Andrew Fox - Fat White Vampire Blues

“So what’s with the clown suit?” Tiny Idaho asked. “You coming back from a kiddie party?”

“I’mincognito,” Jules answered, straightening his collar. It was a good word, and he liked using it whenever he could.

“That’s cool. So what can I do you for? You need exploding balloons, or a nitrous kit for your clown car?”

“Naww. A few years back I bought some laughing gas off you. And you sold me a set of plans for installing it in my trunk and releasing the gas into the passenger compartment.”

“Oh yeah?” His host shut the door behind Jules and rubbed his hairy chin. “Yeah… I remember now. How’d it all work out, man?”

Jules decided not to go into the whole sad story. “Eh, all right. But now I got another project I need your help with.”

Tiny Idaho raised an eyebrow and grinned. “It involve explosives? I just got in some great stuff from Taiwan. These little honeys’ll peel the tread right off a battle tank.”

“Uh, no. It’s another laughing-gas deal. Only this time, I need an automatic-release nozzle that works off a timer. Think you can throw somethin‘ together for me?”

The bearded man laughed, his small eyes sparkling behind his spectacles. “That’s all? Man, you come in here dressed like that-I figure you’d give me somethinginteresting! Come on back to my workshop while I cobble something together. Unless you’d rather browse out front here?”

Jules quickly glanced around the bookshop. The closely bunched shelves were packed with books on ecology and the evils of industrialism. An entire wall was taken up by racks of comics. Jules recognized vintage copies ofZap! Comics andFabulous Furry Freak Brothers; neither of them his favorites. He followed Tiny Idaho through the door at the rear of the bookshop, into the workshop beyond.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” his host said. Jules inhaled the strong, metallic odors of machine oil and freshly tooled steel. Long wooden tables set along three of the walls were covered with a jumble of drill presses, plastic explosives, tangles of wire, and shiny green plastic motherboards. “You got one of them gas canisters with you,” Tiny Idaho asked, “or you need me to rustle you up some new ones?”

“I got ‘em downstairs in my trunk. You need me to bring one up?”

“Yeah. That’d be what we call in the biz Step One.”

Jules went downstairs to his car and fetched the canister, then spent a few minutes describing the kind of setup he envisioned. As his host listened and asked questions, Tiny Idaho rifled through a series of tool chests and parts drawers, pulling out lengths of wire, a soldering iron, and a digital timer.

Jules leaned against a table and watched him work. The gadget man’s fingers danced a ballet of miniaturized construction.

Jules noticed that his host had paused to give him the fuzzy eyeball. “Hey, man. This gas project of yours-is it political or personal?”

“Personal. Politics is a dirty business. You see this?” Jules put his hands around his own neck.

“Yeah?”

“This is what I’m tryin‘ to save.”

“I got you, man. That’s good.” Tiny Idaho seemed to relax some. He grinned and picked up his soldering iron again. “These last few years, man, I’ve gotten so sick and tired of building antipersonnel bombs for every right-wing Fascist wacko who visits my site on the Web… I mean, business is business-I got bills to pay just like everybody else-but this gig of mine ain’t half the fun it used to be. Y’know, back in my salad days, I was doing stuff thatmattered. Shit, I even got a gig from the Weathermen once, back in ‘seventy-one-”

“Yeah, pal, the times, they are a-changin‘.”

“You can say that again. Hey, I’m runnin‘ a special this week on tree spikes. Can you use some?”

Jules raised an eyebrow. “If they’re wood, I could use some.”

“You can’t pound wooden spikes into a tree, man.”

“It’s not trees I’m wantin‘ to pound ’em into. Hey, you ever make up a batch of silver bullets before?”

“Silverbullets? That’s definitely a special-order item. What, you going hunting for werewolves?”

“Somethin‘ like that. Hey! How about a gun that shootswooden bullets? Can you do that?”

Tiny Idaho frowned. “Naww. The ballistics would be all off. Besides, the bullets’d probably shatter before they left the barrel. How about some kinda souped-up crossbow?”

Jules flinched slightly. “Eh, maybe. But don’t call it across bow-and it can’t be shaped like no cross, neither.”

Forty minutes later, Jules left Tiny Idaho’s shop with everything necessary for the remote and precise release of laughing gas. Jules gave him thirty dollars as a down payment. After a lengthy discussion, the gadget man said he’d have a prototype “handheld wooden-projectile launcher” ready for Jules’s inspection by the end of the week.

Jules carefully loaded the equipment in his trunk. He climbed into the Lincoln and started its rumbly engine. Before he yanked the transmission stalk into drive, the scream of a jetliner shook the night. For a brief second the plane was silhouetted against the yellow orb of the moon. Jules’s right hand drifted across to the old metal footlocker resting on the seat beside him.

He opened the footlocker’s lid. Tenderly, he smoothed a decades-old crease out of his cloak, rubbing the rough, dusty cloth between his forefinger and callused thumb. He smiled. In just another few nights jetliners wouldn’t be the only great winged things darkening the moon.

Three and a half hours later Jules piloted his Lincoln through the empty stall spaces outside the French Market and parked behind the Palm Court Jazz Cafй. It was relaxation time. And catching the second set of Theo “Porkchop” Chambonne’s midnight jam session of traditional jazz fit the bill to a T.

Some RR was definitely called for. The trip to Kenner had been unsettling, a frightening vision of the strip-mall horror that had sprung up outside New Orleans. Then there had been the trip across the Causeway… twenty-four nerve-racking miles with nothing but a slender guardrail between him and the black depths of Lake Pontchartrain. That old wives’ tale about vampires and moving water might just be a myth, but even so, the idea of being surrounded by so much water gave him a case of the jitters.

Setting up his equipment inside the American Veterans Union Hall had gone surprisingly easily (once he’d found the place). The building was set a good way back from Highway 190, half hidden in a patch of piney woods, perfect for Jules’s purposes. The thin plywood door had a puny lock, which busted easily in Jules’s huge paw. The meeting hall was nothing more than an oblong room with a low ceiling, a plain podium, and stacks of folding metal chairs leaning against the walls. Jules quickly located a broom closet, which held his canisters of laughing gas very nicely.

But now it was definitely time for some RR. A small group of black men, all dressed in sweat-rumpled suits, stood beneath the music club’s rear overhang, talking and laughing, their faces lit by the orange glows of stubby cigarettes. Musicians, not vampires, Jules told himself; they were all right. He recognized the slight, elderly man at the center of the group, even though it had been months-years, maybe? — since he’d last heard him play in person. That beak-shaped nose, combined with the tufts of fuzzy white hair that peeked from the edges of his brown fedora, was a dead giveaway.

“Chop!” Jules called, waving vigorously. “Hey, Chop! You on break?”

“Yeah. Who’s that?” Porkchop Chambonne turned to stare at the hulking figure approaching him from the street. He tipped back his fedora to get a better look, and his watery eyes widened. “Oh mah Gawd, boys, it’s Mr. Bingle, come to pay us a visit!”