Vampires (7 page)

I'd figured the other door was rusted shut or something. The rest of the place looked like it should be, anyhow. And maybe it was, but 01' Hubby just slid it open with a flick of his wrist and there he stood, all six and a half feet and two hundred plus pounds with a headless chicken in one hand and a bloody machete in the other.

Next to his wife he was the ugliest human I'd ever seen.

“I think I know how the boxcar got down here by the river,” whispered Felix from beside me.

I whispered back without taking my eyes off Hubby. “He carried it down here on his back.”

And then the woman, the wife, screamed and Hubby roared and Felix and I were scrambling around and that machete was slashing through the air flinging drops of bright red chicken blood and the candle got turned over onto the cardboard furniture and flames rose up and the woman jumped between us and the giant to protect her furnishings and Felix and I used that moment to basically run screaming into the night.

Except Felix stopped long enough to grab the tequila and I got my metal wristwatch stuck in the blanket-curtain over the doorway and ripped it off when I jumped through into the weeds.

Outside, the mob was waiting.

Not close enough to see us. Not yet. But close enough that they were about to and close enough that there was no way to get around them and close enough for them to see the flickering light from the boxcar almost immediately and start toward it.

Too damn close, in other words.

“C'mon, Felix!” I hissed. “The river!”

“Hell, no!” he hissed back. “The snakes!”

We were running out of time. I grabbed him. “Fuck the snakes!”

And then he grabbed me back, all calm for a moment, looked me right in the eye, and said, “That's really sick!”

I just had to laugh. He was just too weird.

But in the meantime we were in a bad spot, stuck between two groups anxious to pound on us, and we needed a plan.

To this day I still don't know how we got up that tree, as drunk as we were, and as scared, and the whole time giggling insanely. It was pure Looney Tunes, but we did it. It cost me a lot of skin on the bark, but Felix shinnied right up using only one hand.

He carried the tequila in the other. Incredible.

So we sat up there and watched as the mob and the monster came together. Reminded me a lot of Frankenstein, with all those lanterns bobbing and that huge Hubby roaring. I don't think he was much smarter than he looked because he thought they were us for a while, hammering on a half-dozen or so before they calmed him down. Then they got about halfway organized and all of them started searching for us.

Never looked up, though, and never came near us, though I think they may have heard us giggling once.

They were very persistent. Kept us up there all night long. Felix and I spent the time swapping sips from the bottle and gabbing more about ourselves like we had before. It was dumb as hell, I guess. But it was also our tree.

I told him a lot more about Viet Nam than I'd ever told anyone else and was frankly amazed at his considerable knowledge and understanding of that war, coming as he did from the sixties generation. He told me a lot about what he did and I listened to all of it and couldn't make sense of any of it. Felix only smuggled marijuana, though he had been offered fortunes to run heavier dope. He didn't seem to make very much money at all, in fact.

He didn't even smoke the stuff. Hated it.

I was about to ask him what the hell he was doing there when we got onto the subject of brown heroin and the Cuban connection and the rest of it. He confirmed everything we'd heard, including the danger for his brand of amateur along the border. His own supplier, he said, regularly used Cuban ports and Cuban radar assistance to cross the Caribbean. Or had, until Fidel had started going into business for himself.

At first I thought he was just being upfront and straight about our pact when he went into such elaborate detail concerning his trade. But then I realized that he was also taking advantage of it. Every time I would later run across this info I would have to toss it out and he damn well knew I would stick to it.

How? How does anybody know about anybody? Sometimes you just do. I told him about me. He told me about him. Nobody else's business.

Our tree.

He was getting out that month. He wanted to live. He didn't want to join and he didn't want to fight. He was worried about his partners, though.

“They're young and greedy and stupid and they think that kind of craving makes them tough,” he said once, cupping his cigarette coal against a sighting from the now-scattered posse. He sighed. “And they know all the excuses.”

I asked him what he was going to do and he said, “Nothing,” and I knew he meant it. As long as they didn't involve him, it was their choice and their life.

It got very quiet there for a long time. Dawn was coming and the searchers had given up and it was a bit chilly until the wind died down. The last thing I remember was our finishing the bottle at last telling elephant jokes. Felix knew a thousand elephant jokes.

And then I woke up in the Rio Grande.

