Fiction River: Hex in the City (10 page)

Rinsley’s reflection was a bit more trustworthy. It showed a handsome man in his mid-thirties desperately trying to maintain the look of a teen idol. It also showed a man uncomfortable with his surroundings and nervous with having Fairchild seated across from him.

Rinsley gave Fairchild a politician’s warm smile; it didn’t reach his eyes, but it tried, if only in fake sincerity.

A heavy-set waitress, well past fifty, ambled out from the back kitchen and poured them some coffee. She asked in a thick Bawlmerese accent if she could take their order, all the while giving them the eye for being white-fool crazy enough to be in
this
neighborhood after dark.

Fairchild folded his menu and ordered for both of them. “Two breakfast specials, eggs scrambled, bacon instead of sausage, extra bacon, extra crispy.”

The waitress carried her pad back to the kitchen, muttering all the way about crazy fools.

Rinsley waited until she was out of earshot. “Interesting tradecraft,” He said, gesturing with a languid sweep of a hand. “Why a pancake place?”

Fairchild shrugged. “I like pancakes. And I get hungry this time of night.”

“Pancakes and blue jeans. Not quite what I was expecting for a vampire.”

“Unfortunately, you’re exactly what
I
was expecting.” Fairchild began stirring creamer into his coffee. “Let’s just get this over with. I have more important things to do.”

“More important than a U.S. Senator? I rather doubt it.”

Fairchild sipped his coffee. “You have your world; I have mine. Mine just happens to be reality.”

Anger flashed across Rinsley’s face at Fairchild’s dismissing of his Senator—and thus by extension Rinsley himself—then with a visible effort, he slapped his politician’s bland smile back on.

The smile wouldn’t save him. Rinsley was a dead man. He just didn’t know it yet. A part of Fairchild, a long-buried part of Fairchild, wished it didn’t have to be that way, but as he’d told Rinsley, Fairchild dealt with the way things were, not the way he wished things to be.

“Sorry if I sounded a bit skeptical,” Rinsley said. “You must admit, though, the whole jeans and work boot look goes against certain preconceptions.”

Fairchild drained the last of his coffee. “You were perhaps expecting a silk-lined opera cape? Bela Lugosi accent? The whole nine yards?”

Rinsley’s checks reddened. Fairchild could smell the extra blood flowing so close to the surface of Rinsley’s clear complected skin. He could hear the blood pulse through the man’s jugulars.

“I was expecting black motorcycle leathers like in the movies.”

Fairchild shrugged. “I like to dress comfortably. Besides, I’m not a vampire. Bitten once, yes, actually one, no. Just a staffer, like you.”

Rinsley drew himself up. “I wouldn’t say I’m just a —”

“Is that how you became a staffer, too?” Fairchild interrupted. “Did your Senator bite you?”

Rinsley coughed in surprise. Senator “Matlida the Hun” Gransbury was legendary for her mercurial tirades.

Famous for something else, besides.

Boy Wonder staffers with a
cum laude
PoliSci degree from George Mason were a dime a dozen in D.C. Ones with Rinsley’s Brando hair and DiCaprio smile were not. Obvious why Gransbury had hired Rinsley. And just as obvious as to why Gransbury had set him up for the chop by sending him to meet Fairchild tonight.

Rinsley hid it well, but he was past his prime. His hairline was edging up and his waistline was edging outward. Gransbury’s indispensable Boy Wonder was about to be replaced by a younger Boy Toy.

Fluorescent light fixtures hummed overhead as they tried to blot out the shadow of the night outside. There wasn’t enough light in the world to blot out the shadows of the night. The handgun under Rinsley’s jacket would not protect him from the dangers outside the lighted restaurant, nor would that lucky charm hanging around his neck protect him from the dangers within.

“So,” Rinsley said. “Your side promised a little demonstration. Some sort of vampiric dog-and-pony show I can report back on. When’s it to take place?”

“Soon.” Fairchild said. “Just waiting on a phone call letting me know everything’s in place.”

They sat staring at each other.

