Thirst

by Pyotyr Kurtinski

  “Where does he live?” Van Diemen said patiently.

  “Forty-seven East Sixty-third, the lawyer said. “I don’t know if he owns the building. Probably does. Just the address, no telephone number. That’s it. You got all that written down?”

  “I don’t need to write it down,” Van Diemen said.

  “Just one thing,” the lawyer said. “You won’t find him at any of the places I just mentioned.”

  “Why is that, Bradford?”

  “He said he was going to be out of town for a week or two. He said he wanted to freshen up his suntan, but he didn’t say where.”

  “Did you ask him where you could reach him if I suddenly decided to say yes?”

  “No, I didn’t ask it like that. I just asked him where he was going. He just gave me one of his looks.”

  Van Diemen couldn’t blame Wilcox although he wanted to. He wanted to kill the lawyer, but that wasn’t such a good idea. He needed good old Bradford, and only the Antichrist knew what sort of lawyer Van Diemen would get in his place. Landau was first on his hit list and now that would have to wait. The man could freshen up his suntan in any number of places: Palm Springs, Rio, Acapulco, the Chilean Alps, the Australian Alps, Morocco, Israel. But Van Diemen couldn’t go looking in them all.

  “I did the best I could,” the lawyer said.

  “I’m sure you did, Bradford. He didn’t take your lady friend with him, did he?”

  A strangled sound came over the line, and for a moment, Van Diemen feared that Wilcox was having a coronary. “Compose yourself,” Van Diemen said, smiling. “Merely a random thought. Forgive me.”

  At last the lawyer was able to speak. “The rotten fuck. I never thought of that. I’ll kill the bastard if he’s sleeping with my Tracy.”

  Love’s Old Sweet Song, Van Diemen thought. “I’m sure he’s doing no such thing, Bradford. A blackguard like that is too smart for any hanky-panky that could be traced back to him. Besides, wasn’t there something in the Post about a recent marriage to Bee Lips Ballinger, the new Clara Bow? Spoon Stuff, as they used to say.”

  The lawyer grunted, apparently at Van Diemen’s innocence or ignorance, of man’s needs, of the human condition in general.

  “Doesn’t mean a thing,” he said. “I was fucking somebody three weeks after I married Sandy. More truth if you want it—why not, things as they are—I fucked Tracy the night before mine and Sandy’s fourteenth anniversary.” Life in the suburbs, Van Diemen thought. No doubt Wilcox married Sandy because he needed the right kind of wife. It couldn’t be for money or social position; he had more than enough himself. And he wasn’t maverick enough to marry his mistress and try to shove her down the throat of Greenwich society.

  “You’re beginning to sound like Prince Charles, Bradford.”

  “That’s not funny, William. I’m all broken up about Tracy.”

  Not as broken up as he was going to be when he heard that she’d disappeared without a trace. But when Wilcox thought about it, he’d be relieved, and he wouldn’t say a word to anyone. Van Diemen was sure of that. It would be a clean disappearance, of course, no signs of forcible adduction; the police might not even get into it.

  “I need Tracy’s full name and her address,” Van Diemen said.

  “Why is that?” The lawyer’s voice had a shake in it.

  “For negotiating purposes. I have a great deal of money, as you know. Money usually talks but if it doesn’t, there’s no harm done.”

  “She won’t deal. I’m sure of it. Landau has her scared.”

  Van Diemen’s patience was wearing thin. “Give me the information, Bradford, or I’ll wash my hand of this sordid business. I’ll get a new lawyer and deal with Landau in my own way.”

  The quaver in the lawyer’s voice was more pronounced. “You won’t cause any harm to come to her. Promise me that.”

  Van Diemen forced a laugh. “What is there to promise, for heaven’s sake? You’re talking to the Recluse of Riverdale. What do you think I have in mind for the young lady? Planting her under the pitcher’s mound at Shea Stadium? Pushing her off the top of the Twin Towers?” This appealed to Van Diemen’s sense of the ridiculous, and his laugh was genuine. “Don’t be silly. I’ve never harmed anyone in my life.”