It was the sound, more than the water, that scared me at first. Splashing in from several stories up makes quite a racket. And then the water was in my scream and my ears and cold and moving but the sun was there somewhere and then I was awake enough to realize where I was and pretty soon after that awake enough to remember what swimming was and that I could do it. I lived.

But barely, dragging myself back into Mexico about thirty feet downstream, gasping and whimpering and shivering from the cold. I got on my knees on the bank and searched around for the tree and when I found it I started laughing again immediately.

Felix, dead asleep and drooping from the branches sunk deep into his leather jacket, was still holding the empty tequila bottle. And then I saw something else that made me stare. And think.

Underneath that jacket, my smuggler had a very professional-looking shoulder holster and inside it a nine-millimeter Browning. A couple of times during the raucous night before I had thought longingly of the arsenal back in my motel room and knew damn well I might have used it if I had had it-if only to warn them off.

But Felix had been armed all along and had never, I knew instinctively, thought to use it.

Not once.

Jack Crow stood at the baggage claim in Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport gazing longingly at the bank of pay phones and rattling the change in his pocket.

It was probably too late to call the people he had in mind. Too late at night, too late in his career. And he didn't much want to get involved with them again. What was that old joke? One of the three Big Lies? “Hi! I'm from the Government. I'm here to help you!”

But still, nobody could find someone like the old crowd. And God knows they were fair to me. Just let me walk away from it all.

He stood where he was, undecided, idly watching the others gather the bags. Annabelle and Davette stood chatting amiably on the edge of the activity, picking up all sorts of looks from the other passengers. Crow didn't blame them. Damn few women looked like Annabelle at her age. And come to think of it, fewer looked like Davette at any age. She was really something to see.

Then he noticed something odd.

“Davette? Where are your bags?” he asked, innocently enough but absolutely everyone turned and looked at him and Davette blushed to her dress line and Annabelle trotted over to him wearing her “Hush!” look.

Oh, God, he thought. What have I done now?

Well! If he'd just be quiet for a minute, she'd tell him. It seems this dear sweet little girl has had a falling-out with her family. She, Annabelle, hadn't gotten all the details yet but it was some sort of major blowup and the poor girl is just desperate and she needs this story and I know she probably won't get it printed, Jack! But that's not the point! The point is: she's lost and alone and away from her family and she's going to stay with us for a while, doing her job as a reporter- I'm sure she's a dandy little reporter, she's so smart-and then we'll worry about the rest of it later.

Please? Please, Jack?

For me?

Jack absolutely hated it. He hated the whole bit-the girl, the sob story, the responsibility, Annabelle's tone. But what the hell was he going to do? Annabelle had yet to be wrong about someone, and besides, what could he do anyway? He hated it. He just hated it.

He looked down at her pleading eyes. He was a foot taller and one hundred pounds heavier and one day, when he grew up, he was going to stand up to her.

He just nodded and slunk his ass away toward the taxis.

Shit.

Davette, visibly tense, watched him pass by. She turned to Annabelle.

“Is it all right?” she asked.

“Of course it is, dear.”

Davette relaxed somewhat. “He agreed?”

Annabelle stopped and looked at the younger woman. She laughed. “You sweet thing,” she said, patting Davette's cheek. “Did you get the impression I was asking him?”

The young night clerk at the Adolphus Hotel, Dallas's rejuvenated downtown palace, had no better luck than Crow. Annabelle was terribly sorry they hadn't made reservations but it's just that they always stayed at the Adolphus-it was like their second home and one hardly makes reservations at one's home, does one? Ha ha ha.

And the next thing the poor young man knew, Team Crow had its pair of connecting suites and Davette had her single on the same floor.

Everyone was starving to death so they ordered down for. . . How many of us are there? Six?. . . for eight steaks and big baked potatoes with everything on them and tossed salad and asparagus and a round of drinks, make that two rounds, and a half dozen bottles of Mondavi red.. . No. That's eight steaks and six bottles of wine. Whaddya think we are? Alcoholics? Right. Thank you.

Davette further endeared herself to everyone by falling asleep twice. Once after her first drink and again at the table during the meal. Annabelle clucked and had the men carry her, still sleeping, into her room. The poor girl had been both exhausted and starving and, No thank you very much, Cherry Cat. I can undress her myself.

The next morning Jack Crow declared a holiday. It didn't apply to Carl Joplin, who was going to be busy setting up his workshop and getting ready to make silver bullets and it didn't apply to Annabelle, who was going to be busy screaming at movers and temporary servants, at least during the day, but everyone else could play.

