Текст книги "Known Devil"

Автор книги: Justin Gustainis

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

I went into the spare bedroom and checked on my hamster, Quincey. His water bottle was mostly full, but the bowl was empty. I filled it with food pellets and put it back in his cage. That woke him up – hamsters are nocturnal, just like vampires and some cops I know. When he came over to the bowl, I rubbed his head with my index finger for a little while. He likes that.

Then I went to sleep – and had bad dreams anyway.

When Christine came upstairs, I was in the kitchen, eating some scrambled eggs. “Morning, honey,” I said.

“Good morning, Daddy.”

It wasn’t morning, but we’d agreed that starting the day with “Good evening” sounded stupid – especially when I said it using my Bela Lugosi imitation.

Christine wore the outfit she usually slept in – sweatpants and a T-shirt. Today the shirt said in front, “Thousands of vampires go to bed hungry.” As she went to the fridge, I saw that the back read, “Give generously when the vampire comes to your door window.”

She got at least a dozen different “vampire-centric” shirts, and I’d asked her once where she bought them. She’d given me a wink and said, “The Sharper Image catalog, of course.”

Christine got a bottle of Type A from the refrigerator, pried off the cap, and put it in the microwave to warm up. Then she sat down and poured the contents into the mug I’d put on the table for her, along with a placemat and napkin. Setting the table for a vampire is pretty uncomplicated, but I knew she appreciated the gesture.

“So how was work?” she asked, taking her first sip.

“Depends on what part you mean,” I said. “Do you wanna hear about how Karl and I almost got held up by elves, or about when it got really weird?”

Her eyes widened a little. “Goodness,” she said. “You mean I have to choose?”

“Naw, I’m having a sale tonight – two for the price of one.”

“Hmmm,” she said. “And what is the price?”

“Your opinion, when I’m done.”

“You’ve got yourself a deal, Sergeant. Go for it.”

So I told her about my shift, starting with when the two elves hit Jerry’s Diner. Eventually, I got around to the new street drug, Slide.

The look she gave me when I finished was as skeptical as McGuire’s had been – not that I blamed her.

“A drug that addicts supes…” She’d picked up that term from me and used it freely, even though some supernaturals consider it a slur. Christine knows I don’t mean anything by it.

“That’s what it looks like,” I said.

“I knew about the goblins and meth, of course,” she said with a frown. “I’m not likely to forget, after a bunch of them came over here to kill you a while back.”

“That’s over and done,” I said. “And anyway, things didn’t work out too well for the gobs that night.”

“Just as well,” she said. “Little green bastards.”

“I never thought it possible that other species of supes could become drug addicts,” I said. “But I trust the evidence of my own eyes.”

“I trust your eyes, too,” she said, “but, for gosh sake… So this stuff affects both elves and vampires?”

“The vampire angle’s just hearsay, for the moment. It came from that asshole Car, and I’m not sure I’d trust him if he said bats fly at night. But elves… yeah, I’d say that’s a certainty.”

She drained the mug and put it down. “Goblins and elves are both part of the faerie family. Think there’s a connection there? Some kind of genetic thing?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said. “And for the moment, guesses are all I’ve got.”

“I don’t imagine that state of affairs will continue for very long – now that Detective Sergeant Markowski is on the case.”

Some of that was kidding, but only some. Despite knowing me better than anyone alive – or undead – my vampire daughter seems to think I’m pretty cool. How many dads can say that?

“So,” I said, “I take it that this is the first time you’ve heard about this HG stuff?”

“Absolutely. There hasn’t been even a whisper. What’s HG stand for, again? Hemoglobin-something?”

“Hemoglobin-Plus, according to the elf.”

“Plus what?”

“That’s the mystery, or one of them. It must be something pretty potent, since hemoglobin all by itself isn’t addictive to anybody.”

“Well, it is to me,” she said.

“Fuck that. You’re talking about nourishment, honey. Calling blood addictive to vampires is like saying humans are addicted to food. I mean, in a literal sense I guess that’s true – without it, we’d die.”

“The ultimate withdrawal pang.”

“It’s still not the same,” I said.

She laughed softly.

I looked at her. “What?”

“Stan Markowski, once the scourge of the undead from Scranton to Shickshinny, defending vampirism. There was a time when you didn’t talk like that.”

I turned my head and looked out at the night that was pressing against the window. “There was a time when I didn’t know better.”

