it's been four years
since the death of us.

i'll never forget your face that day--
so drawn and gone.
or how we talked for only an hour
or how i went to work
and then came home to a house
hollow of you.

i didn't think then that
it would be the last time
i ever laid eyes on you.

but it surely was, so...

happy anniversary.

Okay... Here's the bonus installment because I said I would... Hope ya like...

SEVEN

"Can you tell me if Dallas is working tonight?"

"Who?"

"Dallas. I think that was her name. She danced for me the other night and I wanted to come in and see her again."

"No girls here by that name, pal, but we got lotsa others—"

"That's all right, thanks anyway."

I hang up. I cross the number out in the book and move on to the next one. I've spent the last thirty minutes calling every strip club I can find a listing for. Working the phone is tedious, but sometimes it pays off. I'm an hour in and halfway through my third L.A. directory when it finally does. Dallas works at a joint called the Blue Veil in Hollywood. The woman's voice on the other end tells me Dallas will definitely be in later. I thank her and hang up.

I have some questions for Reesa so I head to the Tropicana where I am directed backstage to her dressing room. The gold star on the red painted door bears her name. I knock.

"Yes?"

"It's me. Mick."

"C'min."

The room is only half as big again as a good-sized walk-in closet, but it is crammed full with amenities that include a costume wardrobe, an old-timey dressing blind, a television, an antique bureau, a mini-fridge and a futon.

I find her seated at the bureau, painting her face in the lighted mirror there. She wears the red silk kimono I like so much. From the way it folds open invitingly just below the neck I can tell she isn't wearing much underneath.

"Well this is a nice surprise," she says, standing and taking my hands in hers and painting my stubbly cheek with red brushstroke lips.

"Oh, look what I've done," she says, rubbing out the lip-mark memento I would just as soon have kept. She takes my hat and directs me to the futon. "Sit. Make yourself comfortable."

Like a good soldier, I do as I'm told.

"Can I pour you a drink?"

"What have you got?" I ask.

With a sly smile, Reesa delves into a bureau drawer and comes out with an unopened bottle of Macallen Eighteen. "I asked the bartender what you drank after you left the other night. Hope you don't mind."

I don't and tell her so. She locates a couple glasses and pours us each a healthy belt and hands me mine.

"To new friends," she says glass held out.

"New friends," I agree.

We clink glasses. We drink. She pulls the bureau chair closer and sits so that our knees touch. Times like this I wish I had more feeling in my limbs.

I start to get a cigarette out, but stop. "You mind if I smoke?"

"Not so long as you share."

I stab two smokes between my lips, set them on fire, hand her one. She takes hold of it delicately, branding the tip with her lips like she did my cheek.

"So are you here on business or pleasure?"

"Business."

"That's too bad." She smiles. "Okay, what can I do for you?"

"Well, for starters, you can tell my why you lied to me."

The only tell that the remark has hit home is the slight catch of smoke in her throat.

"What do you mean?"

"You told me Raya just ran away from Vin's. But that's not how it happened, is it?"

Long pause. "No," she says softly, eyes in her lap.

"How do you expect me to help you find your sister if you won't level with me?"

"I'm sorry," she says. "I shouldn't have lied."

"Why did you?" I wait. The smoke from our cigarettes mingles like spirits in the air.

"Because. Because I was ashamed," she says, surprising me by meeting my eyes now. "I caught them together and even though I knew deep down what kind of man he was I took his side over hers. I was weak and scared of losing what I had with him so I blamed Raya."

She shakes her head, blows smoke, shrugs. "The fact that you gave your own sister the boot after your boyfriend raped her isn't such an easy thing to tell a stranger the first five minutes you've known him."

A tear makes a break for her jaw line, but Reesa catches it and bats it angrily away. I can't tell if she's mad at herself or the tear or me. Maybe all three.

"Now look what you've gone and done." She does her best to catch the other conspirators on the brink but there are too many for her and she gives up.

"I'm sorry. I just had to know."

"Well now you do."

"I'm sorry," I say again, taking my own stab at wiping away the tears. I don't have any more luck than she did.

"You probably think I'm a horrible person to do something like that, don't you?"

"No," I say meaning it. "You were a drug addict. Drug addicts do all kinds of things when they're hooked that they aren't proud of later. It goes with the territory."

There is a glimmer of recognition in her eyes. "You sound like you know."

"I know."

When the kiss comes it takes me by surprise. So much so that I pull away. A fact that surprises me even more than the kiss.

"What's wrong? Don't you like me, Mick?"

"Sure I like you," I say. She has no idea.

"Well then?"

The statement sits like an unread contract between us. As tempted as I am to grab a pen and sign my name, I stand up instead. I've got rules about this sort of thing. A junky like me can't go breaking his rules. Bad things happen once that starts.

"I can't."

"Why not?" She pouts all cute and girlish.

"I've got rules."

"What kind of rules?"

"About getting too involved."

"Does that go for clients or for everyone?"

"Take your pick," I say, looking around for where she put my hat. Why is it you can never find your goddamn hat when you're in a hurry?

Reesa stands now and kittens up to me. Her fingers walk my tie. "Well you know what I always say—"

"What's that?" I ask, knowing I shouldn't; knowing I'm just opening the door for her to wedge one of those perfect little size six feet in it.

"Rules are like hymens—made to be broken." She grins, too cute for her own good.
Too goddamn cute by half.

My turn to smile. "You always say that, huh?"

She shakes her head making her red curls jingle and bounce. "Not really. First time."

She looks me deep in the eye, and blows smoke as she stubs her butt out in her glass.

"Well I guess if you feel that strongly about it then a kiss goodbye is out of the question."

I nod. "Completely."

She raises her face to kiss me anyway, her lips opening like flower petals in bloom.

"I'll mess your hair and makeup all up," I warn, our mouths almost touching now.

"It wouldn't be much worth doing if you didn't."

I grab hold of those curls and we kiss like an electric shock. Her mouth tastes of Scotch and smoke which could be unpleasant but isn't. I haven't let myself get this close to a woman in ages because of my penchant for picking the wrong ones. Call it a knack. I am overwhelmed by fear and desire. It's been a long time since I've felt either. Since I've felt much of anything. The numbness that comes with being undead isn't just physical, it's emotional too. Anger is the one exception. There always seems to be plenty of that on hand. Maybe it's what makes us vampires capable of the things we're made to do. I don't know. What I do know is that right now with her I feel more alive than I have in longer than I care to consider.

"There, now that wasn't so bad, was it?" she asks when we part.

I don't trust myself to speak, so I just shake my head. I want more. Lots more if you want to know the truth.

"Well I'd ask you stay, but I have a show to do in a half hour."

"And I have a girl to find." I locate my hat in plain sight on a low shelf and mash it on.

"How about if we get together later when we can take our time with things? I'm off tomorrow night."

I open my mouth to say forget it, but what comes out sounds more like "sure".

She grins playfully. "Your place or mine?"

"Better make it yours. I don't have a bed."

"You don't? Then where do you sleep?"

"In a freezer," I deadpan. She laughs. She thinks I'm joking. I let her keep thinking it. "Where's your place at?"

Reesa moves toward the dressing blind at the back of the room, unknotting the red silk belt that holds the matching kimono in check as she goes. She stops beside it, turns back to me. Red silk puddles like blood at her feet. I try to keep my eyes polite, but sometimes they get fresh all on their own. This is one of those times.

Clad only in a smile brimming with mischief she shrugs. "You're a detective. Find me."

I need a payphone. I aim the Fairlane for Canter's Deli. As I roll south down a car-barnacled Hollywood surface street an unchanging pair of headlights in the Fairlane's rearview makes me think I'm being tailed again. I take a couple turns out of my way just to be sure. Whoever is following me doesn't know what the hell they're doing. The tail is too obvious and amateurish even for cops. So then who? The possibilities are practically endless. I haven't exactly been racking up acquaintances who would fall into the 'new friend' category just lately.

I take a right, then a quick left into a narrow alleyway that curls behind a set of overpriced green-roofed condos. I pull in behind a brown dumpster and cut the lights. I don't have to wait long before the my tail—a familiar-looking '77 blue Ford pick-up as it turns out—pulls in after me.

When I see he's committed, I throw the Fairlane into reverse and punch it, hoping I can get close enough to at least get a look at the driver. White-walled tires smoke and squeal as the powerful V-8 engine drags me back the way I just came. Seeing me bearing down on him like the hammer of God, my tail panics, turns rabbit. A lot closer to the mouth of the alley than me, the pick-up manages to back out into the street before I'm even halfway there. Through the passenger side window, I just catch a glimpse of a white male face and over-styled blond pompadour behind the wheel before the Ford lays rubber and peels away into the night.

Canter's.

I park in the side lot, step over the bum that lies like a speed bump on the sidewalk out front, and shoulder my way through a pair of smudged glass doors. I wave off the cute hostess who offers to seat me, and beeline-it over to the pay phone. There I chase a quarter with a dime and hunt-and-peck out the number Vin gave me for Leroy Watkins.

He answers on the first ring, with a wary "Who dis?"

"Leroy?"

"It's Leh-roy. Leh-roy. Get it straight, fool."

"Sorry didn't realize you were French."

"French? I ain't no motherfuckin' French. I'm straight up red-blooded American, fool. Who is dis?"

"The name's Mick. Mick Angel. I got your number from a mutual friend. Vin Prince?"

"Yeah, so? Whatchoo want?"

"I was hoping maybe we could do some business."

"You want to do business? Man, I don't even know you. You sound like a mufuckin' cop."

"I'm not a cop. I'm just a fella with some extra cash on my hands and no place to spend it. Vin thought maybe you could help me out."

Silence on the line, then. "Gimme your number, fool. I call you back after I talk to Vin."

"I'm at a payphone. No number. How 'bout I call you back?"

"You ain't got no cell phone? Everyone got a cell phone."

"Not me."

A derisive puff of air like you hear during a glaucoma exam crosses the line. "Aight, fine. Gimme ten minutes, fool."

"Right," I say, responding to the guy's natural salesmanship. I like him already.

We get off. I go sit at the counter and order a coffee—black—from the wrinkled blue-hair there.

"That's a smart-looking suit," she tells me as she pours it. "I wish more people of your generation dressed like you."

I smile at her. I'm probably old enough to have banged her mother. Hell maybe I did.

