Fat White Vampire Blues

by Andrew J. Fox

  “Babe, you said those guys in your agency were teachin‘ you all about my habits and my likes and dislikes. You got any idea where they came by that kinda information? It’s not like I ever put it on a Web site or nothin’.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about allthat!” she said brightly. “Once you turn me into a vampire, we’ll move down to Mexico together. The agency won’t bother with you once you’re out of the country.”

  Mexico?Everyone and their brother wanted him to move south of the border! “Just humor me and answer my question, huh?”

  “Ohh-kay. I was never privy to what all the higher-ups had their noses into. But I think I remember somebody telling me once that your case came to the agency’s attention when somebody from local government called in some favors from the FBI. The FBI realized this was out of their depth, so they referred it to my agency.”

  “‘Local government’? You mean from New Orleans City Hall?”

  “I guess. I think it was somebody pretty high up. An alderman or somebody.”

  Who had connections at City Hall? Not Maureen; although with all the Mardi Gras balls she used to attend, it was conceivable that she might have some political connections. Doc Landrieu was well connected throughout the local political community-local politics had been his life. But Jules still refused to believe that his old patron had turned against him.

  That left Malice X. What kind of connections could a drug-dealing, ex-gang-member vampire have at City Hall? Wait-that big black binder he’d grabbed from Elisha Raddeaux’s heroin lab had listed some of the mayor’s top aides as clients!

  “Oh, here’s something else I remember,” Veronika said. “My handler mentioned that he had a local contact regarding your case. Some guy he’d meet up with at this bar on Wednesday nights.”

  Jules could barely contain his eagerness. “You remember the name of this bar?”

  She forked another load of sugar-coated pancakes into her pretty mouth. “Umm… it had a funny name. Hit-Me-Up. No, that wasn’t it. Hit-and-Go, maybe?”

  “The Hit ‘N’ Run Club?”

  “That sounds right. Yeah, I think that was it.”

  Bingo!Wednesday night was tomorrow night. Now he and Doodlebug would take the fight to Malice X instead of waiting for him to catch up to Jules. The element of surprise would be in Jules’s pocket, for once, instead of pressing against his throat.

  “That’s fuckin‘great, baby!” He reached his arms around her ample form and kissed her lustily on the side of her neck.

  She grinned at him and wiped a blob of syrup from the corner of her mouth. “Let me give you something better to get you all hot and bothered. Tell you what. For every bite of breakfast I eat, I’ll take off one article of clothing. And when I’m all out of articles of clothing, it’ll be time foryour breakfast.”

  How fortune could turn on a dime! Only hours ago he was covered in sweat, sitting on a cold concrete floor, enduring a browbeating from Maureen. “Baby, that’s a better deal than the Pilgrims gettin‘ Manhattan for a handful of beads!”

  As the eggs disappeared into her mouth, the shoes and socks came off her feet. A croissant accounted for her blouse and linen jacket. The last bites of pancake were traded for her skirt and the colorful silk scarf adorning her neck.

  Finally, all that was left on her body were her bra and panties. All that was left on her plate was half a grapefruit. Smiling wickedly, she plunged her spoon into the moist, pink fruit.

  “Wait!” Jules cried, bestirring himself from his erotic haze. “Don’t eat that!”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too sour. It might sour up your blood.”

  “But Ilove grapefruit! And I still have my underwear to take off.”

  “Let me worry about your underwear. Just forget about that grapefruit, huh?”

  “You big meanie!” She giggled as she fell into his waiting arms, then engulfed his mouth with a kiss.

  A minute later, he almost wished hehad let her eat the damn grapefruit, just so she would’ve taken off the damn bra herself. Why the hell did lingerie manufacturers make their products so incredibly complicated? The clasps on this thing would’ve bedeviled a tag team of Edison, Einstein, and Joe DiMaggio. Finally, he got it loose. The resulting plunge into infinite softness immediately made him forget about his momentary frustration.

  Sothis was the payoff. Ever since he’d been a little boy, Jules had suspected that the bad things in the universe were balanced out by good things, or vice versa. Just not necessarily of equal magnitude. Most of his life he’d spent dreading the coming deluge of shit that would follow some tiny, insignificant good thing like finding a quarter on the street. But this time,this time, the deluge of shit had comefirst. And if the universe played by its own rules, that meant the balancing payback had to be even bigger and better. Tonight, he was making love to a gorgeous young woman whose fondest wish was to become his vampire queen. Tomorrow night, he and Doodlebug would squish his mortal enemy like the sewer-crawling cockroach he was.

