“Shit!Lookit myshirt!” the gravy-splattered cop hollered. “Mister, you’d betterpray you can convince us that was an accident-”
“He ain’t stoppin‘, Carl,” his partner said. “I don’t think that was any accident.” The cop unholstered his revolver. “Freeze right where you are, mister-”
Jules concentrated on an image of a train set, chugging steadily along its toy tracks. “No,you freeze,” he said.
And they did.
“Now here’s the deal,” Jules said, barely pausing long enough to register surprise at his mental feat. “I was never here, okay? You never saw me crash through your gate. Another thing-that white Cadillac Fleetwood over there? It was never on this lot. What you guys hadinstead was this pile-a-shit Lincoln here. In three minutes, you two dream-birds are gonna wake up. Gravy Boy is gonna feel all mortified about joyriding in the Lincoln and mashing down the gate when the brakes went out on him. By the time the next shift arrives, you two will’ve pieced together some phony-baloney story to feed your bosses.”
Jules walked over to his Cadillac. It was parked between a racing-green Jaguar XJS convertible and a gleaming BMW 8-Series coupe, but to Jules it was the finest car on the lot. He lovingly caressed one of its long, white tailfins. Boy, had he missed this automobile.
He dug the spare key out of his pocket and opened the door. The scent of aged leather was almost intoxicating. The Caddy’s faithful old big-block V-8 turned over on the first turn of the key, without a hiccup of complaint.
If Fate insisted he go where final death waited, he’d go there in his own damn car.
NINETEEN
So this is how it feels to be inside a pinball machine,Jules thought as he walked inside the casino. He strode past row after row of slot machines, all busily flashing, pinging, and jingling for row after row of empty chairs. On the outside the gambling hall at the foot of Canal Street resembled a gigantic suburban bank building, festooned with tons of neon in a vain attempt to disguise its pedestrian origins. On the inside Jules thought it looked more like Vegas… in the aftermath of an army germ-warfare experiment gone wrong. Apart from costumed employees, the place was practically deserted. Many of his fellow cabbies had been enthusiastic when the casino had first been approved by the legislature. They’d all figured it would attract more big-spending tourists. But rather than pulling in tourists, the casino had mostly attracted locals. And when they exited for home, empty-pocketed, they left in city buses, not cabs.
He walked to the side of the main room closest to Convention Center Boulevard. Just as he’d been told, there was the private elevator, flanked by two tuxedoed guards. Guards, not doormen; doormen didn’t sport holsters and squared-off bulges beneath their suit jackets.
Jules approached the guard on the left. Both of the men were white; Jules wondered whether Malice X got a little charge out of lording it over white employees. “I’m Jules Duchon. I got business with your boss downstairs.”
“Ah, yes. The fat man. We were told to expect you.” The guard pressed the elevator’s call button. A few seconds later, the door swished open. “Don’t forget to press theDOWN button once you’re inside. It’s the one with the little red arrow that points to the floor.”
“Thanks, wise guy.” Jules flipped him a nickel before entering the elevator. “Here’s a tip for your trouble.”
The elevator was trimmed in tufted red velvet. “Looks like the coffin I could never afford,” Jules muttered to himself. The doors opened onto a shockingly large space, a high-ceilinged cavern where no cavern had any right to be. Jules felt like Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger, who’d descended to the South Pole and discovered dinosaurs instead of glaciers.
“So this is where they dug it,” Jules said softly, wonderingly. “The tunnel to nowhere.” He thought back to the time, decades ago, when Canal Street had been snarled with earthmoving machines. More than thirty years had passed since the demise of the ill-conceived Riverfront Expressway project, a spur of highway that would’ve cut the French Quarter off from the Mississippi and permanently shadowed Cafй Du Monde with six lanes of elevated traffic. While a group of dedicated preservationists had fought the project in court and in Congress, the road builders had pressed forward, digging a massive tunnel beneath the International Trade Mart, a twenty-story riverfront monolith that stood in the path of the planned highway.
Then, against all expectations, the preservationists won their fight. The highway was canceled. But the tunnel endured. Its entrances were closed off; it didn’t make sense to fill in the hole that remained, but no one could come up with a use for it. Over the years, everyone forgot it was there.
