X-Rated Bloodsuckers

by Mario Acevedo

  A minute passed and still no Rebecca. My kundalini noir sounded the alarm.

  I folded a twenty under my martini glass, got up from the table, and approached the band members milling around the door. Coyote followed.

  “Where’s Rebecca Dwelling?” I asked.

  The keyboard player replied, “In the dressing room.”

  Coyote and I went through the door and behind the stage. Towels damp with sweat lay strewn on chairs and the floor. A chalice tidied up the place.

  “You seen Rebecca?” I asked.

  He pointed to a door at the far end. “She and a customer left that way.”

  “Vampire?”

  “What other customers do we have?”

  Smart-ass.

  Coyote and I hurried past him. The other vampire had beaten us to Rebecca. Why hadn’t I anticipated this? I should have told Coyote to stay behind in case the vampire and Rebecca came out another way.

  The door opened to a hall that led past the storage rooms, the kitchen, and finally to the bar. And the way out. Damn.

  Coyote and I went up the maze we’d come through and back to the bowling alley. I put on my sunglasses. Better not get careless and give myself away to unsuspecting humans.

  We walked through the bowling alley. I looked over the top of my sunglasses. No suspicious auras.

  Outside, heat waves shimmered over the empty cars in the parking lot. The intense California sun warmed me uncomfortably, and I retreated back into the shadow of the front awning.

  The situation felt wrong. I walked around the bowling alley to the back.

  A pair of pink human feet jutted over the rim of the Dumpster, toes up.

  My kundalini noir twisted in distress. I didn’t need to think too hard about whose feet they belonged to. I crept close—Coyote watching my back—and grasped the top of the metal Dumpster. I levitated and looked inside, hoping that I was mistaken.

  The woman wore olive green capri pants and a yellow top. Her head rested against a pizza box, as if it were a pillow. A scarf in a flame motif covered her neck. Her eyes stared blankly at the sky. One blue flip-flop sat where it had been flung atop a plastic garbage bag. The other flip-flop had fallen into a big empty can of tomato sauce. A battered saxophone case was jammed into one corner of the Dumpster.

  I touched her left leg. It was still warm.

  I took off my sunglasses. The body emitted no aura. Rebecca Dwelling was dead.

  CHAPTER 10

  Coyote walked to the Dumpster. He levitated to stand on the rim by Rebecca’s feet and stared at her. He turned his ball cap backward, bent forward, and grasped her ankles. “Watcha.” Look.

  He lifted her body. A dozen flies took to the air and buzzed around us. “There are no wounds. No blood.”

  Coyote shook the body. Her ponytail and hands brushed across the garbage. “See how her head wobbles? Whoever attacked Rebecca twisted her neck like a bottle cap.”

  Even though she was dead, the way she dangled looked humiliating. “Do you have to do that?”

  “Why?” Coyote answered. “If she starts complaining, that would be a good thing, no?”

  Coyote let go of her ankles. Rebecca’s head settled into a pile of juice cartons. Her legs doubled over so that she rested butt up in a perverse yogalike posture. Flies landed on the insoles of her feet. I wanted the toes to twitch, but of course, they didn’t.

  Rebecca’s neck had been broken. I reached down and lifted her hand. I didn’t see any hair, skin, or blood under the fingernails. There were no marks of a struggle on her or the surrounding ground. Which meant she was attacked with such surprise she didn’t have a chance to defend herself.

  She hadn’t been dragged out here. Inside the Majestic Lanes, there had been no commotion. Rebecca must have known and trusted her vampire attacker.

  My gaze returned to Rebecca’s trim body and the still rosy skin. What a pity. Had I been more alert and less careless, I could’ve prevented her death. Here she was in her youthful prime, cut down to feed maggots.

  Rebecca had been casually tossed into the Dumpster, which meant her killer wasn’t worried about the police finding a corpse behind the Majestic Lanes. Maybe this happened often. After all, we were in L.A.

  We were alone, but I figured not for long. To reassure myself, I touched the Colt pistol hidden under my shirt. “It’s best that we leave.” I didn’t want to risk gunplay, not until I learned more.

