Текст книги "Known Devil"

Автор книги: Justin Gustainis

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Nobody spoke for a little while, then Christine said, “We were talking about Lacey earlier. It just occurred to me that she makes pretty good guardian-angel material, Daddy. She likes you, and you told me that she’s pretty handy with a gun. What do you think?”

“Hmmm. I never thought of that,” Karl said.

“Absolutely not,” I said. “No fucking way.”

Christine tilted her head a little to one side. “How come you’re so sure?”

“Like I told you – Lacey’s in Wisconsin, visiting her sister.”

“Maybe she came back early,” Christine said, “and hasn’t told you yet.”

“No chance,” I said. “If she was back in town, she’d have let me know.” I paused for a second. “Probably.”

That prompted another exchange of meaningful looks between Christine and Karl – something I was starting to get tired of.

Karl looked at me. “You and Lace ever figure out what kind of relationship you guys want?”

“We’re still working on that,” I said. “That’s one of the things she said she wanted to think about out in Wisconsin.”

Karl nodded as if he understood, although I was pretty sure he didn’t.

“Besides,” I said, “if Lacey was watching my back like that, she’d want me to know about it. She wouldn’t be pulling this Lone Ranger crap and disappearing once her work was done.”

“OK,” Christine said. “If you say so. It was just a thought.”

“You’re probably right, Stan – it’s not Lacey who’s your shadow,” Karl said. He gave me a half-smile. “Hell, I bet she doesn’t even know what evil lurks in the hearts of men.”

“Of course she does, Karl,” I said quietly. “She’s a cop, isn’t she? She knows.” I looked toward my vampire daughter. “We all know.”

“So, who’s gonna replace Victor Castle,” I asked Christine, “as the capo di tutti supi?” I noticed sirens in the distance, but that’s a pretty common sound around a hospital.

“It’s anybody’s guess,” she said. “No clear candidate has emerged, as they say.”

“I was in the hospital when Castle took over from the late Mister Vollman, so I never got around to asking you about the process. How does the supe community choose a leader, anyway? Is there a series of… primaries or something?”

The sirens were louder now, and there were more of them. But the sound didn’t seem to be getting any closer to the hospital.

Christine gave me a small smile. “It’s nothing so organized,” she said. “What usually happens is–”

That was when music started coming from Karl’s pocket – the first thirteen notes of the James Bond theme, to be exact. Karl had just received a text message.

He doesn’t get them very often, so he pulled out his phone, thumbed an icon, and looked at the screen. From his expression, I was pretty sure he wasn’t reading birthday greetings from his mom, and my suspicion was confirmed when he said, “Aw, fuck!”

As he put the phone back in his pocket, Christine and I both said, “What?” at the same time.

“There’s been another bombing,” he said to Christine, then looked at me. “Ricardo’s Ristorante.”

The sudden jolt of adrenaline started the bump on my head throbbing all over again as I asked Karl, “How bad?”

“McGuire didn’t say – you can’t put a lot of info into a text message, anyway. But when’s the last time you heard of a bombing that wasn’t bad, Stan?”

“Yeah – I withdraw the question.” I threw back the blanket and sheet and swung my legs slowly over the side of the bed.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Christine asked, but before I could say anything, she went on, “Never mind, I know where. But why, Daddy? The fucking bomb already went off, right? And there’s gonna be a gazillion cops and firemen and paramedics and gosh knows what – all over the place. Why do you have to be there?”

“So I can find out what the fuck is going on!”

I stood up, and the pounding in my head immediately shifted from second gear into third. I glanced back at the sterile-looking hospital bed, and at that moment it looked like a really good place to be. But I turned away from it and started walking toward the suitcase that Christine had brought me.

“I don’t mean to throw you out, honey,” I told Christine. I picked up the suitcase and tossed it on the bed. “But unless you want to embarrass us both by seeing your old man naked, maybe you’d better leave. I’ll see you when I get home, unless it’s after sunrise. In that case, I’ll talk to you at breakfast.”

