Thirst

by Pyotyr Kurtinski

  Reborn without regrets, Mara could be very useful. As a writer he was pitiable, but he might prove to be a competent, if plodding, detective. If Mara had pretended to be Det. O’Brien, he had handled the Tracy Lee Dembroder business quite well. He hadn’t seduced Tracy Lee when he might well have, and that spoke well of him since the woman had been juicier and more tempting than the original Eden apple.

  Van Diemen studied the man in the cut-rate clothes lying on the carpet. Earlier, to satisfy his curiosity, he had checked the labels, and the topcoat was indeed from Moe Ginsburg, the suit from A & S. Far from the worst; but certainly not the best. So what did a fellow dressed like that have to regret? He could picture Mara’s apartment on West Twenty-second Street: the Goodwill sofa, the Sharp Company thirteen-inch television set, the ancient manual typewriter (with the letter M broken), the dirty dishes in the sink. Becoming a vampire would surely be a step up in the world for a man who lived in such surroundings. But no matter how Mara took to his new lifestyle, Van Diemen would bend him to his will.

  Van Diemen was thinking about Tracy Lee Dembroder when Mara opened his eyes, said something unintelligible, and tried to sit up. Van Diemen rushed to assist him, putting his arm around the bulky man’s shoulders, telling him to take it easy. He could not have been more solicitous. He said heartily, “Welcome back to the land of the living, Vincent.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. Mara gave a violent start and tried to throw off Van Diemen’s arm. “Don’t touch me!” he cried in a voice fraught with terror. “What is happening to me? I don’t know what’s happening to me!”

  Mara tried again to break Van Diemen’s hold on him, but he didn’t have the strength. Knowing further struggle was futile, he allowed Van Diemen to sit him down in the chair he had overturned.

  Van Diemen went back behind his writing table. “Now, Vincent,” he said, “you must stop this foolishness. Something wonderful’s happened to you, but you don’t quite realize it yet. You have become a vampire, my dear fellow. I have made you a vampire, and in time, you will come to thank me.”

  Mara buried his face in his hands. “Oh, my God!” he wailed, and his body quivered grossly.

  Van Diemen waited, aware of how confused the fellow must be (there had been so such fright or confusion following his own self initiation) and he must be patient. So he didn’t do or say anything. He just sat there. He didn’t even hum tunelessly, a deplorable habit he had when he had to wait too long for something. But patience had its limits, and if Mara didn’t accept his situation in a reasonable amount of time, he would get a nudge and maybe a few kicks.

  Mara looked at Van Diemen through his fingers, but he didn’t say anything. “I think I’m dreaming this. In the dream, you attacked me and bit my neck. I fainted.”

  “No, no,” Van Diemen said. “You didn’t dream that. It happened. Yes, I attacked you, if you want to put it like that, but not in the way you imagine. Believe me, Vincent, my intentions are the best. Your life has changed, but a whole new world will open up for you if have the courage and the vision to accept and embrace what you have become. Here in this room tonight you have been reborn. Think, Vincent. You never need fear death again. Don’t tell me you don’t. All mortals do.”

  Mara was dumbfounded. “You mean I am no longer a human being?” He held out a trembling hand. “How have I changed? My hand looks the same. Has my face changed?”

  Van Diemen let loose a good-fellow laugh. “Not a bit of it, Vincent. You’re still the ruggedly handsome chap who walked in her earlier this evening. Let me ask you something, Vincent. You are a man of the world. Something of a cynic, I’ll wager. A writer, a journalist, something of a Renaissance man, if you will.

  But did you ever, as an intellectual and a sophisticate, consider the possibility that vampires might exist.”

  “I never thought about them at all.” Mara’s voice was as dull as he was himself. “All I know about vampires is Bela Lugosi.”