  “I’m sorry,” the lawyer said, still reluctant. “Tracy’s name is Tracy Lee Dembroder and she lives at 137 West Thirteenth Street. Manhattan. That’s between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. Apartment Two. It’s got a garden in back. You won’t have any trouble finding the building.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t think of going there myself or of sending an intermediary. I’m a confirmed old bachelor and shy with the ladies. If I talk to her at all, it will be on the telephone. I may write. I have to think about it.”

  A sigh of relief came breathily along the line. “That makes me feel a lot better. Thank you, William.”

  “You’re most welcome, Bradford. Now I have a suggestion that I hope you’ll follow.”

  The lawyer tried for a self-deprecating laugh. “You think I should shoot myself. I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

  “Nothing so drastic. What I think you should do is cut back on the drinking and take a little vacation. A week or two, like our Mr. Landau. Somewhere different, somewhere you haven’t been before. Get out of the rut, you old rascal. You may find matters much improved when you return.”

  Bradford C. Wilcox liked being called an old rascal. “I think 111 take your advice. Have some fun in the sun. Maybe find something to take my mind off my troubles. I think you know what I mean.”

  “Indeed, I do,” Van Diemen said. Fun in the sun! He’d like to take Wilcox far up the Amazon and feed him to the piranhas. Fly him over Vesuvius and drop him into the crater. “Call me when you get back. I’m afraid I must hang up now.”

  Van Diemen hung up before the lawyer could say anything else. He had things to think about, but first he had to feed.

  Five

  Drinking a glass of champagne, Van Diemen wondered if Landau’s seemingly offhand talk of a short vacation might not be a deliberate lie told for some devious purpose. Why mention he was going away at all? On one hand, it could be a way of showing off, an indication of how little he was concerned about the final outcome of his plan. On the other, it was more than possible that Landau wanted to lie low for a while. To do what, Van Diemen could only guess, and he didn’t like guessing. That Landau was a clever villain, there could be no doubt, and if he was still lurking in the city, he had to be up to something.

  Van Diemen looked at the clock. Five past nine—time for a little reconnaissance. A flight over Landau’s East Sixty-third Street house might prove helpful. Wilcox thought the crooked lawyer probably owned the building, though that didn’t mean he was the only tenant. Van Diemen hoped Landau was. It would be so much easier if he could find Landau alone and make him give up the tape recordings and the film of Wilcox and his mistress. It would be so easy to make Landau talk, and if he didn’t have the film and tapes on hand, which wasn’t likely, he would be only too glad to say where they were. If they were in a safe-deposit box, he would cry all the way to the bank with his new vampire friend leading him by the hand.

  Van Diemen smiled at the silliness of the scene as he imagined it, but it could come to something like that when the banks opened at nine o’clock on the following morning. And if they had to wait, Van Diemen would entertain Landau with wonderful stories of his bizarre life. If that didn’t terrify the son of a bitch, nothing would. Would Landau think he’d lost his mind when a giant bat came in the window and turned into a man. He might and he might not, but whatever his reaction he’d become a true believer before he could voice an objection.

  Casting a regretful eye at the champagne bottle, Van Diemen rose from his chair. He must be off. No Ritalin tonight. Tonight he must fly right. There was no room for mistakes such as the one he made at the Bronx Zoo. But first he must feed. He must be at his best when he confronted Landau, if indeed the villain could be found. Ascending to
the tower, Van Diemen listened to the night wind. Hearing it rise, he recalled some lines from Tennyson:

  Tonight the winds begin to rise,

  And roar from yonder dropping day:

  The last red leaf is whirl’d away,

  The rooks are blown about the skies

  Van Diemen didn’t know about rooks, but he could fly perfectly well in such weather. Ordinarily he would have welcomed such harbingers of a storm to come—the drop in temperature, the rising wind—but tonight he had pressing business to attend to and he must find a victim and get his feeding out of the way. A victim could be found anytime, anywhere, in any weather, but some of the excitement was in the search. Tonight, however, there wasn’t time. Tonight he must eat and fly.