After finishing my eggs, I said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d ask around the… community about this HG shit when you have a chance.”

“I’ll be happy to,” she said. “But if somebody’s actually using this stuff, it’s pretty unlikely they’re gonna just admit it – at least to me.”

“Maybe not, but it could be somebody heard about another vampire getting hooked on this stuff. You know people like to gossip.”

“And vampires, like corporations, are people, too,” she said, giving me a toothy smile.

“Yeah,” I said, “but a lot more talkative.”

On the way to work, I passed a couple of new billboards that had gone up just since yesterday. One said “SLATTERY FOR MAYOR” and, underneath that, “The man for REAL change.” Three blocks farther on, another billboard reminded me that six of the eight people sitting on the City Council were up for reelection this year, too. But the ad wasn’t paid for by them, even though they were shown in it. The faces of all six were lined up in a row, each with a red X across it. Below that, in big red letters, it said, “THROW THE BUMS OUT!”

I thought that was strange, since I was pretty sure that four of the councilors running for re-election were Democrats and the other two were Republicans. Who would call members of their own party bums?

Then I got a little closer and saw the smaller print saying that the billboard was brought to us courtesy of the fine folks at the Patriot Party. Now it made sense.

The Patriot Party didn’t like anybody – except for fellow Patriots, that is. They were new on the local scene, and while I don’t usually pay much attention to politics, I knew that the Patriot Party combined fiscal conservatism with a social agenda that some people found kind of disturbing. They were backing Philip Slattery for the mayor’s seat, and supporting a whole slate of candidates for City Council.

Everybody wants lower taxes, including me. That’s just what the Patriots promised – I think they wanted to cut the property tax rate in half. That would make a lot of people happy, but the big drop in revenue which would require serious cuts in city services.

The Patriots were fine with that, especially if the services that got cut involved poor people, unwed mothers, or people with substance abuse problems. Supporters of the Patriot Party apparently believed that poor people deserved to be poor, unwed mothers were sluts, and drunks and druggies had brought their problems on themselves and shouldn’t expect taxpayers to help them cope.

The Patriots also weren’t real fond of gays, and they were especially down on supes. Their members contained quite a few Bible-thumpers, who had declared supes to be “abominations before the Lord”. They usually accompanied this claim with a bunch of quotes from the Old Testament – like the one from Exodus that says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

But some other members of the Patriot Party made a more legalistic argument. They said that a “citizen” was defined someplace as “a man or woman living under a particular legal jurisdiction”. Since supes weren’t human, their argument went, they couldn’t be considered citizens and therefore had no basis to claim civil rights.

I wondered if that meant supes didn’t have to pay taxes, either. Karl and Christine would love that part of the program, if not the rest of it.

The PP seemed to have money to spare, considering how many billboards and commercials they’d bought. There was even a Super PAC, the Coalition for American Morality or something, that was running TV and radio ads in support of the Patriots, and putting out some other ads that said some real nasty things about Mayor D’Agostino and the incumbent City Council members.

Fucking politicians.

When I got to the squad room, Karl wasn’t at his desk. That was unusual, since he usually gets in before I do. Then I saw him standing in the doorway of McGuire’s office, talking to the boss. Karl looked my way for a moment and I heard him tell McGuire, “Here he is.” Then he closed McGuire’s door and headed my way, walking fast.

When he reached me I asked, “Something up?”

“Not much – just a war. Come on, let’s go.”

House of God.

That’s what they call it – the Catholics do, anyway. Considering how many churches there are around the world, God’s got more houses than Donald Trump.

St. Mark’s Church towered over its South Side neighborhood like a skyscraper over a bunch of mud huts. As usual, God had used an architect who thought big and liked stone.

I wondered if He’d looked out the front window recently. Was He pissed that a little piece of Hell had been left within a hundred feet of His front door? Could be that He was amused. They say that God created everything – and I guess that means He made irony, too.

Karl and I made our slow way down the middle of the street, trying not to step in any of the blood. At least we didn’t have to worry about traffic, since both ends of the block were closed off by police barriers. Behind the yellow sawhorses, reporters screamed for access, forensic techs waited impatiently, and neighbors just stared in shock and disbelief. It was a typical crime scene – even if this particular crime was anything but typical.

Even though it had been dark for hours, everybody could still get a good look at the carnage. The forensics people had set up enough lights for a film set. Difference was, these actors weren’t getting up for another take, no matter who yelled “Action!”

