“Y-You okay, pal?”
“I’m fine.”
“You sure? You looked a little—I dunno—crazy there for a second. No offense,” Vin laughs. Not “Ha-ha” but “Oh fuck”.
“I said I’m fine,” I say, as I wipe beads of perspiration from my brow. I have to focus.
“The girl. Did she call your dealer?”
“I don’t know. Don’t know, don’t fucking care. Fuck her and her skeezebag sister.”
I want to tell him he shouldn’t talk about a lady like that, but I’m afraid if I open my mouth now what might come out instead is a lot of sharp teeth and murder. I buy some time by focusing on my trembling hands and forcing them to take pad and pen from my pocket.
“Your dealer—what’s his name?”
I try to sound in control of myself, but it’s a bluff, and a piss-poor one at that. I need to get out of here quick. The hunger has receded, but it isn’t gone. I feel it crouched back and coiled to pounce like a tiger lying in wait. Vin seems to sense it. He tells me what I want to know. “Leroy. Leroy Watkins.
Pressing much too hard, I scratch it down. “Give me his number.”
Vin gives it to me.
“You better not be jerking me around, Vin. You won’t like it if I have to come back.”
Time to go.
I leave Vin looking awfully pale for a guy with a year-round tan.
4
Back at the car I binge-fix until I feel in control of myself again. Well, as in control as I ever feel anyway. For a vampire there is always a disquieting sense that the wrong sequence of events at the wrong time could cause things to spiral out of control, like what almost happened back there with Vin. I imagine it’s similar to what sharks experience when they scent blood in the water, or what a bull feels when the matador snaps his cape. A siren call to action that cannot be resisted. Consequences be damned.
Sleepy-eyed, I lull in the driver’s seat. A Louis Armstrong trumpet solo fills the car. Of all the instruments, I love the trumpet best. It’s what I played in the band in the time before. Not like Old Satchmo, but I played. I love the violent-kindness of the brass. Like a smack delivered for your own good. I love the way a well-played staccato burst can shoot you in the head one minute and raise you from the dead the next. I haven’t touched a trumpet since 1943. Don’t need to. That was the year I became one.
The solo ends. I shake the fog off and start the car. I take moon-scrubbed surface streets over to Hollywood to the club Reesa told me about; a place called the Tomb Room. I find it a block off Sunset, tucked in between a Mexican restaurant and a nail salon, right where Reesa said it would be. I park and walk back.
The music oozing like toxic waste from inside is almost enough to turn me around and head me right back home. I brace myself against the toxicity and move past a line of pasty-looking undead wannabes. Every one of them is dressed in black. Up and down the line both guys and girls wear heavy black eye makeup, black lipstick and black nail polish. The androgynous nature of the look makes it difficult to tell the sexes apart. Maybe that’s the point, but it makes me wonder exactly when people got the idea that in order to look like a vampire you had to adopt a transvestite-in-mourning look. If these kids are looking for recruitment into the ranks, they’re going about it the wrong way. Call me old-fashioned, but in my opinion the last thing the vampire world needs is a bunch of gender-confused losers who mistake being sullen and whiny for rebellious and interesting.
I skip to the head of the line, where a bouncer with sharpened teeth and a face full of tats and metal piercings stands by the door. To me it looks like a fishhook grenade blew up in his face. Topping the look off, two metal spikes sprout like devil horns from his bald head. He takes in my suit and fedora and looks at me like I’m the freak.
Maybe I am.
“You sure you’re in the right place, guy?”
I nod in the affirmative and give him the eye. “Mick Angel. I’m on the list.” He looks, finds my name right where it’s not, and lifts the black velvet cordon to let me in. I enter through a black door into a black entryway illuminated by black lights.
There, a Morticia Addams look-alike checks my I.D. and demands fifteen bucks from me. I cough up, hardly able to believe I’m doing it considering what I’m about to subject my ears to. She affixes a black plastic wristband to my wrist and directs me through a thick black curtain into the main room. Imagine my surprise when it turns out to be painted all black.