She made an exasperated sound, but her voice was calm as she said, “I don’t suppose arguing’s gonna do any good, huh?”

Karl answered her before I could. “You’ve known him longer than I have, babe. What do you think?”

Babe. I wondered if it was too late to have that talk with Christine about the bats and the bees.

Yeah – about twenty years too late. Maybe more.

Christine gave him one of those What can you do? expressions, then turned to me and said, “I guess I’ll see you at breakfast, Daddy – if not before.”

She stepped closer and kissed my cheek. “Be careful – there’s likely to be a lot of broken glass out there.”

“I will.”

I wondered if Karl was going to get a kiss, too – but apparently they weren’t willing to do that in front of me yet. He got a friendly nod and “’Bye, Karl,” and then she was gone.

I dropped the hospital gown, then opened the suitcase and began to pull clothes out of it. Getting dressed doesn’t usually pose a challenge for me, but this time was a little different. The first time I bent over, I was afraid my head was going to explode. Then I started hoping it would explode and put me out of my misery.

With a little help from Karl, I managed to make myself presentable. I filled the empty suitcase with the dirty clothing I’d been wearing when they brought me in, closed it, and said, “OK, let’s go.”

“You want a wheelchair, get you as far as the front door?”

I looked at him. “You figure they’re going to have any wheelchairs at the fucking crime scene?”

He shrugged. “I could borrow one from here.”

“Yeah, and I can just hear the other guys from the squad when I show up looking like you just sprung me from the Shady Rest Old Folks Home. I might hear the end of it in ten, maybe fifteen years. Fuck that shit – no wheelchair.”

“Then at least let me carry the damn suitcase.”

“Fine – take it.”

As we passed the nurses’ station, one of the ladies in scrubs glanced up at us from her clipboard, then did a double take. “Mister Markowski! What are you doing out of bed? I need you to–”

With his free hand, Karl held his ID folder out and growled, “Police business.” Then he flashed her a little fang. I’m not sure which impressed the nurse more, but after a second, she picked up the clipboard again and began studying it like she was trying to memorize every damn word.

When we came through the sliding doors of the front entrance, Karl said, “Wait here – I’ll bring the car around.”

“I can walk to the fucking car, dammit! Stop treating me like some kind of invalid.”

Karl turned and faced me. “Stan – I’m a member of the bloodsucking undead, right?”

“Yeah – so?”

“So, I can’t see myself in a mirror. But I’d still bet fifty bucks that right about now you make me look good. Just stay put while I get the fucking car, OK?”

Before I could come up with a suitable retort, Karl turned and started walking away. Then a few seconds later the vampire afterburners kicked in and he disappeared into the night.

Fucking undead showoff.

We hadn’t gone very far from Mercy’s parking area when I started to wonder why Karl was driving like a little old lady on her way home from a Sunday social. Then I got it: he was trying to avoid the many bumps and potholes, to cut down on any bouncing around that would make my head hurt worse than it already did.

“Karl.”

“What?”

“I know what you’re doing, and I appreciate it. I really do. But nobody ever died from a goddamn headache, and I want to get to the crime scene ASAP – so will you fucking move?”

He glanced at me. “Yes sir.”

Karl pressed down on the accelerator while reaching under the dash with one hand. He flicked a switch, and the red LED lights behind the grille started flashing their get-the-hell-out-of– the way message. Then he found the toggle that controls the siren.

The high-pitched wailing noise that began an instant later cut into the back of my head like the business end of a Black & Decker Model 12V. And like the Energizer Bat, it just kept going, and going, and going.

Be careful what you wish for, Markowski.

I did my best to keep the pain off my face, but that’s the thing about having a vampire partner – he can sense changes in your heart rate, and sudden agony will definitely kick things up a notch or two.

Karl gave me another sideways look. “Pretty bad, huh?”

