Vampires Don't Cry: The Collection

by Ian Hall

  Then, just skimming over a written page, I got a break.

  ‘Tonight’s the night. Van Der Coop will meet with the Colombophile, and I’ll get to see the rest of the cadre.’

  I read it again, knowing that I’d seen it before.

  On an absolute whim, I looked up ‘Colombophile’ expecting some reference to Peter Falk’s character, but got pleasantly surprised by a French translation: ‘pigeon fancier.’ I remembered one of the obits had been a Clarence Pigeon. I sprung to my feet in sheer exuberance and hit my head on the ceiling, causing me to fall immediately, hands waving uncontrollably. I landed in a heap on the floor, then got to my feet more carefully. The ceiling wasn’t high, maybe eight feet. I could touch it with my fingers standing up. But from a crouched position, it had still been an impressive jump.

  “Clarence Pigeon.” I walked along the wall, ‘til I came to his obit.

  Clarence Pigeon, 45, Manhattan, died suddenly February 19, 1959 at Roebuck Medical Center. Born October 27, 1914 in Jamestown, Maine, the son of Fredrick and Wilhelmina Pigeon. He is survived by wife, Hope, and two sons. Funeral will be at Princeton Cemetery, Bloomingfield, New York. Family flowers only.

  If the Pigeon fancier had been his wife, Hope, I had a connection to Van Der Coop. I put two or three pages of the notes together, and began to look for more ‘code’ in Knight’s text. Before long, I began to feel a little hungry, and called Mary-Christine, totally forgetting the earlier faux-pas.

  “Hi. Do you wanna get something to eat? I’m starving.”

  A long pause. “Yeah, sure. Do you have anywhere in mind?”

  “I want to get back pretty quick, I think I’ve had a breakthrough.”

  “Chinese buffet will take care of that.” She said.

  “Ok, I’ll pick you up in five minutes.”

  I quickly washed my hands from the old newsprint ink, and changed my shirt. It wasn’t ‘til I saw her walk down the drive that I remembered the earlier incident. So when she got in the car, I got kinda weirded out for a moment.

  “Hi,” I said limply.

  “You had a breakthrough?”

  “Yeah. I think a lot of Marvin’s actual notes could be in code.” I told her of the Pigeon fancier.

  Well, to be honest, at least the talk about work broke the awkwardness. We discussed lots about the case over the meal, but when I dropped her off at the door again, she shied away from a kiss.

  “I don’t want to right now, Lyman.” She folded her arms. I mean, if a girl does that, she’s putting up all kinds of barriers. “I don’t know what got into me earlier.”

  “It’s ok, Mary-Christine.”

  “It’s not!” she snapped. The walls and windows of the SUV seemed to reverberate.

  The wall of silence had grown into something else.

  “It’s fucking anything but ok, Lyman,” she snapped. I had obviously lost the plot somewhere, so I gave her a moment to let it all come out. “I don’t know if it was my hormones that reached inside your trousers or some kind of vampire pheromone that made me do it!”

  “Pheromones?” I asked with some incredulity. “You think just because I have some vampire blood in me, that I’m going to manifest that one vampire characteristic?”

  I tried to forget the jump to the ceiling thing in the cellar.

  I leant over her and breathed in her face, one, two, three times.

  “Do you really think I’m a vampire?” I leant back. “Do you feel an uncontrollable urge to hump me now?”

  Silence reigned for a long moment. “No.”

  I breathed again, and grinned. “I’m not Mr. Irresistible?”

  Shook her head, but her smile came back.

  “I think you should have a talk with your dad, Mary-Christine,” I said with an authority that surprised me. “I’m working hard on not being a vampire, and so are the doctors at the Unicorps clinic. Your dad’s trying his hardest. We all know there’s a chance I’ll slip, but for fuck’s sake, at least give me some encouragement while I battle this thing. Give up on me after I’ve given up. Not before.”

  Wow. I sat in the silence and patted myself on the back for that one.

