by Margaret Carter, Crystal Green, Erica Orloff, Patricia Rosemor
“Well, at first I thought she ran a crooked club. A couple of high-end dealers hung out there and then they ended up dead. Weird shit. Killings…with their blood drained from their bodies.”
“Was that the Bogdanovich case I read about?”
“Yeah. He was one of them. Russian mob. At least, that’s what we thought. Maybe them moving in on the Italians. We thought perhaps a territory dispute. Who the fuck knows with these lowlifes? We thought the blood draining was a sign. A warning. But when I asked this woman what she knew, she always said ‘nothing.’”
“Is the place mobbed up?”
“Well, that’s the thing. I thought so at first, but now I’m not so sure. See, everything about this woman makes me question myself. First, I was sure she was as crooked as the proverbial three-dollar bill. Then, last night we talked, and man…she hates drugs. Hates them as much as I hate them. She tries to run a clean club—not easy in this city.”
Flynn was also adamantly against drug use. His father died a hero, and after his death, looking for a role model for her son, his mother had sought out his father’s brother, Sean. But Flynn’s uncle had turned out to be a two-bit hood, a low-level, dime-bag pot dealer. So Flynn’s mother had isolated her son from the Flynn family, raising him as best she could on a widow’s pension and social security, and what she earned as a teacher’s aide in the school system. Drugs were the enemy in the Flynn home. And though she had lost her husband in the line of duty, doing what was right was the goal she taught her son to aspire to.
“Sounds like this nightclub owner’s a fine woman, then,” Gus mused.
“There it gets tricky. She’s too fine.”
“Too fine?” Gus dunked his bear claw and waited for Flynn to go on.
“See, we have this kind of antagonistic thing going on. Gus, plain and simple, she’s loaded. L-O-A-D-E-D.”
“Like Diana?”
“No.” Flynn’s face darkened. “Diana was from old money. Her parents were mainline Philadelphia, for God’s sake. I was never going to make her parents happy, let alone her.”
“And this woman?”
“She’s different, is all I can say. She doesn’t seem to care about money, even though she obviously has a lot of it. She has this club—as hot as the old Studio 54. I mean, Gus, it is like in Page Six of the Post every Friday and Saturday. Knee-deep in heiresses, movie stars, rappers, New York Yankees—you name it.”
“Ah, the beautiful people.”
“But you want to know something a little strange? The thing is, when you go in her office, she doesn’t have nothin’ on the walls.”
“That’s kind of atypical for a club owner. No black-and-white five-by-tens of her and the latest movie stars? Rock stars?”
“No. Nada. Nothin’. No pictures. She is totally unimpressed by the A-list her place draws.”
“So maybe she is just good at what she does—running a nightclub. And maybe she doesn’t care about all the trappings of wealth. You ever think that’s possible?”
“Yeah. But I know she’s got secrets.”
“Secrets. Please. You got secrets. I got secrets. Remember the Moreno case?”
Flynn nodded. Moreno was a child molester. Flynn and Gus had gone to Moreno’s house to search for an abducted eight-year-old girl. They found a veritable child porn empire. And they found little missing Annie Bey’s underpants. And Charles Moreno, elementary school psychologist, wasn’t about to give anything up. Only after Gus and Flynn inflicted some serious pain did he confess the little girl was buried alive in a bunker twenty feet in back of his house—within view of the bedroom where he slept with his pregnant wife. Had Gus and Flynn not broken Moreno’s jaw and the bones in his left foot, and fired a gun two inches above his head to terrify him, the little girl would be dead. Of course, they had pinned the injuries on “resisting arrest.” Moreno was serving twenty years to life. And neither Flynn nor Gus had lost a moment’s sleep. But yes, they had their secrets….
“I don’t know, Gus. She’s mysterious. And beautiful. And for the life of me I can’t figure out what she could possibly want with the likes of me.”
“Did you ever stop to think that a principled man might be attractive to some women? My Irene…now she loved me precisely because I was going to make sure the bad guys went away.”
