Fat White Vampire Blues

by Andrew J. Fox

  Jules waited for some sign of enthusiasm from his companion. But Doodlebug just stared out the window. “Huh-uh,” he said finally, shaking his head. “Interesting plan, very creative. But it won’t work.”

  “Why the hell not? It’d sure scare the shit outtame!”

  “That’s the problem. It would scare the shit out ofyou. Malice X isn’t another you. He doesn’t think like you. The two of youare brothers, in a way, just not identical twins. You’re more like Cain and Abel. The farmer and the hunter.”

  “Now wait a minute-Malice X and me areboth hunters!”

  “Technically, maybe. But you’ve always been content to gather whatever resources are conveniently at hand. That’s a big part of why you’re so reluctant to give up black victims-you’re accustomed to them, they’re abundant, and they’re convenient. Malice X, on the other hand, appears to be working very hard to change the city’s status quo, to remake his environment in his own image-”

  “I’m no damn loafer, if that’s what you’re tryin‘ to say!”

  “No, that’snot what I’m trying to say. Just let me finish. Cain and Abel both wanted to impress their Creator with their offerings and bask in His approval. Both you and Malice X, over the years, have tried to impress Maureen. According to what Maureen has told us,your offerings met with greater favor. In the Bible story, Abel’s inadvertent one-upmanship of his brother had fatal consequences. Your position is even worse than Abel’s was. Imagine if Adam weren’t around, and both Abel and Cain desperately, fervently wanted to marry their mother. Take that ancient stew of jealousy and hurt feelings, stir in some Oedipal yearnings, sprinkle in a generous pinch of racial animosity, and you have a perfect recipe for murder. Very bloody murder.”

  Jules slowly circled halfway around the brick pile of the Broad Street Pumping Station, part of a massive drainage system designed to suck accumulated rainwater off the streets and flush it into Lake Pontchartrain. From the look of the clouds overhead, the system would have its work cut out for it tonight. He had to admit Doodlebug’s analogy made a certain amount of sense. “So me and Malice X, we’re Cain and Abel. What the hell do you want me to do about it?”

  “There’s only one thing youcan do. Kill him before he kills you.”

  Jules pulled over into a bottle-strewn empty lot that, until a few years earlier, had been the Bohn Ford Used Car Lot. He shoved the transmission into park. “Before we go another block, I wanna ask you something. For somebody who lived in a monastery and wears a dress, you come off as onehelluva bloodthirsty sonofabitch. What’s the deal, Doodlebug? Who’s the real you?”

  Jules turned off the radio. The Lincoln’s roughly idling motor made the dashboard rattle as he waited for his friend to answer. Doodlebug sighed. “Do you remember what I told you about the monks’ initiation test for new vampires? The choice between the meditation staff and the blood?”

  “Yeah. The ones who picked the blood ended up as puddles of red goop.”

  “That’s right.” The rain began falling again. It hit the windshield in fat splatty droplets, bursting against the glass like watery kamikazes. “They barely tolerated me. The monks. They let me stay and learn because I was useful to them. My fangs and blood thirst gave them the potential for fresh initiates. They were never rude or unkind. But they let me know, in very subtle ways, that I was among the fallen. That in this life, debased by my surrender to the blood lust, I have no chance of redemption. They taught me to hope that, if I diligently study the paths of discipline, I might make the right choice during my next incarnation as a vampire.”

  Nextincarnation? In all his long decades as a vampire, Jules had never once thought about what might come after. “Jeez… that sounds even more hard-assed than Catholicism.”

  Doodlebug managed a grim smile. “Perhaps. So, my friend, maybe you see why I don’t share your view that ending a vampire’s existence is wrong. With the exception of that small group of monks on their mountaintop, all of us vampires are tainted by having drunk the blood of our fellow creatures. All of us are fallen. By ending a vampire’s endless life of blood drinking, I may free a fallen soul for a second chance to achieve true and pure immortality.”

  “Whoa whoawhoa!” Jules whacked his steering wheel in frustration.Again Doodlebug was twisting the rules of vampirism into crazy knots! “Just before, you was tellin‘ me I have to kill Malice X before he kills me, right? And now you’re sayin’ it would be agood thing if I got killed? Ain’t that a contradiction of terms?”

