Once Bitten (10 page)

“Hey, what are you doing?” I asked her.

She stopped sucking and lifted her head. There was blood on her lips and I was reminded of the first time I'd seen her, at the police station. “You don't know what he'd been doing with that blade,”

she said. “I'm cleaning the wound.”

“What about AIDS?”

“Jamie, I hardly think you'll catch AIDS from a switchblade.”

“Not me, you. You should be careful with blood.”

She looked at me sternly. “Dr Beaverbrook, are you telling me that you're HIV positive?”

“No, of course not, it's just....”

She went back to licking the wound, her eyes on mine. It didn't hurt, far from it, it was soothing and, to be honest, downright sexy. I could see from her eyes that she was smiling and I reached over with my other arm and stroked her hair.

“You should be careful,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Tackling that guy. God, he could have so easily killed you.”

She snorted contemptuously. “Huh, in your dreams,” she said. “There's nothing someone like him can do to hurt me. There's nothing anyone can do to hurt me, Jamie. Trust me.”

“Everyone feels like that when they're young, Terry. You feel like you can live forever, that nothing can damage you. I used to feel the same, we all did. You feel that you'll walk away from any car crash, that a plane can explode and you'll be the only survivor, that you'll never get seriously sick, that you'll live forever. You feel like you're immortal.”

She nodded, her eyes wide and I put the back of my hand against her cheek. She felt cool and dry, like bone china, but soft.

“It's an illusion, Terry, take it from someone who's been there. As you get older you realise how short a time we have and how precious life is. You've got to learn not to take risks. All it takes is some nutter with a switchblade and it's all over.”

She shook her head firmly. “No, I don't believe that, Jamie.”

“The morgues are full of youngsters who didn't believe it. Trust me on this one,” I said. “You'll change. Everyone does.”

She put her head up close to mine, our noses almost touching. "Nothing can hurt me, Jamie.

And as long as you're with me, nothing will be able to hurt you either."

I tried to lift up my arm to show her the cut, but she pushed it away and pressed her lips against mine, kissing me hard and watching me at the same time. I tried to tell her that she was wrong, that you grew out of the immortality complex, that when you hit thirty you became all too well aware of the body's failings and you can't sleep at night for the sound of your heart ticking off the seconds,

but then I lost myself in the kiss and when I raised my hand it was to caress the back of her neck and not to show her the blood. Eventually she broke away and asked me to drive back to my house.

While I drove she asked me about my work, about my time at university, my research. She didn't ask about Deborah and I didn't explain.

When I opened the front door I was hit by a wave of guilt as if Deborah was waiting there with an arsenal of sarcasm and bitterness but of course there was nothing, and maybe that was worse.

Terry was the first girl I'd taken back since Deborah had left. I reached for the light switch but Terry's hand covered mine and she whispered “no, leave it” and then put her arms around me and kicked the door shut with her heel as she kissed me. I put my arms around her waist and lifted her off her feet so that her head was level with mine. I couldn't see because it was pitch dark in the hall but I felt that she still had her eyes open, watching me. How old was she? Twenty five, she'd said.

Or thereabouts. God, I could barely remember what it felt liked to be twenty five years old and to feel that I'd live forever. When I was twenty five she'd have been fourteen with nothing more to worry about than which boy she had a crush on and whether or not she'd make the cheerleading team.

“You're drifting,” she said.

“I'm what?”

“Drifting. Your mind has gone walkabout and I want you to concentrate on me, Jamie. OK?”

“OK,” I said, and kissed her again.

“Bedroom,” she said.

“Bedroom?”

“Carry me to the bedroom,” she said, lifting her legs and hooking them around my waist. She felt light, hardly any weight at all, though I could feel the tight strength of her young thighs.

“I can't see where I'm going,” I complained.

“It's not that dark,” she said. It was pitch black. I stumbled towards the bedroom, hitting the walls a few times and once banging my shins against one of the innumerable coffee tables which made her laugh out loud.

