“Some. There’s a lot of info. I’ll have to take the files to study them.”
Veronica rested her hip against the edge of the sink counter. Her brown eyes, shiny as gemstones, stared over the rim of her coffee cup. “What a hot Latina babe I turned out to be.”
“Not to worry. My interests are strictly professional.” I’m a practiced liar.
An amused smile played across her lips. She glanced to the wall clock by the refrigerator. “I’ve got brunch with the girls from Barrios Unidos. Wanna come with?”
The girls from Barrios Unidos? Plus Veronica. Could make for an interesting, if tangled, way to pass an otherwise boring Sunday.
“Thanks”—I tapped the box containing the files—“but I should get started.”
Veronica looked at the box, then to the clock, and finally to me. She put her cup in the sink. That amused smile returned. “Yes, it’s time you got started.” She undid her belt and let the robe slip to the floor. “Let’s make up for last night.”
Naked, Veronica was spectacular.
CHAPTER 22
Veronica and I rushed down the stairs from her apartment, her flip-flops smacking as we ran through the breezeway to the parking spaces in the back.
“Ay Dios,” Veronica said. “I hate this. I’m the one getting after the girls at Barrios Unidos to watch the clock. Now look at me.”
She ran to the driver’s side of a Nissan sedan and aimed a key remote. The door locks clicked. I opened the rear door on the passenger’s side and put the box with Roxy’s files and my overnight bag on the seat. I sat up front next to Veronica.
She jammed the key into the ignition and started the car. With one hand on the gearshift she whispered to herself, “Wild Oats. Coffee. Bakery. Fruit.”
It was half past ten. Her brunch was at eleven. No way she’d make it.
I, on the other hand, congratulated myself. Veronica surprised me with her expectations for a morning quickie in the kitchen, followed by an encore on the dinette table. The challenge had been to keep Veronica hypnotized enough to remember some but not all of what happened. I wanted her to recall that sex with me was very good, great, outstanding, the best ever, but not that I was a vampire.
When I removed my clothes she would’ve noticed the pale, translucent skin not covered by makeup. To use hypnosis, my contacts had to go. I had no choice but to use my vampire powers, not to seduce her, but to keep my secrets safe.
I gave her the occasional stare and a measured application of fangs to keep her in a modulated state between conscious and completely whacked out. Her silver jewelry needed to come off to keep from burning my skin when she stroked and clutched in passion.
Vampire hypnosis or not, Veronica showed remarkable initiative when demonstrating her many carnal skills.
She flicked down the sun visor and examined her neck in the vanity mirror. “The hickies you left are barely noticeable, gracias a Dios.” She wiped at the corner of her mouth to tidy a smear of lip gloss. She spread her fingers. “Don’t remember taking off my rings. How do you do it, Felix? One minute I’m with you. The next I’m fogged over. You’re not slipping me something? Roofies?”
“All you’re getting is Felix Gomez.” And Trojans.
“Besides that, I mean.” She put the Nissan into reverse and backed into the street.
I told Veronica that a friend had dropped me off at her place and I needed a ride to the closest car rental. The place was on Beverly Boulevard not far from her apartment and on the way to her morning shopping.
Veronica stopped in the rental lot. We kissed good-bye. She drove off in typical L.A. fashion, foot flat on the gas and a cell phone pressed against one ear.
I slung my overnight bag over one shoulder and carried the box of files into the rental office.
An older woman—blue hair, skinny legs with varicose veins, high-water pants covered with an upchuck of colors—stood against the counter. The woman glared at the tense young man in a baggy dress shirt whose attention was directed at a computer monitor. The little wiry dog in the woman’s arms saw me, growled, and started a yapping fit.
The surveillance camera on the wall peered through two mirrors, each at a different angle, so that this single camera could cover a wide area. A thrifty arrangement and one that worked in my favor. I could be captured on video but not if my image was reflected through a mirror.
The rental clerk raised his head and scowled. “In a minute, sir.”
The elderly crone wrinkled her face in distain, as if I were a booger with legs.
