Immortal at the Edge of the World (3 page)

And I actually did have some new business. I pulled out a scrap of paper I’d cut from one of the dozens of magazines I now subscribe to. Being on an island and all, I have to have them special delivered monthly by helicopter, and more than one person has pointed out to me that this is no longer necessary since most magazines are now online entities. I know in another decade or two I’m going to have to get used to the idea of reading without paper in my hands, but I’m going to be making that trip kicking and screaming. Maybe that sounds stubborn, but my relationship with the printed word is the longest one I’ve ever had and I’m not ready to quit on it yet.

Anyway, the article in question concerned an archeologist who’d been poking around an area in Turkey that held particular interest to me. “Can you put me in the same room as this man?” I asked, handing over the scrap.

He looked it over. “Just the man?”

“No, actually his being there is really optional. I want to spend some time with one of his recent discoveries. He doesn’t have to be there.”

“You would like a private viewing?”

“If that sort of thing can be done.”

“I’m sure it can. Archeologists always need financial support, and so do the museums that support them. How generous do you want to be?”

This was an impossible question for someone like me to answer because I have almost no understanding of what
a lot of money
is. “Whatever works,” I decided. This would probably end up with a museum wing being named after Francis Justinian, but whatever.

“Just to clarify, are you looking to
purchase
something from him?” Heintz asked.

“No, I just need a few hours alone with what he found. Preferably soon.”

“I’ll look into it immediately,” he said.

*
 
*
 
*

About two years ago, I realized I needed to learn more about money. I happen to have a great deal of money, and I suppose it’s true that, like anything one comes into possession of, I wanted to understand how to use it and what it could be used for. I was the same way the first time I came into possession of a gun, and before that swords, and succubi, and so on. It’s just good practice to know the value and utility of what you own before someone who knows that value and utility better than you do tries to take it away from you.

But really, anyone with a decent financial advisor and a Sharper Image catalogue can figure out what to do with money. I was more interested in understanding it the way Heintz understood it, or more generally the way someone whose job it is to use money to make
more
money understands it.

I have lived very nearly my entire life with the barter system—I have two things of value and you have two different things of value, and we both agree the things have equivalent value, and so I will give you one of my things for one of your things, and off we go. Money eventually stepped in and became the portable substitute, so now if I want to get one of your things I sell my thing, get cash, and use my cash to buy your thing. It’s still the barter system, but with less carrying around of livestock. I eventually learned to accept this, and even appreciated that I no longer had to find someone who not only had what I wanted but wanted what I had.

It was when money stopped standing for real live objects that I got really confused.

One time, after getting a rough balance of funds total from Heintz I asked him if I could visit my money. This led to a two-hour conversation I’m very certain he did not enjoy a second of, in which he explained that while a portion of the total he gave me was in fact “liquid”—and we lost twenty minutes as I tried to figure out why my money was, apparently, a large swimming pool—the bulk of it existed in things like stock, stock options, securities, hedge funds, and on and on. Some of these were things that represented partial ownership of other things, which I sort of understood. But some were investments in things that were bundled with other things that were actually based on a made-up thing that had value only because everyone agreed it did. I didn’t like these things, and when I learned about them I asked him to try and keep my money no more than one step removed from a thing I could theoretically visit and touch. He wasn’t happy about this.

That I have money at all is kind of an accident of fate combined with a long lifespan and the fact that I didn’t know I had it for a long while. Being wealthy is
not
something I’m unaccustomed to, only because one doesn’t live through the whole of human history without a lucky financial break here and there. But at the same time wealth doesn’t last forever—it basically ends when the civilization that recognizes it does—so maybe that’s why I’m indifferent about it. Basically, I’m good as long as I have access to food, drink, and shelter, and if money gets me better food, more drink and nicer shelter, then that’s great.

Lately my education about money has involved setting up companies. Some of these are companies that invest in things that other people make or hope to make, and some are just there to hold money in places where people won’t ask too many questions. I’m nearly positive some of it is illegal, although I couldn’t tell you which country’s laws are being violated and whether that even matters. (I half expect to someday learn that I’ve been running the Mafia all this time.) My only active contribution to the day-to-day is when I bring something specific to Heintz and ask him to arrange it for me. In this way, having a tremendous lot of money and a private banker is like having a concierge for the entire world.

And like any good concierge, Heintz doesn’t know and doesn’t ask why I want these things. This is fortunate. Because one of the things I’m trying to figure out is how a person can vanish into thin air, and explaining that would just be awkward.

*
 
*
 
*

The rest of my encounter with Heintz went quickly and nobody was stabbed at any point, which is always the mark of a successful meeting. I signed my fictional financial mogul name several dozen times, we discussed a couple more errands I needed him to deal with, and that was that. It was deeply boring, and there’s no point in going over all of it. I nearly fell asleep twice.

My extremely quiet limo driver was waiting for me in the garage. He had undoubtedly been notified of my impending arrival, as he was standing by the rear door of the car and trying very hard to avoid making eye contact. It was impossible to tell if he was doing this because some extra level of obsequiousness was mandatory for this gig or if he didn’t want to look at the vampire.

“Back to the hotel, sir?” he asked.

“No, actually,” I said, “I was thinking of visiting a friend.”

“Now, sir?” he asked. Because, again: sunlight.

“If that’s not a problem. Also, do you have any alcohol?”

