"Wait, wait, wait, don't hang up."
"Well?"
"You're the one, aren't you? You're real. I mean, you are a real vampire."
Jody held the phone away, stared at the receiver as if it were an alien object. "Who is this?"
"I don't want to tell you my name. I don't want you to be able to find me. Let's just say that I'm a friend."
"That's how most of my friends are," Jody said. "They don't tell me their names or how to find them. It keeps my social calendar pretty clear." Who was this guy? Who could possibly know that she was here, right now?
"Okay, I guess I owe you something. I'm a med student at… at a local college. I did some research on one of the bodies… one of the bodies of the people you killed."
"I didn't kill anyone. I don't know what you're talking about. If I am who you think I am, how did you know I'd be here? I didn't even know I would be here until an hour ago."
"I've been waiting, watching every night for a couple of weeks. I had a theory that you wouldn't have any noticeable body heat, and you don't."
"What are you talking about? No one notices anybody's body heat."
"Look up the street. By the white Toyota. It's running, by the way. If you make a move to come toward me, I'm gone."
Jody looked more closely at the person up the street standing by a white car. The car was running. The man was holding a cell phone and looking at her through some very large binoculars.
"I see you," she said. "What do you want?"
"I'm looking at you through infrared glasses. You're not giving off any body heat, so I know you're the one. My theory was right."
"Are you a cop?"
"No, I told you, I'm a medical student. I don't want to turn you in. In fact, I think I might be able to help you, if you're interested in being helped."
"Talk," Jody said. She held her hand over the phone and focused on the guy by the car. She could hear him talking into the cell phone.
"They gave one of the cadavers to our department after the coroner was done with it. It was a male, about sixty years old, the third victim, I think. I noticed that there was a clean spot on his neck, as if it had been washed. The coroner hadn't put that in his report. I took a tissue sample and put it under a microscope. The tissue in that area was living. Regenerating. I cultured it and it started to die, until I added something on a hunch."
"What?" Jody asked. She didn't know what to think. This man knew she was a vampire, and strangely, she felt an urge to attack. Some protective instinct wanted her to hurt him. Kill him. She fought to stay calm.
"Hemoglobin. I added some human hemoglobin and the tissue started to regenerate again. I ran it through the sequencer. It's not human DNA. It's close, but not human. It doesn't produce heat, doesn't seem to burn fuel the same way that mammalian cells do. The coroner said that he was the one that had drained the blood from the body, but he'd never done that before. And I knew that the guy had been murdered. I made a guess. I saw the ad in the Weekly for a vampire support group, so I've been watching."
Jody said, "Suppose I believe what you're saying. Suppose I believe that you believe this bullshit, how could you help me? Supposing I wanted to be helped?"
"My major is gene therapy. There's a chance I could reverse the process."
"This isn't science. I'm not saying that you're right about your theory. There are a lot of things that you don't know, that can't be explained by science. If you don't know that by now, you will. What you're talking about is magic."
"Magic is just science that we don't know yet. Do you want me to help or not?"
"Why would you want to do that? As far as you know, I kill people."
"So does cancer, but I still work on it. Do you have any idea what kind of competition there is for jobs in my field? It's an all-or-nothing field. I could end up getting my PhD and giving saccharine enemas to rats for five bucks an hour. What I learn from you would put my resume at the top of the stack."
Jody didn't know what to say. Part of her wanted to drop the phone and go after him. Another part wanted to accept his help.
She said, "What do you want me to do?"
"Nothing yet. How can I get hold of you?"
"I can't tell you that. I'll call you. What's your number?"
"I can't tell you that."
Jody sighed. "Look, Mr. Scientific Genius, figure out something. And by the way, I really didn't kill those people."
"Then why are you even listening to me?"
"I guess this conversation is over. Get in your car and get comfortable with asking rats to bend over. Good-bye."
"Wait, we could meet somewhere. Tomorrow. Someplace public."
"No, it has to be at night. Someplace private. You could have cops everywhere." She watched him as she talked. He had put the binoculars down and she could see that he was Asian.