I thank her and drink my coffee and wait. Then I get up and go call Leroy back.

"Who dis?"

"Who do you think?"

"Don't get smart with me, mufucka. Who you think you be talkin' too?"

"All right, sorry. It's Mick again. So how 'bout it?"

"Yeah you check out. Vin says you cool, you cool. You got a ride, Mr. No-cell-phone-having-mufucker, or you short one a them too?"

"I got a ride."

"Aight, where you be at?"

"Fairfax. You?"

"Don't worry where I be at, fool. I'm rollin'. That all you need to know. That how I do."

I sigh. "Fine. Great. S'now what?"

"I'm busy right now. You be outside a diner called Dolores smoking a cigarette in ninety minutes. I'll roll by. If I like what I see I'll pick yo' ass up. If I don't like what I see, I keep on rollin'."

"Fine. Where is it?"

"Sa-Mo bouly, baby. Just west a the 405. Ninety minutes. Don't be late. Leh-roy don't like to wait."


EIGHT

I have some time to kill before meeting Leroy, so I head to the Blue Veil. If you've seen one strip club you've seen 'em all—streaked mirrors, loud music, greasy pole, flashing lights. The Blue veil is no different-- except maybe a little louder. And greasier.

The world behind the black glass doors is violently sexual. Except for the ever-shifting lights of the two dance stages the place is disturbingly dark in a way that you get the feeling is less about atmosphere and more about hiding the kind of stains that can only be seen with the help of a black light. The unmistakable scents of sweat and vanilla and menstruation fill the air. Semen too, but that goes without saying. On the twin stages strippers stalk, crawl, and pace like caged wild animals, earning self-esteem a dollar at a time. The gawking men who ring them attempt to lure the predators to them with their stacks of ones, oblivious to the danger, until their wallets are attacked by ferocious bare tits and gaping g-string asses.

A sour-looking cocktail waitress with a face like an old catcher's mitt leads me to a tall, beer-sticky table at the back. She asks what I want to drink, like she has a thousand more important things to be doing other than her job. I try to be understanding. With a face like that I'd be sour too. I order a Scotch. Single malt. On the rocks.

When she comes back with it, I fat tip her with a twenty; tell her to keep the change. She smiles at me now. She likes me now. We're good friends now.

"Let me ask you something," I say, making use of the goodwill I've purchased. "I haven't been here in awhile, but I used to come in a lot and get dances from Dallas. She around tonight?"

"Just saw her. She's getting changed."

"Great. Would you tell her I'd like to see her?"

"Sure thing, hon," she says favoring me with a lemon-pucker smile as she moves off.

Time in the Blue Veil passes like time in prison. I should know. I listen to songs I don't know and don't get; songs that sink under the screeching nails-on-a-chalkboard weight of guitars. I drink. I smoke. I wait and wait some more.

"You wanted to talk to me?"

I tear my eyes away from the topless Asian girl writhing on stage to find an attractive bleached blond with cold blue eyes and a dissatisfied mouth that looks made to complain at my side. Her skin looks very tan against the pale blue of her silk bra and panties. She smiles at me, but it seems forced, like a grumpy TV cat that has been trained to do tricks against its nature.

"You must be Dallas."

She nods, her face pretty despite its bitchiness. Or maybe because of it.
"Pull up a chair."

With a sly grin she reaches out and fingers my tie, "Let's discuss terms first."

"There are terms?"

She nods again. "I'm at work. I can't just sit around and talk all night. I'm here to make money."

"I get it. How much will it cost me?"

"Same as a lap dance. Twenty a song."

"Pretty steep just for a little conversation. I thought talk was supposed to be cheap."

She shrugs. "Inflation. You want cheap, talk to one of the other bitches."

I can't help but notice the way her huge fake breasts strain against the sheer material of her bra. Then again why would I want to? "All right, why don't we start with five songs." I peel off one of Reesa's hundreds and stick it to the table.

Dallas's eyes go wide at the size of my roll. I can almost hear her brain clacking like an abacus, wondering how much she might be able to get me to part with and for what. She peels the bill from the table with a crackle and makes it disappear into her D-cup like a master magician.

Rewarding me with another Frigid-air smile, she sits on the chair next to mine and I'm reminded of Reesa. Dallas suffers by comparison. Though lean and muscular, her body lacks the fluid grace of Reesa's soft curves. She looks gamey to me. Hard. For me, a night in the sack with her holds all the allure of a night spent humping a wooden post. A fella can get splinters that way.

"What's your name?" she asks.

I tell her. Then I say, "So let me guess—you're from Dallas right?"

She shakes her head. "Fort Worth, but that didn't have the same ring to it."

I'm inclined to agree. She reaches out and traces one long fake nail along the outer rim of my ear. It's intended to be seductive, but it just makes me want to scratch.

"You're adorable, you know that?"

"I bet you say that to all the guys."
"I do." She shrugs. "But I mean it with you."

"You're gonna make me blush."

She smiles. "So you have something specific you wanna talk about, or will any topic do?"

"Something specific. Someone rather. Raya Van Cleef."

Her expression changes ever so slightly. She pales beneath the fake-bake stripper tan. The subtle scent of wariness fills the air. "Who?"

I take out the picture of Raya, flash it in front of those ice water eyes. "I'm looking for this girl."

She shakes her head. "I've never seen her before."

The pungent scent of bullshit stings my nostrils. "Really? I was told you knew her."

"Who told you that?"

"A friend of hers."

"Well, whoever it is told you wrong. I don't know her."

"She didn't live with you?"

"What part of 'I don't know her' don't you understand?"

"I hear you saying it, problem is I don't believe you. I know you know her because the person who told me mentioned you by name. C'mon, spill it. What's it gonna take? More money? What's a gal like you charge for telling the truth? Dollar a word?"

I'm rewarded with the face behind the mask; the ugly, sneering one she tries to hide at work because men just don't pay hard earned money to spend time with faces like that.

"Fuck you. This conversation's over, asshole." She stands.

"But I'm paid up through three more songs."

"Yeah, so sue me for it."

An amused smile on my face, I watch her move off, her hard-muscle hips moving like a metronome in blue silk panties.

she tells me to trust her
but i don't.
i tell her i'll try to
but i won't.
she says this can't all just be nothing
but i know nothing's all it can be...
baby, it ain't you

it's me.

pipa -- praia de madiera --

invasion of waves
marching like soldiers in step
to die on the shore

if you seek the light...
throw yourself in that fire
we must burn to shine

Okay... last installment, i'm including chapter 6 and part of chapter 7 because I happen to really like the scene that plays between Mick and the burlesque dancer Reesa, so here it is... Hope you all enjoy... Thanks for reading and for all your comments!


SIX

Next night I awaken with a severe hemoglobin hangover. Old blood has a way of doing that to you. Maybe the binging I did wasn't such a great idea. In fact I'm sure of it.

I go to the mini-fridge. I pry the door open. I take stock. It doesn't take long. Only four measly vials left. Damn. Four vials would be a modest nightly allotment, but now I'm going to have to stretch them. I curse my weakness. Then I decide to forgive myself and fix. I'm not one to hold a grudge, especially against someone I like as much as me.

I gather my tools together and sort myself out. Better. I might not be feeling like a million bucks, but at least I'm drawing interest again. I get up and go get dressed. On the way past, I punch the play messages button on my machine. There is a message waiting for me from a Detective Coombs. He wants to talk to me. Just a few routine questions about a case he's working on. Give him a call back at my convenience. Yada, yada, yada.

I'm not in the habit of talking to cops. They make me uneasy. Always have. If he wants me, he'll just have to run me down. I erase the message and turn my attention to picking out an ensemble.

A sharp rap sounds at the door as I re-knot my tie for the fourth and final time. I stash my kit and go answer it. A rumpled Schmo in an off-the-rack suit stands there. He's about my height, but fatter, balder, and has the look and smell of bacon about him.

"Detective Coombs."

"That's right. Good guess. You Michael Angel?"

I nod. I'm not in the habit of talking to cops.

"Can I come in?"

I nod again. Then I step aside to let him enter and shut the door and point him to a chair. He sits, and rubs his arms together for warmth.

"Kinda cold in here, isn't it?"

"I like it," I say, sinking like depression into my own chair across the desk from him. I don't bother to explain that as a vampire I keep it that way to slow my decay. I figure that information is need-to-know only and he doesn't need to know it.

Coombs is irritated, but gives me a suit yourself shrug. He stares across the desk at me a minute, then cocks his head, and gives me a puzzled look. "Have we met somewhere?"

"Oh I think I'd remember that," I say.

He nods. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah. Anyway, uh, I called earlier but you didn't get back to me. Hope you don't mind my just dropping by like this."

I do, but I don't bother to mention it.

"Oh, yeah, well I didn't get your message until now. I just got in."

"That so? You sure about that?"

"Yeah, sure. I'm sure."

"Well, the reason I ask is I've been parked out front for a while now. You know, filling out paper work an such, an' I didn't see you come in. I only came up because I figured I ought at least knock before I left."

"Yeah well, there's a back way. I use it to avoid bill collectors. And cops." He looks at my smile like it's a new undiscovered species of expression. "That was a joke."

"Oh, I gotcha. Funny."

I light a cigarette, offer him the pack, but he shakes me off. "So what is it I can do for you, Detective?"

"Oh, well, see like I said, I'm just running down some details on a case I'm working on."

"Interesting case?"

"Oh I think so. 'Course, then all murder investigations are pretty interesting to me."

"Murder huh?"

"The big M."

"Anyone I know?

"Funny, I was just gonna ask you that question. Dead guy goes—went I should say—by the name Michael Ensinger. Ring a bell?"

I scrunch my brow all up in a way I hope appears I'm giving this some real thought, then shake my head and say: "Nope. Should it?"

"Well, guy was in the Times awhile back. He got arrested for stalking and raping a girl by the name of Elizabeth Lowery. Hurt her pretty bad too."

"If he got arrested, what was he doing out?"

"He got off. Girl wouldn't testify. Too scared."

I shrug. "Maybe she did it. You think a that?"

"We did, but I don't think decapitation would be her style."

"I really wouldn't know."

"So I guess that means you don't know Elizabeth Lowery either, huh?"

"Now look who's the good guesser."

The detective's face settles into a comfortable frown that looks very natural on him. "Where were you last Monday night?"

"Here."

"All night?"

