"It's okay, kid. You did great. We are most pleased with you."
Abby snorted and looked out the window. Jody, in turn, put her arm around Tommy's neck and dug her nails into his shoulder. "Shut up," she whispered, so soft that only Tommy would be able to hear it. "You're not helping."
"Look, Abby," Jody said, "it's not something that happens all at once, like in the movies. Sometimes you have to eat bugs for years before you become one of the chosen."
"I know I did," Tommy said. "Beetles, bugs, spiders, mice, rats, snakes, marmosets, OUCH! Stop that, I've been tortured already tonight."
"You two are just into each other," Abby said. "You don't care about anyone else. We're like cattle to you."
The cabdriver, who was a Hindu, looked in the rear-view mirror.
"So what's your point?" Jody said.
Tommy elbowed her in the ribs.
"Kidding. Jeez. Abby, we care very deeply about you. We've trusted you with everything. In fact, you may have saved my life tonight."
Tommy reared back and looked at Jody.
"Long story," the redhead said. Then to Abby again: "Get some rest and come to the loft tomorrow at dusk. We'll talk about your future."
Abby crossed her arms. "Tomorrow is Christmas. I'm trapped with the family."
"Tomorrow is Christmas?" Tommy said.
"Yeah," Jody said. "So?"
"The Animals won't be working. I have some issues with them."
"You were thinking revenge?"
"Well, yeah."
Jody patted the flight bag on the seat, which held all of the money that the Animals had paid to Blue, almost six hundred thousand dollars. "I think you have that covered."
Tommy frowned. "I'm beginning to doubt the steadiness of your moral compass."
"Sure, I'm the one with skewed ethics, when you spent the whole night tied up and beaten by a blue dominatrix and then ripping her throat out."
"You make everything sound so sleazy."
Abby put her fingers in her mouth and whistled—shrill and nearly deafening in the enclosed space. "Hello, there's a cabdriver here. Would you two shut the fuck up."
"Hey," Jody said.
"Hey," Tommy said.
"Hey, you, little creepy girl," said the cabdriver, "you will not be whistling in my cab again or I will be putting you out on the curb."
"Sorry," Abby said.
"Sorry," Tommy and Jody said in unison.
With the exception of the odd serial killer, and car salesmen who think of them as the perfect unit for measuring trunk space, nobody likes a dead whore. ("Yeah, you can get five-maybe six dead hookers in this baby.")
"She looks so natural," said Troy Lee, looking down on Blue. "Except for the way her arm is bent under her—and the riding crop—and the blood everywhere, I mean."
"And she's blue," said Lash.
The other Animals nodded mournfully.
It was turning out to be a stressful morning for the Animals: cleaning up the mess that Jody had made of the store, getting Drew to the emergency room to get his forehead sewn up where the wine bottle had hit him (they immediately passed around the painkillers he was prescribed, which help to take the edge off), then explaining the broken front window to the manager when he came in, and now this—
"You're the one with almost an MBA," Barry, the short balding one, said to Lash. "You should know what to do."
"They don't cover what to do with a dead hooker," Lash countered. "That's a whole different program. Political science, I think."
Despite the dulling they'd given themselves with the painkillers and a case of beer they'd shared in the parking lot at the Safeway, they were all feeling sad, and a little frightened.
"Gustavo is the porter," Clint said. "Shouldn't he do the cleanups?"
"Ahhhhh!" said Jeff, the tall ex-jock, as he thumped Clint on the head with a protruding knuckle. Feeling like the knuckle might not quite be enough, he snatched off Clint's horn-rimmed glasses and threw them to Troy Lee, who snapped them into four neat pieces and handed them back to Clint.
"This is all your fault," Lash said. "If you hadn't ratted Flood out to the cops, this wouldn't have happened."
"I just told them that Tommy was a vampire," Clint whined. "I didn't tell them he was here. I didn't tell them about your whore of Babylon."
"You didn't know her like we did," Barry added, his voice breaking a little. "She was special."
"Expensive," Drew said.
"Sí, expensive," added Gustavo.
"She probably could finally afford to go to Babylon," said Lash.
"Forgive them, for they know not what they do," Clint said.