"You're the killer here. Would you meet you someplace private and dark?"
"All right. Tomorrow night. Seven o'clock, at Enrico's on Broadway. That public enough for you?"
"Sure. Can I bring a blood-sample kit? Would you let me?"
"Would you let me?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
"Just kidding," she said. "Look, I don't want to hurt you, but I don't want to get hurt either. When you leave here, drive like hell and take an indirect route home."
"Why?"
"Because I really didn't kill those people, but I know who did, and he's been following me. If he's seen you, you're in danger."
The line was quiet for a minute, just the ghost voices of a cellular connection. Jody watched the Asian guy watching her.
Finally he cleared his throat. "How many of you are there?"
"I don't know," she said.
"I know that all of the victims don't change. It couldn't work. The geometric progression would have the entire human race turned to vampires in a month." He sounded more confident now that he had brought the conversation back to science.
"I'll tell you what I know tomorrow. But don't expect much. I don't know much. Or I'll tell you now if you want to talk face to face, but I don't think it's a good idea to talk about this with you on a cell phone."
"Yeah, you're right. Not now, though. Not here. You understand, don't you?"
Jody nodded, exaggerating the gesture so he could see. "The longer you stand there, the better chance you have of being seen by… by the other one. Tomorrow night, then. Seven o'clock."
"Will you be wearing that dress?"
Jody smiled. "Do you like it? It's new."
"It's great. I didn't think you would be a woman."
"Thanks. Go now."
She watched him climb into the Toyota, the cell phone still in hand. "Promise not to try and track me down?"
"I know where you'll be tomorrow night, remember?"
"Oh yeah. By the way, my name's Steve."
"Hi, Steve. I'm Jody."
"'Bye," he said. He disconnected. Jody hung up the phone and watched him drive away.
She thought, Great, another one to worry about.
It hadn't occurred to her that her condition might be reversible. But then, the med student didn't know about how the body had turned to dust. Science indeed.
Jump or dive, he thought. The silk suit whipped about his legs in the chill wind. The tower's aircraft warning light flashed red across his face and he could see heat swirling off it, dissolving over the bay.
His name was Elijah Ben Sapir. He stood five feet ten inches tall and he had been a vampire for eight hundred years. In human life he had been an alchemist and had spent his time mixing noxious chemicals and chanting arcane incantations trying to turn lead into gold and tap the secret of eternal life. He hadn't been a particularly good alchemist. He had never been able to pull off the gold transformation, although by a bizarre miscalculation of chemistry he did manage to invent Teflon some eight hundred years before DuPont would find a use for it. (It should be noted, though, that archaeologists recently uncovered a Viking rune stone in Greenland that menti
ons a Jew who entered the palace of Constantine the Magnificent in 1224 selling a line of nonstick hot pokers for the Emperor's torture chamber and was promptly given the bum's rush to the city gates. The accuracy of the story has been questioned, however, as it begins, "I never believed that your letters were true until Gunner and I…" and goes on to recount the sexual exploits of two Vikings and a harem of brown-skinned Byzantine babes.)
Ben Sapir's search for eternal life had been somewhat more successful. Granted, it came with the side effects of drinking human blood and staying out of sunlight, but he had gotten used to that. It was the loneliness that he couldn't abide. Perhaps, after all these years, it would end. He was afraid to hope.
It had been a hundred years since a fledgling had lasted this long. She had been a Yanomamo woman in the Amazon Basin and she had hunted the jungle for three months before she returned to her village and turned her sister. The sisters declared themselves gods and demanded sacrifices from the village. He found them by the river feeding on an old woman, and he took no pleasure in killing them. Perhaps the redhead, perhaps she would be the one.
Dive, he decided. He leaped away from the tower, jackknifed into a dive, and plunged fifty stories to the black water. The challenge was to avoid changing to mist before hitting the water. That was too easy.