“I don’t know. This woman unnerves me. She’s got art in that loft of hers that costs more than I make in a decade. I saw this painting. I was positive I had seen it before. I went home last night and found it in a fuckin’ art history book from a course I had to take in college. It was a Marc Chagall. He drew these kinds of weird people with the eyes flat on the side of their faces. Not my taste, but Jesus…it’s museum-quality shit she has.”
“And what? A classy woman can’t love you?”
“Well, look what happened with Diana.”
“Diana, despite her money, wasn’t classy. She was bossy and controlling. And she loved you in direct proportion to how fast she thought you would rise to police commissioner. To how quickly she could convince you to go to law school, become a DA, join a fancy law firm and make headlines. This woman you describe, I don’t get that sense. Not from what you’ve told me this morning.”
“I don’t know…I just feel like a loser around her.”
“What does Williams say?”
“He thinks she’s amazing. But of course he loves going to her club and scoring phone numbers. I mean there are supermodels there, Gus. And you know Williams. The ladies love him.”
“What’s the name of her club?”
“Night Flight.”
“Night Flight…Night Flight. Where have I heard that name before?”
“The newspaper, probably.”
“No. That’s not it.”
“What, then?”
“Nothing. Want some more coffee?”
“Sure.”
Gus poured Flynn another cup, but the retired detective still looked puzzled.
“What is it, Gus?”
“I don’t know. I’m just getting old.”
“Bullshit.” Flynn knew Gus did the New York Times crossword puzzle every day, read five books a week and did everything in his power to stay at the top of his mental game. He and Irene had not been able to have children, so Flynn was named in his will as sole beneficiary. Flynn also had all the papers necessary to make medical decisions on Gus’s behalf, and what Gus feared most was someday being senile and sent to a home where he would just waste away and die, no longer alert and bright and sharp-minded. Flynn knew nothing escaped Gus, no detail.
“It’s nothing.”
“It is something. Tell me.”
Gus shook his head. He sipped his coffee, then suddenly downed the rest of his cup. Furrowing his brow, he rose from his chair and went over to a four-drawer file cabinet in the corner of the room.
“I seem to remember…”
“What?” Flynn asked. Gus’s hunches were legendary at the precinct.
“I’m not sure. But I seem to remember a nightclub in Germany. World War II. Called the Night Flight Club. A very hot place. Played American jazz, had a chanteuse. And the owner of it was a very beautiful woman. Dark-haired. Green-eyed. One newspaper called them ‘emerald eyes.’ She was mysterious, elusive. But described as stunning by anyone who met her.”
“Night Flight, huh?” Flynn’s heartbeat quickened. “Kind of an odd coincidence. Tessa is very beautiful herself. Black hair. Green eyes.”
Gus opened a file cabinet. “I have everything cross-referenced.” He fumbled through some files. “It’s not under Night Flight. Or nightclub. But I just know it’s here somewhere. I seem to remember, also, a picture. Let me see what I find. Of course, it can’t be the same person, same club, but it just makes me curious.”
“Me too.”
Gus shoved closed the heavy file cabinet drawer bulging with research and clippings. Returning to his seat, he said, “Don’t judge her for being rich, or owning a nightclub. Judge her by what you see, what
you feel. Trust your instincts, Tony. You do as a cop.”
“Yeah, but my instincts as a man left me divorced.”
“And you can’t judge yourself forever because of it. So Diana blinded you to her true self. Doesn’t mean every woman will.”
The two men sat and had another whole pot of coffee. Then they watched the Giants game on television, and finally, yawning, despite the caffeine, Flynn felt ready to go home. Riding on the subway, gently rocking with the train, he thought of Tessa. He thought of kissing her. And he thought of Gus’s words. Trust your instincts. His instincts told him that he could trust her—and that whatever her secrets were, they were more intense than any he previously could have encountered, let alone managed on his own. And his instincts also told him that he didn’t care. He’d take her. Secrets and all.
Chapter 8
That night, Tessa dressed in a classic black crepe Bill Blass pantsuit and rode down around eleven-thirty in the elevator to check in with Cool, who was trying out a new sound system on the upper level of the club. It sounded great, so she proceeded to her office. She was in a horribly bitchy mood, and she knew it.
