Vampires: The Recent Undead (55 page)

I was seriously trying to cut down on the Camels, but the damage was done back in the puff-happy ’40s when no one outside the cigarette industry knew nicotine was worse for you than heroin. I told people I was drinking less, but never really kept score. There were times, like now, when Scotch was the only soldier that could complete the mission.

Junior, as he talked, drank faster than I did. His light tan suit was the worse for a soaking, and had been worn until dry, wrinkling and staining around the saggy shape of its owner. His shirtfront had ragged tears where he had caught on something.

Since his remarriage to a woman nearer Racquel’s age than Linda’s, Junior had been a fading presence in the lives of his ex-wife and daughter (ex-daughter?). I couldn’t tell how much of his story was from experience and how much filtered through what others had told him. It was no news that Racquel was running with another bad crowd, the Anti-Life Equation. They weren’t all vipers, Junior said, but some, the ringleaders, were. Racquel, it appears, got off on being bitten. Not something I wanted to know, but it hardly came as a surprise. With the motorcycle boy, who went by the name of Heavenly Blues but liked his friends to address him as “Mr. President,” she was sporting a selection of bruises that didn’t look like they’d come from taking a bad spill off the pillion of his hog. For tax purposes, the Anti-Life Equation was somewhere between religious and political. I had never heard of them, but it’s impossible to keep up with all the latest cults.

Two days ago, at his office—Junior made a pretense of still running the company, though he had to clear every paper clip purchase with Riyadh and Tokyo—he’d taken a phone call from his daughter. Racquel sounded agitated and terrified, and claimed she’d made a break with the ALE, who wanted to sacrifice her to some elder vampire. She needed money—that same old refrain, haunting me again—to make a dash for Hawaii or, oddly, the Philippines (she thought she’d be safe in a Catholic country, which suggested she’d never been to one). Junior, tower of flab, had written a check, but his new wife, smart doll, talked him out of sending it. Last night, at home, he had gotten another call from Racquel, hysterical this time, with screaming and other background effects. They were coming for her, she said. The call was cut off.

To his credit, Junior ignored his lawfully-married flight attendant and drove over to Linda’s place in Poodle Springs, the big house where I’d been uncomfortable. He found the doors open, the house extensively trashed and no sign of Racquel. Linda was at the bottom of the kidney-shaped swimming pool, bitten all over, eyes white. To set a seal on the killing, someone had driven an iron spike through her forehead. A croquet mallet floated above her. I realized he had gone into the pool fully-dressed and hauled Linda out. Strictly speaking, that was violating the crime scene but I would be the last person to complain.

He had called the cops, who were very concerned. Then, he’d driven to the city to see me. It’s not up to me to say whether that qualified as a smart move or not.

“This Anti-Life Equation?” I asked Junior, feeling like a shamus again. “Did it come with any names?”

“I’m not even sure it’s called that. Racquel mostly used just the initials, ALE. I think it was Anti-Life Element once. Or Anti-Love. Their guru or nabob or whatever he calls himself is some kind of hippie Rasputin. He’s one of them, a viper. His name is Khorda. Someone over at one of the studios—Traeger or Mill or one of those kids, maybe Bruckheimer—fed this Khorda some money on an option, but it was never-never stuff. So far as I know, they never killed anyone before.”

Junior cried again and put his arms around me. I smelled chlorine on his ragged shirt. I felt all his weight bearing me down, and was afraid I’d break, be no use to him at all. My bones are brittle these days. I patted his back, which made neither of us feel any better. At last, he let me go and wiped his face on a wet handkerchief.

“The police are fine people,” he said. He got no argument from me. “Poodle Springs has the lowest crime rate in the state. Every contact I’ve had with the PSPD has been cordial, and I’ve always been impressed with their efficiency and courtesy.”

The Poodle Springs Police Department were real tigers when it came to finding lost kittens and discreetly removing drunken ex-spouses from floodlit front lawns. You can trust me on this.

“But they aren’t good with murder,” I said. “Or vipers.”

