Andrew Fox - Fat White Vampire Blues

Montegut Street seemed unusually quiet tonight. The stoops of the boarded-up houses he passed were empty; none of the usual winos or junkies were sitting out, talking about their next score. No badass kids stood on his corner, playing Master P or the Ninth Ward Devil Dawgs on boom boxes bigger than a Yugo. It was almost eerie. Had the cops pulled a raid while he was out?

A stretch Cadillac limousine was parked on the bare dirt lot across from his house. Jules had never seen it before. In fact, he’d never seen one like it before anywhere, and he considered himself an expert on Cadillacs. He pulled into his narrow driveway, then walked over to take a closer look. It was a brand-new Seville with gold wheels and trim, windows tinted midnight black, a custom stretch job that probably cost close to seventy grand. Jules eyed the stripped cars that lined his block, rusting, doorless heaps that sat forlornly on their bare axles.Whoever owns that limo, Jules thought,must not worry much about money if he parks his ride on this street.

He turned to walk back to his house. He paused in the middle of the street to admire the sagging two-and-a-half-story camelback, silhouetted by the moon, leaning steeply toward the river with a lusty death wish. His castle. Each hurricane that had butted heads with New Orleans had made his house lean a little farther south, until now Jules estimated its riverward tilt to be at least ten degrees. But the house had persevered. It was a survivor, just like he was.

Something was different about it tonight. Hadn’t he left his porch light on? The front of his house was just as dark as the surrounding blocks, which hadn’t known working street lamps in nearly a decade.

Maybe the bulb had burned out.

Jules climbed the cinder block steps carefully; at his weight, a tumble could do him real damage. Despite his elaborate caution, he nearly tripped over something at the edge of the porch. Something hard and metallic that screeched against the worn wooden floor when he kicked it.

It was his iron-barred security door. It had been torn off its hinges. And its thick bars were twisted like pipe cleaners.

“What the hell-?” Jules muttered. His sense of comfort at being back home evaporated like spit from an August sidewalk.

The inner door to his house was partially open, swaying slightly with the river breeze. Its knob was crushed.

No ordinary burglar had done this. Run-of-the-mill thieves would’ve pried the bars off one of his back windows.

Jules knelt down to examine the twisted wreckage of his security door. The dried mud and dead leaves that had caked his porch for months were undisturbed, except for footprints. No signs heavy equipment had been used. But no one, not even a champion weight lifter, was strong enough to mangle that security door with his bare hands. Maybe back in his vampiric prime, Jules could’ve given those bars the kind of pretzel-job they’d suffered tonight. Maybe. Or maybe not.

Jules placed the twisted metal back on his porch and shook his head. Another vampire? It was unthinkable. Vampires didn’t screw with each other. Ever since Europe’s vampire population had nearly annihilated itself through internecine warfare during the years of the Black Plague, the notion of sovereign and separate territories had remained a sacred creed among vampires. One vampire might invite another to share his or her territory. But unwelcome incursions simply didn’t happen.

Whatever.He pushed what remained of his front door open and strode into his living room. Whoever or whatever the burglar was, and however he’d managed to bend inch-thick iron, he’d picked the wrong homeowner to fuck with.

Jules headed straight for his music listening room, steeling himself for the worst. Outside Tulane University’s music archives, he owned what was probably the most extensive collection of early New Orleans jazz on original pressings in the entire city. If sold to a knowledgeable dealer or collector, his vintage sounds could fetch close to ten thousand dollars. Yet not a single album was out of place.

His battered old Philips television set sat undisturbed on its stand, the half-watched Alan Ladd video from last week still loaded in the VCR. His Depression-era pulp collection? Untouched. His mother’s antique flatware? In the drawer where she’d left it. Even the computer his buddy Erato had talked him into buying was still on Jules’s kitchen table, half buried in dusty floppy diskettes.

So what had the thief stolen? Upstairs was nothing but a set of bedroom furniture and Jules’s clothes, which he couldn’t imagine anybody wanting. His mother’s things were so moth-eaten that even the lowliest of Magazine Street antiques hustlers wouldn’t touch them. The basement held nothing but Jules’s coffin and seven decades’ worth of accumulated junk. Surely, someone hadn’t torn open his most securely locked door just to tour his home.

A clatter of falling cans made Jules jump. The sound had come from downstairs. Could the thief still be here? What would he want down in the basement? Jules’s spirits perked up again. If the burglarwas down in the basement, that meant he was trapped; the only exit was the narrow stairway Jules began to descend. And if the burglar was trapped, that meant an easy meal. Home-delivered and piping hot, more convenient than Domino’s!

Jules pulled a cord that switched on a dim twenty-five-watt bulb. “Anybody down there?” He couldn’t see anyone, and no one answered. From the top of the stairs, it looked like nothing had been touched at all.

Wait. That wasn’t true. Somethingwas different. His coffin.

He descended the stairs as quickly as his knees would allow. Someone had spray-painted his coffin in big red letters.

NO POACHING WHITE BOY

The words made no sense. Jules read them three times, figuring either he must be reading them wrong, or else the vandal was a product of New Orleans’s dreadful public schools. He read them aloud, hoping maybe the sound of them would help him solve this puzzle.

“No. Poaching. White. Boy.”Maybe white boy’s a kind of fish, like redfish?

The shadows that draped the spare lumber in the corner of the basement sprang to life. A man stepped from the darkness to the center of the room. He was tall and broad-shouldered, dressed in a sharply tailored black suit, starched white shirt, and crimson bow tie. He couldn’t be older than twenty-four or twenty-five. His skin was ash gray, a color Jules remembered from nights in the morgue. When he stepped into the light, a slight reddish brown tone underlay the gray of his face. He stared unflinchingly into Jules’s eyes. The intruder looked confident enough to lead the Saints to a Super Bowl win.

“So you’re Jules Duchon. Big-time New Orleans vampire. Huh. Pretty much what I expected. ‘Specially after I seen this dump you live in.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

The intruder smiled. His voice was velvety smooth, but higher and reedier than Jules would’ve expected. “Me? I’m your new landlord, Jules. I’m the man. I come to set down thelaw. You an‘ me hafta have a serious talk. You been steppin’ outside the linesway too long.”

Questions buzzed through Jules’s mind like angry gnats. How did this interloper know he was a vampire? Why the strange skin?

“Buddy, I am gonna make youseriously sorry that you busted in here and messed with my property.”

This infuriating young punk was undoubtedly faster than Jules was. He’d have to immobilize him somehow. Jules hadn’t tried out his vampiric hypnotism in years. He had a nagging fear that he couldn’t get it working again. But he was so pissed off, he figured his righteous fury was hot enough to boil away any rust.

Jules concentrated hard. He arched his eyebrows and opened his eye sockets as wide as they would go. Boy, would this prowler be sorry! He’d freeze him with terror. He’d turn his blood to freon. He’d make him shit icicles.