And they did. Jack and Cat and Adam and Davette did Dallas in a big way for the next couple of weeks. The others joined them at night for dinner, but during the day they got silly on their own. They went to movies and amusement parks and go-cart tracks. They bowled. They golfed. They played tennis, hard, every day to stay in shape. They lunched, huge lunches lasting three hours and costing as many hundreds of dollars. They ran up an enormous tab at the hotel (everyone still slept there), paid it, ran up another, paid that.

In the meantime the house was getting ready; the vehicles arrived from California in time for Jack to get a DWI. He stood there, furious, while a twenty-year-old policeman dressed him down, quite rightly, for driving across a cemetery at three o'clock in the morning scouting picnic spots for the next afternoon. Jack was forced to renew his old acquaintances downtown before he really wanted to think about such things. The lieutenant he spoke to knew (unofficially) who he was and what he did and got him off but lectured him some more.

Jack shut up and took it and leased a limo the next morning.

In the meantime, all had their-own little chores. Davette went shopping with Annabelle once it was discovered she had only what she had been wearing. Cat chased and caught several women, at least two of whom had a sense of humor. Adam went to mass every morning.

And Jack made his phone call to the nation's capital.

They were surprised to hear from him but not entirely distant. They said they would see what they could do. Two weeks later they called him back and gave him an address. He thanked them, hung up, checked the address in the yellow pages, nodded to himself.

During the whole two weeks they never once mentioned their jobs. Nobody said the word: vampire. Jack even stopped jumping whenever the phone rang.

He shouldn't have.

The silver had arrived from Rome through the local see. The bishop was a new man who knew nothing about Team Crow or, for that matter, his parishioners. Persuaded by his aide that anyone with enough clout to receive a package from the Vatican through diplomatic channels was worth knowing, he grudgingly consented to share his sumptuous evening feast with Crow & Co.

It took less than fifteen minutes in his presence for Team Crow to know all the important facts about this man. He was cold. He was haughty. He was better than his flock, more cultured, more intelligently pious, more.., how shall one put it? More aristocratic.

The bishop was an idiot.

He was also Carl Joplin's meat. Carl's and Cat's. The two of them took rich delight in infuriating the man, pretending alt the while to be unaware at how offended he was by their every gesture and semicrude remark. They had descended to triple entendres when the bishop had absolutely had enough.

He rose curtly and left the room, gesturing for the uniformed Father Adam to follow.

Adam loved the Church. He loved it deeply and fully, without reservation, both as an institution and as a vehicle for Almighty God. He loved priests also, knowing them to be as fine a collection of human beings as existed on the planet. Many times in even a career as short as his he had felt.. . no, he had known he bad seen, in the shining eyes of some simple servant of Rome, the hand of Christ.

But this bishop was an ass and he ignored the man's clipped demands for explanation and instead laid before him on his desk the pouch he had brought with him from the Vatican.

With a snort and a sneer, the older man reluctantly began to read. When he was finished, his face was pale.

It was worth seeing.

Suddenly (almost miraculously, thought Adam wryly), all was well. Anything the bishop or his office could do for them would be done without question. Why, he'd be glad to.

Right. Great. They all shook hands and left.

As much fun as Cat had been having, he hadn't been neglecting his job, which was to fret over Jack Crow. Everybody had his own relationship with their leader and each relationship was close but none as close as Cat's and everyone knew it. Cat found it strange that he received such attention, that his feelings of... well, approval, he guessed, should be so important. But they were.

For now.

Because one day, Cherry Cat was very sure, someone would stop by from the Home Office, some field man in charge of Karma, and inform him that there had been a dreadful mistake. We're very sorry, Mr. Catlin, the man would say, but you're not supposed to be here. By some clerical error, your soul was classified under Hero when it should have been under Intelligentsia. Let's face it, Mr. Catlin, you are hardly the crusader type, now are you? You should have been a film critic.

It was bound to happen, thought Cat. But until that time, until they caught him, he was going to stick. Because he couldn't imagine any other way that a fellow like him, a smartass and a determined coward, could hope to bang around these giants. So he would stay until they dragged him away. Just to be there. Just to see it.

He only hoped the Home Office wouldn't prosecute.