  Van Diemen resisted the urge to give him a good working over. “Poor old Bela, most amusing in his way: the black vaselined hair, the Slavic eyebrows, the goulash accent. I take it you have seen his most famous film, Dracula.” Mara’s brain seemed to be working again, however sluggishly. Van Diemen thought he was going to be all right; his word associations were good, his conditioned responses even better. Vincent was coming out of the mist.

  “I saw that movie at the Pix on Forty-second Street,” Mara said, “as a kid. Three old movies. You could get in for a quarter. I used to play hooky.”

  Good. Good. Mara hadn’t suffered any brain damage, something that frequently happened to newborn vampires in the critical moments between moribundity and revival. The lardy lad could think. It was time to tell him the truth.

  “Now you must listen, Vincent. I’ve said that before, but now you must listen.” Van Diemen put a hiss into the final word. “You’re like the boy whistling past the graveyard. The boy knows there’s nothing to fear there, but he likes to pretend there is. What I’m saying to you is this: You have just now entered into the glorious world of the vampire. You must consider it a privilege to be permitted to join the ranks of the undead. Do you, Vincent? Do you feel privileged. Answer me!”

  Van Diemen’s voice cracked like a whip and Mara sat up straight in his chair. Good. Good. Sometimes a little pressure therapy worked where more orthodox treatment failed. Van Diemen knew he wasn’t wrong about Vincent: The man would respond to the whip and feel its pain before the stroke was delivered. Van Diemen thought they were getting along swimmingly.

  “You gotta give me time to think,” Mara said. “This is all so sudden.”

  Van Diemen decided to try another tack. “Forgive me for saying this, Vincent, but the moment you walked through my door, my first thought was that life had not treated you too kindly. Indeed in my youth, life treated me with indifference and neglect. All that changed when I became a vampire. The word vampire itself is freighted with menace, yet in itself it is simply another word in the lexicon, a word with sinister connotation certainly, as I’m sure you will agree. But you don’t have to be afraid of the word vampire, Vincent.”

  Getting no response, Van Diemen wondered if Mara might not be asleep. He decided to get a response out of him, if such could be done, by saying casually, “You can have more money than you ever dreamed possible if you come in with me.”

  Mara’s eyes snapped open. “What’s happening here? I hear what you’re saying, but am I dreaming?”

  That was all Mara said, and he lapsed into silence after speaking. He didn’t go back to his inexpressible-grief posture, but his face had a closed look. The expression was a mystery to Van Diemen, who was a student of slang and cant. What did it mean? Was it part of Mara’s new inarticulation?

  It was time to hurry Mara along. Van Diemen said sharply, “Of course, you’re not dreaming. And how could you not hear what I’ve been saying? What I’d like from you now is an intelligent response. You are a vampire and that’s that. If you have any lingering doubts, examine your neck. There should be a wound there, but there isn’t. Go on. Feel your neck.”

  Mara did what he was told and his face turned gray. Then he looked at Van Diemen with wonder in his eyes. He felt his neck again and then looked at his fingers. “It’s true,” he said.

  “What you need is a drink,” Van Diemen said. “I’ll have one with you, and then we must talk.” Van Diemen got a glass for himself. He put some vodka in Mara’s glass, and much less in his own. “Drink, Vincent.”

  Mara drained his glass in one long swallow; Van Diemen waited for the vodka to take effect before he spoke. It wouldn’t take long; it never did with drunks.

  “That hit the spot,” Mara said, a little color in his face.

  “Now, Vincent,” Van Diemen said, giving Mara a stem look, “it’s time to get down to business. Don’t talk. Listen. I know all about you. I know you are a private investigator and you work for Jack Landau. I know about Tracy Dembroder and what you did at her apartment. I
was there. She told me everything before I killed her.”

  Mara stared at Van Diemen with no expression on his face. Since he was still residually human, it was hard for Van Diemen to tell what he was thinking, but the master vampire knew the novice was trying to decide what to say.

  Van Diemen prompted him. “You have nothing to fear, Vincent, nor have I. We are beyond fear now, the two of us. You committed a crime for which as a mortal you would be incarcerated. My crime, of course, is the more serious. But I’ll never sit in prison and neither will you.”