I looked over my shoulder and said quietly to Karl, “You doing OK?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I had something before coming on shift.”

I’d been a concerned that he might be feeling edgy. Some vampires get that way in the presence of a lot of fresh blood – although Karl was used to it. He’d been to a lot of crime scenes.

Our slow progress eventually brought us to the tall man in the black raincoat. He stood, hands in his coat pockets, staring at one of the bodies as if he was trying to memorize it. He didn’t look up as we approached. Lieutenants don’t have to show up at crime scenes, but Scanlon does anyway. I think he likes it.

“Evening, Scanlon.” He outranks me but doesn’t act like it, usually. I used to work Homicide, and even though I’ve been in Occult Crimes for years, we still run into each other at crime scenes – especially those with a body count as high as this one.

Scanlon slowly turned toward me. “Stan.” He looked over my shoulder, nodded, and said, “Karl.”

“Lieutenant.” Karl doesn’t have the long history with Scanlon that I do, so he keeps it formal, usually.

I made a gesture with my chin toward one of the bodies. “They all vampires?”

“That’s what my guys tell me. Once I noticed one body had fangs, I had them check all the others.”

“No wood, though,” Karl said. “Did you notice?”

We both looked at him. “No arrows,” Karl said, “or crossbow bolts, or any of the other things most people use to kill the bloodsucking undead at night, when they’re not lying helpless.”

They, I noticed, not we. But the way he’d said “bloodsucking undead” showed that he wasn’t completely indifferent to what had happened. Karl’s what you might call conflicted.

“Silver bullets for all of them, you figure?” I said.

“That, or maybe charcoal,” Scanlon said. “We had a guy use a charcoal slug on a vampire last year, remember?”

“Forensics will tell us about the bullets,” I said. “But there’s something else I noticed.”

Now I was the focus of attention.

“A couple of them are lying on their backs, and I recognize the faces,” I said. “Both members of the Calabrese Family.”

Scanlon made a disgusted sound. “Fangsters. Jesus.”

“Looks like somebody set up an ambush with the Calabrese guys as the guests of honor,” I said. “They got hurt pretty bad tonight.”

“It wasn’t a shutout, though,” Karl said.

I turned toward him. “What?”

“One of these dead guys is wearing thin latex gloves,” he said.

“Paranoid about leaving his prints?” Scanlon said.

“Could be,” Karl said. “Or maybe he was part of the ambush and figured he’d have to reload eventually.” Karl made a grimace that briefly displayed his fangs. “The bloodsucking undead don’t handle silver bullets too well.”

Scanlon looked from Karl to me. “Vampires… ambushing vampires?”

“Makes a certain amount of sense,” I said. “Word on the street these last few weeks is that a gang from out of town had its eyes on the Calabrese territory. I figured if the rumors were true, it was only a matter of time before the new guys tried what you might call a hostile takeover.”

Scanlon’s head did a slow pan, taking in the crime scene and the six dead men it contained, all of whom had probably died tonight for the second time.

“A vampire gang war,” he said. “Just what we fucking need.”

I shrugged. “Could be worse.”

He looked at me, eyebrows raised. “Yeah? How?”

“I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

Back in the car, Karl said, “Looks like the new kids in the neighborhood don’t play nice.”

“No, but they’re playing to win,” I said. “A couple more nights like tonight, and Calabrese is gonna start running out of soldiers.”

“You heard anything about where these new guys’re from?”

“Nothing I’m willing to put any faith in,” I said. “One guy I talked to last week said he thought it was Philly – but it turns out that it was something he got from his cousin, who heard it from some other guy, who was banging a girl who once knew somebody who lived in Philly. Or something like that. You know how it goes.”

“Confidential informants – you gotta love ’em,” Karl said.

“Not when they only have shit to tell me, I don’t. If we’re gonna find out what’s going on, we better get a little closer to the source.”

“So, we going to see Calabrese?”

I thought about that. “No, not tonight. After what happened to his crew, he’ll be hiding out for a while.”

“Hiding out?” Karl showed his fangs in a grin. “Don Pietro Calabrese, capo di tutti vampiri, hiding from his enemies like a rabbit cowering in his hole? Say it ain’t so, Stan.”

“That’s not what Calabrese will call it,” I said. “He’ll say he’s gathering his forces, or planning strategy, or maybe even going to the fucking mattresses. Do wiseguys still say that?”