These two needed an attitude adjustment. “If you please,” I said and removed my contacts.
Their auras gave nice bursts of crimson. They stared zombielike. The dog kept yapping.
With the clerk hypnotized, I ordered him to look up my account, override any holds, and issue a luxury car at subcompact rates. Add maximum insurance coverage at no extra cost so I could’ve rolled my rental off the Santa Monica pier and not owed this company a dime.
I left the clerk and the old woman comatose and naked on a table in the break room. Glazed donuts covered their naughty parts. The pooch swung from the overhead fan, his harness and leash tied to one of the blades.
The rental, a blue Chrysler 500M, was the kind of fancy, overly macho car a Klingon would’ve appreciated. I locked the box with Roxy’s files in the trunk. What new clues waited for me?
New clues about Venin and Niphe.
But first I needed to do something I should’ve done earlier in my investigation. Visit the spot where Roxy Bronze had been killed.
I drove north to the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Cahuenga and passed the alley where she had been found. I circled the neighborhood. LAPD Hollywood Station and the city hall annex were four blocks south. What a convenient walk for the detectives “investigating” Roxy’s murder.
I parked near the corner of Selma and Cahuenga, next to a café and close to the alley. Wooden scaffolds shaded the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. Posters covered the plywood sidings. Scruffy men mingled in the shadows, smoking cigarettes and sharing drinks from a bag.
This being Sunday midmorning, other than the customers in the café and the bums, there weren’t many people out.
I walked up the street toward Hollywood Boulevard. I passed a couple of shops that sold either porn or really bad art—I couldn’t tell through the dingy windows. There was a take-out barbecue joint and at the corner, a twenty-four-hour newsstand. Except for the newsstand and café, everything was closed.
Considering its glamorous reputation, Hollywood Boulevard seemed disappointingly low rent. Grime caked the shuttered storefronts. A dead pigeon rested near an empty tallboy of malt liquor. Trash on the sidewalk sullied the marble stars and brass plaques of the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
I returned to the alley and stopped at the entrance. A multistory office building stood to the right, the northern side. A two-story, gray brick building was on the left, the southern side. Posters for musical acts were pasted to the gray walls.
I walked into the alley, between tall metal gates secured in the open position. The alley turned left and made an L to the south. The asphalt in the immediate area seemed remarkably clean, as if steam blasted. Any traces of Roxy’s death had long been obliterated. A roll-on Dumpster stood against the wall at the corner of the L. What little I had learned about the crime scene was that Roxy was found dead beside this Dumpster at a little after one in the morning.
I knelt and touched the spot where Roxy must have fallen dead. I closed my eyes and, in my memory, saw her face again, not the leer from the porno DVD but that warm, empathetic, and gracious smile of a high school girl.
I caressed the rough surface of the asphalt and imagined picking up faint sparks of Roxy’s long-evaporated aura. I felt nothing of course; still, there was much of the supernatural world that I didn’t know.
Standing again, I wiped the dirt from my hand.
The police report—a breezy, sanitized summary my hacker
had found—said that a “small-caliber bullet” entered Roxy’s torso at a horizontal angle. But where in her torso? There was no mention of gunpowder residue nor an estimated range from the shooter to Roxy. The police insisted the homicide was a random act, which meant the shot was remarkably lucky—or unlucky, from Roxy’s point of view.
According to the report, the murder went like this: Pow. Roxy dropped dead. Happened faster than the snap of my fingers.
One small-caliber bullet dropped her? A .22? A .25? Pistol, according to the newspapers. One small bullet to the torso, and a strong, healthy woman like Roxy just collapsed and died? The one bullet could kill her, of course. Usually the victims bled to death, sometimes within seconds.
There wasn’t anything random about the shot. Roxy was gunned down at close range. Meaning she had been comfortable enough with the shooter to let him—or her—get close, especially at that time of night.
There was a lot more to Roxy’s murder than the remarkable ballistics of one little bullet. How convenient that the police had lost evidence. Too bad she had been cremated; otherwise, I’d get her corpse exhumed and autopsied again.