  His friends the bats were nowhere to be seen as he opened the door to the tower and stepped out into the full force of the gale. Sensible little dears, he thought fondly, throwing himself fearlessly from the battlements. The fearsome wind thrusting upward against the great span of his wings carried him aloft, higher and higher into the inky night sky, and for a few moments before he exerted control, he allowed himself to be swept hither and yon, indulging himself in the childish pretense that he was helpless, impotent, powerless in the face of such overwhelming odds.

  South and east he flew, skirting the end of Van Cortlandt Park, across the white capped waters of the Jerome Park Reservoir, above the original late-Gothic buildings of Fordham University. From there he flew directly south, following the bright ribbon of nighttime Southern Boulevard until he veered eastward again and found himself streaking at incredible speed out over the murky waters of the East River. Which was it to be? Hunt’s Point Market or Riker’s Island? If he didn’t decide pretty soon, he’d find himself halfway to Portugal.

  Yet even as he found himself over dark water and looking back at Long Island, he knew he was going to feed on Riker’s. It was safer on the penal isle than on the mainland; over by Hunt’s, he might have to contend with the mink-clad Ethiop pimps who squatted in the weeds, nine-mm semiautomatics or taped scalpels ready, waiting while their ladies finished working over long-distance produce haulers from McKeesport or Bangor so they could rob them.

  Van Diemen slowed his speed as he made his descent, passing over LaGuardia Airport on his way back to Riker’s. Since he knew where he was going he made a smooth landing at the eastern tip of the island, behind the high chain-link fence topped by rolls of razor wire that set the Shoplifter’s Slammer apart from the seventeen jail buildings that housed prisoners convicted of more serious crimes. Actually, it wasn’t a slammer in the sense that steel cell doors slammed; the nimble-fingered and those nailed for quality-of-life offenses, such as pissing in public fountains, were lodged in jerry-built one-story wooden buildings that looked like old army barracks. The inmates in for no more than a month or two were treated leniently; no guard towers there, no machine guns, no searchlights.

  Keeping to the shadows, Van Diemen listened, and he thought he heard the untrained plunking of a guitar. A lot of young ladies sent up for hitting Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s brought their guitars with them. No one here was much of a danger to anyone but himself. The windblown rain would have frozen anyone but a vampire. There was a guard shack with lights, but it looked like the hacks were staying close to their camp cots and crack pipes and the television.

  The only sounds were the wind and the rain and the listless plunking of the guitar that came from the recreation-reeducation building. Van Diemen had been here before and he knew his way around. A year before, he had seized and fed upon a dazed but winsome teenage beauty he found alone, vamping on a big professional harmonica, in this same building at five minutes past midnight. The rules were very relaxed or she would not have been up at that hour. She was so young, so beautiful and Nordic, and so plaintive-sounding when she took the big Homer away from her young Ann-Margret mouth and sang the words of some sweet old folk song.

  Tonight it was the guitar instead of the mouth organ. Van Diemen crept close to the dimly lit window, and he felt somewhat disappointed. A lad of no more than eighteen summers, hulking and overweight, stood at the front of the platform from which, during the day, city-paid social workers gently but earnestly beaded those under their less than certain authority.

  Even by the dim light of a candle stuck in a bottle, Van Diemen could see the youth was deep in some drug reverie. He was dressed in denims and yellow work boots; a shock of dirty blond hair hung over one eye. He stood right at the front of the platform, plucking the guitar strings, talking to an imaginary audience. Now and then he would do a graceless bump and grind. Van Diemen could hear the guitar above the noise of the wind, but not what the stoned lad was saying.

  Van Diemen wondered how he was going to get at this kid; he was very big and he looked as if he lifted weights when he wasn’t thinking about his other life as a rock star. Van Diemen knew he could take him down if he got close enough, but that was the problem: how to get next to him. The windows were closed, and even if they had been open, they were too narrow for a giant bat to fly through. So it had to be the door. He had to go in the door. With the kid from Minnesota that had been no big thing. Van Diemen had just opened the door and smiled at her. She had smiled back and said he was welcome.