“I’m alright – just drive.”

Eight long minutes later, we arrived at the scene of the restaurant bombing – or as close as we were able to get. What looked like dozens of official cars and vans were blocking Moosic Street, all with their own lights going – red, blue, or yellow, depending on the department responding. The effect that light show had on my pounding head made me want to squeeze my eyes shut and keep them that way – for a week, maybe. But Karl and I had a three-block hike in front of us, and I wasn’t going to do it like some kind of blind man. So, squinting like the second lead in a spaghetti western, I got out of the car.

The walk was slow going, what with the police and emergency vehicles parked at crazy angles and the immense crowd of gawkers standing around, probably hoping to see a dead body being carried away – or, better yet, a headless corpse.

Finally, we came to the barrier of yellow crime-scene tape that extended from one side of the street to the other, uniformed cops standing behind it every fifty feet or so. The one we approached, a red-haired patrolman named McHale, knew us by sight and lifted the tape so Karl and I could duck under it. Bending over like that achieved something I wouldn’t have thought possible – it made the pounding in my head even worse. When we’d straightened up, I said to Karl, “Let’s wait here a minute or two, see what’s going on.” Truth was, I just wanted to stand still and see whether the pain would back off a bit – just receding from “Intolerable” to merely “Pretty Fucking Awful” would’ve been OK with me.

Karl looked at me, but all he said was, “Sure, Stan.”

If McGuire had been there, I was prepared to listen to a bunch of “I told you not to act like some TV hero” crap, but I guessed he’d stayed back at the station house. Maybe my night was improving – a little.

Christine had been right, back at the hospital. There was nothing I could do here that all the other professionals on scene couldn’t do, and probably better. But there were things I wanted to know. Besides, I couldn’t stay in a hospital bed while every other cop in the city was on the streets working this case. I just couldn’t.

After a while, the pain did let up a little – enough for me to focus on the scene before us. And quite a scene it was.

This section of Moosic Street was brightly lit, but all of the illumination came either from the headlights of emergency vehicles or the dozen or so HMI lights that had been rigged by the police and fire departments. None of the usual light sources were worth shit at the moment.

Up and down the street, tall wooden lampposts were either bent in half, their lights smashed on the ground, or just knocked flat by the explosion. Most of the power poles had gone down, too, taking the electrical wires along with them. Several loose wires lay on the asphalt, still live, sparking and hissing like wounded dragons.

What I could see of the street – the part that wasn’t covered with debris or puddles left by the fire hoses – had depressions in the asphalt, as if a T-Rex had stomped through, on his way to eat Dixon City. Broken glass was everywhere, and the air was thick with the odor of gasoline, burned rubber, scorched metal, and several other smells that I couldn’t identify.

“Blood,” said Karl, the mind reader. “There’s a lot of blood in the air.”

“You gonna be alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said quickly. Maybe a little too quickly.

“Look – Scanlon’s here,” I said, as much to change the subject as anything else.

“I’m not surprised. Lot of work for him and his boys tonight.”

Hugh Scanlon made his careful way toward us, stepping over or around the worst of the debris, avoiding the puddles made by the fire hoses. He kept his hands in the pockets of the light topcoat that he seemed to be wearing every time I saw him.

When he reached us, Scanlon stopped and looked me over. “I heard you were dead,” he said finally. “Looks like the reports are only half right.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” I told him.

“Me, too,” Karl said.

Scanlon gave him a look and turned back to me. “I’ve heard about six different stories about you,” he said. “You know how cops are – they gossip worse than a bunch of old ladies.”

I gave him raised eyebrows. “They?”

“I just listen,” he said with a shrug. “That doesn’t count.”

“If you say so,” I said.

“One version says that you were jumped by a bunch of guys behind Jerry’s and managed to take out three of them before they finally took you off the count.”