  Coyote turned his cap around. “I’m still hungry. Those nachos weren’t much.”

  “After seeing Rebecca like that, you wanna eat?”

  “Vato, no matter what happens, the world keeps spinning and your appetite returns.”

  I couldn’t argue. We headed back to my car.

  Coyote recommended a dive in Watts. Since I was the only one with money, I paid for the meal. We ate outside under a tattered picnic umbrella. Coyote had five beef and red chile tamales to my two. We smothered the tamales with blood from a bag I had stashed in my car.

  I sipped a Carta Blanca.

  Why was Rebecca killed? And why now? I assumed it was to keep her from talking to me.

  The next question: what did she know?

  I asked Coyote, “Why did you tell Rebecca about me?”

  Coyote pushed a hunk of tamale through the blood on his plate. “Because, carnal, she was friends with Katz Meow. I knew Katz was looking for someone to solve Roxy’s murder.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Vato, I listen to chisme, rumors. Roxy’s death was suspiciously convenient for a lot of rich people.”

  “Like Cragnow?”

  “Especially ese culo vampiro.” That vampire asshole.

  “Did you know Roxy?”

  “We never met.”

  “How did you know about Rebecca being friends with Katz?” I asked.

  “I followed Katz around. She and Rebecca hung out together. I eavesdropped on them.”

  “They didn’t notice?”

  “No, but I was right there in plain sight.” Coyote extended his index fingers, as if they were antennae sprouting from his forehead. “Como una mosca.” Like a fly.

  “Katz needed help,” he continued. “I recognized Rebecca from the Majestic Lanes. That’s where I told her how Katz could find her champion.”

  “Champion? Me?”

  Coyote licked a dollop of blood clinging, like sauce, to his mustache. He grinned. “Símon. Who else?”

  “Rebecca was murdered just before I had a chance to question her. Who knew I was here? Katz. Cragnow and his goons. Lucky Rosario.” The next name was difficult for me to say but I had to. “You, Coyote.”

  His eyes turned toward mine. He lapped blood from his fingertips and waited a moment before answering.

  “Hermano, I knew you’d get around to that question. I should be offended but I’m not. You at least have the cojones to ask me to my face.”

  “What do you care about Roxy?”

  “Maybe I don’t. What’s another dead human among the billions already here? But what I know is that Cragnow and his buddies who run this nidus are setting us vampires up for a disaster. This deal with humans, whatever it is, is a countdown to catastrophe.”

  “Why doesn’t Cragnow see it that way?”

  “Because he’s blinded by arrogance and his thirst for power. Vato, I can’t stop him alone.”

  Coyote took a swig from his beer and belched. “Felix, do you trust me or not?”

  “I have to.”

  “Good, because I’m still hungry and I need to borrow something for a burrito.”

  I gave him a five. “Make it to go and keep the change.” I heaped my bottle, plate, and napkins together and shoved them into an overflowing trash can. “There are others we need to question. Like Councilwoman Venin and Roxy Bronze’s ex.”

  Coyote held up his plate and licked it clean. “Who’d be easier to get to?”

  “Let’s try the ex. Fred Daniels.”

  From Watts we took the Long Beach Freewa
y north toward Rosemead. I followed the directions from MapQuest on my wireless laptop. Coyote peeled back the aluminum foil of his burrito and ate.

  I told him what I’d learned about Roxy from my research before leaving Denver. She had been married to Fred Daniels, who introduced her to the porn business. Together they were to be the first couple of smut. Daniels took the screen name of Peter Pipe.

  A year later, Peter Pipe and Roxy Bronze quit billing themselves as a couple. Except for gay porn, the business was all about women, unless the guy had a prodigious pipe, which Daniels didn’t. He worked as her manager and, like his on-camera “acting,” failed at that. Daniels occupied himself with booze, cocaine, and the easy pickings around porn sets. Roxy was Daniels’s meal ticket until she jettisoned him after a nasty divorce.

  I found the address and parked against the curb.

  “Que bonito chante,” Coyote said. What nice digs.

  The house was a fine example of midcentury Atomic Ranch: a big picture window, long horizontal lines, and plenty of ochre-colored brick. The garage doors were closed.