The sizzle of their order cooking on the grill back in the kitchen filled the silence. The smell of slightly burnt bacon reminded Fairchild of the crematorium and billowing white smoke from their brick stacks. They’d both be leaving smelling like bacon.

After a while, the waitress returned with their order. She slapped down two daily breakfast specials and left wordlessly, as if she’d taken one look at Rinsley and his Senate Staff pin and knew for a dead certainty she wasn’t getting any tip.

The cooking wasn’t any better. Runny scrambled eggs, burnt bacon, half-cooked hash browns, and a short stack of pancakes heavy on the “short.” Fairchild started eating anyway. He’d been quite honest when he’d told Rinsley he was hungry.

He’d been quite honest in everything else he’d said to the man.

Rinsley, used to dining at the Four Seasons, stared at his plate and the abyss stared back. He tried a timid bit of the runny eggs and then pushed the plate away. He looked nervous. Perhaps it was how Fairchild’s teeth flashed as he wolfed down his food. Or perhaps he’d finally realized the danger he was in dickering with vampires.

“Um,” he said as Fairchild ate. “Perhaps some ground rules for our little meeting here? How do I know you won’t—”

“Fang you?” Fairchild asked. “Drain your blood?”

Fairchild reached over and plucked one of Rinsley’s untouched strips of bacon. He dropped it perpendicular across one of the remaining strips, forming a cross.

“There,” he said. “You’re safe.”

Rinsley’s DiCaprio smile evaporated. “You’re laughing at me, aren’t you?”

Faster than Rinsley could follow, Fairchild lunged across the table and snatched the hidden silver necklace from around Rinsley’s neck, broken chain links scattering. He hefted the store-new silver crucifix in the hollow of his cupped hand. Neither the cross nor the silver had any deleterious effect.

“
Now
I’m laughing at you,” he said. He tossed the crucifix back at Rinsley. “Any more movie moments you’d like to share? A silver bullet perhaps? Garlic? Running water? A mirror?”

Rinsley jerked his hand towards the gun under his jacket. Fairchild grabbed him and squeezed just short of the pressure needed to snap the wrist bone.

“Don’t,” Fairchild said, his voice perfectly level. “You’ll only make me mad. Besides, what would your Senator’s constituents think, the aide of the Senate’s leading gun-control advocate with an unregistered concealed weapon?”

He let go of the wrist. “Don’t worry, pretty boy. I won’t muss a single hair on your precious head. “

Rinsley rubbed the bruised area. “So fast. So strong. I thought you said you weren’t a vampire.”

Fairchild picked his fork back up. “Like I said, only bitten. Some of the bite stuck is all.”

He waved the fork. “But by all means, let’s talk about rules, the rules our two sides abide by: my side stays hidden, keeps things discrete, cleans up our own messes; your side looks the other way. My side is
not
happy Gransbury broke those rules asking for direct contact.”

“They’d end up less happy if she hadn’t,” Rinsley said. “This isn’t the same world anymore. Twenty-four-hour newsfeeds, Internet bloggers, a video camera in every phone. How are you going to stay hidden in a world of cameras on every corner, surveillance drones, and computerized records? You need more than just our ‘looking the other way.’ You need somebody on the inside running interference.”

“And that someone is Gransbury?”

“
Senator
Gransbury. Senate Majority Leader Gransbury come November.”

“And what’s her price?” Fairchild asked, as if he didn’t already know the answer.

Rinsley wiped his fingers with a paper napkin. “She wants to switch sides. Become one of you. A vampire. A senator vampire.”

“Feeling her age, is she?” Fairchild asked. “Wanting immortality enough to join the Rookery?”

“That isn’t it at all. She’s one of the rare greats. She still has so much to offer this great country.”

“And of course, her loyal aide has still so much to offer his boss, too,” Fairchild shot back with just as much sincerity. “I take it it’s a package deal then, the two of you?”

Rinsley’s face reddened. “She’s discussed the matter with me, yes.”