“I think I’ll encourage that one,” I said. “The first part of it, at least. Makes me sound dangerous.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Scanlon said. “Another story has you in Mercy Hospital, deep into a coma due to a fractured skull.” He leaned a little to one side to get a better look at my bandaged lump. “Looks like they weren’t far wrong,” he said. “About the fractured skull, I mean.”

“I’m doing OK,” I lied. “They say I don’t even have a concussion. Just some bruises, a big lump, and frequent visits from the Headache from Hell.”

The sudden whoop of an ambulance siren sent a fresh jolt of pain through my head. When it had receded a little, I said, “Look, I dragged myself out of my bed of pain because it seems like the gang war’s escalating. I want to know what the fuck happened here and why.”

“Short version,” Scanlon said. “The answer to your first question is ‘car bomb’, and I’m guessing the answer to the second one is ‘to kill a bunch of folks’.”

“Well, duh,” Karl said, which earned him another look from Scanlon.

“How many dead?” I asked him.

“They’re still bringing bodies out,” he said. “Nine that we know about, so far.”

“They’re all human, aren’t they?” Karl said.

“How the hell do I know?” Scanlon said. “That’s for the Medical Examiner’s people to figure out.”

A third-story parapet that had run across the front of an apartment building directly across from Ricardo’s suddenly came loose and fell to the sidewalk with a crash. I was glad nobody had been standing underneath it. There’d been enough dying on this street tonight already.

“My point is,” Karl said, “that I’m pretty sure none of them were vampires.”

“Yeah?” Scanlon said. “And you reached this conclusion how, exactly?”

“Because you can’t kill vampires with a bomb.”

Scanlon and I both stared at him, then we looked at each other. “He’s got a point”, I said.

“Does he?” Scanlon frowned. “Look, I freely admit this isn’t my area – I mostly deal with humans who kill other humans.” He looked at Karl again. “You’re telling me you can sit a vampire on top of a ton of TNT, set it off, and the vampire just gets up and walks away once the smoke clears?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Karl said.

“But the vampire’d be blown into a million pieces,” Scanlon said. “Do they all get –”

“No, he wouldn’t,” I said. “A human would be in a million pieces. The vampire wouldn’t discorporate like that. He’d probably be blown a fair distance by the blast, and he wouldn’t feel so great for a while – but, yeah. He’d get up and walk away.”

Scanlon shook his head slowly. “How the fuck is that possible?”

“Who the hell knows?” I said. “How are vampires possible? How is magic possible – and lycanthropy, and all the rest of it? It just is.”

“Wait a second,” Scanlon said. “What about that case down in Louisiana a few years back? Some religious nut turned himself into a suicide bomber directed against vampires. He made up an explosive vest, then hung a bunch of silver jewelry all over it. Showed up at a party some vamps were having, and boom. That killed a few, as I recall.”

“Yeah,” Karl said, “but that was the silver shrapnel that did it, not the explosion itself.”

“Maybe that’s what happened here,” Scanlon said.

“No way,” Karl said. “If there was that much silver around here, I’d be able to feel it – and I’m not getting anything at all like that.”

I tried to make myself think, despite the insistent pounding in my head. “This is fucked up,” I said.

“What was that word your partner used a minute ago?” Scanlon said. “Duh?”

“No, what I mean is, if you’re waging war against a gang of vampires, why would you use a weapon that’s not gonna kill any vampires?”

Karl looked at what had once been the front of Ricardo’s Ristorante. “I think you’re right, Stan,” he said. “What’s the point?”

“The point?” Scanlon made an impatient gesture that took in the whole street. “Maybe the fucking point is to make sure that nobody ever comes near this joint again, even if they do get it rebuilt someday. That bomb might not’ve hurt Calabrese’s body, but it sure as shit put a big, fat hole in the middle of his wallet.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not.”

“What the fuck’s that mean? Scanlon said.

