“That’s three dollars,” he said. “Drink it and get out of here, ’cause I don’t know anyone named Raze and I don’t appreciate the insinuation.”
He reached for the twenty on the bar. Jim covered Pete’s hand with his own. A bare trace of a smile showed on the bartender’s lips as he looked up.
“That was a mistake,” he said.
He reached for something under the bar—an axe handle, a lead pipe, maybe a baseball bat, but before he could do much with it, Jim squeezed his hand to the point where bones started to break. Tears flooded Pete’s eyes and his knees buckled enough to drop him several inches.
“Ow ow ow,” he cried. “For Chrissakes, let go!”
Jim could sense other faces turning toward him.
“Quiet down,” he ordered softly. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself. Anyplace we can talk privately?”
Pete nodded fervently as if his life depended on it, which in a way it did.
“Okay. Drop whatever it is you’re holding under the bar, then lead the way. And don’t fucking test me.”
Pete again nodded. Jim heard something drop, and out of curiosity looked down to see an axe handle rolling on the floor by the bartender’s feet. He let Pete go, and the bartender pulled back his damaged hand and held it at an awkward angle while he massaged it.
“This really hurts,” he said. “I think you broke some bones.” He squeezed his eyes shut, then stumbled for a second before regaining his balance. “I don’t feel so good,” he said. He didn’t look too good either, like he might pass out.
“You have any aspirin?” Jim said.
Pete nodded glumly.
“Take some.”
Pete fished out a bottle of aspirin from a drawer, but struggled with the child proof cap.
“Why do they have to do this?” he muttered, frustrated. “How’s someone with a broken hand supposed to open one of these things?”
Jim took the bottle from him and opened it. Pete tossed a handful of tablets into his mouth, chewed them as if they were mints, then stumbled out from behind the bar and led the way to a room in back. People in the bar were still watching them, but no one seemed overly interested, and no one bothered to say anything.
“I really think you broke some bones,” Pete complained once they were alone. They were standing only a foot or so away from each other in a cluttered stockroom no bigger than a coat closet. Beer kegs and cases of vodka, whiskey and gin were stacked along the walls. The bartender’s face had become wet with tears. “It really hurts.”
“Where’s Raze?”
“I don’t know any Raze.”
Jim edged closer to him. Pete started to raise both hands in a defensive gesture, winced and grabbed at his damaged hand again.
“Goddamn, I really think you broke up my hand. And I don’t know who you’re asking about. I’m just a bartender here. I serve drinks, I clean up the bar, I restock the beer kegs, and I bounce when there’s trouble. That’s all I do here. I don’t know anyone named Raze.”
Jim stopped, gave the bartender a skeptical look. “Why the attitude with me earlier?”
Pete met his eyes. “Because part of my job is to smell trouble, and I could smell it on you the second you walked into the bar. I could also see you’re packing. You don’t really have the body type to hide a big piece of iron on you.”
Jim opened his jacket and pulled out the .45 that he had shoved in his waistband. He held the gun loosely by his side. The bartender tried hard not to look at it.
“You’re not being honest with me, Pete. If you’re tending bar here, you have to know who I’m talking about. He was here last night with two of his boys dealing product out of your men’s room.”
Pete nodded. “The bikers with the skull tattoos. Yeah, I see them here, but I keep out of their business. Other than taking drink orders, I’ve never said word one to any of them. I swear.”
“That sounds like bullshit.”
“It’s not.”
“Someone here has to know them.”
Pete lowered his eyes enough to answer that. He tried to meet Jim’s eyes again, but it was too late.
“Okay, so who is it?”
The bartender looked away and shook his head, his lips making a red gash across his face as they pressed tight together.
“I really don’t want to hurt you if you’re not involved,” Jim said. He pointed the .45 at one of the kegs stacked on the floor and blew a hole through it. Pete nearly jumped out of his shoes at the sound of the gunshot. Beer poured out of the keg and flooded the area they were standing in.
“Shit! What are you doing?”