Junior nodded. “That’s just it. They aren’t. I know you’re retired. God, you must be I don’t know how old. But you used to be connected. Linda told me how you met, about the Wade-Lennox case. I can’t even begin to imagine how you could’ve figured out that tangle. For her, you’ve got to help. Racquel is still alive. They didn’t kill her when they killed her mother. They just took her. I want my little girl back safe and sound. The police don’t know Racquel. Well, they do . . . and that’s the problem. They said they were taking the kidnap seriously, but I saw in their eyes that they knew about Racquel and the bikers and the hippies. They think she’s run off with another bunch of freaks. It’s only my word that Racquel was even at the house. I keep thinking of my little girl, of sands running out. Desert sands. You’ve got to help us. You’ve just got to.”

I didn’t make promises, but I asked questions.

“Racquel said the ALE wanted to sacrifice her? As in tossed into a volcano to appease the Gods?”

“She used a bunch of words. ’Elevate’ was one. They all meant ‘kill.’ Blood sacrifice, that’s what she was afraid of. Those vipers want my little girl’s blood.”

“Junior, I have to ask, so don’t explode. You’re sure Racquel isn’t a part of this?”

Junior made fists, like a big boy about to get whipped by someone half his size. Then it got through to the back of his brain. I wasn’t making assumptions like the PSPD, I was asking an important question, forcing him to prove himself to me.

“If you’d heard her on the phone, you’d know. She was terrified. Remember when she wanted to be an actress? Set her heart on it, nagged for lessons and screen tests. She was—what?—eleven or twelve? Cute as a bug, but froze under the lights. She’s no actress. She can’t fake anything. She can’t tell a lie without it being written all over her. You know that as well as anyone else. My daughter isn’t a perfect person, but she’s a kid. She’ll straighten out. She’s got her mom’s iron in her.”

I followed his reasoning. It made sense. The only person Racquel had ever fooled was her father, and him only because he let himself be fooled out of guilt. She’d never have come to me for gas money if Junior were still giving in to his princess’s every whim. And he was right— I’d seen Racquel Ohlrig (who had wanted to call herself Amber Valentine) act, and she was on the Sonny Tufts side of plain rotten.

“Khorda,” I said, more to myself than Junior. “That’s a start. I’ll do what I can.”

Mojave Wells could hardly claim to come to life after dark, but when the blond viper slid out of the desert dusk, all four living people in the diner—Mom and Pop behind the counter, a trucker and me on stools—turned to look. She smiled as if used to the attention but deeming herself unworthy of it, and walked between the empty tables.

The girl wore a white silk minidress belted on her hips with interlocking steel rings, a blue scarf that kept her hair out of the way, and square black sunglasses. Passing from purple twilight to fizzing blue-white neon, her skin was white to the point of colorlessness, her lips naturally scarlet, her hair pale blond. She might have been Racquel’s age or God’s.

I had come to the desert to find vampires. Here was one.

She sat at the end of the counter, by herself. I sneaked a look. She was framed against the “No Vipers” sign lettered on the window. Mom and Pop—probably younger than me, I admit—made no move to throw her out on her behind, but also didn’t ask for her order.

“Get the little lady whatever she wants and put it on my check,” said the trucker. The few square inches of his face not covered by salt-and-pepper beard were worn leather, the texture and color of his cowboy hat.

“Thank you very much, but I’ll pay for myself.”

Her voice was soft and clear, with a long-ago ghost of an accent. Italian or Spanish or French.

“R.D., you know we don’t accommodate vipers,” said Mom. “No offense, ma’am, you look nice enough, but we’ve had bad ones through here. And out at the castle.”

Mom nodded at the sign and the girl swivelled on her stool. She genuinely noticed it for the first time and the tiniest flush came to her cheeks.

Almost apologetically, she suggested, “You probably don’t have the
fare
I need?”

“No, ma’am, we don’t.”

She slipped off her stool and stood up. Relief poured out of Mom like sweat.

R.D., the trucker, reached out for the viper’s slender, bare arm, for a reason I doubt he could explain. He was a big man, not slow on the draw. However, when his fingers got to where the girl had been when his brain sparked the impulse to touch, she was somewhere else.

“Touchy,” commented R.D.

“No offense,” she said.

“I’ve got the fare you need,” said the trucker, standing up. He scratched his throat through beard.

“I’m not that thirsty.”

“A man might take that unkindly.”

“If you know such a man, give him my condolences.”

“R.D.,” said Mom. “Take this outside. I don’t want my place busted up.”

