“Is this your quest?” I asked. “Are you Don Quixote?”
“If I am, then you’re my Sancho Panza, and you’re too skinny to be him.”
“You summoned me through…”—I had to think of her name—“Katz’s friend. Rebecca Dwelling. Human.”
“That was the best way,” Coyote replied. “Rebecca knows about vampires. She’s a chalice. I told her that you could help Katz.”
“How do you know Rebecca?”
“Wait and I’ll show you, vato.”
“As a chalice Rebecca is forbidden from revealing her awareness about the undead,” I said. “If the nidus leader won’t enforce that, the Araneum will.”
“The local nidus no longer fears the Araneum.”
“I’ve figured that out. So, did Cragnow kill Roxy Bronze?”
Coyote shrugged. His aura dimmed. “That’s a big question, no? Answer that and you’ll start to solve everything.”
The twin mysteries of my trip—the conspiracy behind Roxy’s death and vampire–human collusion—remained parallel yet far apart.
“Why didn’t you contact me directly, Coyote?”
“Because I needed to slap you in the face to get your attention. Would you have listened to a loco vampire like me? Or to a beautiful woman describing the great secret?” Coyote wagged a finger. “I know you like the ladies, Felix.”
“And the L.A. nidus?” I asked. “Don’t any of them care about what’s happening?”
Coyote glanced to the outside mirror. “If you know about Cragnow’s plan, you’re either with him or you’re ash.”
“Why aren’t you ash?”
“To the L.A. nidus I’m as invisible as a bum on a street corner. They don’t see me because they don’t want to. Sometimes being crazy and looking down-and-out is the best way to hide.”
“Maybe you’re not so crazy, Coyote.”
He clicked his tongue. “Maybe not, Felix.”
“How many vampires in the nidus?”
“It’s not like I’ve taken roll.” He straightened and raised a hand like a schoolboy. “Coyote. Present.” He settled back. “I’d guess maybe a couple thousand. Hard to say. Many are just passing through.”
A huge nidus, regardless. “How many work for Cragnow?”
“Maybe three hundred. More than enough to be dangerous. And they’re all over, with the police, the government.”
I needed an ally in this wilderness, and Coyote’s frankness made him the best candidate. I offered a handshake. “So we’re partners. You got a last name, or is it just Coyote?”
His hand was bony, like a paw. After releasing my grip, he closed his eyes and began to howl.
“Okay wiseass,” I asked, “how do you spell that?”
Coyote barked for several seconds. He gave a smile of yellowed teeth. “Don’t quote me. I could’ve been speaking Doberman.”
“What’s your last name in people talk?”
“Malinche,” he said.
“As in the Malinche?”
“La Malinche,” he corrected. “My mother.”
“Doña Marina?”
“You know of another one?”
La Malinche. The Aztec maiden who served as translator and concubine for Cortès. The woman lauded by the Spaniards for her help in conquering Mexico. And reviled by many Mexicans as a traitorous whore. Yet others found her a compromised woman who had kept history from getting worse.
“She’s your mother? Then you must be five hundred years old.”
“Like I said, I’ve been around.”
“So your father was the devil himself, Hernando Cortès?”
“Chale”—no way. Coyote recoiled from me. “Rather than settle down with her, after all she had done for him, Cortès kicked my mother out of his house, porque he already had a wife…imagine that? Cortès was not only a rapist, looter, and murderer; he cheated on his woman. Que vergüenza.”
“A real shame,” I agreed.
“Before my mother was married off to Cortès’s lackey, Don Juan Xamarillo, she had another boy.”
Coyote let silence fill the void between us until I understood.
“You?”
“Símon.”
“And your father was?”
“One of Cortès’s soldiers.” Coyote raised his hand in a mock toast. “L’chaim.”
I had to think about his reply for a moment. Was he Jewish? Some of the Conquistadors had been Jewish. “You want me to believe that you are the son of a Jewish Conquistador?”
“I’m not asking you to believe anything. I’m only asking that you listen.”
“Your father?” I asked. “A Jew?”
