Thirst

by Pyotyr Kurtinski

  I began to assemble my great library. The scholarly work I would do there was to serve as a cover for my isolation, and I let it be known that I intended to write a multivolume history of the Dutch people from the earliest times, in the Old World and the New, in Holland itself the East Indies, the Caribbean, North and South America. This was fifty years before Motley’s monumental Rise of the Dutch Republic; so I was on safe ground. My history, so the story went, would occupy my time for the rest of my life. Fashionable New York mothers with marriageable daughters were disappointed to hear this news, and in spite of my public announcement I received invitations to all sorts of social events, all of which I ignored because I had to be firm in such matters. I hoped society would forget me and in time it did. The letters from long-lost relatives, desperate widows, and impoverished gentlefolk stopped coming, and I was left in peace.

  It was wonderful to be a young, rich vampire. Money, of course, was the key to eternal happiness. A vampire with money is like a heroin addict with money. He’s as safe as money can make him. Money is the great protector, a shield from slings, a blunter of arrows, and if it can’t buy everything, it can buy nearly everything.

  Van Diemen put down his pen and thought about the happiness of his first days in America. He wasn’t happy now, but that trouble would pass as soon as he resolved the problem of the Connors woman. The clock gonged out the hour of five, reminding him that soon it would be time to take his rest. How long would he lie awake thinking of what he had to do and how to do it? His irritability turned into a mad fury as the telephone began to wink its red signal. He snatched up the receiver and shouted, “What do you want, Bradford?”

  Four

  “Hey, that’s no way to talk, ol’ buddy,” Bradford C. Wilcox said at the other end of the line. “Loosen up, will ya.” He was about to say something else, but he seemed to have forgotten what it was.

  Van Diemen was so angry he wanted to slam down the phone. Instead, he forced himself to be calm, which took a considerable effort. Something was wrong and he wanted to find out what it was. “You sound as if you’ve been drinking, Bradford. Is that why you’re calling me at five o’clock in the morning?”

  Ol’ buddy! Had the man taken leave of his senses?

  “I been drinking Rob Roys. Scotch is brilliant with vermouth. You should try it some time. Very big-time.”

  “I thought I told you not to bother me with any more real-estate offers. Didn’t I make myself clear on that? So why are you doing it?”

  “Because Landau still thinks you should sell. He’s been pressuring me to get you to sell.” Since Wilcox had a loud voice, Van Diemen held the receiver an inch or two away from his ear. He knew the trouble with Landau and his faceless clients wasn’t somewhere in the future. It was here or at least getting close.

  “How can Landau pressure you about anything?” he asked.

  “Because—”

  “Wait. Where are you calling from?”

  “From the phone in my car, which is parked in my driveway. The little woman can’t hear me if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  You’re the one who should be worried, Van Diemen thought. “All right,” he said. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”

  Odd sounds came over the line. What was the idiot doing, drinking from a bottle of premixed booze? Rob Roys! Scotch was brilliant with vermouth. How nauseating!

  “Landau is bothering me—that’s what. Bothering me to bother you. You’ve never been married, have you?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “I don’t know why you say it like that. It’s natural enough, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I suppose I would.”

  “Well, ol’ buddy, not being married, you’ve never had the need to keep a piece of ass on the side. I’m afraid that’s what I’ve been doing. Four years I’ve been doing it and not a single problem till now. My wife knows about it—I think she does, I’m pretty sure she does—but it’s no problem so long as it remains discreet and out of the public eye. What the hell! She’s been sleeping with a whole bunch of guys, not at the same time, naturally, but you know what I mean. It’s a way of life here in the suburbs and all the other ’burbs I can think of.”

  Van Diemen felt tired. The drug and the alcohol had died in his system, and he really should have been preparing for his long day’s rest. But he said, “What does Landau propose to do with this information? He couldn’t try to blackmail you if he didn’t have it.”

  “He has it all right, the works. The woman’s name, where she lives, the check I write her every month, the trips we’ve taken when I was supposed to be engaged in more sober activities.”