The place is packed solid with kids. On the far side, on a black stage, back-dropped by a black banner depicting a gaping set of bloody fangs, a crew of music haters torture their instruments. The band looks as if they could have been plucked minutes ago right from the line outside. Judging by their musical ability, I wouldn’t be too surprised to learn that was the case. According to the face of the drummer’s bass drum, the band goes by the name Bite Me. Clever.
Ignoring looks and smirks and nudges from the peanut gallery, I make my way across a black floor over to a black bar. To get into the spirit of things I order Johnny Walker Black.
The bartender brings me my drink. It looks like he shares a butcher with the door guy. The main distinction I see is that instead of two metal spikes like horns, this guy has a ridge of spikes running down the center of his skull like a Mohawk. Cute.
I fat tip him for his trouble, then I pull the picture of Raya from my pocket and show it to him. “Recognize her?” I ask, needing to practically yell to be heard over the band.
He bends, looks, shakes his head, answers too fast. “Nope.”
The lie hits me in the face like a slap from a dame. Before he can get away, I reach out and grab hold of the thick metal bullring that dangles under his nose.
It’d be nice if the gaze worked for eliciting information from people, but it doesn’t. It’s a handy tool, but only good for giving orders and altering memories. Information I have to finagle. Or force.
“Look again,” I say, making my eyes dangerous; putting the promise of pain and the possibility of a very violent death in my eyes.
He looks.
“You’ve seen her in here?”
“Yeah. I’ve seen her.”
“How long ago?”
“Three weeks maybe—”
“She come in a lot?”
“Used to, ’til we figured out she was using a fake I.D. Then we had to take it away and keep her out.”
“Who does she hang out with? Anyone here tonight? Look.”
I let the pull-tab go so he can browse the crowd. Finally he shakes his demon head and shrugs. “She used to come in with another kid, a little older than her. He comes in a lot, but I don’t see him tonight.”
Figuring he’s talking about the eighteen year-old boyfriend, I take a stab. “This kid—his name Scotty?”
“Yeah, yeah, somethin’ like that.”
Now I give him the gaze. “I’m gonna be here for a while. You see him come in, you let me know.”
“I’ll let you know.”
“Good boy,” I tell him. “And keep the booze comin’. On you.”
“On me,” he says, ambling back into the shadows at the back of the bar.
I sit. I drink. I smoke. No one at this fleabag seems to give enough of a shit about a bad habit as mainstream as smoking to come hassle me. Maybe the joint isn’t so bad after all.
Time passes. A skinny, strung-out dame in all-black everything comes to the bar for a drink. She takes in my suit and fedora and tells me I remind her of her dad.
“Yeah? That turn you on?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Kinda.”
“Well that’s funny because you remind me of my dead ex-wife.” It’s not a lie, she does. A little. Most places an admission like that would be a conversation stopper. Not here.
“Really? Cool. How’d she die?”
“I killed her. I didn’t want to, but she made me.” That does the trick. Next time I look, Skinny and her drink are gone.
Bite Me goes off, but their sou
nd is all-too-soon replaced by an even worse racket created by a band calling themselves the Sinister Ministers, who take to the stage in white-collared priest get-ups.
I go to the black-walled bathroom and pick a black stall and fix. I guess I’m in there too long because someone outside pounds on the door and asks if I’m giving birth in there. I put my kit away and fake flush. I exit to find a kid with long unkempt black hair, black nails, and black lipstick waiting outside.
“’Bout time,” he says.
I look him up and down. Call me old fashioned, but I liked it when men went around looking like men. This kid looks like a skirt. An ugly one.
“You sure you’re in the right bathroom?” I ask him.
“You sure you’re in the right decade?” he fires back.
Touché. I nod, shrug, go to the sink, wash up. When I get back to my freshly-refilled drink at the bar, the bartender comes over and gently taps me on the shoulder. He jabs one sharptaloned finger at a black-haired Cousin It lookalike standing arms-crossed next to a back exit.
