Night and Day (Book 3): Bandit's Moon (36 page)

“So everybody keeps saying,” I
said.

“I will do everything in my power
to ensure success,” she continued. “If that means I follow up on
accusations, so be it. If that means you had to be treated like a potential
threat, so be it.” She paused. “If that means I have to kill you...”
Another pause. “So be it.”

“I’d have a real problem with
that.”

“No doubt,” she said. “So tell me
about uptown.”

“What about it?”

“You said you were there for nine
years,” she said. “I take it that you know the area pretty
well.”

“Every street, every alley,” I
said. “While I was there, I probably worked every patrol zone, motor and
foot.” I paused. “Plenty of gas in those days. I hear that these days they
only have a few patrol cars and most patrols are done by cops walking the
streets.”

“Been up there
recently?”

“Not for about a year or
so.”

“Why then?”

“Guy hired me to drive him uptown
and meet with a business associate.” I paused. “A skeeter business
associate. Some
goomba
from one of the uptown mobs who was making
trouble for the man who hired me.”

“What were you there for? Just to
do the driving?”

I shook my head. “No, he wanted the
skeeter to go away. Permanently. I helped him make that happen.”

“Any friends at the uptown police
station?”

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked.
“Uptown Station isn’t like the other police stations in town. Sure, you got
skeeters working the night shift, same as all the other stations. But the
day shift cops are carefully picked.” I paused. “If Becca has friends up
there, they’re probably pre-war friends who lied real good during the
selection process.”

“What does that mean?”

“There are what, around forty
thousand skeeters in the city? Of those, eighty or ninety percent live in
the Uptown District.” I paused. “Uptown is skeeter town. And the police
department takes good care of their skeeters. They get preferential
treatment, everywhere, but especially in Uptown District.” I paused again.
“If you’re a skeeter-hating cop uptown, you keep it strictly to yourself.
Otherwise they transfer you, fire you, or worse.”

“Skeeter lovers,” Schleu muttered.
“They’re not going to fare too well in the coming storm.”

“To tell you the truth, I think
most of them are just opportunists,” I said. “They’re not in Uptown
District because they like vampires. They’re there because it’s a good
career move. There are humans living in uptown too, bigwigs. The mayor lives
there. Human city councilmen, businessmen. There’s a lot of ways to get
your face in front of people who can make your life better.”

Schleu took a last puff of her
cigarette and dropped it. “Not for much longer,” she said. “By the way, you
didn’t answer my question.”

“What question?”

“Can I trust you?”

“Oh, that,” I said. “I thought you
were joking.”

“I’m not much for
jokes.”

“I got that,” I said. “Can you
trust me? Well, I could say yes, but I might be lying. And I’m probably not
going to say no, since I have a real good idea what that would mean. So
what’s the point of even asking?”

“Indulge me,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. “Yes, you can trust
me. I don’t like skeeters. You and everybody else say that you have a plan
to drive them out of the city, or kill them all, or whatever it is.” I
paused. “I’m a get-it-done kind of guy. I’m not turned on by fancy talk
about breaking humanity’s chains or rising up like an angry wave. I just
want ‘em gone. From here, from everywhere. If you got a way to do that, I’m
in. If it’s just empty chatter, count me out.”

Schleu smiled. “That kind of fancy
talk may not have an effect on you, but it does work.” She paused. “If you’re
telling me the truth, you’ve been living a life these past three years very
different from most of the people we recruit. A human life. The rest of
these people? They’re little more than slaves to whoever is in power. Right
now, it’s the skeeters. Before the war, it was the businessmen and liberals
and the Jew string pullers.”

She took another cigarette from the
pack and lit it. “This country was founded by white Christian people,
Charlie. Where were the niggers at Plymouth Rock or the Jamestown Colony?
There were none. It was white people and American Indians. We took this
country from the Indians, but we made the mistake of bringing in nigger
slaves. It polluted our country. And you saw the end result before the
skeeters came. Niggers and spics and chinks, everywhere. This country was
rapidly heading for a day when there would be more mud people than white
people in this country. Our country!”

It was nice to hear that Schleu
shared the racist beliefs of those she led. It would make it even easier to
pull the trigger.

“I hear what you’re saying,” I
said. “But first we need to get rid of the skeeters. They don’t care about
race. Doesn’t matter what color we are, to them we’re just
food.”

“I accept that you’re not going to
believe the way we do about everything, and that’s okay,” she said. “You
were a cop. You had to serve everyone, no matter what kind of human filth
they were. But many of us have had very different experiences.” She paused
and drew on the cigarette. “And you’re right. The skeeters are our first
priority. The rest will come after we win the second war against
them.”

“So when are we going to stop
talking about it and do something?”

“Soon,” she said. “Very
soon.”

Schleu stood. “You’ll be kept under
guard until Becca gets back to me later today. If you get a clean bill of
health, we’ll talk again.”

If I was right about Becca, she was
just waiting for enough time to pass before reporting back that I was
clean. And I liked the idea of another talk with Schleu. If she trusted me,
even a little, she might lower her guard long enough for me to kill
her.

I stood too. “I hope I’m not going
back to that fucking closet.”

She shook her head. “No, that was
just an easy place to put you at the time. Zachariah’s apartment is empty.
You can stay there for now. There will be a guard at the door, of course,
so you don’t wander, but otherwise it should be pleasant enough.” She was
silent for moment. “Get some sleep, if you can. I keep unusual hours, so
there’s no telling when I’ll want to see you again. Get your rest when you
can. As I do.”

