Andrew Fox - Fat White Vampire Blues

Inside, the station looked like most other city government buildings, except maybe a little cleaner. There were the downscale bureaucratic accents Jules remembered well from his nearly thirty years in the coroner’s office-faded, ugly wallpaper; framed photos of the mayor; and fluorescent lights that hummed annoyingly and made everyone look ghoulish (not just Jules, who looked that way in any kind of light).

Jules approached the front desk and coughed. The phlegmy sound made the petite desk clerk look up from the New Orleans Fairgrounds racing form she was studying. Jules was surprised; not that a city employee would be studying a racing form during work hours, but horse-racing season had been over since the spring. He watched her eyes widen for an instant as she took him in. But only an instant; her expression quickly reverted to studied boredom. “Yes? Can I help you?”

“Yeah. I got a call from somebody in your, oh, what’s it called, uh-y’know, where the cops store the stuff they grab from criminals?”

“Evidence and Recovered Items?”

“Yeah. That’s it. They asked me to come in and pick up some stuff of mine that got stolen.”

“Okay. You’ll need to sign in on this list here. And you’ll need to wear this visitor’s badge. Also, you’re gonna need to show some ID before Marvis will release your stuff to you.”

“Yeah, but what if what I’m here to pick up happens tobe my ID? Those thieves left me naked as the day I came into the world. I got a friend who’ll vouch for me. His cell phone number’s here in my pocket.”

The clerk looked infinitely disinterested. “Whatever. Work it out with Marvis.” She slid a clipboard across the desk.

Jules signed his illegible scrawl at the top of the paper, trying to ignore the coffee-induced rumblings in the pit of his stomach. He clipped the bright pink badge to his shirt pocket. “Thanks. So where do I need to go?”

“Down that hallway there. Fifth door on your left. Just past the ladies’ room.” Before Jules could even manage to maneuver himself through the gateway by her desk, the clerk had returned to studying her racing form.

Jules followed her directions, hoping he wouldn’t accidentally walk into the ladies’ room. The room he entered, markedEVIDENCE, was much larger than he’d expected. The air inside smelled of dust, machine oil, sweat-stained leather, and dried herbs. Except for a desk and a narrow walkway by the door, nearly all of the space was taken up by row after row of metal utility shelves. The floor and shelves were packed with bicycles, chrome-plated pistols, purses of all shapes and colors, cemetery statuary, wrought-iron gateposts, sawed-off shotguns, car stereos, television sets, computers, Mac-10 machine pistols, a grenade launcher, and the cleanly severed marble head of Jefferson Davis. It looked like an unlikely hybrid of a Royal Street antiques boutique and a St. Claude Avenue pawnshop.

Jules loudly cleared his throat and waited for the officer in charge to appear. A minute later he heard a loud rustling from the back of the room, and Sergeant Marvis Mancuso, a short, stocky, balding man who looked to be on the cusp of retirement, carefully picked his way through the tangle. “ ‘Evening! What can I do for you?”

Jules was disappointed. He’d halfway been hoping that Mancuso would be familiar to him, one of the cops who used to drop bodies off at the morgue. It would’ve made things easier. But he’d never seen Mancuso before. Now he’d have to rely entirely on his wits and on his long-untried powers of vampiric hypnosis. The thought made Jules’s stomach turn over like the contents of a cement mixer.

Jules leaned across the desk, putting his face as close to Mancuso’s as possible. “Me? I’m here to pick up my things. Wallet, shoes, shirt, belt, pants. The works.”

The officer stepped back from the desk to avoid Jules’s coffee breath. “Do you have your Form 108-B?”

“Form 108-B?”

“You would’ve received it in the mail. It lists what we recovered of yours. I’ll need to see that and a photo ID, please.”

How could he bullshit his way through this? Jules tried desperately to think, but his mind was blank as tapioca. This was the moment he’d been dreading all night. It was now or never. He took a deep breath, then stared piercingly into Mancuso’s watery gray eyes.

“My name is Jules Duchon. Your will is my will. You will get my clothes, my wallet, and my taxi certificate and bring them to me. Then you will forget you ever saw me.”

Mancuso looked confused. His cheeks and eyebrows twitched, like he was lost in the middle of a bad first-day-of-school dream where everyone else was dressed in freshly ironed uniforms and he was naked. Then his eyes refocused on Jules. “Honey,” he stammered. “Honey, look, I’m sorry, okay? I’ll paint the garage next weekend. The Saints are playing the Raiders today. One more win and they could win their division.”

Jules sighed. He was obviously rusty. He redoubled his concentration and spoke even more slowly, sounding like a seventy-eight record playing at thirty-three rpm. “My name is Jules Duchon. You will turn around and bring me my clothes and all my things. After I leave, you will forget I was ever here.”

Mancuso was as glassy-eyed as Christine Gordon inI Walked with a Zombie. “Bring you-your things…”

“Yeah. That’s right. Bring me my things.”

A cloud lifted from Mancuso’s face. He smiled broadly at Jules, a kindly twinkle lighting up his eyes. He turned and walked into one of the narrow, cluttered aisles. Jules waited expectantly.Hey, he thought,that wasn’t so hard after all. I’ve still got the touch.

Mancuso returned with a small pink bicycle, training wheels still attached. He held it by its banana seat and tasseled handlebars and rolled it through the gate. “Here you go, sweetheart,” the officer said, his voice dripping with honey. “We caught the bad man who took this away from you. He’s in a place where he won’t be scaring any pretty little girls anymore, okay?”

Jules turned red.Okay, the hypnosis definitely needs work. “Aww, fuck this already,” he muttered half under his breath. “Mancuso, you stay here. Don’t move a muscle. I’ll get my shit myself.”

The sight of Jules wiggling through the gate roused Mancuso from his trance. “Hey!” he shouted, rubbing his eyes groggily. “You can’t go back there! Only authorized personnel are allowed behind the desk!”

Shit!This was exactly the kind of scene Jules had hoped to avoid. Panic-induced spasms surged through his gut. What to do? Mancuso shook off the last of his grogginess and grabbed Jules’s arm. The vampire’s stomach rumbled like a freight train. Jules locked eyes with Mancuso. One last desperate shot at hypnosis The sergeant clutched his belly, a stunned, pained look on his face. “Oh, Jesus-!” His protruding stomach emitted a gurgling rumble, an exact duplicate of the angry noises Jules’s gut had been making. He let go of Jules’s arm and stumbled backward toward the door. “Jesus Christ! Oh Mama-!” Holding his stomach like it was about to explode, Mancuso bolted out the door. Jules listened to his frantic footsteps echo down the hallway. Then a door slammed. Jules presumed it was the door to the men’s room.

That would keep Mancuso plenty busy for the next few minutes, at least. The notion of pushing his way through the tangled thicket of stolen possessions and actually finding his stuff was a daunting one, but Jules had no other choice. He sucked in his stomach and dived in.

Most of the recovered clothing was stored in clear plastic trash bags in the back of the room. Jules examined the endless mounds in disbelief. Then Fortune graced him with a bucktoothed smile. His checkered pants were pinned to a corkboard on the rear wall, spread out like a tablecloth on a clothesline. Someone had attached a sign to the pants. It read, in blue magic marker,HEY MANCUSO,EAT ANY MORE DOUGHNUTS AND YOU’LL END UP WEARING THESE. Sitting on the floor beneath the pants, in an open plastic sack, were the rest of Jules’s clothes, his wallet, and, most important, his taxi certificate.