The impact of the water ripped the clothes off his back; the stitching of his shoes exploded with the pressure. He surfaced, naked except for one sock that had strangely survived the impact, and began the long swim back to his yacht thinking, I shouldn't have saved her from the sunlight. I must be desperate for entertainment.
Chapter 28
Is That a Blackjack in Your Pocket?
Tommy booted the Emperor out of the store at dawn. It had been a long night trying to keep the crazed ruler away from the Animals while throwing stock and trying to figure out the logistics of his meeting with Mara, all while under the influence of Dr. Drew's polio weed, which seemed to affect the part of the brain that motivates one to sit in the corner and drool while staring at one's hands. When the shift ended, he declined the Animal's invitation for beers and Frisbee in the parking lot, swiped a baguette from the bread-delivery man, and caught the bus home, intent on going straight to bed. He knew his plan was foiled when Frank, the biker/sculptor, met him outside their building holding a familiar-looking bronze turtle.
"Flood, check it out." Frank held up the turtle. "It worked!"
"What worked?" Tommy asked.
"Thick electroplating process. Come on in, I'll show you." Frank turned and led Tommy through the roll-up door into the foundry.
The foundry took up the entire bottom floor of the building, here was a huge furnace making a muffled rumbling sound. There were several large pits filled with sand, and plaster-of-Paris molds lay in them in various states of completion. In the back, near the only windows, stood wax figures of naked women, Indians, Buddhas, and birds, waiting to be cut up and placed in plaster of Paris.
Frank said, "We've been doing a lot of statues for people's gardens. Buddhas are big with the koi-pond types. That's what we needed the turtles for. Monk already sold one of them to a woman in Pacific Heights for five hundred bucks. Sight unseen."
"My turtles?" Tommy said. He looked more closely at the bronze turtle Frank was holding. "Zelda!"
"Can you believe it?" Frank said. "We did them both in less than eight hours. Lost-wax process would have taken days. I'll show you."
He led Tommy to the other side of the shop where a short, portly man in leather and denim was working beside a tall Plexi-glas tank filled with a translucent green liquid.
Frank said, "Monk, this is our neighbor, Tom Flood. Flood, this is my partner Monk."
Monk grunted, not looking up from a compressor that he seemed to be having trouble with. Tommy could see how he had gotten his name. He had a large bowl-shaped bald spot with a fringe of hair around it: the Benedictine version of Easy Rider, Friar Tuck on wheels.
"This," said Frank, gesturing toward the ten-foot tank, "as far as we know, is the biggest electroplating tank on the West Coast."
Tommy didn't know quite how to react. He was still stunned by seeing the bronze likeness of Zelda. "That's just spiffy," he said finally.
"Yeah, dude. We can do anything we can find. No molds, no wax carvings. You just dunk and go. That's how we did your turtles."
Tommy was beginning to get it. "You mean that that is not a sculpture? You covered my turtles with brass?"
"That's it. That liquid is supersaturated with dissolved metal. We sprayed the turtles with a thin metal-based paint that would conduct current. Then we attached a wire to them and dipped them in the tank. The current draws the metal out of the water and it fuses to the paint on the turtle. Leave it a long time and the coating gets thick enough to have structural integrity. Voila, a bronze garden turtle. I don't think anybody's ever done it before. We owe you, man."
Monk grunted in gratitude.
Tommy didn't know whether to be angry or depressed. "You should have told me you were going to kill them."
"I thought you knew, man. Sorry. You can have this one, if you want." Frank presented the bronzed Zelda.
Tommy shook his head and looked away. "I don't think I could look at her." He turned and walked away.
Frank said, "C'mon, man, take it. We owe you one. If you need a favor or something…"
Tommy took Zelda. How would he explain to Jody? "By the way, I've turned your little friends into statues." And this right after they'd had a big fight. He slunk up the steps feeling completely lost.
Jody had left him a note on the counter:
Tommy:
Imperative that you are here when I wake up. If you go out you are in serious, life-threatening trouble. I mean it. I have some very important things to tell you. No time now, I'm going to go out any second. Be here when I wake up.