“I’ll try.”

“Guard!” she called.

The door opened almost instantly.
Braves Cap must have been standing outside the whole time.

“Take him to 205 and stand watch
outside the door,” she said. “He’s not to leave. If he tries...” She
glanced at me. “Shoot him.”

“Right, captain,” Braves Cap
said.

“I’ll see you later, Charlie,” she
said. She sat and reached for the pack of cigarettes.

“Let’s go,” the guard
said.

When we left the leasing office, I
saw Nancy Haynes, still on the stairs, watching. Alone. Apparently Franklin
had someplace else to be.

Nancy was smiling as we got close,
me in front, Braves Cap behind. The smile faded when we started up the
staircase and not past it to the hallway. And the basement.

I gave her a wink as we went past.
That would give her something to think about.

As we crossed the first floor
landing to the next stairway, I said, “So my name is Charlie. What’s
yours?”

“Just keep walking,” Braves Cap
said.

So much for bonding. When we
reached apartment 205, he opened the door and motioned with the barrel of
his rifle. “Inside.”

I went into the living room and he
closed the door behind me. The first thing I noticed was that the pile of
paperbacks next to Zach’s chair was gone. One of the three bowls on the
kitchen counter was also missing. So much for Zach.

I wandered down the hall to the
back bedroom, the one Zach had been using, and looked in. A mattress on the
floor, a blanket tacked over the window. Whatever personal items Zach had
in addition to his books were gone, moved along with him.

The bedroom I’d shared with Johnny
was as we’d left it. My bomber jacket on the floor next to my mattress.
Johnny’s heavy cloth coat in a heap against the wall where he’d dropped it
the night before.

I went to his jacket and picked it
up. The pockets were empty except for a slip of paper with ‘Sunday Morning’
written on it in a childish scrawl. I put it back in the pocket, folded the
coat, and laid it on his mattress. Then I walked back to the living
room.

Zach’s chair wasn’t as comfortable
as my chair at home, but it was a step up from the couch. I leaned back in
the chair and closed my eyes.

Schleu had shown a lot of interest
in my connection with uptown, from the moment Becca mentioned it. An
unusual amount of interest.

That wasn’t a surprise. Uptown was
obviously going to be a big part of whatever she had planned. Like Zach had
said, if you want to kill skeeters, you go where the skeeters live. Becca
knew it too, and so she’d given my uptown credentials a boost.

I could use that. Make it the
center of my own play, if Schleu gave me the chance. Then see how it worked
out.

Christmas Eve was about eight hours
away, but I was banking on her operation going down on Christmas. Let the
Vees have their celebration Christmas Eve, then go after them the next day
while they slept. It’s the way I would do it.

Of course, I didn’t have any
interest in killing Vees. I had different prey in mind.

All I needed was for her to give me
a clean shot.

Chapter
Twenty-Three

They brought the wheeled cauldron
of stew down the hall at around five o’clock. When I came to the door with
my bowl, Braves Cap asked if there was an extra bowl in the apartment. I
could have been an asshole about it and said no, but why bother? Johnny
wasn’t going to be using it.

After I ate, I went back to Zach’s
chair and dozed. It had been a long day.

A brisk knock at the door woke me
up some time later. It was dark in the apartment, but when I held my watch
close to my face, I could make out the hands. A couple of minutes past
two.

I got up, stretched, and went to
the door. Lee stood in the hall with a dirty bowl in his hands. Braves Cap
was gone.

“This yours?” he asked.

“Comes with the apartment,” I
said.

He handed it to me. “The commander
wants to see you.”

I put the bowl on the floor in the
living room next to the door, and stepped out, closing the door behind
me.

He started down the corridor and I
followed. The hallway was as quiet as a tomb. All the good little
Resistance fighters were asleep behind their doors.

“You’re Lee, right?” I asked as we
reached the end of the hall.

“That’s right.”

“I’m Charlie,” I said.

“I know,” he said, turning the
corner.

When we reached the landing, he
turned again and started upstairs. Apparently Schleu didn’t always hold
court in the leasing office.

“So, Lee, are you the commander’s
right-hand man?”

He shook his head. “Nah, I’m just
in charge of inside security.” His smile was just visible in the dim light.
“And I’m sometimes the voice of reason.”

“What does that mean?”

He didn’t reply.

At the third floor, we went around
the landing and started up the final staircase. When his familia had
occupied the Floresta, Papa Lazaro had kept an apartment on the top floor.
Apparently Schleu had not only taken Lazaro’s building, but his apartment
as well.

Lee went to the left at the top of
the stairs and I followed him around a corner. A guard stood in front of
the door at the end of the short hall. The guard opened the door, then
stepped aside to let us pass.

I don’t know what I was expecting
in Schleu’s personal quarters. A war room, maybe, complete with a
conference table. Confederate flags on the walls, pictures of
Hitler.

It was, instead, just a room. A
mostly empty room. Mattress on the floor against one wall, beside it a
beat-up roll-top desk. What looked like a drafting table in the middle of
the room. A couch and some chairs behind it. Guard sitting on a stool in
the corner, blue knit cap pulled down low on his forehead, rifle resting in
his lap.

Schleu stood on one side of the
drafting table, looking down at whatever was there. She didn’t look up when
we came in.

Lee walked to the table. I came up
next to him and took a look.

Spread out was a large aerial
photograph of the Uptown District. Pre-war.

A piece of clear plastic lay on top
of the photograph, marked up with half a dozen irregular shapes, each with
a number written inside.