  Veronika moaned lustily. While his mind had been wandering, she’d managed to remove his shoes, socks, and shirt, but his trousers and underpants were prompting squeals of frustration. Once he lifted his behind off the bed, the trousers came off easily enough. His underpants were more problematic, being tightly clasped between his manly belly and his overexcited soldier. Veronika solved the conundrum by ripping them off. Soon thereafter her own panties went flying across the room like a pink bat.

  She pushed him down onto the bed, signaling that she wanted to be on top.Fine, Jules thought; since she was the lighter of the two of them, it was only fair that she do most of the work. Besides, the view was bound to be spectacular.

  She climbed on top of him, and the room temporarily disappeared behind an engulfing curtain of flesh. Then she straddled him, and her soft hand found his eager-to-serve soldier. She wiggled her posterior a little. There was an instant of erotic limbo while the biologic geometries adjusted themselves. Then he felt it.

  Mission Control, we have ignition…

  Wow!Being inside her was the most intensely wonderful sensation he’d ever experienced. It was right up there with that first big gulp of blood after days of going without. His body was a Saturn V rocket, flames bursting from its base as it trembled with the mighty effort of breaking free of earth.

  Gantries are clear, all systems are go He was going too fast.Way too fast. If he wanted to make this last more than five seconds, he’d better concentrate on something other than the rocket. He watched her thigh muscles bulge majestically as she pumped him for all he was worth.

  Ten, nine, eight Aww, hell; there was no stopping liftoff now. The best he could do was squeeze as much sensual experience into the next few seconds as he could. He reached for her breasts seven, six, five and they were fabulously soft, so ample (he wished his hands were bigger), maybe they were phony but he didn’t care, they sure as hell feltgreat, he squeezed and squeezed four, three, two and squeezed and squeezed, she was loving it, “Yes! Yes!” she said, and then there was a funny noise that sounded something likeshplittt!

  And then there were two terribly sharp-looking wooden stakes sticking out where her nipples had been.

  Abort mission! Abort mission!

  “Oh no!” she cried. “Notnow! NOT NOW!”

  He looked up into her eyes, and paradise was lost. He saw her awful moment of indecision-to be or not to be-and then he saw the room begin to disappear as she fell forward, her right breast-stake aimed directly at his heart.

  His rocket, suddenly just a frightened little soldier again, retracted into the dubious shelter of its sheath. Jules rolled to the left as quickly as his blubber-hindered muscles would allow.

  “AAOWW-shit!”

  The stakes missed his heart. But his right shoulder suffered a gouging, and her weight and momentum actually drove her right stake through the loose fold of skin on his upper left arm and buried it deep in the mattress. Pain supercharged his strength. He pushed her off him
, bloodily dislodging the stake from his arm in the process. Veronika landed on the floor with a loud thud.

  Dazed, Jules watched the blood from his torn left arm stain the white sheets crimson. He heard Veronika stirring.Fortune turns on a dime, turns on a fuckin‘ dime… He forced himself to move. His injuries were messy, but they weren’t deep-despite the pain, he still had full use of his stabbed arm.

  “Jules! It was amistake! An accident! Please believe me!”

  She was on her feet, her face beseeching him, her arms outstretched, begging for a forgiving embrace. But those twin stakes still pointed at his heart like the warheads on a pair of torpedoes.

  “I want to be your queen! We can still make it work, darling! Let me prove my loyalty-I can help you with the black vampires!”

  She came at him. He scanned the room for a defense, a weapon-anything. All there was was the uneaten half of a grapefruit.

  Jimmy Cagney had the kiss-off thing down pat: a gesture was worth a thousand words. He picked up the grapefruit and mashed it in her face.

  “Ahhhgh!Myeyes!”

  She blindly ran to the bathroom. Jules watched with no small satisfaction as she rammed into a wall on her way. Then he retrieved his clothes. He found himself wishing he were one of those superheroes who could simply say a magic word and have their uniform appear on them, perfectly pressed. This retrieving of a wadded-up mass of clothing was getting to be an aggravating habit.