“That’s him. That’s the kid the girl you showed me was always with.”
I thank him, and cut a circus-freak swath over to the kid. I try to be sly about it but it’s no good, I stand out like a tick at a flea convention and he sees me coming. Taking me for a cop, he turns and ducks out the door before I can collar him.
I hit the piss-stinking alley only a handful of steps behind him.
“Scotty!”
He looks back without slowing, his long jet-black hair flaps like a cape as he runs full-tilt-boogie toward the street. Fueled by meth and who knows what all else, he’s fast, but he’s still no match for a real vampire. I catch up in a matter of steps, grab hold of that mile of hair, and yank. Hard. His head stops, but the rest of him doesn’t. His feet fly out in front of him and he back-flops onto the cracked black asphalt with a lung-collapsing oof. Looks painful.
Before anyone can come out and see us I drag him, helpless and incapacitated, into the shadows behind the rusty dumpster at the back of the Mexican restaurant.
I stand over the kid as he sucks in shallow gasps of air. His black New York Dolls band t-shirt rides up, exposing his midriff. He is impossibly skinny; a skeleton in black jeans. His boyish face is about a hundred years younger than the world-wise eyes that stare out of it, but a few more years on the street, it’ll catch up. Faces always do.
“I’m not holdin’. Fuckin’ search me if you want,” he says when his wind is back and he can form words again.
“I’m not a cop.”
“Then what the fuck do you want with me, man?”
I take the picture of Raya out and stick it in his drug-sweaty face. “I’m lookin’ for this girl. I know you know her. Where can I find her?”
“I dunno, man. I haven’t seen her.”
I don’t smell a lie, but his fear could be covering it up. To cover my bases, I take the .38 out and press it up under his weak chin. I give him the scary eye; the same one I gave the bartender.
“Like I said, I’m not a cop, which means I don’t have to follow any rules here. So shoot me straight if you know what’s good for you.”
“I am, dude. I swear. I haven’t seen Raya in weeks.”
“What happened to her?”
“I dunno. She was here, then she was gone. Maybe that bitch did somethin’ to her.”
“This town has more bitches than traffic lights. Which bitch are you referring to?”
“The bitch she was staying with.”
“Raya was living with someone?”
He nods.
“Who?”
“I only know her by her stripper name.”
I look at him expectantly.
“Dallas. She went by Dallas.”
“What club did she work?”
“I dunno. I only met her once, but I didn’t trust her.”
“Why not?”
He shrugs and says, “You live on the street you either get a sense about people or else ya don’t live on the street long. There was something off about her. She promised Raya all kindsa shit she was gonna do for her. Get her off the streets. Help her get her GED. It sounded like bullshit to me. Too good to be true, ya know?”
I nod. I know all right.
“Anyway, the bitch offered Raya a place to stay and Raya took it. Even started calling Dallas her big sister. I guess she was looking for one after what her real sister did to her.”
“What’d she do?”
“Raya and her sister were livin’ with some producer guy. Can’t remember his name—”
“Vin Prince.”
“Yeah, him. They were livin’ with that asshole and one day while her sister was out he got high on meth and raped Raya. Sister came home in the middle of it, saw them together and took his side. Kicked Raya out for screwing her boyfriend. How’s that for fucked?”
It was fucked all right; if it was true. My blood does the old slow boil just thinking about how hard I fought to keep from killing Prince when, as it turns out, I might’ve been doing the world a favor if I had.
“Did you go to the police when Raya went missing?”
“No. Why would I?”
“Your friend disappeared.”
Despite the gun, the kid laughs and looks at me like I’m half retarded. “C’mon, dude. The fuckin’ pigs don’t give a shit about street kids unless they can bust one of us for drugs. One of us turns up dead, the most they do is contact next of kin. Fuck the police.”
“Right,” I say. I feel a little bit bad for the kid. He doesn’t seem like a bad sort, just un-fucking-lucky. I take the picture back and put the gun away and pull some of the money Reesa gave me out. I peel off a twenty and stretch it out to him. “Here. For your trouble.”