But in the meantime he watched Jack Crow and he'd noticed an odd look on his leader's face all night. He hadn't joined in with their game of Piss Off the Bishop, hadn't even seemed to notice it much. Something was going on, Cat knew. And it was something that he ought to be able to...

Of course! Mexico! That story he told about that funny smuggler guy. What was his name? Fre. . . No. Felix. Like Felix the Cat. Hmm. So. That was that look.

Hmm, again. When do you suppose he's going to get around to telling us? Maybe he could use a feed.

At the moment there was no decent opportunity. Jack had directed the limo to Greenville Avenue, the American model, from New York to Chicago to L.A.'s Marina del Rey, of the Singles' Strip. For six straight miles, ninety percent of the real estate was devoted to night life. Everyplace was a bar or a restaurant with a bar and all served steak and lobster and silly drinks with sillier names designed to sound obscene when drunkenly pronounced and all were filled with nubile young ladies, a terrifying percentage of which had received herpes from dirty toilet seats.

Cat moved through this place like International Harvester in the fall. Women loved his blond looks, his sly smile, his five-foot-eight build. Even the tall ones and that was okay because some of them were worth the climb.

But the bar Jack was taking them to was a lot different. For one thing, the name (the Antwar Saloon). For another, the clientele. This was a bar bar. No foo-foo drinks with little umbrellas for them. This was a place for men, mostly, where they could come and talk and do serious drinking without showering after the office. They didn't seem particularly anxious to get new customers, or even happy about the arrival of six cash-carrying strangers. The waitress who took their order after they had filled up a corner booth seemed friendly enough, and she did her job quickly and well, but Cat could tell she didn't care if they returned or not or lived or died. It was a nice place anyway. Somehow.

Cat glanced again at Jack, saw him surveying the room with that look strong on his features, and decided it was time for the feed.

“So,” he began cheerily, “whatever happened to that Felix guy?”

“Yes,” echoed Davette, who seemed genuinely interested. “I'd like to hear.”

“So would I,” said Adam, now without his collar once more. “Did you ever see him again?”

Jack eyed CM briefly, surprise and dawning gratitude on his face. He smiled and nodded to the question. “Yep. Twice more.”

Annabelle's smile was a knowing one. “What happened?”

“Well, to answer that, I've first got to talk about Mr. Peanut.”

Carl frowned. “What's Carter got to do with it? He wasn't president then.”

“No,” Jack agreed slowly. “But the damage was done. Who else told the world a bunch of unshaven purportedly religious punks could mob-storm an American embassy and capture and torture the diplomatic personnel for four hundred and forty-four days and get away with it?”

Carl frowned again. “So what's the point?”

Jack sipped and grinned. "That is the point. The whole world knew we lacked the one thing absolutely required to stop outlaws: the resolve to get the dirty job done. Without that, they knew if they pushed us hard enough and long enough, we'd back off.

“So they decided to murder DEA agents. One, anyway, so there would be a chance for Congress to whoop and holler and then do nothing and the agents themselves would see they had no backup after the second killing and quit. Not quit their jobs. Just quit doing them. And why shouldn't they? Why be targets for people who didn't care anymore about them than to say they did?”

“So what stopped it?” Adam wanted to know.

Jack's face was hard. “It wasn't stopped.”

Adam stared at him. “You're kidding.”

“Read the papers much, kid?”

Jack snorted, smiled. “Don't blame you. Anyway, they've killed five DEA men since 1983.”

“And they tried to kill you?” prompted Davette. “Kidnapped me first.” Jack drained his glass and signaled

the waitress for another round. “Which was stupid. Felix tried to warn me. He got word to me two days before but I had John Wayne fever or something and wouldn't get out like I should.”

“How,” asked Cat slowly, “did Felix know?”

“They were his gang. Those partners he was so worried about, trying to prove they could make it in the raw-brown-heroin business.”

Third Interlude: Audition

They trussed me up good. Four of 'em. They took me right out of my motel room in the early morning during my shower.

Stupid, stupid, stupid on my part. Just stupid!

But not bad on theirs. They were fast and rough and scared and they bad me down and wrapped up tight and then they pounded on me to show they meant it and then we left. At least they gave me my trousers.

Two hours later we're out in some abandoned mobile home way out in the sticks and I'm tied to a chair at the legs and armrests and shoved up against this rickety old kitchen table like they're going to feed me and then they sit down and shoot some more speed into their arms.