  He left the room door open. Slamming it wasn’t worth the energy. He had to husband all of his energy for tomorrow, when he would finally get the Malice X monkey off his back.

  Tomorrow would be better.

  Tomorrowhad to be better.

  Women!

  FOURTEEN

  The damp wind blowing off Bayou St. John felt good against Jules’s skin. It was a proud wind, a strong wind. A wind for heroes.

  He placed his footlocker on the long, low hood of his Lincoln, and then he unlatched it. The cloak and hood smelled a little musty as he lifted them out of the box and unfolded them. But the breeze quickly freshened them. He wrapped the cloak around his beefy shoulders and fastened the stiff, cracked leather clasps. Then he pulled the hood over his head, gently adjusting its frayed mouth- and eyeholes. The aged fabric was more snug than he remembered it being. It felt like a second skin. A new face. A reborn face.

  The wind lifted his cloak behind him and made it snap smartly, like Old Glory whipping from the topmast of a speeding destroyer chasing after deadly U-boats in the Gulf. A light rain began falling from the gray sky. It beat against his chest like a second baptism, scouring the accumulated years away. He felt like a young vampire of sixty-five again-no,fifty. There was nothing he couldn’t do. All the Veronikas and Malice X’s of the world were merely obstacles, just cases to be solved. The Dark Fright had returned.

  Jules pointed to the grassy banks of the bayou, now lined by luxury condominiums and the campus of the LSU Dental School. “I can still see it, Doodlebug. It’s like it’s still there.”

  “The Higgins Boat Plant?”

  “Yeah. The Higgins Boat Plant. Three-quarters of a mile long. Spitting out new landing craft into the bayou as fast as you could snap yer fingers. Eisenhower said the Higgins boats won the war. And we kept the plant safe, didn’t we? For three years, we kept it safe.”

  “We sure did, partner.”

  Jules took a step back to appraise Doodlebug’s new costume. It consisted of a sunburst yellow leotard, metallic purple tights, a matching purple domino mask, and shiny black vinyl go-go boots. The white calfskin gloves were a nice touch. “I’m almost embarrassed to admit it,” Jules said, “but this new outfit of yours looks a helluva lot better than the old one ever did. Thanks for remembering the old color scheme, though.”

  “Sure thing.” Doodlebug smiled. “Youknow I’d never pass up a perfect opportunity to dress up.”

  Jules took a last look along the bayou, imagining the long-gone landing craft factory he’d invested so many long nights protecting. Then he turned toward the car. “Let’s hit the road. We got us a stakeout ahead, and I don’t want my hood gettin‘ soggy.”

  Doodlebug placed himself between Jules and the door. “Costume or no costume, I’m not at all comfortable with your confronting your X before we’ve finished your training. As your adviser, I’m duty-bound to tell you that.”

  Jules gently but firmly pushed him aside and opened the door. “You done your duty, then. Look-I know where that bum’s gonna be tonight. This shit has gone on long enough. I don’t wanna stall no more. Besides, I got me an equalizer. Here. Lemme show you.”

  He lifted a large box out of the backseat, set it on the Lincoln’s roof, and opened it. Then he removed a large black object that looked like a cross between a pistol-grip crossbow and a child’s Special Forces action toy.

  “Tiny Idaho made this for me. After last night, I came up with the idea of it firin‘ pellets loaded with garlic powder, in addition to the wooden darts I originally wanted. What a whiz that guy is. He was able to add the extra features while we were hangin’ out by his work table talkin‘. See this little button here? It lets me switch between the two types of ammo.”

  “Very clever.” Doodlebug took the weapon and examined it from all angles, then handed it back to Jules. “I don’t recall the Hooded Terror ever using a gun before.”

  “Yeah?” Jules carefully put the gun back in the box, then put the box back in the car. “Well, that’s because the Hooded Terror was facin‘ dumb-ass fifth columnists his last time up at bat. That sorry buncha losers could hardly hit the side of the Higgins Boat Plant with a mortar shell from thirty yards. I figure Malice X and his bunch should be a little more battleworthy, them being vampires and all.”

  “I expect you’re right,” Doodlebug said. He got into the car. The rain began to beat a little harder against the Lincoln’s windows, and the thin reeds by the bayou’s edge were splayed flat against the black water by sudden gusts of wind.