“Beats me,” he said. “All I know about the Mafia, I learned from Francis Ford Coppola. If I wanted to mess around with those guys, I’d be in Organized Crime.”

“Well, since Calabrese is likely to be unavailable for a while,” I said, “we oughta pay a call on Victor Castle.”

Although Pietro Calabrese was the Godfather of the local vampire “family”, the wizard Victor Castle was the unofficial head of the city’s whole supernatural community. I was never clear on exactly how he got the job – was there an election, or a vicious power struggle, or did Castle simply have better magic than anybody else who wanted the job?

Before Castle, the position of local “supefather” had been held for a long time by an old vampire/wizard named Vollman. But he’d died last year, at the hands of his own son.

Victor Castle has a lot of business interests in town, but he usually hangs out at the rug store he owns on the west side. Like a lot of businesses, Magic Carpets, Mystic Rugs was usually open at night, catering to customers who didn’t come out during daylight hours.

When we walked into the store, Castle greeted us himself instead of sending one of his flunkies. Apart from the expensive suit he wore, the man who’d come into this world as Vittorio Castellino didn’t look much like the big deal he apparently was. Average height or a little less, bit of a gut on him, and a lot of bald scalp glistening in the overhead lights.

Castle never seemed to know what to do with his hands. As we approached, he was fiddling with the large gold signet ring he wore on his right pinky finger. I never knew whether the ring was some kind of badge of office or just something that Castle wore as a complement to his thousand-dollar suits.

“Sergeant Markowski,” Castle said. “Good evening.” He turned to Karl and with a slight nod said, “Detective.” There was usually a hint of tension between those two, and most of it originated with Karl. My partner was a vampire, but he was a cop first. I figured Karl was reluctant to pay homage to a guy who he might have to arrest someday.

Castle studied us for a couple of seconds, turning the ring around and around. Then he said, “Why don’t we talk in my office?”

Castle’s inner sanctum was done in dark wood, including a huge desk that looked like it might have been real mahogany. Rugs, rolled up and tied tight, were standing in three of the corners, and fabric samples of different sizes were tacked to each of the walls. Larger carpet samples, about a foot square, were stacked all around the room.

Despite the general sloppiness of the office, Castle’s desk was nearly immaculate. All that rested on it were a fancy-looking clock encased in Lucite, a closed ledger, and one of those Tiffany-style desk lamps that provided the only light in the room.

A couple of comfortable-looking chairs faced the desk, and Castle gestured for us to sit down. Then he plopped into his leather desk chair and said, “And what can I do for the Occult Crime Unit this evening?”

It’s been well established that human pupils dilate in response to sudden emotional change, and I was watching Castle’s eyes closely as I said, “It’s about HG.”

All that got me was a frown of perplexity that might even have been genuine. His pupils didn’t change at all.

“Since you seem intent on being mysterious,” Castle said, “I’ll have to ask you what HG refers to, Sergeant.”

“It’s the street name for a new drug,” Karl told him. “It’s short for ‘Hemoglobin-Plus’.”

Castle’s heavy eyebrows nearly came together as he frowned. “Plus what?”

“That’s the secret ingredient,” I said. “At least, it’s a secret for now. I take it all this is news to you.”

“You’re quite correct,” Castle said. “But why are you asking me about some street drug? Humans become addicted to such things, not supernaturals – well apart from those degenerate goblins, and I think we’ve just about got that under control now.”

“That’s what we used to think, too,” I told him. “But the evidence of our own eyes, along with a couple of interrogations, says that at least one species of supernatural is capable of getting hooked on the stuff.”

“That’s very interesting,” Castle said, the way you do when humoring somebody. He was looking at me as if I’d just told him that I’d seen a six-foot cockroach walking down Mulberry Street, wearing an evening gown and playing the bagpipes.

Castle’s gaze went to Karl – maybe to check whether he was smiling at what might be a tall tale. “What species are we talking about, exactly?”

“Elves,” Karl said. “Two that we know about for sure, anyway.”

We told Castle about how our coffee break the night before had been rudely interrupted by two elves packing heat, and what followed afterward. It took a while.

When Karl and I were done, there was a silence in the room so total that I could hear the electric clock on the desk ticking. Finally, Castle said, “I can think of no reason why the two of you would concoct a story like that. So I am inclined to take your account at face value.”

“That’s good to hear,” I said. “I’d hate to think we’ve been wasting our time – not to mention yours.”

