Underground Vampire (6 page)

“No,” she barked. 

After a long moment the voice said,
“We found an anomaly in the data.”

“Are you going to tell me about
it?” 

“It involves a spike in data to and
from a source in the Underground.”

Trog communication was slow when
limited to language, she thought, “Who is it and what are they talking about?”

“This would go faster if you would
allow us to install a plug in your head, we could give you wireless capability
and do a data dump whenever we had something,” said the voice, “think of it.”

She did, the thought of the Trogs
dumping data indiscriminately into her brain creepy and repulsive, “No thank
you,” she said as politely as possible.

“Who, what?”

“Jason at Blood Simple seems to be
acquiring more, much more, than his existence requires.”

“Send me a list of what he is
purchasing and copies of his email.”

“Done,” said the voice as the line
went dead.

Spotting the neon sign up the
block, she crossed the street and strolled along the sidewalk, a tourist
wandering the spicier part of town to a bar she hadn’t been in for almost a
century.

Satisfied that the street was not
under any surveillance either from the Humans or the Underground, she turned
her attention to the Blue Anchor and extended her senses, feeling for power
radiating from an unseen but malignant source.  Satisfied, she waited at
the light, crossing with the signal.  Seattle police were enamored with
jaywalking citations and frequently issued them as prelude to altercation, a
fact that made her miss New York every time she went for a walk.  Casually
wandering down the sidewalk, she pushed through the door of the Blue Anchor, a
tourist soaking up Seattle’s seedier side.  

The bar looked unchanged from the
last time she’d been in it and, although she knew it couldn’t be the same
Human, the elderly gentlemen stocking the coolers deeply resembled the Human
who’d helped her all those years ago.   Ignoring him, she walked
through the bar to the back where she entered first the men’s room then the
women’s, satisfying herself that they were both empty.

Returning, she turned her attention
to the only patron, a large, enigmatic Indian standing passively at the
shuffleboard table watching her through sharp, dark eyes. His hair was thick
and lustrous, pulled back into a ponytail reaching halfway down his back. 
His face was broad and full, showing little emotion as she walked past him;
only his eyes tracked her.  The Indian moved to the other end of the
shuffleboard table and casually began to practice. He had a nice touch and lagged
the blues to the end of the table.

“I believe I knew your father,” she
said, stopping in front of the bartender, “Or maybe your grandfather.”

“Possibly,” he replied, “or my
great-grandfather.”

“My apologies; it is difficult to
keep track of your generations through time.”  She stood in front of him,
openly inspecting him.

“The traditions are alive,” he
replied formally.

“There may be a problem.”

“Yes, there is,” was all he said.

Arabella turned to the bar and, choosing
a stool in the middle of the bar, said, “Something to drink, please, anything
will be fine.”  The bartender pulled a draft and set it in front of her.
 “It’s on the house.”  He stood there waiting for her.  Arabella
ignored the beer and looked at him with her green, steady eyes; he stood
motionless and tried to look away, but every time he shifted his gaze her eyes
trapped him until he stood frozen, unable to blink, unable to run, almost
unable to think.

“You resemble him,” she said,
“Although he was better looking, I think taller, with a nicer nose.”  

She blinked, releasing him, and in
the respite he blurted, “I know who you are.”  

“Good,” she said, “tell me who I
am, I would like to know.”

“It was foretold that you would
come; we have been waiting for you.”

“We?  Exactly, who are we?”

“We study the Book, watching for
the return of the Plague; you could come to our gathering, every Thursday at
eight in the basement.” He nodded toward the back where she’d seen a door
probably leading to a basement.

She stifled a grin, picturing
geezers downstairs, the mah jong analogue of the women’s club.

“I’m looking for Ratman; tell him
that I wish to meet with him; tell him that I will be here in two days.”

“I’ve found your Human.  He’s
a policeman like the ones before” he replied, ignoring her request.

“I don’t want a Human. 
Remember what happened to the last two,” she nodded at the pictures on the
wall, “I want Ratman.”

“I will do my best,” replied the
bartender, “but understand he is …. unreliable.”

“I know, just get the message to
him, please.”

She was refreshingly polite for a
Vampire, he thought.  Most of his interactions with the People of the
Night had been decidedly less civil.  He watched as she stood and walked
toward the door leaving the beer untouched on the bar.

“Want a game?” said the Indian as
she passed by.

“Stakes?”

“Usually a beer,” said the Indian.

“I’ll play you,” she whispered,
“but I want more, much more.”

Without a word he turned to the
table arranging the disks, red on the left, blue on the right, “Lag for who
goes first.”

