Thirst

by Pyotyr Kurtinski

  “Yes, I do. My work speaks for itself. My work is in world-class museums and galleries.”

  He smiled at her. “Why are you so reluctant to die? You could join the immortals. Daguerre, Brady, Stieglitz, Cartier-Bresson. Think of the name Connors added to that list. Think about it.”

  “I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to die.”

  “Yes, but by dying young, you’d assure your fame. How many great artists go downhill in middle age? As their artistic powers wane, they begin to repeat their past work. They become parodies of themselves. Novelists, poets, painters, actors—it happens to so many of them. Why should photographers be any different?”

  Maggie Connors reached for Van Diemen’s hand, and he didn’t remove it. He felt like a perfect fool, sitting there.

  “I’m different,” she said. “I know my best work is ahead of me. I hope to be like Georgia O’Keeffe, who worked well into her nineties. Take Katharine Hepburn—”

  Outside, more guard vehicles were coming into the security area. Van Diemen pulled his hand away from Maggie Connors and got up from the couch. “I must be going. I’m not going to kill you. Good-bye.”

  “Wait. Don’t leave like that. Don’t shut me out of your life. I love you. I want to help you. At least we can be friends. I’ll leave here tomorrow and go back to my apartment. Please come to see me. Will you?”

  Van Diemen opened the back door as Spinelli knocked on the front door and called out the photographer’s name.

  “Will you?” Maggie Connors repeated in a whisper as Van Diemen vanished into the night without giving her an answer.

  Fourteen

  It was still dark when Van Diemen returned to the castle. Heading in from the east, he had to fly over the gate, and as he did, he saw the three Italians with the pickup truck. There was light enough to see what they were doing. Working fast with a bucket and brushes, they were pasting up posters on the wall on both sides of the gate. Van Diemen came to earth to watch them from behind a tree.

  The posters—huge black lettering on thick white paper—all said the same thing:

  VAN DIEMEN SHELTER FOR THE HOMELESS AIDS TREATMENT CENTER DRUG AND ALCOHOLIC CLINIC MEALS SERVED 24 HOURS OPENING: 12:01 A.M. JANUARY 1, 199- COME ONE, COME ALL HAPPY NEW YEAR.

  Van Diemen wished he had his gun and his grenades. What those men were doing was much worse than scattering garbage. Finished with the wall, they were throwing single-sheet flyers into the air and letting the wind take them. One of the flyers blew behind the tree where Van Diemen was concealed. He picked it up and saw with horror that it had the same wording as the posters. The only difference was the flyer gave the location of the castle and how to get there by subway and bus. But he was wrong; there was more on the flyers: Free transportation tokens were available to the needy, also free clothing and free shoes.

  Dear Satan! he thought. The advertisement would bring every loony and scrounger, wino and windscreen washer, beggar and burn to his door. He could see the indigent coming up the long hill from the nearest heavily trafficked avenue. In his mind’s eye, he saw them scratching, drinking from pint bottles, chewing Slim Jims, pissing against trees, picking their scabs, all heading for his castle.

  The three thugs were standing back, admiring their handiwork. “This is gonna break that guy’s balls,” the youngest of them said, and he laughed so hard he could hardly stop.

  “Knock it off,” one of the others said. “We got to distribute the paper before it gets light. Come on.”

  Van Diemen’s ears pricked up; the men hadn’t distributed the flyers yet. There were still stacks of them tied together in the back of the truck. Two of the men got into the bed of the pickup; the third drove. The truck pulled away, and Van Diemen followed, staying fairly high, but keeping the vehicle in sight. The truck pulled on the Grand Concourse and drove down to Fordham Road, where it made a right turn and went under the elevated tracks at Jerome Avenue. They were heading for upper Manhattan by way of the University Heights Bridge. The bridge, which crossed the Harlem River, was at the bottom of a long, steep hill, and the road that led to it had a few twists and a dangerous intersection. Traffic was light, but there wasn’t much darkness left. Construction work was going on at the near end of the bridge; part of the side was boarded up and there were warning signs and blinking red lights.