“Speeding things up by giving you an idea that this is something you don’t have a fucking clue about. Hopefully then I won’t have to hurt you too badly.” Jim put the barrel of the .45 against his own chest and pulled the trigger. He had braced himself so the gun blast only pushed him back a few inches. He maintained a hard stare at Pete throughout.
The bartender’s complexion paled to a sickly white. “Fuck,” he mouthed, his eyes dumb and as large as silver dollars, his jaw having fallen slack.
“You’ve got this one last chance before I start doing things to you.”
“Why’s this so important to you? Please tell me it’s more than you just wanting to rip them off?”
“It’s more than that,” Jim said. He swallowed hard to keep his emotions in check. “They took someone very important to me and they’re going to hurt her pretty bad if I don’t find them.”
Pete nodded to himself, accepting that. “The owner of the bar,” he said in a soft whisper. “Charlie Drum. He does some shit with them.”
The name of the bar was The Broken Drum. Jim asked if that was how the place got its name.
“Yeah, Charlie used to always be broke and bumming money off anyone he’d see here. Me, waitresses, customers, you name it. That changed a couple of years ago when all of a sudden he was flush every time you saw him. Started paying me more regularly too.”
Jim nodded to himself realizing that must’ve been the same time Drum hooked up with Raze. After a couple of years in business together there had to be some trust between the two of them.
“Alright. You’re going to call him and get him down here. You’re not going to warn him and you’re not going to do anything stupid. I know you don’t want people here to start dying, especially since you’d be the first one. Right?”
Pete nodded, his eyes half-lidded and staring at nothing in particular.
Jim handed him the cell phone he had taken off of Ash. The bartender stared at it and shook his head.
“Caller ID,” he said, finding his voice. “If I call with that phone Charlie will know something’s up. Better that I use the bar phone.”
“Okay, yeah, that makes sense. It’s a good thing one of us is thinking clearly. We’re going back out there now. Anyone asks you about the gunshots, you tell them a few bottles broke, nothing more, and you say whatever you have to to convince them that that’s what happened. Understand?”
Again, the bartender nodded. He asked, “What the fuck are you?”
“You don’t want to know.”
He nodded again, realizing that that was probably true.
Jim slid the .45 back in his waistband, zipped up his jacket and moved aside to let Pete leave the stockroom first. He followed Pete back into the bar area and stood close enough to hear the bartender explain to a couple of the patrons who asked about the noise that no, those weren’t gunshots, only a couple of bottles that were accidentally knocked onto the floor. They either bought his explanation or they didn’t care enough to challenge it. Pete went back behind the bar and Jim stayed close and listened in as the bartender left a message for Charlie Drum that he needed him at the bar pronto.
* * * * *
Serena garnered open stares when she and Zach went shopping at the XXX Sex Emporium and later at the Beachwood mall. She decided it was more her exotic and stunning look than anyone recognizing her from
the video recording that was being shown all over the news. In celebrity-saturated Manhattan, she’d still catch people staring at her as if she had to be someone famous, but nothing like this; and the idea that some of these people might be wondering whether she could be the same person they watched on TV massacre all those cops left her throbbing badly between her legs. At one point she came within a hair’s breadth of pulling Zach into the ladies room at Nordstrom’s. It wasn’t easy but she controlled herself—as much as she needed relief she decided to wait until they returned back to their room so they’d have the space to go wild. The only downer to the evening was when Metcalf had tried calling her. She’d been hoping that he’d stay holed up in his van and wouldn’t be bothering her for at least another twelve hours, but someone must’ve filled him in. She wondered briefly whether that someone could’ve been from her hotel, and the image of Walter Smith’s lizard-shaped face, along with his bulging and nearly lidless eyes popped into her head, but she discounted the idea and decided it had to be someone from Metcalf’s compound. As much as Smith tried hiding it with his false smiles and empty compliments, she had long suspected his animosity towards her but couldn’t imagine him being stupid enough to betray her like this, especially after her adding an expert computer hacker to the family six months earlier. If Smith did make the call through his cell phone (which he probably didn’t think she knew he had), she’d find out about it, and the consequences for him would be dire.
