“So what kinda big plans did you and your little pervert pal hatch behind my back? Or am I too ‘stupid’ and ‘unpredictable’ for you to bother tellin‘ me?”
“Turn offRockford and I’ll fill you in, Mr. Pouty.”
Jules clicked off the TV.
Maureen crossed the path leading through her garden and sat on the bed’s padded frame. “First off, you should know, whether you’re willing to admit it or not, that Doodlebug is a damn good friend of yours. I told him the whole story, and he’s dropping everything to fly out and help you the night after tomorrow night. Now keep in mind, he’s the head of a very important business-”
“A freaky cult, you mean!”
“A very important and profitablebusiness — more than you’ve ever accomplished inyour long unlife, I might add-and he’s putting everything on hold to fly here from his compound in northern California. Nowthat’s friendship for you! He’s very devoted to you, Jules. I just don’t understand why you shun him so.”
Jules slapped the mattress, making himself bob atop a stormy sea. “Oh, you know damn well why! I’m ashamed to think I’m the one who made him a vampire! I mean, the only person I ever picked to do the change on, and look how he ended up!”
Maureen grabbed his shoulders. “Just getover it, Jules! He could’ve turned out way worse, and you know it! You never hearme complaining about howyou turned out, do you?”
Quickly deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, Jules bit his tongue.
“Well,” she continued, “he’ll be here two nights from now, and it’s out of your hands. So just get used to the idea. You’ll thank me when this is all over. Believe me, you’ll thank me.” She clapped her hands twice to turn out the light, then settled into her side of the bed, leaving a foot and a half between herself and Jules. “All right, enough yacking already. I’m pooped. Good morning, Jules.”
Jules clung tightly to the bed frame until the waves subsided. “ ‘Morning, Mo,” he said. He knew it would take him a long time to fall asleep. There was too much to think about. He lay on his back and listened to the sounds of Maureen’s breathing. It had been so long since they had been this quiet together. This close.
Just before she started snoring, he felt her shift onto her side. In the undulating darkness her arm fell across his shoulder and chest like a scented pillow.
Jules was awakened the next evening by the deep tones of the front doorbell. He hurriedly rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Maureen’s side of the bed was empty. While he was recovering from his disappointment and trying to decide whether the doorbell had maybe been a dream, it rang again. His sack lay crumpled at the foot of the bed. Rather than squeeze into the makeshift garment again, he went into the adjoining room and pulled one of Maureen’s terry-cloth bathrobes out of her walk-in closet.
Downstairs, he went to the front door and peered through the peephole. A white man stood on the front stoop, an impatient look on his face. Jules recognized him as a bouncer from Jezebel’s Joy Room. He was holding a large paper bag.
Jules opened the door a hand’s width, so that a bare minimum of his robed body could be seen from the street.
“You Jules?” the man on the stoop asked.
“Yeah,” Jules said cautiously.
The visitor handed over the bag. “Here you go, buddy. Maureen asked me to come over. She found these on the street. Had to pull the coat away from a bum who was using it as a blanket. Two words of advice for you-dry clean.”
He turned, loped down the steps in a vaguely simian fashion, and walked up Bienville Street in the direction of the club. Jules closed and bolted the door. He set the bag down in the hallway without opening it, not especially eager to see what was inside. But then he remembered that Doc Landrien’s antidiabetes pills were in the trench coat’s pocket. Relieved, he removed the pill bottles, telling himself to leave it somewhere more secure this time.
He walked into the kitchen, his empty stomach emitting watery, squishy noises, much like those made by the water bed mattress. He tried to remember how Maureen had fixed her blood-tomato-juice-vegetable concoction the night before.
A happy surprise awaited him. On the counter, a tall glass sat next to the blender, which was full of Maureen’s patented mixture. He poured himself a glassful, then put the remainder in the refrigerator for later. He sat at the kitchen table, where Maureen had left a handwritten note. The note was short and to the point:
Jules,
There’s coffee grounds and water in the coffeemaker; all you have to do is pressON. I left your dinner on the counter to warm up for you, but don’t leave it out of the fridge too long. I’ll be back around 4:30A.M. Don’t do anything stupid.