Troy Lee bent and examined Blue, careful not to touch her. "It's hard to see bruising through the blue dye, but I guess she broke her neck. The blood must be Flood's. I don't see any marks on her."
"No bite marks, you mean," said Clint.
"Of course that's what I mean, nit wit. You know Flood's girlfriend did this, right?"
"How do you know?" Lash asked. "It could have been Flood."
"I don't think so," said Troy Lee. "Tommy was tied up here—see the orange crap all over the restraints. And these were unlocked, not broken."
"Maybe when Blue let him go he killed her."
Troy Lee picked something off of Blue's face, as delicately as if he were taking her ghost. "Except for this."
He held a long red hair up where Lash could see it. "No reason for her to be here, if Flood was loose."
"Dude, you're like one of those CSI guys," Drew said.
"We should call those two homicide cops," Barry said, like he was the first who might have thought of it.
"And tell them to come help us with our dead hooker," Lash said.
"Well they know about the vampires," Barry said. "Maybe they'll help us."
"How 'bout we move her to your apartment, and then call them?"
"Well, what are we going to do with her?" Barry said, standing feet apart, hands behind his back, a brave Hobbit ready to face a dragon.
Troy Lee shrugged. "Wait until dark, then drop her in the Bay?"
"I can't bear to touch her," Barry said. "Not after the moments we shared."
"You little puntas," Gustavo said, stepping up and beginning to roll up the bloodstained rug. He had a wife and five children, and although he had never disposed of a dead hooker before, he thought that it couldn't be any worse than changing the diaper on a gloopy infant.
The other Animals all looked at one another, embarrassed, until Gustavo growled at them and they jumped to move the heavy bed frame out of his way.
"I never really liked her that much, anyway," Barry said.
"She really did take advantage of us," Jeff said.
"I just went along with you guys so I didn't ruin the party," said Troy Lee. "I didn't enjoy even half of those blow jobs."
"Let's just put her in my closet until tonight, then a couple of us can sneak the bitch out to Hunter's Point and drop her off."
"On Christmas?" Drew asked.
"Can't believe she took all our money and now she's going to ruin Christmas," said Troy Lee.
"Our money!" said Lash. "That bitch!"
Nobody likes a dead whore.
"I do like a dead whore now and then," said the vampire Elijah Ben Sapir, derailing a perfectly good theme. He'd snapped the whore's neck right before she was completely drained so there would be a body. "But one doesn't want to be too obvious." He dragged the whore's body behind a Dumpster, and watched as the wounds on her neck healed over. He'd taken her in an alley near Tenth and Mission streets. He'd had the hood up on the oversized tracksuit he was wearing, so she'd been surprised when they'd ventured down the alley and he threw it back to reveal a very pale Semitic man.
"Look at-chew. Thought baby was a playa—" the whore had said, her last words. She'd only had a hundred dollars on her, which, along with the tracksuit and a pair of Nikes, were the complete resources the ancient vampire had at his disposal.
He'
d come to the city in a yacht worth millions, filled with art worth millions more, and now he was reduced to making kills for petty cash. Of course he owned several homes around the world, and had stashes of cash put away in a dozen cities, but it would take some time to access it. And perhaps it wasn't so bad to have the wolf at the door, for a change. After all, he'd come to the City and taken a new fledgling in order to alleviate his boredom. (It's very hard to feel alive when you've been dead for eight hundred years.) And she had done that. He was not bored—and he felt very much alive.
He walked out of the alley and checked the sky. Dawn was threatening—he had perhaps twenty minutes until sunup. "Where does the time go?" He crossed the street and was buzzed into a hotel with a sign that read for rent, by hour, day, or week. He could smell the cigarettes, sweat, and heroin on the desk clerk, and he kept his head down so the hood covered his face.
"Do you have a room without a window?"
"Twenty-five bucks, like all the others," the clerk said. "You want sheets? Sheets are five more."
The vampire smiled. "No, I don't want to spoil myself."
He paid the clerk, took the key, and trudged up the steps.
Yes, he felt very much alive. One really can't appreciate what one has until it's gone. And without a significant loss, how would one enjoy the process of revenge?