“Sí. Many became Conquistadors to escape the Inquisition. Many still hide out of custom, pretending to be good Catholics in public. For some reason they call themselves marranos, though I don’t understand why Jews would want to be known as pigs.”
Coyote snorted like a hog, the nostrils of his thin nose twitching.
“When did you become vampire?”
“That was a long time ago, hermano.” Coyote cupped his crotch. “About the time hairs sprouted around my chile. I sought a vampire to escape the torment of being the bastard son of a gauchupin.” A Spaniard.
Coyote sighed in a way that made me pity him. Half a millennium had not been enough time to dilute his grief.
“There were legends of a jaguar man living in the jungle. He preyed on the lost and drank their blood. There was no one more lost than me, so I looked for him.”
“Obviously you found him,” I said.
“I wish I hadn’t, carnal. There are agonies worse than dying.” Coyote’s talons and fangs shot out and his aura burned like a bonfire. He was vampire, the tormented drinker of blood, doomed to prowl the earth forever.
“I understand,” I said.
“Consider, ese.” Coyote’s aura settled. His talons and teeth retracted. “When my mother was big and pregnant with me, before she was hitched to that buey Don Xamarillo, Cortez figured that Xamarillo had sampled her wares, while Xamarillo thought that Cortès had left her with a souvenir. These murderers were each too much the gentlemen to question the other’s integrity. Had they known she bore the bastard son of a heathen Jew, they would have burned her alive. My mother could not keep me, the evidence of her sin. At my birth, she switched me with a stillborn baby. I was given away and raised by the poorest of the defeated indios. Even among them I was a pariah, an omen of what the future held for Mexico.”
“And your father?”
“He died of plague. Some said it was divine justice for turning La Malinche into his little knish.” Coyote smiled, the pallor of sorrow evaporating. “I also heard that my father died masturbating. His final words at orgasm were viva Mexico.”
Coyote blinked uncomfortably. Driving under the intense California sun made my eyes water and burn as well. I replaced my sunglasses. Coyote fished a pair of shades from the breast pocket of his jacket. A paper clip held the left temple to the lens frame.
Coyote motioned abruptly as we neared a traffic light. “Here. To the left.”
We headed east for several blocks along Vernon Avenue. I explained my investigation as it had progressed so far. Katz Meow and the Araneum had brought me to L.A. Now Katz was missing. And my two prime suspects—porn king Cragnow Vissoom and corrupt developer Lucky Rosario—were each looking over their respective shoulders and had asked me for help.
Coyote listened and nodded. When I was done he said, “Sí. Mucha caca.”
I knew that. A big help he was.
Coyote directed me into the parking lot of a bowling alley, a cinder block building bearing the name Majestic Lanes in faded plastic letters along the front. Trash littered the bottom of the walls and front sidewalk. Liquor bottles sparkled among the weeds. Cars crowded the spaces closest to the building. There was a muffler shop and beauty salon across the street.
I found a spot between a Jaguar and a Bentley, cars that looked as out of place here as would a pair of albino ele
phants. “Pretty fancy wheels for this dump. What’s here?”
“Dinner,” Coyote replied. “And a concert for the damned.”
“Who’s the damned?”
“We are,” he replied.
CHAPTER 9
I followed Coyote toward the entrance of the Majestic Lanes. “We’re eating at a bowling alley?”
“I am,” he replied. “Don’t know about you. But we’re here not just for refín. I want you to meet Rebecca Dwelling.”
Katz said Rebecca worked at a secret place where humans intermingled with vampires, no doubt a chalice parlor. Talking to Rebecca could clear away some of the smoke in this investigation, as she might know what happened to Katz.
I examined the broken neon and cracked plastic on the facade. “Good disguise. This is the last place I’d think to look for a chalice parlor.”
“¿Vato, estas loco?” Dude, are you crazy? Coyote chuckled. “This ain’t no ordinary parlor.”
We stepped into the shadow of the front awning. Coyote gripped the door handle when he stopped abruptly. “Smell that?”
I caught only warm asphalt, gasoline, and dirty bowling shoes. “What is it?”