M.
Jules downed his initial glassful of Mo-8, then turned on the coffeemaker. As the blissful burbling and heavenly aroma delighted his senses, he mulled over his plan to recruit Nathan Knight’s followers into a white vampire army. Wednesday night, when the rally would be held, was two nights from now. The night after Doodlebug was scheduled to fly in.Hell. Thanks to busybody Maureen, he was stuck with the little deviant for a while. At least pulling off a masterstroke like creating an army would demonstrate conclusively that Jules was still boss.
He couldn’t afford to screw this one up. Too much was at stake. He’d have to plan very carefully. He poured himself a cup of coffee and paced the kitchen. The central question, the one he couldn’t quite get his head around, was this: How could he turn dozens of people into vampires all at the same time?
Gas.
Of course! He could use laughing gas to knock the whole room unconscious at once. Then he could pick the best ones, the biggest, strongest, and meanest, and transform them into vampires at his leisure while they snoozed helplessly away. Oh, he knew the pitfalls, after his last experience with gas, but they’d be easy to avoid. Terrific!
Let’s see… he’d need canisters of gas, of course. And a timer of some kind; that way he could set the canisters to release during the middle of the rally, when attendance would be the highest, and he wouldn’t have to be in the room himself. If he was going to use a timer, then he’d have to set up the whole knockout apparatus ahead of time. A timer meant complications-batteries, wiring, and some sort of electricON switch for the gas nozzles. But luckily, he could get free construction advice from the same man who’d happily sell him the parts.
That man was Tiny Idaho. Anarchist. Tree hugger. Bearded ex-hippie radical. The best gadget man Jules had ever run across. Tiny did most of his business over the Web nowadays, but he still maintained an inconspicuous, disguised storefront operation in a broken-down strip mall buried on a side street in suburban Kenner. Jules had used his services for years.
He checked the contents of his wallet. Thirty-two dollars and a dollop of change. Not a heck of a lot to offer Tiny Idaho for what Jules wanted rigged up. Maybe Tiny would consider it a down payment? Jules hated the idea of going into hock yet again, but he couldn’t think of any alternative. Maybe he could cut a few corners. If the gas canisters in his old garage had survived the fire, then he wouldn’t have to buy new ones.
There was just one more hurdle he had to jump before he could begin his night’s work. What to do about Malice X’s toughs, who might still be scouting the neighborhood for him? Once he was in his car, he could be out of the Quarter in hardly more than ninety seconds; but the short walk from Maureen’s door to the garage was too risky. Even his wolf-form was too conspicuous.
Tooconspicuous-maybe that was the answer. If he couldn’t make himself small or stealthy, then hiding in plain sight was his best option. The Quarter wasfull of weird characters… mimes, human statues, and tuba players, to list only the most common. Dressed as a costumed street performer (the more outlandish, the better), he could fit right in.
He climbed the stairs and returned to Maureen’s walk-in closet. Surely she’d have some old thing lying around that would fit the bill… a stage outfit she used in her stripper’s act, or maybe even a Carnival costume. After diggin
g through a tangle of outsized dresses and gowns, Jules found what he was looking for: a harlequin’s outfit. The black-and-white checkered jumpsuit, with its garish frills on the collar, sleeves, and cuffs, certainly looked big enough for him. There was an easy enough way for him to find out.
The jumpsuit was a considerably tighter squeeze than Maureen’s bathrobe had been. The fully elasticized waist was stretched to its limit. So long as he didn’t inhale too deeply or try any fancy gymnastics, he’d be all right. He couldn’t find the bell-trimmed cap that went with the outfit, so he went searching for something else to cover his head and face with. A broken pink lamp shade from the attic, with two eyeholes cut out, fit the bill nicely.
He slung his trench coat over his arm and headed fearlessly out the door. Malice X might scoff at him. Maureen might doubt him. Doodlebug might pity him. But starting tonight, he’d show them all.
