Joe Pitt 3 - Half the Blood of Brooklyn (2 page)

--Go away, Joe.

I don't go away.

She looks at me.

--Goddamn it, if you can't do something to help me, go away! You think this helps? Standing
there, looking at me like that? You think I feel better about what's happening, having
your sorry ass here moping over me? Do something! Fucking do something!

I reach out to touch her.

She slaps my hand.

--Don't touch me. You said you wanted to take care of me. Then fucking take care of me.
Fucker! Fucker! What use are you? I'm sick. I'm fucking dying and you're standing there.
You, you. Always doing things. Your fucking job. Your job, and you can't help me. All you
can do is put more blood in me for this fucking disease to live in. You don't help. You.

She's sitting up now, her pajama top slipping off her boney shoulder, showing the pale
skin and freckles.

I stand there.

She yanks on the hose in her arm.

--Fuck this. This can't make me better. Nothing can make me better. You can't. You can't.

She throws the dripping needle at me.

--Go do something! Save me, goddamn it! Fucking save me!

The nurse comes in, sees the mess, shakes her head, gets to work.

Evie flops back into the pillows.

--See, this bitch, at least she can do something. She cleans up after me. She brings me
crap food I can't eat. If I could take a shit, she'd wipe my ass for me.

The nurse glances my way, shoots her eyes toward the door.

I look at Evie's feet, sticking from beneath the sheet.

--I'll come by tomorrow.

She has her hands over her face.

--God, I want to be alone. Please let me be alone. Leave me alone. Don't ask me for
anything. I don't want to do it anymore. I don't want to think about anyone else anymore.
I'm no good at it. Leave me alone, Joe. Let me die alone. Go away. Go away.

The nurse faces me, places a hand on my arm, points at the door.

I think about taking her head between my hands and twisting her neck and spitting in her
face as I kill her.

The old lady peeks from behind her magazine as I leave, shaking her head.

On the street I fire up a Lucky and look at the people walking around: on their way home
after a late workday, on their way back out because it's Friday night, whatever. Normal
stuff. Stuff Evie can't do these days.

I think about killing them all.

It wouldn't change things, not for my girl up there on the HIV ward of Beth Israel. But it
would make me feel better. A dead body for every blood-corrupting cell invader in her
would just about even things out with the world as far as I'm concerned.

A sense of proportion not being something I have much of a grip on.

A Harley grumbles up to the curb and the leather-coated rider touches the brim of his top
hat.

--Joe.

I watch a guy walk past with his girl on his arm, both of them giggling at some stupid
shit they think is cute. I skip asking what's so fucking funny and go talk to Christian
instead.

--What's up?

He pulls the aviator goggles from his eyes and lets them hang from his neck.

--Something needs looking at below Houston.

--Off my beat.

Christian takes one of the smokes I offer him. I pop open my Zippo and hold out the flame.

--Not for long, I hear.

--What's that mean?

--Means everyone knows Terry is talking to faces from over the bridge. Those
bridge-and-tunnel types start coming into the Society, Bird's gonna have to find turf for
them somewhere.

--Where you hear that?

He grins.

--Seriously, man, you think Bird could move his action that close to Pike Street, and me
and the boys wouldn't know what's what?

--Even if it's so, I only look after Society business.

He takes a drag.

--Joe, we go back?

It's a stupid question.

We go back to the night I peeled him off the sidewalk after the Chinatown Wall had
shredded his gang and left him broken. Some asshole cut his vein and bled him and then
bled into him. Thought it'd be cute to leave him breathing. See if the Vyrus would take
root and keep him alive. Alive or the next best thing, anyway. Lameass probably figured if
Christian died it'd be no harm, no foul. If he lived he'd freak out, be torn up over what
happened to his boys and do himself. Go out colorful. Didn't figure I'd make the scene, do
the right thing and clean up the mess before any cops or civilians got involved and found
Christian still kicking.

I could have bled him out. Could have tumbled him into the East River, just another
floater for the patrol boats to fish out. But there was a time someone could have made the
same call on me, so I figured I was due to pay that one off. Figured I'd get him on his
feet, give him the score on the Vyrus and let him make his own call.

