No one here was anxious, worried, searching, behaving in any other manner than he would expect from people sitting in a bar half an hour before closing. Most were smiling, some were drunk, all were calm.
That changed ten minutes later when a heavyset man wearing a nondescript suit and weathered fedora came through the door and searched every face. Rick ignored him and waited. Sure enough, he came up to the bar. His heart beat fast, and sweat dampened his armpits and hairline.
“What can I get for you?” Rick asked.
“You see a girl come in here, about this tall, brown hair, wearing a blue dress?” the man said. He was carrying a pistol in a holster under his suit jacket.
Some of the patrons had turned to watch. Rick was sure they’d all seen Helen enter. They were waiting to see how he’d answer.
“No,” he said. “Haven’t seen her. She the kind of girl who’d come into a place like this by herself?”
“Yeah. I think she is.”
“We’re past last call. I doubt she’ll come in this late. But you’re welcome to wait.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Can I get you something?”
“Tonic water.”
Rick poured the drink and accepted his coins. The guy didn’t tip.
Patrons drifted out as closing time approached, and the heavyset man continued watching the door. He kept his right hand free and his jacket open, giving ready access to the holster. And if he did see Helen walk through the door, would he shoot her then and there? Was he that crazy?
Rick wondered what Helen had done.
When they were the only two left in the bar, Rick said, “I have to close up now, sir. I’m sorry your girl isn’t here.”
“She’s not my girl.”
“Well. Whoever she is, she isn’t here. You’ll have to go.”
The man looked at him. “What were you in the war, kid?”
“4-F,” Rick said.
He was used to the look the guy gave him. 4-F—medical deferment. Rick appeared to be a fit and able-bodied man in the prime of his life. He must have pulled a fast one on the draft board to get out of the service, and that made him a cheat as well as a coward. He let the assumptions pass by; he’d outlive them all.
“If you don’t mind me asking . . .” the guy prompted.
“I’m allergic to sunlight.” It was the excuse he’d given throughout the war.
“Huh. Whoever heard of such a thing?” Rick shrugged in response. “You know what I was? Infantry. In Italy. I got shot twice, kid. But I gave more than I got. I’m a hell of a lot tougher than I look.”
“I don’t doubt it, sir.”
The guy wasn’t drunk—he smelled of sweat, unlaundered clothes, and aftershave, not alcohol. But he might have been a little bit crazy. He looked like he was waiting for Rick to start a fight.
“If I see this girl, you want me to tell her you’re looking for her?” Rick said.
“No. I’m sure she hasn’t been anywhere near here.” He slid off the stool and tugged his hat more firmly on his head. “You take care, kid.”
“You too, sir.”
Finally, he left, and Rick locked the door.
He wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d returned to the storeroom and found Helen gone—fled, for whatever reason. But she was still there, sitting on the crate in the corner, her knees pulled up to her chest, hugging herself.
“Someone was here looking for you,” Rick said.
She jerked, startled—he’d entered too quietly. Even so, she looked like someone who had a man with a gun looking for her.
“Who was he? What’d he look like?” she asked, and Rick described him. Her gaze grew anguished, despairing. “It’s Blake. I don’t know what to do.” She sniffed, wiping her nose as she started crying again. “He’ll kill me if he finds me, he’ll kill me.”
“If you don’t mind your coffee bitter, we can finish off what’s in the pot and you can tell me all about it.” He put persuasion into his voice, to set her at her ease. “I can’t help if I don’t know what’s wrong.”
“I don’t want to get you involved, Rick.”
“Then why did you come here?”
She didn’t have an answer for that.
He poured a cup of coffee for her, pressed it into her hands, and waited for her to start.
“I got this job, right? It’s a good job, good pay. But sometimes . . . well. I make deliveries. I’m not supposed to ask what’s in the packages, I just go where they tell me to go and I don’t ask any questions.”
“You told me you got a job in a typing pool.”
“What was I supposed to do, tell you the truth?”
“No, you’re right. It wasn’t any of my business. Go on.”
“There’s a garage out east on Champa—”
“Rough neighborhood.”
“I’ve never had any trouble. Usually I just walk in, set the bag on the shelf, and walk right back out. Today I heard gunshots. I turned around and there’s Blake, he’d just shot Mikey—the guy from the garage who picks up the drops—and two other guys with him. He’s holding this gun, it’s still smoking. He shot them. I didn’t know what else to do; there’s a back door, so I ran for it, and he saw me, I know he saw me—”
He crouched beside her, took the coffee cup away, and pressed her hands together; they were icy. He didn’t have much of his own heat to help warm her with.
“Now he wants to tie off the loose ends,” Rick said.
“Of all the stupid timing; if I’d been five minutes earlier I’d have been fine, I wouldn’t have seen anything.”
Rick might argue that—she’d still be working as a runner for some kind of crime syndicate.
“Have you thought about going to the police? They could probably protect you. If they can lock Blake up you won’t have anything to worry about.”
“You think it really works like that? I can’t go to the cops. They’d arrest me just as fast as they’d arrest him.”
“So leave town,” Rick said.
“And go where? Do what? With what money?”