  Doodlebug smiled. “You’re swifter on the uptake than I sometimes give you credit for. But don’t worry-this isn’t some plot on my part to get you killed. I want you to have the best shot possible at doing ‘the vampire thing’ right on your next go-around, and we haven’t finished your training.” He patted Jules’s shoulder reassuringly. “Besides, there’s no telling what sort of person you might be reborn as… and I have to admit to a certain fondness for the imperfect-but-charming vampire you are now.”

  Jules’s head stopped swimming. As convoluted as his friend’s reasoning was, it made a bit more sense to him now. “Well… okay, then.” He shifted the transmission lever back into drive. “But one more thing-we’re at least gonnatry my original plan, right? Before we do anything more drastic?”

  “Your problem demands your solution. I only advise. You’re the boss, Jules.”

  He didn’t detect any sarcasm or ambiguity in his partner’s voice. Jules pulled out of the empty lot and turned onto Washington Avenue, heading for Central City and Club Hit ‘N’ Run.

  He passed a large white-columned building that he remembered as the Broadmoor Cinema. Now it was the Rhodes Funeral Home. Jules glanced at the long black Cadillac hearses lined up in front, and a frightening thought occurred to him.

  Doodlebug had said he didn’t want Jules to die, not yet. But would his friend, ashamed of his own fallenness, thirsting for a second chance, welcome hisown death in the coming battle?

  Jules performed a slow drive-by past Club Hit ‘N’ Run. He circled the block, searching for some sign that their quarry was inside. The club occupied both halves of a shotgun double house on Melpomene Street, half a block off Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard. As he scanned the trash-strewn streets for Malice X’s Cadillac limousine, Jules’s mind wandered to the days when Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard had been called Dryades Street. Back then, before World War II, it had been home to numerous Jewish businesses. Jules recalled the bearded men, wearing their funny little black skullcaps, who had run the bakeries, shoe stores, and tailor shops, all open on Sunday but closed on Saturday. By the early 1970s, when the street was renamed for a local civil rights activist, the bearded men in their skullcaps were long gone. Now the area was an economic fringe zone, an incubator for gangsters and petty criminals, avoided by tourists and middle-class locals like a radioactive crater. Jules had actually done a good business there over the past couple decades; most Central City residents didn’t own cars, at least not reliable ones, and he was one of the few cabdrivers willing to respond to calls from the neighborhood.

  The sight of a familiar long, black, custom-built Seville jarred Jules back to the present. “There she blows,” he said, pointing to an alleyway off Melpomene Street, across the street from the club, four storefronts closer to the river. The brightly polished limousine had been backed into the alleyway, mostly out of sight of the street. A pair of orange barricades had been placed at the mouth of the alley, presumably to prevent any other cars from parking in front of the limousine and blocking it in.

  “It’s a good setup for us,” Jules said. “He’s gotta go back in that alleyway sometime tonight to get his car. I didn’t see any rear exit; the back of the alley is blocked by that gardening supplies warehouse on Baronne. Once he’s in there, we can trap him and any bodyguards real easy.”

  “Maybe it’stoo good a setup,” Doodlebug replied. “Didn’t you see that guard lounging by the side of the car? The car’s windows are tinted-there could be half a dozen more guar
ds waiting inside.”

  “Then we’ll just have to take care of them, won’t we? Remember ‘The Case of the Skull-Faced Nazis’? How many crummy guards did we have to polish offthat time? Compared to that, this’ll be a cakewalk.”

  “Whatever you say, Jules.” Doodlebug didn’t sound convinced.

  Jules turned the corner onto Baronne. “Hey-while we’re in uniform, it’s ‘Hooded Terror,’ ‘Terror,’ or ‘H.T.’ ”

  “Oh, yes… it’svital that we protect our secret identities. How could I forget?”

  A pair of large, grayish brown German shepherds chased each other across the street, forcing Jules to slam on the Lincoln’s brakes. “Shit! Fuckin‘ dogs got a death wish! Damn mutts ain’t got no collars, neither.” Muttering to himself about the dearth of dogcatchers in New Orleans, he parked along the curb while he still had a few shreds of asbestos left on his brake drums.