After shopping, they went back to Hayes’ hotel room, and she and Zach went at it as soon as the door closed behind them. Serena, her head pounding with desire, first shredded her leather pants as if they were nothing but wrapping paper, then did the same to Zach’s. It was a long time before they were done, and when they were, Zach lay on the floor with Serena mounted on top of him, his chest heaving as if it were going to explode, and her long black mane pulled in every direction as if she’d been caught in a windstorm, a wildness burning in her eyes. Hayes was lying only a few feet from them and was making a thin mewling noise as he writhed in agony. His hair had turned a stark white and his body had already grown leaner and more narrow. His head had changed also, taking on the same cat-like characteristics of every other infected vampire. Serena got off of Zach to check on Hayes.
“His bindings are threadbare,” Serena noted as she examined the cloth strips securing his wrists and ankles. “Another few minutes and he’d be breaking loose from them.”
Zach grunted an acknowledgement, then got to his knees so he could hold the PI’s wrists while Serena replaced the cloth bindings with handcuffs that she had bought at the sex store, then they did the same with Hayes’ ankles. After the PI was secured, Serena fed Hayes a pint of blood and that seemed to calm him down.
“I still don’t see why we need him,” Zach noted, his voice dripping with petulance.
Serena smiled wistfully at the other vampire, but didn’t bother with an explanation. It was always like this whenever she added a new member to their family. For whatever reason Zach had a difficult time with change, especially if it meant sharing her affections. She motioned for him to take a seat on a cushioned chair so she could join him on his lap. While they sat like that she played with his spent and limp penis. Even after humping more times than two caged rabbits, it didn’t take long to get him hard again. There was both a longing and a pleading in Zach’s eye; he wanted her again, but he wasn’t sure if he had anything left inside for another go around. She showed some mercy and left it alone. Instead she called Wilfred on his cell phone. After some pleasantries, she asked whether he’d had any luck finding the Blood Dragons.
“Not yet. We’ve been driving all over this hick city, but nothing yet.” Wilfred paused, then asked, “You and Zach have been fucking like crazy, haven’t you?”
“We’ve been christening every square inch of our hotel room,” Serena said, laughing. “Darling, how’d you know?”
“I could hear it in your voice. You don’t know how jealous I am right now. Or how hard.”
“I can imagine. Please do be careful walking about. You don’t want to be poking any holes in walls.” Her laughter died down. “Have you found anything about these Blood Dragons?”
“A little. Stefan and I have been going to nightclubs and spreading some money around. They’re a biker gang, and from what I’ve been told, very particular in what they ride. Only Harleys. They also sell drugs. Meth, heroin, acid. Stefan’s at one of the bars waiting to be hooked up with one of them for a drug buy. Right now I’m riding around looking for any bars with Harleys out front. Oh, and guess what? They all have the coolest tattoos to identify themselves. Skulls wrapped in barbed wire and flying dragons. We’ve got to get ourselves some. It would be the rage back home.”
“That biker-type Jim was feeding on when I hit him with the limo…” Serena pondered out loud. “I was wondering why Jim would be doing something so brazen like that right out in the open.”
“I was wondering about that too. So now we know. The guy he was feeding on had to’ve been a member of these Blood Dragons. If I remember right half his face was gone. Jim must’ve been trying to keep him alive so he could get information out of him.”
“We had one right under our noses. What a shame. Do you remember seeing this Blood Dragon afterwards?”
“Unfortunately, no. With all the commotion I didn’t bother looking for him.”
“Neither did I. Oh well, so we’ll find another one of them.”
“Probably Stefan before me.”
“My money’s on you, Wilfred. Keep doing what you’re doing. It all sounds very clever.”
Serena blew him a kiss over the phone and hung up. Zach was staring stone-faced, watching. “How about me?” he said. Serena caressed Zach’s cheek as she thought about it. “I’d like you to drive around and see if you can sniff Jim out,” she said. “If you do find him, don’t go after him alone. Jim is too dangerous and resourceful for that. Call me, and we’ll handle him together.”