Fairchild bet she had. The same way the farmer discussed Thanksgiving dinner with the turkey on the stroll to the chopping block.

“How lucky for you.”

Mistaking Fairchild’s acid observation for a welcoming handshake into the club, Rinsley dropped his mask. “What’s it really like, immortality?” Rinsley’s sudden almost childlike trust cut Fairchild to the core. Fairchild almost told him the truth out of pity. Pity and the tattered scraps of the conscience he’d had before he’d become what he was now.

Instead, he continued to do his job.

“That’s the reason for the demonstration, to show your senator what our immortality is really like.”

As if on cue, Fairchild’s phone rang.

Time.

He stood. “Tip the waitress,” he told Rinsley. “Leave a twenty.”

Rinsley paused, his wallet half open. “You’re kidding? A twenty? Why?”

“Because I said so,” Fairchild said. “Because she’s here doing her job at night in a neighborhood the slasher’s been prowling. Because just once in your miserable life you’re going to treat those beneath you with the respect they deserve. But mainly because if you don’t, you can tell Gransbury the deal’s off.”

Rinsley threw down a twenty in disgust, then a second just for spite. “I didn’t know vampires were such bleeding hearts.”

“They aren’t,” Fairchild said.

He slipped his phone in his back pocket.

“But like I told you, I’m not one.”

***

The two of them stepped out into the soggy air. It hadn’t cooled at all. If anything, it was hotter and stickier. Fairchild smiled wryly. Rinsley would be sorry for that suit jacket, but he couldn’t very well take it off without exposing his shoulder holster. Too bad. Rinsley should have left his toy at home.

Rinsley held a sleeve up to his nose. “I smell like burnt bacon after sitting in there.”

Fairchild nodded. He smelt like bacon, too. He stepped away from the lighted building and into the shadows of the night.

The rest of the entire neighborhood stood dark. Blood-red brick apartments rose above the street like giant gravestones. Not a light glowed in a window. Not a person stirred outdoors.

Streetlights hung unlit overhead. Whether off from power outage or by budget cuts, Fairchild didn’t know or care. He could see without them. Rinsley, however, blinked against the darkness.

“The demonstration area’s a couple blocks southwest of here,” he told Rinsley. “We’ll walk.”

“Walk? In this heat?”

“Walk,” Fairchild repeated. He started down the street. Rinsley trotted to catch up.

A cat dashed out from under a parked car, causing Rinsley to jump. “I don’t think walking through this neighborhood at night is such a good idea.’

Fairchild just laughed. “Why?” he asked. “Don’t you want to see first-hand what a mess you politicians have made of this city? Don’t you care about the poor and downtrodden?”

Rinsley tugged at his shirt collar. “Ah, it’s just those news reports about the slasher and all…”

Fairchild laughed again. “A man of your breeding and intelligence afraid of a ghetto punk in a hoodie?”

Fairchild stopped and turned towards him. “You’re as bad as Horatio. Hamlet wasn’t afraid of any ghost.
Why, what should be the fear?/I do not set my life in a pin’s fee;/And for my soul, what can it do to that,/Being a thing immortal as itself?
”

He started walking again. “If walking in the dark frightens you, Rinsley, perhaps you’d better rethink your joining us.”

***

A few hundred feet later, a nervous Rinsley cleared his throat. “There’s a car following us with its headlights off.”

Fairchild didn’t even have to turn around to know that a huge black SUV, a Vettius-Dama luxury Italian import with dark tinted windows, idled slowly behind them.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s just part of the demonstration.” He continued walking at the same measured pace in the heat.

Sweat streamed down Rinsley’s face. He’d already loosened his necktie and unbuttoned his collar. “How much farther?”

Fairchild stopped. “Right across the street actually.”

“A graveyard?”

“Several adjoining graveyards, actually.” Fairchild said as he quickstepped across Alabama Avenue towards the wrought-iron gate of the Hebrew Congregation Cemetery. The gate was chained and padlocked. Fairchild snapped the heavy Yale lock with an easy twist of his wrist. He pushed the squeaking gates open.