Angel of Vengeance (2 page)

I don’t have much in the way of furniture or appliances; I’m not what you’d call an acquirer. I can list all my major possessions in twenty-five words or less: desk, chairs, answering machine, phone, filing cabinet, mini-fridge, freezer, fedora, five suits, two pairs of shoes, a car. Oh yeah, and a gun. The adjectives’ll cost ya extra.

I move out of the kitchenette into the office proper. The freezer motor hums dully in tune with distant traffic noise from the 101. There is a numb, mildly pleasant pain as my frozen limbs begin to thaw. I barely notice. I have bigger concerns. Shivering, not with cold but with thirst, I stiff-leg it over to my desk and twist the light on. I punch a button on my answering machine. No messages while I was on ice. No nothing.

My trembling fingers tug a side drawer open and fumble with the zipper of my worn leather kit. In the light, I notice that they are coated with a fine layer of dust from the graveyard dirt that pads the bottom of my cold-storage coffin.

Time to fix.

I go to the small refrigerator that sits on the floor just below the office’s single aluminum foil-covered window. The neighbors probably think I’m running a meth lab, but the fact of the matter is the sun and I aren’t exactly on what you’d call speaking terms. Haven’t been for a while now.

I kneel. My frozen knee joints pop with the force of a twenty-two caliber pistol. I open the refrigerator door to find only five crimson glass vials remain. Damn. I thought there were more. I grab one and hold it up to the refrigerator light, enjoying the brownish-red tint of the liquid that hugs the vial walls. Except for red, vampires see the world in only black and white. So all things red are to be savored. Adored.

Eager for my fix, I hurry now. I carry the vial back to the desk. I take an old-fashioned, sawbones-style needle from the sterilizer and assemble it, screwing the tip and casing together. I pop the cap from the vial and poke the gleaming tip into the ichor. I pull the plunger back, drawing a good portion of the thick blood into the casing, before carefully replacing the cap on the vial, saving the remainder for later. Then I strangle one ice-cold bicep with a rubber garrote, pulling it tight with sharpened teeth.

Over the years, mainlining has evolved as my favorite way of taking blood. There is a comfort in the ritual that I have grown to love. A holdover from my days as a smack addict. Any junkie will tell you that the effects are stronger and the relief more immediate and a little goes a lot longer when you shoot it. What can I say? Old habits die hard.

I smack my arm, searching for a non-recessed vein. Finding one, I jam the needle home before it can slip away on me like a snake in water. I have to jam it hard to break through my permafrost skin. I depress the plunger. Goddamn but it feels good. Even old blood. Fresh is best, but any blood will do. Just so long as it’s human.

I withdraw the needle, lick the tip clean. Tasty. My jangling nerves recede with my teeth. My thirst abates.

As always, the initial high makes me sleepy. I drowse in my chair, staring from under half pound lids at the framed black-and-white photograph perched on one corner of my desk. It’s a snapshot of me posing with my old band mates, taken after a show at the Million Dollar Theater on Third and Broadway in late ’43. Good guys all of them. And me the only white boy in the bunch.

I reach out with sandbag arms and take the frame in both hands for a better look at the me I used to be. Tall and too thin; almost sickly. Probably from the drugs. Dark hair. Darker eyes. Wise-guy grin. A chin in constant need of a shave. Good looking but not too good looking, if you know what I mean.

I shake my head. I barely recognize that kid. With all I’ve seen and all I’ve done, I feel I must look different, but I probably don’t. Hard to know for sure.

Despite rumors to the contrary, vampires do have reflections. The random observer would see my human image in a mirror, but when I look I can only see the monster inside; the way I look when I transform. When every day’s a bad day in the mirror, eventually you just stop looking.

The black phone in front of me rings shrilly. Enough nostalgia. I set the photo down and pick up.

“Yeah?”

A smoky female voice blows over the line. “Mr. Angel?”

“Speaking.”

“My name’s Reesa Van Cleef. I have a job I’d like to discuss with you.”

“What’s that?”

“I’d rather talk about it in person. Would it be possible to meet?”

“Anything’s possible. When’s good?”

“I’m free tomorrow during the day. I could come by your office—”

“No good. I’m busy tomorrow.”

“The next day then.”

“Actually, Ms. Van Cleef, I prefer to work at night. I’m a little funny like that. Call it a quirk.”

