by Mark Henwick
I hadn’t had any plan that day. I just wanted to see where the rogues had been living. I had smelled the vampire smell from the house and passed on by, vaguely surprised that nothing else marked the place—dust gathered and weeds grew, just like everywhere else.
Hector Street was a bad area and it was midnight, but I was armed and anyway, there was no one else around.
I parked, pocketed a flashlight and some gloves, and walked slowly down the road, my boots making a soft tock tock on the sidewalk. The sounds of music or TV drifted out from some of the houses, but most were dark and quiet.
The rogues had lived at 1105. The house had been sold and it looked like a happier place, even in the darkness. There was no smell of vampire from it now.
I walked on, and around 990 the houses became uniform: clapboard squares with a couple of windows facing the street, individual only in the efforts to provide an off-road parking space or a neater yard. 982 was as unremarkable as the others. It was a corner lot and it had a driveway with an old Buick parked in it.
My breath plumed in the chilly air. The cross street was called Monroe and it was a step down the ladder—more cars parked along the road, narrow overgrown yards, paint peeling, unrepaired windows and doors. Still, some of these people probably owned their homes, which was more than I could say for myself.
I yawned; there was nothing here. I wanted to go to bed, if not back at the Desiartos’, then in the office.
I took a couple of aimless paces down Monroe Street and stopped abruptly.
The smell was faint but unmistakable. There was a vampire here, or one had been here recently. At the same time, I also realized that the rogues last year had smelled different from the four guys I had fought yesterday. And this smell was the same as the rogues.
I slipped my hand inside my jacket and checked the HK. The textured grip, warm from my body heat, felt reassuring. I lifted it from the holster, but kept it inside the jacket as if I were keeping my hand warm as I walked down the street, trying to judge which house it was.
It seemed to be number 248. Other houses had porch lights and some had strips of light showing under poorly fitting doors, or curtains lit by lights inside. 248 was completely dark and silent. I’m not much given to flights of imagination, but it felt as if the house were holding its breath, waiting.
I slipped down the side, the HK out and the safety off. This was definitely the one. The smell was stronger, even mixed with others. Fanciful thought or not, the house gave off a feeling of cold. Hidden in the darkness by the side of the house, I put my gloves on, then followed the HK around the back.
The odor of garbage piled up outside the kitchen door deadened my nose till I could barely smell vampire any more. I edged past the pile and reached a back door. It was locked, using a standard mortice deadbolt. Any reputable PI would have lockpicks in their pocket and be through that in seconds. I went and checked the windows.
The second one was warped and popped its latch when I pressed it. I opened the window and listened for any response from the house. There were no sounds, but my nose was picking up something else from inside now—the smell of death.
I eased myself in. I was standing in a tiled eating area beside the kitchen. Even in the dark, the place looked filthy. A small, half-assembled motorcycle stood in the corner, the engine lying next to it on old newspapers. Trash covered the table and chairs: clothes, takeout packaging, leftover food and empty beer bottles.
The stench of death was nauseating, swamping everything else. Tiny sounds from neighboring houses filtered in as if they were on a different planet, but this house was still. I knew there was no one alive inside.
Leading with the HK, I made my way carefully through the kitchen. The back door key was hanging from the handle by a string. I unlocked it in case I needed out in a hurry and started checking room by room.
It didn’t take long. It was a small house and the scurrying rats led me to him. He was in the living room, lying on the sofa. Judging from the rigor mortis, he had been dead about a day.
I made sure there was no one else in the house and the curtains were tightly closed before going back to him. I paused before using my flashlight. I wanted to use it sparingly because my night vision was so good, and the flashlight would reduce that. Also, there’s nothing so suspicious as a flashlight in a dark house. But the main reason was that I didn’t want to see him. I’ve seen my share of deaths, in the army and police. It doesn’t get any better, and I had a feeling this would be bad.
