The Tale of the Body Thief (20 page)

“Ah.”

“Ten million dollars in a bank account waiting for me when I repossess this body.” He reached into his coat pocket again and drew out a small plastic card with a thumbnail picture of his new face on it. There was also a clear fingerprint, and his name, Raglan James, and a Washington address.

“You can arrange it, surely. A fortune that can only be claimed by the man with this face and this fingerprint? You don’t think I’d forfeit a fortune of that size, do you? Besides, I don’t want your body forever.
You
don’t even want it forever, do you? You’ve been far too eloquent on the subject of your agonies, your angst, your extended and noisy descent into hell, etcetera. No. I only want your body for a little while. There are many bodies out there, waiting for me to take possession of them, many kinds of adventure.”

I studied the little card.

“Ten million,” I said. “That’s quite a price.”

“It’s nothing to you and you know it. You have billions squirreled away in international banks under all your colorful aliases. A creature with your formidable powers can acquire all the riches of the world. It’s only the tawdry vampires of second-rate motion pictures who tramp through eternity living hand to mouth, as we both know.”

He blotted his lips fastidiously with a linen handkerchief, then drank a gulp of his coffee.

“I was powerfully intrigued,” he said, “by your descriptions of the vampire Armand in
The Queen of the Damned
—how he used his precious powers to acquire wealth, and built his great enterprise, the Night Island, such a lovely name. It rather took my breath away.” He smiled, and then went on, the voice amiable and smooth as before. “It wasn’t very difficult for me to document and annotate your assertions, you realize, though as we both know, your mysterious comrade has long ago abandoned the Night Island, and has vanished from the realm of computer records—at least as far as I can ascertain.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Besides, for what I offer, ten million is a bargain. Who else has made you such an offer? There isn’t anyone else—at the moment, that is—who can or will.”

“And suppose I don’t want to switch back at the end of the week?” I asked. “Suppose I want to be human forever.”

“That’s perfectly fine with me,” he said graciously. “I can get rid of your body anytime I want. There are lots of others who’ll take it off my hands.” He gave me a respectful and admiring smile.

“What are you going to do with my body?”

“Enjoy it. Enjoy the strength, the power! I’ve had everything the human body has to offer—youth, beauty, resilience. I’ve even been in the body of a woman, you know. And by the way, I don’t recommend that at all. Now I want what
you
have to offer.” He narrowed his eyes and cocked his head. “If there were any corporeal angels hanging about, well, I might approach one of them.”

“The Talamasca has no record of angels?”

He hesitated, then gave a small contained laugh. “Angels are pure spirit, Monsieur de Lioncourt,” he said. “We are talking bodies, no? I am addicted to the pleasures of the flesh. And vampires are fleshly monsters, are they not? They thrive on blood.” Again, a light came into his eyes when he said the word “blood.”

“What’s your game?” I asked. “I mean really. What’s your passion? It can’t be the money. What’s the money for? What will you buy with it? Experiences you haven’t had?”

“Yes, I would say that’s it. Experiences I haven’t had. I’m obviously a sensualist, for want of a better word, but if you must know the truth—and I don’t see why there should be any lies between us—I’m a thief in every respect. I don’t enjoy something unless I bargain for it, trick someone out of it, or steal it. It’s my way of making something out of nothing, you might say, which makes me like God!”

He stopped as if he were so impressed with what he had just said that he had to catch his breath. His eyes were dancing, and then he looked down at the half-empty coffee cup and gave a long secretive private smile.

“You do follow my drift, don’t you?” he asked. “I stole these clothes,” he said. “Everything in my house in Georgetown is stolen—every piece of furniture, every painting, every little objet d’art. Even the house itself is stolen, or shall we say, it was signed over to me amid a morass of false impressions and false hopes. I believe they call it
swindling? All the same thing.” He smiled proudly again, and with such seeming depth of feeling that I was amazed. “All the money I possess is stolen. So is the car I drive in Georgetown. So are the airline tickets I used to chase you around the world.”

