Vampires Don't Sparkle! (2 page)

This particular RV was one of those huge monster trailers. Sammy always wondered how people could drive the damn things. They were like houses on wheels. The curtains were drawn in this particular trailer, providing little light, but Sammy had a penlight that he flicked on deftly. He cast its narrow beam quickly through the kitchen galley, moving it over mounds of clothes stacked on chairs. He moved toward the clothes and quickly riffled through them. No wallets or purses here. The back sleeping chambers were the next likely target.

He was just heading down to the sleeping chambers when the door to the RV suddenly opened. Sammy spun around, his heart leaping in his chest at the sudden fright. Dim light from the New Year’s Eve night beyond stabbed into the RV, illuminating the man that had just come in. He looked in surprise toward the rear of the RV where Sammy was standing. “Who the hell are you?” the guy asked.

Sammy held up his hands in surrender. “Oh wow, man,” he said, feigning drunkenness. “Shit, I must have the wrong trailer. I’m sorry… I’m
so
fucked up…” He made to stumble past the man, cringing slightly as he approached him. This had never happened before, and he thought that quickly reverting to the ruse he used when casing RV’s would work. Not so this time.

The guy grabbed him by the lapels of his denim jacket the minute he tried to squeeze by. “Not so fast, guy.” He leered at him. “You ain’t going nowhere.”

Sammy reacted instinctively, going out of his fake drunken mode to fight-or-flight. He tried to pull out of the guy’s grasp but the guy held on tight. He tried shoving the guy into a closet set along the far wall of the RV, but the guy held fast. The guy grabbed him roughly in a bear hug, pinning his arms to his side, and Sammy thrashed wildly. Christ, but this guy was strong for such a skinny runt. Sammy yelled at the top of his lungs: “
Let me go you little
—”

The guy threw Sammy, sending him sprawling into the opposite wall where he crashed hard, rocking the RV. The blow knocked the breath out of him, and as he sank to the floor, trying to gain his equilibrium, the guy loomed before him with a mad grin on his face. He reached down for Sammy, locking strong fingers around his throat. Sammy tried to fight him off but it was no use. He was out like a light in seconds.

v

He had no idea how long he was out, but when woke up he saw that the RV’s owner had been joined by five others. They were all standing around him in a rough semi-circle, staring down at him as he lay on a bunk that also served as a sofa.

Sammy tried to collect his senses. He must have been placed on the bunk when he was unconscious. It was still dark, and judging from the noise that emanated faintly from outside, the New Year’s Eve bacchanal was still in full swing on Colorado Boulevard. Was it the New Year yet? He had started working around ten p.m., and had only been at it for an hour or so when he was caught. Surely he couldn’t have been out for that long.

As if reading his mind, one of the new people that had shown up to peer down at Sammy answered his question. “It’s almost two a.m. Now maybe you can tell us something.” He leaned forward. It was an older man, probably in his mid-fifties, grizzled and bearded, long gray hair tied back in a pony-tail hanging down his back. He spoke in a smooth voice, like an FM disc jockey. He was dressed in biker leathers and boots. “Who the hell are you?”

Sammy swallowed, and decided to try his first ruse. “Look, man, I didn’t know this was your RV. I-I-I was partying a little too heavy out there, and I was trying to find my trailer and yours looks a
hell
of a lot like mine and—”

The woman standing next to him raised her foot and nudged him with it. She leaned forward, her piercing eyes hooking his. “Try to come up with something better than that. Gus told us everything.”

Sammy looked at her, taking her image in; she appeared to be roughly the same age as the man, standing about five foot two, her voluptuous figure clad in a black leather jacket. She was dressed in tight blue jeans and a T-shirt with a Harley Davidson logo on the front. Her hair was wavy, blonde, and cut to the shoulders. Was this the older guy’s wife? “Listen, man, I’m telling ya the truth.”