Zach nodded, hurt showing in his eyes over Serena’s assessment of his abilities. “How about you?” he asked.
“I’d better stay here,” she said, making a sour face. “I’m expecting company later tonight.”
“From whom?”
She sighed, her face for a moment ageing to something closer to death. “The same person who tried calling me earlier this evening,” she said.
“I don’t think so. How would he find you here?”
“Oh, he’ll find me. He’s very clever that way. And it would be best if I were alone when he does. My guess is he’s going to be a grouchy bear. To say the least.”
Zach nodded, still showing some hurt, and lifted Serena off of him so he could get dressed. He put on a pair of Hugo Boss jeans, a silk shirt, and a smart lightweight calfskin jacket that Serena had bought him at Bally’s.
“I’m going to find Jim,” he promised her. “Count on it.”
“If you say so, I believe you. And you’ll call me when you do?”
“Of course.”
He left the hotel room, and Serena gathered up her ruined clothing and took out a new skintight peach-colored leather outfit from her suitcase to peel over her body. She wanted to look her best for Metcalf. It had been a while, and nothing was better than angry sex—or as would be the case with Metcalf when he showed, psychotic rage-filled sex.
Chapter 11
Last call had passed leaving a small smattering of regulars and hanger-ons sitting around and nursing their drinks; some simply not wanting to go home, others looking for an excuse to mingle with the Bon Jovi cover band that had played earlier—although the band did mix in a few of their original songs. The four members of the band were all in their thirties, wore muscle shirts and torn jeans and styled their hair in the same sort of shaggy, teased manner of the members of Aerosmith. They were joking and talking loudly, trying to wind down with bourbons and draft beers after a lively three-hour set, and four young skinny girls who had come to see them—all of whom look
ed underage and were wearing tight tee shirts and either micro-miniskirts or shorts that were cut high up on the thigh, sat with them. There was no mistaking what these girls wanted, and their body language spoke loud and clear as they made sure to touch the band members knees and bare arms every chance they had. Jim observed all this blankly, his legs jiggling and his knees bouncing up and down. He turned his stare back at Pete. Jim had been there over five hours waiting for the bar owner, Charlie Drum, to show. During the course of the night he had Pete leave half a dozen messages for Drum, telling him it was urgent that he show up at the bar. The last message was left only a half ago, and at Jim’s suggestion, included something about there being a lot of money at stake.
“I think you should call him again,” Jim said.
Pete shrugged and tossed a couple of more aspirin in his mouth and chewed them slowly. Over the course of the night his skin color had grown waxy, his eyes pinkish. He looked feverish. He wasn’t doing too well with his broken hand, and had been dropping glasses throughout the night and struggling with the simplest bar activity.
“I already called too many times as it is,” Pete said, his voice tired and hoarse. “It wouldn’t do any good to call again. Probably just warn him that something was up.”
“You sure you don’t know where he lives?”
Pete looked up in amazement. This was the fourth or fifth time the guy had asked him that. “If I knew don’t you think I’d tell you already? Christ, Jim, I need to get to a hospital’s emergency room. My hand’s fucking killing me. I don’t know how much longer I can stay on my feet.”
Jim nodded, wiped the back of his hand under his nose. He knew that the bartender would’ve told him whatever he had to to get rid of him, but also that Pete was smart enough to understand that if he lied to him it would cost him dearly. Pete claimed all he had was his boss’s cell phone number, and when Jim tried calling information for an address, the operator told him she didn’t have one. She suggested that he try calling Drum’s service provider, although, she added, she didn’t think they would give him a home address. Charlie Drum sounded like an uncommon name to Jim, but when he checked the Cleveland phone books he was surprised to find seven Charles or C. Drums listed in the city and the surrounding areas. As the night wore on he considered taking Pete to each address, but he didn’t want to risk Drum showing up at the bar while they were gone and, as Pete pointed out, Drum might not even be one of those seven listed. The bar owner could instead have an unlisted home number.
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