Twice as dead, p.16
Twice as Dead, page 16
When things were getting pretty frantic, she nuzzled at my neck. I thought she did more than nuzzle, but I wasn’t paying much attention right then. A few seconds later, I stopped paying attention to anything but my own joy. It was …. It certainly was, wasn’t it?
I’d got all hot and sweaty. She hadn’t. I didn’t know whether that was the way vampires worked or a comment on my technique. Not asking seemed like a good idea.
Of itself, my hand went to my neck. When I took it away, my first and second fingers had blood on them. Not a lot of blood—I’ve seen more when my Gillette Blue Blade slipped—but blood. I looked at her. “Did you—?”
She nodded. I would say shamelessly, but shame is one of the things the undead don’t bother with. “Yes, naturally,” she said. “I always do. I need to find out what my lovers taste like. It is part of what knowing the living means to folk like me.”
I always do. If your lady friend is who knows how many times older than you are, you have to be dumb in a way I’m not to imagine you’re her first. The matter-of-factness did jar a little, though. I couldn’t help asking, “Do I pass the test?”
“Oh, yes. In that way among others,” she answered. It could have been polite, or it could have been praise higher than saying I might barely start to understand what being a vampire was all about. I chose to take it for a compliment. Go ahead. Call me vain. I don’t care. Then Dora tilted her head to one side and asked, “And do I please you?”
Some people say vampires are vain to begin with, or they wouldn’t try and cheat death the way they do. Was she fishing for compliments? Or was it a woman’s question, not a vampire’s? Because she was still a hell of a lot of woman, as I was in a position to know. “What do you think?” I said. With her sense of smell, she was bound to know already.
“We seem well suited,” she said. She walked into the tiny bathroom stuck on to my office and did whatever female things she needed to do to clean up. I don’t suppose she had to use it for anything else, being what she was.
When she came out, I went in. She was getting dressed when I opened the door again. I’d hoped for a second round, but after that first one it wasn’t urgent.
“There is cat hair all over my skirt,” she said, as if it were my fault.
“You sit down on that sofa, there will be,” I said. Since we’d done other things on that sofa besides sitting, there was bound to be cat hair on her elegant backside, too, but I didn’t point that out. Old Man Mose, he gets around. I also started dressing.
She got ready to go. Then she paused and came over to kiss me, as if she’d just reminded herself she needed to do that now. “Be careful, Jack.”
“Yeah, you, too.” Romantic parting, huh? But it was good advice to both of us, and we both knew it.
She went out through the door without bothering to open it. That seemed even stranger now than the first few times I’d seen her do it. I knew that body felt like flesh: lively, squirmy flesh. And how did she make her outfit go through the door along with her?
Don’t ask me. I’m nothing but a private eye. I’d bet War Department wizards in a thaumaturgical lab somewhere near Washington are trying to duplicate the effect so live people can use it. So are Red wizards in a thaumaturgical lab somewhere near Moscow.
Old Man Mose came in through the cat door. He stopped, sniffed, and made a horrible cat face. “You have disgusting habits,” he said, and hoisted one leg in the air while he licked his behind.
“Shut up,” I explained.
I’d just walked into the office the next morning when the phone rang. I picked it up anyway. “Mitchell Investigating.”
“Hello, Mister Mitchell. This is Isidore Berkowitz,” said the guy on the other end of the line. The name and the bright, cheery tenor both seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place either one. He took care of that: “I’m the doctor who drew your blood at County General. I’d like to talk with you about something that has to do with your line of work.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, not sure whether it was or not. “Uh, how do you know what my line of work is? I don’t remember putting it down on any of the paperwork I filled out.”
“You were talking about robbing the blood bank. That doesn’t happen every day. I had your number, of course, but before I called it I looked in the phone book. It said you were what I thought you might be.”
I chewed on that for a few seconds. “Oh. I wouldn’t want to do your job, Doctor Berkowitz, but it sure sounds like you could do mine.”
“Don’t be silly.” He sounded pleased. “But there’s something I really would like to discuss with you.”
“Professionally? Professionally for you or professionally for the hospital?” If he wanted to get my ideas on something simple over the phone, I’d give them to him. Why not? I wasn’t doing anything else right then. If he wanted something bigger than that, though, it would cost him money. I wanted to be real clear about things from the start.
“Professionally, of course,” he said. “I understand that you don’t work for nothing.” He was an optimist, but I didn’t tell him so. At least he got the point without my needing to bang it home for him.
“I’m listening,” I said. “When I hear what’s going on, I’ll tell you where the tariff starts.”
“That sounds fair. I had an unusual visitor yesterday afternoon, so unusual that he made me remember you. He was a police sergeant, and he was asking about how the blood bank stored drugs and how we made sure pushers and dope fiends couldn’t get their hands on them. He was also wondering whether the blood bank was secure against drug thefts by vampires.”
“I do see why you remember me, all right,” I admitted. I played with the puzzle pieces inside my head, and damned if some of them didn’t fit together. “By any chance, was this sergeant named Elmer V. Jackson?”
“How in the world did you know that?” Berkowitz’s laughed sounded nervous. “When you said I could do your job, you had no idea what you were talking about.”