Well I gave him the score. Filled him in on how the Vyrus was cultivating him. How it'd
keep him sharp and strong and fast and pretty goddamn youthful for that matter, as long as
he kept it fed.

He asked the obvious questions.

I gave the only answers.

Blood. Human. As much as possible.

Then I gave him some. And he liked it. Hell, we all like it. Just some can't stand the
thought
that we like it. And what we have to do to get it.

Tap as many veins as you like. Draw off just enough and leave behind a confused mugging
victim or a zonked-out junkie. Hustle the blood banks, buy some green scrubs and lurk
around the hospitals. Find a sweet Lucy who'll open a vein for you as often as she can
just because she loves to be used that way. Try lapping at your own slit wrists or sucking
on a decapitated rat and get sick as a man guzzling seawater. Try it all to put off the
one thing you don't want to do, but sooner or later you'll do it.

And once you do, once you pop a blade through warm, healthy skin and feel the hot gush of
living blood hit the back of your tongue, you'll wonder why you waited so long.

And then you'll curse at how long you're gonna have to wait till the next time. As few of
us as there are running around, it's still too many. We all start picking off civilians
whenever we feel hard up, this island's gonna be an abattoir. That happens, the lid blows
off.

We let them know we're here, we let the real people know what's lurking just underneath
their lives, and we won't last another night.

We'll all be in the sun.

And what the Vyrus does to its host when it gets hit by the sun, it makes what my girl's
going through look easy.

And it ain't. That shit ain't easy at all.

I smoke and look at Christian and remember how he handled it when he was back on his feet.
Way he handled it is, he found what was left of his gang, the Dusters. He managed to
infect a couple. And they infected a couple more. After some months, when they had their
shit together, they got on their hogs and hit the Wall. Massacre ain't the word. I don't
know the word for what they did down in Chinatown. But the Dusters own Pike Street now.

They haven't been acknowledged as a Clan, but they could give fuckall as long as no one
messes in their shit. And no one does.

I flick a butt into traffic.

--Yeah, sure, we go back.

He fits his goggles over his eyes.

--Then believe me when I say, What I got to show you, this kind of thing is everybody's
business.

I get on the back of the bike.

--Where we going?

--Rivington off Essex.

I put my feet on the bitch pegs.

--Not the fucking Candy Man?

He taps his toe on the shifter.

--Yeah, the fucking Candy Man.

And he takes me for a ride below Houston.

The basement reeks of blood and ammonia and candy.

--What do you think, Joe?

--What do I think?

I take another look at the poor slob spread all over the floor: arms and legs and hands
and feet and head and bisected torso and ripped-out heart all laid pretty much where they
should be, but with about a foot or so between various parts that should be connected.

--I think we got a fucking Van Helsing on our hands.

Christian claps his hands to his cheeks and bugs his eyes.

--A Van Helsing? Ya think?

I look at the big white Maytag refrigerator in the corner of the basement. Blood is
smeared around the handle and drips from the seal at the bottom of the door, pooling on
the floor.

--Don't be a smartass, Christian. Nobody likes a smartass.

--You would know.

I go to the fridge and tug on the silver handle. The blood around the seal makes a noise:
two pieces of overused flypaper being peeled from each other.

Two dozen slashed blood bags drip the last of their contents over the stainless steel
shelves. A small flood of it washes out onto the floor.

Christian walks over.

--Any of it still good?

I pick up one of the bags and hand it to him.

He smells the ammonia it was laced with, the same ammonia that's been splashed around the
basement.

He drops the bag.

--That's fucked up. What's he think, the ammonia's gonna hurt us?

I dab my index finger in some of the blood.

--Make for one hell of a stomachache. If he hadn't poisoned it, I'd be licking the fridge
clean right now.

He pushes his top hat to the back of his head.

--Well, sure, me too, man.

He considers.

--And still, might be worth the sick to have a drink.

I smell the blood on my fingertip.

--Won't do you any good, ammonia killed it. Vyrus won't want it.

He kicks the fridge door closed.

--Fuck.

I wipe my finger on a piece of old newspaper I peel from a stack under the stairs.

--Can you get a scent?

He flares his nostrils, inhales, grimaces.

--Ammonia's overpowering most of it. You?

