Thirst

by Pyotyr Kurtinski

  Van Diemen suppressed a grimace of distaste. Roommates! How could the fool even utter the word? “I’m afraid not, Vincent. It’s not that I don’t hold you in high regard. But don’t you see? It would be impossible for me to change the habits of two centuries. What you’ve forgotten is that we’re of such different ages. You’re forty and I’m past the two-hundred-year mark. Even as fellow vampires, we’d be an odd couple. Take some good advice from a vampire who has lived far longer than you have: The arrangement simply wouldn’t work.”

  The idea of having Vincent Mara underfoot all the time made Van Diemen shudder, though it appeared that Mara didn’t notice it. And it seemed as if he hadn’t heard a single word Van Diemen had said, though his meaning could not have been clearer. Van Diemen hoped it wouldn’t be necessary to get rid of Mara there and then. It could be done without slightest difficulty, no matter what Mara might think himself.

  “All I was thinking of was a room of my own.” Mara set his heavy jaw a little, suggesting an obstinate child holding his breath until he got his way. “A little room. A little corner of this great big place—is that too much to ask? I hate the place where I live now. The fridge don’t get things cold. The radiator leaks. There’s a guy upstairs who practices the electric guitar all the time. He’s a junkie, and I’m afraid of him.”

  “You need not be, Vincent. You’re a vampire now. Feed on him. Kill him.”

  Mara was not about to be put off. “He’s got four other junkies in there with him. Dangerous guys, I think all ex-cons with born-to-kill tattoos and steel-toed boots. They’re always coming to my door asking to borrow five dollars. What can I do but give it to them. I got to get out of there, Mr. Van Diemen. I’m shitting my pants every time I see them. Last time I gave one of them five dollars he said to me, “Thanks, cracker.”

  Realizing the sod was hysterical, Van Diemen sighed. If a vampire could be greedy, deceitful, unreliable, and treacherous, he supposed one could be hysterical. It was something he hadn’t encountered before, but he’d always believed in living and learning.

  “Why don’t you find a better place to live, Vincent? I’ve already suggested that. You’re getting one thousand a week now, and even at hotel rates, that amount should be more than enough to put up at some decent hotel while you’re looking around for a new apartment. They say the St. George isn’t at all bad since they renovated the place. Now listen to me. I’m sure I can help you out with money. Show some of the old vampire spirit, my boy. Move out of the apartment you’re living in now and into the St. George.”

  The pout hadn’t left Mara’s stupid face. “I’d rather move in here with you. I think we get along pretty well, and there would be advantages for both of us. I’d always be on call anytime you needed me. If you had some sudden brainstorm or something you wanted done in a hurry, I’d be here. All I’m asking is a little corner to myself. I wish you’d think about it, Mr. Van Diemen. Take as long as you want. I won’t say a word. I’m gonna shut up right this minute and go look at the books while you’re thinking it over.”

  Good as his word, he got up and started for the bookshelves, and Van Diemen had to fight the urge to destroy his own creation. Van Diemen stared at Mara’s meaty back while the man pulled priceless volumes from their shelves with no delicacy at all.

  How long would he stay in his little corner if he got it? Not long was the answer to that. Vincent Mara would invade Van Diemen’s privacy in no time at all, no matter what assurances he gave. It was hard to tell what the first awful outrage against peace and good order would be. He’d probably play his wretched Bartok records while Van Diemen slept, shattering the bliss of absolute silence. Van Diemen hated noise of any kind, be it jackhammers or the dissonance of modem composers, the twanging of Mozart, the fluting of Galway. Noise was noise, but music was the worst of all. What was the point of it? What did it mean?

  Music was bad enough, but to have to talk to Mara, to really listen to what he had to say would be insufferable. It was one thing to have a chat with Mara, as they had been doing, quite another to be on terms of some sort of intimacy with him. What if he came knocking on the library door at midnight, or entered without knocking, offering some lame excuse for the intrusion? What might he say? Perhaps something about wanting to borrow a certain book. To discuss some idea he had. Mara was an alcoholic, and it was entirely possible that he would go back to hitting the bottle in a big way once he felt secure enough in his little corner. Vampires couldn’t eat solids, but they could drink anything. They could drink spirits and they could get drunk.