  Van Diemen found the whole scenario hard to believe. “You say you wrote her checks?”

  The lawyer made a sort of strangled sound. Was the idiot starting to blubber? Finally he said, “A dumb thing to do, I guess, but I saw no reason not to trust her. She’s a wonderful woman and we’re deeply in love. I’d many her tomorrow if I could.”

  “Why can’t you? Not tomorrow, I suppose, but sometime.”

  “That would mean getting a divorce.”

  “It usually does, Bradford.”

  “Easy for you to say, but you don’t know the half of it. I could never leave Sandy after all we’ve meant to each other. Besides, her father is one of our senior partners. It would ruin me. Sandy doesn’t want a divorce and neither do I. We’ve come close a few times, I admit, but we’ve always stayed together for the good of the family. We have two wonderful children, Roger and Amanda, sixteen and seventeen, as I think I told you.”

  Everything was wonderful? Such piffle! Van Diemen said, “Then your mistress is the problem? Landau has been working on her?”

  “Oh, yes,” the lawyer said. “She swears she doesn’t know how Landau’s man, this private investigator, got hold of all this information, but deep down I think she gave it to him or made it easy for him to acquire it. That and the photographs and tape recordings. She says she has absolutely no idea how this PI bugged her apartment with hidden cameras and tape machines. I’d like to believe her, but I can’t.”

  Sweet Satan! Van Diemen groaned to himself. What else was he going to hear? Still, he had to admit that he was beginning to enjoy himself, listening to Wilcox’s anguished blather. But enough of that. He didn’t see how his lawyer’s problem could affect him, but he wanted to hear this out to the end.

  “What do your problems have to do with me, Bradford?” he said.

  The lawyer sucked in air before he said, “Here’s what will happen if I can’t persuade you to sell. My dear sweet Tracy—I still love her and feel so sad—will bring a lawsuit against me, charging me with any number of very nasty things.”

  Van Diemen was impatient. “Such as what?”

  “Well for openers, we’ve been sleeping together for four years, more or less as man and wife, and I haven’t divorced my wife and married her, as promised. Not only that, she will charge that I forced her to have an abortion, which she didn’t want to have because it’s against her religious beliefs. Number three: she will charge that I have failed to set up an arrangement, as promised, whereby she would have financial security in her older years. There are other charges”.

  Van Diemen sighed. “How old is she?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “Can she really take you to court on these charges?”

  “You can sue anybody for anything in this country. And you can sell your story to the supermarket rags for big money. The law firm of Wilcox and Philpot is very well known. My dad won the big SEC case, and Sandy’s dad was a vice-presidential possibility—so the press would eat the story up. And worst of all, they’d publish the photographs. Sandy would have the story to divorce me. What else could she do? And I’d be ruined.”

  “She’d dump you after all you’ve been through together?” Van Diemen allowed himself a little vicious smile.

  “Sure she would. She’d have my by the balls, don’t you see? She’s always known I was f
ucking somebody on the side, but she’s never had proof. Now she would. And it wouldn’t matter that she’s fucked and sucked ten times more people than I have. What counts is the proof. What am I going to do, Bill?”

  Van Diemen had quite enough of that. “First of all, you will never again address me as Bill.”

  “Sorry, William. But what am I going to do?”

  “Why does Landau think you can do anything? You’re my lawyer, not my brother. Even if you were, why does this villain think I would sell my property simply to keep you out of trouble? At a ridiculous price, I might add. I have no obligation to you, personal or otherwise.”

  The lawyer took a deep breath and let it out noisily. “Then I’m sunk.”

  “Not necessarily.” Van Diemen didn’t give a damn if Wilcox found himself sunk in the deepest trench of the Indian Ocean; yet at the same time he resented Landau’s crude attempt to get at him through his lawyer. It was clear that Landau had no idea of what Wilcox and Van Diemen’s relationship was. Did he think a man would sell his property for next to nothing simply because his lawyer’s great-grandfather had been his lawyer too? Of course, Landau had no way of knowing that. Even if he did, it would be beyond his understanding. Landau had better watch out if he knew what was good for him. But he wouldn’t. That kind never did.