The entrance from Selma had battered metal gates, secured open with rusted padlocks. Weeds with yellow blossoms grew between cracks in the asphalt.
A scuzzy area, yes. But dangerous? Maybe at night, this area would be different.
On the drive to Coyote’s home, I mulled over the images of the murder scene. They flashed like slides across my brain, and I imagined Roxy’s corpse sprawled on the asphalt in the alley with a chalk outline around her body. The trip to Hollywood confirmed the obvious, that I didn’t yet have the whole story about her murder.
I got off the freeway. Surprisingly, my Chrysler wasn’t the fanciest set of wheels in the neighborhood. The homies were back in their cribs this Sunday morning. Scores of big customized SUVs and pickups made this part of Boyle Heights look like the impound lot of the Drug Enforcement Agency.
I carried my overnight bag and the box with Roxy’s files toward Coyote’s home. He sat in the shade under a blue tarp stretched from his porch and tied to a pair of crooked aluminum poles. He tossed golfball-size pellets from a greasy paper bag to the snapping jaws of three scrawny dogs.
Coyote blinked his bloodshot eyes. Even for a vampire, despite his makeup and leather skin, he looked pale.
I asked how he was doing.
“Not so good, vato.” He shifted in the lawn chair. “It’s that rat chorizo. Maybe there’s a reason you leave the tails out.” Coyote reached into the bag and lobbed a hunk of the malodorous sausage. “What’s in the box, ese?”
“Homework.”
“How was Veronica?”
“Healthy.”
Coyote nodded and went back to feeding the dogs.
Inside the house I set my laptop computer on the kitchen table. I sent an email to my hacker and asked for anything regarding Lara Krieger, possibly the sister of Roxy Bronze.
I reviewed the files. I set aside the photo of Niphe, Rosario, and Journey standing together. Finding information that linked them was my immediate task, though if I wanted to dredge through notes and numbers like this, I would’ve been an accountant. I sorted the documents, cross-checking information, taking the occasional break for a coffee-and-blood pick-me-up. What I really wanted was a Manhattan and another shot of leg…Veronica’s.
The last folder held large manila envelopes. I opened one and pulled out a cheap spiral notebook. Scotch tape held photocopies of news clippings to the pages. Judging by the dates, this information went back more than ten years, long before Project Eleven.
One photo from the Los Angeles Times showed a much slimmer Rosario and a woman in her midthirties, dark hair, oversize glasses, passing one another in a vestibule within the city hall building. The caption identified her as Councilwoman Petale Venin. The accompanying story described the controversy surrounding the rezoning along Loma Alta Drive in Altadena and the use of eminent domain to displace the residents for commercial development.
But what stood there now was Dale Journey’s church. What happened to the commercial development?
I read through the clippings in the notebook and learned that the development trust pushing for eminent domain had gone bankrupt. After the homes had been demolished, the vacant land, with its magnificent views of the San Gabriel Valley, lay fallow.
Then what? How did Journey get the land for his ministry? The files didn’t mention what happened next.
Had Roxy found something that led to her murder?
Lots of clues. And lots more questions. But nothing definite about her murder, and zilch concerning vampire–human collusion.
My brain felt like I’d been scraping it against a cheese grater. The clock read 10:14 P.M. Time to set the files aside and take another look at the alley where Roxy was gunned down. I closed the box.
I got my .380 automatic, checked that it was loaded, and holstered the pistol to the back of my trousers.
Coyote sat on the edge of his porch. He sipped a concoction with the aroma of yerba buena—mint tea—with lamb’s blood, a traditional Mexican vampire’s remedy for an upset stomach. He put the cup down. “The next time I mention rat chorizo, please kick me in the ass.”
“Can I practice?”
Coyote grabbed his crotch. “On this, cabron.”
“You up for a ride? Providing you’re not going to puke.”
“Don’t worry.” He tilted his face toward me. His eyeballs looked their normal jaundiced yellow. “Where we going?”
“Hollywood.”