I go through the big contemplative act again and nod. "Yeah, except for running a few errands."

"These errands, did they happen to take you by the fourteen hundred block of Ivar?"

"No," I say too quickly.

Coombs notices, but pretends not to. "Well, the reason I ask is because I talked to a guy who says a red mint condition Ford Fairlane matching the description of yours was seen parked just up the street from the crime scene."

There's nothing there for me so I just grunt.

"You do own a red mint condition '67 Ford Fairlane, don't you?"

I feel my head nod a response.

"Yeah, see we got lucky, 'cause this guy who saw it happens to be a real car buff. He lives in the area and he pulled over to really check it out. Even got a look at the plate." Coombs fishes some reading glasses out of one suit pocket and a note pad out of another. He puts the glasses on and flips the pad open and reads my plate number out to me. "That yours?"

The one drawback to having a one-of-a-kind set of wheels is people tend to notice.
"Yeah. It's mine," I say, with that sinking feeling that only comes when being interrogated by cops and women.

"Seems a funny coincidence, but I guess if you say you weren't there, then you weren't there."

Coombs sits back, scratches his Friar-tuck dome, and waits to see if I'll hang myself with the length rope he's run out for me. I snap my fingers like I've just had a thought, "Oh wait, did you say Monday night?"

"Yeah, Monday."

"Tuesday is when I ran the errands. But Monday, Monday I was near Ivar."

"Mind if I ask what you were doing there?"

"Just visiting a friend."

"Can I get the name of your friend? You know, for my records." He finds a pen and gets ready to write.

"I'd rather not say." Coombs doesn't give me much, just raises his eyebrows a little. It's a neat trick. The awkward silence sits like a guilty plea between us, making me feel like I should explain. So I do. "See, my friend, she's a married woman. Her husband travels. She gets lonely. You know how it is."

"Oh I know," he nods. "Tell ya what. You give me her name and I'll be real discreet when I go talk with her. You have my word on that."

Okay, damage-control time. I'm reluctant to use the hypnotic gaze, not knowing how many people know what at this point, but the damn guy has me painted into a corner. Moving fast, I bolt out of my seat and smack the reading glasses off the detective's surprised face. There's a lot at stake. Can't take any chances on them screwing with the works. Floored by this development, Coombs sputters and spews and tries to jump out of the chair, but I pin him in place and stare deeply into his shit brown eyes and say, "You're fine. Calm down."

"I'm fine," he says, growing calm.

"Nothing out of the ordinary has happened here."

"Nothing. . ."

"The woman's name is Marla Dupree."

"Marla Dupree," he mumbles.
"Write that down in your pad." He writes it. "You already went and talked with her."

"I talked with her."

"That's right, and Marla, she backed my story up. It all checked out."

"It checked out."

"Right. So, I'm no longer a suspect in this investigation. If it ever comes up you'll find a way to explain it all. But aside from that, you won't even think about me again after you leave here. We've never met. I don't even exist."

"Don't exist."

"That's right. Very good, Detective," I say bending and retrieving the glasses from the floor. I set them back on his face and return to my chair and my cigarette. "Now I think we're done here, so why don'tcha scram."

Coombs stands abruptly, his meaty hamstrings skritching the chair back on the wood floor. "Scram," he says.

I watch from behind a veil of cigarette smoke as the Detective zombie-walks to the door and opens it. In the doorway, he stops and looks back at me, a bewildered smile spread on his face.

I smile, wave. "Nice talking with you, Detective."

"Uh yeah. Y-you too."

"Keep up the good work," I tell him as he steps out of my office, pulling the door shut behind him.

When he's gone, I sit and smoke and fret. Goddamn Michael Ensinger is turning out to be more trouble dead than alive.

I could just kill the guy.

Note-- The novel is written in two parts- present day which is written in present tense... and 1943-1946 which is written in past tense... Just can't stop without including at least one chapter that revolves around my favorite femme fatale Coraline...


FIVE:1943


Things with Coraline began with a bullet.

Like the thousands of other small town beauty queens who have been told all of their small town lives they're pretty enough be in pictures, she had come to Hollywood seeking fame and fortune.

As a child, her favorite book had been "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." I remember her telling me how she had read it over and over until the pages wilted and fell out like flower petals from a dead bouquet. The only part of the book she didn't like was the end where Dorothy returns home. Coraline told me she had ripped that chapter out the first time through. She thought Dorothy was a dumb bitch for giving up Oz for Kansas. A dumb bitch. That was how she put it.

Maybe the book captivated her for the simple reason that she, like Dorothy, was a small town Kansas girl. Maybe it was something more sinister than that. Like the stumbling drunk of a dad whom she never talked to and refused to say much about. Whatever the case, Coraline knew she wanted the hell out of Kansas from an early age. She wanted something more from life. Something bigger. It was this that lead to her Hollywood in March of 'Forty-three. And to me.

She had only been in town maybe a month or two by then. I met her on a break between sets at a Boyle Heights dive bar where the boys and me had been hired to fill an off week. I saw her across the smoke-filled room seated at a four-top near the bar. She was sitting by her plain-Jane friend, smoking a cigarette in a way that made you just know she thought she was doing something bad and was enjoying it all the more because of it. It made me smile and our eyes met and she smiled back like she was in on the joke.

I've always been a cynic. I'd never believed in love at first sight until that moment. 'Til then I'd thought it was just some sappy concept thought up by some asshole screenwriter somewhere. Maybe this was the real thing and maybe it wasn't, but goddamn it was close. My first sight of Coraline took hold of me like my first veinful of dope. Her hair, pulled up in a trendy forward curled pompadour, was the blue-black of a crow's wing at midnight. It struck an uneasy alliance with her powder-pale skin. Dark eyebrows set off a pair of jewel blue eyes. A pert slightly upturned nose was balanced on a teeter-totter of kissable red lips. The moment I saw her I was hooked. I knew if given the chance I would keep going back to that well no matter the cost.

Even if it poisoned me.

I went over and introduced myself. She told me her name was Coraline. She told me she'd heard about me and the boys and how she had snuck out past curfew from the boarding house where she lived just to come see us. She told me she thought we were swell, just swell. Then the girls' dates came back from the bar armed with drinks and scowls and things got a little awkward. They got even more awkward when I asked Coraline to accompany me to a private party I knew of after the show.

"Hey, what are you tryin' to pull, Dad? Can't you see she's spoken for?" Coraline's date, a wisp of a kid, demanded. He had a bang of muddy blond hair and a weak jaw and I didn't blame him a bit for trying to hold on to her. I knew as soon as I saw her that Coraline was the kind of girl bucks locked horns over.

My eyes never left Coraline's. "No one's talkin' to you, junior, so why don't you just do yourself a favor and sit there quietly while the lady makes up her own mind."

He was too young and dumb to know it, but I was doing him a favor. No way a light-weight like him could handle a woman like this. If I hadn't stepped in she'd have K-Oed him before the end of round two. A girl like her was best left to a seasoned masochist like myself.

"You hard a hearin', Dad? I said she's spoken for." The kid clapped a skinny mitt down on my shoulder.

Before I turned away, I saw the look of anticipation and excitement that flooded Coraline's eyes. It was the look of a girl having a fantasy realized. She had been waiting all her life to have something like this to write down in her diary.

No doubt the kid probably had some tough-guy line he'd seen in a movie ready to deliver, but he never got to it on account of my fist connecting with his nose. There was an ugly crunch and he jitterbugged backwards a few steps and crashed down hard atop an adjoining table, overturning it.

I reared around on his big moose of a buddy, who looked ready to try his luck, but I guess the sight of Morris and the other boys hurrying over to get my back changed his mind. Black faces have a way of doing that to white boys. Even big dumb ones. Instead of taking a swing, the moose bent and helped his hurt friend up. Maybe he wasn't as dumb as he looked.

By then the bar's bouncers were there and began hustling the younger guys toward the exit. Under normal circumstances I'd probably have been tossed out on my ear too—I'd been the one to throw the first punch after all—but then I was with the band and we still had a set to play.

Amid all the hubbub, I turned back to Coraline. I wanted to make sure the sudden violence hadn't put the brakes on things. It hadn't. I found her looking at me; eyes glowing brighter than a welder's torch, a crooked halo smile perched on her lips. I'd never been looked at by a woman that way before. I'd been looked at all kinds of ways—lots of them bad—but not like that. Coraline was staring at me like she saw in me the potential for some darker life she'd always secretly desired, but had been too timid to seek. Like I was the answer to some pagan prayer.
Like I was her cigarette all come to life.

I stared right back. I guess maybe I saw all the same things in her. I guess maybe that's why I'd come over in the first place. And I guess maybe that's why I never saw the kid pull the gun from the waistband of his loose fitting chinos and shoot me in the back.


The bullet, a twenty-two, pierced my right lung and lodged in a rib. The sawbones who patched me up told me if it had been just a hair to the left it would've paralyzed me. A touch lower and it would've killed me. I guess it was supposed to make me feel lucky. It didn't.

I spent an angry month in the hospital. Coraline came to visit me every day. By the end of my stay there, I was in love. I had thought I had been in love before her, but I was wrong. Dead wrong. The passion I had felt for other dames was a ghost-emotion compared to how I felt about Coraline; insubstantial, barely there. This was something else. Something fearsome in its depth and complexity. I was weak for her in a way I'd never been with any other woman. In a way I didn't even know I could be. If she had asked I would have killed, died, even sold my soul for her.

In the end I guess I did all three.

Once I was released, Coraline and I decided it might be fun to play house together. It was. We rented a cheap little bungalow in Venice just a few blocks off the beach. Caught up in the excitement of it all, we even went and hunted up a Justice-of-the-Peace and made it official. It was my idea. Call me old-fashioned, but I couldn't stand the idea of people looking down their noses at my girl. I wanted to make a honest woman of her. If only it had been that easy.

For a while, things were good— real good if you want to know the truth. I played music with the boys and Coraline went on auditions during the day, and came to watch our shows at night. She liked the late night lifestyle and the fast crowd I ran with. She liked the parties and the drinking. She liked it all.

Problem was, my love for Coraline wasn't the only thing I took with me when I left the hospital. The bullet had hurt like hell; hurt like nothing I'd ever experienced before, and after a month of treatment, the morphine the docs gave me for the pain had begun to seem more a necessity, than a luxury. Once I hit the street, I starting buying heroin because it was cheaper and easier to get, but it all came to the same thing in the end. I was an addict.

