by P. N. Elrod
My nape prickled at his insight. I remembered that moment and wasn’t proud of it, yet the idea had bolstered me when I was in need and gotten me out of a death sentence.
He went on. “You’d just figured out you were the big fish, and big fish feed on little fish. Only with us it’s a literal thing. The question is, do you make a habit of feeding from people?”
“I goddamn don’t.”
He made a “no problem” gesture. “That’s fine then, fine.”
“And you?” I’d once encountered a vampire who took human blood—often and any way he liked. I saw to it he came to a bad end.
“I’m not in the habit, no.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I got.” He scowled when I didn’t respond. “Get off your hind legs, Fleming, I’m no menace to society. I’m retired now.”
Time will tell, I thought.
He waved the bottle under his nose again. “You get this stuff from the Stockyards?”
I nodded.
“Pretty smart. Good for emergencies, but someone could find it.”
“Who looks twice at an old bottle? Nobody but my partner is ever here anyway, and he’s wise.”
“That would be the guy in the hospital? Charles Escott?”
“Yeah. This is his house.” Kroun had never actually met him, but had gotten plenty of information about my life and hard times from long talks with Gordy, who was also wise. Escott knew Kroun by sight and reputation, the latter being very grim, indeed. Somehow the reputation didn’t seem to match up with the guy in front of me. Lots of people were good at hiding their real sides, though. I was an expert.
“And he knows all about you?”
“Yeah. Everything.”
“You trust him with this?” He lifted the bottle, not talking about blood, but rather the condition that required I drink it.
“Completely. He’s been one hell of a friend.”
Kroun shook his head. “You’re nuts to leave yourself open like that.”
“Guess I am.”
“Well, I don’t want him knowing about me.”
“He doesn’t. Last he heard you’d been blown up in the car. Killed.”
“Keep it like that.”
“No problem.” Escott was in no shape to be told. I also wanted to have some space between him and potential trouble.
“That girlfriend of yours…”
“Won’t talk.” Some edge slipped into my tone. Kroun heard it and picked up the meaning. Bobbi was strictly hands-off. He got the message.
He had a sample sip from the brown bottle. From his grimace it wasn’t perfect, but drinkable; the blood would cure his hunger quick enough and speed his healing. He suddenly tilted the bottle and finished it off in one quick, guzzling draft. The stuff must have charged through him like a bull elephant. Head bowed, he gave in to a long shudder as though it had been 180-proof booze and not cattle blood.
“Wow,” he whispered, almost in awe.
I knew the feeling. Taken hot from a vein, the internal kick is astonishing. When cold from storage, the reaction isn’t that strong unless you’re on the verge of starvation. Kroun possessed one hell of a lot of self-control to be willing to stick it out going hungry. If I went too long between meals, I got crazy—tunnel vision, unable to think straight, a threat to people around me, nothing pleasant. I made sure to feed every other night, though lately I’d been overfeeding like a drunk on a binge. It was a considerable relief now not to have that tug of mindless appetite urging me to clean out the rest of the cache in the icebox.
“That hit the spot, thanks.” Kroun handed the empty bottle over, and I rinsed it in the sink. He looked improved, even filled out a little. Blood works fast on our kind. The whites of his eyes were flushed dark red and would stay that way for a short time, iris and pupils lost to view. I tried not to stare.
“Another?”
“No thanks.” He moved into what was originally meant to be a dining room, but Escott wasn’t one for fancy eating, preferring the kitchen. His old dining table was a huge work desk decked with orderly piles of books and papers. There was a big sideboard along one wall, but it served as a liquor cabinet and storage for odds and ends. Kroun paused and peered through the glass doors at all the bottles.
“Your partner a lush?”
Once upon a time. Back then a very good friend of his got tired of the drinking and tried to beat some sense into Escott about it. It’d worked. “He likes to be prepared for company.”