Jody
"Great," Tommy said to Peary. "Now what do I do about Mara? Who does Jody think she is, threatening me? What does she think she's going to do if I'm not here? I can't be here. Why don't you keep her busy until I get home." Tommy patted the chest freezer and an idea came to him.
"You know, Peary, scientists have frozen vampire bats and thawed them completely unharmed. I mean, how would she know? How many times has she thought it was Tuesday when it was really Wednesday?"
Tommy went to the bedroom and looked in on Jody, who had made it to bed, but not in time to change out of her black dress.
Wow, Tommy thought, she never dresses like that for me.
She looked so peaceful. Sexy, but peaceful.
She'll be angry if she finds out, but she's angry now. It won't really hurt her. I can just take her out tomorrow morning and put her under the electric blanket. By sundown she'll be thawed out and I'll have handled the Mara thing. I can tell Mara that I'm involved. I can't start something new until this is finished. Maybe with the extra time, Jody will have chilled a little.
He smiled to himself.
He opened the lid of the freezer, then went into the bedroom to get Jody. He carried her into the kitchen and laid her in the freezer on top of Peary. As he tucked her into the fetal position he felt a twinge of jealousy. "You guys behave now, okay?" He tucked a few TV dinners around her nice and snug under her arms, then kissed her on the forehead and gently closed the lid.
As he crawled into bed he thought, If she ever finds out about this, she's really going to be pissed.
Tommy had been asleep three hours when the pounding started. He rolled out of bed, stumbled across the dark bedroom, and was blinded when he opened the door into the loft. He was just regaining his eyesight when he opened the fire door and Rivera said, "Are you Thomas Flood, Junior?"
"Yes," Tommy said, bracing himself against the doorjamb.
"I'm Inspector Alphonse Rivera from the San Francisco Police Department." He held up a badge wallet. "You're under arrest" — Rivera pulled a warrant from his jacket pocket — "for abandoning a vehicle on a public street."
"You're kidding," Tommy said.
Cavuto stepped through the door and grabbed Tommy by the shoulder, whipping him around as the big cop pulled his handcuffs from his belt. "You have the right to remain silent…" Cavuto said.
Two hours later Tommy had been processed, probed, and printed, and as Cavuto had expected, Tommy's fingerprints matched those on the copy of On the Road that they had found under the dead bum. It was enough for them to get a search warrant issued for the loft. Five minutes after they entered the loft a mobile crime lab was dispatched along with a forensics team and two coroners' trucks. As far as crime scenes went, the loft in SOMA was the mother lode.
Cavuto and Rivera left the crime scene to the forensics team and returned to the station, where they took Tommy from a holding cell and put him in a pleasantly pink interrogation room furnished with a metal table and two chairs. There was a mirror on one wall and a tape recorder sat on the table. Tommy sat staring at the pink wall, remembering something about how pink was supposed to calm you down. It didn't seem to be working. His stomach was tied in knots.
Rivera had done dozens of interrogations with Cavuto and they always took the same roles: Cavuto was the bad cop, and Rivera was the good cop. Actually Rivera never felt like the good cop. More often he was the I-am-tired-and-overworked-and-I'm-being-nice-to-you-because-I-don't-have-the-energy-to-be-angry cop.
"Would you like a smoke?" Rivera asked.
"Sure," Tommy said.
Cavuto jumped in his face. "Too bad, punk. There's no smoking in here." Cavuto took great pleasure in being the bad cop. He practiced in front of the mirror at home.
Rivera shrugged. "He's right. You can't smoke."
Tommy said, "That's okay, I don't smoke."
"How about a lawyer then?" asked Rivera. "Or a phone call?"
"I have to be at work at midnight," Tommy said. "If it looks like I'm going to be late, I'll use my call then."
Cavuto was pacing the room, timing his path so he could wheel on Tommy with every statement. He wheeled. "Yeah, kid, you're going to be late, about thirty years late, if they don't fry you."
Tommy pushed back in his chair with fright.
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