Wrapping my hand around the flashlight head and reducing the beam to a red glow, I looked on the ruin that had been Guy Windler. It was every bit as awful as I anticipated. The guy had tried to run me down, but no one deserved to end up like that. His body had shrunk in on itself, not from decay or the normal process of death. He’d been sucked dry of blood. Then his chest had been shattered and his heart torn out of his ribcage. The rats had been at his face and the remainder of his organs. The corpse stunk of vampire.
I made it out the back door and heaved my guts out onto the dusty back yard.
When I could go back inside, I called Morales from the kitchen.
“Farrell, you know what time it is?” I could tell from his harsh whisper that he had been in bed. I heard him close a door.
“Farrell! You there? What’s going on?”
“I found Windler, Captain,” I managed hoarsely. I could almost feel the sleep clearing from Morales’ brain.
We had some prearranged signals dating back to the cover up last year. I went on. “It’s snakebite. Real bad. I need your snake experts over at 248 Monroe in Aurora. In a hurry. Don’t know if someone’s coming to clean up.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” I replied, but I was lying.
“They’ll be there in thirty minutes. I’ll be there too. Wait for me, Farrell, you hear me?”
“Yes, Captain.”
The call cut off and I was left with the rat infested, choking darkness and the dead man. At least Morales hadn’t wasted time asking me what I was doing out there on my own. That would come later.
I stood there and thought over the other things my brief glimpse had shown me. The wounds on his throat. The way his hands had stiffened into claws. His shirt had been torn off, and his upper arms were tattooed with rattlesnakes, open mouths and fangs framing the shoulders. That was the gang tattoo of ZK, Zeklesh, the snakemouth gang.
Morales and I had agreed on snakebite as a code for vampires. Maybe the association went deeper than that.
Chapter 14
THURSDAY
“Fabulous. You are my hero.” I swallowed a mouthful of the coffee Tullah had brought in.
She was looking me over carefully. I guess finding her boss sprawled asleep at her desk in yesterday’s clothes was a concern for her.
“At least you don’t have any new bruises,” she said.
“Damn, I forgot. I was supposed to pick up some more last night.”
“What were you doing?”
“Long story. Long night.” I stretched. “We tracked down the driver from Crate & Freight. He’s dead. Killed by whoever he was working with.”
“Not that he didn’t deserve it for trying to run you over, but why was he killed? The police have a dozen other drivers in cells. All of them were all doing the same thing.”
“Good question, but not quite accurate.” I shrugged. “He was the one who was the contact with whoever was running this.”
We sat and sipped our coffee. Tullah was showing a good grasp of the business for someone who I’d hired to handle the phones and filing.
Around the time I started as a PI, we’d met and sparred at her father’s martial arts classes and had gotten to talking. She’d explained that she had spare time between classes during the day and didn’t want to go all the way home or sit in the library. I couldn’t really afford her, but somehow it worked. And she brought me coffee in the morning.
“I got your message about looking at a new office,
what happened?” I said.
“Oh my God! I’m sitting here in a daze.” She leaped out of her chair. “I found the right place yesterday. Umm. I had to take it then and there.” She looked anxiously at me. “I’ve got a guy with a van coming. We’re moving in an hour. If that’s okay?”
I laughed. “Well, go on, tell me about it.”
“It’s a little bigger and it’s furnished already, so we saved money there. It’s not even a hundred a month more in rent. Utility bills are lower than this place. Phones will be transferred in a couple of days. Oh, and there’s three months’ notice either way.”
“Great! Where is it?”
“Colorado Boulevard. Just south of the interstate where East Evans crosses Colorado. Is that going to be okay?”
I raised my eyebrows. That was good for a hundred a month more, and handy for the college.
“It’s better than okay, it’s fantastic, Tullah. I owe you, big time.”
She looked pleased and started to run around, emptying cabinets into cardboard boxes. I helped, and we were finished quickly.
“I’m going to get a shower and then some breakfast,” I said and headed out.