“Oh, I see...”

“Something wrong?”

“No, it’s just that—well, I work nights too. I’m a performer; a burlesque dancer. I do a retro lounge act at the Tropicana five nights a week.”

“I see.”

“Would it be too much trouble to ask you to come to me?”

Normally it would. Normally if a client wanted my help they could damn well come here. But seeing as I could use the work and being as this particular client was a burlesque dancer, well, I figured I could make an exception just this once.

“Sure. When?”

“How ‘bout tonight? My first performance is at ten. It’s a little racy, but if you’re not the type whose sensibilities are easily offended why don’t you come see it? We can grab a drink at the bar between shows.”

“Sure,” I say again. It’s a long time since I’ve been out on the town for anything other than work or blood.

“Great. I’ll put your name on the list,” she says in a voice as playful as a tongue on an earlobe. “You’ll know me. I’ll be the one in the red feather boa and not much else.”

“I’ll be the one in the fedora.”

2

I
pull my vintage, blood red Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadster into a metered slot just up the street from the Tropicana. I bought her new back in ’57 and it’s a love affair that has stood the test of time. Ain’t love grand?

I’m early so I take my kit out and go through the familiar process of fixing. I assemble the needle, tie off my arm, draw the blood. Because my skin is almost translucent in its alabaster whiteness I rarely have trouble finding a vein. Even the recessed ones. I slip the tip in, depress the plunger and... everything’s Jake.

Settling back into the Benz’s loving embrace, I let myself drowse in my euphoric state for a few minutes, enjoying my high. Lids at half-mast, I watch the red taillights of cars as they motor past on Melrose. When I slowly rise to full awareness fifteen minutes later I see it’s ten-o-five. Now I’m late. Swell. I shake my head to clear it, get out, head back up the street to the club.

I move past the long losers’ line at the door and walk right up to a pony-tailed doorman with a chest like a beer keg. I tell him I’m on the list. Turns out I am. He unhooks a purple velvet cordon and lets me in.

The small dark forties-style lounge smells of beer and cigarettes and betrayal and sex. Old pick-up lies hang faintly in the air. The joint hasn’t changed a bit, which I take to mean the owners are either visionary about the cyclical nature of trends or just cheap. Maybe both. Small, intimate candlelit tables punctuate the room. On one side, a small thrust stage takes up the entire west wall. Big bare glowing light bulbs stand like soldiers at attention along the perimeter of the stage, as if protecting the six-piece swing band from the riff-raff. Aside from me, the members of the band are the only ones in the place dressed the part.

I look around for the bar. I find it set back into the wall opposite the stage. The band plays me over the shoe-worn carpet to a tall stool. I order a Scotch on the rocks from a bartender with a thin moustache and watery eyes that remind me of two black pearls sunk deep in oysters. Judging from the gin-blossoms in his cheeks, slinging drinks isn’t the job for him. Kind of like a pill-head working the counter at a pharmacy. But that’s his problem, not mine.

I swivel around on the stool, eyeing the people that take up the seats at the tables scattered about. Reesa draws an eclectic crowd. Mostly gay couples of both sexes, but thrown in among them are tie-loosened Hollywood types, horny college students, and a few leering Persians.

All eyes are directed at the stage where the white-tuxedoed bandleader tempos the Cole Porter down and takes to the mike to introduce the delightful, delicious, de-lovely Reesa Van Cleef. Cheers, applause, whistles, and hoots follow the introduction, growing in volume and intensity as the lady herself, veiled behind a wall of red feathers, takes center stage.

She’s gorgeous; stunning in that golden era Hollywood screen siren way, when women carried an alluring air of mystery about them. When they all seemed to know something you didn’t, and found the fact amusing. She might have walked right out of a frame of an old black-and-white Bogart flick. The only tip-off that she is not a product of my own bygone day is the fact that her hair, which she wears in a forties-style forward-curled pompadour, is brilliant Kool-Aid red. My favorite color. I’m not much for smiling, but I smile now. I didn’t think they were making them like her anymore. Glad to see I was wrong.