He slid a blue down with subtle
english so that it curled at the three, holding a whisper over the line, “Your
turn.”

“Nice,” she said, as she delicately
balanced a red disk in her hand.  She stood in the middle of the table and
ran the disk up and down, feeling the table, testing the friction, using her
fingers to estimate the kinetic touch. The red slid the length, coming to rest
next to his, slightly behind.

 “You have a soft touch for
someone so large.”

He went first, lagging a blue to
the two, dead middle of the table.  Arabella ineffectually left hers
short.  He parked one behind his first, tucking it in protected. Her
second went further but still short on the left, and so it continued with the Indian
building a triangle around his high score and her blocking the left side till
her final turn came.

“What are we playing for?” he
asked, confident in his position.

“Possession,” Arabella smiled,
“what else is there?”

She lined her last disc up in the
middle and flicked her wrist so the disc shot down the table, the red popping
the highest blue, starting a crazy chain reaction wreck till all his were in
the gutters and her last stood alone.

“One zip,” he said, “you win.”

“I’ll be seeing you,” she said,
walking to the door.

“I’ll be here.”

Standing across the street from
West Precinct, Ortega hoped the Captain wasn’t around. Actually, he wished that
the place was empty but that wasn’t going to be, so he needed a reason why he
was digging around in old files.  Nothing plausible came to mind so he
fell back on the truth; he’d been familiarizing himself with the neighborhood,
stopping in at the establishments and saw the pictures on the wall; he just
wanted to know the history.  Cops are nosy by nature, so hopefully he
wouldn’t be questioned when his archive request went through. 

He headed in past the desk officer,
nodding to the cops on duty and headed to his desk, hoping he still had a desk.
Thankfully, the room was empty; most of the detectives worked days and were out
in the field interviewing witnesses, following leads and otherwise performing
excellent police work.

 His cubicle still had his
name on it and when he booted the computer it accepted his login and
password.  Now came the tricky part: rummaging through archived files left
a trail and management could review his access requests and question the
search.  He punched in the first name on his list, Patrolman James P.
Malloy, bracketed the date range, and hit search.  The other guy on the
wall was also Malloy; the old Jew said they were brothers, maybe the search
engine would pull them both up. He watched as the hands on the little clock
spun around until a box that he’d never seen before popped up screaming
RESTRICTED ACCESS.  For further information he was directed to Special
Matters. 

He’d never heard of Special Matters
and was pretty sure he didn’t want them, whoever they were, asking him
questions.  Logging off search, he knew he’d stepped in it on his first
day of lying low, flying under the radar and avoiding attention.  Pulling
up the internal SPD directory, he searched for Special Matters but drew a
‘nothing matches your query, try widening your search parameters.’ He went to
the Index and scrolled through the departments looking for anything Special,
but nothing looked remotely similar.

He went back to archives and typed
in the information again and hit enter; RESTRICTED ACCESS came up and he
clicked on the referral to Special Matters. Nothing happened.  As he
stared at the screen pondering the total lack of information, the phone on his
desk rang.

Since he’d become the precinct
pariah and they’d reassigned his active files, his phone had stopped
ringing.  He looked at it like it was an alien artifact and tried to ignore
it, hoping that whoever it was would leave a message and go away. 
Finally, he picked up the receiver to stop the annoying ringing. “Detective
Ortega?” questioned a voice he’d never heard, “This is Sergeant Malloy with
Special Matters.”   The voice was fatherly, the way you’d like a
priest to sound.

“Yes, this is Ortega,” he mumbled,
while four alarm fire bells rang in his head and he fought the urge to slam the
phone down and pretend like this wasn’t happening.

“Let’s meet up,” the voice said,
“I’d like to talk to you.  You’re at your desk now so how about the
Totem?  We can get some chips and watch the boats,” Malloy said, like they
were old buddies catching up on the families, “I like to watch the boats go
through the locks.”  

“Sure,” replied Ortega, “that would
be nice.” 

“Good, I’ll see you in an hour,
I’ve got to stop and pick up a file,” Malloy replied, the most courteous man
ever.  “I’m looking forward to meeting you,” as he softly
disconnected. 

If Ortega knew anything, it was
that he didn’t want to meet Malloy.  This Sergeant had the same name as
the patrolmen on the bar wall so this wasn’t a coincidence; the computers must
link the query to the Sergeant, which meant something. And he didn’t want to
meet him at the Totem, an old fish and chips place next to the Ballard
locks.   And most important, he didn’t want anything to do with the
Blue Anchor or the old Jew or the pictures on the wall.  He just wanted to
do his time in purgatory, get released and get on with his life.  