  The thought of having to deal with a drunken, perhaps violent, vampire was more than Van Diemen could bear. No, there was no way he could put up with that. And yet he needed the man for now. Mara was the only competent private detective he had. The problem of the Connors woman remained unresolved and Landau hadn’t been found, but Van Diemen would be damned to the searing light of ten thousand suns before he’d be forced to give Mara shelter. All Van Diemen could do was try to set Mara on another course and hope it worked.

  “Vincent,” he said.

  Mara nearly dropped the invaluable book in his eagerness to respond. “Yes, Mr. Van Diemen.”

  Van Diemen beckoned him. “Sit down, Vincent,” he said kindly. “Make yourself comfortable and listen to me. It’s important that you do.”

  Mara sat down with the look of an employee who didn’t know if he was about to be promoted or sacked. “I’m listening, Mr. Van Diemen. I’m all ears.”

  “I’m going to answer you without any apologies. The answer is no, and I think you’re man enough to take it. All right?”

  Mara nodded, disappointed but bearing up for the moment. He looked at the vodka bottle, then gave his attention to Van Diemen.

  Van Diemen waved his hand. “It’s very nice here,” he said, meaning the library, “isn’t it? Of course, it is: quiet, comfortable, secure. Anyone could hide here in this castle and feel himself safe. But life is not safe, Vincent, for mortal or vampire. You see how I live, and you want to live the same way. It’s understandable that you would want a retreat from the world such as I have. You see how strong I am and want to share that strength. Isn’t that true?”

  “It’s true.”

  Van Diemen nodded sagely. “However true it is, you must keep in mind that I am your friend, not your father. You must stand on your own two feet and live your own life. You have the means to do that now. In the past, life did not treat you too well, as it did not treat me well in the beginning. Now you can put such feelings aside forever. I can’t give you strength, my friend. You must find it, earn it, for yourself. A vampire is essentially a loner, Vincent. You shrink from the word, forgetting that all strong men are loners. They may have many friends, but they are dependent, finally, on no one but themselves. That is where their strength lies. Think about it and you will see I’m right.”

  This time Mara did the nodding. “I hear what you’re saying. It’s just that—”

  Van Diemen stopped him, but not sharply. “You can’t hide here from the world. It’s as simple as that. Soon you will have more money than you’ve ever had before. But you must not think solely in terms of money. Doing so would be a mistake. You must be bold, with or without money. Always be aware that you are now someone special. A while ago we were joking about that ice-cream business. I teased you a little—mea culpa—but I meant well. What I was saying, in essence, was that you must seize life by the throat, no pun intended, and take what you want from it. But I repeat: You must do it by yourself. If at times you need help from a friend, I will be there for you/’

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Mara said. “And I’ll do the same for you. You can be sure of that. I know—”

  Van Diemen held up his hand, smiling at the same time. “You were going to say, 1 know you don’t need friends, a man like you,’ something like that. You’re quite wrong. We all need a friend’s help now and then. That is the nature of life, eternal or otherwise. But I would be no friend if I allowed you
to live here. Can’t you see the truth in that?”

  “I think I can.”

  “Very well then,” Van Diemen said heartily. “To get back to your problem with your neighbors: You must move out of your apartment immediately or as soon as you can. Abandon your belongings if you like. Take only a few things special to you. Find a decent hotel and pay a month’s rent.” Van Diemen chuckled. “I think our problem with Landau will be settled before the month is up. I can’t have you apartment hunting before then. And now I am going to give you two weeks salary instead of one. That should make things easier for you, wouldn’t you say?”

  “A lot easier,” Mara said. “So anyway, Mr. Van Diemen, what are my orders for the coming week? Do I keep looking for Landau? Or have you something else in mind?”