Jules circled his old block, scanning the street and weed-strewn lots for lurkers. Montegut Street was as deathly quiet as a Pacific atoll after a bomb test. He rolled down his windows. His nose twitched happily as it detected the familiar scents of diesel train exhaust and fermenting grain wafting in from river barges.
Jules parked. His garage appeared to be the least damaged portion of his house. If the neighborhood’s scavengers hadn’t been too thorough, he might still drive off with a couple of usable gas canisters. At least the looters had made it easy for him to get inside. A roughly five-foot-tall hole had been cut through the garage door’s aluminum panels.
He peered through the darkness at what remained of nearly a century’s worth of personal and family history. As he’d figured, every one of his power tools was long gone, along with his lawn mower and gardening implements. They’d even taken the poured-concrete lawn Madonna that Jules had wrapped in burlap and stored away after his mother died.
But over in the corner, half buried under the cinders of a pile ofLife magazines fallen from an overhead shelf, were three of Jules’s laughing-gas canisters. Obviously, the looters hadn’t known what to make of them. Jules smiled. The winds of luck were finally blowing his way. He dragged the canisters over to the ruined door and shoved them through the jagged hole.
His foot hit something hard and sharp-edged. The object scraped loudly against the concrete floor. The sudden screeching nearly made Jules’s heart burst through the top of his head. As soon as he regained his breath, he looked to see what lay at his feet. It was a box. A metal footlocker.
He bent down to open it. He hadn’t seen one like it since the war years.
Then a vague but thrilling recollection tickled the ivories of his memory synapses. Could it be-?
The footlocker’s rusty hinges gave way as Jules forced the box open. The distant moonlight revealed a bundle of carefully folded cloth, faded and musty but immeasurably vibrant. Jules’s heart leapt as he lifted the bundle out of the locker. He was certain now that his luck had changed.
Once more, after a span of half a century, he held in his hands the hood, shirt, and cloak of that fabled nemesis of saboteurs, that mysterious defender of freedom and democracy… the Hooded Terror.
Jules loathed Kenner with every fiber of his being. After dark, the suburb, penned in by swamps and airport runways, had the feel of a graveyard where even the ghosts were too bored to stir up trouble. The only exciting thing that ever happened out there was the occasional plane crash. But Kenner was where Tiny Idaho worked his magic, so Kenner was the place Jules had to be.
He pulled into the parking lot of a small, poorly lit two-story shopping strip. Its windows were boarded up and plastered withFOR LEASE signs, except for two occupied storefronts. One was an uninviting bar on the ground level called The Lounge Lizard-only it was really called The Longe Lizard, because lounge had been misspelled on the hand-painted sign next to the screen door. The other tenant, Readwood Forest Used Books and Comix, was on the second level.
Jules climbed the stairs to the second-story bookstore, barely visible as an operating business from the street. From downstairs, a jukebox voice warbled on about hunting dogs and guns, punctuated by a sharper, more distinct sound, possibly a pool stick being broken over a skull. Readwood Forest was dark, but Jules knew that Tiny Idaho lived in an apartment and workshop behind the store.
Jules rang the bell. He waited a long minute, listening to the scratchy country music from below. No footsteps. No lights turning on in the store. Jules rang again. This time, a distorted voice crackled from a weather-beaten intercom beneath the doorbell.
“The store’s closed, man. The weekly comics shipment comes in tomorrow afternoon after three. Good night.”
Jules spoke quickly into the intercom. “Hey, Mr. Idaho? It’s Jules Duchon. We done business before. I’m a buyer of your ‘special’ merchandise.”
The intercom was silent for a few seconds. “Oh yeah? Hang tight while I put on some pants. Be there in a sec, man.”
A minute later the door creaked open. “This better be important, man. You yanked me away from an episode ofAmerica’s Most Wanted. C’mon in before the skeeters eat you alive.”
Under the dim illumination of a bug zapper, Jules took a look at his host. He’d only seen Tiny Idaho in this much light once before, about four years ago, when he’d picked up his first set of laughing-gas canisters. The man’s most prominent feature was his long, thickly tangled beard, made up of curly clumps of gray and red hair that reached all the way to his outsized belt buckle. His small eyes, made even smaller by wire-rimmed bifocals, and two large, somewhat yellowed teeth were all that was visible through his abundance of hair. In overall stature, Tiny was neither small nor huge. Jules ached to ask this medium-sized man where his nickname had come from, but he thought it wisest to keep the question to himself.