I tried to hide it from her, and I had done a pretty swell job of it until she walked in on me in the bathroom one night after we had gotten back from a show at Club Alabam, a needle still dangling from my arm. Your typical dame would have yelled, thrown things, demanded I go and seek treatment, but Coraline was anything but typical. Looking back on it, it seems she had been waiting her whole life for the right twister to come along and sweep her off to Oz. Thanks to me, she found it in heroin.

"I want to try it," she said, as I attempted to hide my kit along with my humiliation.

"No, that's a bad idea, baby."

"Why? It's okay for you, but not for me?"

"It's not okay for anyone, but I can stop. I'll quit. I swear it."

"I didn't ask you to quit, Mick. I just asked you to share."

"I'm not doing that."

"Fine. Then I'll just go out and find someone who will. Is that what you want? Me to go out and look for it on my own? Is it?"

Coraline could be stubborn sometimes. Real stubborn if you want to know the truth. I knew her well enough by then to know when she sounded like that there was no point in arguing. She wasn't bluffing. She would do what she said. So I gave in. I wish to God I hadn't, but I did. She clapped her hands together like a little girl who has been told she's getting a pony on her birthday. I had to shoot her up that first time because of her aversion to needles. I remember the way she looked at me, a beatific, sleepy-eyed expression on her face. I remember her exact whispered words after I pressed the plunger home. "We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto."

Got to give it to her, she was right. This was Oz. Except in this version the bricks were black and the road led straight to hell. Funny. I had thought I was protecting her by not letting her try it, but I soon found out it was me I was protecting all along. Although I didn't know it yet, heroine had taken my place in her affections and things would never be the same.

Over the course of the next few months we sunk into addiction together like panicky swimmers who drag each other beneath the waves. Larger and larger quantities of our time went to scraping together the cash to buy. With two sizeable addictions to feed, it was no easy task. Pretty soon I found I wasn't in a band anymore. I pawned my trumpet. Why not? It was no good to me just sitting around. When that money was gone I brushed-up on my lock-picking skills and turned to breaking and entering. But in the end it was Coraline who became the real bread winner by selling the one thing she had to sell— her body. It killed me to let her do it, but the dope it provided helped me forget.

With her looks and that body, it wasn't long before Coraline had built a fairly sizeable number of steady clients, many of them key players in the film industry willing to pay good money for a quickie with a discreet gal. Most times I went along with her on her "dates", to make sure no one got out of line. One particular night, however, I shot too much and got too high and Coraline drove out to a certain producer's Hollywood Hills house alone. She came back three hours later with her lovely china doll face all beat to hell. Always a gentleman in the past, the bastard had gotten drunk and mean this time 'round.

One eye swollen shut, the left side of her face a violent tale in Braille, I listened with growing rage as Coraline filled me in around a fat lip. I'd grown up watching my Mom take regular beatings from my Dad until it killed her. I didn't believe in laying hands on a woman, and I sure as hell wasn't about to let some rich Hollywood-sleazebag get away with doing it to mine. I went and grabbed the snub-nosed .38 I kept under the mattress for protection.

"Let's go see him."

She looked at me curious. "What are you gonna do to him?"

"I'm gonna beat him until his face looks like yours and then I'm gonna beat him some more."

"I have a better idea. He's rich. You know how you hurt a guy like that, baby? You take his money. He got screwed by the banks back in twenty-nine and now he keeps all his cash in a wall safe in his house. I saw it. He paid me out of it once. I'd never seen so much money in my whole life. We do this our money troubles'll be over."

I should have said no. If I had everything would have been different, but I didn't. I was mad-- mad as hell if you want to know the truth-- and she was preaching to the choir.

"Let's compromise. We'll do both."


We piled into the black Packard we were driving then and drove to the hills for a little social call. The house-- a tall two-story number with ivy covered white-stone walls, a terra cotta roof, and an arched entryway-- looked like a thousand others stabbed down along the twisting roads that snaked through the Hollywood hills.

We knocked. No one came to the door, so Coraline and I let ourselves in. We found him passed out on the living room couch, knuckles still covered with Coraline's dried blood. He was a big fella, but the muscle of his youth had softened to fat from years of overindulgence and good eating. He woke up to the barrel of my .38 doing a Woody Woodpecker routine on his forehead. His expression went from surly to worried in the time it took him to recognize Coraline through her swollen features and make note of the gun.


"I'm back, Roy, and I've brought a friend," Coraline said over my shoulder. "What's wrong? Aren'tcha happy to see me, lover?"

He didn't look happy. Scared. Confused certainly. Not happy.

"Whasis this?" He asked, his words still slurred by drink. "Whaz going on?" He looked back and forth between us. I let Coraline do the explaining. She was always the better explainer.

"Look at my face, Roy. Look what you did to me. I came over to show you a nice time and look what you went and did."

"I shouldn't've done thzat."

"No. You shouldn't have. So now you're going to have to pay for it. That's what grown-ups do after all, isn't it? Pay for their mistakes."

"How much d'you wan'?"

"Well, I'm not going to be able to work for awhile looking like I do, so you're going to have to pay me disability. It could get expensive."

"How much?"

"Make you a deal. Let's go into your safe. You start paying and I'll tell you when my face stops hurting."

"I'm not opening my g'damn safe for nobody."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Coraline said, with a look at me. "I suppose you'd better hurt him, Mick."

I hurt him. I was happy to do it. I pistol-whipped the fat drunk bastard until his face matched Coraline's and then I pistol-whipped him some more. He was sobbing like a huge overgrown baby by the time Coraline grabbed my wrist and made me stop. A slick mixture of blood, snot and saliva dripped from Roy's nose and mouth staining his expensive linen shirt.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"It's all right, Roy. I forgive you. It's over. All you have to do is be a good boy and give us the combination to the safe and I won't let him hurt you any more. I promise," Coraline cooed.

Battered as he was, Roy still hesitated. I raised the gun again, and the numbers came spilling out like a jackpot in a Vegas slot.

We herded him at gunpoint into the mahogany world of the office. The safe was in the wall, behind a portrait of Roy's homely mother. Pulling it from the wall, he made as if to go and open the safe, but I pushed him aside. I didn't want to take the chance he might have a gun of his own hidden within. I handed the .38 to Coraline, told her to cover him, and spun the small black dial. The safe popped open first time round, revealing a stash of cash the likes of which I'd never seen outside of the movies, and a small black pistol.

Shaking a disappointed finger at Roy, I turned back to the safe and began to toss the cash—what looked at a glance to be about forty grand or so—into a the bag we'd thought to bring. When it was empty I closed it and zipped the bag and smiled at Coraline.

She didn't notice. She was too busy staring down the barrel of the .38 at Roy. The way her one eye was swollen shut gave the impression she was taking careful aim.

"We've got the money, but my face still hurts, Roy," she said regretfully.

"Coraline—" I interrupted.

"Yes, darling?"

"This wasn't the plan," I said.

"Stay out of it, Mick. It's not your face he beat up. It's not you it happened to."

I had to admit that it wasn't, still, this wasn't the plan. "Put the gun down, baby."

"No."

"Why not?"

She smiled. "I don't want to. And besides, he knows my name. He can finger us. We walk out of here he'll have the police on us in an hour."

"No I won't. I won't. You can have the money. I don't care about it," Roy sounded a lot more sober as he pleaded for his life.

"He says that now, but we leave, he'll start to care, Mick. It's a lot of money. He'll care and he'll call the cops. You know he will."

I knew it, despite the vehement way Roy was shaking his chins at me. Still, killing people—even ones who maybe could do with killing—wasn't my style. Not back then anyway. We had his money. We'd given him a beating. It was enough.

"We'll tie him up," I said. "We'll go to Mexico. By the time he works himself free we'll be across the border."

"I don't want to live in Mexico," Coraline said.

"Canada then."

Coraline shook her head. "Not there either. I like it right here." She looked highly satisfied about things as she cocked the gun.

Roy went all pie-eyed. I didn't know eyes could get that wide.

"You promised you wouldn't hurt me if I went along," he said. "You promised."

Coraline shook her head and smiled like a teacher speaking to a confused student. "No, Roy. I promised I wouldn't let Mick do it," she said sweetly.

The crack of the gun left a ringing like alarm-bells in my ears.

I am really going to have to stop doing this before I put my entire novel on here, but what the hell, there are a lot of chapters... here's another one...


FOUR


Back at the car I binge-fix until I feel in control of myself again. Well, as in control as I ever feel anyway. For a vampire there is always a disquieting sense that the wrong sequence of events at the wrong time could cause things to spiral out of control, like what almost happened back there with Vin. I imagine it's similar to what sharks experience when they scent blood in the water, or what a bull feels when the matador snaps his cape. A siren call to action that cannot be resisted. Consequences be damned.

Sleepy-eyed, I lull in the driver's seat. A Louie Armstrong trumpet solo fills the car. Of all the instruments I love the trumpet best. It's what I played in the band in the time before the time before. Not like Old Satchmo, but I played. I love the violent-kindness of the brass. Like a tough-love smack delivered for your own good. I love the way a well-played staccato burst can shoot you in the head one minute and raise you from the dead the next. I haven't touched a trumpet since 1943. Don't need to. That was the year I became one.

The solo ends. I shake the fog off and start the car. I take moon-scrubbed surface streets over to Hollywood to the club Reesa told me about; a place called the Tomb Room. I find it a block off Sunset, tucked in between a Mexican restaurant and a nail salon, right where Reesa said it would be. I park and walk back.

The music which oozes like toxic waste from inside is almost enough to turn me around and head me right back home. I brace myself against the toxicity and move past a line of pasty-looking undead wanna-bes. Every one of them is dressed in black. Up and down the line both guys and girls wear heavy black eye makeup and black lipstick and black nail polish. The androgynous nature of the look makes it difficult to tell the sexes apart. Maybe that's the point, but it makes me wonder exactly when people got the idea that in order to look like a vampire you had to adopt a transvestite-in-mourning look. If these kids are looking for recruitment into the ranks, they're going about it the wrong way. Call me old-fashioned, but in my opinion the last thing the vampire world needs is a bunch of gender-confused losers who confuse being sullen and whiny with rebellious and interesting.

