Andrew Fox - Fat White Vampire Blues

Jules tossed handfuls of water in his friend’s direction. “Look, I found out where the library is, didn’t I?”

“Resource Center.”

“Whatever. Sorry about the wallop. I had to think fast.”

“Next time, let your brain do the thinking, not your hands.”

They climbed the stairs to the second floor. The Resource Center wouldn’t have looked out of place at a medium-sized university. The facility seemed to have more computers than books. After a few minutes of searching, they found the yearbook collection in a dimly lit, musty-smelling annex room.

The dusty wooden shelves were lined with thick, hardbound editions ofThe Jayson dating back to the 1920s. Jules scooped up ten of the big volumes, starting with the 1976-77 edition and ending with the one dated 1985-86. He set the stack of yearbooks on a nearby table with a heavy thud.

“According to what Mo told us, he coulda been here at Jesuit any of these years.”

“Let’s get cracking, then,” Doodlebug said. He looked around him, clearly uncomfortable, and hugged his arms to his sides. “The sooner we’re out of here and away from all these crucifixes, the happier I’ll be.”

“Amen to that, brother.”

“Are you sure you’ll be able to recognize him?”

“Oh, yeah,” Jules said, laying the first volume flat and skipping over the sections on Student Life and Athletics to the pages with portraits of freshman students. “I got his ugly puss memorized. Maybe he’s a little younger and a little browner in these yearbooks than he was when I saw him, but there’s no way I’d mistake him for anybody else.”

Ninety minutes later the multitude of crucifixes on the walls and in the pages of the yearbooks had begun taking their toll. Both vampires were sweating profusely. Jules was able to skim the first three or four yearbooks fairly quickly; the number of black students during those years was small, only four to six a page. As the years became more recent, the numbers of black students increased. He found himself having to concentrate more closely, matching the sharp chin and cold, cruel eyes of recent memory against a larger number of possible matches. Many of the faces were soft and relatively innocent; these he was able to discount pretty quickly. Others seemed warier, already cynical and hardened… even kids lucky enough to go to Jesuit weren’t immune to the tough influence of the streets, Jules had to remind himself.

He wiped his clammy forehead with his sleeve, then cracked open the 1981-82Jayson and flipped to the freshman photos and descriptions. In no time one portrait leapt off the page and drop-kicked him square on the nose.

“Holy shit… I found him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure!” He quickly read the description beneath the photo. “Look at this-the little fucker was a member of thedebate team! No wonder he talked such a blue streak before pissin‘ on my coffin.”

“Let me see.” Doodlebug pulled the yearbook to his side of the table. Jules prodded the portrait with a thick forefinger. “Malik Raddeaux?That’s his name? I’m surprised. I wouldn’t have expected his real name to be so close to hisnom de guerre.”

“Talk English, would ya?”

“To his gang name. Itis pretty clever, though-substitutingRado forRaddeaux.”

Jules pulled the book back to his side and read the capsule description again. “Be sure and compliment him when you meet him.”

“That won’t be long in coming. Now that we have a name to feed to my contact at thePicayune, we should be able to land some solid leads.”

“Maybe we won’t even hafta bother with your pansy pal at the newspaper.”

Doodlebug frowned. “Why not? You have a better idea?”

Jules smiled triumphantly. “You didn’t read the whole description, did you? TheseJayson‘s, they’re pretty thorough. Didya notice how they list the names of siblings who attend other Catholic schools? Our boy Malik’s got himself a sister.”

The first Elisha Raddeaux listed in the phone book turned out to be a fifty-eight-year-old great-grandmother raising two generations of children in a three-room New Orleans East apartment. The second Elisha Raddeaux had left town, leaving no forwarding address with her former landlord or neighbors. The third and final Elisha Raddeaux lived in a modest but well-kept camelback shotgun on Laurel Street, a couple of blocks from Tipitina’s Uptown Music Club.

The neighborhood was on the dicey side. Several houses hadn’t been occupied in months, maybe years, and were well tattooed with the tags of various neighborhood gangs. Piles of dirty gravel filled the street’s larger potholes, poverty-row Band-Aids for a road in dire need of major surgery. Abandoned shopping carts lay on their sides in the high grass that fronted most of the lots.

In contrast, the house they’d come to visit was recently painted, with a tall, straight fence surrounding it, a neatly trimmed lawn, and a large tin-roofed utility shed out back. Jules tried opening the gate, then noticed it was locked with a neon-green Kryptonite U-lock. Luckily, the gate had a buzzer attached. He rang it.

A moment later a young black woman cautiously pushed aside the drapes from her front window. She looked to be about the right age-late twenties or early thirties, which would fit with the information Jules had gleaned from the yearbook. She opened her window a few inches, just enough to make a shouted conversation feasible.

“What do you want? It’s late.”

“You Elisha Raddeaux?” Jules asked.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Depends what you need to see Elisha Raddeaux about.”

“We’re here to talk about your brother Malik.”

Her expression remained coldly impenetrable. “I don’t got no brother Malik. You got the wrong address. Go bother somebody else.”

She started to close her window. The humidity made it stick. She cursed. Doodlebug took advantage of the brief opening. Dressed in a flattering silk blouse and high-slit skirt, he was the model of confidence again. “Ms. Raddeaux? We have a very important reason to speak with your brother. We know all about his special condition. We need to warn him about a new bloodborne disease that’s been ravaging the blood-drinking community. It’s vital that we reach him.”

She stopped struggling with the window. “You on the level with this? You sayin‘ he might be in some kinda health trouble?”

“My name is Debbie Richelieu, Ms. Raddeaux. I’m a physician and researcher from California. My staff and I have been tracking the transmission of this new disease across the country. I’ve made it my business to get word of a few simple precautions to every known blood drinker. My associates and I overlooked the initial outbreak of AIDS, and we’re determined not to repeat that mistake with this new syndrome. Will you talk with us?”

She stared suspiciously at Jules. “Who’s the fat dude?”

“That’s Julius. My assistant. Don’t worry, he’s quite harmless.”

The drapes fell shut. A few seconds later the front door opened and Elisha Raddeaux walked across her well-tended front lawn to the gate. Jules was surprised to see that she was wearing a black catsuit and a matching, rhinestone-trimmed jacket; given the late hour, he’d expected her to walk out in a rumpled bathrobe. Her tiny waist flared into an impressive set of hips, wide enough to carry a week’s worth of groceries and half a Little League team. The fullness of her hips wasn’t mirrored in the contours of her face, however. As she unlocked the gate, Jules could see some of the same angular harshness in her features that he’d noted in her brother’s.

She warily hefted the U-lock in her fist and swung open the gate. “C’mon in. I guess wedo have somethin‘ to talk about, after all.”