Somewhere a bubble machine works its magic. The band dusts off an old tromboney ditty and Reesa glides into motion. Her bright eyes flirt as she teases the crowd, giving us titillating peek-a-boos of her moon-pale skin, racetrack curves, and full Jane Russell bosoms with small rosebud-pink nipples. Call me old-fashioned, but this is what a strip show should be. The term striptease suggests nudity with a sense of fun and playfulness. There’s none of that in the way the strippers of today ply their trade. It’s all just gyrating, g-string-in-your-face, mercenary flesh for hire. Ugly. A show like that leaves you feeling low, like you’re lesser for it, like you’ve been conned. Not that I don’t ever go. I do. Joints like that are open late and I’m a late-night kind of guy. But watching Reesa do her red-feather shimmy reminds me of something I’ve almost forgotten. It’s as if her seductive movements are capable of weaving a spell and casting me back in time. I feel transported. I feel like a kid again.

I feel alive.

The show goes by faster than summer vacation. When it’s over I blink and look around feeling like I’ve come out of a trance. My highball of McAllen, which was delivered unbeknownst to me, sits melted and untouched at my elbow. I shake my head to clear it. I need to get a hold on myself. I’m here on business. It won’t do to come across like some drooling schoolboy.

To have something to do, I shake out a butt, light it. The bartender is instantly on the spot to play the ever-popular game of fuck with the smoker.

“Sorry, you’ll have to put that out, sir. There’s no smoking allowed in the Tropicana,” he says.

He doesn’t sound too sorry. In fact, he sounds like he enjoys spoiling my good time. I lock eyes with him, my hypnotic stare as impossible to resist as a
Star Trek
tractor beam, and tell him, “I’m not smoking.”

A glazed cow-dumb stare comes over his ruddy face. “You’re not smoking,” he repeats.

“That’s right. Now you’re going to give me an empty rocks glass to use as an ashtray.”

He nods, says nothing, just does it.

“Now you’re going to leave me alone until I call you.”

“I’m going to leave you alone,” he murmurs.

Being undead has a lot of drawbacks, but it’s got its advantages too. The hypnotic gaze is one of them.

Grinning, I blow a cloud of secondhand smoke in the guy’s face as he goes to stand over by the cash register, which seems to serve the additional purpose of propping him up.

Intermission. The lights come up. Patrons—fags and dykes and Persians alike—file out. I smoke, trying to ignore the butterflies that flop like dying fish in my stomach as I await Reesa’s company. I reassure myself that she’s probably not half as attractive up close. Can’t be. I only ever met one other dame who was. This was all just a trick of the distance, the makeup, the lights. Up close I’ll see the flaws; the chinks in her Venus di Milo complexion; the cracks running through her Mona Lisa smile.

I check my watch and toss back my drink and signal for another, a double. Why the hell not? I can’t get drunk unless the alcohol has already been absorbed into a victim’s blood, and besides it gives me a prop; something to do with my hands. I mash my smoke out, light another.

“How do you do it?”

I swivel around to find her standing there in a red silk kimono embroidered with dragons. Immediately I realize I couldn’t have been more wrong about her looks. She’s the real deal; every bit as lovely up close as she appeared on stage. Lovelier. I feel a strange disappointment. A noticeable flaw would have been a welcome thing; would have put me back in control of myself.

“What’s that?” I ask, glad at least that I don’t sound like a nervous schoolboy. It’s about eighty years too goddamn late for that.

“Get away with smoking. I can’t believe no one’s said anything to you yet. Usually they’re real pricks about it. Won’t even let me do it in my own dressing room.”

“Yeah, well, we came to an agreement. Would you like one?” I say, picking up the pack and shaking one out.

Reesa hesitates a moment, but finally takes it, game if I am. Red manicured nails carry the butt up to a mouth like a Christmas bow. I’ve never felt jealous of a cigarette before. Guess there really is a first time for everything. She waits for me to light it. Her wish is my command.

“I hope you’re Mick Angel,” she says, drawing in a lungful. “Otherwise I’m gonna feel real silly.”

“That’s me,” I say. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“I drink free here, but you can order me one.” There is a whisper of silk on vinyl as she slides onto the stool next to me. Now I’m jealous of the stool.

“All right. Let me guess—you look like a martini kinda gal.”

“Good guess. And I bet you’re having Scotch.”

We smile. Kindred spirits.

“Vodka?” I ask, hoping it’s not.

She shakes her head, electric-red curls bouncing around that lovely face. “Gin. Three olives. Dirty.”