I reached the bedroom in one piece, just about, and put her on the bed. The blinds were open so the first time I good actually see her in the light of the big, white moon that hung in the middle of the Californian night sky. She threw off her jacket kicked up her legs and undid the belt of her trousers, wriggling to slip them off. “Come on Jamie,” she giggled. “Get naked.”

The zip on the motorcycle jacket made a ripping sound as took it off and I pulled the t-shirt over my head and then I took off my jeans to the pitter-patter of hundreds of grains of rice raining down onto the carpet.

The Star She was gone when I woke up and I didn't remember her leaving in the night. I felt as if every bone in my body had been broken and then reset, there were bruises on my thighs and bitemarks on my shoulders, not deep enough to draw blood but I could see where her teeth had marked me. She'd been like an animal at times, screaming and biting and scratching, but she'd been gentle too, soft and imaginative, doing things to me that no-one had ever done to me before. Part of me wanted to ask her how she knew how to give so much pleasure, how she knew just what to do and how long to do it, but I knew that I didn't really want to know the answer because the things she did in bed weren't the things you learn from books, they came only from experience. No-one had ever made love to the me the way she'd done, and I doubt that anyone else ever would. I'd asked her if she wanted to use anything but she laughed and said no, there was no way she'd get pregnant and I wondered if the flippant attitude came along with the immortality complex but when I asked her if she was on the Pill she just kissed me and flipped me over onto my back and I didn't ask her again.

She used the phone once during the night, I think, because I sort of remembered waking up to find her sitting on the edge of the bed whispering in a language which I didn't recognise but which sounded Slavic, Polish or Russian maybe, and I reached out for her in half-sleep and she ruffled my hair and put the phone back and then made love to me again. I don't know, maybe I imagined that bit.

There was an indentation in the pillow and I rolled over to her side of the bed and lay there, face down, breathing in the smell of her. I went to shower and saw that she'd used the bathroom, the shower stall was wet, two of the towels were damp and there were a few of her hairs in one of my brushes. I picked one of them and ran it through my fingers, stretching it out to see how long it was. It was perfectly straight, no kinks or bends. I love straight hair. I got so pissed off when Deborah went out and got her's permed, without even asking me whether or not I thought it was a good idea. I hated the way it looked, but even worse I hated the burnt smell that lingered for days afterwards. Terry's hair smelt fresh and clean, but as I ran the individual strand over my skin I could feel that it was strong too. I held it up to where I imagined the top of her head would be if she was standing next to me and I dropped one end and allowed it to swing free. I imagined she was there, looking up at me, teeth parting as she smiled, standing up on tip-toe to kiss me. I caught my reflection in the mirror and realised how dumb I looked so I put the hair back on the shelf above the sink. The were several others in the brush and one of them was pure white. I pulled it out of the bristles and would it around my left index finger. It had the same feel as the black hair but was totally devoid of pigment.

I showered and put on a white towelling robe and went into the kitchen to make myself coffee.

There was no note from her anywhere but the red light was flashing on the answering machine and I thought that she'd left a message for me on it but it was Peter Hardy, asking me to call him again.

I dialled his number, half expecting to end up speaking to his machine, but he picked it up on the third ring.

“We speak at last,” I said.

“Hiya Jamie. I tried to call just after midnight. You out with the crazies?”

“Just one,” I laughed.

“How was she?”

“I'll tell you about it some time. But not yet, OK?”

“Sure. Hey, that film, Lilac Time. Do you want see it?”

“You've got a copy?”

“I haven't, but I know a man who does and he says he'll lend it to me. Snag is, it's not on video so we're going to have to go a viewing room.”

“Is that a problem?”

“In LA? Of course not. It's only the likes of poor working folks like you and me that have to live without pools, Jacuzzis and viewing rooms.”

“Er, I've got a pool, Peter. And a Jacuzzi.” Deborah had insisted that we have both when we were looking for houses. They weren't something I'd miss.

“Yeah, I know that, mate. You want to see the film or not?”

“Of course. The sooner the better.”

“OK, I've been on to a friend of mine, an agent who owes me a favour. He said he'll let us use his house. This afternoon. That suit you?”