I didn’t respond. How strange he was, I thought, intrigued by him and yet still repelled by him, for all his graciousness and seeming honesty. It was an act, but what a nearly perfect act. And then the bewitching face, which seemed with every new revelation to be more mobile and expressive and pliant. I roused myself. There was more I had to know.

“How did you accomplish that, following me about? How did you know where I was?”

“Two ways, to be perfectly frank with you. The first is obvious. I can leave my body for short periods, and during those periods I can search for you over vast distances. But I don’t like that sort of bodiless travel at all. And of course you are not easy to find. You cloak yourself for long periods; then you blaze away in careless visibility; and of course you move about with no discernible pattern. Often by the time I’d located you, and brought my body to the location, you were gone.

“Then there’s another way, almost as magical—computer systems. You use many aliases. I’ve been able to discover four of them. I’m often not quick enough to catch up with you through the computer. But I can study your tracks. And when you double back again, I know where to close in.”

I said nothing, merely marveling again at how much he was enjoying all of this.

“I like your taste in cities,” he said. “I like your taste in hotels—the Hassler in Rome, the Ritz in Paris, the Stanhope in New York. And of course the Park Central in Miami, lovely little hotel. Oh, don’t get so suspicious. There’s nothing to chasing people through computer systems. There’s nothing to bribing clerks to show you a credit card receipt, or bullying bank employees to reveal things they’ve been told not to reveal. Tricks usually handle it perfectly well. You don’t have to be a preternatural killer to do it. No, not at all.”

“You steal through the computer systems?”

“When I can,” he said with a little twist to his mouth. “I steal in any fashion. Nothing’s beneath my dignity. But I’m not capable of stealing ten million dollars through any means. If I were, I wouldn’t be here, now, would I? I’m not that clever. I’ve been caught twice. I’ve
been in prison. That’s where I perfected the means of traveling out of body, since there wasn’t any other way.” He made a weary bitter sarcastic smile.

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because your friend David Talbot is going to tell you. And because I think we should understand each other. I’m weary of taking risks. This is the big score, your body—and ten million dollars when I give it up.”

“What is it with you?” I asked. “This all sounds so petty, so mundane.”

“Ten million is mundane?”

“Yes. You’ve swapped an old body for a new one. You’re young again! And the next step, if I consent, will be my body, my powers. But it’s the money that matters to you. It’s really just the money and nothing else.”

“It’s both!” he said sourly and defiantly. “They’re very similar.” With conscious effort he regained his composure. “You don’t realize it because you acquired your wealth and your power simultaneously,” he said. “Immortality and a great casket full of gold and jewels. Wasn’t that the story? You walked out of Magnus’s tower an immortal with a king’s ransom. Or is the story a lie? You’re real enough, that’s plain. But I don’t know about all those things you wrote. But you ought to understand what I’m saying. You’re a thief yourself.”

I felt an immediate flush of anger. Suddenly he was more consummately distasteful than he’d been in that anxious jittering state when we first sat down.

“I’m not a thief,” I said quietly.

“Yes, you are,” he answered with amazing sympathy. “You always steal from your victims. You know you do.”

“No, I never do unless … I have to.”

“Have it your way. I think you’re a thief.” He leant forward, eyes glittering again, as the soothing measured words continued: “You steal the blood you drink, you can’t argue with that.”

“What actually happened with you and the Talamasca?” I asked.

“I told you,” he said. “The Talamasca threw me out. I was accused of using my gifts to gain information for personal use. I was accused of deception. And of stealing, of course. They were very foolish and shortsighted, your friends in the Talamasca. They underestimated me completely. They should have valued me. They should
have studied me. They should have begged me to teach them the things I know.

“Instead they gave me the boot. Six months’ severance. A pittance. And they refused my last request … for first-class passage to America on the
Queen Elizabeth
2
. It would have been so simple for them to grant my wish. They owed me that much, after the things I’d revealed to them. They should have done it.” He sighed, and glanced at me, and then at his coffee. “Little things like that matter in this world. They matter very much.”

