Thirst

by Pyotyr Kurtinski

  “I have a lot to tell you,” Mara said. “Good information, the best, but maybe you don’t want to hear it over the phone.”

  “That’s right, Vincent. I’d like to hear it in person.” Van Diemen wanted to see Mara’s face when he made his report. That way he could tell truth from lies. “It’s late now. Why don’t you come up tomorrow night? No need to call ahead. Just ring the bell. I’ll be waiting.”

  Mara made a sighing sound. “I’m glad you said that, Mr. Van Diemen. I’m tired, but I’ll be all right by the time I see you.”

  Van Diemen thought he should show some concern. Actually, his concern was genuine: He couldn’t have Vincent falling down on the job for whatever reason. “Have you been feeding well?” he asked.

  There was a pause. “Pretty good,” Mara said, “but not great. I’m still getting the hang of it.”

  “We’ll talk about that and other things. Rest well, Vincent. I want you in good form when you get here. Till tomorrow night then.” Van Diemen hung up the phone.

  He couldn’t say it had been a very productive evening in the sense of getting things done, yet there had been time for contemplation. Some hours were left until dawn, but he decided not to do any more writing in his book of eternal life. Vincent’s report promised to be a good one, if he could believe the fellow; he’d soon know how good it was. That morning, a little tired, he would take an early rest.

  Eleven

  “Sit down, Vincent,” Van Diemen said. “I hope you’re feeling as well as you look.”

  Mara’s face was self-satisfied, tense, and tired at the same time. “I’m okay. Finished my report this morning and rested all day. Have to get used to my new way of life. Been a tight week, working just a few hours in the morning when things are open. Boy, could I use a drink.”

  Van Diemen controlled his impatience. “No drinks just yet. Later, after you’ve made your report. You do have a report?”

  “You bet I do. I know you’re going to be pleased. You’re sure about the drink?” Mara licked his lips.

  “Not right now. I want you clearheaded. Please proceed.”

  Mara took a notebook from his inside pocket, but didn’t open it. “I couldn’t find out where Landau is. Tried hard, no dice. Goes off on these trips to nobody knows where. At least they won’t tell me.” Mara tapped his notebook. “And there’s nothing about him in here. For a guy so public, he lies low.” Mara opened the notebook. “Otherwise, I got everything you wanted to know.”

  “You talk and I’ll listen,” Van Diemen said.

  Mara read: “Landau represents a Bronx and Westchester Mafia family headed by Marco Simonelli. People call him Polo, but he doesn’t mind. Polo is seventy-five, but in good health. He was born in East Harlem, so the feds can’t deport even if they could prove something, which they can’t. His business deals, criminal and legitimate, are handled by his son, Marcus, who has a Fordham law degree. Marcus is forty-three and married. He has three children and lives on City Island. The Simonelli crime family is the smallest in the New York area, about fifty to sixty soldiers, but with influence far beyond their size. The lowest ranking soldiers, the most dangerous, are recent immigrants from Sicily, all young. None of them are illegals. Marcus Simonelli gets them green cards one way or another.”

  Mara paused to turn the page. “Most of the family’s operations are confined to the Bronx and the part of Westchester they control. Drugs. Shylocking. Prostitution. Stolen cars. Cigarette smuggling. Hijackings. Anything from truckloads of VCRs to frozen meat. They also own or control nightclubs and restaurants in the Bronx and Westchester. By control, I mean they move in on owners without investing any money.”

  Mara turned the page and read on. “Since the late Eighties, Marcus has been putting a great deal of money, much of it borrowed from banks, into real estate of various kinds. The family used to be big in the numbers racket, but they have yielded to the Hispanics in the interests of peace. However, drug distribution in the central and northern Bronx, also Westchester, is firmly under their control. Their supply of cocaine, powder and crack, is provided by the Colombian drug boss Hector Benitez. The Italians and the Colombians will clash eventually. At the moment they cooperate. The Colombians have more money than they can get out of the country in cash, or launder through crooked bankers; so they have been investing in or lending money to be used in Marcus Simonelli’s real-estate operations. Marcus knows better than to try to cheat these people or fail to repay their loans.”