Half an hour later, thanks to Sol and the spare clothes in my trunk, I was clean and presentable for my meeting later with Jennifer.
I strolled happily into Papa Dee’s. This place was good and I would miss it, I thought, looking around.
Hmm.
I picked up my order and opened my jacket so the shoulder holster would show when I sat down. Then I walked over to sit opposite rabbit face and pushed the screen of his laptop closed.
“It’s rude to play with your computer at breakfast,” I said, and got out my Sergeant’s Smile Number 13—‘Unlucky for you’.
“Are you going to tell me why you’re following me or do we do this the hard way?” I said through the smile. His eyes—exactly like a frightened rabbit—made a hasty circuit of my face, the next occupied table and the butt of the HK peeking out from beneath my jacket.
“You…you can’t threaten me,” he stammered. “My office knows where I am.”
“Oh, I imagine they do. So, I’m not threatening you. You haven’t answered my question.” I started working on my breakfast.
My not pinning him to the seat seemed to give him some courage. He reached for his pocket, then froze when I looked up sharply. Very slowly, he put his hand in and drew out an ID and an official letter.
“Lieutenant Henry Krantz,” I read aloud. “Army pay administration. And a cover letter from the Department of Veterans Affairs. I’m so impressed. You still haven’t answered my question.”
“I’m checking on disability compensation payments,” he blurted out.
I just looked at him in disbelief. “You’re checking the couple of hundred a month that I get?”
“It adds up, Ms. Farrell,” he said stiffly. “Even if I accepted the legality of your claim, I’ve determined that you have no lasting physical injuries pertinent to any claimed operational incidents in service. And whereas it would require a fully qualified assessor to determine your psychiatric state,” he paused, glancing nervously at the gun before gathering himself to stutter on, “it would seem that you are fully and gainfully employed as a private investigator which would argue against any lasting psychiatric injury.”
I could argue the ‘gainful’ bit, but I just ate another piece of toast and watched him. I didn’t like where this seemed to be leading. Officially, I wasn’t in the army any more, despite the fact I was still under orders. They paid me a retainer which they had disguised as a veteran’s disability payment.
He licked his lips. “So even if I accepted the legality of your claim, I would adjudge your compensation payment redundant.”
“That’s the second time you’ve used that comment about legality. You want to tell me what that’s about?”
He seemed to be getting more confident as he went on.
“Your claims are commensurate with a sergeant grade E5 at a 20% rating with no dependents.”
I shrugged. I had never claimed anything, but that was the right grade and it was probably what was written in the agreement I had signed.
Krantz tried to hide his triumphant expression. “But there are no salary records for you after boot camp, no army records at all, in fact, until you started claiming. You never made private, Ms. Farrell, let alone sergeant. You were never in the army.”
He sat back, satisfied that he’d nailed me.
I finished my breakfast and took a swallow of coffee. It rattled him to see my lack of reaction, but he felt secure enough in his facts to take a sip of his own coffee.
“You don’t have the security clearance to see my records,” I said.
He laughed and brushed my comment away with a wave of his hand.
“Ridiculous. You’re claiming that you were special forces or something? Ms. Farrell, if you’d ever actually been in the army, you would know that the special forces don’t recruit women. And anyway, their salary records are still available to me.”
I suppressed a flare of anger. “Obviously, not all of them. Just tell me one thing, Krantz. Why would it be worth it?”
This was beyond ridiculous. The money was nothing, but it was upsetting out of all proportion with that. Exasperating.
Krantz leaned forward as if he were about to impart something profound to me.
“I’ve found out that you’re just a small part of a large conspiracy to defraud the taxpayers and divert veterans’ money from where it is needed.” He licked his lips, and his little rabbit eyes became earnest. “You’re probably not aware of it, and the amount may seem trivial to you personally, but I can tell you, I know that this fraud is worth many millions in total. My job at the moment is to find out how the fraud is perpetrated. I’m not really interested in your case, per se. I want to find out the person in the VA department who arranged it and how it works. I mean, how much of a cut do you take and how do you pass the rest back? Who to?”