“Why did you go through our stuff then?” This came from one of two other men, both of whom appeared to be in their mid-thirties. The guy that asked him this was tall, bearded, with light brown hair and gray eyes, wearing a black leather jacket, blue jeans and a chambray shirt. The second was clean shaven with long black hair that fell to his waist with a hoop earring dangling from his left ear.

How the hell did they know I went through their stuff?
Sammy thought. As if in answer to this silent question, the last of the five newcomers answered him.

“We could tell you went through our stuff because it’s placed differently than it was when we left it.” Sammy turned to this fifth person, a young woman who appeared to be in her early twenties. Tall, her body clothed in what resembled a blood red evening gown that clung to every curve of her body like a second skin, she had a fair complexion, long black hair, full red lips, and wide dark eyes that held him entranced. There was something about her that seemed familiar. Had he seen her before? Perhaps he was entranced with her because she was the most beautiful woman Sammy had ever seen.

They stared at each other for a moment, Sammy and the woman, the others staring back at Sammy. The older man broke the spell by nodding at Gus, the guy who had caught him. “We’re done. Let’s head out.”

Gus nodded and headed toward the cab of the RV. He started the engine.

It took all of his effort to sit up, but Sammy did it. He tried to ignore the five crowding around him, especially the young woman. “Listen, everything’s cool, I didn’t take anything, okay? I’m just gonna walk out of here right now and let you guys go on your merry way.”

“You’re staying right here.” The command was barked by the older man, who held him with his fiery gaze.

Despite trying to hold his ground, Sammy was scared to death inside. He felt a chill race through his body. “Come on, man, it’s cool.”

The older man turned to the two younger men. “Take him down.”

The two younger men were on Sammy in a flash, pinning him down to the bunk. One of them produced a coil of rope, and within minutes they had trussed him up tight. Sammy’s arms were pinned to his sides, held fast by the coarse rope. Likewise, his legs and feet were tied together, rendering escape impossible.

The RV pulled away from the curb and began cruising slowly down the residential street, heading north toward the 210 freeway.

Sammy tried to remain calm but it was hard to do with his heart beating so fast. He watched them as they took seats on the make-shift sofa/bunk opposite him, and along the chairs in the dining area. Their eyes were on him as Gus piloted the large RV down the residential street, braking slowly as he came to the intersection.

They were silent for a moment as Gus made a right turn down Walnut Street and then waited at the intersection of Walnut and Allen to make a left, which would take them to the 210 freeway. Sammy’s mind was spinning, trying to think of something to say that would help him get out of here. He didn’t want to piss them off, but he also wanted to get the hell away from them as soon as possible. He had first taken them to be another mid-western family that had driven out to view the parade like the hundreds of other tourists that descended to Pasadena, California every New Year’s to camp out along the parade route to view the spectacle. It was those people—and the thousands that drove out to camp out along the sidewalk on Colorado Boulevard in their sleeping bags—that Sammy preyed on every year. New Year’s Eve along Colorado Boulevard was like a mini Mardi-Gras, with drunken revelers doing their best to ring in the New Year. As a result, people let their guard down more, and for Sammy it was a thief’s paradise. Long an expert pick-pocket and sneak thief, Sammy had perfected the job. He could be in and out of an RV in under thirty seconds, and he could rifle through an unattended sleeping bag and make off with whatever cash was in a discarded purse or wallet in half that time. He had never been caught, and the financial returns on returning to Pasadena year after year were greater than the few risks involved. He could average fifteen hundred bucks over New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day alone, and he could always count on every other year of hitting somebody unwise enough to guard their jewelry or cash more stringently. The most he had ever made was a cool five grand.

This was certainly the first time that a would-be victim had turned the tables on him. He thought about this as Gus made a left on Allen and headed north toward the 210 freeway. He swung the huge vehicle up the east-bound on-ramp. Why would these guys risk being charged in felony kidnapping over being pissed off about a guy committing misdemeanor breaking and entering?

