Dark Moonlighting (3 page)

Starside was nestled about halfway between
Chicago and Springfield. Founded in the middle part of the 19th
century, it served as a Midwestern transportation hub before
expanding into a commercial center in the latter half of the 20th
century. Legend has it that the city was founded and named by a man
who had an intense sibling rivalry with his brother. The brother
had started a magnificent vacation town called Oceanside in
Florida. Since the site of his city had no significant geographic
features and a much less appealing climate, the founder of Starside
decided to focus on the beautiful view of the nighttime sky. As a
vampire, it had been a very appealing name for me. Unfortunately,
modern light pollution blocked most of the majestic stars from
sight during the night.

Hass, Furcht & Ruine was the biggest law
firm in Starside and would have even been a strong competitor to
its counterparts in Chicago. Caleb Hass and Benjamin Furcht started
out as ambulance chasers and gradually worked their way up to be
the dominate defense attorneys in the city. Franklin Ruine was
allowed to join the partnership because he brought a small number
of clients who had a large amount of money. Rumors persisted that
either Hass or Furcht had been involved in the mysterious
disappearance of Ruine three years earlier. While I had no love for
either man nor any illusion about their moral standing, I tended to
believe they were innocent of the crime. Men like Hass and Furcht
wielded loopholes as their weapons, not knives and shovels. Whether
it was true or not, I had been happy with the accusation at the
time. It had taken media and police attention away from a
particularly brutal murder I had committed against an employee of
the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The law firm did not have an underground
parking garage, but I was assigned a special parking spot near the
entrance of the office. A hastily constructed canopy stretched out
from the side of the building and provided just enough shade for me
to avoid the unbearable pain of exposure to sunlight. I am sure it
was an inconvenience for Hass and Furcht to make the special
arrangements. I often wondered if they tolerated my employment
because I was such a good defense attorney or because it allowed
them to bask in the diversity of having an albino on the staff. I
exited my SUV, slid my posterior along the car door to stay in the
shade and proceeded into the building. The receptionist barely
acknowledged my presence when I nodded at her and made my way to
the senior partner’s office.

Caleb Hass was on the phone when I entered
the room. He smiled and waved me into the chair in front of his
desk. I returned the smile while thinking,
if you weren’t so
influential I would have made a point to eat you years ago
.
Hass was fat with graying hair and an elaborate array of liver
spots from his regular deep sea fishing excursions. He looked
pretty much exactly how you would expect a scheister to look.
Though he rarely sat in on trials after becoming a senior partner,
Hass built a reputation early in his career for winning at any
cost. He once got a drunk driver acquitted of running down a
bicyclist at night on the technicality that one of the reflectors
on the bike was a quarter inch smaller than regulation size. In
another high profile case, he saved the neck of a priest accused of
molesting an altar boy by insinuating that the boy had been asking
for it by dressing slutty. He then successfully countersued the
boy’s family and got the priest a $250,000 settlement for emotional
damages. Overall, he is a real douchebag. As a lawyer, I am very
much aware that the comments I make about Caleb Hass could be
considered libelous. Since I am soon going to be executed by the
state of Illinois, I am not particularly concerned about Hass suing
me for defamation. Rest assured though, if he could sue a corpse he
would. The man perfected his craft so well that almost everything
he said was disingenuous. For the sake of clarity, I will attempt
to translate his words to the best of my ability.

“Nick, it’s good to see you (I don’t really
care if you live or die),” Caleb said to me after finishing up on
the phone.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be visiting with
happier news,” I said. “I’m sure you’ve already heard about the
outcome of the Stephens trial.”

Caleb nodded his head solemnly. “That’s very
unfortunate for poor Robert Stephens, Jr. (Robert Stephens, Sr. was
ridiculously powerful, and I really would have liked it if he owed
me a favor). Oh well, I suppose we can’t win them all (You suck. I
totally would have won that one).”