  Since his lawyer was still on the line, Van Diemen said, “You may not be sunk at all.” It was best not to give Wilcox too much encouragement. Van Diemen would let him suffer for a while and see the folly of his ways. “What you must do, Bradford, is stall him for a while—say a month. I’m sure Landau won’t do anything if you ask him for a month. There is a vast amount of money involved here, I’m sure. He won’t do anything that might ruin the deal. Tell the villain you’ve talked to me and I need a month to make a final decision. Tell him too that you’ve appealed to my good nature, and since I love you like a brother, you can practically guarantee that the answer will be yes. Do or say nothing else than that. Leave Landau to me.”

  “But what can you do?” There wasn’t much hope in the lawyer’s voice. “You don’t know what Landau is like.”

  Van Diemen wanted to rush to the quiet of his coffin. “I think I do,” he said. “And I’ll tell you something else. This Landau may understand men and money, but he doesn’t understand me. Call me after you talk to him. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?”

  The lawyer spoke quickly before Van Diemen could hang up. “You don’t love me like a brother, do you, William?”

  “I’m afraid not, Bradford.”

  “Then why are you doing this for me?”

  “I don’t like Landau or his tactics.”

  “I wish we could be better friends,” the lawyer said.

  “Good night, Bradford,” Van Diemen said, firmly putting down the phone.

  What a relief it was to be rid of the idiot.

  Checks with his name on them! Photographs! Tape recordings! Why didn’t he go whole hog and fornicate with the twenty-three year-old harlot in Macy’s window? Van Diemen knew he would have to kill the faithless woman if Landau refused to wait a month for an answer. But if Landau did agree to wait that long, he would be dead before the month was up, and the mistress too. Who could tell what other crooked mouthpiece might not sink his hooks into her, threaten her, coax her. Once Landau and the woman were dead, Wilcox would be off the hook and forever in thrall to Van Diemen. He would deal with Landau’s clients if they reappeared with another front. They would. He knew they would.

  They wanted his beloved castle, his cherished land. They would fight to get them, and he would fight back. If only they knew what was in store for them. Let their God take pity on them, for he would not. Van Diemen was rather fond of the Bible, the sound and the fury of it. In the words of that book of sonorous nonsense, he would smite his enemy’s hip and thigh, and much more than that. Without a doubt, he would make them wish they had never been born. It would have to be done, but it was all so tiresome.

  ~*~

  Not much later, lying in his coffin, his anger still simmering, he wondered why he should be bothered so. He was upset and felt put upon. He had to watch self-pity and paranoia.

  All he wanted was to be left in peace to pursue his own life as he saw fit. Was that too much to ask? That Connors woman, these real-estate vultures, that scheming little kept woman. Van Diemen didn’t think he was making too much out of this. Aside from having to kill once a day, which was necessary for his survival, he did no one no harm. He knew he was fudging here, but the inescapable fact was that he did need his daily fix.

  For the love of Lucifer, why was he having such idiotic thoughts? Was it possible for a vampire to crack up, for his mental powers to disintegrate? Van Diemen wondered if it could be the flavored vodka and the mood-altering drug. After all, who could say what such things could do to anybody, even a vampire’s? Science, ancient or modem, never had been able to understand the physiology of vampirism; so perhaps it would be better if he eased back on his drinking and drugging, for there was a good chance that he would not have confronted the Connor’s woman if his usually razor-sharp brain had not been slightly addled. There would be no problem now if he had simply seized her from behind without saying a word. But he hadn’t; so the problem had to be faced that night.

  But first he must wait for a call from Wilcox, and surely a long office day was enough time to get an answer from the blackmailing Landau. If Landau didn’t agree to wait, he would die all the quicker. Van Diemen knew he had to decide which came first: the killing of Landau, Wilcox’s mistress, or Maggie Connors. Van Diemen would decide that night. He closed his eyes and drifted off into darkness.