In the first place, she hadn’t slept well at all. She needed to feed, and soon. Her pallor was such that she’d been forced to use pancake makeup, and though she applied it better than a Hollywood makeup artist, she hated feeling like a slave to her condition.
Condition. She shook her head. How many euphemisms had she used over the years to kid herself? She just couldn’t bear to think of herself as she was—as she really was. Undead. Neither alive nor truly dead. Just in a state between two worlds. She was reviled. Movie after movie portrayed vampires as bloodsucking evil creatures. And spiritually, she knew immortality achieved through blood was wrong, an affront to all religions.
Adding to her bad mood was waking up this evening with a feeling that her longing for Flynn was a weakness. She had lived as a celibate, but now she hungered for the taste of Flynn, for his mouth on hers. Kissing him hadn’t cured her of her infatuation—it had made it far worse.
She was poring over her accounts on her computer when there was a knock on her office door.
“Who is it?” she asked sharply, an edge to her voice.
“Cool.”
“Come in.” She tried to soften her voice, but she knew it still sounded irritated. Like she had PMS. She and Lily joked they had “Pre-Monster Syndrome”—since neither menstruated anymore. Though she had considered her periods an inconvenience when she had them—most especially at the end of the nineteenth century—she knew now a monthly cycle meant the opposite of her. It meant life.
“Tess?”
“Hmm?” Her face was impassive.
“Lily is a no-show.”
“What do you mean a no-show?”
“I mean a no-show. As in not here, and she’s supposed to go on in a half hour.”
“Did you call her place?”
Cool nodded.
“Her cell phone?” she snapped.
He nodded again.
Tessa took a deep breath. “Cool…I’m sorry. I’m just in a really bad mood. Insomnia. Of course you’d call her place and her cell before you’d come in here. That’s just really unusual.”
“I’m going to go on the assumption maybe she’s sick or something, so no live show tonight. Unless I can get Miss Divine,” he added, referring to a drag queen who sometimes did a fun, over-the top disco set.
“Miss Divine needs three hours of makeup and prep. Just go without the live show.”
“Okay. But I figured you’d want to try to track down Lily. She’s never not shown. Not as long as I’ve worked here.”
“Thanks. And sorry for being so bitchy.”
“We’re cool.” He winked at her and left.
Tessa dialed Lily’s apartment in Chelsea, a place on the top floor with access to the roof. The phone rang and rang. No machine came on, something else that was absolutely unlike Lily, who adored being part of the twenty-first century and had every technological gadget she could get her hands on. Hell, she coordinated her outfits on her Palm Pilot, used her iMac to download songs to her iPod. She was wired to distraction, and there was no way she’d leave her apartment without the machine on or without forwarding the calls to her cell phone—which was a tiny fold-up Nokia in bright red with rhinestones.
Every nerve inside Tessa was now alive and working overtime. She massaged her temples, then she buzzed Jorge. He wore an earpiece not unlike that of a Secret Service agent.
“Yeah?”
“Listen, Jorge, you need to cover everything tonight. Lily isn’t picking up her phone, she didn’t show up to sing—and you know how much she loves being the center of attention. Something’s wrong. I can feel it. I’m going by her place to check it out.”
“Maybe I should go with you.”
Tessa was sure Jorge was replaying the sight of her on the roof, her arm bloodied by her battle with Jules, but she tried to put his mind at ease. “No, really. I’ll bet she’s got something as simple as the flu, and just turned her ringer off. I’m concerned, but not in panic mode yet. I’ll call you if I need you. Meanwhile, I’ll have my cell on. If she should show up, call me.”
“Sure thing.”
Tessa hung up the phone and mused over how twenty years ago, she wasn’t even online. Cell phones, gadgets, her friendship with Hack didn’t exist. The world was changing at a faster pace than at any other time she could remember, except perhaps during WWII—though then the frenzy had been a furious worldwide spiral downward. Now it was about keeping in touch and wired to the rest of the world all day, every day.