  “Why couldn’t I go to prison even if I am a vampire?”

  “I suppose you could, theoretically, but you won’t. I promise. For one thing, there will be no evidence and no one to testify against you when I get through. The Dembroder woman is dead, and soon Mr. Landau will join her wherever mortals go when they die. But I must warn you, Vincent, not to entertain any thoughts of betraying me. I would find you and destroy you. But let’s look on the bright side. We are in this together, and I expect our association to be harmonious and mutually profitable. I have a great deal of money, as I’m sure you know. If you have money problems, forget about them.”

  “I am glad to hear that.” Mara’s speech was slow, but he was responding.

  “As why should you not. Life as a vampire can be sweet. You must believe that. You are a new vampire and therefore somewhat confused. But you have great potential. I can see that. In time, you will develop great powers, as I have. There is, you see, very little an intelligent vampire can’t do. Within certain limitations, he can do anything, and what is best about becoming a vampire is the freedom it bestows upon you.

  The petty worries of the world fall away as if they never had existed. Freedom from fear, Vincent—that is the main thing. You will discover freedom from tedious morality is even more satisfying.

  “Do you feel better now, Vincent? Are you getting used to your new state? Do you accept it? Or at least, are you prepared to accept it?”

  “Yeah, I’m getting used to it.”

  “See, it’s not so hard,” Van Diemen said. “Shake a leg, old man. Cheer up. We have much to talk about.”

  “I hear what you’re saying.” This time, Mara didn’t drag his words out.

  “Now, about Landau. He hired you to investigate me. Did he give a reason?”

  “He said he was acting for a client who might become involved in a multimillion-dollar deal with you. The client wanted a thorough investigation of your background.”

  Mara’s voice was close to normal and Van Diemen was pleased. “Did you believe him?”

  “He sounded reasonable enough. Private investigators are hired for all sorts of reasons. Unless the job’s criminal or too dangerous, most investigators just work. Some just go through the motions. They get paid anyway. But others try to do it right.”

  “But you didn’t just go through the motions, did you, Vincent?”

  “No, I wasn’t like that. I had some integrity.”

  “I hope you still do.”

  Mara looked puzzled. “I think I do. I feel I do. But what has that got to do with now? I’m a vampire, not a detective.”

  Van Diemen laughed. “What makes you think you can’t be both? Just because a man becomes a vampire does not mean that he forsakes the world completely. I want you to work for me, Vincent, and if you do your work well, you will be the highest-paid private detective in the world. In your present state, you aren’t giving much thought to money, which is to be expected. But I urge you to think about it, Vincent. It’s wonderful to be any kind of vampire, but it’s better to be a vampire with a private fortune.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to find out all there is to know about Landau. But more importantly, I want to know the identities of the men he represents. I want to know why they want to buy my property and what they intend to do with it. Also, Landau seems to be missing. Find out where he is. He may be with his clients.”

  “They may be just real-estate developers. No, I guess they’re not, considering the blackmail angle.”

  Vincent was coming along beautifully; except for a slightly dazed look in his eyes, he was the same oaf who had walked in the door.

  “What puzzles me,” Van Diemen said, “is why they are so persistent. They want my property so badly that Landau was willing to engage in an elaborate blackmail scheme. He risked disbarment and a long term of imprisonment if he was discovered. It’s not as if my property sits on top of a lake of oil. Landau made an offer through my lawyer, and my answer was a firm no. So what do you think?”

  “Some real-estate sharks hate to give up.”

  “It looks like it, doesn’t it? I can’t imagine what Landau hoped to find out about me by hiring you. What on earth could force me to sell? So far as Landau knows, I am a scholarly recluse who has lived a blameless life.”

  Mara helped himself to a drink without being invited. His actions were a bit forward of the fellow, but a good sign nonetheless. “That’s why Landau hired me: to find out if maybe you had a few skeletons in your closet. He didn’t want to find out how much you are worth. He already knows that.”