  “Well, H.T., how do you propose getting that guard out of the way?”

  “Simplicity itself, my dear D.B.,” Jules said, regaining his composure as he cut the motor. “Once you take off that mask, you can pass for a civilian real easily, considerin‘ the kooky way women dress nowadays. So here’s what you’ll do, see? All you gotta do is waltz up to that guard like some ditzy, airhead tourist who’s lost her way; boy, Iwish we had a Hurricane glass! Anyway, you distract the guard-show a little leg, and bounce those little titties of yours around. Use your imagination; I don’t wanna think about it much. Get him to turn away from the mouth of the alleyway. Then I’ll come in with a plank or a pipe and whack him over the head.”

  Doodlebug rolled his eyes. “You’ve been readingway too many pulp mystery stories, Jules-” “ ‘H.T.’ ”

  “Whatever! What stereotypical thinking! Do you really thinkevery man drops a hundred IQ points whenever he sees a woman sashaying his way? What if he doesn’t like white women? What if he’s a happily married deacon in his church? For that matter, what if he’s gay?”

  Huh.Creepy, but maybe Doodlebug had a point there. “So you don’t like that plan?”

  “No-I definitely do not.”

  “Well, okay, don’t get your panties in a bunch. Here’s another plan. If he’s human and he’s eaten anything at all in the last twelve hours, I can get him runnin‘ outta that alley like a rat with its tail on fire. Thenyou can whack him over the head.”

  “How do you plan to manage that?”

  Jules grinned beneath his hood. “Hey, you ain’t theonly one who’s developed new powers since that last time we met.”

  “If this would only work on a human, what do you think the chances are that he’s a vampire?”

  “I dunno-why wouldn’t Malice X have human flunkies, as well as vampires?”

  “Good point. He could only afford to create a small number of vampire followers; he needs to supply them all with blood, and if he makes too many of them, there’s no way he could remain inconspicuous for long. Maybe only his top lieutenants are vampires. Keeping an eye on his limo is a fairly low-level chore. Still, if the guardis a vampire, what then?”

  Jules grabbed his unwieldy black dart gun from the backseat. “Then there’sthis.”

  Doodlebug raised an eyebrow. “So you’ll kill him with a dart through the heart?”

  “Who said anything about killin‘? I’llwound him. And then you can whack him over the head.”

  There was no shortage of scrap lumber lying in the derelict lots along this stretch of Baronne Avenue. Doodlebug quickly selected a solid, hefty plank for himself. They turned the corner onto Melpomene Street and instinctively ducked within the shadows. Darkness covered the street and broken sidewalks like a muddy, threadbare blanket. Jules and Doodlebug wrapped themselves in this blanket as they approached the alleyway that held Malice X’s black limousine.

  Jules flattened himself against the brick wall adjoining the entrance to the alley. Why was he hesitating? Was he nervous about going into action as the Hooded Terror again? Afraid he couldn’t live up to the heroic tradition he’d established for that identity? Going into action was like jumping off a high dive, he told himself; the worst part was taking that first step, but then gravity took over. He peeled himself off the wall and lurched into the alleyway, his hooded bulk blocking nearly two-thirds of its width.

  “Hey, Jeeves, how about a spin in that car a yours?”

  The guard gaped at the tremendous apparition in front of him. “Who orwhat the fuck are you supposed to be?”

  Jules steeled himself for a full-strength application of his Diarrhea Stare. Luckily, the guard was looking him right in the eyes. “You can call me the Hooded Terror,” he said, forcing himself to recall his last few solid meals and their terrible aftermaths. “The ‘Hooded’ part is a no-brainer. The ‘Terror’ part will become obvious real soon.”

  The guard reached for his holstered gun, but then he clutched his stomach and doubled over. “Oh Mama-!” Horrifying rumbles and squealings emitted from the man’s gut as he stumbled past Jules toward the street. Jules barely had time to turn around before a resoundingthunk! announced that Doodlebug had performed his half of the operation.

  Together they dragged the unconscious man to the back of the alley. Jules sucked in his belly as best he could but still scraped his love handles against the rough brick wall and the polished flanks of the car. It was a tight squeeze, but he made it.