The next room was the front parlor with a long sofa, my favorite chair, and the radio. I didn’t bother switching on a lamp; the spill from the kitchen was enough for us. It also wouldn’t reach the parlor window and give away that anyone was home.
Newspapers were stacked so precisely on the low table in the middle that you couldn’t tell if they’d been read yet. They were yesterday’s editions, and Escott would have gone through them, it just didn’t show. He was that neat about things.
I grabbed the one on top, which bore a headline about the mysterious deaths of nightclub singer Alan Caine and his ex-wife Jewel.
Damn it all.
The story itself was thin on facts, padded to two columns by biographical sketches for them both. The police were investigating what appeared to be a murder-suicide. The estranged couple had been seen arguing in public and so on and so forth.
Damn again. Removing the accusation of murder and stigma of suicide from Jewel’s name would be impossible. The killer was on his way to the bottom of the lake by now. He had no direct connection to either of them that could be proved. Any stepping forward on my part would be a futile gesture that would pin me square under the cops’ spotlight.
I couldn’t risk it and felt like a coward by giving in to common sense.
But still…maybe I could fix something up…get some of Derner’s boys to phone an anonymous tip or three to the rags while the story was still newsworthy, sow some doubt. A double murder was a juicier story to sell than a murder-suicide.
I’d have to talk to Derner about funeral arrangements for poor Jewel. She hadn’t had two dimes; I didn’t want her going to the potter’s field just because her ex hadn’t kept up the alimony.
I’d get things moving and hope it wasn’t already too late. The world spun on relentlessly. New disasters rose up to overshadow the old as I discovered when I quit the parlor for the entry hall and opened the front door. Several editions lay piled on the porch. I grabbed them up, kicked the door shut, and dropped them all on the parlor table. To judge by the headlines, the presses had been stopped in order to fit in something special.
They all had the same story.
The only event that could eclipse a nightclub headliner’s murder was the shooting of a movie actor. It warranted larger, bolder type to convey the importance of a near-fatal assault on the life of Roland Lambert, onetime Hollywood matinee idol.
Roland would hate the “onetime” part, but ignore it with bemused grace. He and his ballerina wife, Faustine, did exhibition dancing at my club, working to raise grubstake money so he could go back to California in style for a return to films. Toward that end, he’d made the most of the free publicity, having apparently granted an exclusive interview to every reporter in the country.
Above the fold in one journal was a picture of Roland in his plain hospital whites, managing to look devil-handsome, gallant, brash, and charming, just like the sword-fighting heroes he’d played on-screen. Faustine sat bravely at his bedside, holding his hand, decked out in the best Paris could offer, exotic and erotic as always. He wouldn’t be dancing much anymore, having been shot in the leg.
That was my fault. Sort of. Roland had been in the wrong place when a bad guy had cut loose with bullets meant for me. The shooter was dead now. Not my fault—for a change—and someone else had bumped him off in turn. Roland didn’t know that part and never would.
He had quite another story to tell, though, and it was a pip.
He’d sold
the reporters the malarkey that he had run afoul of some real Chicago mobsters, and the tale was developing a life of its own.
“SHERLOCK” LAMBERT TAKES ON THE GANGS!—no kidding, that was how they’d printed it—headed an overwritten four-column section of a sob sister’s feature. It was long on emotion, purple prose, with damn few facts, but why let the truth get in the way of such thrilling entertainment?
According to that version of events, a mysterious underworld figure had imposed his unwanted attentions on an innocent bride—at this point it was noted that film legend Roland Lambert adoringly kissed the hand of his beautiful wife, the famous Russian ballerina Faustine Petrova. After a brisk bout of fisticuffs, the gangster had been sent off in round order by her valiant husband, but that wasn’t to be the end of it. Strange threatening letters began to arrive, compelling Roland to investigate and deal with their source. He was making serious progress at tracking the bounder to his lair, which was too close for comfort for at least one of the miscreants, and resulted in the present small setback. Here Roland gestured ruefully at his dreadful wounding.
