Andrew Fox - Fat White Vampire Blues

Doodlebug rolled his eyes. “You’ve been readingway too many pulp mystery stories, Jules-” “ ‘H.T.’ ”

“Whatever! What stereotypical thinking! Do you really thinkevery man drops a hundred IQ points whenever he sees a woman sashaying his way? What if he doesn’t like white women? What if he’s a happily married deacon in his church? For that matter, what if he’s gay?”

Huh.Creepy, but maybe Doodlebug had a point there. “So you don’t like that plan?”

“No-I definitely do not.”

“Well, okay, don’t get your panties in a bunch. Here’s another plan. If he’s human and he’s eaten anything at all in the last twelve hours, I can get him runnin‘ outta that alley like a rat with its tail on fire. Thenyou can whack him over the head.”

“How do you plan to manage that?”

Jules grinned beneath his hood. “Hey, you ain’t theonly one who’s developed new powers since that last time we met.”

“If this would only work on a human, what do you think the chances are that he’s a vampire?”

“I dunno-why wouldn’t Malice X have human flunkies, as well as vampires?”

“Good point. He could only afford to create a small number of vampire followers; he needs to supply them all with blood, and if he makes too many of them, there’s no way he could remain inconspicuous for long. Maybe only his top lieutenants are vampires. Keeping an eye on his limo is a fairly low-level chore. Still, if the guardis a vampire, what then?”

Jules grabbed his unwieldy black dart gun from the backseat. “Then there’sthis.”

Doodlebug raised an eyebrow. “So you’ll kill him with a dart through the heart?”

“Who said anything about killin‘? I’llwound him. And then you can whack him over the head.”

There was no shortage of scrap lumber lying in the derelict lots along this stretch of Baronne Avenue. Doodlebug quickly selected a solid, hefty plank for himself. They turned the corner onto Melpomene Street and instinctively ducked within the shadows. Darkness covered the street and broken sidewalks like a muddy, threadbare blanket. Jules and Doodlebug wrapped themselves in this blanket as they approached the alleyway that held Malice X’s black limousine.

Jules flattened himself against the brick wall adjoining the entrance to the alley. Why was he hesitating? Was he nervous about going into action as the Hooded Terror again? Afraid he couldn’t live up to the heroic tradition he’d established for that identity? Going into action was like jumping off a high dive, he told himself; the worst part was taking that first step, but then gravity took over. He peeled himself off the wall and lurched into the alleyway, his hooded bulk blocking nearly two-thirds of its width.

“Hey, Jeeves, how about a spin in that car a yours?”

The guard gaped at the tremendous apparition in front of him. “Who orwhat the fuck are you supposed to be?”

Jules steeled himself for a full-strength application of his Diarrhea Stare. Luckily, the guard was looking him right in the eyes. “You can call me the Hooded Terror,” he said, forcing himself to recall his last few solid meals and their terrible aftermaths. “The ‘Hooded’ part is a no-brainer. The ‘Terror’ part will become obvious real soon.”

The guard reached for his holstered gun, but then he clutched his stomach and doubled over. “Oh Mama-!” Horrifying rumbles and squealings emitted from the man’s gut as he stumbled past Jules toward the street. Jules barely had time to turn around before a resoundingthunk! announced that Doodlebug had performed his half of the operation.

Together they dragged the unconscious man to the back of the alley. Jules sucked in his belly as best he could but still scraped his love handles against the rough brick wall and the polished flanks of the car. It was a tight squeeze, but he made it.

Doodlebug placed his nose close to the tinted windows and stared inside the car. “I can’t see anyone. If no one came piling out while we were shanghaьng that guard, I don’t suppose we have any hiders in there.”

“Then let’s go find us a good stakeout spot.”

They crouched behind an abandoned Mercury Grand Marquis sitting on Melpomene two houses down from the alleyway, situated so that Malice X wouldn’t walk past it on his way back to his limousine. The massive Mercury made an excellent vantage point; all four wheels and tires had been removed, so the vehicle sat flush on the ground, and weeds had begun colonizing the rusting shell. With the way weeds grow in New Orleans, Jules figured, in a few more years it wouldn’t be recognizable as a car at all. It would be a big green lump.

The two large stray dogs that Jules had nearly run down trotted over to their hiding place. They sniffed Doodlebug’s legs and wagged their tails. “Geddoutta here!” Jules whispered fiercely, shooing them away with a piece of loose weatherstripping from the car. “We ain’t got nothing for you to eat! Keep buggin‘ me and I swear I won’ttouch the brakes next time.Scat! ” The dogs scampered off in the direction of the club.

They watched the club for the next half hour. The left side of the building, labeledHIT, was larger and better maintained, benefiting from a fresh coat of paint and deeply tinted, double-paned windows. The right side, wearing a sign that readRUN, was hardly more than a take-out liquor shack, marred by a sagging porch, dangerously leaning steps, and flaking paint. The only discernible activity came from the few customers who entered theRUN portion and exited a few minutes later carrying quarts of beer. Snatches of rap and RB music escaped into the hot night each time they opened the leaflet-plastered door. No one entered or left theHIT side, at least not by the front door. The windows, tinted like those on the limousine, revealed nothing. The only sound to escape that side of the building was the steady hum of a powerful air-conditioning condenser.

“Not much action here,” Jules said, more to break the silence than anything else.

“No,” Doodlebug replied. “If Malice X conducts his drug and business transactions in that building, we can safely assume he’s doing it in the nicer side. It’s likely his customers have a less conspicuous entrance than the front door. Maybe a rear entrance that connects with one of those abandoned houses on the other side of the block.”

“But no matter which door he uses, he’s gotta come back this way, to get his car.”

“Unless he contacts his driver by cell phone, and his driver pulls the car around to the back entrance.”

“Yeah. But tonight his driver’s takin‘ an unscheduled nap. So he’s gotta come. Sometime before sunrise, he’s gotta come.”

After another twenty minutes, Jules’s adrenaline rush had completely subsided. It was replaced by the kind of dull torpor he remembered from thousands of nights of waiting for customers in his cab. The broken sidewalk was beginning to make his rear end and lower back ache, despite the thin cushioning provided by his wadded-up cloak. He kept having to shoo scurrying palmetto bugs away from the two of them, although Doodlebug didn’t seem bothered by the big cockroaches. To top things off, their observation post didn’t exactly smell wintergreen fresh. The pungent, chemical odor of dripping motor oil mingled with the scents of human and dog piss and week-old garbage, a combination Jules doubted even a roach could love.

Jules tapped his friend on the shoulder. “Hey, D.B., don’t you wish we were out by the bayou again, stakin‘ out the Higgins Boat Plant? Boy, were those nights sweet. Nothing around but us and the moon and the trees and the water. Everything smelled clean, like the ocean. Shit, I even miss them ol’ Nazis.”

Doodlebug smiled, but his eyes were serious. “Watch yourself, Jules. Too much nostalgia can be like a cancer. It’ll eat you up from the inside.”