I took the liberty of pouring myself a glass
of Scotch whiskey from a bottle that Caleb had carelessly left on
his desk. He had a fully stocked liquor cabinet in his office but
had not even once offered me a drink. My cover story as an albino
often made people believe I was weak or fragile. He might have
assumed I was too soft to drink. On the other hand though, perhaps
he was just a cheap asshole. It was not until I was returning the
bottle to the desk that I glanced at the label and realized the
Scotch had been aged for sixty years.

Caleb’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly (That
bottle is more expensive than your retainer!).

I took a sip from the glass and then made a
point of downing the rest of the pricey liquor in a single
gulp.

“Ah, smooth,” I remarked as I raised the
glass slightly and pretended to admire it.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it (I am not glad you
enjoyed it). I suppose you deserve a stiff drink after that trial
(I don’t know if you realize how expensive 60-year-old Scotch is or
if you’re just an idiot, but either way I will exact terrible
vengeance on you at some point in the future). The reason I called
you in today is that I wanted you to meet someone (Speaking of
vengeance…),” Caleb said. With a fake smile still plastered to his
face, he leaned to his left and pressed the intercom button. “Ms.
Pollock, has Christina Leopold arrived yet (Where is that
moron)?”

“No, Mr. Hass. I think she might… oh,
actually I think I just saw her drive by. Would you like me to go
get her?” the receptionist’s crackling voice asked through the
intercom.

“No, I’ll go flag her down (God she’s dumb),”
he answered before releasing the intercom button. “Would you like
to come out with me Nick (I didn’t forget about the whole albino
thing, I just wanted to highlight your physical weakness in the
hopes of giving you a complex)?”

I declined the invitation while Caleb
pretended to suddenly remember my whole issue with sunlight and
feigned sympathy. I poured myself another glass of the ridiculously
expensive Scotch and lazily examined the office as I waited. There
were two bookcases on the wall to my right. The top rows were
filled with the standard legal books that could be found in any
lawyer’s office. I had been in his office many times before, but
for the first time I took note of the titles of the books on the
bottom rows of the two bookcases. They were not legal reference
books, but rather his personal collection. After reading the titles
for a few seconds I realized that something seemed out of place.
The books were not in alphabetical order, and after a moment I was
able to figure out his odd arrangement. He had organized his
personal collection by their position on the political spectrum.
Das Kapital
and some books by Bill Maher were on the left.
Mein Kampf
and the works of Ann Coulter were on the right. I
was still contemplating Caleb’s placement of A.A. Milne at the far
right of the bookcase when my boss returned to his office with a
young woman in tow.

Christina Leopold was an attractive girl, but
she was far from a super model. Her skin was fair although not
nearly as pale as mine. Her hair was dirty blond and unkempt. She
was a little on the heavy side but was by no means fat. Much of her
excess weight had settled serendipitously into her bra, which was
protruding noticeably out of her poorly buttoned blouse. Everything
about her appearance indicated that she was frazzled and nervous.
She even leapt forward to shake my hand before Caleb had started
the introductions.

“Nick, I’d like you to meet Christina Leopold
(Check out the rack on this one!). I was blown away by her when I
was interviewing applicants, and I just knew I had to have her (I
interviewed her towards the end of the day when I was pretty drunk.
It was probably a poor decision on my part but, again, just look at
that rack. Can you blame me?). She graduated at the top of her
class from John Marshall, provided three glowing recommendation
letters and wrote a real nice essay about what she hopes to do at
the firm (blah, blah…blah). I’d like you to take her under your
wing and show her all the excitement of being a defense attorney
(She’s your problem now. After I sobered up I realized it’s
probably a bad idea to have her around given that she has so
recently studied sexual harassment law. I already had enough
trouble with that call girl last year who I later found out was
turning tricks to pay for law school). You’re trying a triple D for
the Norton trial aren’t you (Even I’m mildly interested in your
next case)?”

“Yes, sir. Keep your fingers crossed,” I
responded with a sly smile.

“Triple D?” Christina questioned.