“Think about it, Scanlon,” I said. “The restaurant wasn’t a money-maker for Calabrese – my guess is, he barely broke even on the place. And since this was his headquarters, he wouldn’t have had any of his illegal operations going on in there, so blowing the joint up probably wouldn’t even affect his main income stream.”

“And if Calabrese hasn’t got a ton of insurance on this place,” Karl said, “then the bastard isn’t half as smart as I think he is.”

Scanlon spent a few seconds with his eyes closed, rubbing the bridge of his nose with two fingers. Behind him, the work of cleaning up the devastation continued.

EMTs brought out the dead and injured as soon as the Fire Department could locate them. Cops were trying to secure the crime scene so that evidence could be systematically gathered from it later. Men and women in yellow hardhats from PG&E went around deactivating the live electrical wires before somebody stepped on one and got fried. And clergy from several faiths were ministering to those among the injured who the EMTs didn’t think were going to make it as far as the hospital.

“Let me see if I understand this,” Scanlon said at last. “Whoever set the bomb off wasn’t trying to kill vampires with it, cause you can’t kill vamps with a bomb.”

“That’s right,” Karl said.

“And they didn’t do it to destroy the business,” Scanlon went on, “since Calabrese doesn’t use the place to make money.”

“Seems that way,” I said.

Scanlon looked at me, then at Karl, then back at me again. “Then why the fuck did the Delatassos do it?”

“That’s a hell of a good question,” I said. “But I’ve got one that might be even better.”

“Which is…?”

“What if the Delatassos didn’t do it?”

As Scanlon walked away, I noticed Dennehy from the State Police bomb squad standing a couple of hundred feet away, giving orders to some of his people.

“Come on,” I said to Karl, and we made our slow, careful way over to where Dennehy was standing. I stumbled once and Karl tried to take my arm, but once I’d glared at him, he let go again. We came up on Dennehy just as he was finished deploying his troops – four guys and a woman, all dressed in identical blue jackets that read “State Police BDU” on the back.

“Don’t forget to check for fragments buried in the sides of buildings.” He practically had to yell to be heard over the noise from all the other people and vehicles in the area. “You see anything unusual, dig it out and bag it. We’ll figure out if it’s relevant later. OK, get to work.”

As the four bomb techs trotted away, Dennehy turned toward Karl and me. “I wish I could say it was good to see you fellas again, but under the circumstances…”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said.

Dennehy looked at me for a few moments, his head tilted a little to one side. “Christ, what happened to you, Stan?.”

“It looks worse than it is,” I said. “I just got jumped by some guys early this morning. One of them whacked my head with something hard, probably a gun barrel. But I’ve got that thick Polack skull. I’m OK. But we came over to ask you about this bomb.”

“What d’you want to know about it?”

“Anything you can tell us,” I said. “I realize you haven’t had much time to investigate yet.”

Dennehy sneezed a couple of times, then blew his nose on a big bandana handkerchief. “It’s the dust,” he said. “Always irritates my sinuses at these scenes. I tried wearing a respirator once, but the other guys kept asking me if I was still beating up on Batman, so I gave it up.”

“The bomb, Chris,” I said. “What about the bomb?”

“OK, well, for starters – it had a lot more juice than the one that did in what’s-his-name…”

“Castle,” Karl said. “Victor Castle.”

“Yeah, him. You can see by the amount of damage that it was a much more powerful explosion this time – not the kind of charge you could fit in a trash can, that’s for damn sure.”

“What was it in, then?” I asked him. “Any ideas?”

“Car bomb, most likely.” Dennehy pointed up the street in the direction of what had once been Ricardo’s Ristorante. “That car there, specifically.”

A couple of hundred feet from the restaurant’s entrance was something that might once have been an automobile. It was lying on its roof – at least, I think it was. Looking at that twisted, burned pile of metal, it was hard to say for sure.

“You figure plastic explosive, like the last time?” I asked.

“Most likely,” he said. “Big difference between this bomb and the last one, though – I mean, apart from the amount of explosive used.”