  Then Mary-Christine leant over the gap between the seats and gave me the sexiest kiss I think I’ve ever had. When we broke, she settled back in her seat and grinned at the bewildered look on my face.

  “Mary-Christine,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I think it’s you who’s the vampire.”

  Sheldon Newell. I had his name and address in my hot little fist; I also had a standing invitation from Lucy (if I could once and for all pop the zit known as Alan McCartney) to relocate with her and start again, living side-by-side with the humans, peacefully. I knew she was just missing her daughter; but, I missed people, too. So, it was definitely something to think about.

  Turned out, Newell lived some twenty minutes outside of Winslow; small town, further east called Harris. It was still early in the day, so I took a swing by. On arriving, it became obvious that calling it a town had just been a courtesy; nothing but a strip of dirt with some buildings scattered haphazardly around.

  He lived in kind of a shabby neighborhood, too; you could tell the median income would be sub-twenty-grand. The whole area was all rundown, houses were all a wreck. One of the yards looked like a scrap metal dump there were so many rusted-out cars on the lawn. I wouldn’t have expected a big boss in the vampire mafia to be making a place like that his home; of course, that might just be the whole zingy idea.

  Newell’s house looked in just as bad a shape as all the others. Dirty mint green paint peeled off the walls in waves, and the gutters were even worse, falling off in the front. The screen door was nothing more than a metal frame with a big hole in it. Before I ever got to the porch, I heard noises coming from inside.

  A woman’s voice; at first it kind of sounded faint, like a small cry. Within seconds, it grew to an all-out, bloody scream. Behind the hysterical woman, a shrieking wail of an infant could just barely be made out.

  Holy shit.

  Okay - it had not been my plan to drive down to Harris and confront Newell all on my own; but just then I figured I had no choice.

  I busted through the useless screen and flimsy door. I found them sprawled out over the living room floor: a Mexican woman, naked, and on top of her lay the bare-assed and extremely vigorous Sheldon Newell. He drilled her like there was no tomorrow.

  So, at least she wasn’t screaming for the reason I’d thought.

  Soon as he noticed me, Newell…uh, dismounted…the woman and stood up to face me. He had the weirdest look of satisfaction on his face; like he’d been waiting on me to show up. I wondered if Lucy had ratted me out.

  “What you want?”

  BTW…It all just hung out there for me to see, too…

  The woman, on the other hand, didn’t really seem to notice the intrusion at all. She just stayed down, basically humping the air and moaning. Definitely human; and Newell had her all hormoned up. Just like a true Blanche vampire.

  He grabbed his pants off the floor and shrugged them on. Thank God. Then he snapped something at the woman in Spanish. Even though I stayed in Mexico for a while, my Spanish was cruddy. Pretty sure he said something like, “Shut that kid up.”

  Suddenly, she finished with her world-record orgasm and rolled to her feet, heading for a back room. Blood trickled down under her left ear. So, the charmer had fed on her before he raped her. Nice.

  By looking at him, I’d say that’d be the only way he could hope to get any. Sheldon Newell looked downright icky. What hair he had had been greased up and slicked in a really bad comb-over. He stood freaky tall and toothpick skinny, with oversized ears and - most disturbing of all - his eyes rolled off in two different directions. I almost wished he’d take his pants back off so I wouldn’t have to look at his face.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “Mandy Cross.”

  “How do you know me?”

  “Who doesn’t know the girl that killed Alan McCart
ney?”

  “I had no idea I was so famous.”

  Newell kinda crab-walked up to me. One of his eyes peered at me. I don’t know what the other one was looking at.

  “More than famous, Mandy Cross…wanted.”

  “Oh? What’re you gonna do? Arrest me in the name of the vampire mob?”

  “Arrest you? Hell no, girl! We don’t want to put you behind bars, Mandy Cross. We want to bring you in…into the fold.”

  I wasn’t expecting that.

  “Who wants to bring me in?”

  “Standing orders from Alan McCartney. He turned you and he’s got every intention of keeping you…despite your little tantrum back at Gregor. Maybe because of it.”