  Mara closed his notebook and put it back in his inside pocket. “These are the people who want your property, Mr. Van Diemen. And I would like to add saying no to Jack Landau won’t be the end of it.”

  Van Diemen hadn’t said a word all through Mara’s report. Now he said, “You’ve done a remarkable job in so short a time. Can you tell me how you did it?”

  Mara hesitated for only an instant. “My brother is a sergeant attached to the New York Police Department Intelligence Section. I had to give him five hundred dollars to get it,” he said. “Five hundred to my own brother.”

  “Go on,” Van Diemen said.

  “The section, never official, was ordered broken up twenty years ago when its existence became known for the first time. But it wasn’t. It just went deeper underground after weeding out cops who might be security risks. The disbandment order came right on top of a police scandal. The section still compiles and maintains dossiers on private citizens as well as known criminals or people suspected of criminal activities. By private citizens, I mean just about anybody of importance. Politicians. Political activists of all kinds. Black, white, fascists, Klansmen, animal rights, gay rights, and so on. But you don’t have to do anything for the section to start a file on you. No files, of course. It’s all on computers now.”

  “Amazing,” Van Diemen said, not even slightly amazed. “But why is there nothing on Landau?”

  “There may be, but it isn’t accessible to my brother. He said he wouldn’t even try. I don’t know much about computers, but it’s like any attempt to get top-secret information is recorded by the computers. Landau may be in there, but there’s no way to get at him by bribery. I guess you could bribe somebody at the top. I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  “Neither do I. I think you’ve done marvelously, Vincent. One more question: Were you tempted to ask your brother about me?”

  Mara squirmed in his chair. “Yeah, I did. But it wasn’t like I was snooping on you. More for your own protection, like, in case the section had some interest.”

  “Vincent?”

  “My brother checked—nothing. I hope you’re not offended.”

  “Not at all. It was good thinking on your part. Well, now that business is out of the way for the moment, let’s have a drink to celebrate your brilliant spot of detecting.”

  Mara pretended modesty. “The computer did the detecting.”

  “Nonsense. Knowing where to find things is what counts. The computer, after all, is just a machine, however complex. Come. Let’s have that drink. I could use one myself.”

  “Let me do it, Mr. Van Diemen.”

  “You’re not a butler, Vincent.”

  “I know that. You just sit there. Hey, where’s the bar?”

  Van Diemen pressed the button that revealed the refrigerator. “Wow!” Mara said when he saw all the bottles of vodka. “You sure know how to live!” Mara’s voice got high when he got excited.

  “Thank you,” Van Diemen said, taking the drink from Mara, who couldn’t wait to get to his own drink. His hands had a slight tremor.

  “Bottoms up!” Mara drained his tall glass of eighty-proof in one long swallow. “Just what the doctor ordered. Mind if I have another?”

  Van Diemen hadn’t touched his own drink. “Help yourself. You’ve earned it.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” The first drink was already taking effect. Van Diemen didn’t care: The report was in. Mara’s second drink was as big as the first one, and it went down just as fast. He didn’t tr
y for a third, at least not yet; perhaps he was trying to learn self-control. With two big drinks in him, he was a little less tense. “Nothing like a few drinks to relax you after a rough week,” he said.

  Van Diemen took a sip of his drink. What did the fellow want? More praise? After all, he was being very well paid, making more money than he’d ever made in his life—for as long as it had lasted. “You certainly know your job, Vincent. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  “I’ll bet you’d make a crackerjack PI,” Mara said. “What amazes me about you is you’re over two hundred years old and as up-to-date as I am.”

  “I am a man of three centuries,” Van Diemen said. “But I prefer the eighteenth to the others I’ve known and not only because I was very young then. It was the only century of elegance. I’ve found nothing else like it in the history of the world.”

  Mara put on some kind of face, as if he meant to say something weighty. “You have no special feeling for the fifteenth, the century of Dracul, Vlad the Impaler?”