  “Keep after Landau, yes,” Van Diemen said. “That’s top priority, but there’s another matter you might look into. Have you ever heard of a celebrity photographer named Maggie Connors?”

  “Oh, sure. Everybody’s heard of her. She’s in the papers all the time.”

  Van Diemen frowned. “That may be, but I can’t find her. It’s a private matter. She was in New York quite recently, doing some photography right here in the Bronx Zoo. The Photographer’s Guild must know where she is, but they’re not saying. Can you locate her for me?”

  “I think so. But now I got to be off. Haven’t fed tonight and I’m feeling it,” Mara said. He straightened his hat and buttoned his coat. “What if I find her before next week? This cabbing up and down is cumbersome.”

  Reluctantly, Van Diemen gave Mara his telephone number. “Vincent,” he said, “do not call me unless it is absolutely necessary.”

  Twelve

  Van Diemen wasn’t surprised when it started. What surprised him was that it hadn’t started sooner. It had happened many times to property owners who refused to sell at the right price to the wrong people—or to sell at any price, which was his own position. It wasn’t like Sandor to go against the long-established rule of not bothering Van Diemen in the evening. Yet there he was in his old black suit, white shirt, and no tie, risking his master’s wrath and possibly a sound whipping.

  “Come in,” Van Diemen had said irritably when the knock had come on the library door. “Shut the door and come here.”

  Sandor stood in front of the writing table.

  “Dey are trowing tings over the wall, a dead dog, bags of garbage, fish guts, chicken guts, animal guts. Outside they paint the wall. Trow bag of shit at the gate. They paint wall with words. I clean it and they do it again.”

  “How long has this been happening?” Van Diemen asked.

  “Three night,” Sandor said. “Morning I clean. They do it again.”

  Van Diemen looked at the clock: 8:15. “Have they done it tonight?”

  “Not yet, master. I can send the dogs out after them.”

  “No, no, don’t do that.” It was a good thing Sandor never did things on his own. The mastiffs would tear the malefactors to pieces; the huge animals were trained to kill, not to hold. New York was the most lawless city in the Western world, but a person couldn’t kill someone for vandalizing his property. It would be different if the vandal came over the wall.

  Since Sandor was waiting for orders, Van Diemen said; “Go back to your quarters. I will take care of this.”

  After Sandor left, Van Diemen took the fifteen-shot semiautomatic pistol from the drawer and put it in one pocket of his smoking jacket, the two grenades in the other. He gave no serious consideration to using the pistol or the grenades unless the vandals tried to kill him. If all they did was make a mess, Van Diemen would let them. No doubt they were teenagers, vain, arrogant, brainless, often murderous, the plague of modem society.

  Van Diemen left the castle by the front entrance and walked to the gate. The mastiffs came bounding out of the darkness, snarling and ready to kill. Their owner was unfamiliar to them, but they turned and ran away when they got close enough to know he was no human. The dogs could tell. All animals could tell.

  It was early, but the road that went by the castle was silent. Not many houses were on the road, and the few that lined the street were big or of a fair size. A few had cedar fences or chain-link fences concealed by shrubbery. None had stone walls, but then none was a castle. It was quiet there and residential, with no gas stations, convenience stores, pizzerias, no noise; it could have been a road in a good suburb.

  A car passed without stopping. Van Diemen unlocked the gate and went out to take a look around. It was hard to use an aerosol can on a rough stone wall, but an attempt had been made and paint was still stuck between the crevices in spite of Sandor s best efforts to clean it off. Since there was nothing to see other than that, Van Diemen went back inside, locked the gate, and waited.

  It was infuriating to stand on his own property and wait to have it vandalized. Another property owner would have called the police, but that option was not open to him. Too many questions might come up if the police came around. They might, for instance, want to conceal themselves behind his gate. He’d never had any dealings with the police for any reason. Every year, Wilcox & Philpot sent a check to some police or fund in Van Diemen’s name, and that was as far as his association with them went. So far as the police were concerned, Van Diemen was a rich bachelor, an eccentric who kept to himself and bothered nobody.