  “He told you this? You’ve spoken to Alan - still have contact with him?”

  His smile got vicious. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  The woman wandered out, still not a stitch of clothes on. She had the baby in her arms. It looked tiny, tiny - like newborn. I could tell she was still under Newell’s influence by the way she held it; not protectively but more like a watermelon. I went around Newell and took possession of the infant; its mother hardly seemed to notice.

  I’d never seen a human quite that out of it before; like she moved under the influence of a narcotic than just vampire pheromone.

  “What the hell did you do to her?”

  Newell waved my question off like it were a fly. “Eh. Nothing. She’s just outlived her usefulness. They start to go dim after a few too many feedings. Shame, too - she was one caliente senorita.”

  As he spoke, he slid up to her, tilting up her chin and evaluating her with this gaze like appreciating a fine piece of art or something. In the next second, he had her head pushed back, hanging off her neck like a ball on a tether.

  “What the fuck is the matter with you? What’s the baby gonna do without its mother?”

  “Why do you care? It’s a human piece of shit, just like she was.”

  Without any kind of remorse, Newell picked up the woman’s body and headed for the closest door down the hall. Like a total ding dong, I followed. Curiosity, I s’pose.

  Immediately through the door lay a set of rickety wooden steps. Newell pulled the chain on an overhead light and proceeded to drag the woman’s body behind him as he went down. At the bottom, he went for a large door that looked like it was made out of cement. No prob for a vampire. Newell jimmied it open like it had been hollow wood.

  Instantly, I wished I’d never gone down there. He tossed the woman’s body on top of a pile of corpses about two feet high. It was a collection of men and women; a good deal of the women were nude. All were Mexican - at least the ones that weren’t decayed past the point of recognition. Pretty damn sure none of them were documented citizens.

  So, that’s why Sheldon Newell chose this stink hole of a town; the perks of being a head guy in the vampire mob: you get to go where the feeding is easy. At least this was what Alan McCartney had to offer. I didn’t think it would hold water back when Amos Blanche had been the big boss.

  Newell just pushed the cement door shut, bolted it, and went back up the stairs like he’d taken trash to the curb. OMG! I was so sick of these effing vampires.

  The McCartney Legacy

  That night, I stood alone in my new bedroom, looking out over the lights of Gregor, trying to make some sense of it all.

  A world that didn’t trust me stood outside my bedroom window, and I was the enigma, a man who stood on both sides, but trusted by none. A half-breed.

  I’d been overdue to take my last vitamins for the day, but they were downstairs in the cellar, and I couldn’t be bothered going down there. I felt kinda buzzy, no sign of sleep at all on the horizon, so I thought I’d go for a drive. No real direction, east towards Flagstaff, then after a while got bored with that idea, and just drove aimlessly.

  I really don’t know how I arrived in Sedona.

  For those of you who haven’t been, it’s the most trashy, touristy place in Arizona, but it’s almost like it actually has soul, too. Like the Disneyland that never got developed. In summer it’s open ‘til God-knows what time, but on the fourth of January, you could have had an orgy in main street without having a single witness. Only one place had lights on; a flamboyant Mexican restaurant where the name had become so hidden in the hacienda crap that I had no idea what it was called. The main bar area lay empty, and I wandered over.

  “You still open?” I asked the girl behind the bar.

  “No, sir, we closed, ten minutes ago.” She didn’t even look up.

  One of the older waiters crossed the room with a basket of chips. “You’re too young to drink here anyway, red-boy.” His voice sounded thick Mexican. “You gotta go back to your mamma’s teat,” he laughed.

  I’m sure that if I wasn’t in the middle of a blood battle, and pumped up with hormones, I would have excused myself from the premises, and gave his rudeness little further thought. But I became instantaneously pissed. I walked over to him, and he must have seen the look in my eye, because he put the basket down, and placed his hand on a knife on the bar. Only a steak knife, but it would have been sharp.