  The big burly kid he was looking at now could be very different. The instant Van Diemen opened the door, the kid could go ballistic. Van Diemen thought the kid could be put down no matter how wild he got, but that wasn’t the point. There was bound to be a fierce struggle.

  The table and chairs on the platform would be knocked over; perhaps the windows would be broken. That much noise, even muffled by the wind, was sure to be heard. And what if the guttering candle, slanting in the neck of the bottle, was jerked loose and started a fire?

  Good sense told Van Diemen to fly away from there; even on such an inclement night many other victims were abroad. Yet he was reluctant to go. He needed to feed, and he had wasted enough time as it was. Landau had to be seen to and Van Diemen was going to need all the energy he could muster. Get on with it, he told himself irritably. There was a chance the kid wouldn’t hear or see him if he opened the door quietly. But the hinges squeaked and the kid looked up, blinked a bit, then said, “Hey, man. What’s happening, man? Who’re you?”

  “A friend,” Van Diemen said, hoping the great oaf wouldn’t launch himself off the platform and attack. The building was drafty and the candle flickered. It would be a problem if the candle went out and Van Diemen had to fight this moron in the dark. But all the kid did was to look at him bleary eyed, as if seeing him through the wrong end of a telescope.

  Then the kid stepped forward as far as he could go without falling. “Where you comin’ from, man?” he asked, as if Van Diemen had spoken to him in some unknown tongue.

  “You’ll get what’s coming to you.” Van Diemen reached into a side pocket and brought out a thin sheaf of big bills folded in half and held together by a gold clip. “You want to come down and get this?”

  The kid broke into a high-pitched cackle. “The nerve a this fuckin’ guy!” he yelled. “Bring it up here, fuck face.”

  Van Diemen walked toward the kid holding the money clip. Suddenly, the kid grabbed for the cash, and Van Diemen dodged away from him. Van Diemen knew he could rip the kid with his pointed teeth, but he didn’t want this to become a savage struggle to the death. The kid came after him making wild swings with his big fists. He was out of shape and panting, but he looked immensely strong.

  “You gotta hold still or I’ll hurt you,” the kid warned Van Diemen, who continued to back away. There were folding chairs all around him, and he nearly fell back over them. To divert the kid’s attention, he threw the money clip, and the kid went after it. He was bending to pick it up when Van Diemen hit him in the back of the head with a chair. The chair was made of heavy metal, but Van Diemen had to hit him three times before he went down. With no time to waste, Van Diemen threw himself on the prostrate body, sank his teeth into the thick ne
ck, and fed. The kid groaned and sank deeper into unconsciousness as the lifeblood was sucked out of him. Van Diemen knew he was drinking too much. But he was angry, and he kept at it like an aggrieved drunk tossing down doubles. When at last he stopped, he felt bloated and the lout was dead.

  Van Diemen retrieved his money clip and dragged the body out into the howling wind. Even drained of blood, the body was heavy, and the wind made it hard to keep the door open. As a vampire in human form. Van Diemen needed all his strength to accomplish the deed. But once he transformed himself into a bat, his cruel curved beak seized the corpse without effort and carried it off to feed the sharks.

  Flying low at reduced speed, Van Diemen swooped low over Landau’s house on East Sixty-third Street between Fifth and Madison. There was no rain now, just gusting wind; so it was easier to see. What he saw on his first pass was the security-company patrol car parked in front of the house. Its lights were off. There could be men in the car, and more inside the house. It didn’t matter how many: the house was under surveillance. The house was four stories high and the only lights showing were on the top floor, but that didn’t mean Landau or anyone else was up there. Still, it did look as if the lawyer owned the building and was the only occupant. If there were tenants in the building, there would have been some lights on the other floors.

  The wind tore at Van Diemen’s great leathery wings as he flew over the back of the house. Jutting out from the top floor was a cantilevered terrace with white wrought-iron garden furniture on it. No deck chairs or plants in tubs— they would have been taken in for the winter. Light came from the sliding-glass doors facing the terrace. Van Diemen landed on the terrace and turned into a man. No alarm sounded. No alarm would sound unless he tried to force the lock or broke the glass in the doors. Another alarm would alert the people in the security company’s office.