“How do you mean?” I said.

“That other one – very precise. You can’t use words like ‘surgical’ when talking about bombs, but the one outside the rug store had a very specific objective – to take out that one man. The other damage was incidental. But this….” Dennehy waved his arm in a gesture that took in the whole scene. “This is more like the kind of stuff you see in the Middle East. The fuckers who set it off don’t really have a specific target in mind. They just want to cause as much damage – to people and structures both – as they can.”

Karl and I glanced at each other. “That’s very interesting,” I said.

“The first time, it was a hit, pure and simple,” Dennehy said. “But what we had here tonight was fucking terrorism.”

“You think so?” I just wanted something to say while I tried to get my mind around what I’d heard.

“Goddamn right it was,” Dennehy said. “And you know what Lenin wrote about terrorism?”

“The Russian revolution guy?” Karl asked him.

“That’s the one. Lenin said, ‘The purpose of terrorism is to terrify.’”

“Sounds about right, but a little obvious,” I said. “What’s your point?”

“My point,” Dennehy said, “is this: just who were these fuckers trying to scare?”

An hour or so later, we were back at the car. The trip to the crime scene hadn’t given me a lot of useful information, but it sure had been a rich source of questions.

“Where to?” Karl asked. “Back to Mercy?”

“No, fuck that. If I was gonna drop dead from that whack on my head, I’d have done it by now. Take me home, will you?”

“Home it is, then,” he said, and started the engine.

“Wait,” I said. “Where’s my car, anyway?”

“Should be in your driveway. One of the guys from the squad drove it over to your place from Jerry’s earlier today.”

The route Karl followed to my place took us past Saint Peter’s Cathedral. Karl averted his eyes from the large crosses on the front door, but did it without a lot of drama. I didn’t say anything – I’ve seen him do that a hundred times since he joined the ranks of the undead.

We’d gone a block past the cathedral when Karl said, “Remember what Victor Castle told us a while back – that he thought a vampire’s aversion to religious symbols was just psychological? We believe we’re supposed to be scared of crosses, and so we are.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Think it’s true? Or is it because we really are spawn of the devil?”

I shifted in my seat, which didn’t help my head any. The issue Karl had raised was one I tried not to think about too much.

There was a time when I was wary of vampires, because the popular culture said they were monsters – a view that the Vampire Anti-Defamation League has been fighting for decades. Then a vampire killed my wife, and I came to hate the creatures. That was why I’d requested a transfer to the Occult Crimes Unit – I figured it would give me the chance to kill a few vampires in the line of duty and thus get away with it.

But now my partner and best friend, as well as my daughter Christine, were vampires. More than that – each of them was undead because I had made it happen. It was either that or stand by helplessly and watch them die.

Karl and Christine weren’t evil – I was convinced of that. But I also knew that if you waved a cross – or a Star of David, or some other religious symbol – in the direction of a vampire, he’d run from it. Or she would. And if religious symbols represent God, vampires being afraid of them meant… what?

The academic types have a name for my current attitude towards vampires: cognitive dissonance. That’s a fancy way of saying that somebody holds conflicting attitudes toward something – or somebody.

“I don’t know if Castle was right or not,” I said to Karl. “But that spawn of the devil stuff is bullshit.”

Another couple of blocks went by before Karl said, “I’ve been spending some time with Doc Watson, talking about all that shit.”

I didn’t know what to say about that, so I settled for “Uh-huh.”

Terence Watson, MD, is a local psychiatrist who’s been a lot of help to the Scranton PD over the years. I’d last run into him about a month ago, in the frozen foods section of Wegmans. Doc and I had chatted briefly, but he didn’t say anything about having Karl as a patient. Of course, he wouldn’t. Doc Watson’s very big on preserving confidentiality – maybe that’s why so many people trust him.

“Doc seems inclined toward Victor’s Castle’s opinion on the cross issue,” Karl said.