  Van Diemen thought he could do without Mara’s scholarship. “You have been reading up on the subject?”

  “I have this past week. Not very much I admit, but I had to go to the library as part of the job. The main research library has a raft of books on vampirism and its origins. They say one of the best modem studies is by Montague Summers, a Northern Irishman. What is it with these Irishmen? Bram Stoker, the Dracula author, was Irish too. What could have been their interest?”

  “Summers was cracked and Stokers brain was rotted by syphilis, which comes to the same thing. Both books are rubbish, but at least Stoker s novel is amusing. I especially enjoy all that business about Van Helsing, the great vampire killer, with his wolfs bane and garlic and crucifix. No wonder his Dracula ran away from garlic. So would I.”

  “Then you’ve read the book?”

  “I’ve read both. They’re right over there on the shelves under R for rubbish.”

  Mara leaned forward to pour another drink, and still holding the bottle he said, “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Interview With a Vampire, the new movie.”

  Van Diemen wished Vincent would put down the bottle of vodka before he dropped it. Like all rich men or vampires, Van Diemen was a bit stingy. Besides, the vodka would stain and ruin the carpet.

  “I haven’t seen it in a theater,” he said. “But I have the video.”

  Mara gave him a sly smile, thinking he’d caught Van Diemen out in a lie. “But the video hasn’t come out yet.”

  “Mine is pirated. There are not many vampire films I don’t have, old or new. I have Fred Murnau’s Nosferatu, the original uncut version. I have Daughter of Dracula, with Christopher Lee. I have Dracula Must Die, with Peter Cushing. I have Dracula Meets Billy the Kid, and much, much more, as the television ads say.”

  It was odd for Van Diemen to be chatting like this with Mara as if they were two human movie buffs. But why not after all? The popular notion that vampires spent all their time doing frightful things—such as robbing graves, devouring dead bodies, and crunching the bones with their rat like teeth—was ridiculous. He himself had never robbed a grave in his life. Why should he, and to what purpose? Blood from corpses, even the recently dead, was congealed, malodorous, lifeless. And as to chatting about silly old vampire flicks, it was as good a topic as any. Besides, Van Diemen and Mara were vampires, and Van Diemen did enjoy those crackpot pictures. They were always good for a chuckle.

  But even as Van Diemen started to enjoy their conversation, Mara said, “You don’t seem to think much of my little attempt at vampire research. May I ask why?”

  Van Diemen barked out a laugh. “You’ve got it all wrong, my dear chap. Sometimes I’m inclined to be facetious. I think it’s commendable to see a new recruit, so to speak, showing such an interest, pride you might say, in his heritage, if that’s the correct word. Too many of the new undead take their astonishingly improved condition for granted. I’ve got it made, they think, and that’s all they think. In short, they see only the gains and none of the responsibilities.”

  “Responsibilities?” Apparently such an idea had not occurred to the keyhole peeper and one-shot novelist. “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean is they should not bring disgrace to the ancient nobility of our kind. You may not want to believe it, but some of them do. To my knowledge, the most recent and shocking instance of this was the money-grubbing wretch who attempted to sell his life story to the News of the World.”

  “What’s that? Something like Hard Copy on TV?”

  “No. It’s a scandalous newspaper with one of the largest circulations in Britain. It’s always running stories about Princess Di’s panties being found in the bushes in St. James Park. Or the Duke of Edinburgh abusing himself in the front row of a dirty movie house. They’ve been said to pay up to a million pounds for the right kind of story, however lewd and disgusting.”

  Mara was all ears now, the million-pound figure ringing bells in his head. “Did they buy the guy’s story?”

  “Not a chance. They’re too smart for that. ‘Vampires?’ they told him. ‘Don’t you know vampires don’t exist? You must be having us on. Get out of here, or you’ll find yourself down the Bailey on an attempted fraud charge.’ When last seen that particular gentleman was slinking off down Fleet Street, trying to hide his face with his broad-brimmed hat.”