“We’re not kidding around,” Karl said. “You’re right that we’ve got no reason to do that. But if it was all a big joke, I’d say you haven’t heard the punch line yet.”

“Really?” Castle looked like a man who was developing a bad headache. “Then by all means deliver it, Detective.”

Karl leaned forward a little. “There’s an unconfirmed report that at least one vampire is hooked on the stuff, too.”

Castle just looked at him. “Cross-species addiction,” he said softly. Then in a normal voice, he told us, “I was about to say, as a reflex, that such a thing is impossible. But then, until a few minutes ago, I would have held that drug-addicted elves were an impossibility, too.” It looked like Castle’s headache had taken a turn for the worse.

He sat there for a little while, staring at the banker’s lamp and drumming his fingers softly on the desk. Then, without taking his eyes off the lamp, he said, “What you’ve said concerns me on two different levels. One is the idea of a drug-addicted supernatural species other than goblins. My second concern is that until you officers told me, I had heard absolutely nothing about this.”

“Could be that none of the junkies have been driven to crime before,” I said. “Last night could’ve been the first time – hell, it must have been, otherwise I would’ve heard something.”

“You don’t understand, Sergeant,” Castle said. “It doesn’t matter whether last night’s incident was the first or the hundredth. If elves are getting addicted to this ‘HG’, then I should have known about it before it resulted in armed robbery. I am supposed to know – I am boyar.”

“Is that your title?” I said. “Some cops refer to you as the ‘supefather’.”

He smiled with half his mouth. “The Mafia term? Well, I suppose it’s not a bad analogy, as long as you keep in mind that the supernatural community is not made up of…” He let his voice trail off.

“Criminals?” Karl said.

“Yes, Detective,” Castle said, with a little more force in his voice. “Even if some of our number may have committed unlawful acts, they are not representative of our community.”

“Hell, I know that,” I told him. “If all the supernaturals, or even most of them, weren’t law-abiding citizens, there’d be chaos in this city. My job would be impossible.”

“Thank you for that,” Castle said. He sounded less pissed off as he said, “I should not speak of this to outsiders, but you two already know so much, it seems pointless to conceal the rest from you.” He folded his hands over his stomach and tilted the chair back a little.

“The fact is,” Castle said, “there have been subtle challenges to my leadership lately. Nothing concrete, no overt defiance. And yet, sometimes when I give orders they are not obeyed or not carried out correctly. There are always excuses, of course. No one meant to disobey my commands, there was a misunderstanding, amends will be made, and so forth. And yet…” He shook his head.

“Once is happenstance,” Karl quoted. “Twice is coincidence. The third time, it’s enemy action.”

Castle looked at him. “Oh, that’s right. The James Bond fan. It may surprise you, detective, but I also have read the works of Mister Ian Fleming. Mostly, I regard them as light entertainment, but sometimes, as in your present example…” The fingers were drumming again, softly as tears falling on a coffin. “Sometimes, they contain words of wisdom.”

The rest of our shift was fairly quiet, which gave Karl and me some time to talk with McGuire and the other detectives passing through about the latest scourge to afflict our fair city.

I may be the last person alive to refer to Scranton as “our fair city,” and even I don’t mean it. Well, not really.

I got McGuire’s OK to knock off a little early, since I wanted to talk to Christine before she went downstairs for the day – I was hoping she might have found out something about vampires using HG. But I didn’t get to talk to her – not that night.

It wasn’t really my fault. I’m a cop – what am if I supposed to do if I’m driving home from work and hear the rattle of gunfire a few blocks away?

I arrived on the scene a few minutes later. Leaving my car around the corner from where the action seemed to be, I got out and tried to creep close enough to see what was going on without being either spotted or shot. This was a neighborhood full of warehouses, so I wasn’t surprised that a 911 call hadn’t already brought other cops to the scene.

It was still dark enough for me to see muzzle flashes, even though dawn was less than a half hour away. There seemed to be four guns involved. Three of them, located in different places around the street, were firing at a big car parked at the opposite curb. Somebody crouching behind that car was responsible for the fourth series of muzzle flashes. I couldn’t see more, because the street lights in this area had been shot out long ago.

When I’m working, Karl and I keep a selection of special equipment and weapons in the unmarked police vehicle we use. But I don’t carry any of that stuff in my personal vehicle, because I don’t expect to get into gunfights when I’m off duty. One thing I do keep in there, however, is a set of night-vision binoculars. A lot of supes see real well in the dark, and I hate to be at a disadvantage, even when I’m not expected to be out enforcing law and order.