  The truck was going down the steepest part of the hill when Van Diemen went out over the bridge, turned and came back, heading straight for the truck. The headlights blinded him, and he barely missed hitting the truck. The men in the truck yelled and screamed, and the truck swerved over the line to the wrong side of the road. The driver was trying to straighten up the vehicle when Van Diemen flew across his line of sight. The truck swerved again. It was completely out of control when it hit the construction site at great speed, tore through the nailed-up boards, and plunged into the river far below. Van Diemen saw it hit the water and go under.

  First light was glimmering when Van Diemen arrived at the castle. He woke Sandor and Drina and set them to work tearing down the posters and picking up the scattered flyers, some of which had been blown far from the gate. He even helped them himself; it was of the utmost importance that they collected the flyers before his neighbors were up and about. But there would be some that the three of them couldn’t find; those scraps of paper would have been carried too far away by the wind.

  A little later, Van Diemen lay awake in his coffin, an occurrence that had been happening too often lately. The Simonellis’ men had almost created an awful problem for him. If the flyers had been flung from the truck, the downtrodden of the city would have washed up to his front steps, gibbering like baboons, their filthy hands raised in trembling entreaty, whining and threatening in turn. The creatures would have come in the thousands, and what could he do? Call the police? No need for that; they’d come anyway. And with them would have come the newspaper and television jackals, snapping their yellow teeth, drooling at the prospect of a big story. The television cameras would have moved in close, and they would denounce Van Diemen for perpetrating such a cruel joke. By the time the media had finished with him, he would have been the most hated man in America.

  The three men in the truck would paste up no more posters, scatter no more garbage, and lay poison for no more dogs. Van Diemen felt good to think of them at the bottom of the filthy, freezing Harlem River. He hoped old Simonelli and his son would hold him responsible for the deftly executed murders; if not, it would be a lesson gone to waste. Well, why shouldn’t they blame him? They had sent these men to do worse than harass him, and now the thugs were dead. Naturally, the Simonellis wouldn’t think he’d done it himself since they knew nothing of giant bats. Their first thought would be that Van Diemen had hired some protection. They would send their Mafia intelligence agents out to interview people who might have seen the truck go off the bridge. Had a bigger truck rammed the pickup from behind? Had a front tire been shot out? They would have to wait until the pickup was hauled for that information.

  Van Diemen didn’t anticipate any problem with the police; the stacks of flyers in the open pickup would have been washed away since the Harlem River s currents were swift. One of the flyers could turn up, however; then the police would see his address and want to talk to him. Bradford Wilcox would have to be called as soon as he returned to the library that evening. Van Diemen trusted no one else to help him with that problem.

  For the moment, he had to consider what the Simonellis would do about the killing of their three hirelings. He had no way of knowing if the dead men had been regular Mob soldiers or just hired help recruited for this particular job. It hardly mattered what they were; the Simonellis would feel they had to do something about the murders. But what? Would they send out three more thugs with posters and flyers? Somehow, Van Diemen didn’t think so. Their war had finally come to killing; additional harassment would not be an adequate vengeance. In short, Van Diemen felt sure the Simonellis would try to kill him, and they would not consu
lt Landau, even if they knew where he was.

  The Simonellis wouldn’t go after Van Diemen right away, he was fairly sure. First, they would send their men out to look for information. That would take some time; so perhaps Van Diemen had a few days to get ready. He had the Glock semiautomatic and the grenades, but that wasn’t all. One of the most murderous weapons he had hidden away was the new Marine Corps 12-gauge shotgun that fired cartridges filled with flesh-ripping darts— fleshettes—instead of buckshot. But he had no intention of shooting it out with the killers the Simonellis sent. He would be waiting when the assassins came.

  Since Van Diemen had an orderly mind, he could put the Simonelli problem aside for the moment. Wilcox had to be called and ordered back to New York that evening. He hoped the chubby lawyer wasn’t still crying in his Rob Roys, or whatever he drank under the palm trees. It would be most annoying to find Wilcox drunk when he called. But no matter how the lawyer was, he would have to return to New York and do some work. Bradford C. Wilcox would have to shape up and interpose himself between his client and any possible legal problems. But, Van Diemen thought with a smile, he would not need a lawyer to deal with the Mob.