I didn’t reply. I looked down at the picture again, at the figure on the deck of the ship, but I’m not sure he took notice of it. He was staring off into the noisy glare of the café, eyes dancing over walls and ceiling and occasional tourists and taking note of none.

“I tried to bargain with them,” he said, voice soft and measured as before. “If they wanted a few items returned or a few questions answered—you know. But they wouldn’t hear of it, not them! And money means nothing to them, no more than it means to you. They were too mean-spirited to even consider it. They gave me a tourist-class plane ticket, and a check for six months’ pay. Six months’ pay! Oh, I am so very weary of all the little ups and downs!”

“What made you think you could outwit them?”

“I
did
outwit them,” he said, eyes flashing with a little smile. “They’re not very careful with their inventories. They have no idea really how many of their little treasures I managed to appropriate. They’ll never guess. Of course you were the real theft—the secret that you existed. Ah, discovering that little vault full of relics was such a stroke of good luck. Understand, I didn’t take anything of your old possessions—rotted frock coats from your very closets in New Orleans, parchments with your fancy signature, why, there was even a locket with a painted miniature of that accursed little child—”

“Watch your tongue,” I whispered.

He went quiet. “I’m sorry. I meant no offense, truly.”

“What locket?” I asked. Could he hear the sudden racing of my heart? I tried to still it, to keep the warmth from rising again in my face.

How meek he looked as he answered. “A gold locket on a chain, little oval miniature inside. Oh, I didn’t steal it. I swear to you. I left it there. Ask your friend Talbot. It’s still in the vault.”

I waited, commanding my heart to be still, and banishing all
images of that locket from my mind. Then: “The point is, the Talamasca caught you and they put you out.”

“You don’t have to continue insulting me,” he said humbly. “It’s entirely possible for us to make our little bargain without any unpleasantness. I’m very sorry that I mentioned this locket, I didn’t—”

“I want to think over your proposition,” I said.

“That might be a mistake.”

“Why?”

“Give it a chance! Act quickly. Act now. And remember, please, if you harm me, you’ll throw away this opportunity forever. I’m the only key to this experience; use me or you’ll never know what it’s like to be a human being again.” He drew close to me, so close I could feel his breath on my cheek. “You’ll never know what it’s like to walk in the sunlight, to enjoy a full meal of real food, to make love to a woman or a man.”

“I want you to leave here now. Get out of this city and never come back. I’ll come to you at this address in Georgetown when I’m ready. And it won’t be for a week this switch. Not the first time at any rate. It will be … ”

“May I suggest two days?”

I didn’t answer.

“What if we start with one day?” he asked. “If you like it, then we can arrange for a longer time?”

“One day,” I said, my voice sounding very strange to me. “One period of twenty-four hours … for the first time.”

“One day and two nights,” he said quietly. “Let me suggest this coming Wednesday, as soon after sunset as you like. We shall make the second switch early on Friday, before dawn.”

I didn’t reply.

“You have this evening and tomorrow evening to make your preparations,” he said coaxingly. “After the switch you will have all of Wednesday night and the full day Thursday. Of course you’ll have Thursday night as well up until … shall we say, two hours before Friday’s sunrise? That ought to be comfortable enough.”

He studied me keenly, then became more anxious: “Oh, and bring one of your passports with you. I don’t care which one. But I want a passport, and a bit of credit plastic, and money in my pockets over and above the ten million. You understand?”

I didn’t say anything.

“You know this will work.”

Again, I didn’t answer.

“Believe me, all I’ve told you is true. Ask Talbot. I wasn’t born this handsome individual you see before you. And this body is waiting right now this very minute for you.”

I was quiet.

“Come to me Wednesday,” he said. “You’ll be very glad that you did.” He paused, and then his manner became even softer. “Look, I … feel that I know you,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I know what you want! It’s dreadful to want something and not to have it. Ah, but then to know that it’s within your grasp.”

I looked up slowly into his eyes. The handsome face was tranquil, devoid of any stamp of expression, and the eyes seemed rather miraculous in their fragility and their precision. The skin itself seemed supple and as if it would feel like satin to my touch. And then came the voice again, in a seductive half whisper, the words touched with sadness.