I was taken aback momentarily by the
intensity of her staring into my eyes. She made more eye contact
with me than any other person I had ever met. Before that moment I
did not even know that there could be varying degrees of eye
contact. I always assumed there was either eye contact or there was
not. Christina’s eyes bore into me unceasingly, refusing to shift
awkwardly around the room like the eyes of any other person in her
position would have. She barely even blinked. Neither the question
she had asked nor the answer I was going to give were interesting
enough to elicit such attention. Her strange action left me
unbalanced, and I shifted my eyes to my shoes like a nervous
schoolboy.

“I’m trying for an insanity plea. So it’s a
mental disease or defect defense. Triple D,” I answered.

“That sounds so interesting,” she said in
such a passionate way that it would have been more fitting had I
just revealed the presence of space aliens to her.

“I’m sure you two will get along just fine
(I’m bored with this, get the hell out of my office),” Caleb said.
“Christina, you might even become as successful as my youngest
lawyer here (No seriously, get out). What are you Nick, twenty-six,
twenty-seven (This conversation is cutting into my drinking alone
time)?”

“Twenty-six,” I answered for the 651st year
in a row.

Chapter Two: Plagued

I had forgotten my socially awkward
introduction to Christina by the time I reached McClane County
General Hospital. The sun had set during my commute, which allowed
me to use the surface parking lot without fear of dying on my walk
into the building. I parked in a remote area so I could change out
of my suit and tie and into a pair of scrubs before I entered the
hospital. I took the elevator down one floor where it deposited me
in the basement. One of the doctors from the morgue smiled
halfheartedly at me as I passed him on the way to my office.

During my murder trial, the prosecutor
described the basement of the hospital as a place reserved for
corpses. As I was not undead, the statement was an inaccurate
attempt to paint me as inhuman to the jury. It was, however, not
too far off from an appropriate description of the morgue workers.
They were a depressed and quiet bunch, likely due to their chosen
vocation. With the basement filled with corpses and workers who had
no life in them, most of the rest of the hospital’s employees
avoided the area like the plague.

I, who incidentally survived the plague,
loved working in the basement. My fake medical condition required
an office without windows. Basement real estate was not at a
premium, and the space I was allotted was easily twice as large as
any of the offices above ground. Having my own office at my age and
level of experience was itself a peculiarity. Of course I had
actually been practicing medicine for two centuries, but the
administration of the hospital only saw me as a genius child. They
decided quickly that they had to have me when I applied for the
position six years earlier. This was based mostly on my fake
medical test scores and glowing recommendations from doctors in
Massachusetts who did not really exist. If any of them had doubts
about hiring me, they were quickly won over when they saw me in
action.

Even after I was exposed as a vampire, many
people believed that I was some sort of genius. I like to assume
that I am smarter than most people, although I have never undergone
an intelligence test to prove that theory. The main reason I was
able to master three difficult professions is a simple matter of
time. I was born in central London in 1340 and became a vampire in
1366. It took some time to get used to being a vampire. I had to
learn what I could do, what I could not do and how to hunt without
getting caught. A liberal estimate would be that this process took
at most a decade. After I had figured out the routine and gotten
accustomed to it, I found myself with quite a bit of free time. I
had eaten most of my family in an insane binge when I was first
turned, and my constant fear of exposure left me without any
friends. I turned to books to pass the time, and I eventually
became interested in England’s early legal system. Many years later
I became enthralled with medicine. I tried many other professions
over the years to pass the time. My experience as a police officer
was comparatively limited. I had only developed an interest in
criminal justice over the course of the last forty years.

It was my real medical condition that gave me
the ability to hold three jobs simultaneously. Vampires require
only two hours of sleep per day. By the early fifteenth century I
had grown weary of twenty-two hour days. I used careers and
expanding my skills to fight off the loneliness and isolation that
I felt. On that day at the hospital though, I had just finished a
grueling court case and had not slept in nearly thirty-six hours. I
fell into a deep sleep as soon as my head hit the desk in my
office.