I skip to the head of the line where a bouncer with sharpened teeth and a face full of facial tats and metal piercings stands by the door. To me it looks like a fishhook grenade blew up in his face. Topping the look off, two metal spikes sprout like devil horns from his bald head. He takes in my suit and fedora and looks at me like I'm the freak.

Maybe I am.

"You sure you're in the right place, guy?"

I nod in the affirmative and give him the eye. "Mick Angel. I'm on the list."

He looks, finds my name right where it's not, and lifts the black velvet cordon to let me in. I enter through a black door into a black entryway illuminated by black lights.

There, a Morticia Addams look-alike checks my I.D. and demands fifteen bucks from me. I cough up; hardly able to believe I'm doing it considering what I'm about to subject my ears to. She affixes a black plastic wristband to my wrist and directs me through a thick black curtain into the main room. Imagine my surprise when it turns out to be painted all black.

The place is packed solid with kids. On the far side, on a black stage, back-dropped by a black banner depicting a gaping set of bloody fangs, a crew of music haters tortures their instruments. The band looks like as if they could have been plucked minutes ago right from the line outside. Judging by their musical ability, I wouldn't be too surprised to learn that was the case. According to the face of the drummer's bass drum, the band goes by the name 'Bite Me'. Clever.

Ignoring looks and smirks and nudges from the peanut gallery, I make my way across a black floor over to a black bar. To get into the spirit of things I order Johnny Walker Black. I'm nothing if not flexible.

The bartender brings me my drink. It looks like he shares a butcher with the door guy. The main distinction I see is that instead of two metal spikes like horns, this guy has a ridge of spikes running down the center of his skull like a Mohawk. Cute.

I fat tip him for his trouble, then I pull the picture of Raya from my pocket and show it to him. "Recognize her?" I ask, needing to practically yell to be heard over the band.

He bends, looks, shakes his head, answers too fast. "Nope."

The lie hits me in the face like a slap from a dame. Before he can get away, I reach out and grab hold of the thick silver bullring that dangles under his nose. It'd be nice if the gaze worked for eliciting information from people, but it doesn't. It's a handy tool, but only good for giving orders and altering memories. Information I have to finagle.

Or force.

"Look again," I say, making my eyes dangerous; putting the promise of pain and the possibility of a very violent death in my eyes.

He looks.

"You've seen her in here?"

"Yeah. I've seen her."

"How long ago?"

"Three weeks maybe—"

"She come in a lot?"

"Used to, 'til we figured out she was using a fake I.D. Then we had to take it away and keep her out."

"Who does she hang out with? Anyone here tonight? Look."

I let the pull-tab go so he can browse the crowd. Finally he shakes his demon head and shrugs. "She used to come in with another kid- a little older than her. He comes in a lot, but I don't see him tonight."

Figuring he's talking about the eighteen-year-old boyfriend I take a stab. "This kid—his name Scotty?"

"Yeah, yeah somethin' like that."

Now I give him the gaze. "I'm gonna be here for awhile. You see him come in, you let me know."

"I'll let you know."

"Good boy," I tell him. "And keep the booze comin'. On you."

"On me," he says, ambling back into the shadows at the back of the bar.

I sit. I drink. I smoke. No one at this fleabag seems to give enough of a shit about a bad habit as mainstream as smoking to come hassle me. Maybe the joint isn't so bad after all.

Time passes. A skinny, strung-out girl in all black everything comes to the bar for a drink. She takes in my suit and fedora and tells me I remind her of her Dad.

"Yeah? That turn you on?" I ask.

She shrugs. "Kinda."

"Well that's funny because you remind me of my dead ex-wife." It's not a lie, she does. A little. Most places an admission like that would be a conversation stopper. Not here.

"Really? Cool. How'd she die?"

"I killed her. I didn't want to, but she made me." That does the trick. Next time I look, Skinny and her drink are gone.

Bite Me goes off, but their sound is all-too-soon replaced by an even worse racket created by a band calling themselves the Sinister Ministers who take to the stage in white collared priest get-ups.

I go to the black-walled bathroom and pick a black stall and fix. I guess I'm in there too long because someone outside pounds on the door and asks if I'm giving birth in there. I put my kit away and fake flush. I exit to find a kid with long unkempt black hair, black nails, and black lipstick waiting outside.

"'Bout time," he says.

I look him up and down. Call me old fashioned, but I liked it when men went around looking like men. This kid looks like a skirt. An ugly one.

"You sure you're in the right bathroom?" I ask him.

"You sure you're in the right decade?" he fires back.

Touche. I nod, shrug, go the sink, wash up. When I get back to my freshly refilled drink at the bar, the bartender comes over and gently taps me on the shoulder. He jabs one sharp-taloned finger at a black-haired Cousin-It look-alike standing arms-crossed next to a back exit.

"That's him. That's the kid the girl you showed me was always with."

I thank him, and cut a circus-freak swath over to the kid. I try to be sly about it but it's no good, I stand out like a tick at a flea convention and he sees me coming. Taking me for a cop, he turns and ducks out the door before I can collar him.


I hit the piss-stinking alley only a handful of steps behind him.

"Scotty!"

He looks back without slowing, his long jet-black hair flaps like a cape as he runs full-tilt-boogie toward the street. Fueled by meth and who-knows what-all else, he's fast, but he's still no match for a real vampire. I catch up in a matter of steps, grab hold of that mile of hair, and yank. Hard. His head stops, but the rest of him doesn't. His feet fly out in front of him and he back-flops onto the cracked black asphalt with a lung-collapsing oof. Looks painful.

Before anyone can come out and see us I drag him, helpless and incapacitated, into the shadows behind the rusty dumpster at the back of the Mexican restaurant.
I stand over the kid as he sucks in shallow gasps of air. His black New York Dolls band tee-shirt rides up exposing his mid-riff. He is impossibly skinny; a skeleton in black jeans. His boyish face is about a hundred years younger than the world-wise eyes that stare out of it, but a few more years on the street, it'll catch up. Faces always do.

"I'm not holdin'. Fuckin' search me if you want." he says when his wind is back and he can form words again.

"I'm not a cop."

"Then what the fuck do you want with me, man?"

I take the picture of Raya out and stick it in his drug-sweaty face. "I'm lookin' for this girl. I know you know her. Where can I find her?"

"I dunno, man. I haven't seen her."

I don't smell a lie, but his fear could be covering it up. To cover my bases, I take the .38 out and press it up under his weak chin. I give him the scary eye; the same one I gave the bartender.

"Like I said, I'm not a cop, which means I don't have to follow any rules here. So shoot me straight if you know what's good for you."

"I am, dude. I swear. I haven't seen Raya in weeks."

"What happened to her?"

"I dunno. Maybe that bitch did somethin' to her."

"This town has more bitches than traffic lights. Which bitch are you referring to?"

"The bitch she was staying with."

"Raya was living with someone?"

He nods.

"Who?"

"I only know her by her stripper name."

I look at him expectantly.

"Dallas. She went by Dallas."

"What club did she work?"

"I dunno. I only met her once, but I didn't trust her."

"Why not?"

He shrugs and says, "You live on the street you either get a sense about people or else ya don't live on the street long. There was something off about her. She promised Raya all kindsa shit she was gonna do for her. Get her off the streets. Help her get her GED. It sounded like bullshit to me. Too good to be true, ya know?"
I nod. I know all right.

"Anyway, the bitch offered Raya a place to stay and Raya took it. Even started calling Dallas her big sister. I guess she was looking for one after what her real sister did to her."

Suddenly I'm interested. "What'd she do?"

"Raya and her sister were livin' with some producer guy-- Can't remember his name--"

"Vin Prince."

"Yeah, him. They were livin' with that asshole and one day while her sister was out he got high on meth and raped Raya. Sister came home in the middle of it, saw them together and took his side. Kicked Raya out for screwing her boyfriend. How's that for fucked?"

It was fucked all right; if it was true. My blood does the old slow boil just thinking about how hard I fought to keep from killing Prince when, as it turns out, I might've been doing the world a favor if I had.

"Did you go to the police when Raya went missing?"

"No. Why would I?"

"Your friend disappeared."

Despite the gun, the kid laughs and looks at me like I'm half retarded. "C'mon, dude. The fuckin' pigs don't give a shit about street kids unless they can bust one of us for drugs. One of us turns up dead, the most they do is contact next of kin. Fuck the police."

"Right," I say. I feel a little bit bad for the kid. He doesn't seem like a bad sort, just unfuckinglucky. I take the picture back and put the gun away and pull some of the money Reesa gave me out. I peel off a twenty and stretch it out to him. "Here. For your trouble."<br>
His eyes go wide and greedy seeing it. He starts to take it, but stops himself like a stray offered food from a hand that has hit it one too many times. His eyes grow wary, wonderin' if maybe I want a little something extra for the cash.

"Go on, take it. It's yours free and clear."

Hardly able to believe it, he takes the bill in both hands. "Aw fuck, man, thanks. I can really use this. Thanks. Thanks, dude."

I nod and turn to go.

"Hey," the kid says, stopping me at one sharp corner of the dumpster. "You see that Vin guy, tell 'im he's a fucking asshole for me, huh?"

"Sure, kid," I say. Then I'm gone.


Normally a vampire's sleep is like death; total immersion in the black waters of oblivion where there is no light no awareness no dreams. It's why vampires are so vulnerable in their sleep state. Because it's more than sleep. Occasionally however, dreams get through. Maybe it's meeting the girl that did it. Maybe it's the unexpected nostalgia brought on by the stops I made. Maybe it's talking about her with the skinny girl in the club that shoveled up a long buried memory best forgotten. Whatever the case—tonight I dream. I dream of the past. Of nineteen-forty-three. And twist name of Coraline.

THREE


I go back to the car. I fix. I fire up the Fairlane. I drive. Every store, every street that flashes past holds a memory for me of an earlier day, and as always, I find myself reconciling the landmarks of the ghost-of-L.A.-past with those of the present. The dry-ice inland fog that's come smoking in from the Pacific only makes the town look all the more spectral.

I hang a right at Fairfax and head south. In the rearview, a set of constant headlights begins to make me wonder if maybe I'm being tailed. Feeling a nervous tightness form in my chest, I take the next left just to see. The headlights, which belong to an older model Ford pickup, blow past without so much as a hiccup. My chest loosens. I shake my head and fire up a smoke. Maybe I'm getting paranoid in my old age, but if there's one thing I've learned over the years in this business it's that paranoia pays.