  Before I knew it, and certainly before he knew it, I held him hard against the wall, my hand at his throat, and the other holding his hand down on the knife. “What the fuck did you just call me, Pedro?”

  At first he looked confident, then his eyes clouded. He looked sideways at me, then leaned closer. To my surprise, he sniffed.

  “Hombre,” he said, and I was so taken back by the smile, that I let him go, but stood back from him. “Why didn’t you say so? Introduce yourself. Hey, we don’t get many of you guys down here. Maybe you need to come more often.”

  I felt at a total loss for words, but I went along with my new friend, and joined him at the bar. “Shot?” he asked.

  “Sure.” I kept checking my peripheral vision for signs of betrayal.

  “What age are you, amigo?”

  “Seventeen,” I said, a sly smile crossing my lips.

  To my surprise, it didn’t faze him at all. “Ah, yes. You were seventeen when you were turned. How old you really?”

  “Forty-one.” I gave my dad’s age, so I’d remember it later. He put a couple of shot glasses on the bar and put a shot of pale yellow tequila in them. We chinked glasses. I followed his one shot/down the hatch philosophy.

  “You a friend of Sandy’s?” he asked, filling the glasses again.

  “No.” I picked the glass off the bar, but this time I sniffed the yellow liquid. “I’m a colleague of Alan’s.”

  “McCartney?”

  Well, I just about shit myself then and there. This guy knew Alan, and I kinda thought he’d smelled some kind of vampire aroma from me. I was either in supreme investigation mode, or in the deepest trouble I’d ever been in. Or both.

  “The same.”

  “Pah, Alan don’t come round here no more.” He drank. I kept my glass in my hand, still smelling the fluid. “He’s been fucked for a while. But he’ll be back. He always comes back to my place here. I been here for seventeen years. Alan always come back.”

  “I just got a bit pissed, you know, everything fucked up like it is.”

  He nodded as he poured himself another, then knocked it back. “Yeah, really. Well Sandy’s got a good hold here now. She won’t let the big man down, no way.”

  I had no way to regulate this conversation, but I tried my best.

  “Depends what ‘big man’ you’re talking about.” I swigged the drink over my throat, then held my hand up to dissuade him from pouring another.

  “Only one big man coming here, red boy. Thomas Jesus Candy. Sandy’s looking forward to it. It’s not every day we get to be part of the big push. Phoenix won’t know what fucking hit it.”

  I was stuck between getting more information or paying and leaving, when a door clicked behind me, followed by the sound of a woman’s heels coming into the bar.

  “Sandy!” my host shouted, and ran ar
ound the bar, stopping in front of the lady.

  I turned around on my barstool.

  The Mexican bent down to kiss her hand, and I looked over his head right into the eyes of Angela McCartney; Alan’s mom.

  “Wait!” I called after Newell, unfortunately rousing the little bundle in my arms.

  He reached the top of the stairs before he replied. For a sec I thought he was gonna shut the door and lock me and the baby in. And with all those dead people just behind the wall!

  I quick-stepped to the staircase but soon realized Newell had no intention of locking us up. He waited patiently as I took each rung gingerly. All the motion calmed the baby down and Newell’s oddly casual posture calmed me.

  “Why does Alan McCartney still want me in the …fold?” I’d almost said mob.

  “That’s something you’ll have to discuss with Alan. I don’t bother him with questions I don’t have any business asking.”

  “Okay,” I swallowed so hard I practically choked on my tongue. “Then when can I ask him?”

  Newell shrugged as he motioned me out of the doorway. “When it’s time, he’ll come calling for you.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Just sit here and wait for Alan to show up? He’s a vampire - it could be decades…”

  “You got some big prior engagement, Blondie?”

  I gave the place a quicky once-over. “Well, I don’t particularly want to stay here.”

  “You’re off your nut. This whole town is fast food alley, babe!”

  “There’s plenty of food all over the place; I’ll make do.”

  All Newell’s easy going-ness kind of faded right then. His one forward-looking eye got real intense. The other just kind of bobbed there…