“I’m leaving,” said R.D., dropping dollars by his coffee cup and cleaned plate. “I’ll be honored to see you in the parking lot, Missy Touchy.”

“My name is Geneviève,” she said, “
accent grave
on the third
e
.”

R.D. put on his cowboy hat. The viper darted close to him and lightning-touched his forehead. The effect was something like the Vulcan nerve pinch. The light in his eyes went out. She deftly sat him down at a table, like a floppy rag doll. A yellow toy duck squirted out of the top pocket of his denim jacket and thumped against a plastic ketchup tomato in an unheard-of mating ritual.

“I am sorry,” she said to the room. “I have been driving for a long time and could not face having to cripple this man. I hope you will explain this to him when he wakes up. He’ll ache for a few days, but an icepack will help.”

Mom nodded. Pop had his hands out of sight, presumably on a shotgun or a baseball bat.

“For whatever offense my kind has given you in the past, you have my apologies. One thing, though: your sign—the word ‘viper.’ I hear it more and more as I travel west, and it strikes me as insulting. ’No Vampire Fare on Offer’ will convey your message, without provoking less gentle
vipers
than myself.” She looked mock-sternly at the couple, with a hint of fang. Pop pulled his hold-out pacifier and I tensed, expecting fireworks. He raised a gaudy Day of the Dead crucifix on a lamp-flex, a glowing-eyed Christ crowned by thorny lightbulbs.

“Hello, Jesus,” said Geneviève, then added, to Pop: “Sorry, sir, but I’m not that kind of girl.”

She did the fast-flit thing again and was at the door.

“Aren’t you going to take your trophy?” I asked.

She turned, looked at me for the first time, and lowered her glasses. Green-red eyes like neons. I could see why she kept on the lens caps. Otherwise, she’d pick up a train of mesmerized conquests.

I held up the toy and squeezed. It gave a quack.

“Rubber Duck,” said Mom, with reverence. “That’s his CB handle.”

“He’ll need new initials,” I said.

I flew the duck across the room and Geneviève took it out of the air, an angel in the outfield. She made it quack, experimentally. When she laughed, she looked the way Racquel ought to have looked. Not just innocent, but solemn and funny at the same time.

R.D. began moaning in his sleep.

“May I walk you to your car?” I asked.

She thought a moment, sizing me up as a potential geriatric Duckman, and made a snap decision in my favor, the most encouragement I’d had since Kennedy was in the White House.

I made it across the diner to her without collapsing.

I had never had a conversation with a vampire before. She told me straight off she was over five hundred and fifty years old. She had lived in the human world for hundreds of years before Dracula changed the rules. From her face, I’d have believed her if she said she was born under the shadow of Sputnik and that her ambition was to become one of Roger Vadim’s ex-wives.

We stood on Main Street, where her fire-engine-red Plymouth Fury was parked by my Chrysler. The few stores and homes in sight were shuttered up tight, as if an air raid was due. The only place to go in town was the diner and that seemed on the point of closing. I noticed more of those ornamental crucifixes, attached above every door as if it were a religious holiday. Mojave Wells was wary of its new neighbors.

Geneviève was coming from the East and going to the West. Meager as it was, this was the first place she’d hit in hours that wasn’t a government proving ground. She knew nothing about the Anti-Life Equation, Manderley, Castle or a viper named Khorda, let alone Racquel Ohlrig.

But she was a vampire and this was all about vampires.

“Why all the questions?” she asked.

I told her I was a detective. I showed my license, kept up so I could at least do the sub-contract work, and she asked to see my gun. I opened my jacket to show the shoulder holster. It was the first time I’d worn it in years, and the weight of the Smith & Wesson .38 special had pulled an ache in my shoulder.

“You are a private eye? Like in the movies.”

Everyone said that. She was no different.

“We have movies in Europe, you know,” she said. The desert wind was trying to get under her scarf, and she was doing things about it with her hands. “You can’t tell me why you’re asking questions because you have a client. Is that not so?”

“Not so,” I said. “I have a man who might think he’s a client, but I’m doing this for myself. And a woman who’s dead. Really dead.”

I told the whole story, including me and Linda. It was almost confessional. She listened well, asking only the smart questions.

“Why are you here? In  . . .  what is the name of this village?”