I U-turn and continue down Fairfax and pull into the small lot behind the big Canter's Delicatessen sign. I used to love Canter's back when I could still digest solid food. I would go and eat there after shows way back in the thirties when the deli was still located over in Boyle Heights. I got the pastrami sandwich every time. I liked theirs because it was so lean and rare. I guess I liked things bloody even back then.

I get out. I go in, not in search of a pastrami sandwich, but a payphone. It's bright and busy at this hour. The smell of greasy cooked food washes over me, making my delicate stomach roll uneasily. I swallow hard and make my way over to the phone. Times like this make me rethink my stubborn refusal to adopt a cellular.

I flip my notepad open, drop some change in the slot, and punch up Vin Prince's number. His assistant, a perky skirt by the name of Barbara, picks up. I give a fake name, something Jewish-sounding, and ask to talk with the boss-man, but she tells me he's incommunicado all night. I act all pissed-off, telling Babs her boss and me were supposed to get together for drinks to discuss a picture I wrote. I tell her that I'm at the restaurant, that I don't like being stood-up, and that if this is how Prince deals with writers I'll just take my script to the next production house down the block because the goddamn town's full of them. Babs gets all flustered-like and explains that Mr. Prince probably just forgot because of some big shindig he's throwing up at his house in the Hills tonight. I ask the address and she tells me before she can think the better of it. Then she asks my name again and I hang up because I can't remember what I told her. Doesn't matter. I found out what I wanted to know. These days this sort of thing is called social-engineering. In my day we just called it bullshitting.

I scratch the address down in my pad, cradle the phone, and exit Canter's, leaving the smell of greasy food and my queasiness behind.


Fancy-shmancy is right. Prince's house is a sight to behold. From a parking spot thirty yards up the winding street at the top of Beachwood Canyon I smoke and take in the splendor of the vintage 1920's home. Nestled in under an oak tree canopy, the expansive Spanish tile roof rests on the tired shoulders of two-story bone-white stucco walls. I can tell at first glance it's too good for a Hollywood asshole like Prince. How do I know he's an asshole? Simple. He works in Hollywood.

From my vantage point I watch as a stream of waxed and gleaming Lexus's, Limos, Benz's, and Beamers pull up to the wrought-iron gate that surrounds the compound. Leaning out their windows, evening-attired guests flash gilded invites at the guard who in turn presses a button, causing the automatic gate to Frankenstein-lurch open. Once in, the guests pull around the circular flagstone drive which has been movie-lighted to show their luxury automobiles off to best advantage. There, red-vested valets open their doors, and the guests spill out, moving like royalty along the ridiculous red carpet that runs like a tongue from the mouth of the house.

Looks like I won't be getting in that-a-way. Sure, I could drive up and parlor trick my way in, but I can't stand the idea of letting those valets put their grubby paws on my gal. She deserves better. I'll have to look for a back entrance.

I make a firefly of my cigarette butt, exit the Fairlane, and start along the twist of road back toward the house. When I reach the property, I duck into the California scrub along its perimeter. Set into the side of a steep Hollywood hill, the long rocky slope is slick as ball-bearings on black ice beneath my patent leather shoe-soles. I have to use the rough metal rungs of the ten-foot high fence just to keep from bobsledding down on my ass.

A deeper fog sleeps curled in the ravine at the base of the property. Through spaced wrought-iron bars and carefully landscaped foliage, I look back up graded hills to see partygoers mingling atop two large redwood decks that hang off the back of the house and around the illuminated pool and spa below. Jazz music dances in the water-logged night air. It comes from the gazebo set to one side of the pool. Maybe I have misjudged the host. No one who appreciates Jazz enough to hire a band can be all-bad. I decide to go in and find out firsthand.

Times like this it would be nice if the stories about vampires being able to turn themselves into bats or mist were true. It would certainly make getting in and out of places a whole lot easier. It's all crap though. At least so far as I know. No one gives you an instruction manual when you get turned. But if that sort of thing is possible, I sure as hell don't know how to go about it.

On the other hand, it is true that vampires are exceedingly strong, a fact I think is only partially due to enhanced supernatural strength. From my experience, all of a vampire's senses are greatly heightened, except for one—touch. Dead, bloodless limbs simply cannot experience the same sensitivity to pressure. The result is a disquieting full-body numbness. On the bright side, less nerve endings mean a much greater pain-threshold. Where living flesh would give up under the influence of severe pain, dead flesh won't. The less pain you feel, the more you are capable of enduring. The more you can endure, the stronger you are. So there you go.

I decide to get by on brawn. I grab hold of two wrought-iron rungs and pull. One breaks. The other bends. It's enough. I squeeze my gaunt frame through the gap, careful not to snag my best suit. Feeling tired and dizzy at the expended effort, I brush off and climb the tiered green banks of grass to join the party.



I step through coved French doors into a set-decorated room of another era. A better era. My era. Across the room, over the talking heads of the guests who mingle in the dramatic step-down living room, I see a turreted entryway and a spiral staircase leading up. Expensive prints—they can't be originals—cover the walls. Most of the furniture has been moved out of the living room, but I step down into it to get a better look at the tile fireplace with an interesting Mayan motif, which is tucked back into one wall. My head swims. The Tropicana, Reesa, Canter's, and now this place. Everywhere I go tonight, I seem to find myself hunting ghosts.

Oblivious to the magic of the place, and the lesser for it, guests mingle and drink under the high barrel ceiling. So far as I can tell, they are a bland gumbo of Hollywood screenwriters, directors, producers, executives and semi-recognizable actors, each of them believing themselves vastly more interesting than they actually are by virtue of working in the movie biz. I shake my head. This is California. Where's a good earthquake or mudslide when you really need one?

I snare a flute of champagne from the silver tray of a passing cocktail waitress. Sipping it, I walk up to an aging, Botoxed actress who stands gazing sadly out a nearby picture window on the distant city lights. I only recognize her because she happens to be the daughter of an actress I used to have a bit of thing for. Her face poisoned into a death's-head grin, I smile, hoping my eyes don't reflect the horror I feel. She smiles back, but then she doesn't really have a choice.

"Loved your last movie," I lie, not because I didn't love it, but because I didn't see it. Though I'm sure I would have hated it if given half a chance.

"Oh thank you, that's so nice of you to say." She takes my hand. We shake. "I still can't understand why it went straight to video."

"Well there's no accounting for taste in this town."

"True."

If possible, she smiles wider. Okay, enough bullshit. I decide to get to the point before she decides she wants to jump the bones of her last fan on the planet.

"Have you seen our host around anywhere?" I ask, this being my clever way of getting Vin Prince, who I've never seen, pointed out to me. I'm good like that.

"Oh yes, I just saw him. Let's see," she turns and looks over at the makeshift bar that has been set up on the ornate tile near the front door. "There he is at the bar."

I look along the curve of her French manicured nail to see a guy in a tailored Armani suit hand a drink to a fake-boobed blond twenty years his junior. I dislike him on sight, and not just because his tan is much too dark for the time of year or the fact that he wears sunglasses despite being indoors at night. He does his best to hide it, but I know his type immediately. All the money in the world can't scrub slime off a slug. It takes salt to do that.

"I should probably go say hi," I tell the succubus. "Pleasure talking to you."

"You too," she says trying to be demure, trying to be her mother. "Why don't you come find me later so we can. . .get better acquainted."

"I'll do that," I lie.

She smiles as I walk away, but then she doesn't really have a choice.


I obstacle course my way across the sunken living room, up the step, and over to the bar where Vin is busy eye-fucking the blond behind his shades. As I move up behind him I see he stands an inch or two taller than my own six feet. I put my best shit-eater on and clap him on the back a little too hard.

"Vinnie, my man, how's tricks?" I say. I pegged him for the kind of guy who dislikes having his name man-handled and when he turns around I see from his face I was right.

"Vin. The name's Vin."

"Oh yeah sure right."

Vin slides the shades down his beak so as to get a better look at me. "I know you?"

"Sure you do. I'm at your party aren't I?"

"That don't mean I know you. That don't mean shit," he says and pushes his shades back up hiding his eyes from my hypnotic gaze. For some reason the stupid trick won't work through sunglasses. Sometimes even regular glasses or contacts screw with the works. Go figure.

"You know me," I assure him. "We go way back."

"Wait. Are you a writer?"

"Huh?"

"A writer. A screenwriter I was supposed to meet or some shit like that?"

"Oh, you heard about that?"

"Heard about it? My goddamn assistant called half-shitting-her-panties-scared some homicidal screenwriter she gave my address to was on his way here to put his fountain pen in my eye. Wazzat you?"

"Well, yeah, but I think maybe she got the wrong impression. I'm not a writer. I'm a P.I."

"A what?"

"A private investigator. I've been hired to find Raya Van Cleef. I was hoping maybe you'd give me a few minutes of your time to tell me what you know."

"I don't know shit, how's that? It's just like I told the fuckin' cops-- she was here then she left and I ain't talked to her since. There. Conversation over. Now hows-about you get outa my fuckin' house seein' as you wasn't invited in the first fuckin' place?"

The smell of his lie fills my nose. "I'd be happy to. Right after you answer a couple questions for me."

Vin's grin is an ugly thing to behold. "Here, walk with me over here a sec," he says to me.

Turning to the blond who looks like her brain automatically goes into screen-saver mode when no one's punching her keys, he says, "We'll be right back, baby. You stay here."

The blond nods obediently and my new pal throws a knotty arm around my shoulder and guides me over to a more private location under a lighted Dali print.

"All right, I'm gonna give it to you straight, just so's we're real clear," he tells me.

"Oh good. I'd like that."

"I thought you would, so here it is: this is a big night for me. I got a lot of industry friends here. Important people—unlike you. And the last thing I want is for any of them to get the idea that I'm some kinda uncivilized brute because I had to beat the livin' Christ outa some investigator who crashed my fuckin' party. It wouldn't look good. It's not how things are done in Hollywood. It'd be almost as bad for my business as it would be for your face. You with me?"

"I'm with ya," I say.

"Good. Okay, so in the attempt to find an amenable resolution—a compromise if you will—here's my proposition. I'm gonna go upstairs and get a blowjob from that fine young piece a ass right over there. You came uninvited, but now I'm invitin' ya—stick around, get a fresh drink, make nice, whatever. But when that drink's gone, you're gone. 'Cuz if I come back down here after my dick suck and I still see you standin' here smellin' up the place, I'm gonna throw caution to the wind and fuck you all up regardless. Capiche?"