“Un lobo.”
A wolf in Los Angeles meant that a transformed vampire was close by. Vampires didn’t transform into wolves unless they expected getting, or making, serious trouble.
I closed my eyes and sniffed again. There it was, that faint musky odor.
I checked left and right. If a wolf came for trouble, I’d give it to him. “Why would a vampire risk running through L.A. as a wolf? And in the daytime?”
“Maybe he wasn’t running through the city,” Coyote answered. He put a finger to his lips and whispered, “Maybe he turned into a wolf to sit and listen.”
It was as a wolf that a vampire’s senses were at their most keen. Transforming into a wolf was common practice when stalking special prey.
Who was his prey?
Me? If so, he was in for a surprise.
Coyote? I looked at my scruffy and wily partner. Good luck catching him.
Then who?
Rebecca.
“Where’s the wolf?” I asked.
“Don’t know. The scent is cold.”
“Let’s go find Rebecca.” Grasping Coyote’s arm, I hustled him through the entrance and toward the rumbling of bowling balls and the crashing of pins.
Most of the lanes were occupied. I peeked over my sunglasses. Everyone had a red aura. If this was a chalice parlor, where were the vampires?
Coyote led me across the carpeted aisle on the upper level, looking down on the lanes. He turned the corner and approached a gray metal door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.
He opened the door and we entered a dark corridor sloping to the left, parallel to the lanes and filled with the racket of machinery, bowling balls, and pins.
Coyote removed his sunglasses and so did I. A red bulb illuminated the corridor. An oily, mechanical odor from the pin machines grew more intense the farther we walked down the incline.
At the back of the hall, Coyote stopped before a metal cabinet. Dents and graffiti covered the front. Coyote opened the double doors of the cabinet and ducked inside. The back of the cabinet swung away. Coyote stepped down, as if descending stairs.
I followed him, taking care to shut the cabinet doors behind me.
We were on a metal landing. Stairs led to another door beneath the Majestic Lanes. The door had a placard for a Cold War Civil Defense shelter. We climbed down. The muted crashing of the bowling machinery rumbled through the concrete wall. Coyote knocked on the door.
A view port at face level opened. A pair of shiny vampire eyes peeked out. I expected Coyote to say, “José sent me.”
But he said nothing and the door swung open. Our orange auras must have been our pass in.
Jazz music flooded out, a raunchy blare of saxophones against the energetic accompaniment of a keyboard, guitar, and drums. The aroma of fresh human blood sent my nostrils tingling and my mouth watering. No trace of a wolf.
A vampire bouncer waved us through. He was huge and his muscles were overinflated; most likely he was a steroid juicer before he was converted to the undead.
Laughter and playful snarls swirled around us. Orange and red auras filled the room. The psychic glows flashed gaiety and lust. The ambience was a combination Juarez cantina and Chicago speakeasy. A sign on the wall read: NO UNDEAD CONVERSIONS ON THE PREMISES. NO SEX ON THE TABLES. NO DANCING ON THE CEILING.
Below that, someone had scrawled with a black marker: AND TIP, YOU CHEAP BASTARDS.
Vampires crowded the bar to my right. A naked female chalice lay facedown across the top. Blood seeped from puncture wounds lacing her shoulders, buttocks, and the back of her thighs. The vampires around her sipped cocktails and chatted, stopping occasionally to lap and nibble on the chalice, as if she were a plate of hors d’oeuvres.
More vampires sat at the tables lining a terraced auditorium, which faced a stage. I guessed that the place, with its low black ceiling, could hold a hundred patrons.
Six musicians—humans—played on stage, three women sax players, the rest men. They wore either scarves or leather collars to cover bite marks and advertise their status as chalices. Sequined jackets sparkled under the colored spotlights. The women swayed on bare legs in tempo to the music. Their costumes were just the jackets, plus black bikini briefs and shoes. The women looked delectable, but the men, in loafers and with hairy bellies sagging over their briefs—well, that was a taste others preferred.
Coyote pointed to the woman at the far right of the combo, the short one with a gymnast’s body, stocky and muscular. “That’s Rebecca.”