Riding back up to her loft, she tried not to feel a sense of dread, but she was worried. She unlocked the door and quickly dressed in what she thought of as her kick-ass attire. If Jules was waiting for her, he’d find that she was more than willing to finish what he had started.
Turning to leave her bedroom, she saw that her answering machine was blinking. Thinking Lily had called, Tessa pressed play. She heard Flynn’s voice.
“Tessa…It’s Tony Flynn. I want to thank you for the drink last night. I enjoyed…shit…I enjoyed your company. And in the meantime, I’m trying to see what I might be able to find out about Shanghai Red…And I was wondering if I might buy you dinner. You have my card. Call me. All right, then…good night.”
Tessa’s finger poised over the button. She decided not to press erase. She liked the sound of his voice, so instead pressed save.
A second message began to play.
“Tess…Tess, pick up. Please. Please…it’s—”
Lily’s voice. Sounding scared. And then cut off. Tessa wondered if her machine had malfunctioned, even as she knew it hadn’t. Something—or more likely someone—had prevented Lily from continuing.
Tessa pulled on her leather jacket and donned a pair of dark glasses. Whoever it was, Tessa was ready to do battle.
Chapter 9
Lily’s apartment was as much a reflection of her being as Tessa’s loft was a reflection of herself. Whereas Tessa’s home was a collection of art, beauty and Buddhism, Lily’s apartment was about music and bohemia. Giant posters of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, as well as movie stills from old silent films Lily had watched—when they were released—and loved, mingled with hanging tapestries from Morocco and Spain. Whereas Tessa’s clothes hung in a dressing room fit for a queen, Lily’s clothes were strewn haphazardly or draped over one of several dressmakers’ mannequins. Lily often sewed her own clothes, never losing the skill she had learned as a seamstress and servant over a century ago. She haunted a thrift shop over on St. Mark’s that stayed open until eleven o’clock at night during the week and later on the weekends, and brought home vintage clothes that she then altered into nouveau funk.
“Lily?” Tessa called out cautiously. She entered the apartment through the bedroom window, muscles taut, ready for whatever faced her. “Lily?”
Tessa crept from room to room. Lily was very untidy, so Tessa was ha
rd-pressed to determine whether or not a struggle had occurred in the apartment. She entered the kitchen, and there she saw a knife thrown on the floor—a meat cleaver. Tessa looked at the butcher block where Lily stored her kitchen knives. It was the cleaver from the block. Tessa picked up the knife. Why had Lily drawn it, if not because she felt danger? Tessa spotted blood on its edge—
And then, from behind, he hit her.
“Fuck!” She whirled around, momentarily reeling, and faced off against a vampire easily six feet tall.
“So easy when you take the bait, Tess,” he hissed at her.
“Who are you?” She demanded, drawing back and preparing to fight. Her head pounded. In truth, she was in a weakened state—she really needed to feed. She imagined it was like when Delorean, Jorge’s wife, complained of the migraines she sometimes suffered.
“Please…before I kill you, we should be on a first-name basis. Call me James.”
She struck him quickly with a strong kick to his side. He barely registered the blow, just blinked once slowly, and then shot his hand out, grabbing her by the throat and lifting her two feet off the ground. Tessa struggled to breathe, gasping and trying to pry his fingers from her neck. She began seeing actual stars. Damn this one. If her head hadn’t hurt before, it would surely hurt now.
Tightening her grip on the cleaver in her right hand, she sliced his arm, deep, not stopping when she felt the knife meet the resistance of bone.
James screamed out in anger and pain, a primal howl, releasing his fingers from her throat. Blood spattered across the walls and cabinets of Lily’s kitchen. With him momentarily distracted, Tessa kicked with all her might, then slashed at him again, catching his shoulder with the full force of the cleaver and burying the blade in his collarbone, where it stuck. He clutched his shoulder, the blood spilling through his fingers, and opened his mouth wide in pain, showing lengthening canines.
“You’ll fucking pay for this,” he snarled at her, but Tessa was already on the move.
Certain Lily was not in the apartment, and certain that the strength of this vampire was greater than her own because she was weakened, she retreated, almost in full flight, out into the living room and, in a flash, out to the fire escape and up to the roof.