I ran back to the car, opened the trunk, and took out the binoculars. I flicked the “On” switch, hoping that the batteries were still fresh enough for the thing to function. The slight, rising whine of the device booting up meant that I was in luck.

I went back to my vantage point, looked through the dual eyepieces, and scanned the street. Everything was sharp and clear, even if I did seem to be looking at it through a green filter.

The big car I’d caught a glimpse of earlier was a Lincoln Continental, and there was what looked like a dead guy lying on the street near the driver’s-side front door. I focused on the license plate and saw that it read “BATDAD1”.

I recognized the tacky vanity tag – the Lincoln belonged to Don Pietro Calabrese, the Vampfather himself. The corpse on the ground probably wasn’t the Don – if it had been, the shooters would have left by now. Nobody sticks around just to finish off the chauffeur. The gunfire from behind the Connie was probably coming from the Don himself.

And that meant the guys trying to finish him off were most likely members of the same bunch who’d taken out four of Calabrese’s men earlier in the evening. Whoever these guys were, they didn’t seem inclined to let any grass grow under their feet.

So it looked like vamps shooting it out with vamps, again. And judging by the three-to-one odds, I figured the new gang’s hostile takeover of the Calabrese territory was just about ready to succeed. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

I hustled back to the car, got on the police radio, and told the dispatcher what was happening and where. She said, “Wait one, Sergeant,” and a few seconds later I was talking to the watch commander, Captain Fisk.

I explained the situation as I understood it, trying to be as brief as possible.

When I was done, Fisk said, “So, you’ve got four vampires exchanging gunfire in the street?”

“I haven’t got a close enough look at any of them to either spot fangs or recognize their faces, sir. But I know that’s Calabrese’s car, and I also know that an out-of-town vampire gang took out four of Calabrese’s people earlier tonight.”

“Yes, I saw the incident report,” Fisk said. He’s a good cop, but a little too by-the-book for my liking. The rules and operational policies are important, sure, but so is flexibility and the ability to improvise when you have to. Fisk would never grasp that, even if he stayed on the job a hundred years.

“Standard procedure when supernaturals are involved in a situation like this is to call in SWAT,” he said. “But I happen to know that the unit is already involved in a hostage situation involving some werewolves on the north side of town. I’ll try to get in communication with Lieutenant Dooley and see if he can cut loose some of his people to deal with the situation you’ve got there.”

The Sacred Weapons and Tactics unit consists of cops, a few of them clergy from different faiths, who are specially trained and equipped to deal with dangerous situations involving supes. They were just what the gunfight around the corner needed, except for one thing.

“That could take a while, Captain,” I told him. “And I’ve got a feeling that by the time SWAT gets here, the action’s gonna be all be over and the perps long gone. The ones who are still standing, I mean.”

“Can’t be helped, Sergeant. You say you’ve got a night-vision device?”

“That’s affirmative, sir.”

“Then get back in position to observe what happens, and take your radio with you. For their own safety, I’m going to order regular patrol units to stay clear of the area.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll let you know when SWAT is rolling,” Fisk told me. “In the meantime, you are to take no action except to observe and report as necessary. Understand me?”

“Yes sir – I’m not to engage the perps, but to watch what’s going down, and to report developments to you.”

“That’s affirmative. Now get moving, Sergeant. Fisk out.”

I thumbed the radio off and sat there behind the wheel, trying to think.

If I followed Fisk’s orders, Calabrese was going to die in the next few minutes, and the fangsters who’d killed him would get away clean. I might get a license number as they left, but any wiseguys – human or vampire – learn in their first ten minutes on the job always to use stolen cars when they’re planning to commit a crime.

I had no love for Don Pietro Calabrese, who was a professional criminal and therefore a scumbag. He’d been a human scumbag until about twelve years ago. That’s when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer – inoperable and almost certainly fatal. So he’d paid a vampire to turn him.

The guidos are all nominally Catholic, and the Church, with its usual tolerance, declared more than fifty years ago that all supes were anathema – cursed by God. So, choosing to become a vampire was considered a mortal sin. Of course, extortion, drug running, prostitution, and murder are also mortal sins, and guys like Calabrese aren’t troubled by those. And vampirism offered the very substantial benefit of allowing him to avoid God’s judgment indefinitely.