  “Does he? And how much is that?”

  “In the neighborhood of five million, according to him. He has ways of finding out things like that.”

  “Does he, indeed. For your information, Vincent, and this is strictly confidential, I am worth half-a-billion dollars. I’m not in the class of the Sultan of Brunei, but I’m not badly off.”

  “Whew! That’s some dough. Half a bil— wow!”

  Van Diemen knew he had Mara. A man did not change his basic nature when he became a vampire. Vincent was greedy, and joining the undead would not change him one iota. No more proof was needed than the greedy longing Vincent put into his reaction.

  To urge Vincent toward greater greed, Van Diemen said, “Every day, my fortune grows larger. It’s five hundred million at least, and probably more than that. I don’t concern myself much about money. I have other interests, including my work and my library. But my money is perfectly safe in reliable currencies and sound banks in countries with stable governments. You won’t find me putting money in the Bank of Cambodia. Much of my wealth is in gold. Men may come and men may go, but gold, not diamonds, is forever.”

  “Half a bil,” Mara murmured dreamily.

  “Forgive me, Vincent,” Van Diemen said, “we haven’t discussed salary. What do you say to one thousand dollars a week? Declare what you like. That’s between you and the IRS.” From the look on Mara’s face, he seemed about to ask for additional funds to cover expenses, but he didn’t. Van Diemen decided Mara was thinking about his new employer’s immense wealth and how he was going to get control of it. Once Mara had done his work, Van Diemen would get rid of him.

  “A thousand a week will be fine,” Mara said. “You know, it’s funny. I’m a vampire, but I’ll still be working for a living—you know, like your average citizen.”

  “And paid handsomely for what you do. In no time at all you can move out of Chelsea. Or if you’re comfortable there, you can fix up your apartment and get rid of that Goodwill sofa.”

  Mara regarded him with suspicion. “How do you know about that?”

  “Just a guess. I know how hard it is to make ends meet.”

  Mara looked around the well-appointed library, with its oiled-leather bindings of thousands of books shining dully in the dim light, the oak paneling, the paintings in their elaborate frames, the rich carpet, the eighteenth-century furniture.

  “How could you know what it is to be hard up?” he asked.

  “Ah, Vincent,” Van Diemen said, “I was not always as you see me now. As a youth in Amsterdam, I suffered much deprivation, and there were times when I went hungry. My father, poor man, was a mere dike mender, and I hardly need to tell you there’s not much money in that.”

  “But how did you make your money?” It seemed that Vincent liked to talk about money; those without it always did.


  “I’m sure you’ll find it hard to believe, how I became so immensely rich.” Van Diemen wondered if Mara had dug up information on Jacobus Van Diemen and all the money he’d had. To cover up his past, Van Diemen decided to spin a wild yam that would appeal to Mara’s avarice.

  “I’ll believe you,” Mara said. “After tonight, I’ll believe anything you say.”

  Van Diemen smiled at him. “Well, there’s no reason to lie to you. We are fellow vampires, after all. To make a long story short: A long time ago, I went to South Africa to seek my fortune. The Dutch were long established there, and of course, since I was Dutch myself, I hoped to receive a warm welcome. And indeed I did. A kindly old Dutch diamond prospector took me under his wing and taught me all he knew. Oh, it was wonderful, Vincent, the freedom of it. We roamed the limitless veldt. We penetrated the as-yet-unexplored mountains of the Drakensberg Range. It was there at the highest peak of all, Irabantsononyana (as the natives called it), that we found the largest diamond in the world. We called it the Southern Star, and it put the other glorious diamonds—the Hope, the Cullinan, the Mackay—all to shame.”

  “Holy cow!” Mara said.

  “I sold it to the Czar of Russia for ten million rubles, and you must remember in those days a million rubles were a million rubles. No income tax then. You made it, and you kept it. I kept it and I made it grow.”