He looked directly at me for the first time. Since the garage was well lit, if he knew anything at all about vampires he’d recognize quickly that I am not one. Aside from the slightly tanned face, my eyes are the wrong color. “A good meeting?”

“Only in the sense that it ended.”

He gestured, and I slid into the back of the car. Reaching inside, the driver unlocked a small bar hidden under one of the seats. “I don’t have anything chilled,” he lamented.

“It’s all right, I’m not celebrating anything,” I said. I reached in and found a bottle of whiskey that looked to be of decent quality. “I’m just not expecting to have to think very much for the rest of the day.”

“Yes, sir.” He closed the back door, then slid into the front seat and lowered the privacy window. “You’re not . . .” he began, before stumbling over how to say the word
vampire
to a non-vampire without coming across as a lunatic, “. . . not like most of our clients.”

“Apparently true. I might even crack a window on the ride back, provided they open.”

“They do,” he said. “So not the hotel?”

“What’s your name?”

“Dugan, sir.”

“Is that a first name or a last name?” I asked.

“Take your pick.” He smiled.

“All right. Dugan, I need to visit a very particular pawnshop in a less than fantastic part of this city. If you’d rather not travel to this part of town in your nice car, I understand, but that’s where I’d like to go nonetheless.”

I gave him the address, and he tapped it into his onboard trip computer. Not to get all fussy and irritable, but in my day professional drivers knew how to get around without an electronic box of maps shouting at them.

“Pawnshop,” he repeated.

“As I said, it’s to say hello to a friend, not because I need to pawn anything.”

*
 
*
 
*

The ride to Tchekhy’s shop was much more amiable than the trip from the hotel to the bank had been, mainly because Dugan was okay chatting up an ostensible non-vampire. He had a little soldier-of-fortune in his history, which wasn’t a huge surprise given his size, age, and the fact that I was pretty sure he was packing a gun. He kept hinting at various connections he had around the city, and it wasn’t until we were nearly to the shop that I realized he was implying he could get me drugs if I wanted them. He seemed to think I was visiting my dealer. It was a nice offer, and would have been even nicer if drugs had any effect on me whatsoever.

Dugan was right in one regard: Tchekhy is much more than the owner of a small pawnshop. He
probably
isn’t a drug dealer, but he is the guy I talk to when I want to discuss breaking laws, and avoiding governments, and that sort of thing. He’s also the guy who usually handles my passports.

I didn’t need any of those things. This was a social call. I don’t know very many people in New York City, and almost none of those people would be willing to drink with me in the middle of the day. But Tchekhy, a self-employed criminal expatriate Russian, breaks the law pretty much on his own schedule. He’s usually good for a day or two of drinking.

When we got to the shop I thanked Dugan and reached for the door handle.

“Let me get that!” he insisted, slipping out of the car and running around to the sidewalk to open the door for me. I’m really not used to being treated like someone with money, and here I was getting out of a very nice car in a very bad neighborhood with a driver holding the door. If I was an easy person to mug I’d be worried about this.

I swung my feet out.
 

“I’ll be happy to wait for you,” Dugan said.

“No, no, I can find my own way back,” I said, extending my hand with a tip I was pretty sure was generous pressed into the palm. “And you don’t want to park the car in this neighborhood for longer than . . .”

And that’s when the bullets hit the door.
 

I didn’t even know it had happened, nor did almost anyone else since the shots were from a silenced gun from somewhere above the storefront. The only person who knew right away was Dugan, and only because his hand was on the door when the rounds struck.

So, halfway out of the car, I was suddenly shoved back into it again.
 

“Stay down!” he shouted, slamming the door.

A second later he threw himself back into the driver’s seat. “Are you hit?” he asked.

“Only by you. What are you talking about?” My initial impression was this was a really bad time for my limo driver to be suffering a combat flashback.

“Two shots hit the door,” he said. “Clustered, not strays. Bang-bang, double tap. The shooter has skills.”

“You think they were aiming for me?” I asked, not entirely believing I was having this conversation.

“Door’s jacketed or those bullets would’ve hit you in the chest,” he said.
 

“Assuming a high-powered rifle.”

“I’m assuming.” He threw it into drive and started looking up the street with an effective balance of calm and urgency you don’t see in a lot of people. He was trying to get into traffic to get us the hell out of there. “Who knew you were coming here?” he asked.

“Nobody,” I said. “It was a surprise.”

I cracked the window on the street side to get a look at Tchekhy’s shop. It was, I realized, closed. In the middle of the day.

Something didn’t feel right at all. Other than the gunshots, I mean.

Dugan saw an opening in the traffic and started to pull out. “Hang on a minute,” I said.

“Okay, but raise that window. The glass will deflect most anything, but it kinda has to be between you and the bullet.”

“Fine, but your windows aren’t see-through and the shooter is on the other side of the car.”

“I’d rather not wait for him to reposition himself.”

“Just one second.”

The shop wasn’t just closed. It was without power. None of the neon signs were lit, and none of the inside lights were up.

And then I saw light inside. But it wasn’t electrical, it was incendiary.

“Okay, drive,” I said.

Dugan stepped on the gas and jerked the car forward just as the front of Tchekhy’s pawnshop exploded outward, showering glass everywhere. Dugan skidded in surprise but kept straight enough to negotiate the limo away from the scene before traffic locked down around us.

“I hope your friend wasn’t in there,” he shouted over his shoulder.