“I can give you money,” Rick said.
“On a bartender’s salary? That’ll get me to where, Colorado Springs? No, Rick, I’m not going to ask you for money.”
He ducked to hide a smile. Poor kid, thinking she was the only one with big secrets. “But you’ll ask me for a place to hide.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just I didn’t know where to go, I don’t have any other friends here. And now I’ve dragged you into it and if Blake finds out he’ll go after you, too.”
“Helen, don’t worry. We’ll figure it out.” He squeezed her hands, trying to impart some calm. She didn’t have any other friends here—that he believed.
“You probably hate me now.”
He shrugged. “Not much point to that.”
She tilted her head, a gesture of curiosity. “You’re different, you know that?”
“Yeah. I do. Look, I know a place where Blake absolutely won’t find you. You can stay there for a couple of days. Maybe this’ll blow over. Maybe they’ll catch Blake. In the meantime, you can make plans. How does that sound?”
“Thanks, Rick. Thanks.”
“It’s no trouble at all.”
ONE OF THE UNIFORMED OFFICERS CAME INTO THE LIVING ROOM TO HAND Hardin a paper cup of coffee. Rick declined the offer of a cup for him.
“So she had a criminal background,” Hardin said. “Did she do any time?”
“No,” Rick said. “She was a runner, a messenger. Never anything more serious than that.”
“Prostitution?”
“No, I don’t think so.” He was pretty sure he would have known if she had. But he couldn’t honestly say what she’d done before he met her. “I know she saw a lot that she probably wasn’t supposed to see. She testified in a murder trial.”
“You said that was over sixty years ago. Surely anybody who wanted to get rid of a witness is long gone,” the detective said.
; “You only asked if I knew why someone would want to kill her. That’s all I can think of. She didn’t have much property, and no family to leave it to even if she did. But I do know that sixty years ago, a few people did have a reason to want her dead.”
“Only a vampire would think it reasonable to look into sixty-year-old motives for murder.”
He hadn’t really thought of it like that, but she was right.
“Do you have any other questions, Detective?”
“What did she do since then? I take it she wasn’t still working as a runner.”
“She went straight. Worked retail. Retired fifteen years ago or so. She led a very quiet life.”
“And you said she doesn’t have any family? She never married, had kids?”
“No, she didn’t. I think her will has me listed as executor. I can start making arrangements.”
She rested her pen again. “Do you think she was lonely?”
“I don’t know, Detective. She never told me.” He thought she probably was, at least some of the time.
“Well, I’ll dig up what I can in the police records, but I’m not sure we even have anything going that far back. You remember anything about that murder trial she testified in?”
“1947,” he said. “The man she testified against was Charles Blake. He got a life sentence.”
She shook her head. “That still blows my mind. And I suppose you’ll tell me you remember it like it was yesterday?”
Rick shook his head. “No. Even I know that was a long time ago.”
In fact, he had to think a moment to remember what the Helen of that time had looked like—young, frivolous, hair in curls, dresses hugging her frame. When he thought of Helen, he saw the old woman she had become. He didn’t even have any strong feelings about the change—it was just what happened. His mortal friends grew old and died. He preferred that to when they died first.
Many of his kind didn’t bother, but Rick still liked being in the world, moving as part of it. Meeting people like Helen. Even if it meant saying good-bye more often.
Hardin’s gaze turned thoughtful. “If I were immortal, I’d go see the world. I’d finally learn French.”
Rick chuckled; he’d never learned French. “And yet vampires tend to stay in one place. Watch the world change around them.”
“So you’ve been here for five hundred years?”
“Not here in Denver, but here in the West? Yes. And I’ve seen some amazing things.”
“A lot of murders?” she asked.
“A few,” he said.
She considered him a long time, pondering more questions, no doubt. In the end, she just shook her head. “I’ll call you if I need any more information.”
“Of course you will.”
She smirked at that.
The police were in the process of sealing the house as a crime scene. Yellow evidence tags were going up, marking spots in the kitchen—the teacup, the table, spots on the floor, the counter. Yellow tape, fluttering in a light breeze, decorated the front porch. Time for Rick to leave, then. Now and forever. He paused for a last look around the living room. Then he was done.
He drove, at first aimlessly, just wanting to think. Then he headed toward the old neighborhoods, the bar on Colfax and the garage on Champa. The shadows of the way they’d been were visible—the outline of a façade, painted over a dozen times in the succeeding years. Half a century’s worth of skyscrapers, office complexes, and high-end lofts had risen and fallen around them. The streets had widened, the pavement had improved, the signs had changed. The cars had changed, the clothing people wore had changed, though at this hour he only saw a few young men smoking cigarettes outside a club. None of them wore hats.
If Charles Blake was even alive, he’d still be in prison. Did he have relatives? An accomplice he’d hatched a plan of revenge with? Rick could call the Department of Corrections, talk them into releasing any information about Blake. Just to tie off that loose end and finish Helen’s story in his own mind.
Or he could let Detective Hardin do her job. Hardin was right, and Helen’s sixty-year-old criminal life probably had nothing to do with her death. It might have been an accidental shooting. Some gang misfiring on a drive-by. Anything was possible, absolutely anything. Hardin didn’t need his help to find out what.