“People say that about me all the time. Look, Doctor Berkowitz—”
“Izzy, please.”
“Izzy, okay. I’m going to ask you about a particular drug—I think it’s a drug, anyway. I’m not going to name it. I’ll spell it out. When you answer me, don’t you name it, either. It’s important. You with me?”
“I sure am,” he said.
“Fine.” I thought I’d figured out a way to beat the listening spell. Now I’d find out if I was right. And I’d find out how big a mess I’d made of things if I was wrong. “Did Jackson ask you about V-E-P-R-A-T-O-G-A?”
“One of these days, I’ll have to find out how you could possibly know that. But yes, he did. I think he wanted to shake me down, or shake the blood bank down, on account of it. I explained to him that we did not have any, had never had any, and never would have any. I may have explained rather firmly. He didn’t seem happy, but he went away.”
My guess was that Dr. Berkowitz explaining things rather firmly could peel paint off steel bulkheads, and probably set it on fire, too. That didn’t matter, though. “You know about this stuff, then?” I asked.
His laugh was so empty of mirth, it might’ve come from a vampire’s throat. “For my sins, I do. I say that, and I’m not even slightly Catholic. You never would have guessed, would you?”
“Don’t need to put on my deerstalker cap to deduce that one, no.”
This time, he really laughed. “Okay, you got me there.”
“The stuff you shouldn’t name, it’s involved in some other things I’m working on,” I said. “If I come up there, will you have lunch with me? You can talk about it and around it with me, if that’s all right.”
“That’s great. We may both learn some things we didn’t know before.”
“I’d love to learn some things I don’t know. The people I’ve talked to about this stuff, most of them’ve never heard of it, and I mean people who know about these things. The ones who have heard of it, it scares them to death.”
“Worse than that,” Berkowitz said.
“Huh?” I said. He sounded as if he meant it.
“We’ll talk about it at lunch. I have to pretend to earn my living now. So long.” Without waiting for me to say goodbye back, Berkowitz hung up.
I rode the trolley up to Country General. Since I’d been there before, I more or less remembered how to find my way to the blood bank. Dr. Berkowitz waited for me outside the door. As we shook hands, I asked, “Where do you want to go?”
“We could eat at the cafeteria. It’s right here and it’s cheap, but it’s the cafeteria, if you know what I mean. Or …. Do you like Mexican food?”
“I’m your man. I don’t know how many hangovers I’ve killed with menudo.”
“I’ve done that myself. C’mon. This is the Mexican part of town. You can get all kinds of goodies here. The place I go to most often is about ten minutes’ walk.”
It was called El Burro Loco. It was a hole in the wall, not even as big as Al Harris’s shop. You miss a lot of great food if you get snooty about joints like that. I ordered tongue stewed with peppers and sliced cactus leaves. So did Berkowitz. It came in a hurry.
“They’d never seen a white fellow get that till I did,” he said. “I love tongue. Now they know I’ve got crazy friends, too.”
“I love it, too.” I’m not exactly a white fellow, but I’m not exactly not, either, so we could talk about that later if we had to. “It’s poor-people food, whatever color you are. Those are my people.”
“Mine right along with you,” Berkowitz said. We ate for a while. He was right. The cook at El Burro Loco knew what he was doing and then some. When we were most of the way through what they’d given us—which was a lot—the doc put down his fork and asked, “You were in the war, right?”
I nodded. Most people our age were. “Yeah. Italy.”
“I was in Gaul. I had red crosses on my arm and my helmet, not that spells or bullets cared. But if you worked your way up the boot, there’s a chance you ran up against some of the fylfot boys’ LR units.”
“The Lightning Rune troops? Uh-huh, a few times. Very bad news.” I nodded again, and clicked my tongue between my teeth while I did. Those were the Leader’s elite outfits. They got the best men, the best wizards, the best equipment. They were tough, mean, and nasty. They didn’t want to retreat, and they really didn’t want to surrender. Half the time, they’d kill themselves instead. Not quite so fanatical as the Knights of Bushido on the other side of the world, but getting there.
Oh. The LR ran the fylfot boys’ murder factories, too. Some of them hanged for that afterwards. Not enough, but some.
“All right. You’ll know what I’m talking about, then,” Izzy Berkowitz said. “When you fought them, what did you notice most?”
“They wouldn’t wear down,” I answered at once. “I took some pills to stay awake myself—who didn’t? But I don’t think they ever slept. I’m exaggerating, but not a lot.”
“No, not a lot,” Berkowitz agreed. “The Leader’s biggest trouble was, he didn’t have enough of anything. He sure didn’t have enough soldiers, not when he was fighting us and the Reds and Albion all at once. So he had to get the most out of the ones he did have. You’re right. The Lightning Rune soldiers had more different chemicals in them than a fancy Gilbert chemistry set. And it still wasn’t enough. His doctors and his wizards got together, and they did some experiments.”
“Experiments?” I didn’t like the sound of that. You didn’t want the fylfot boys experimenting on you.
“That’s right. It’s possible some of my relatives who didn’t make it out of the old country were guinea pigs. I don’t know if that’s true, thank God, but it’s possible. If they were lucky, they just got killed.”