  Doodlebug placed his nose close to the tinted windows and stared inside the car. “I can’t see anyone. If no one came piling out while we were shanghaьng that guard, I don’t suppose we have any hiders in there.”

  “Then let’s go find us a good stakeout spot.”

  They crouched behind an abandoned Mercury Grand Marquis sitting on Melpomene two houses down from the alleyway, situated so that Malice X wouldn’t walk past it on his way back to his limousine. The massive Mercury made an excellent vantage point; all four wheels and tires had been removed, so the vehicle sat flush on the ground, and weeds had begun colonizing the rusting shell. With the way weeds grow in New Orleans, Jules figured, in a few more years it wouldn’t be recognizable as a car at all. It would be a big green lump.

  The two large stray dogs that Jules had nearly run down trotted over to their hiding place. They sniffed Doodlebug’s legs and wagged their tails. “Geddoutta here!” Jules whispered fiercely, shooing them away with a piece of loose weatherstripping from the car. “We ain’t got nothing for you to eat! Keep buggin‘ me and I swear I won’ttouch the brakes next time.Scat! ” The dogs scampered off in the direction of the club.

  They watched the club for the next half hour. The left side of the building, labeledHIT, was larger and better maintained, benefiting from a fresh coat of paint and deeply tinted, double-paned windows. The right side, wearing a sign that readRUN, was hardly more than a take-out liquor shack, marred by a sagging porch, dangerously leaning steps, and flaking paint. The only discernible activity came from the few customers who entered theRUN portion and exited a few minutes later carrying quarts of beer. Snatches of rap and RB music escaped into the hot night each time they opened the leaflet-plastered door. No one entered or left theHIT side, at least not by the front door. The windows, tinted like those on the limousine, revealed nothing. The only sound to escape that side of the building was the steady hum of a powerful air-conditioning condenser.

  “Not much action here,” Jules said, more to break the silence than anything else.

  “No,” Doodlebug replied. “If Malice X conducts his drug and business transactions in that building, we can safely assume he’s doing it in the nicer side. It’s likely his customers have a less conspicuous entrance than the front door. Maybe a rear entrance that connects with one of those abandoned houses on the other side of the block.”

  “But no matter which door he uses, he’s gotta come back this way, to get his car.”

  “Unless he contacts his driver by cell phone, and his driver pulls the car around to the back entrance.”

  “Yeah. But tonight his driver’s t
akin‘ an unscheduled nap. So he’s gotta come. Sometime before sunrise, he’s gotta come.”

  After another twenty minutes, Jules’s adrenaline rush had completely subsided. It was replaced by the kind of dull torpor he remembered from thousands of nights of waiting for customers in his cab. The broken sidewalk was beginning to make his rear end and lower back ache, despite the thin cushioning provided by his wadded-up cloak. He kept having to shoo scurrying palmetto bugs away from the two of them, although Doodlebug didn’t seem bothered by the big cockroaches. To top things off, their observation post didn’t exactly smell wintergreen fresh. The pungent, chemical odor of dripping motor oil mingled with the scents of human and dog piss and week-old garbage, a combination Jules doubted even a roach could love.

  Jules tapped his friend on the shoulder. “Hey, D.B., don’t you wish we were out by the bayou again, stakin‘ out the Higgins Boat Plant? Boy, were those nights sweet. Nothing around but us and the moon and the trees and the water. Everything smelled clean, like the ocean. Shit, I even miss them ol’ Nazis.”

  Doodlebug smiled, but his eyes were serious. “Watch yourself, Jules. Too much nostalgia can be like a cancer. It’ll eat you up from the inside.”

  Jules waved off the remark. “Oh, c’mon… tell me you don’t miss plenty of stuff about the old days. What’s so bad about nostalgia? What’s wrong with wantin‘ the same things I’ve always wanted, with missin’ the way things used to be?”

  Doodlebug ran his forefinger along the leaves of a vine that had twisted itself luxuriously around the Mercury’s rear axle. “Nothing’s wrong with wanting the same things you’ve always wanted. We’re all entitled to want whatever it is we do. But you need to be flexible enough to seek those same old goals in new ways. The world around us is constantly changing. Sometimes evenwe change. Take a deep look at yourself. Maybe the Jules of today actually wants different things than the Jules of fifty years ago did.”