“Shouldn't be a problem. I don't usually get really busy until the evening. I'll ask one of my colleagues to hold the fort. What's the address?”

He gave me the details and said he'd meet me there at three o'clock.

I spent the morning lying under my car trying to work out why I was getting a grinding noise from the near side whenever I had the steering on full lock. The springs looked OK and I finally figured it was just a case of the shock absorber starting to go. I wasn't planning to do anything over the weekend so I reckoned I'd probably have a go at doing it myself. That was one of the pleasures of owning an old car that was put together with nuts and bolts rather than a spot-welded built-bynumbers Japanese model. I stripped off my overalls and washed the grease and dirt from my hands.

There were times when I wished that I could repair my own body as easily as I took care of the car.

If it needed new brakes or bulbs or the bodywork got dented then you just ordered the parts and did the work and it was as good as new. Even almost thirty years after it had rolled off the production line it was virtually perfect. And if ever the engine wore out it would be reasonably easy to replace, there were still plenty of specialist suppliers back in the UK who could ship one over. But my body, the organs that were beginning to show signs of wearing out, well, that's a whole different ball game. There was no replacement for the skin that was beginning to lose its elasticity and was becoming speckled with brown moles and wrinkled around my eyes. I could remember being young and playing in the fields around the family farm, playing football for hours and running with the dog and never getting tired. Now walking up a couple of flights of stairs left me out of breath.

I ate reasonably well, health-wise, but at times I could feel my veins and arteries silting up with cholesterol and fat globules and at night the sound of my beating heart seemed less powerful than it used to back when I was a teenager and had most of my life ahead of me. I wished I could go back.

There was a small cut by the thumb on my right hand, not much more than a nick but I smeared antiseptic ointment over it. That's something else I'd noticed as I got older - cuts and abrasions took longer to heal and it took weeks rather than days to shrug off colds and the like. It was as if my body was starting to get tired and I wondered how long it would be before it gave up trying to repair itself and I was left to lie alone on some urine-stained bed, riddled with bed sores and waiting to die. I shook my head and tried to think of something else.

I went to the kitchen and microwaved myself a frozen lasagna and boosted my caffeine intake with two steaming cups of strong coffee. I always felt better after coffee.

The agent's house was in Beverly Hills and the guy was obviously doing well because it was above the smog line. Just. It was a single-storey ranch house affair, lots of cartwheels and exposed beams and cactus murals on the walls and it had all the charm of a takeaway taco restaurant. I parked the Alpine between a white Corvette and Hardy's orange MGB. Hardy, like me, preferred old British cars to any of the American stuff, and we often used to help each out in the hunt for spare parts. At any given time there was a good chance that one of our cars would have something mechanically adrift and it was a rare occurrence for them both to be on the road together. I made a mental note to ask him if he fancied giving me a hand to fit the new shock absorbers.

The door opened before I could press the doorbell and Hardy was there looking disgustingly healthy in a red and green track suit and brand new Reeboks. He became something of a health nut a couple of years back and worked out every day at one of LA's more serious gyms, where you actually went to work up a sweat rather than hit on out-of-work actresses.

With him was a balding man with blue-tinted glasses who was as wide as Hardy was tall. He had an expensive-looking Italian suit that looked as if it had been bought for the price-tag rather than the style, and he was wearing shoes made from the hide of some animal that Greenpeace was probably fighting to save from extinction. He flashed me a gleaming smile and pumped my arm up and down enthusiastically when Hardy introduced us. His name was Archie Hemmings and from what Hardy had told me earlier he represented some real heavy-hitters.

“You're the first vampire hunter I've ever met, Jamie. It's a pleasure, a real pleasure.”

I gave Hardy a pained look and he shrugged.

“Pete tells me you're on a case right now,” Archie continued, unabashed. “So where's the stake and the holy water?“ He punched me on the shoulder and I thought about suing for whiplash. ”Just kidding, Jamie. You wanna drink?”

“Bit early for me,” I said.

“How about a Bloody Mary?” he giggled.