  At ten o’clock, Van Diemen was about to give up when he heard a small truck coming. It stopped in front of the gate, and he watched while three men got out of a pickup truck. The back of the pickup was filled with open garbage bags. Van Diemen could smell it from where he was. The three men looked like Italians. They wore quilted short coats, gas-station caps, and work gloves. The youngest of the men, who was about twenty-two years old, said something in Italian that made the others laugh. Then another said in Bronx English, “Yeah, but how do you shit in his mailbox? Besides I don t see no mailbox out here/’

  When the three men started to throw the garbage bags over the wall, Van Diemen had to fight to control himself. It would be so easy to lob a grenade among them and follow it up with a hail of bullets from the fast-firing gun. But that was no good. All Van Diemen could do was stand there in the dark. A bag of garbage landed close by and split open. It had been torn so it would burst open when it hit the ground. The bags contents spilled out in a foul-smelling mess. Van Diemen heard the dogs running and so did the men outside. The dogs ran past Van Diemen’s place of concealment and sprang at the steel plate behind the bars of the gate. The three men started taunting the enraged, snarling dogs. The youngest Italian was doing most of the teasing. “Throw the meat over and let’s get outa here,” one of the others said.

  Chunks of meat started to come over the top of the gate. Eight or ten chunks came over before the pickup started up and drove away. Van Diemen knew the specially trained dogs wouldn’t eat the poisoned meat. The dogs ran away into the bushes when he came out and clapped his hands. His lack of odor frightened and confused them. He picked up one of the chunks of meat and smelled it, but there was nothing other than the smell of beef. The Simonellis, father and son, were going to pay for their insult. Van Diemen smiled bitterly.

  He went back to the castle and told Sandor and Drina to clean up the mess. No real damage had been done, but what if the vandals had succeeded in poisoning his dogs. No threats had accompanied the vandalism, but quite often the guilty parties tried to wear their victims down with vicious little acts. When their victims were more fed up than angry, they would threaten to do worse, and they made it plain who they were. Such acts of extortion didn’t always follow that pattern, but the Simonellis didn’t seem creative enough to think up a new slant on the age-old game.

  Sitting at his writing table, still fuming with anger, Van Diemen wondered what had happened to law and order. The country was coming to a sorry pass when a man of property was subjected to such outrage. All men were created equal—what rubbish! All that meant, when considered realistically, was that it gave the lowest bla
ckguard the right to jeer at a gentleman and to get away with his insults.

  “Calm yourself,” he said aloud. It was his favorite admonition to himself when something annoyed him and stirred up his anger. Sometimes it worked, but he knew it wasn’t going to work that night, at least not for a while. Thinking about what those villains had done, he longed for the days when there were numerous hanging offenses.

  It was a good thing Van Diemen had fed so early that night. As soon as darkness had descended, he had risen. No Draculina stillness that evening. He had settled for the first likely blood source he saw: a fortyish woman with a bag of groceries getting into her car in a supermarket parking lot no more than a mile from his castle. Not an exciting feeding, to be sure, but eminently sensible. Every night could not be an orgy of emotion.

  Toying with his beautiful quill pen, he wondered if he’d get any writing done, and the thought that he might not renewed his anger. Why was he sitting there instead of being out there doing something? He knew where the Simonellis lived. The old man had a big pink house on Arthur Avenue between One-hundred-eighty-seventh Street and Fordham Road. The son had his own big house on City Island, next to a boatyard bearing his name and that of a partner. Van Diemen even knew where Hector Benitez, the Colombian drug lord, lived, but he thought he could disregard him for the moment. The Gang of Three were Landau and the two Simonellis. The Tracy Lee Dembroder blackmail plot proved beyond doubt that Landau was more than just another Mob lawyer, and it was possible that the entire land-grab conspiracy had originated with him. No doubt he was a wealthy man, but did he have the millions needed to launch such a project? If he couldn’t get the money from a bank, he might have gone to the Simonellis. He might have represented them in the past. What did it matter? Mobsters and Mob lawyers were peas in a pod.