"Who? Oh, the Supefather, right."
"You probably ought not to call him that when you meet him, which you can do at 'Magic Carpets, Mystic Rugs', on Susquehanna Avenue."
I smiled at that, a little. "The capo di tutti supe is a rug merchant?"
"He has a bunch of business interests, or so I hear, but that's the one he uses as headquarters."
"OK, I'll be paying him a visit. Thanks."
"No prob." She grew a smile of her own. "Capo di tutti supe," she said, and shook her head. "You've been watching The Sopranos again, haven't you?"
"I sneak one every once in a while." I didn't mention that one of the reasons I liked the HBO series was that all the bad guys were human, and whenever somebody shot one of them, they stayed dead. No wonder it was considered fiction.
Not long afterward, Christine was on her way downstairs for her day's rest. She left the laptop on the kitchen table.
I waited a couple of minutes to be sure she wasn't going to come back for something. When I saw the first rays of sunlight creep in through the kitchen window, I went over and sat down where Christine had been when I'd come home. I opened the laptop and the screen came alive immediately, asking me for a user name and password.
Her email account was [email protected], and I was pretty sure the first part of that was her user ID. She'd never told me her password, but I understand my daughter better than she realizes. I typed in ritaelainemarkowski, clicked, and watched the screen welcome me back to the world of cyberspace.
The password was her mother's name. Like I said, I know my daughter.
She'd logged off from whatever page she'd been viewing, but I went to the bar that ran across the top of the screen and clicked on the drop-down menu. The most recent site visited was something called "Drac's List." It was a name I'd heard before. I double-clicked on it.
A second later, I was looking at
DRAC'S LIST
FOR VAMPIRES AND THOSE WHO LOVE THEM.
It's my job to know what's going on in the supe community, and I was aware of a couple of websites, like Witch.com, that are devoted to bring together supernatural creatures for whatever it is that they want to do together. But this place, I knew, was different.
"Looking for a bite?" it said. "Drac's List is the place to go for vampires looking for a willing… partner, as well as humans who just can't wait to know what the undead's 'touch' feels like."
This was a business that brought together vampires and those who wanted to be bitten by one. And Christine had been looking at it, then tried to conceal that fact from me. I didn't go any deeper into the site. If she had a profile in there, I didn't think I could stand to read it.
I shut the computer down and lowered the lid. The "click" as it closed seemed unnaturally loud in the quiet kitchen. I sat looking at the vampire rights sticker that Christine had put on the lid. It had a drawing of a wooden stake, and superimposed on it was a red circle with a diagonal line through it – the kind of thing they use in airports over a picture of a cigarette to mean No Smoking. Inside the circle were the words: "Van Helsing bites it."
I don't know how long I sat there, but eventually I got up and went to bed. There have been days when I've slept better. Quite a few of them, in fact.
I left for work without waiting for sundown. It didn't matter if McGuire wasn't paying overtime – I wouldn't put the extra couple of hours on my time sheet. I didn't know yet what I was going to say to Christine about Drac's List, and I didn't want to sit around the house with her and pretend nothing was wrong. She knows her old man pretty well, too.
I decided to pay a call on Harmon Pettigrew, head of the local chapter of the Homo Sapiens Resistance. It started out as an anti-vamp organization back in the Fifties, when it was known as the Johannes Birth Society. The name was a reference to a guy who was supposedly the first human vamp victim in the USA, but that story's a myth. In the late Sixties, the Birthers changed the name and broadened their focus to include all supernatural creatures. These fuckers hate everybody – except humans, that is. And they don't always respect the law.
I thought a conversation with Pettigrew might go easier if Karl wasn't with me. Those HSR jerks don't like cops much – they regard us as human race traitors, or something. You can imagine what their attitude is toward a vampire cop.
Having Karl with me when I talked to Pettigrew would be fun, in some ways. Pettigrew would hate having Karl there, but the badge meant he'd have to be civil – just like in that old movie In the Bright of the Day, about a vampire cop from Philly stranded in the Bible belt. Rod Steiger was great in that, but Jonathan Frid should've won the Oscar.
But that conversation with Pettigrew, fun though it might be for me and Karl, probably wouldn't produce any worthwhile information. Talking to the guy alone increased the odds that I might actually learn something useful.
Pettigrew runs a motorcycle repair shop called Born to Be Wilding at the edge of town. A lot of HSR types hang out there, which isn't too surprising. Don't get me wrong – not all bikers are human racist assholes. But a lot of the local racist assholes do seem to be bikers.
As I walked into the main repair bay I saw Pettigrew kneeling on the cracked cement floor with the engine from a beat-up Harley spread out on the floor all around him. He was alone, which was my good luck. I don't think any of these HSR clowns would ever make a move on me, but Pettigrew's an even bigger asshole when his posse's around – it's like he has to show the others what a tough guy he is.