Oh, brother.
At the time of the shooting, I’d been in a blind panic that I’d gotten him killed. Nothing like a little rest and a lot of personal moxie to turn things on their head. With a trowel in each hand, he’d plastered it on thick. I had serious doubts that any of the mugs in the gangs even knew the meaning of miscreant, but had to admire him. Roland’s eyewash was a great misdirection. He’d made himself into a crime-busting hero, and my name was never once mentioned. What a relief.
The sob sister went into grand and glorious detail about how Roland had rescued his lovely bride from conflict-torn Russia. Their daring escape culminated in the Lamberts’ romantic shipboard wedding amid the threat of lurking German submarines. Somehow, routine lifeboat drills took on an ominous significance, and the fate of the Lusitania twenty years back was remembered as though it had occurred yesterday. If there was ever going to be another war in Europe, stories like this would be one of the causes.
The couple had actually met over cocktails at a cast party for one of Roland’s London plays, but that didn’t make nearly as exciting copy.
The next paper went one better and compared Roland and Faustine to Nick and Nora Charles, speculating that a movie of their real-life adventures should be filmed, something that would even top The Thin Man for popularity.
Sleuth away, old sport, I thought.
Below the fold were a few short paragraphs about the mystery explosion in Chicago’s Bronze Belt. It was old news compared to the rest, but could still sell a paper. A stark photo showed a smoke-filled street and staring bystanders frozen in the moment, but the camera flash hadn’t reached far enough to show what was burning. It was a good shot, though; the photographer must have arrived with the fire trucks.
“You see this?” I asked, showing the page.
My houseguest was also catching up on the news and shook his head. “Huh. Doesn’t look like the same place.”
“You saw it from a different angle.”
“I didn’t see much but smoke.”
Kroun had hurtled from the bomb-gutted car and hidden behind some curbside trash cans before going to ground for the day, leading everyone to believe he’d been blown to hell and gone. Our kind is pretty damned tough, but there are limits. Kroun had only survived because of the car’s armor plating and the devil’s own luck. He’d gotten seriously hammered around and burned, though. It was really too bad he was unable to vanish and heal the way I could.
The story was little more than a thin rewrite of yesterday’s edition, but this time had names. Someone had traced the car’s owner. The police wanted to question underworld figure Gordy Weems about the incident. He’d love that.
Kroun read the piece through and snorted. “They don’t know anything. This guy got it all wrong.”
“It happens. For you it’s better if they don’t have the facts.”
“You used to do that, didn’t you? Reporting?”
“Yeah. About a thousand years ago.” I dropped into my chair, putting my feet up on the table.
“I hope that’s a joke.”
It occurred to me that he didn’t know my real age, either. I was thirty-seven, but looked a lot younger. I felt a brief, smug grin stretch my face.
“So how long have you been like this?”
Just the question I wanted to ask. “You first.”
“Uh-uh. You.” He went past me to peer out the front window, pulling the curtain open just a crack, perhaps checking for the first changes that marked the coming dawn. You couldn’t always trust a clock.
“Happened a year ago last August,” I said.
“When you came to Chicago?”
“Yeah. Slick Morelli and Frank Paco did the honors.”
They’d murdered me—a slow, vicious process—but I’d gotten some payback in the end. Slick was dead and Paco raving in a nuthouse God knows where. There was a lesson in that mess someplace about picking your enemies carefully, but I didn’t like thinking about it.
“Morelli and Paco?” Kroun sounded like he’d met them once upon a time. “What’d you do to get noticed by those two?”
“Nothing I want to talk about.” And he would know it already. He’d spent time with Gordy, who knew all the dirt about my Undead condition and how it had happened. Kroun would have used hypnosis to pick Gordy’s brain clean about my death, so what was his game asking me? Probably to see if the stories matched. Suspicious bastard. I could get annoyed, only in his place I’d have done the same. “What about yourself? How did you buy it?”