"Sorry," I say, looking at my twin invisible-man reflections in the tinted glass of his Raybans. "I don't speak wop."

Vin's ugly grin goes on a starvation diet, getting thinner and whiter and uglier, like an anorexic chick. For a second I think he's going to swing at me, but to his credit, he maintains control. It takes everything he has, but he does it.

"I almost hope you're here when I come back. I really do," he says backing away and straightening his tie. "It might be worth it to have you here. But that's your call."

With this, he turns and goes back to the sex-bot blond who immediately comes out of sleeper mode and begins to purr and cling according to the dictates of her programming. I watch Vin guide her up the spiral staircase and disappear above.

I light a smoke, ignoring indignant stares from the health-conscious Hollywood set. A too-skinny brunette with wanna-be actress written all over her takes notice and drifts over.

"That looks really good," she tells me. "You have an extra?"

I shake one out, light it for her.

"Thanks," she blows smoke. "I'm supposed to've quit. These things'll kill ya, ya know?"

"It's okay," I say. "I'm already dead."

She laughs. She thinks I'm joking. I let her keep thinking it.

"You're funny."

There's nothing there for me so I just nod and smile.

"So what d'ya do for a living?"

"I salt slugs," I say, sizzling my own cigarette out in the last gulp of champagne at the bottom of my flute. "Excuse me."


I head upstairs. The hall is long and dark. Ornate Persian rugs hang from the walls. I try two oak doors, which open into empty bedrooms. Then I decide to see what is behind door number three.

What's behind it is a tastefully decorated room complete with a Juliette balcony, all-natural hardwood floors, an antique maple bureau, and a large four post canopy bed-- where true to his word-- my new friend is playing the age-old party game of bob-for-cock with the blond. Both are so involved in what she's doing, they don't hear me come in.

I drift over to the bed where the dame, black cocktail dress in flat-tire ring around her taut abs, kneels on the floor. I bend. I grab her by the elbow and pull. Her swollen lips come off Vin's small purple pecker with an slobbery-suctiony pop as I tug her to her feet and set her in motion.

"Let's go, doll. Me and Vinnie here need to talk."

"Hey," she says in protest, wiping at the drool that slimes her lower chin.
Behind the glasses, Vin's eyes snap open angry-like. "What the fuck?"

Seeing me there, a look of cagey fear crosses his face, but it doesn't last. Rage and humiliation set in and he lunges off the bed at me, his dick moving up and down like tiny diving board.

"You motherfucker—"

What he says next is hard to decipher because I've stopped his forward momentum at arm's length by grabbing him around the throat and clamping tight on his windpipe, but it sounds something along the lines of 'aack'.

"Go on, honey. Get dressed and get out."

"Vin? Are you okay, baby?"

"Aaack," he says again, which I assure her means that he's just fine and he'll be along shortly.

Pulling her dress up and down as needed, she backs from the room, politely closing the door behind her.

When she's gone, I yank Vin close so his face is scant inches from mine. I pull his sunglasses off and break them with my free hand. "Now you're gonna answer those questions we talked about. Capiche?"

He nods enthusiastically, even throws in a couple "aacks" to show me just how committed he is to the idea. I let him go. He sags like sack of shit onto the bed. He sucks for air, one hand going to his throat while the other tugs his lipstick-stained shirttail down over his now limp dick.

"Where'd you learn to do that?" he asks hoarsely. Oddly, he seems a little impressed with me.

"Kindergarten. It was a tough neighborhood."

"Well it was really something. No shit."

"Glad you liked it."

"I gotta tell ya, you're a lot stronger than you look, guy. Hey, you ever think about being in a movie? Guy like you, with your kinda— what's the word—demeanor and physicality, you could do well. I even got a movie in mind."

"No thanks," I say. Most movies are crap these days anyway. I haven't really liked one since black-and-white went out of style.

"No thanks? Whaddya mean? You don't wanna be in a movie? Everyone wants to be in a movie."

"Not me."

"Well lemme tell you about it at least. This movie I've got comin' up, it's about this guy—an ex-special forces operative—real badass who loses his wife and kid—"

That's all I hear of the plot because I've gone back to choking him. "You're not listening, Vinnie. I don't want to be in your two-bit movie. What I do I want is to ask you some questions and get some answers in return. And that's all I want. Get me?"

He nods. He gets me.

"All right. I'm gonna let you go, but if anything comes out of your mouth that's anything besides an answer to one of my questions I'm gonna choke you unconscious, bring you around, and start all over. We clear?"

More nods. I let him go. His bag-pipe lungs wheeze out an ugly Scottish dirge.

"Whaddya wanna know?" He winces, realizing he has already fucked up, but I let it go.

"Raya. Where is she?"

"I don't know."

Smells like the truth, but it's hard to be sure. The problem with guys like Vin Prince is they lie so damn much there's a constant stink about them.

"Have you heard from her since she left?"

"Yeah. Once."

"When?"

"Two—three weeks ago."

I wait for him to go on. He doesn't. "What'd she want?"

"I don't remember."

I shake my head, disappointed-like and make to start choking him again, but he flails backwards onto the bed hands held protectively to his throat.

"Okay, okay, I'll tell ya. I'll tell ya. She wanted-- she wanted the number for my dealer."

"And?"

He shrugs. "I gave it to her."

"You gave a fourteen year-old kid the number for your meth dealer?"

"What am I, her daddy? I mean fuck, I was doing a whole lot worse than that by her age."

The mere mention of a fix reminds me that I haven't had one in awhile. Alone in the quiet room with Vin, my hunger awakens like a colicky newborn. I find myself staring hard at the swollen, finger-reddened pulse in his neck. It has the same effect on me as that little old bell of Pavlov's.

"What are you lookin' at?"

Deep inside, I feel the change pushing for release from whatever dark place it resides. It rushes over me. The sheer intensity is shocking. I tell myself that Vin Prince might be a slime-bag—is a slime-bag—but that's not enough to buy him a death sentence. I have rules. Without my rules I'm just another mindless animal, but it's no use. I'm too weak to resist it. Even reminding myself what a bad idea it would be, that the blond has seen me and knows I'm up here, isn't enough to stop it. I want to change. I want to sink my fangs deep into his throat and drink him dry like a spider does a fly.

And then I think of Reesa. I think of her lovely face and the way she made me feel and the investigation I'm supposed to be conducting on her behalf and somehow, amazingly, unbelievably, I manage to pull back at the very brink. The pain of abortion is hollow and immense. With a sort of growl, I tear my gaze away from Vin's throat and back away toward the door, not trusting myself to be any closer.

"Y-You okay, pal?"

"I'm fine."

"You sure? You looked a little—I dunno—crazy there for a second. No offense," Vin laughs. Not "ha-ha" but "oh fuck".

"I said I'm fine," I say, as I wipe cold beads of perspiration from my brow. I have to focus. "The girl. Did she call your dealer?"

"I don't know. Don't know. Don't fucking care. Fuck her and her skeez-bag sister."

I want to tell him he shouldn't talk about a lady like that, but I'm afraid if I open my mouth now what might come out instead is a lot of sharp teeth and murder. I buy some time by focusing on my trembling hands and forcing them to take the pad and pen from my pocket. "Your dealer— what's his name?" I try to sound in control of myself, but it's a bluff, and piss-poor one at that. I need to get out of here quick. The hunger has receded, but it's not gone. I feel it crouched back and coiled to pounce like a tiger lying in wait.

Vin seems to sense it. He tells me what I want to know. "Leroy. Leroy Watkins.

Pressing much too hard, I scratch it down. "Give me his number."

Vin gives it to me.

"You better not be jerking me around, Vin. You won't like it if I have to come back."

Time to go. I leave Vin looking awfully pale for a guy with a year-round tan.

In case anyone's still reading...

TWO

I pull my blood red "427" limited edition Ford Fairlane into a metered slot just up the street from the Tropicana. I bought her new in back '66 and it's a love affair that has stood the test of time. Ain't love grand?

I'm early so I take my kit out and go through the familiar process of fixing. I assemble the needle, tie off my arm, draw the blood. Because my skin is almost translucent in its alabaster whiteness I rarely have trouble finding a vein. Even the recessed ones. I slip the tip in; depress the plunger, and . . . everything's Jake.

Settling back into the Fairlane's loving embrace, I let myself drowse in my euphoric state for a few minutes, enjoying my high. Lids at half-mast, I watch the red taillights of cars as they motor past on Melrose. When I slowly rise to full awareness fifteen minutes later I see it's ten-o'-five. Now I'm late. Swell. I shake my head to clear it, get out, head back up the street to the club.

I move past the long losers line at the door and walk right up to a pony-tailed doorman with a chest like a beer keg and tell him I'm on the list. Turns out I am. He unhooks a purple velvet cordon and lets me in.

The small dark 40's style lounge smells of beer and cigarettes and betrayal and sex. Old pick-up lies hang faintly in the air. The joint hasn't changed a bit, which I take to mean the owners are either visionary about the cyclical nature of trends or just cheap. Maybe both. Small, intimate candlelit tables punctuate the room. On one side, a small thrust stage takes up the entire west wall. Big bare glowing light bulbs stand like soldiers at attention along the perimeter of the stage, as if protecting the six-piece swing band from the riff-raff. Aside from me, the members of the band are the only ones in the place dressed the part.

I look around for the bar. I find it set back into the wall opposite the stage. The band plays me over the shoe-worn carpet to a tall stool. I order a Scotch on the rocks from a bartender with a thin moustache and watery eyes that remind me of two black pearls sunk deep in oysters. Judging from the gin-blossoms in his cheeks, slinging drinks isn't the job for him. Kind of like a pill-head working the counter at a pharmacy. But that's his problem, not mine.

I swivel around on the stool, eyeing the people that take up seats at the tables scattered about. Reesa draws an eclectic crowd. Mostly gay couples of both sexes. But thrown in among them are tie-loosened Hollywood types, horny college students, and a few leering Persians.

All eyes are directed at the stage where the white tuxedoed bandleader, tempos the Cole Porter down, and takes to the mike to introduce the delightful, delicious, de-lovely Reesa Van Cleef. Cheers, applause, whistles, and hoots follow the introduction, growing in volume and intensity as the lady herself, veiled behind a wall of red feathers, takes center stage.