Almost everyone. The man who became Malice X hadn’t even been born when the tunnel was first dug, but someone older than he had remembered the big hole by the river. Someone who realized that, with enough money invested, the hole would make an ideal sunproof lair for vampires.
The black vampire had certainly invested his wages of sin impressively. In the center of the tunnel was a Greek Revival mansion that wouldn’t have appeared out of place on St. Charles Avenue. A glassed-in garden and courtyard, a third as big as a football field, filled the space between the mansion’s two rear wings. A small fleet of tricked-out luxury cars and sport-utility vehicles was parked next to a gated access tunnel at the cavern’s far end. Most unusual of all, however, was what covered the cavern’s ceiling-a canopy of glittering stars and bright planets. Jules hadn’t seen such a glorious night sky within the city limits since before the widespread adoption of electric lights.
Jules stared upward, slack-jawed, as a meteor shower highlighted the faux sky. “Impressed?” Malice X’s wry, scornful voice boomed from hidden loudspeakers. “It’s a shame you won’t be around to see our beautiful sunrise,” the electronic voice continued while Jules searched futilely for its owner. “But it’s the sunsets, man-that’s when my light dude really earns his keep.”
“I didn’t come for no IMAX show,” Jules grumbled in the direction of the house. “You gonna show your face, mother-killer, or do I have to tear your place apart lookin‘ for you?”
“ ‘Muthah-killer’? For a sec there, I thought you might shock me and cuss me somethin‘ more colorful. You sound like a man in a hurry. Relax. I’ll make things as simple as possible. To find me, just follow yo’ heart’s desire.”
A series of pencil-thin beams of light illuminated dozens of beignets lying on the cobblestones. The sugar-laden squares of fried dough formed a winding pathway that led around the side of the mansion. He’d better enjoy his little jokes about my weight, Jules thought.Bastard won’t be making them much longer. As he followed the path of beignets, the spotlights stayed a few yards ahead of him. The path ended at the doorway to the glassed-in courtyard.
Jules opened the door, made of crimson stained glass, and stepped into the spacious garden. They were all there, standing behind the flowers and neatly trimmed hedges that enclosed a central square of immaculate lawn. He recognized about half the dark gray faces that stared him down. The toughs who’d surrounded him and Doodlebug in the alley outside Club Hit ‘N’ Run, who’d nearly killed him outside Maureen’s house. Cowboy Hat was there, still sporting his distinctive western wear and the chip on his shoulder. Even Malice X’s sister was there, glaring at Jules evilly. She spat sharply into a hedge as he closed the door behind him.
Jules didn’t look at her for long. He quickly locked eyes with the man he’d come to close accounts with. Malice X sat in an ornate wicker porch swing, squeezed comfortably between a pair of adoring, buxom women vampires. In contrast to the rest of Malice’s entourage, they paid Jules no attention at all, contenting themselves with running their long-nailed fingers across their master’s broad biceps and nearly bare chest.
“Welcome to my ‘humble abode,’ Jules,” Malice X said, smiling a Cheshire cat grin. “Welcome to Palace X.” He kept his arms snugly around his companions, leaving himself insouciantly vulnerable to any sort of projectile weapon Jules mig
ht’ve sneaked in under his coat. “All those priests at Jesuit High, man, they kept tellin‘ me I hadda go to college to make somethin’ of myself, tobe somebody. What thefuck did they know, huh? You know where all this comes from? Smarts, man. I came up with a good product, I marketed it right, and then I stashed my profits away in tech stocks. The joint upstairs? It wouldn’texist without me. Those yo-yos who wanted to build the world’s biggest casino, they couldn’t get their ducks in a row. Couldn’t line up the financing, didn’t have the pull with the local politicos. I could, and I did. I was their-what’d they call it? Oh, yeah. Their ‘white knight.’Heh.
“And you know what? I accomplished all this in less than a decade as a vampire. Less thanten years. How long’ve you been a bloodsuckah, Jules? Eighty years? A hundred? And what’s been the peak of your success? Tempting fat-ass old bag ladies into a cab even more broken down than they were?”
“You done bragging?” Jules asked flatly.