She had a round, pretty face that placed her anywhere from sixteen to the midtwenties. Her cheeks puffed and her ponytail wobbled as she wailed on the sax.
“Why not get us drinks and nachos,” Coyote said, “while we wait for Rebecca to finish this set.”
I stopped a passing chalice waitress. She was dressed—or to be more precise—barely dressed with costume beads looped over her naked shoulders and perky breasts. Metallic glitter freckled her face and torso. A studded red leather collar encircled her delicate neck. She wore tap pants, mule pumps tied with ribbons around her ankles and calves, and a silly pillbox hat resting at a slant over her brown hair.
We ordered the day’s special—a fanged martini: the house vodka, vermouth, and type O-positive.
The waitress smiled and turned about. The bottom curves of her firm butt winked from under her tiny pants.
Coyote motioned toward an empty table that offered a clear view to the stage. “Over there, where we can keep an eye on Rebecca.”
The band started a fast and raucous rockabilly tune. Vampires whooped and crowded the floor. They shuffled and kicked and flung their chalice dance partners. Some of the vampires leapt and clung to the ceiling, dancing upside down, their feet knocking pieces of acoustical tile to the floor. Now I understood the rule about no dancing on the ceiling.
This was the concert for the damned? Lucky us.
What about this joint? Every other chalice parlor I’d been to before had the languid mood of an opium den. This place had a happy hour, dancing—a cold breeze tickled the back of my neck—and air-conditioning. How could so many vampires and chalices congregate without the local human populace finding out?
Our waitress arrived with drinks and the plate of nachos, which was drizzled with melted cheese, diced jalapeños, and—from the aroma—goat’s blood. She had twenties and hundreds heaped on her tray.
Who raked in all this money? I could smell the graft. Certainly this parlor—make that saloon—pointed to the vampire–human collusion I’d been sent here to investigate.
Coyote flipped through a jukebox-type device on the table. Instead of songs, each tab on the device listed a chalice on the menu with a photo and description.
F 9. Jason—a thirty-year-old Asian male from Newport Beach. Type B-negative. Very lean. Smoker. Hearty metall
ic taste with pepper and menthol notes.
“Naw. Muy flaco.” Coyote raised his voice. The music was very loud. “Too skinny. Plus it took me a hundred years to kick my nicotine habit. I fang him and boom, I’m back to those goddamned Marlboros.”
He kept flipping and stopped on G 34. Darlene—a forty-six-year-old from Willowbrook. Type A-positive.
“Bien gordita. I like them chunky.” Coyote touched the order button. “She okay for you?”
In her picture, Darlene looked plump, happy, and most delicious, as juicy as a marbled steak.
“Sure,” I answered. “But don’t order until after we’ve met with Rebecca.”
“Bueno.” Coyote pulled his finger off the order button. “You can cover the check, no? I’ll owe you until payday.”
“I didn’t know you had a job.”
“I don’t. But with the economy turning around, I’m optimistic. I’ve got résumés all over town, ese.” Coyote tugged at my elbow and leaned close. “I’ve even applied as a pilot with Pan American.” He winked.
“Pan Am went under years ago,” I said. “Don’t expect them to call.”
“I’m not,” Coyote said, laughing, “because I don’t have a phone.”
The band played harder and faster. The dancers hurried their frenetic pace to match the rhythm. The finale had the subtlety of a bottle truck smashing into a fireworks stand.
The band members, their bodies glistening with sweat, bowed to rowdy applause. The curtain closed before them. The house lights brightened. Vampires and chalices returned to their chairs.
I sipped my martini, munched nachos, and surveyed the surrounding vampires as I looked for an aura that betrayed danger.
Coyote scooped blood with a nacho chip and crunched on it. “¿Nada, verdad?” Nothing, right? “Maybe the wolf presence has nothing to do with us or Rebecca.”
“You believe that?” When on a trail leading from murder, there was no such thing as a coincidence.
A door to the left of the stage opened. The band filed out. Coyote and I remained seated, finishing our drinks as we waited for Rebecca to appear.
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