Time to let Helen go.
HE BROUGHT HER TO ARTURO’S.
Arturo was the master vampire of Denver, which meant he made the rules, and any vampire who wanted to live in his territory had to live by those rules. And Rick did, mostly. What he didn’t agree to was living under Arturo’s roof as one of his dozen or so minions. Instead, Rick kept to himself, lived how he wanted, didn’t draw attention, and didn’t challenge Arturo’s authority outright, so Arturo let him have his autonomy. A lot of the other vampires thought Rick was eccentric—even for a vampire—and he was all right with that. In the meantime, Arturo’s was the one place in the city Blake would never find Helen.
Arturo owned a squat brick building east of downtown. The ground floor housed a furniture dealer who did sporadic business, but his real work was deflecting attention from the basement. Underground, away from windows and sunlight, the city’s vampires lived and ran their little empire.
He walked Helen the dozen blocks from Murray’s bar to the furniture store, his arm protectively across her shoulder. She huddled against his body, glancing outward fearfully. Blake would never find them, not the way he moved, casting shadows, pulling her into his influence. But she didn’t know that.
In the back of the furniture shop, a concrete staircase led down, below the street level, to a nondescript door. Rick knocked.
“Blake won’t find you here,” he said.
“I trust you,” she said. She was still looking up the stairs, as if she expected Blake to appear, gun in hand.
What he really ought to do was put her on a train back to whatever town she came from. Tell her to find a good husband and settle down. Instead, he was bringing her here, and she trusted him.
The door opened, and Rick faced the current gatekeeper, a young woman in a straight silk dress ten years out of date, not that she would notice. Estelle hadn’t been above ground during most of that time.
Helen stared. To her, Estelle would look like a girl dressing up in her mother’s cast-off clothes, the skirt too long and the neckline too high.
“Hello, Estelle. I just need a room for a couple of nights.”
“Is Arturo expecting you?” she said, looking Helen up and down, probably drawing conclusions.
“No. But I don’t think he’ll mind. Do you?”
Pouting, she opened the door and let them in.
The hallway within was carpeted and dimly lit with a pair of shaded bulbs.
“Is he in his usual spot?” Rick asked over his shoulder.
“Sure. He’s even in a good mood.”
Helen looked to him for an explanation. He just guided her on, through the doorway at the end of the corridor and into a wide room.
The place had the atmosphere of a turn-of-the-century lounge, close and warm, dense with subdued colors and rich fabrics, Persian rugs, and velvet wall hangings. One of Arturo’s dozen minions, Angelo, a young hothead, was smoking, purposefully drawing breath into his lungs and blowing it out again—breathing for no other reason than to smoke. It wasn’t as if the tobacco had any effect on him. Maybe he liked watching the smoke. Or maybe it was just habit. He was only a century old.
Most of Arturo’s vampires were young to Rick’s eyes. Then again, just about everyone was.
Sated with the human blood that kept them alive, they’d most likely been discussing the evening’s exploits. Their latest mode of hunting involved finding a dinner party, inviting themselves over, mesmerizing the whole group, and then having a taste of everyone. They didn’t kill or turn anyone, which would draw too much attention, and the group would wake up in the morning thinking they’d had a marvelous—if strange—evening. Rick sometimes suggested to Art
uro that he should open a restaurant or club and let the party come to him.
Arturo—by all accounts dashing, with golden hair swept back from a square face—lay in a wingback armchair, legs draped over one of its arms. He looked at Rick and raised his brows in surprise. “What have you brought for us, Ricardo?”
The dozen vampires, men and women, straightened, perking up to look at Helen like a pack of wolves.
“She needs a place to stay,” Rick said. “She’s under my protection.”
“Ricardo?” Helen whispered to him, and he hushed her.
“I’d just like to use the spare room for a couple of nights, if that’s all right.”
The young man—he looked to be in his midtwenties, a little younger than Rick appeared—considered, tapping a finger against a chin. “Certainly. Why not?”
“Thanks.”
His arm still around her shoulders, he turned Helen back to the hallway, where he opened the first door on the right and guided her inside.
“Rick? What is this place, some kind of boardinghouse?”
“Sort of.”
“Who are all those people?”
The room was absolutely dark. Helen gasped when he closed the door behind her. “Rick?”
He didn’t need to see to find the floor lamp in the corner and turn it on.
The room had a double bed with a mass of pillows and a quilted satin comforter, an oak dresser, the lamp, and not much else. The place was for sleeping out the day and storing clothing. A rug on the hardwood floor muffled footsteps.
Helen stared. “It’s a brothel. You’ve brought me to a brothel.”
If he argued with her, he’d have to explain, which he wanted to avoid.
“Do you mind?” he said. “I could find somewhere else.”
She hesitated before shaking her head and saying, “No. It’s okay. As long as it isn’t one of Blake’s.”
“It’s not.”
She squared her shoulders a little more firmly, as if steeling herself. “I think maybe I’m ready for that drink you offered earlier.”
Down These Strange Streets Page 19