I took another bite of my stewed tongue. For some reason, it didn’t seem so savory any more. “You’re going somewhere with this,” I said.
“Afraid so. They came up with something that killed the need for sleep, sure enough. They liked that, so they tried it on some LR soldiers. But it killed too many other parts of you along with needing to sleep. You took it, you stopped caring. If you were a Lightning Rune man, you didn’t care about the Leader any more, or the holy fylfot, or your country, or much of anything else.”
“They made a zombie drug? Zombie soldiers aren’t especially dangerous, even if you can’t kill ’em. Too slow, too stupid, no good at following orders.” I’d run into some of them, too. The fylfot boys tried everything they could as their dreams crashed down on their heads.
But Dr. Berkowitz shook his head. “No. With what they made, you’re still as quick as ever and as smart as ever, but you don’t care about anything. What’s the use of a fighting man who doesn’t care about fighting?”
“And the name they gave this stuff was …?” I didn’t say it.
“That’s right.” Berkowitz didn’t, either. We both knew what we were talking about, but the LAPD’s listening spell wouldn’t. “They didn’t use it in the war. It was no damn good for fighting. But they kept careful records about what they did and how they did it. The fylfot boys have always been good at that. And they didn’t have the chance to burn all of them when they realized they might have to pay for what they’d done.”
“This is how we found out about it, huh?”
“Right the first time,” Berkowitz said.
“I can see how it might be a problem,” I said. “Not caring about anything …. A lot of the drugs they cook from poppy juice make you feel that way. Some people would want it. How long does the high or kick or whatever you want to call it last?”
“You are a smart fellow,” Berkowitz said, peering down at his plate as if he could find answers on it. “There’s the rub. You take it once. It always lasts for weeks or months. Sometimes it’s permanent. Depends on how it hits you. You don’t know till you try.”
“Permanent.” I echoed the word as if I’d never heard it before. I imagined hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people not giving a damn about whatever had mattered to them before they swallowed vepratoga or injected it or did whatever you had to do to get it inside you. “No wonder they’re trying to keep it under wraps.”
“No wonder at all,” Izzy Berkowitz said. “But you know Poor Richard’s proverb, don’t you? Three can keep a secret, as long as two of them are dead. This kind of thing always leaks out. Always. And it’s starting to.”
“Why did Elmer V. think you had some at the blood bank?” I asked.
“If I knew, I’d tell you. He said he had reason to believe we were involved with the stuff. I told him he was welcome to search … after I called a couple of County General lawyers and a sorcerer to make sure nobody planted anything that wasn’t there before. He didn’t like that.”
“Good for you!” I said. A lot of white people who make decent money honest to God believe the police are there to protect and to serve, and not for any other reason. If you watch things like that luckless woman dragged out of the phone booth and taken away, if you see them over and over again, you know better. I can’t tell you how Dr. Isidore Berkowitz came to see he couldn’t trust cops any farther than he could throw them. But he had.
He chuckled now. “After Jackson went away, I did talk with a lawyer, to let him know what had happened. He said one bad apple could ruin a whole barrel, and the longer Jackson stayed on the police force, the worse off it would be.”
“He got his name in the paper not so long ago, remember?” I answered. “He had a madam for a girlfriend, or that’s what they said, and he was taking money from her so the cops wouldn’t close down her operation.”
“Was that him? I didn’t make the connection.” Berkowitz said that with the air of a man who hates to miss anything. Come to think of it, Deacon Washington sounded the same way. Then Izzy added, “A madam for a girlfriend, and taking kickbacks from her? A regular snatch purser, that guy.”
I looked at him. I didn’t say anything. What could I say?
“Sorry. I do that once in a while.” He had the grace to seem shamefaced.
“You might have warned me first.”
He spread his hands. I’ve seen Al Harris make exactly the same gesture. “It catches me by surprise sometimes, too,” he said.
“Whatever you say.” But then I thought of something else. “And your lawyer was right. The LAPD isn’t even close to clean, in case you didn’t know.”
“You can judge that better than I can,” he answered. Did he mean I was a private eye and had to deal with cops, or had he realized I was the other thing and not the one, and so I had to worry about cops dealing with me? I couldn’t very well ask. One more mystery being betwixt and between left me with.
Before I could, he paid for lunch. It wasn’t a big check, but I meant to grab it. He beat me to the punch. “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks twice, in fact. The food here is good. And I learned some things I didn’t know before, and God only knows where I would’ve found out about ’em if not for you.”
“Glad to help. It works both ways,” Berkowitz said. “I’d never heard of anything like that sorcerous dragnet the police are using. I’m going to talk to the lawyer again. Something like that has to violate people’s freedom of speech. I bet you can call it an illegal search, too.”
Even if he didn’t trust cops, we came from different worlds. He thought laws and courts could solve problems. Oh, sometimes they can. But don’t they prop some people up and hold other people down a hell of a lot more often?
I tried to spell it out for him. “Be careful what you stick your nose into. You’re liable to be fighting way out of your weight. Remember, Jackson isn’t still a sergeant by accident.”
“He knows where the bodies are buried, you mean?”