  ~*~

  When Van Diemen awoke it was nearly seven o’clock, two hours after dark for that time of year, and he didn’t feel as rested as he should have. The tiny red light of the library telephone was pulsing when he got there. The bucket of iced champagne was waiting on the writing table, but he ignored it for the moment. He sat down, picked up the phone, and said, ‘What did he say, Bradford?”

  The lawyer had sobered up since his last call. Now his voice had hope in it. “Landau agreed to wait a month, William. He didn’t want to do it, but he did. I talked him into it.”

  “Good of him,” Van Diemen said. “You said exactly what I told you to say.”

  “That’s what I said, William.”

  “And what were his final words?”

  “He said he’d give you one of the months with thirty days in it. Like thirty days hath September—”

  “I know the months,” Van Diemen said. “Was he very threatening?” It would be good to hear what Landau said so Van Diemen could remind him when killing time came. The man was scum. He would not be worth feeding on when he got his big surprise.

  “He didn’t shout if that’s what you mean. Yes, he was very threatening. If you didn’t do what you promised to protect me, he would get at you some other way. I’m sure he means it.”

  Van Diemen looked at the bottle of champagne with longing. “Don’t use his words to threaten me. No one threatens me—no one of this world or any other.”

  The lawyer grunted in surprise at Van Diemen’s remark, but he merely said, “I’m not trying to threaten you. I’m just telling you what he said. You have to admit you’re involved in this.” Van Diemen thought the chubby yachtsman was going too far. “If I’m involved at all, it’s because you’ve been sleeping with a scheming woman young enough to be your daughter. Otherwise, Landau and his clients wouldn’t be a problem to me. What could they do to me?” The lawyer was taken aback for a moment.

  “They could do a lot, I’m afraid.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, William, but I’ve got a bad feeling. Landau knows all sorts of people.”

  “You mean gangsters? Of course you do. Listen to me, Bradford, and stop beating about the bush. This is an absolutely secure telephone, so you must talk freely. No, wait. Let me finish. Gangsters come in all shapes and sizes. Crime-family g
angsters, criminal associates of such families. There are political gangsters who do favors for the crime families because they’re paid to do them or are afraid not to. There are lawyer gangsters, which your friend Landau most certainly is. But no matter what they call themselves, what they think they are, they’re all gangsters. Now what sort of gangsters are behind all this?”

  It took a while for the lawyer to answer. “I think it’s real estate people with Mob backing. But that’s only a guess. I’m just a downtown lawyer, after all. What do I know about mobsters? I don’t know that I’ve ever met one.”

  Van Diemen smiled. “That’s just as well, Bradford. I wouldn’t want my lawyer consorting with criminals known or unknown. All right, you think Landau’s clients are real-estate men with Mob money behind them. So do I. But don’t play detective or get someone else to do it. If Landau got wind of it, and he probably would, you would be in worse trouble than you are now. Leave him to me. Remember, Bradford, this is not a movie.”

  “I know that,” the lawyer said.

  “Just don’t forget. Now tell me where Landau can be found. I know his office is in the Graybar Building, but where does he live? Do you know his clubs or the bars and restaurants he frequents? Is he in Who’s Who?”

  Van Diemen couldn’t hear the lawyer shifting his considerable bulk in his chair, but he could feel it. He could smell his sweat, or so it seemed. Wilcox was having a terrible time. Served him right, the pampered slob.

  “Wait,” the lawyer said, somewhat out of breath. “You’re coming at me so fast. Landau’s not in Who’s Who—that’s big-time—but he is in Who’s Who in America, which isn’t. I’ve already looked him up. No, I wasn’t playing detective. I was just looking. His office is in the Graybar Building. Association of the Bar, City of New York, West Forty-fourth Street. Surprised they let him in, but times have changed. They didn’t use to let in Jews. Downtown Athletic Club— you know it? Okay. No bars and restaurants, naturally.”