And what in the hell were these people doing
leaving
six hours before the start of the celebrated Rose Parade?

The answer was that there was more to this bunch than the typical mid-western tourist family. At least that’s the impression Sammy was now getting. The impression grew stronger as he regarded his captors from his spot on the bunk. They were appraising him with a penetrating gaze that Sammy found uncomfortable. The worst of it was the young woman’s. Sammy found it hard to resist gazing back at her.

Their silence was broken when the ringleader—Sammy assumed he was the ringleader because he was the oldest male of the group—suddenly burst out laughing.

The rest joined in. They laughed hard, as if sharing some secret joke among themselves. Even Gus laughed from the cab of the RV as he drove. Sammy looked around at them, the tension easing somewhat but not nearly enough for comfort. They weren’t making any attempt at assaulting him further; they were just sitting in their respective seats laughing their asses off at him.

Sammy smiled and tried to laugh with them. This made some of them—the two young guys in particular—laugh harder.

The old man stopped laughing, shaking his head. He looked at the older woman and chuckled. “Who would have thought that out of all the years we’ve been coming out here to work the parade route we’d be preyed upon ourselves by a common criminal.”

They laughed harder at this and then suddenly Sammy understood. They weren’t typical tourists out to watch the parade. They were crooks like him who had come out to work the parade. The question was, what kind of racket were they working?

Sammy mustered a smile. “So you’re not tourists then, right? So what kind of work do you do along the parade route?”

There were still some chuckles floating around the cabin. The long-haired guy shook his head and leaned back in his seat, looking out the window as they rode down the freeway. The old man and his lady leaned back, the woman taking out a nail file and working her nails. Sammy felt better as he saw the others relaxing. They weren’t planning on hurting him. If that was the case, what the hell were they doing kidnapping him?

“You could say that we converge upon the parade route every year like yourself to prey on the tourist population,” the older man said. His voice was deep and compelling. Sammy now pegged the ages of the older couple in their late forties or early fifties. The woman chuckled at that, and the man smiled and looked back toward Sammy. “Why don’t I back up a bit. My name is Frank. This is Melissa,” he indicated the woman beside him, who Sammy assumed was either the man’s wife or Significant Other. He introduced the long-haired guy as Jason, and the quiet bearded guy as Robert. The young woman was Olivia.

Sammy nodded at each one as they were introduced and kept his gaze on Olivia longer than he should have. She smiled at him and Sammy felt a stirring in him, a sense of yearning. That familiar feeling was now easily explainable. He had obviously seen her before on previous New Year’s Eves while working the parade. They had probably passed each other countless times on the crowded streets of Colorado Boulevard while each one worked through the long evening.

“And your name is?” Frank asked, looking at him questionably.

“Sam,” he said, grinning. “But you can call me Sammy.”

“Sammy it is then.” Frank leaned back in his seat and regarded him with those steely cold eyes. Appraising him. “You didn’t really stumble in here by accident, did you Sammy?”

They already knew the answer to that. Especially when he had basically confessed to it by asking what line they were in. His best bet was to lay all his cards on the table. He nodded. “No, I didn’t.”

Frank nodded, then glanced at Melissa, who was regarding him the way a mother would if she had caught her son doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. Jason and Robert were relaxing, caught up in the ride, paying scant attention, but Olivia was closely watching the exchange. She gave an encouraging smile to Sammy.

“The question is, what do we do with you?” Frank asked. He seemed to be thinking out loud, tossing the question out for his posse to digest. “We could very well let him go.”

“Let him go?” This came from Robert, who swung his gaze to the center of action. “We’ve never let anybody go before.”

“True, but Sammy’s a special case.” Frank leaned his grizzled form forward, leaning his elbows on his knees, peering at Sammy. He was looking directly at him. “How long have you been doing this Sammy?”

Sammy swallowed a dry lump. What Robert had said—
we’ve never let anybody go before
—was hanging in his mind. “Seven years.”