“So what’s with the clown suit?” Tiny Idaho asked. “You coming back from a kiddie party?”
“I’mincognito,” Jules answered, straightening his collar. It was a good word, and he liked using it whenever he could.
“That’s cool. So what can I do you for? You need exploding balloons, or a nitrous kit for your clown car?”
“Naww. A few years back I bought some laughing gas off you. And you sold me a set of plans for installing it in my trunk and releasing the gas into the passenger compartment.”
“Oh yeah?” His host shut the door behind Jules and rubbed his hairy chin. “Yeah… I remember now. How’d it all work out, man?”
Jules decided not to go into the whole sad story. “Eh, all right. But now I got another project I need your help with.”
Tiny Idaho raised an eyebrow and grinned. “It involve explosives? I just got in some great stuff from Taiwan. These little honeys’ll peel the tread right off a battle tank.”
“Uh, no. It’s another laughing-gas deal. Only this time, I need an automatic-release nozzle that works off a timer. Think you can throw somethin‘ together for me?”
The bearded man laughed, his small eyes sparkling behind his spectacles. “That’s all? Man, you come in here dressed like that-I figure you’d give me somethinginteresting! Come on back to my workshop while I cobble something together. Unless you’d rather browse out front here?”
Jules quickly glanced around the bookshop. The closely bunched shelves were packed with books on ecology and the evils of industrialism. An entire wall was taken up by racks of comics. Jules recognized vintage copies ofZap! Comics andFabulous Furry Freak Brothers; neither of them his favorites. He followed Tiny Idaho through the door at the rear of the bookshop, into the workshop beyond.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” his host said. Jules inhaled the strong, metallic odors of machine oil and freshly tooled steel. Long wooden tables set along three of the walls were covered with a jumble of drill presses, plastic explosives, tangles of wire, and shiny green plastic motherboards. “You got one of them gas canisters with you,” Tiny Idaho asked, “or you need me to rustle you up some new ones?”
“I got ‘em downstairs in my trunk. You need me to bring o
ne up?”
“Yeah. That’d be what we call in the biz Step One.”
Jules went downstairs to his car and fetched the canister, then spent a few minutes describing the kind of setup he envisioned. As his host listened and asked questions, Tiny Idaho rifled through a series of tool chests and parts drawers, pulling out lengths of wire, a soldering iron, and a digital timer.
Jules leaned against a table and watched him work. The gadget man’s fingers danced a ballet of miniaturized construction.
Jules noticed that his host had paused to give him the fuzzy eyeball. “Hey, man. This gas project of yours-is it political or personal?”
“Personal. Politics is a dirty business. You see this?” Jules put his hands around his own neck.
“Yeah?”
“This is what I’m tryin‘ to save.”
“I got you, man. That’s good.” Tiny Idaho seemed to relax some. He grinned and picked up his soldering iron again. “These last few years, man, I’ve gotten so sick and tired of building antipersonnel bombs for every right-wing Fascist wacko who visits my site on the Web… I mean, business is business-I got bills to pay just like everybody else-but this gig of mine ain’t half the fun it used to be. Y’know, back in my salad days, I was doing stuff thatmattered. Shit, I even got a gig from the Weathermen once, back in ‘seventy-one-”
“Yeah, pal, the times, they are a-changin‘.”
“You can say that again. Hey, I’m runnin‘ a special this week on tree spikes. Can you use some?”
Jules raised an eyebrow. “If they’re wood, I could use some.”
“You can’t pound wooden spikes into a tree, man.”
“It’s not trees I’m wantin‘ to pound ’em into. Hey, you ever make up a batch of silver bullets before?”
“Silverbullets? That’s definitely a special-order item. What, you going hunting for werewolves?”
“Somethin‘ like that. Hey! How about a gun that shootswooden bullets? Can you do that?”
Fat White Vampire Blues Page 17