He heard my footsteps and pivoted his head toward me at once, like an animal does when it hears a twig snap in the forest. Seeing who I was, he got slowly to his feet, the tool he'd been holding still in his right hand. I walked a few yards closer, then stopped, my eyes pointedly on what he was holding, which looked like a Number Seven flare nut wrench. After a second, Pettigrew got the idea and tossed the wrench on the floor, as if that was what he'd intended to do all along.
"Sergeant Markowski – to what do I owe the pleasure, if that's what it is?"
Unlike the rest of him, Pettigrew's voice was restrained and fairly cultured – at least when his homies weren't around. Not many people knew that he has a degree in economics from Penn State – or he would have, if they hadn't kicked him out three weeks before graduation for starting a species riot.
Physically, he was what you'd expect: weightlifter's build, shaved head, the grease-stained sleeveless sweatshirt displaying the tats that ran the length of both muscular arms.
"You mean, apart from the delight I always experience in your company?" I can talk fancy, too, if I want.
Pettigrew's mean-looking mouth turned up briefly at the corners. "Yeah, besides that."
"I wanted to ask you about a couple of things. You hear about stuff that I wouldn't, since there's people who'll talk to you that won't talk to me."
"Hard to imagine, isn't it?" Then the playful note left his voice. "Why should I do anything for the porkers? All you bastards do is help the supie-loving government oppress real warm Americans."
"I don't suppose saying 'the goodness of your heart' is enough of a reason," I said.
"Not fuckin' hardly."
I gave him a shrug. "So, what do you want?"
Pettigrew walked slowly over to a nearby workbench, picked up a rag, and started carefully wiping his hands. From the looks of the rag, I didn't think he was gaining much ground in the cleanliness department.
Without looking up from what he was doing he said, "Jackie Marcus."
It took me a moment to place the name. Then I remembered that John Robert Marcus had been busted a month ago on six charges of child molestation involving a couple of kids who lived in the same trailer park he did. The girl was seven, I think. The boy was five. I knew Marcus's name because he had been a longtime member of HSR, even editing their so-called newspaper for a couple of years.
"You want him sprung?" I asked Pettigrew. "You can't seriously expect me to say yes to that."
"I don't." He finally
looked up, his expression grimmer than usual. "He's in County, awaiting trial. They've got him in the protection wing, along with the snitches, welchers, and faggots. I want you to get him released into population."
"You want him in the yard, with the rest of the inmates? What the hell for?"
"So a couple of our guys who are already inside can get to him. Fucker betrayed the movement, made us all look bad with his little hobby."
The last word had some snap to it, and I remembered that Pettigrew had kids of his own. Going against type, he was said to be a pretty good husband and father.
"You want your people to shank him," I said.
"Shank?" He gave me a crooked grin. "Don't believe I'm familiar with that word, Officer."
Now that I had Marcus's name rattling around in my memory bank, something else popped up.
"The DA's trying to make him a deal, isn't she? A lighter sentence in return for everything he knows about the HSR and all of your little hobbies. He hasn't made up his mind yet, has he?"
The grin was gone now. "All the reasons don't matter. What's important is that the son of a bitch has got to go down before his case goes to trial."
"And if I promise to talk to the warden over at County and see if I can get Marcus sent out in the yard to play, you'll answer some questions for me?"
"Yeah, something like that."
I shook my head slowly. "No can do, hombre – even if I was so inclined, and I might just be. The warden at County's new, only been on the job about four months. I've never met him, and he sure as hell doesn't owe me any favors."
"Maybe he owes a favor to one of your buddies. One hand washes the other, or so I hear."
"It's not real likely. Like I said, the guy's only been in place four months – not long enough to run up too many IOUs." I paused to let that sink in. "That mean we can't do business?"
Pettigrew looked at me. "You could've just said, 'Sure, I'll take care of it', knowing all the while that you couldn't."
"Yeah, I guess. But I don't work that way."
"So I hear," Pettigrew said. "So I hear."
He dropped the rag in a trash can and leaned his butt against the workbench, his still-dirty hands gripping the edge for support. "Ask your questions," he said. "I'll either answer, or I won't. But I won't lie to you – I don't do that."
"So I hear," I said. "All right, then. There's some people with a Scranton connection making and selling snuff films."
"I thought all that stuff was some bullshit urban legend," Pettigrew said.
"This stuff isn't," I told him. "I've seen one, and it's the real deal. There's four different ones that we know about, and they all follow the same pattern. Two guys are chained up inside a pentagram. A demon is summoned, and it possesses one of the guys. Then he's set free, and the demon makes him torture and kill the other guy. It's the nastiest shit I've ever seen – and I've seen a lot."
"Jesus," Pettigrew said. "That is beyond sick."
"No argument from me," I said.
"Demons, huh? Well, that's supies for you – fuckin' perverts, every damn one."