  I removed my sunglasses and sat in the car for a moment. I studied the well-kept neighborhood and scanned for suspicious auras. Coyote and I then got out. The lawn smelled freshly watered.

  The front door was tucked into an outdoor foyer paved with flagstone. A decal to an alarm company decorated the glass bricks around the main entrance.

  I looked through the window in the door and saw the alarm on the opposite wall. It read: SET.

  “Let’s go around back,” I said.

  Coyote brushed past me. “Pa’que?” What for?

  He touched the door handle. The alarm flashed DISABLED, and the dead bolt snapped. He pushed the door open.

  Coyote gave a broad, ragged-toothed smile. “I can do more than look handsome.”

  Ugly, tricky bastard.

  The air inside was cool and moist. A welcome relief after the rush-hour drive under the sun’s punishing glare.

  Lounge music drifted from the stereo receiver on a buffet table. I couldn’t detect the presence of anyone in the house.

  Coyote walked across the front room to check the hall. I went into the kitchen.

  A glass pitcher with iced lemonade and a half-empty bottle of white rum rested on the counter. The sliding glass doors at the back of the kitchen opened to a fenced yard with a swimming pool.

  I stepped around the counter and paused at the threshold to replace my sunglasses to temper the harsh sunlight. A terrazzo walkway surrounded the pool. The only sound was the gurgle of the pool filter.

  Beyond the pool was a strip of lawn bordered by rosebushes and boxwood shrubs. White plastic chairs sat on the grass.

  I was sure the house was Daniels’s divorce settlement. Probably the only smart move in his life was that he married an ambitious porn star and mooched off her for all he could get.

  Where was Daniels? The way my case was going, I wouldn’t be surprised to find his drowned corpse lying on the bottom of the pool. I walked to the water’s edge, expecting to find his bloated and dead face.

  “Don’t you move.”

  I turned to the left.

  There was a stainless steel outdoor bar at the corner of the yard, under the shade of two magnolia trees.

  Fred Daniels rose from behind the bar and aimed a Beretta pistol.

  CHAPTER 11

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” I said evenly.

  Daniels looked like he did in his photos. Late twenties. Blue eyes empty of deep thought. An impossibly smooth forehead, probably from overdoing Botox.

  He was shorter than me. Very tan. His brown hair was gelled into spikes with blond highlights. A cream-colored linen shirt sagged over his lean torso. In his pictures he flashed a smile; here he threatened with a scowl and a 9mm pistol.

  The muzzle of the Beretta and the gold links of his tennis bracelet trembled. With his left hand, Daniels picked up a glass tumbler from the bar. I smelled the lemonade and rum.

  Keeping his gaze fixed on me—a gold piercing cinched over his eyebrow—he brought the tumbler to his lips and gulped nervously. Lemonade dripped down his chin and to his shirt. He set the tumbler down, and the ice tinkled. He wiped his chin and rubbed his fingers against his shirt. The trembling of his hand eased and the black malevolent hole of the gun barrel held steady on me.

  I calculated my options.

  Daniels stood about thirty feet away. Too far to zap with hypnosis even after I removed my sunglasses. I could try and rush him, but that would risk getting shot. Or I could draw my pistol and start blasting. But I needed to ask questions. Better that I let him drink until Dutch courage turned into a drunken stupor.

  Daniels kept the muzzle trained on my chest. “How’d you get in without tripping the alarm?”

  “I opened the door. If that’s a problem, talk to your security company.”

  “Unless I shoot you as a trespasser. Then it’d be your problem.”

  Cheeky dipshit had better mind his manners.

  In my short stay so far in L.A., pistols seemed as ubiquitous as sunglasses. “You always keep a gun handy?”

  “Cragnow warned me.”

  That double-dealing undead son of a bitch. He wanted my help and then alerted Daniels to meet me with a pistol at the ready. What was Cragnow’s agenda? What didn’t he want me to know?

  “Warned you about what?” I took a step toward Daniels.

  “Don’t come closer. Cragnow said to tell you that he gave me special bullets. I don’t know what’s so special about them, but he said you’d know what he meant.”

