The Vampire Files - Art In The Blood Part 1

Art in the Blood.

by P.N. Elrod.

Chapter One.

HUNGRY AND CARELESS, I'd opened the vein more than necessary and the blood slipped past my mouth and dribbled down the animal's leg. I shifted my right hand above the wound and applied pressure, which slowed the flow, and continued with my meal, siphoning off more than usual because I'd been on short rations the last few nights. I drank my fill and more, the excess partly due to curiosity; I wanted to know if I'd swell up like a leech or if I could get away with fewer feedings per week.

The cow didn't mind, she could afford to spare a quart or more-there'd just be that much less to spill out when they finally slaughtered her for someone else's dinner.

I drew away, a handkerchief immediately at my lips so as not to spot my clothes, and tightened the pressure on the leg. It worked, and the bleeding eventually stopped. My hand looked the same, at least-no puffiness there. I wondered how long it would take for the red to fade from my eyes. The usual time was only a few minutes, but there was no way to tell. These days I preferred to avoid useless mirrors and their many complications.

To spare my shoes from farmyard-style damage, I went incorporeal to get out and flowed past the wood corrals and their complaining occupants. It was a disorienting state, but I knew the route well and was soon back on the open street again, doing my best imitation of a normal man out for a walk. My car was parked less than a block away, but I always varied my route into and out of the Stockyards. Few people believed in vampires these days, but it never hurt to be careful.

The first aid to the cow had stained my fingers somewhat, so I took a swing past Escott's office with a mind to borrow his washroom. His lights were on, which surprised me, for only yesterday he'd mentioned a dearth of business. I didn't feel like his company just then and kept walking, but silently wished him luck as I pa.s.sed. He detested being idle. A dripping tap in an alley down the street provided all the cleanup I needed, and I tossed the stained handkerchief into a trash can.

Escott's laundry service, which I shared now, had once asked if his houseguest suffered from frequent nosebleeds.

The car started up without fuss and I drove aimlessly, turning when the mood struck me and obeying the stop signals like a good citizen. I pulled up and parked near the Night-crawler Club up on the north side and pretended it was only an impulse that took me there, and not some inner need.

They had a new man out front. He looked askance at my ordinary clothes, but let me in when I asked to see Gordy. The hatcheck girl was not new, I rarely forget dimples, but she didn't know me from whosis, and put my plain gray fedora next to the flashier silk toppers with a friendly if impersonal smile.

I knew the place had been raided by the cops at least once since my last visit, and Gordy had taken the temporary shutdown as an opportunity to redecorate. The walls were bright with fresh paint, and the tables, chairs, and bandstand were now shiny black with gleaming chrome trim. The only thing unchanged were the costumes on the girls, which remained black with silver-sequined spiderwebs patterned on the happily short skirts. The leggy details were enough to keep me occupied until Gordy showed up.

He was puzzled to see me, maybe slightly wary as well, but when I stuck my hand out he took it. He was a big mountain of a man with a solid, but not crushing grip.

He had no need to prove his strength against anyone, taking it for granted people could figure it out for themselves.

" 'Lo, Fleming, what's up?"

"This and that. Got a quieter place than here?" I gestured at the band across the dance floor below. They were just starting off another tune for the patrons.

He nodded, not one for much wordage, and led the way through a door marked Private. The soundproofing did its job and we were in the casino room, up to our eyeb.a.l.l.s in stale smoke and the tight atmosphere of prolonged tension. Gordy nodded to a couple of tough boys in tuxedos guarding the money cage and threaded through the c.r.a.ps and roulette tables to the back exit. We took a short hall and some stairs up to an office I remembered very well. The redecorating had gotten this far with a new rug, paint, and paintings. His deceased boss's boats had been replaced by green- and-brown pastorals. A canvas depicting a lush forest covered a section of the wall where six slugs from a .38 had embedded themselves one memorable night.

"Nice picture, huh?" he said, noticing my interest. There was a very slight humor coming from his eyes. "I like to look at it."

"That's what they're there for." I noticed it was not an ordinary store-bought print, but a real oil with a decent frame.

"Yeah."

He pointed at a deep leather chair and settled into a wide matching sofa, taking up most of it. He wasn't fat, just big, and I knew from experience he could move fast and light when he wanted to; the present slowness was all pan of his camouflage. Large men were supposed to be slow and stupid, so Gordy cultivated that image and thus kept a lot of people off balance. In his business an edge always came in handy.

"Want anything?" he asked, meaning refreshments.

I shook my head and with some caution removed my dark gla.s.ses. From his reaction I could tell my eyes were still quite red from the feeding.

"You look like you had a h.e.l.l of a weekend."

"I did."

"You're not the social type; Fleming, at least for places like this and mugs like me.

You got a problem?"

"Yeah."

He apparently recalled the last time he'd seen my bloodied eyes. "Trouble with Bobbi?"

"No."

"Another woman?"

I couldn't tell if he was being perceptive like Escott or if it was simply the next logical question for him to ask. "Yeah, you could say that."

"What kind of trouble?"

"I killed her."

The news didn't exactly send him into a panic. "You need protection, a cleanup job?"

"No, nothing like that."

He had one of those phlegmatic faces under his short-cropped blond hair, great for poker or making people sweat. "You need to talk about it?"

My instinct to come see him had been right, and I nodded, inwardly relieved.

"So talk," he said. He wasn't the soul of encouragement, but he settled back into the depths of the sofa to listen. I gave him a short version of how I'd killed the young woman and why I'd done it, just stating bald facts and not bothering with any defense. During the story he stared at yet another painting above and behind his desk, his eyes hardly blinking the whole time.