There was no way out of it, he
thought, as he drove out Market Street then angled over on 54th to the
locks.  He’d just tell the Sergeant he was bored with nothing to do and
had already forgotten their names. 

Malloy was standing there like a
retiree come to feed the pigeons for something to do on a sunny Seattle
day.  He was a big old-country Irish, one of the beefy ones, white as a
boiled potato with a ruddy wind burn to the edges of his face, topped by
impossibly thick white hair parted on the left and combed the way the nun’s
liked it straight across and off the forehead.  In each hand he held a
large bag of fries with cups of catsup and tartar sauce balanced on top, “I
ordered for you, didn’t know what you liked so I got some of both,” poking his
big red nose towards the condiments. 

Ortega took the closest bag,
nodding and smiling, “Nice to meet you, there’s really no need for us meeting,”
as Malloy led him to a bench where they could watch the boat traffic away from
the other sightseers.

“Oh but there is, there is,” said
Malloy, ominous to Ortega’s ear but delivered with a warm, inviting smile.

They sat and Malloy took a single
chip, dunked it in the catsup and ate it like it was fine French food. 
“Not supposed to be eating fried food, if my wife knew I’d be in for it,” he
said, as he set the bag down beside him and opened the file poking from under
his arm.  “Course, she’s been gone all these years so I guess I can get
away with it, eh?”

Malloy sat there, self-assured and
solid; he managed to wear khaki pants and white shirt without looking like a
rumpled old guy. A comfortable blue blazer with metal buttons was folded across
his other arm and he wore a round-faced watch with a crisp leather band on his
left wrist.  The watch managed to look expensive without ostentation.

“Jesus (Jesse) Ortega, let’s see
now,” he said, burrowing into Ortega’s life, “a bit of trouble at the station,
one punch broke his nose.”   He turned to Ortega sizing him up as a
prizefighter, “Before your recent troubles you progressed quite nicely, passed
all your exams, moving up the ladder, a credit to the department.  Always
wondered about naming a kid Jesus, seems blasphemous, but apparently the good
Lord doesn’t give a damn so it’s alright by me.” 

Stunned that this stranger had his
personnel file, not only had it but had been able to get it within an hour, not
only had it and read it but obviously didn’t care that Ortega knew he had it,
frightened him.  “Hey, that’s my file,” Ortega blurted, “You’re not
supposed to have that.  How’d you get it?” officious as only the truly
powerless can be. 

“I’m special,” Malloy said, “didn’t
you see when you looked me up on line, right after you tried to access my
brother’s file?” 

Completely cowed by Malloy’s
offhand manner, Ortega could only stare at the sailboats transiting the locks,
wishing he was on board one, sailing away, far away.

“So tell me, Detective Ortega, why
you were calling up a file that’s been forgotten by everyone, an ancient
file?”   Snack time finished, pleasantries concluded, time for the
real meeting, time to get to business. 

“Oh, I don’t know, just got
curious,” replied Jesse Ortega, and he was sure that his answer sounded as much
like a deliberate evasion to Special Matters Sergeant Malloy as it did to him.
While avoiding the issue, he tried to figure out how Malloy, sitting on the
bench with him, could have a brother whose picture was hanging on the wall of
the Blue Anchor from the turn of the last century. He couldn’t figure it out,
so he stared across at the locks wondering if there were any salmon trying to
climb the ladder so they could swim into Lake Union and die.

 Malloy let his answer float
in the soft light reflecting off the blooming rhododendrons, all pink and soft,
then casually popped Ortega’s balloon.  “And what made you curious?” he
asked, as gentle as a friend helping someone through a rough patch, “what
exactly was it that made you decide to go to your desk and turn on your
computer and search for this particular file, or were you just browsing through
the history of the Department and coincidentally started with this file?” 

Malloy turned his attention to a
huge sailboat motoring into the Sound, “Isn’t she a beauty?” like they were
there to admire the scenery.

“I saw the photos on the wall at the
Blue Anchor and wondered about them,” said Ortega.  He tried to do the
math in his head again, but couldn’t calculate how this guy was the brother of
the cop on the wall.

“Ahh,” said Malloy blowing the word
out like a barnacled ancient whale breaching after a deep cold dive, blowing it
out like now it all made sense, like why didn’t you just say that in the
beginning and save me all this inconvenience.  “You’ve met Mr.
Finkelstein, have you, and what did the two of you talk about?” 