Chapter Nineteen
Our Dead Homeys
The vampires sat side by side on the bare futon frame, watching as a five-legged bug limped up the big front window of the loft.
Tommy thought that the rhythm of the bug's steps made a for a danceable backbeat—thought he might be able to set music to it, if he knew how to write music. Suite for Angst and Limping Bug, he'd call it.
"Nice bug," Tommy said.
"Yeah," Jody said.
We should save it for Abby, Jody thought. She was feeling guilty about having bitten the girl—not so much because of the violation, because obviously the kid had been willing, but because she felt as if she really didn't have any choice. She had been injured and her predator nature told her to survive, whatever the cost, which is what bothered her. Was her humanity drifting away?
"The Animals are going to come for us now," Tommy said. He was feeling angry, betrayed by his old crew, but most of all he felt separate from them now. He felt separate from everyone. Tomorrow was Christmas and he didn't even want to call his parents because they were a different species now. What do you buy for an inferior species?
"It's just the Animals," Jody said. "We'll be safe."
"I'll bet that's what Elijah thought, too, and they got him."
"We should go get him," Jody said. She imagined Elijah Ben Sapir, standing in the full sun by the Ferry Building, tourists passing him, wondering why someone would put a statue there. Would the brass protect him?
Tommy checked his watch. "We'd never get there and back in time. I tried that yesterday."
"How could you do that to him, Tommy? He was one of us."
"One of us? He was going to kill us, if you remember. He kind of did kill us. I resent that. Besides, if you're covered in bronze, what does it matter if you're underwater? I was just trying to get him out of sight so we could think about our future without him being part of it."
"Right. Okay," Jody said. "Sorry." Future? She'd lived with a half-dozen guys, none had ever willingly talked about the future before. And she and Tommy had a supersized buttload of future ahead of them as long as someone didn't catch them sleeping. "Maybe we really should leave the City," she said. "No one would know about us in a new city."
"I was thinking we should get a Christmas tree," Tommy said.
Jody looked away from the bug. "That's a thought, or we could put some mistletoe up, put on Christmas carols, and stand outside waiting for Santa until the sun comes up and incinerates us. How's that sound?"
"Nobody appreciates your sarcasm, missy. I'm just trying to get a handle on normal. Three months ago I was stocking groceries in Indiana, looking at community college, driving around in my crappy car, wishing I had a girlfriend, and wishing that there was some potential for something to happen beyond getting a job with benefits and living the same life as my dad. Now I have a girlfriend, and superpowers, and a bunch of people want to kill me, and I don't know how to act. I don't know what to do next. And it's going to be that way forever. Forever! I'm going to be scared out of my mind forever! I can't deal with forever."
He'd been barking at her, but she resisted the urge to snap back. He was nineteen, not a hundred and fifty—he didn't even have the tools for being an adult, let alone being immortal. "I know," she said. "Tomorrow night, first thing, we'll hire a car, go get Elijah, and pick up a Christmas tree on the way back. How's that sound?"
"Hiring a car? That sounds exotic."
"It'll be like prom." Was she being too patronizing?
"You don't have to do that," he said. "I'm sorry I'm acting like a weenie."
"But you're my weenie," Jody said. "Take me to bed."
Still holding her hand, he stood, then pulled her up into his arms. "We'll be okay, right?"
She nodded and kissed him, feeling for just a second like a girl in love instead of a predator. She immediately felt a resurgence of shame over feeding on Abby.
The doorbell rang.
"Did you know we had a doorbell?"
"Nope."
"You can't beat a dead whore in the morning," said Nick Cavuto cheerfully, because apparently, everyone loves a dead hooker, despite what certain writer types might think. They were standing in the alley off Mission Street.
Dorothy Chin—short, pretty, and whip-smart—snorted a laugh and checked the thermometer probe she'd stuck in the deceased's liver like a meat thermometer into a roast. "She hasn't been dead four hours, guys."
Rivera rubbed his temples and felt his bookstore slipping away, along with his marriage. He'd known the marriage had been going for a while, but he was feeling a little brokenhearted about the bookstore. He figured he knew, but he asked anyway. "Cause of death?"