CHAPTER 23
Once inside the Chrysler, Coyote found the controls and moved his seat all the way back and up. He propped his dirty sneakers through the window. As we drove out of Boyle Heights, Coyote bobbed his head in rhythm to a reggae beat tuned on the satellite radio.
“Vato, know what would make this ride bien suave? Some ganja.”
“Fresh out.”
Coyote opened his jacket and produced a metal hip flask. “Then mescal will do.” He took a swig and belched. He wiped the neck of the flask and offered it to me.
The flask reeked of rat chorizo, which smothered any thirst I might have had. “Thanks, but I don’t drink rat and drive.”
Coyote shrugged. He upended the flask, and the drink gurgled into his mouth. Suddenly coughing, he folded over and hung his head out the window.
Was this another reaction to the rat chorizo? I pulled against the curb.
Coyote sat straight, panting, and wiped drool from his face. “I forgot about the pinchi worm. Damn near choked me.”
“Serves you right for drinking that shit.”
Coyote capped the flask and inserted it back into an inner jacket pocket. “It keeps the hair on my balls. You ought to try some.”
“Too bad it doesn’t do anything for your mustache.”
I pulled away from the curb. I described our destination, the alley where Roxy had been found dead. My plan was to get a sense of the place at night.
“You mean a stakeout?” Coyote sat rigid, rolled his shoulders back, and thrust his chin out. He swiveled his head robotically to the left and right.
“Sort of,” I replied. “If we get lucky, something important will turn up.”
We arrived at Hollywood and Cahuenga at 11 P.M. The corner was as alive and crowded as it had been dormant and lonely earlier that afternoon. Cars lined the streets, and I had to park two blocks away.
Customers stood shoulder to shoulder inside the café. People on the sidewalk followed barbecue smoke and queued at the window of the take-out up the street. Men and women milled around open doors of the tiny nightclubs, guarded by bouncers perched on tall stools.
A van was parked in the alley beside the gray building. Men toted amplifiers and guitars from the van to the rear entrance.
Coyote and I walked west on Selma and entered the alley from the south. Both of us checked to make sure no one noticed, then trotted up the wall and onto the roof.
> Levitating so we’d move silently over the rooftop, Coyote and I made our way to where we could observe the spot where Roxy Bronze was slain. The flat roof vibrated from music inside the building. This perspective from above rendered us all but invisible. No one bothered to look up.
I removed my contacts and knelt with my elbows on the short wall surrounding the roof. Coyote kept me company, both of us as quiet and absorbed as a couple of anglers watching a pond.
Midnight came. The crowds ebbed and formed again. Some people laughed. Others argued. A few teetered on drunken legs and puked. Pretty lively for a Sunday night.
A Jaguar convertible drove up Cahuenga. The orange aura of the driver announced he was a vampire. I followed his progress along the street. Coyote nudged me and also watched the visitor.
The vampire’s large head sat on the broad shoulders of a thick frame. He had sandy hair in a medium-length cut. He slowed and panned the knots of people before continuing to Hollywood Boulevard.
Who, or what, was he looking for?
I whispered, “Coyote, recognize him?”
Coyote shook his head. “Nah.”
SUVs with spinner wheels paraded past, disgorging or picking up women in clothes as tight as tamale wrappers.
An orange aura surrounded one of the women. Vampire.
I studied her aura and those of her human companions. The vampire’s aura teemed with bright spots and bumps. She advertised the anticipation of feeding on necks later. The humans seemed clueless about her appetite for them. So they weren’t chalices. And she behaved like a vampire out on the prowl. She was your new best girlfriend, inviting oodles of trust and gossip, yet biding her time for the chance to clamp sharp fangs on your throat. Typical undead predatory behavior.
“Know her?” I asked Coyote.
“Wish I did, ese.”
“Seems the type that could twist you in knots.”
“Like rat chorizo? Vato, I survived that, I could survive her.”
The women chatted with the bouncer at the entrance to the nightclub and went inside.
X-Rated Bloodsuckers Page 14