"I'm sure Charles knows about it, but he hasn't said anything. I don't think he ever will."

"Smart guy, then," he approved. "What about Barrett?""He apparently took the suicide at face value."

"He probably wants to. How are you taking it?"

" I feel like..." But I couldn't finish. I couldn't put words to what I was feeling.

He raised a hand to call off the question and tried another. "You remember the war?"

"I was in it."

This confused him, since I didn't look old enough, but he continued. "You fight?

You have to kill?"

"Yeah, I see what you're getting at. This was different."

" Why? Because it was a woman and in a nice house and not out in a field of mud with the noise and cold? She was killing people. You had to stop her. What's the problem?"

"Living with it. Why me?"

He shifted his sleepy-looking eyes from me back to the painting. It was a soft overview of a farm near sunset, in one corner a boy was leading two plow horses back to the stable. "When I was a kid, I once knew a retired hangman. I asked him about it. He knew how to do it better than anyone else but he didn't think much about it, it was just a job to do. I can't say he enjoyed it, but he knew he was doing his part in making things cleaner."

It seemed an odd statement coming from him, considering how he came by his living. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. You either learn to live with it or you go crazy. Make up your mind."

"Is that what you've done?"

He glanced over, again with faint humor. "I'm just a businessman."

"That's what Capone used to say."

"Huh. He never talked about the dirty side of the business, not where he could be overheard. He'd pretend it wasn't there. Maybe that makes him crazy. I know it's there, I don't enjoy it, but I'm good at it. And I'm not crazy."

The humor was more p.r.o.nounced, but under it was something hard and very cold. The base of my spine went stiff as I suppressed a shiver.

A few days, or nights, later I was just coming down from the upstairs bath when I heard Escott let himself in the kitchen door. His arms were full with a newspaper, raincoat, and several small canons, and the latchkey got stuck in the lock again.

When he started to jiggle it loose he nearly lost the cartons. Drawing a breath to say h.e.l.lo I caught a strong whiff of Chinese food and rushed to rescue the soggy white boxes before his dinner ended up on the floor.

"Thank you," he said as I transferred them to the counter by the sink. He extracted his key and glared at the lock for exactly one second, tossed his coat and hat on the table, and stalked into the dining room. He was back almost immediately with a screwdriver and small oil can, and began an energetic a.s.sault on the rusty mechanism.

"Your dinner'll get cold," I said, leaning against a doorway to watch the show.

"A distinct possibility, but I'd rather it be cold than suffer the indigestion this recalcitrant lock is likely to cause me."

"You almost make me glad I've given up eating."

His mouth twitched, whether from amus.e.m.e.nt at my remark or frustration at the job was hard to tell. Something gave, and he seized the oil can and attacked the breach in the lock's defense while it was vulnerable. He experimented with the key, grunted with satisfaction, and put things back the way they were.

"Good evening. Jack," he said, standing and dusting his knees off. It was his way of starting things over fresh. "How arc you tonight?" His suit coat joined the raincoat on the table und he turned on the hot water in the sink to wash his hands.

"Fine. You look tired."

"Thank you so much. I can a.s.sure you it is not from overwork."

"You were busy the last few nights."

"Yes, but that little-extremely little-job is resolved and I've nothing to do now."

"Boredom?" I knew how exhausting that could get.

"Inactivity. I never allow myself to become bored, but inactivity may strike at any inconvenient moment."

"There's a difference?"

He registered mock surprise as he toweled dry. "Most certainly. One cannot help inactivity, but boredom is a self-inflicted disease. I firmly believe there is a special Providence watching us all for signs of boredom, the moment we declare ourselves in that state some disaster will occur to take our minds right out of it. The last time I was bored was the year 1920. I was carrying a spear, so to speak, in the court of King Claudius..."

I looked blank.

"Hamlet!" he suggested, by way of clarification.Dawn broke. "You were on stage in front of an audience and bored? I'd be scared to death."

"Given time, one can become used to anything. I'd grown all too familiar with that particular scene in that particular play and thus declared myself bored. The next thing I knew the trapdoor we used for the Ghost to enter from under the stage gave way and down I went. It was one of my more spectacular exits."

"Were you hurt?"

"A bruise or two when I landed on the platform below had me limping for a week.

It seems the fellow playing the Ghost forgot to latch the trap properly after his last scene."

"Did you kill him?"

"He was terribly embarra.s.sed so I thought it more vengeful not to put him out of his misery." He pulled out a few clean plates and emptied the cartons onto them.

"Since then I've schooled myself to patience when it comes to inactivity. I've completely sworn off boredom."

I shoved his things to one side of the table to give him room. "So work is slow?"

"I more than caught up on my reading." He nodded at the crumpled newspaper.

"Not even a divorce to turn away?"

His thin lips curled in distaste. "Please, I am about to eat."

"Sony."

"What social event are you off to tonight?" he asked in turn as his long fingers snapped up a set of chopsticks with practiced ease.

"How did you-"

"You've taken more care than usual with your hair, that is a hew shirt and tie, and I believe Miss S my the will be quite impressed with the after-shave and shoe shine."

"Looks okay, then? I can't really tell."

"Mirrors must be a considerable source of annoyance to you these days."

"You can say that again," I grumbled.

"The event?" he repeated, just before plunging into his chow mein or whatever it was; the smell was making me vaguely nauseous, but that was my usual reaction to solid, cooked food.

"Some kind of party. Bobbi and Marza got a job singing and playing background music, and their boss said it was okay to bring a date."

"It sounds an odd mix of the formal and informal."