“No.” Malice X smiled again. “I’m not. Had yourself a good time with that chippie from the Strategic Helium Reserve?”
Jules was careful not to let any emotion play across his face. “So you were behind that, too. You ain’t tellin‘ me anything I haven’t already figured.”
“But yougotta admit it was slick-one vampire siccin‘ the vampire hunters on another. You know why I did it? Not because I thought I couldn’t do the job on you myself. I pulled the feds’ strings because I could. Because it waseasy. I had all these bigwigs at City Hall eatin’ outta my hand, beggin‘ me for their next dose of Horse-X. They had connections, and their connections had connections. I wanted to see what the feds had. What kinda antivampire doohickies they could come up with. And if I could find that out and make your life miserable at the same time-hey, Inever pass up a two-fer.”
“Yeah? Well here’s a two-fer for you. I left your fed dame lookin‘ like a sap, and I’ll do the same to you.”
Malice X laughed. “Hey, I got nodoubt you left her lookin‘ like a sap. You walk around lookin’ like a sapall the time.” He laughed again, and then his smile faded. “But you ain’t gonna be walkin‘ outtahere, sappy lookin’ or not.”
Jules had no more patience for banter. It was time to call his rival out. “You gonna back those words up? Or are you just gonna sit there and threaten me to death?”
Malice X pushed his lady companions aside and rose from the swing. His silver Lycra athletic pants glistened like polished chrome, and his ribbed undershirt did little to conceal his chiseled abdomen and oiled, bulging pectorals.
“Preston, fetch us the stakes,” he said.
Cowboy Hat picked up what looked like an antique rifle case and laid it at Malice X’s feet. The lieutenant unlatched the case and opened it. Inside were two identical shafts of maple wood, about four feet long, each with both ends sharpened to a deadly point.
“This is an idea I copped from a bossTomb of Dracula comic,” Malice X said proudly. “In this one issue, see, ol‘ Drac was challenged by this other bloodsuckah as to who should be king of all the vampires. So Drac proposed a ’Duel by Stake‘-two vampires, two stakes, and only one vampire walks away. Wicked, huh?”
Jules eyed the twin stakes warily. The introduction of such weapons didn’t come as a complete surprise to him. Before the days of gentlemen’s agreements and arbitration in the vampire world, duels like this had been distressingly common. Anyway, if he played his cards right, he could twist the introduction of stakes to his own advantage. “Okay. I’ll accept your terms. On one condition,” he added.
Malice X raised an eyebrow. “Who said anything ‘bout any ’conditions‘?”
“Idid,” Jules said. “I’m on your turf, ain’t I? Surrounded by your friends and flunkies? If you’re so cocksure you’re better than me, and you’ve got home-field advantage on top of that, what’s the harm in throwin‘ me one little bone?”
“That tub-a-lard ain’t got no right to demandnothin‘!” Malice X’s sister shrieked, her face contorted with contempt. But many other onlookers murmured that they wanted to hear Jules’s demand. The murmurs were subdued and nearly anonymous, but they were insistent.
Jules watched Malice X’s face carefully. Clearly, the black vampire agreed wholeheartedly with his sister’s admonition; but just as clearly, he couldn’t risk losing even a fraction of the respect granted him by his underlings. Jules enjoyed seeing flickers of indecision play across his rival’s mouth. “All right… name it, fat man. One condition.”
“I win this duel, I get your coffin. You burned up mine when you torched my house. I need a new one.”
“That’sit?” Malice X’s momentary indecision morphed into incredulity. “That’syour one condition? I thought maybe you’d want me to fight with both hands tied behind my back or somethin‘-”
“That’s my condition. And I want it down herenow. Where I can see it. Before we start our duel.”
“Why the hell d’you want that for?”
“So you can’t welsh on me after I win.”
Malice X started to protest, but his objections melted into rich laughter. “Fuck yeah, man. Sure! I gave you a chance to make this dustup halfway fair, and if that’s what you want, that’s what you get, man. It’s your fuckin‘ funeral, and you got a right to screw it up any way you wanna.” He turned to his chief lieutenant. “Preston, take a coupla dudes and fetch my coffin from the master bedroom. Make it snappy, huh? I wanna get in a coupla rounds of blackjack upstairs before the sun rises.”