"Let's not generalize," I said. "So I take it all of this is news to you?"
"Yeah, it's the first I've heard of it," he said, and I believed him.
"If you come across anything that smells like this, I'd appreciate a call."
He shrugged those big shoulders, not committing himself. "What else you got?"
"Somebody's been burning witches," I said. "Two, so far. We don't know why, and we sure as hell don't know who."
"Yeah, I saw something on the news about one of them," he said.
"Is that all you know about it – what was on TV?"
Pettigrew was silent, looking at the floor in front of him, as if he'd found a crack that made an interesting pattern in the concrete. "I hear things, all kinds of shit," he said finally. "It's hard to know how much of it's true, and what's connected to what, you know?"
"Yeah," I said. "So?"
"I get a feeling it's not going to stop with the witches," he said. "Pretty soon, other supies are going to turn up as members of the true dead, and you know what I call that?"
"What?"
"A good start." He frowned at the floor. "But this is some crazy shit, if the whisper stream has it right. These motherfuckers are looking to start the Big Party." He looked up at me then, and I saw something in his face that was a mix of eagerness and fear. "Helter Skelter, man. Helter fucking Skelter."
Helter Skelter. Years ago, a crew of Charlie Manson's bloodthirsty wackos had written that in blood on the interior walls of a house, out in the Hollywood Hills. The blood came from the bodies of four women who'd been having a social evening when the killers broke in. One of the women was the wife of the famous were actor, Larry Talbot.
The next night, a different bunch of crazies, also sent by Manson, had invaded an elegant house in LA, not far from the La Brea tar pits. Armed with holy water, wooden stakes, and an Uzi that sprayed silver bullets, they'd left behind three dead vamps and "Helter Skelter" written all over the place in vampire blood.
The Talbot-La Brea murders had scared the shit out of undead Southern California, but it wasn't long before the police, acting on a tip, busted Charlie and his bunch of misfits at some ranch they had out there in the desert. It was at their trial that the prosecution explained to the jury in detail what Manson's conception of Helter Skelter really was.
The name came from an innocent little song on the Beatles' White Magic album, but there was nothing innocent about what Crazy Charlie had in mind for America: race war.
Out of Manson's deranged mind had come the notion that the Bible predicted a final showdown between humans and supes, or what Charlie called the "Children of Light" and the "Children of Darkness." When it became clear to the supes that humans were targeting them, courtesy of Charlie and his troops, they would strike back indiscriminately. This would bring a swift response from humans, prompting a struggle that would eventually result in the annihilation of every supe on the planet.
Or something like that.
Charlie was currently serving ninety-nine years to forever, and the rest of his tribe also went down for long stretches. A few of them were released eventually, and one of the women actually tried to assassinate President Ford. But somebody in the crowd grabbed the gun away before Betty could take a bullet.
In any case, the visions of Helter Skelter were locked up with the madman who had dreamed them, and that particular brand of craziness wasn't going to trouble the world again.
Or so everybody thought.
I looked at Pettigrew. "If you really believe that, you oughta be happy as a pig eating garbage," I said.
His mouth tightened at my insulting metaphor, but what he said was, "I don't know, man. I just don't know. It's a cool idea to rap about over a few beers or some weed, but making it really happen…" He let his voice trail off.
"You afraid you might get killed, is that it?"
He shook his head. "No, within the context of the struggle, my life is nothing."
I just looked at him. After ten seconds or so, his somber expression broke and he snorted with laughter.
"Guess you still know bullshit when you hear it, huh?"
"I encounter so much, you might say it's pretty familiar," I said.
"Yeah, well, sure, I'm afraid I might die, if the capital 'S' shit hits the capital 'F' fan. I've got a wife and kids that I love the hell out of, most days. And I'm pretty damn fond of myself, too. But that's not the real reason why this Helter Skelter stuff scares me."
"What, then?"
"I'm afraid we just might lose."
It was time for me to go to work for real. When I got to the squad room, I saw that Karl had already arrived. He was alone in the place, apart from Lieutenant McGuire, who was in his glass-enclosed office at the far end.
Karl looked up, said, "Hey," and went back to work on his computer. I wanted to let him know about my conversation with Pettigrew, even though he might be
pissed that I went there without him. I walked around to his side, grabbed an empty chair from somebody's desk, and wheeled it over to where Karl was sitting. As I plopped down he turned and looked at me curiously. "What's up, Stan?"
"I got out of the house earlier than usual tonight. Christine and I have some shit going on, and I didn't feel like dealing with it right now, so I left before she got up."
"Is she OK?" I sometimes wonder if Karl has some kind of a thing for Christine. I hope he doesn't, although I couldn't have said why, exactly.
"It's complicated, but, yeah, she's OK. I'll tell you about it sometime. Maybe you can even give me some advice, since you're uniquely qualified. But now you need to hear about the conversation I just–"
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