"Toothy blow job," Cavuto said.
"Yes, Alphonse," said Dorothy with a tad too much sincerity, "I'd have to concur with Detective Cavuto, she died of a toothy blow job."
"It just pisses some guys off," Cavuto added, "a professional without skills."
"Guy just snapped her neck and took his money back," said Dorothy with a big grin.
"So a broken neck?" said Rivera, mentally waving goodbye to a whole set of first-edition Raymond Chandlers, ten-to-six workdays, golfing on Mondays.
Cavuto snorted this time. "Her head's turned around the wrong way, Rivera. What did you think it was?"
"Seriously," Dorothy Chin said, "I have to do the autopsy to be sure, but offhand that's the obvious cause. I'd also say she's probably lucky to go that way. She's HIV positive and it looks like the disease had developed into full-blown AIDS."
"How do you know that?"
"See these sarcomas on her feet."
Chin had removed one of the hooker's shoes—she pointed to open sores on the corpse's foot and ankle.
Rivera sighed. He didn't want to ask, but he asked anyway, "What about blood loss?"
Dorothy Chin had done the autopsies on two of the previous victims and cringed a little. It was a pattern. They'd all been terminally ill, they'd all died of a broken neck, and they'd all shown evidence of extreme blood loss, but no external wounds—not even a needle mark.
"Can't tell out here."
Cavuto had lost his cheery manner now. "So we spend Christmas day canvassing dirtbags to see if anyone saw anything?"
At the end of the alley, uniforms were still talking to the grimy homeless man who had called in the murder. He was trying to get them to spring for a bottle of whiskey—because it was Christmas. Rivera didn't want to go home, but he didn't want to spend a day trying to find out what he already knew. He checked his watch.
"What time was sunrise this morning?" he asked.
"Oh, wait," Cavuto said, patting do
wn his pockets, "I'll check my almanac."
Dorothy Chin snorted again, then started giggling.
"Dr. Chin," Rivera said, tightening down now, "could you be more precise about the time of death?"
Chin picked up on Rivera's tone and went full professional. "Sure. There's an algorithm for the cooling time of a body. Get me the weather from last night, let me get her back to the morgue and weigh her, and I'll get you a time within ten minutes."
"What?" Cavuto said to Chin. "What?" This time to Rivera.
"Winter solstice, Nick," Rivera said. "Christmas was originally set at the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. It's eleven-thirty now. I'm betting that four hours ago the sun was just coming up."
"Uh-huh," Cavuto said. "Prostitutes have shitty hours—is that what you're saying?"
Rivera raised an eyebrow. "Our guy didn't travel far after sunrise, is what I'm saying. He's going to be around here."
"I was afraid that's what you were saying," Cavuto said. "We're never going to get the bookstore open, are we?"
"Tell the uniforms to look anywhere it's dark: under Dumpsters, in crawl spaces, attics—anywhere."
"Getting warrants on Christmas day might be a problem."
"You won't need warrants if you get permission from the owners—we're not looking to bust anyone living here, we're looking for a murder suspect."
Cavuto pointed to the eight-story brick building that composed one wall of the alley. "This building has something like eight hundred ministorage units in it."
"Then you guys had better get started."
"Where're you going?"
"There was a missing person report on an old guy in North Beach a couple of days ago. I'm going to check it out."
"Because you don't want to go Dumpster diving for v—"
"Because," Rivera cut him off before he could say the V-word, "he had terminal cancer. His wife assumed he just wandered off and got lost. Now I'm not so sure. Call me if you find anything."
"Uh-huh." Cavuto turned to the three uniforms who were interviewing the bum. "Hey, guys, have I got a merry Christmas detail for you."
The Animals decided to hold a small memorial service for Blue in Chinatown. Troy Lee was already there, as was Lash, who wouldn't go home to his apartment until Blue's body was removed, and Barry, who was Jewish, would be coming there for dinner with his family, as was the tradition in his faith. Plus, the liquor stores in Chinatown were open on Christmas, and if you slipped some money under the counter, you could get firecrackers. The Animals were fairly sure that Blue would have wanted firecrackers at her funeral.
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