His eyes go wide and greedy seeing it. He starts to take it, but stops himself like a stray offered food from a hand that has hit it one too many times. His eyes grow wary, wondering if maybe I want a little something extra for the cash.
“Go on, take it. It’s yours, free and clear.”
Hardly able to believe it, he takes the bill in both hands. “Aw fuck man, thanks. I can really use this. Thanks. Thanks, dude.”
I nod and turn to go.
“Hey,” the kid says, stopping me at one sharp corner of the dumpster. “You see that Vin guy, tell ’im he’s a fucking asshole for me, huh?”
“Sure, kid,” I say.
Then I’m gone.
Normally a vampire’s sleep is like death; total immersion in the black waters of oblivion where there is no light, no awareness, no dreams. It’s why vampires are so vulnerable in their sleep state. Because it’s more than sleep. Occasionally, however, dreams get through. Maybe it’s meeting the girl that did it. Maybe it’s the unexpected nostalgia brought on by the stops I made. Maybe it’s talking about her with the skinny girl in the club that shoveled up a long-buried memory best forgotten. Whatever the case—tonight I dream. I dream of the past. Of 1943. And a twist name of Coraline.
5
1943
Things with Coraline began with a bullet.
Like thousands of other small-town beauty queens who have been told all of their small-town lives that they’re pretty enough be in pictures, she had come to Hollywood seeking fame and fortune.
As a child, her favorite book had been The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I remember her telling me how she had read it over and over until the pages wilted and fell out like flower petals from a dead bouquet. The only part of the book she didn’t like was the end, where Dorothy returns home. Coraline told me she had ripped that chapter out the first time through. She thought Dorothy was a dumb bitch for giving up Oz for Kansas. A dumb bitch. That was how she put it.
Maybe the book captivated her for the simple reason that she, like Dorothy, was a small-town Kansas girl. Maybe it was something more sinister than that. Like the stumbling drunk of a dad who she never talked to and refused to say much about. Whatever the case, Coraline knew she wanted the hell out of Kansas from an
early age. She wanted something more from life. Something bigger. It was this that led her to Hollywood in March of ’43. And to me.
She had only been in town maybe a month or two by then. I met her on a break between sets at a Boyle Heights dive bar where the boys and me had been hired to fill an off week. I saw her across the smoke-filled room seated at a four-top near the bar. She was sitting by her plain Jane friend, smoking a cigarette in a way that made you just know she thought she was doing something bad and was enjoying it all the more because of it. It made me smile and our eyes met and she smiled back like she was in on the joke.
I’ve always been a cynic. I’d never believed in love at first sight until that moment. ’Til then I’d thought it was just some sappy concept thought up by some no-talent screenwriter somewhere. Maybe this was the real thing and maybe it wasn’t, but goddamn it was close. My first sight of Coraline took hold of me like my first veinful of dope. Her hair, pulled up in a trendy forward-curled pompadour, was the blue-black of a crow’s wing at midnight. It struck an uneasy alliance with her powder-pale skin. Dark eyebrows set off a pair of jewel-blue eyes. A pert, slightly upturned nose was balanced on a teeter-totter of kissable red lips. The moment I saw her I was hooked. I knew if given the chance I would keep going back to that well no matter the cost. Even if it poisoned me.
I went over and introduced myself. She told me her name was Coraline. She told me she’d heard about me and the boys and how she had snuck out past curfew from the boarding house where she lived just to come see us. She told me she thought we were swell, just swell. Then the girls’ dates came back from the bar armed with drinks and scowls and things got a little awkward. They got even more awkward when I asked Coraline to accompany me to a private party I knew of after the show.
“Hey, what are you tryin’ to pull, Dad? Can’t you see she’s spoken for?” Coraline’s date, a wisp of a kid, demanded. He had a bang of muddy blond hair and a weak jaw and I didn’t blame him a bit for trying to hold on to her. I knew as soon as I saw her that Coraline was the kind of girl bucks locked horns over.
Angel of Vengeance Page 4