She's gorgeous; stunning in that golden-era Hollywood screen-siren way when women carried an alluring air of mystery about them. When they all seemed to know something you didn't, and found the fact amusing. She might have walked right out of the frame of an old black-and-white Bogart flick. The only tip-off that she is not a product of my own by-gone day is the fact that her hair, which she wears in a forties style forward curled pompadour, is brilliant Kool-aid red. My favorite color. I'm not much for smiling, but I smile now. I didn't think they were making them like her anymore.

Glad to see I was wrong.

Somewhere a bubble-machine works its magic. The band dusts off an old tromboney ditty and Reesa glides into motion. Her bright eyes flirt as she teases the crowd, giving us titillating peak-a-boos of her moon-pale skin, racetrack curves, and full Jane Russell bosoms with small rosebud pink nipples.

Call me old-fashioned, but this is what a strip-show should be. The term strip-tease suggests nudity with a sense of fun and playfulness. There's none of that in the way the strippers of today ply their trade. It's all just gyrating g-string in-your-face mercenary flesh for hire. Ugly. A show like that leaves you feeling low; like you're lesser for it; like you've been conned. Not that I don't ever go. I do. Joints like that are open late and I'm a late-night kind of guy. But watching Reesa do her red-feather shimmy now, reminds me of something I've almost forgotten. It's as if her seductive movements are capable of weaving a spell and casting me back in time. I feel transported. I feel like a kid again.

I feel alive.

The show goes by faster than summer vacation. When it's over I blink and look around feeling like I've come out of a trance. My highball of McAllen, which was delivered unbeknownst to me, sits melted and untouched at my elbow. I shake my head to clear it. I need to get a hold on myself. I'm here on business. It won't do to come across like some drooling schoolboy.

To have something to do, I shake out a butt, light it. The bartender is instantly on the spot to play the ever-popular game of fuck with the smoker.

"Sorry, you'll have to put that out, sir. There's no smoking allowed in the Tropicana," he says.

He doesn't sound too sorry. In fact, he sounds like he enjoys spoiling my good time. I lock eyes with him, my hypnotic stare as impossible to resist as a Star Trek tractor beam, and tell him, "I'm not smoking."

A glazed cow-dumb stare comes over his ruddy face and he completely agrees. "You're not smoking," he repeats.

"That's right. Now you're going to give me an empty rocks glass to use as an ashtray."

He nods, says nothing, just does it.

"Now you're going to leave me alone until I call you."

"I'm going to leave you alone," he murmurs.

Grinning, I blow a cloud of secondhand smoke in the guy's face as he goes to stand over by the cash register which seems to serve the dual purpose of propping him up. Being undead has a lot of drawbacks, but it's got its advantages too. The hypnotic gaze is one of them.

Intermission. The lights come up. I smoke, trying to ignore the butterflies that flop like dying fish in my stomach as I await Reesa's company. I reassure myself that she's probably not half as attractive up close. Can't be. I only ever met one other dame who was. This was all just a trick of the distance, the makeup, the lights. Up close I'll see the flaws; the chinks in her Venus di Milo complexion; the cracks running through her Mona-Lisa smile. I check my watch and toss back my drink and signal for another, a double. Why the hell not? I can't get drunk unless the alcohol has already been absorbed into a victim's blood, and besides it gives me a prop; something to do with my hands. I mash my smoke out, light another.

"How do you do it?"

I swivel around to find her standing there in a red silk kimono embroidered with black and gold dragons. Immediately I realize I couldn't have been more wrong about her looks. She's the real McCoy; every bit as lovely up close as she appeared on stage. Lovelier. I feel a strange disappointment. A noticeable flaw would have been a welcome thing; would have put me back in control of myself.

"What's that?" I ask, glad at least that I don't sound like a nervous school boy. It's about eighty years too goddamn late for that.

"Get away with smoking. I can't believe no one's said anything to you yet. Usually they're real pricks about it. Won't even let me do it in my own dressing room."

"Yeah, well, we came to an agreement. Would you like one?" I say, picking up the pack and shaking one out.

Reesa hesitates a moment, but finally takes it, game if I am. Red manicured nails carry the butt up to a mouth like a Christmas bow. I've never felt jealous of a cigarette before. Guess there really is a first time for everything. She waits for me to light it. Her wish is my command.

"I hope you're Mick Angel," she says, drawing in a lungful. "Otherwise I'm gonna feel real silly."

"That's me," I say. "Can I buy you a drink?"

"I drink free here, but you can order me one." There is a whisper of silk on vinyl as she slides onto the stool next to me. Now I'm jealous of the stool.

"All right. Let me guess—you look like a martini kinda gal."

"Good guess. And I bet you're having Scotch."

We smile. Kindred spirits.

"Vodka?" I ask, hoping it's not.

She shakes her head, electric red curls bouncing around that lovely face. "Gin. Three olives. Dirty."

"Dirty huh?"

"The dirtier the better."

I call the bartender over and order her drink. He notices Reesa smoking and starts to put the kibosh on it, but I cut him short, telling him he's got it all wrong again. This time a flicker of doubt crosses his face. That's the problem with the hypnotic gaze. It's a nice tool to have, but some people are more receptive to it than others. It usually correlates with intelligence. I wonder if I've already overused it with this fella, and if the situation is about to become awkward, but then the troubled look in his eye disappears and he goes to mix the drink.

"So, you've been here before?" she asks.

I nod. "But it's been awhile."

"Ever catch my show?" she asks.

I shake my head. "I don't think you were doing the show last time I was here, but I'd've been back sooner if I'd known what I was missing out on."

She likes this. It earns me a smile. "This seems like your kind of place."

"Yeah?"

It's her turn to nod. "I mean, this place is old school and you seem like an old school kinda guy."

I smile wryly. "Old school. That's me all right." Emphasis on the old.

"I like old school," Reesa assures me. "It's a compliment."

"Then that's how I'll take it."

We smile. The drinks come. I enjoy seeing the perfect imprint her full bottom lip leaves on the rim of her martini glass. As much as I'd like to make this about pleasure, it's about business, so I get to the point and ask how I can help her.

"I want you to find my fourteen year-old sister. Raya. She's gone missing."

"How long?"

"A couple months now. She was living with me and my boyfriend, but she ran away."

I smell a lie in there somewhere, but I let it go. Everybody lies. I'm more disturbed by the fact that she has a boyfriend, if you want to know the truth.

"And no one's looking for her?"

"The cops say they're looking, but they haven't found her. What's one more teenage runaway to them?"

"Why was she living with you instead of your parents?"

"If you knew my family you wouldn't have to ask. Let's just say my Dad put the fun in dysfunction and let it go at that."

I nod. "So she was living with you and your boyfriend?"

"Ex-boyfriend. I left him a week or two later."

Hearing it does my heart good. "Mind if I ask why?" I'm prying. So sue me.

"You want the short list or the long?"

"Just gimme the highlights."

"Well, on top of being a complete shitbag of a human being, it turns out he was fucking everything he could get that little pecker of his into."

"I see."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't talk like that. It's not lady-like."

"No one would ever mistake you for anything but a lady," I say, cashing in on another smile.

"Anyway, it's my own fault. I broke my rule about never dating anyone with anything to do with Hollywood. I know better. Of course the icing on the shit cake was his endearing meth addiction."

"He was a tweaker?"

Reesa nods, absently pulling a red curl out and letting it sproing back into place as she speaks. "We both were. That's partly why I left. I was sick of it. I hated living that way. I wanted to clean myself up. So I left. Went into rehab. When I got out six weeks later I tried to find my sister, but. . ." she shrugs helplessly.

"No dice," I finish for her.

She shakes her head. "So, do you think you can help me, Mr. Angel?" Holding her martini glass in both hands, Reesa drinks, watching me with big gorgeous doe-eyes as she does it.

"I could, but I'll be honest, I don't come cheap. I charge five hundred a day plus expenses."

"Money I've got. A girl can make a pretty good living taking her clothes off, or hadn't you heard?"

I match her smirk for smirk and take my notepad out and flip it open to a blank page. "Have you talked to your ex since you left?""Do you call the warden after you break out of prison?"

"Good point. But I should talk to him. Your sister lived there with you. Maybe she forgot something when she left and came back for it. Maybe she's tried to call and get in touch with you. Anyway, it's a place to start. What's his name and number?""

Reluctant, she gives them to me. I chicken-scratch the name Vin Prince and two numbers—one for cell the other for his production company in my pad. "Address?"

"I don't know," she tells me. "We lived in Brentwood together, but last I heard he'd moved to some fancy-shmancy place up in the hills I'm sure he can't afford."

"I'll find it," I say. Then I ask for the names and numbers of anyone else who might know something about where I can find Raya along with the addresses of places she frequented. Reesa's embarrassed at how little she can come up with, proving once and for all that the best parenting doesn't get done on crystal meth. In the end I've got the name of a seventeen year old boyfriend of Raya's and the name of a Hollywood Goth club they went to together, and that's all I've got. It'll have to do.

The last thing I ask for is a picture of Raya; something I can show around. Reesa says she thinks she has one in her dressing room and goes to get it. I watch her go. I'm reminded of the ocean. I light a cigarette. I wait. When she comes back she hands me a snapshot of an attractive fourteen-year-old girl with dyed black punk-cut hair caught in the act of rolling her eyes at the camera. The resemblance to Reesa is undeniable. I pocket it.

Though I want to linger, my own addiction is tightening the leash, so I tell Reesa I will look into it, drain my drink, and stand to go.

"Don't you want some money up front?" she asks, batting her lashes at me playful-like. "I thought that's how it worked."

She reaches inside her robe now and takes a stash of hundreds from somewhere I don't dare think too long about being as I'm standing up and all.

"Will a thousand do to start?"

I want to tell her to put it away, to keep it 'til I get some results. That would be the classy thing to do. But I don't. I take it. I take it and hide it in my pocket like something shameful. "It'll do."

"Aren'tcha gonna count it?"

"I trust you," I say.

"But you don't even know me."

"I don't have to. I know where to find you."

One last smile. One last look. I try to acid burn the image of her into my memory. I want to be able to remember her exactly when I fantasize about being that barstool later. I turn and retrace my steps to the door, a cigarette smoke snail-trail the only evidence I came and went.