Cowboy Hat grunted his assent, then nodded to a pair of toughs, and the three of them disappeared into the mansion. Malice X turned back toward Jules. “So what doI get whenI win? And don’t be tryin‘ to pawn off that lame-ass car of yours on me.”
Jules thought about this for a minute. “If you win, you get to scatter my ashes in the parking lot of the Esplanade Mall, so my sufferin‘ soul is stuck in the goddamn suburbs forever.”
Malice X laughed sharply. “Shit, man, fuck the parkin‘ lot. You goin’ in the mall’surinals.”
“Whatever,” Jules muttered. And he managed a tight little grin of his own as he watched Cowboy Hat and the others maneuver Malice X’s polished teak coffin through the double doors into the courtyard.
“Okay, it’s here,” Malice X said. “Satisfied?”
“Yeah,” Jules said. He took off his safari jacket, then knelt down to untie his boots and pull them and his socks off. Next to come off were his shirt and undershirt. He had unbuckled his belt and was unzipping his trousers when Malice X interrupted.
“What th‘ hell you tryin’ to do now-nullify my knockout by nauseatin‘ me with your nudity?”
“I’m strippin‘ down for action,” Jules said, sitting on a stone bench while he peeled off his trousers and began the arduous task of extricating his underpants from between his massive thighs. “You got a problem with that?”
“No problem. Just a silly li’l question: How the hell do you plan on holdin‘ a four-foot stake when you got wolf’s paws or bat’s claws?”
“You letme worry about that,” Jules said, smiling inwardly. He scooped up his pile of clothing and walked boldly across the open square to where Malice X stood. He made no attempt at all to cover his privates (mostly hidden by his stomach, anyway) or to hide his tremendous, quivering white ass from the onlooking crowd. For the first time he could remember, he wasn’t ashamed, either of his naked body or having strangers see it. His overwhelming mass was an asset, not a handicap-his secret ace in the hole, secret even though it was in plain sight of everyone. He’d show them all, before the night was done. He’d show them what a fat vampire could do.
He dumped his clothes next to the coffin. “So they’ll be handy when it’s time to cart this thing away,” he said. He glanced at the two long stakes in the leather case near Malice X’s feet. “How about lettin‘ me have one of them pig stickers now?”
“Give him one, Preston,” Malice X said. Cowboy Hat grunted wearily, selected one of the stakes, and held it out to Jul
es.
“Gimme the other one,” Jules said.
The lieutenant looked quickly to Malice X, who shrugged irritably and said, “Let ‘im have it.” Cowboy Hat handed his boss the first stake, then gave Jules the second one.
Jules backed away to the far edge of the open square of grass. He broke the stake twice over his knee, snapping it into three stubby weapons. Before his rival could do more than grunt with surprise, Jules whispered two words to himself.
“Train set,”he said.
It was the most difficult transformation he’d ever attempted. He concentrated on thoughts of all the little tough guys he’d admired in the movies-Alan Ladd, Jimmy Cagney, Edward G. Robinson. Little tough guys who didn’t put up with shit from anybody; fighters worth twice their weight in a scrap. He was going to do something even Doodlebug couldn’t do-he was going to carve three middleweight vampires from one heavyweight.
He felt his bones melting. He sensed the familiar pull of his far-off coffin on a portion of his great mass, but he resisted, concentrating on keeping it all present, splitting himself like an amoeba. His nerve endings were afire, but he refused to settle for the familiar, the easy. Images flashed through his splintering mind-Jake La Motta; Sugar Ray Robinson; the mayor of Munchkinland in his little purple suit…
The fleshy mist began to clear and coalesce. For a moment Jules felt like he was on the wildest caffeine jag of his life. But then the static in his brain(brains?) died down to a tolerable buzz. He’d done it. Again he experienced the vertigo of looking at himself watching himself stare at himself. Where there had been one 450-pound Jules, there now stood three 150-pound Juleses.
Unfortunately, he’d concentrated too much on the Munchkins and not enough on Jake La Motta.
Fat White Vampire Blues Page 39