He rocked back on his chair. “If you make full disclosure I could help. It might never even come to criminal charges.”
I just looked at him.
He tried once more. “You applied to join the army once. I’m thinking that showed some patriotism on your part and I applaud that, believe me, I do. Now, think of the damage this fraud is doing to this country. Please, find that patriotism again and help repair the problem.”
I jerked him across the table before he realized what was happening. His eyes bulged and he scrabbled futilely against my grip.
“Listen to me, Krantz. Maybe you have found some conspiracy with compensation payments. Maybe it is worth a lot and it needs fixing. But don’t you ever come around here telling me I’m part of it, and don’t you ever, ever dare suggest I’m unpatriotic.”
I threw him back into his chair and walked out. Every eye in the place was on me. It wasn’t the way I’d have wanted to say goodbye to Papa Dee’s, but at that moment, I didn’t care.
I walked slowly back to the office. Tullah’s van driver was there getting our things loaded. She sensed I wasn’t in a talking mood and just gave me the address of the new office to pass on to Jennifer.
I had to scrub this out of my mind. I needed to be thinking clearly at lunchtime. Jennifer wasn’t going to be happy with what I had to say.
Chapter 15
Jennifer arrived at the new office at noon. I heard her talking to Tullah and I walked out to greet her.
“Hi, Amber!” She turned on her pin-sharp Italian heels and gave me a big smile. She was wearing another beautiful dress, medium blue this time, simple and elegant, with a plain jacket.
I wasn’t quite sure whether to shake her hand or kiss her on the cheek. We had been very informal with each other, but there’s a certain distance you should keep from clients. I didn’t want to make any assumptions.
She solved the problem by kissing me on both cheeks, European style.
“Hi Jen,” I replied. “Thanks for coming o
ver. What do you think of the new office?”
“I like it. Nice and bright. Easy for me to get to as well.”
“Thanks. It’s all thanks to Tullah. She found the place and did the deal.” Tullah smiled shyly.
I motioned to my office. “Let’s go sit down.”
“Oh, honey, I booked a table for lunch,” Jennifer said.
I must have looked hesitant, because she pressed on quickly.
“It’s at the Moulin. It’s a booth, so it’ll be private.” She paused. “I thought it would be easier if I run you out to Silver Hills from there afterwards.”
“Ah, okay.” I hadn’t dressed for lunch, I’d dressed for the office and visiting the site of the planned resort. Not really up to the Moulin, which was another of those restaurants I’d heard about but couldn’t afford. I ran a hand through my hair. “Give me a few moments and I’ll get some stuff.”
I went back to my office and took the Walther PPK and holster from the safe. It doesn’t have the stopping power of the HK, but it’s smaller and lighter and it fits better under a jacket. That’s the reason James Bond favors it. Then again, he wouldn’t have been caught dead in the sloppy jacket I put on.
I ran a comb through my hair, made sure it was neatly caught in its tie and looked in the mirror. At least the worst of the bruising was gone. Sigh. I grabbed my preliminary notes and investigation gear and rejoined Jennifer. Tullah gave me a big grin and a wave as we left.
I expected the chauffeur to be waiting for us outside and stopped for a second to look around, but Jennifer strode briskly to another car. My jaw unhinged itself. I went over and stroked it. It was all I could do not to lick the thing, it was so gorgeous.
“Are you getting in it or getting off on it?” asked Jennifer, laughing.
“Okay, okay, I’ll get in.” Her laughter was infectious. “This will definitely be the first time I’ve ever gotten in a pink car!”
It wasn’t just any car either, it was the top of the line Mercedes roadster. It was already a fun car with outrageous performance. And then Jennifer Kingslund bought one and painted it a deep and dusty pink. I slid down into the pale leather seat and wriggled with pleasure.