Malloy was beginning to sound like
the old country packed into the steerage of a leaky wooden sailing ship coming
to America.  Ortega could smell the peat and taste the whiskey. “What
stories has Mr. Finkelstein been telling you, anything to share and something
for me, eh?  I like a good story and Finkelstein, he knows where the
bodies are buried; his father before him and his father and his father, down
the line, they buried them.” No longer your loving old uncle come to feed you
chips on a pleasant afternoon; Special Matters Sergeant Malloy now seemed Grand
Inquisitor Malloy come to pull your fingernails out in service of the truth.

“Christ almighty,” thought Ortega
“he knows Finkelstein, what the hell is going on?”  “You mean the old Jew
at the bar?” he replied, stalling for time, stalling while he tried to figure
out if he was in more trouble, stalling while he tried to think of something
innocuous to say.  

“Of course, who else?  Him,
his father or his father or the one before him have always been at the Blue
Anchor.  You didn’t know that?”  One investigator to another,
accusatory perhaps, but no he hadn’t known that when he went into the Blue
Anchor.  He’d been looking for a drink, not a history lesson.

“The Malloy family goes way back
with the Finkelstein family, baptisms, brisses, you know what that is right,
it’s where the mohel cuts your foreskin off, hell I was at Finkelstein’s kid’s,
bar mitzvahs, graduations all of it, we been to all theirs and they’ve been to
ours, corned beef and cabbage, pastrami and rye.” Malloy went silent.

Ortega fell into Malloy’s ice blue
stare and started at the beginning, recounting the fight at the station house,
the subsequent disciplinary hearing, his demotion and the rainy walk through
nighttime Pioneer Square and his decision to drop into the Blue Anchor to have
a drink while on duty.  Now that the venial sins were out, the truth came
easier and he picked up steam in his rush to confess. He told Malloy all about
Finkelstein and his cryptic summons and his warning not to say anything out
loud and how silly it all sounded now, sitting on this bench in the warm
Seattle sun watching expensive sailboats transit the Locks while munching on
chips sauced with tarter.

“It’s starting again, he said
that?” asked Malloy, leaning in close, “those exact words?” boring into
whatever secrets Ortega had left, time to get to the root of the evil, time to
root it out of the dark hidden part of the soul.

“Something like that, he talks in
circles and doesn’t really say what he’s thinking.  Says I’m supposed to
read the file and go back to the bar.  Said he’d give me another drink and
we’d talk about the next step.”  

“You, for the next step?” clearly,
Malloy had doubts about Finkelstein’s choices.

“You know this is not really a case
and I’m dropping it,” said Ortega, sensing a way out, babbling on, “don’t know
anything, don’t want to know anything, haven’t seen the file and I promise I
won’t look for it.  We can just drop this thing; no harm no foul,
right?  I mean all I want is to get back to my job and maybe a little
excitement, what they have me doing looks pretty boring.”

Malloy settled down into the bench
and, letting out a deep breath, deflated like a punctured beach
ball.   “You need to watch the drinking, you hear?  I made some
calls and you’ve been known to take more than your share,” he said, “Can’t have
that now.”  Ortega had the demeaning thought that Malloy might assign him
penance, maybe the Stations of the Cross after a good Act of Contrition. 
With that out of the way, Malloy raised his huge head from his chest, face
relaxed to another place or time. Finally, he came back from wherever he went,
“I envy you for what’s to come, you’re going to get excitement.  Got a
computer?”

“Of course,” said Ortega, “usually
I log on at the station.” 

“Don’t log in from the station,”
ordered Malloy, “and don’t use your personal computer, don’t want anyone
tracking your address.” Taking pen and pad from inside his jacket, he scribbled
for a minute, tore off a page and thrust it into his hand, saying, “use this access
name and password, not your name and SPD password, understand, and get a cheap
second hand computer that you only use for this, nothing else, no email, no
porn, no dating sites, no nothing.”

 He said “Yes, Sir.” 
Malloy had that effect on him.  Ortega understood the words but he didn’t
understand what was going on, and Malloy wasn’t doing any more explaining
because Malloy stood up and said, “Listen to the rabbi, he’s not a real one but
he’s yours now; listen to him and do what he says.  He says you’re the
one, then it’s you.  I’ve got work to do now; don’t worry, I’ll keep an
eye on you, and help if I can. One more thing, about referring to my good
friend Mr. Finkelstein as the Jew, it’s disrespectful, like calling me the Mick
or you the Spic, understand? I’d consider it a personal favor to me if you
could show him respect and I mean a lot of respect.”