Andrew Fox - Fat White Vampire Blues

That man was Tiny Idaho. Anarchist. Tree hugger. Bearded ex-hippie radical. The best gadget man Jules had ever run across. Tiny did most of his business over the Web nowadays, but he still maintained an inconspicuous, disguised storefront operation in a broken-down strip mall buried on a side street in suburban Kenner. Jules had used his services for years.

He checked the contents of his wallet. Thirty-two dollars and a dollop of change. Not a heck of a lot to offer Tiny Idaho for what Jules wanted rigged up. Maybe Tiny would consider it a down payment? Jules hated the idea of going into hock yet again, but he couldn’t think of any alternative. Maybe he could cut a few corners. If the gas canisters in his old garage had survived the fire, then he wouldn’t have to buy new ones.

There was just one more hurdle he had to jump before he could begin his night’s work. What to do about Malice X’s toughs, who might still be scouting the neighborhood for him? Once he was in his car, he could be out of the Quarter in hardly more than ninety seconds; but the short walk from Maureen’s door to the garage was too risky. Even his wolf-form was too conspicuous.

Tooconspicuous-maybe that was the answer. If he couldn’t make himself small or stealthy, then hiding in plain sight was his best option. The Quarter wasfull of weird characters… mimes, human statues, and tuba players, to list only the most common. Dressed as a costumed street performer (the more outlandish, the better), he could fit right in.

He climbed the stairs and returned to Maureen’s walk-in closet. Surely she’d have some old thing lying around that would fit the bill… a stage outfit she used in her stripper’s act, or maybe even a Carnival costume. After digging through a tangle of outsized dresses and gowns, Jules found what he was looking for: a harlequin’s outfit. The black-and-white checkered jumpsuit, with its garish frills on the collar, sleeves, and cuffs, certainly looked big enough for him. There was an easy enough way for him to find out.

The jumpsuit was a considerably tighter squeeze than Maureen’s bathrobe had been. The fully elasticized waist was stretched to its limit. So long as he didn’t inhale too deeply or try any fancy gymnastics, he’d be all right. He couldn’t find the bell-trimmed cap that went with the outfit, so he went searching for something else to cover his head and face with. A broken pink lamp shade from the attic, with two eyeholes cut out, fit the bill nicely.

He slung his trench coat over his arm and headed fearlessly out the door. Malice X might scoff at him. Maureen might doubt him. Doodlebug might pity him. But starting tonight, he’d show them all.

Jules circled his old block, scanning the street and weed-strewn lots for lurkers. Montegut Street was as deathly quiet as a Pacific atoll after a bomb test. He rolled down his windows. His nose twitched happily as it detected the familiar scents of diesel train exhaust and fermenting grain wafting in from river barges.

Jules parked. His garage appeared to be the least damaged portion of his house. If the neighborhood’s scavengers hadn’t been too thorough, he might still drive off with a couple of usable gas canisters. At least the looters had made it easy for him to get inside. A roughly five-foot-tall hole had been cut through the garage door’s aluminum panels.

He peered through the darkness at what remained of nearly a century’s worth of personal and family history. As he’d figured, every one of his power tools was long gone, along with his lawn mower and gardening implements. They’d even taken the poured-concrete lawn Madonna that Jules had wrapped in burlap and stored away after his mother died.

But over in the corner, half buried under the cinders of a pile ofLife magazines fallen from an overhead shelf, were three of Jules’s laughing-gas canisters. Obviously, the looters hadn’t known what to make of them. Jules smiled. The winds of luck were finally blowing his way. He dragged the canisters over to the ruined door and shoved them through the jagged hole.

His foot hit something hard and sharp-edged. The object scraped loudly against the concrete floor. The sudden screeching nearly made Jules’s heart burst through the top of his head. As soon as he regained his breath, he looked to see what lay at his feet. It was a box. A metal footlocker.

He bent down to open it. He hadn’t seen one like it since the war years.

Then a vague but thrilling recollection tickled the ivories of his memory synapses. Could it be-?

The footlocker’s rusty hinges gave way as Jules forced the box open. The distant moonlight revealed a bundle of carefully folded cloth, faded and musty but immeasurably vibrant. Jules’s heart leapt as he lifted the bundle out of the locker. He was certain now that his luck had changed.

Once more, after a span of half a century, he held in his hands the hood, shirt, and cloak of that fabled nemesis of saboteurs, that mysterious defender of freedom and democracy… the Hooded Terror.

Jules loathed Kenner with every fiber of his being. After dark, the suburb, penned in by swamps and airport runways, had the feel of a graveyard where even the ghosts were too bored to stir up trouble. The only exciting thing that ever happened out there was the occasional plane crash. But Kenner was where Tiny Idaho worked his magic, so Kenner was the place Jules had to be.

He pulled into the parking lot of a small, poorly lit two-story shopping strip. Its windows were boarded up and plastered withFOR LEASE signs, except for two occupied storefronts. One was an uninviting bar on the ground level called The Lounge Lizard-only it was really called The Longe Lizard, because lounge had been misspelled on the hand-painted sign next to the screen door. The other tenant, Readwood Forest Used Books and Comix, was on the second level.

Jules climbed the stairs to the second-story bookstore, barely visible as an operating business from the street. From downstairs, a jukebox voice warbled on about hunting dogs and guns, punctuated by a sharper, more distinct sound, possibly a pool stick being broken over a skull. Readwood Forest was dark, but Jules knew that Tiny Idaho lived in an apartment and workshop behind the store.

Jules rang the bell. He waited a long minute, listening to the scratchy country music from below. No footsteps. No lights turning on in the store. Jules rang again. This time, a distorted voice crackled from a weather-beaten intercom beneath the doorbell.

“The store’s closed, man. The weekly comics shipment comes in tomorrow afternoon after three. Good night.”

Jules spoke quickly into the intercom. “Hey, Mr. Idaho? It’s Jules Duchon. We done business before. I’m a buyer of your ‘special’ merchandise.”

The intercom was silent for a few seconds. “Oh yeah? Hang tight while I put on some pants. Be there in a sec, man.”

A minute later the door creaked open. “This better be important, man. You yanked me away from an episode ofAmerica’s Most Wanted. C’mon in before the skeeters eat you alive.”

Under the dim illumination of a bug zapper, Jules took a look at his host. He’d only seen Tiny Idaho in this much light once before, about four years ago, when he’d picked up his first set of laughing-gas canisters. The man’s most prominent feature was his long, thickly tangled beard, made up of curly clumps of gray and red hair that reached all the way to his outsized belt buckle. His small eyes, made even smaller by wire-rimmed bifocals, and two large, somewhat yellowed teeth were all that was visible through his abundance of hair. In overall stature, Tiny was neither small nor huge. Jules ached to ask this medium-sized man where his nickname had come from, but he thought it wisest to keep the question to himself.