I shook my head and he asked Hardy what he wanted.

“A fucking gin and tonic,” said Hardy.

Archie looked shocked and Hardy laughed at his discomfort.

“It's a joke, Archie. A Bloody Mary. A fucking gin and tonic. Get it?”

Archie finally got it and laughed. “Yeah. English humour, right? God, you Brits kill me. That Fawlty Towers. Great comedy. You Brits.” He was shaking his head as he went to pour Hardy's drink and I wondered if he really had got the joke.

We walked together into Archie's viewing room, the size of a small cinema but containing only a couple of dozen chairs, each as big as a seat in the first class cabin of a 747 jet, complete with footrests and a place to put your drink, and upholstered in the skin of another endangered species.

The seats were facing a screen and there were noises from a small hole behind us where the projector was. Archie waited until Hardy and I had sat down before he killed the lights.

“You mind if I watch, Pete?” he asked.

“Of course not, Archie. Make yourself at home.”

Archie laughed. “Right. Make myself at home. You guys.” He took a large cigar out of the inside pocket of his suit, bit off the end and spat it into a waste paper basket by his seat. His cigarette lighter flared and a few seconds later the air was filled with cloying smoke. The screen flickered and the titles came up. Lilac Time.

It was black and white, naturally, but I was surprised to see that it was a silent movie with the dialogue coming up on the screen with a twee little border around it. I'd forgotten how recent sound was in the grand scheme of things. When had it been made? Early thirties, I suppose. I couldn't remember when sound had first come in, though I half-remembered that Al Johnson was in the first one. I couldn't remember when colour had come in either, though that was largely because Ted Turner's plan to colourise every old film he could tended to play tricks with my memory. I mean, there's a whole generation out there who think that Casablanca was filmed in colour and that Bogart wore a shitty brown suit.

The story was simple enough: a country doctor, played by Greig Turner, was blamed for a murder he didn't commit, and the only witness was a small girl who was so shocked by what she'd seen that she retreated into herself. The doctor was only saved by a schoolteacher who got the child to open up after a nail-biting courtroom scheme. It was quite gripping, I had to admit, though the lack of sound took a bit of getting used to. There was no doubt about the fact that Turner had charisma. The camera really loved him. There was something about the girl who played the schoolteacher, too. Something I couldn't place until about half way through the film and then it suddenly hit me. She was the spitting image of Terry, facially anyway. She had the same mouth,

the same dark eyes and long lashes, and the body was similar, too. This girl, though, was a blonde.

I watched her closely for the rest of the film and by the time the film flickered to a close and the doctor hugged the teacher and the jury stood and cheered and the judge banged his gavel I was pretty sure that she must be related to Terry in some way.

I stood up as the film ended and walked closer to the screen so that I could get a good look at the credits. The girl who'd played the schoolteacher was called Lisa Sinopoli. I wrote it down on a scrap of paper.

“What's up?” Hardy asked.

“The girl looks familiar. Lisa Sinopoli. You ever heard of her?”

He shook his head. “Sounds Italian,” he said.

“Thanks Peter. You're a big help. What about Greig Turner? You turn up anything about him?”

Archie pulled himself out of his chair and switched on the lights.

“He was a minor star during the Thirties. Four or five films then he just vanished,” said Hardy.

“What happened?”

Hardy shrugged and pulled a face that said he didn't know. Archie lit another cigar, took a deep pull, and then jabbed it in my direction.

“Sound killed him,” said Archie. “He was one of those guys who looked great but whose voice let him down. Body of an Adonis but the voice of Donald Duck, know what I mean? When audiences heard him speak, they couldn't take him seriously as a leading man. He wasn't the only one, dozens of top stars went belly up when talkies came in.” He took another pull on the cigar.

“You know him?” asked Hardy, obviously surprised.

Archie practically glowed with pride. “I know everybody in this town,” he drawled.

“Yeah, but Archie, that film was made in 1932. You weren't even a twinkle in your father's eye when it was being made.”