  Damn right I did. Silver bullets. Probably painted to look like regular steel-jacketed slugs. I could take several hits to my body with conventional bullets; one silver bullet in the right place would leave me flopping on the terrazzo like a speared fish.

  The afternoon sun reflected off the pool and into Daniels’s face. The gold hoops of his earrings glittered. He squinted, and his free hand groped for the Ray-Bans lying on the bar. Daniels put the sunglasses on. Now if I wanted to hypnotize him, I’d have to get close enough to knock off his shades.

  He hadn’t shot me yet, and the way he held the pistol signaled that he wasn’t comfortable with violence.

  “What now, Lone Ranger?” I asked. “You going to use those special bullets?”

  Daniels relaxed. “Look man, I just want to be left alone.”

  “I got no problem with that.” I kept my arms loose and gestured with my hands, palms up. “How about we just talk about your ex.”

  “What for?” The edge in his voice returned. He steadied the pistol. “The police know everything. You could wallpaper the city with what’s been printed about me and Roxy. There ain’t nothing more to say.”

  “I’m not convinced of that,” I replied. “Every time I mention Roxy’s name, people act like roaches about to scatter.”

  “Why don’t you scatter?”

  I couldn’t wait to hurt this douche bag. Fist, then fangs.

  Where was Coyote? I could use him to distract Daniels.

  “You know where I could find Katz Meow?”

  “Ask Cragnow. She worked for him.”

  A cell phone resting on the bar chimed.

  “Step back,” Daniels said.

  I didn’t.

  The pistol went off. The bullet ricocheted between my legs. Daniels seemed as astonished as I was.

  The phone kept chiming.

  Daniels’s surprised expression turned into a sneer. “Hey, that wasn’t hard.” His grip tightened on the Beretta. “Now get back.”

  Luckily, the last shot was low. The next one might hit my belly, or worse. I took a step back.

  His eyes remained fixed on me and he picked up the phone. “Yeah I know exactly where he’s at.” Daniels smirked. “Right in front of me.”

  He folded the cell phone and his shoulders relaxed. “Cragnow’s men are on the way.” His smirk deepened. “Maybe they can help you find Katz.”

  Why did
mention of Cragnow’s goons sound like bad news?

  Coyote stumbled out of the kitchen. Daniels swung the pistol toward him.

  “Don’t shoot,” I yelled.

  Coyote spit an ice cube and tipped the empty pitcher of lemonade over his upturned face. “Estoy bien pedo.” I’m really shit-faced.

  Daniels stabbed the Beretta toward me, then to Coyote, and at me again. “Don’t move.”

  Coyote lurched to the edge of the pool, teetered, and dropped the pitcher into the water.

  “What the hell you doing?” shouted Daniels. “Get against the wall, the both of you.”

  “Good idea,” Coyote mumbled. He staggered close to the wall and unzipped his jeans over a row of potted flowers. “All that lemonade has gotta come out. Might as well make it now, bro.”

  “Not on my plants,” Daniels whined. He stepped from behind the bar. “Get back from them, you drunken wetback bastard.”

  I lunged forward. Daniels jerked his gun toward me and popped a round that zinged past my ear.

  “¡Al la Madre!” Holy Mother! Coyote jumped from the wall. A stream of fire shot from his crotch onto a big chrysanthemum. “¡Auxilio! ¡Auxilio! Llamen los bombaderos.” Help! Help! Call the fire department.

  Flames rolled against the stucco wall and turned into black smoke that curled back on us.

  Daniels started shooting again. The bullets peppered the air. One of those bullets was bound to hit Coyote or me.

  I grabbed Coyote by his collar and yanked him into the kitchen.

  Bullets cracked against the sliding glass door.

  A wall of fire erupted across the kitchen threshold behind us.

  I ran out the front door and dragged Coyote along. His feet slammed against the furniture. Fire dribbled from his open fly. We got into my car. Smoke mushroomed over the roof of Daniels’s home like it had been hit by artillery.

  Once the engine kicked over, I stomped on the accelerator. My tires screeched like banshees with hemorrhoids. Coyote fumbled with his zipper.

  My kundalini noir settled enough for me to finally speak. “How’d you do that?”