tables are all taken, and I hate listening to the blues alone.”
It was a woman’s voice. Unfamiliar, but as warm and smoky as Chop’s tireless trumpet. Jules leaned back in his chair, and when he saw who it was, he nearly fell out of it. It washer — the woman from the Trolley Stop. The cover girl fromBig Cheeks Pictorial!
She smiled at him, her teeth sparkling in the candlelight. “I’m so sorry to bother you,” she said. “I could see how much you’re enjoying the music. But seeing you again is such a wonderful coincidence. I simply couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t come over and introduce myself. May I sit down?”
Was this really happening? Or was it a hallucination brought on by accumulated stress, a bizarre waking wet dream? He pinched his upper arm with every last ounce of his vampiric strength. She didn’t fade away. He could smell her musky perfume. He could feel the electric warmth of her body, so provocatively close to his own.If this is a wet dream, he told himself,I’m gonna go all the way with it, all the way to the sticky finish line.
“So may I sit down?” she asked again. So patiently, so unpetulantly (so unlike Maureen, who would’ve bitten his head off by now).
“Uh, you wanna sit withme?”
“Yes,” she smiled.
“Buh-be my guest,” he said, catapulting himself out of his seat in an effort to pull out a chair for her.
“That’s very gallant.” He noticed her voice had a sweet trace of a hill-country twang. Gracefully, she settled herself down, smoothing the folds of her emerald silk pantsuit to avoid wrinkling. Beneath her jacket she wore a daringly low-cut T-shirt, which showcased her mountainous cleavage. Jules’s dream girl turned appreciatively toward the stage, closing her eyes and nodding gently in time with the music. No matter how sublime Chop’s solos were, Jules might as well’ve been stone deaf. His complete attention was glued to the rise and fall of her magnificent chest.
When the band slid into the closing bars of “St. James Infirmary,” she sighed with pleasure. “Isn’t the music simplywonderful?”
“Some of the best in the city,” said Jules, trying hard to sound authoritative. “That means some of the best in the whole world.”
“You sound like someone who knows his music.”
“Sure! I been around music and musicians my whole life.”
Her eyes flashed with interest. “How fascinating!” She laughed and patted his arm affectionately. “I promised to introduce myself, didn’t I? My name’s Veronika, with ak. I’m visiting from New York. I know this’ll soundhorribly immodest, but I’m a model-a plus-sized model-and I’m in New Orleans working on a series of shoots for various magazines. Most of my photos are for women’s clothing magazines, and the others-well, let’s just say I doubt a gentleman such as yourself would’ve seen them.”
“My loss,” Jules said with a poker face.
“I think your city is simplymagical. I’ve been hoping to meet someone who could help me see it with a native’s eyes. When I saw you at that little trolley car diner, you seemed so friendly andinteresting, and I wanted to meet you, or at least say hello, but at the last second I was too shy. Then you were gone. So seeing you again tonight, in this place, with this wonderful music, I just know that we were meant to be friends.”
Jules felt suspended in a warm velvet fog. Every honey-coated word she spoke sizzled a path from his ears straight to his groin. He caught sight of his empty outfit in a mirrored post. Why did this woman have to meet him on a night when he was dressed in Maureen’s harlequin costume?
“I, uh, I’m comin‘ back from some kids’ party. Crippled kids, actually. All stuck in wheelchairs. Charity work, y’know. I do this sorta thing all the time.”
“That’s sonoble of you.” She grasped his paw tightly between her two soft hands and stared into his eyes. They listened to the remainder of the set in silence.When the band finished their final number the house lights came up like a sudden dawn. The forty or so patrons gathered their coats and purses and began shuffling toward the doors.
Veronika turned to Jules and smiled warmly. “Oh, that was simplyexquisite. Thank you for sharing such a fabulous evening with me.” She leaned across the table and lightly stroked his forearm with her fingertips. “Would you mind escorting me back to my hotel? I’d feelso much safer.”
“I-” Maureen’s face flashed on the mildewed movie screen of Jules’s mind. Hadn’t she put her arm over him the night before, just as she’d fallen asleep? What wouldshe think? Oh, she’d be fine with it if he intended to fang the woman… butfanging was not the verb Jules had in mind. He thought hard and furiously about the nature of luck. Until today, his recent luck had beenshit luck. What would happen if, now that his luck had turned amazingly, fabulouslygood, he ungratefully turned his back on it? Would it go and dry up into a desiccated turd again?
“I, uh-I’d behonored to walk you to your hotel.”
Veronika’s hotel was a Spanish Colonial-style mansion on Barracks Street that had been converted into time-share condominiums. She opened the front door, recently renovated to show off its intricate moldings. The air in the foyer was chilled to a crisp sixty-five degrees, a nearly twenty-degree drop from the temperature outside.
Veronika removed a handkerchief from her purse and delicately dabbed her forehead and neck. “Please excuse me… I’m simply not used to this humidity anymore.” She looked at her companion, who was arid as a white desert. “How do you manage to stay so dry in all this dampness? A big husky man like you?”
Jules leaned against the gilded back of a French Restoration side chair. “Oh, y’know, when you’ve been livin‘ in New Orleans as long as I have, you kinda get used to a bit a stickiness.”
She took his hand and led him to a stairway at the rear of the foyer. “Come. I’m up on the third floor.” She laughed, sounding more li
ke a schoolgirl than a (very) grown woman. “The only fault I can find with this place is it doesn’t have an elevator.”
“That’s okay. I can handle two flights easy enough.” Heck, with her holding his hand, her perfume tantalizing him, he’d climb to the top of One Shell Square, fifty stories up.
To Doc Landrieu’s credit, Jules made it to the third floor without even breathing hard. Veronika fumbled with her room key; her excitement buzzed his skin like static electricity. Jules was excited, too. But he was also nervous as hell. His nerves accomplished what the nighttime humidity hadn’t; sweat poured out of the pinched glands beneath his arms. He half expected that when Veronika finally got the door open, Maureen would be standing on the other side, vengefully clutching a stake pointed at his (cheatin‘) heart.
After what felt like a sizable chunk of eternity, Veronika got the key to work. The door opened. No ten-foot-tall Maureen made a jealous grab for his testicles. He took a deep breath and followed Veronika inside. The room was sumptuous. It was dominated by a startlingly large whirlpool bath, which managed to overpower even the red-velvet-covered king-sized bed.
“Would you like a drink?” she asked him as she stepped quickly to the mini bar. “My employers are very generous. Anything I want, I just put it on their tab.”
“I’ll skip it, thanks,” he stammered, fingering the velvet bedspread.
“Well, I’m going to make myself something. I’mthirsty!”
Jules watched her pour Sprite, cranapple juice, cherry concentrate, and vodka into a tumbler. She mixed it with her pinkie and gulped it down quickly, not even pausing to add ice cubes. She set the glass down on the dresser by the bed. Then, before he could brace himself, she was all over him.
Her lips engulfed his mouth. He tasted cherry on her tongue, and a hint of vodka. He felt himself losing his balance as their bodies collided. He tumbled backward onto the bed, and Veronika followed. Their stomachs, like air bags, cushioned their impact, but her top front teeth banged into his as their combined weight mashed the bedsprings to full compression. She rolled off him, laughing uproariously as he struggled to regain the air that had been squeezed out of his rib cage.
Fat White Vampire Blues Page 18