  Van Diemen fretted as twilight sleep still eluded him. A vampire didn’t sleep as mortals did; his sleep, for want of a better word, was a state between the conscious and the unconscious. A vampire didn’t dream in the human sense, nor did he have nightmares. But he needed his rest. Without proper rest, he suffered as much as any insomniac mortal, with all the attendant irritability and fatigue. Now and then, Van Diemen thought of laying in a supply of some mild sedative, but he never did. Drinking was bad enough; drugs were far more dangerous.

  Suddenly, Van Diemen found himself thinking of Maggie Connors. It bothered him that he was thinking of the drunken photographer when he should have been resting. He should have fed on her and drained her to death. Then she’d have become another of his countless, forgotten victims. Why hadn’t he done it? Could someone with the gift of eternal life somehow get old, not in body, but in mind? Could a vampire go soft? Could he, inexplicably, come to think of a woman as more than an outlet for pent-up sexual energy? The idea was preposterous, yet there he was doing just that.

  Maggie Connors had called Van Diemen crazy before she’d thought better of it. Being called crazy by her was unsettling because, if Van Diemen knew anything after 218 years of life, it was that he was the sanest being around. Of course, there had been times when he’d behaved irrationally, but not many.

  Van Diemen prized his cold, clear sanity as much as anything else in his eternal life. In fact, his rationality was more important to him than most things; without it, eternal life would lose meaning and focus, and he would go on blundering throughout the ages without direction or aim. If nothing else, unending life had to have meaning.

  Maggie Connors had a lot of nerve calling him crazy. Admittedly, he did indulge in sexual frenzy when he swooped down on some woman homeward bound. The recent business with Tracy Lee Dembroder and Draculina came to mind. He had torn them up pretty well, and the only excuse he could offer, if one were needed, was that he had to do it, so he had.

  Van Diemen had been about to dispose of Maggie Connors when she’d made her brutal move on him. And that red-hot poker she’d pulled out of the fire had been a terrible setback. Van Diemen wondered if she knew how afraid of fire he was. Probably not, but then who wouldn’t be afraid of a red-hot poker? But he could have taken her if the guards hadn’t been right outside. Putting her down would have caused a lot of noise and he hadn’t felt like fighting all those guards.

  The conversation with Maggie Connors had been strange, to say the least. There they had been, sitting on the couch, the killer and the woman he had to refrain from killing for the moment, talking like two pretentious dilettantes at a cocktail party.

  What had she said? “I want to be your woman. I’d love you and take care of you. I’d protect you from the world.” Such bloody rot! As if he needed love and protection! He loved himself, which was more than enough; as for protection, who did she think she was kidding. But oddly, he felt compelled to prove himself to her, to show her what a vampire could do when he put his mind to it.

  Why he was responding to the woman was a mystery to him. It went against all the laws, traditions, and time-honored dictums of vampirism. Yet there he was, thinking about her when he should have been getting his rest. It was embarrassing and completely out of character. Perhaps the only way to rid his mind of Maggie Connors was to kill her.

  Finally, Van Diemen drifted off. He awoke completely rested as darkness fell. It was always thus when he had set a clear course of action for himself. First he would call Wilcox and get him back to the city; that done, he would prepare for the arrival of the Simonellis’ killers. Van Diemen was absolutely sure they would come, and if only one came, that would make his job all the easier. Actually, it didn’t matter how many men the Simonellis sent. They could send a platoon, and he would send them all to hell.

  Downstairs, Van Diemen dialed Wilcox’s number in Sea Island. A woman with a Gullah accent answered on the tenth ring. “Dis Buford C. Wilcox office,” she said, and giggled. There was music in the background, the roll of drums, the clicking of castanets, and women’s voices making what sounded like bird cries. Someone seemed to be grabbing at the woman who answered the phone.

  “Hey, take it easy,” she said, giggling at the same time. Then she asked Van Diemen, “Who you want?”

  “I would like to speak to Bradford C. Wilcox,” Van Diemen said in cold, clear tones, enunciating every word.