  “What happened to him?” Mara tried not to show his sympathy for the fictional betrayer.

  Van Diemen’s look was nothing if not meaningful. “That was the last any mortal saw of him. He had attempted to disgrace us, to reveal our secrets, and there was nothing else for it.”

  “You mean?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. He was dealt with. Say no more.”

  Hear me well, you greedy fool, Van Diemen thought. Try to betray me, and I’ll drain you like a Bavarian stein. “I’m afraid I can’t discuss the situation even with you, at least not for the moment. Suffice it to say, the fellow erred and had to be corrected in the most drastic way.”

  “I hear what you’re saying.” Mara was pale even for a vampire. “Served him right,” he added loyally.

  Van Diemen thought he had gone far enough for the moment. “Well, let’s not dwell on it. No need to depress you with such regrettable stories. Thankfully, they are few. Come on, old fellow. Have another drink, and we’ll talk about more pleasant things. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see you taking such an immediate interest in the history of our kind. More than pleased, I am delighted. But you must not be taken in by these so-called historians, charlatans really, whose works are no more than bald-faced fabrications. In a way, forgive me, it’s like the young lady who asks the policeman how, she can get to Carnegie Hall and he says, ‘practice, practice, practice.’ But, really, that’s what you must do: Practice, practice, practice.”

  Mara looked sulky and Van Diemen was reminded of Tracy Lee’s little moments of Kahlua courage. “You make me look like I just got off the boat, like some immigrant who can’t even read the street signs.”

  “Nothing to be ashamed of in that. Many of our immigrants have achieved great success in business, government, science, and the arts. Look at Louis B. Mayer, to give just one example. And all the others. Carnegie, Felix Frankfurter, Kissinger, Gen. Samoff, Tom Carvel, the Ice-cream King.”

  Mara came as close to scowling as he dared.

  “You think I should aspire to be an ice-cream king? I got my sights set a little higher than that, intellectually speaking. I got a collection of Bartok records. I belong to the Literary Guild. I’d like to be a big-time writer.” Mara hiccupped.

  Too much vodka, Van Diemen thought. “Why not do it all? I’m certainly not suggesting that you go into ice cream, far from it. But if the opportunity arises, seize it. And don’t be such a snob. Tom Carvel’s frozen delights have brought joy to multitudes of children and overweight adults. All that aside, old Tom was a multimillionaire when he died, a billionaire for all I know. In America, it d
oesn’t matter how you make your money as long as you make it. Think what it would mean to be an independently wealthy writer.”

  “I thought you were making fun of me.” Mara’s drunken courage was fading a little.

  “I like a bit of a joke now and then,” Van Diemen said. “But I wouldn’t make fun of a friend and a fellow vampire. I don’t know how many there are of our persuasion, so to speak, but I do know we must stick together in a world that is incapable of ever understanding us.”

  Van Diemen was thinking that it was about time for Mara to take himself back to West Twenty-second Street. Still, his report on Landau and the gangsters was a fine one, and Van Diemen didn’t want to hurt the fellow’s feelings by telling him to go home.

  Mara, still looking around, said, “I wouldn’t mind moving in here with you.”

  “Is that so?” The suggestion was not unexpected; nonetheless it was most unwelcome. Van Diemen tried to keep the frostiness out of his voice. Why antagonize the creature if he didn’t have to? “I don’t know about that, Vincent. I’ve been so long by myself.”

  “It’s such a big place,” Mara said, as if he hadn’t heard Van Diemen. “I can understand how you’d feel cramped even in a big house. But this is, like, a castle.”

  Van Diemen knew that was just Mara’s way of speaking, yet he was nettled. “It is a castle, Vincent.”

  Mara shifted his weight, causing the delicate eighteenth-century chair to creak and Van Diemen to wince. “I know it is. I still say like all the time. What I mean is, it’s such a big place a couple hundred people could live here without crowding. Just me, one person—I’d never get in your way. You’d never see me unless you wanted to. I’d be quiet as a mouse. It’s not like we’d be roommates or anything like that.”