“Seems?”

“You know how it is – or maybe you don’t. He doesn’t tell me much. Just asks questions and lets me come up with my own answers.”

“So you’re working toward the point where you can look at a crucifix without wanting to run like hell?” I said.

“Something like that.”

“How’s that working out?”

“I’m not there yet,” Karl said. “Maybe I will be, someday.”

“Here’s hoping,” I said.

“Yeah.”

Karl had been right about my car. When we got to my house, his headlights showed the Toyota Lycan, sitting in the driveway. As we came to a stop, I checked my watch: 3.18.

“You going back to work from here?” I asked him.

“Yeah, might as well see if McGuire’s got anything for me to do as a solo, or maybe I can go out with one of the other teams. If not, there’s always paperwork to catch up on.”

Karl put the car in park and looked at me. “You gonna take tomorrow night off?”

“Fuck, no – I’ll be in for my shift. You can tell McGuire as much, too.”

“I dunno, Stan. I mean, no offense, but you’re not movin’ around too good right now. Maybe some rest is just what you need.”

“I’m gonna get some rest. I plan to keep vampire hours today – sleep from sunrise to sundown, and I may even get to bed earlier than that, after I talk to Christine.”

“OK, good, but I still think–”

“Karl, listen. The fucking city is coming apart at the seams, right? We got bombs going off, supes doing crimes to get high, fangsters shooting it out in the streets, and God knows what all. And by the way, I know what you’re thinking.”

He gave me a flash of fangs in a quick grin. “Is that right?”

“Yeah – you’re thinking that I’ve got some kind of Matt Dillon complex–”

“Who?”

“Gunsmoke. Before your time. Anyway, you think I’ve got some kind of hero thing going on, where I figure that only I can stop all the bad shit that’s been goin’ on. Right?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have put it quite that way – but that’s because I never heard of Gunsmoke.”

“I should’ve used a James Bond example – but, anyway, you’re wrong. I don’t figure I’m going to stop it alone. Shit, maybe it can’t be stopped by anybody. But all I know is, I’ve got to try.”

Karl made an “I give up” gesture and said, “Alright, OK. Fine.”

“Scranton’s my town, Karl. I’ve never lived anyplace else. And I’m not gonna spend tomorrow night at home watching Zombie Survivor on TV while the whole place goes to hell in a handbasket. I can’t.”

“I said OK, didn’t I? I believe you, Stan – don’t get aggravated.”

“Yeah, I guess that could be pretty bad for a guy in my condition, huh?”

“Fuckin’ A,” Karl said. “Goddamn fuckin’ A right.”

“OK, I’ll see you at nine tonight. Thanks for the lift.”

As I reached for the door handle, he said, “I’ll wait until you’re inside before I take off.”

I turned back and looked at him. “I’m all grown up and everything, Karl. Besides, I’ve got my Beretta.”

“You had it with you this morning behind Jerry’s Diner, didn’t you?” He gave an embarrassed shrug. “I’m just sayin’.”

I like Karl pretty well most of the time, but there are moments when I hate him – especially when he’s right. Like now.

I drew in breath to say something sarcastic, but what came out was, “OK, Karl – and thanks.”

I closed the kitchen door behind me and made sure it was locked. Christ, Karl had got me paranoid now – although I’d always thought that the philosopher Allan Konigsberg had a good point when he said “Being paranoid doesn’t mean that they’re not really out to get you.”

I could hear the TV playing in the living room – I’d already known that Christine was home, since her car was in the garage. I was about to call out “It’s me!” when the TV shut off. She’d heard me come in, as any vampire would have. A moment later, Christine appeared in the doorway between the living room and kitchen.

She looked at me for a second before saying, “Hi.”

I think she’d been about to say something involving the phrase “death warmed over” but changed her mind. Good for her.

“Hi, yourself.” I pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and sat down, although “collapsed into it” is closer to the truth.