  “I gotta get you name, mister.”

  “It’s William Van Diemen. Please bring Mr. Wilcox to the phone. It’s very urgent.”

  Wilcox got on the line. “Hey, William, what’s happening?”

  “I need you back in New York, Bradford. Problems have come up that I can’t handle by myself. I’d like you to take the first flight out.” The lawyer paused to take a drink; Van Diemen heard ice cubes tinkling in his glass. The music was getting louder; so were Wilcox’s female guests.

  “Can’t fly out for three or four hours, William. Some hostage-taking situation at the airport. It’s closed till further notice. Is Landau the problem?”

  “Not on the phone, Bradford. I’ll tell you when you get here.”

  Another tinkle of ice cubes. “I’d like to fly out right away, but I can’t. I didn’t tell you about Sandy, did I?”

  “No, Bradford. What about Sandy?”

  “My wife hit a tree in Aspen.”

  “Those icy roads are dangerous.” Van Diemen felt he had to say something. He didn’t care if Sandy had been eaten by a grizzly bear.

  “It wasn’t a motor accident, William. She was skiing.”

  “Is she badly injured?”

  “No, William, she’s dead. Ah, the poor kid.” Bradford C. Wilcox started to laugh. “Wunnerful woman, mother of my kids. I’m gonna miss her, you bet. I’ll miss her like colon cancer.” Van Diemen chose to ignore Wilcox’s last comment. If he hadn’t needed urgent legal advice, he would have dismissed the unfeeling blackguard on the spot.

  “We have a bad connection here,” he said. “I didn’t quite hear the last thing you said.”

  “What I said—”

  “No need to repeat it, Bradford. Can’t you charter a private jet or something like that? I’ll pay for it.”

  Now it appeared that one of lady friends was trying to pull the lawyer away from the phone. She was saying, “Don’t be a party poop.”

  The lawyer said to her, “Wait; sugar. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  To Van Diemen, he said, “Sony about that. Must be heavy if you want to charter a jet. Wouldn’t do any good. I’m telling you the airport is closed, sealed off. A lot of cops and FBI are there. I’ll be back as soon as the planes are flying again. I’ll call you the minute I get in. Best I can do, William.”

  Van Diemen’s earlier good mood had evaporated. He felt the urge to tell the lawyer that
his mistress had been two-timing him, but he didn’t. He didn’t think it would have much effect on the jolly mood Wilcox was in now.

  As he put down the phone, Van Diemen thought the new liberated Wilcox would have his advantages. He was out from under Tracy Lee and his wife Sandy, and he would be a better man for it. But Van Diemen didn’t want him to sink into debauchery; what he wanted Wilcox to show was a bit of spine.

  Yes, he trusted Wilcox as much as any mortal, but just to make sure the hostage-taking situation was real, he called La Guardia and asked if any planes were flying to Sea Island, Georgia. He said he’d heard on the news that there was trouble there. Yes, the person he spoke to said, there was a problem there and the airport was closed until further notice. But there was no need for alarm; the authorities had the situation well in hand.

  Van Diemen felt his good mood returning. Wilcox hadn’t lied to him; Satan pity him if he had. As the information person at the airport said, the situation was well in hand, or so it seemed.

  Wilcox would fly back as soon as the airport reopened. Mindful of his father-in-law, and his place in the legal and suburban worlds, Wilcox would have to attend his wife’s funeral, manfully choke back a sob, and sing “Amazing Grace” with the rest of the mourners. But that wouldn’t take very long, and no one would look askance at him if he went right back to work to bury his grief.

  Van Diemen hadn’t fed that evening, but feeding could wait for a while. It was best to get ready before the assassins started coming over the walls of the castle. He took the Glock semiautomatic out of the drawer, pressed the release button, and pulled out the fifteen-round clip. He could have put another round in the chamber, making it a sixteen-shot pistol, but he didn’t think that preparation necessary. A round in the chamber was dangerous; he was an excellent shot and could light a kitchen match with a bullet. Then he grabbed the two grenades from the drawer even though there was no easy way to check a grenade once it had been assembled.