I shake my head. I've been sniffing around like a hound and can't get one good trace of
whoever did it. The mess spilling from what used to be Solomon's belly, the ammonia and
the basement overstock are killing the subtler human traces of sweat and skin. If I'd had
some blood today the Vyrus might be running strong enough to peak my senses, but I didn't.
And Sol's is making me damn hungry.

I toe the head on the floor and watch it rock back and forth.

--When'd you find him?

Christian is skirting a spill of intestine.

--Swineheart and Tenderhooks rolled over here right after sundown looking to score. They
didn't know the shop closed for Sabbath and rattled the gates for a while before they went
round to the alley side and banged on the trap. Smelled the blood. Twisted the lock off
the trap and came down here. Saw this shit and freaked out. Came and got me.

I poke around some boxes, shifting them, looking for God knows what. Moving the boxes
releases sugary pink smells.

--Swineheart and Tenderhooks got freaked?

Christian points at the corpse.

--This shit? You bet they did. Who wants to fuck with a Van Helsing?

The answer is
no one.

Fuck with some kid who stumbled onto the wrong scene at the wrong time and managed to get
out alive and declares a war on the undead and comes after you armed with holy water,
garlic, and a crucifix? Sure, no problem. Holy water's just gonna get you wet, garlic's
just gonna make your breath rank, and a crucifix is just a stick with a guy nailed to it.
Nothing special. A Van Helsing like that comes after you, all you got to do is get him
someplace dark and give his head a twist. After that, it's all a matter of how much of his
blood do you drink right away and how much do you drain off and mix with an anticlotting
agent so you can drink it later.

But a real Van Helsing? That's a different matter. A real Van Helsing knows that you bring
a Vampyre down the same way you bring anyone down; only more so. A well-fed Vampyre won't
like taking a bullet in the leg, but it won't stop him, not unless it hits the femoral
artery and he bleeds out before he can stick a finger in there to plug the hole while it
heals. And it'll heal. Fast. A Van Helsing that knows that? Knows to put some
large-caliber rounds into a Vampyre's face, neck, chest? Or maybe to cut his or her head
off? Or strangle him long enough to starve the brain of oxygen? Or has a handy tub of
cement around to plant their feet in before dumping them off a bridge? Or has a big truck
to run into them and roll back and forth over the broken body before the bleeding wounds
can close and the bones knit? A Van Helsing who knows how weak we can become when unfed?
Or how vulnerable to the sun? One who knows to look for the signs of feeding, the high
mugging rates, the mysterious disappearances, the rumors among the squatters and the
winos? A Van Helsing who really deserves the name? No one wants to fuck with that.

I put a couple boxes of Sugar Daddies back in place.

--Yeah, no one wants to mess with that. Funny, though.

Christian is looking in the hole in the guy's chest.

--How's that?

I start up the stairs to the shop above.

--Funny a Van Helsing gets all old school with the evisceration and the beheading, and the
guy he's carving up ain't even infected.

He follows me.

--Yeah. Thought about that myself.

He jerks a thumb back at the corpse.

--Old Solomon never was a lucky one.

I reach the top of the stairs and push the door open and the smells of roasted nuts and
dried fruits and caramel and chocolate and high-fructose corn syrup and red dye number 5
and pure cacao and refined sugar and gelatin and all the other stuff that goes into the
stock of the Economy Candy Store hits me in the nose.

--Yeah, but he ran a great fucking candy shop.

Christian walks past a counter, reaches into a glass jar, grabs a jawbreaker and tosses it
into his mouth.

--No lie there.

Bottle Caps, Big League Chew, Pop Rocks, Almond Joy, Gold Mine bubble gum, candy
cigarettes, Pixy Stix, 100 Grand bars, Chunkys and a couple hundred other varieties of
packaged candies. And in barrels: roasted and raw cashews, peanuts, almonds, brazils,
hazelnuts, pistachios and filberts. And in plastic buckets: dried cherries, apricots,
apple rings, peaches and pineapple. And laid out on wax paper inside the glass cases at
the front of the crowded shop: bricks of dark Belgian chocolate, turtles, white truffles,
chocolate-covered pretzels and strawberries and orange slices.