“You guys,” said Archie, waving his cigar. Ash spilled over the trousers of his seat and he brushed it away with a hand studded with gold rings. “He made a minor comeback in the late Sixties. Character parts in made-for-TV movies. Nothing spectacular, but he was in work for a few years.”

“Did you manage him?” I asked.

“Give me a break, Jamie,” said Archie, almost savagely. “He was strictly minor league. I think he was handled by one of the smaller agencies. If a talent isn't getting seven figures a throw, it's not worth my while getting out of bed. You hear what I'm saying?”

“Yeah, Archie. I get your drift. Do you think you could me a favour? Do you think you could find out who his last agents were?”

"Sure, no problem. Hey, come on, how often does a guy get to help out a vampire hunter?

Come on, let's go get a drink."

I had a vodka and tonic this time and while I drank it I asked Hardy if he knew that James Dean had a cat.

“I didn't know that,” he said, which surprised me because he devoured movie trivia like a vacuum cleaner sucks in dust, partly because it helped him when it came to writing showbiz features but mainly because he'd been a movie buff since he was a kid. You'd be hard pushed to name a movie he hadn't seen or a star he hadn't written about, and he had a near-photographic memory.

“A Siamese cat,” I said.

“News to me,” he said.

“Elizabeth Taylor gave it to him. He took it round to his neighbour's house the day before he died,” I said.

Hardy frowned. “I thought I knew everything about James Dean,” he mused. “Where did you read that?”

“I didn't read it, someone told me.”

“Somebody who knew him?”

“Hardly. She's far too young for that.”

“You been cradle-snatching again?”

“I'm not sure who's being snatched at the moment,” I said.

Archie and Hardy asked me if I fancied going out for a meal with them to a new Thai place but I said no, I had work to do.

I drove to the police station via my house so that I could change into a suit and pick up the computer. I'd promised Rivron the night off for covering me during the day so I had my hands full.

There was an old guy, seventy-four he said he was, who'd been brought in for smashing a row of shop windows in Rodeo Drive. He hadn't stolen anything, just walked from boutique to boutique smashing the glass frontages with a tyre iron until a cruiser had turned up and then he'd hit two officers over the head before they'd subdued him with their night-sticks. The man sat in front of me with a bandage across his head and a plaster holding his nose together while he moved and pressed the mouse. According to the program he was suffering from Korsakoff's syndrome, probably induced by chronic alcoholism, so I recommended that they took him straight to a mental institution and didn't even bother charging him. He was just old and sick and would be better off in a geriatric ward than in a holding cell.

I went back to my office and started writing up my report on the old man when the phone rang and I was called down to the interview rooms again, this time to run two black teenagers through the program. They were both cocky and aggressive, swearing at me and demanding their lawyers.

They were wearing black and silver jackets with the logo of the LA Raiders and according to De'Ath they were both members of the Bloods, one of LA's more homicidal adolescent street gangs, and were well known as crack dealers. They'd raped and beaten up a teenage girl on her way back home after cheerleading practice, taking it in turns to hold a knife to her throat. The girl was in intensive care, De'Ath told me, and it would be some time before she was cheering for the High School football team again. Before they left her they'd stuck the knife up inside her, just for the hell of it. The surgeon reckoned she'd live, but she wouldn't ever have children. Sick world, isn't it?

One of the black kids asked me if I had any games he could play on the computer and I wanted to smash it into his leering face and take a knife and stick it inside him the way he'd abused the girl. I put it out of my mind, ran him and his unsavoury pal through the program and told De'Ath that there was nothing clinically wrong with either of them. Nothing a lethal injection wouldn't cure.

Later I sat at my desk with my head in my hands and tears in my eyes, grieving for a girl who I didn't even know. The phone rang and it was Terry, asking me how I was and why I was in the office so late. I lied and said I was fine and that I was just writing a few reports. She asked me if I wanted to go out for a late night snack and I looked at my watch and was surprised to see it was already one o'clock in the morning. The blinds were down and I'd lost all sense of time. I said OK and she asked me if I had my car and she said she'd meet me outside in half an hour.