  Jules drove down Esplanade to North Broad Avenue, a once thriving, middle-class commercial corridor now split evenly between rent-to-own rip-off joints and sagging, boarded-up storefronts. He fiddled with the radio tuner while steering around abandoned cars and rusty muffler husks, trying to get WWOZ to come in strongly. The Lincoln’s radio was acting up; the Wild Magnolias’ “Iko Iko” faded in and out of clouds of static.

  “Fuckin‘ Ford Motor Company piece of shit…” Jules muttered to himself.

  “You promised me earlier you were working out a plan,” Doodlebug said, tying back his long hair into a sensible braid. “I’d like to hear it. I assume youhave a plan, don’t you?”

  “Well, sure. Sure I do. I went and got the gun, didn’t I?”

  “So you plan to shoot him with the gun?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No,” Jules repeated. “Vampires don’t kill other vampires. Maybe I didn’t teach you that too good, but that’s one of them commandments I live by. The gun? I plan tothreaten him with the gun. After, y’know, we rough him up a little. To show him we mean business and he can’t railroad me no more. Then I’ll talk to him, man to man.”

  “Uh-huh. Do you plan to have this little heart-to-heart before or after he sics his vampire goons on you and rams a stake through your chest?”

  Jules snorted. “I’ve got that worked out, okay? He won’t be expectin‘ us. We can stake out his car, hide in the shadows. I figure he’ll have at most one or two bodyguards with him. And between your kung-fu tricks and my Tiny Idaho special, we should be able to knock them out easy. Then big, bad Malice X is all ours.”

  Jules stopped for the light at the corner of South Broad and Tulane Avenue. The busy intersection was dominated by the gray stone hulk of the Criminal Court Building, a failed, boarded-up Goodfeller’s Fried Catfish Shack, and an immaculate, golden-arched McDonald’s.

  “Y’know, that McDonald’s there,” Jules said as the light changed, “it appeared overnight. Like magic. I was pass
in‘ this corner for weeks while workmen leveled the old building on that corner and prepared the concrete slab. Then one night, they brought the restaurant in on the back of a flatbed. They plunked it down in the concrete, and by the next night it was open for business. Magic.”

  Doodlebug glanced briefly at this miracle of modern commerce. “Maybe you’re expecting a little too much magic tonight? Let’s say that everything goes exactly as you described. We take care of his bodyguards and pull him into some dark, empty alleyway. What makes you think you can convince him to leave you alone-short of killing him?”

  “Againwith the killing! You wanted to kill his sister, too, didn’t ya? Look, this Malice X, whatever else he may be, he’s a businessman. Sellin‘ drugs is abusiness, just like sellin’ toothpaste is. And if he’s a businessman, that means he can be bargained with. If I can show him that I can’t be pushed around, that screwin‘ with me is bad for his business, I can get him to cut a deal. Some kinda quota deal on black victims-maybe two a month for me, and the rest of the time I’ll get by on white tourists and blood you ship me from California. I got his black binder of customers, don’t I? I can always use that as a bargaining chip. Besides, we got somethin’ in common… we’veboth had to put up with Maureen’s shit. That should count for something.”

  “I see. And what’s your fallback plan?”

  “Fallback plan?”

  “What are you going to do if your calculations of Malice X’s character are wrong?”

  “I dunno-didn’t them Tibetan monks of yours teach you some superduper hypnotic whammy you can lay on him?”

  “No.”

  “Bummer.” Jules’s spirits sagged momentarily, but they quickly reinflated as he experienced a brainstorm. “Hey! Igot it! Here’s what we can do to really put the quakes in him. You tell him about all these nasty extra powers you got. Then you give him a demonstration. Wave your arms around like Mandrake the Magician, then stare at me real hard and mean. And whatI’ll do, see, is I’ll do like I did in Maureen’s basement and try to turn into two animals at once. I’ll change into some horrible two-headed mess, then collapse into a pool of goo. Then you’ll wave your arms around again, and I’ll reappear as me, moanin‘ like you just cut my balls off. After that, he’ll be thinkin’,Shit-if he’d do that to his buddy, just to prove a point, what’ll he do to me? He’ll be crappin‘ his pants big time!”