Angel of Vengeance (4 page)

“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 the 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 blonde twenty years his junior. I dislike him on sight, and not just because his tan is much too dark for the time of year and 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 blonde 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 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. “Be happy to. Right after you answer a couple of 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 blonde, 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 blonde 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 an 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 can 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?”

It’s true what they say about a vampire being unable to turn or use his powers on a victim in their own home unless invited in. I don’t know why it works that way, or who makes the rules, but that’s how it is. I came uninvited, but Vin had just changed all that—“stick around” is all it takes. Now all bets are off.

“Sorry,” I say, looking past the twin monster reflections that stare back at me from the tinted glass of his Ray-Bans. “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 blonde, 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 wannabe 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, y’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’s behind door number three.

What’s behind it is a tastefully decorated room complete with a Juliet 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 bob-for-cock with the blonde. 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 a 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 a 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 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 a 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 off his sunglasses 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 of “Aacks” to show me just how committed he is to the idea. I let him go. He sags like a 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 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 bagpipe 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 backward 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 a while. 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?”

If Vin hadn’t invited me to stay downstairs, he’d have nothing to worry about, but he did. He did, and now I feel the change pushing for release from whatever dark place it resides in. It rushes over me. The sheer intensity is shocking. I try to 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 blonde 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.

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 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 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 skeezebag 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 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 a piss-poor one at that. I need to get out of here quick. The hunger has receded, but it isn’t 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.”