He didn’t answer, closely watching something outside. The only reasonable activity at this hour might be someone leaving for an early job or the milkman making his round.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Car’s stopped in front of the house.”
Now what?
“You know a big colored guy? Well dressed? Drives a Nash?”
Oh, hell. “What about him?”
“He’s coming up the walk. Looks pissed, too.”
“Let him in.”
“It’s your door, and I’m no butler.”
The man outside began ringing the bell and pounding. I tiredly boosted up.
Kroun stepped into the entry hall. “Oh, yeah. He’s pissed. I’d stay to watch, but—”
“Upstairs. Third floor. Keep quiet.”
He went quick despite the limp, not making a lot of noise, though I couldn’t hear much over the racket. He ducked from view at the top landing, stifling a cough.
I got the door. “Hi, Shoe.”
Shoe Coldfield filled a very large portion of the opening, his anger making him loom even larger. Before I could say anything else, a word of explanation, an invitation to come inside, he slammed a fist of iron into my gut.
2
HE had an arm like a train. All the breath shot out of me. I folded and staggered and kept my feet only by grabbing the stair rail with one flailing hand. It wasn’t as bad as it might have been for anyone else. I didn’t want a second helping, though.
Coldfield’s dark face was darker than normal, suffused with barely controlled rage. “You know why I’m here,” he rumbled. Volcanoes reach that kind of deep pitch before they blow.
Took an experimental sip of air for speech. “Oh, yeah.”
“Why the hell did you do that to him?”
“How’d you—”
“I got people who work at the hospital. One of them saw Charles brought in looking like he’d been worked over by a bulldozer and called me. They wouldn’t let me see him. Took one look and knew I wasn’t a relation. I tracked down the ambulance drivers and got them to talk. What the hell did you do?”
I’d grown a thick hide over my ability to feel guilt over some of the more objectionable things I’d done in life, but it was no protection now. I was in the wrong, and there were consequences to face.
“Charles and I had a fight—”
“The hell you did! What about?”
The words got stuck long before the halfway mark. The situation was edging close to being a reprise of my fight with Escott. Sweat popped out on my flanks.
“What?”
I shook my head. There was no way I could tell Coldfield what I’d done that had infuriated Escott enough to beat the crap out of me—and then my going bughouse-crazy out of control and returning the favor. All I could do was thank God that I’d stopped short of murder. I couldn’t remember much about the fight, but the aftermath was clear and sharp, especially those frozen-in-lead moments when I thought Escott was dead.
“What?” Coldfield loomed again.
“Charles was pissed with me about something and we got into it. It’s not important now.” Favoring my middle, I straightened, knowing what was coming. No way out.
“Goddammit, you put him in the hospital!” Coldfield piled in a rain of gut-busters, grunting from the effort. He was in on my secret. Had been for a while. He also knew about the ugly business with Hog Bristow, what the bastard had done to me. For all that, Coldfield didn’t pull a single punch.
And I took it.
He finally knocked me ass flat on the floor. I stayed there, not quite keeling over.
“Talk to me, you sonovabitch!”
He wasn’t going away. Come sunrise he’d probably continue beating on my apparently dead body to make sure I had more damage than Escott.
I raised one hand in surrender. Seemed like too much trouble to stand. He’d just put me back again. It hurt to draw breath to speak. Took a minute to get enough air inside to do the job. “Look…you once socked him for his own good…didn’t you? You got fed up?”
Coldfield nodded slowly. “What about it?”
“This time it was my turn. He did his damnedest to pound some sense into me. Nearly took my block off.”
“You don’t look it.”
“I heal fast, remember?”
“And then what?”
“I wouldn’t listen. So Charles kept at me…until I hit him. That’s where the ambulance came in. I’m sorry, Shoe. I didn’t mean for it to go that way. I’d take it back if I could.”
