Thirst Page 7

  He stood to one side of the door and looked into a game room. The room was very large, with a circular bed, a mirrored ceiling, halogen lamps, a billiard table, a well-stocked bar with stools in front of it, a huge television set no thicker than a phone book, a VCR on a stand below it, and two closets. Van Diemen was pleased to see the closets because they helped him make a plan.

  No one was in the circular bed, which was hardly proof that Landau wasn’t asleep in some other part of the house. The circular bed would be for fun and games; it really wasn’t meant to be slept it, except by those exhausted from sexual intercourse. Van Diemen had the feeling that he wasn’t going to find Landau, but he was here and he might as well take a look.

  Bracing himself against the wind, he picked up one of the wrought-iron chairs and threw it through the glass doors. An alarm went off with an intermittent shriek loud enough to wake the whole neighborhood. Van Diemen sprang into the air and flew away. He went over the top of the house, then swooped down to see what was happening in the street. Two uniformed guards were scrambling out of the security-company car; lights were going on in the adjoining houses. Van Diemen headed back over the house as two more guards came out onto the terrace with guns in their hands, and while they were looking around, they were joined by the two men from the car.

  Van Diemen hovered above them, too high to be seen or to hear much of what they were saying. The man in charge was shouting and pointing, and when he finished, the other guards carried the rest of the wrought-iron chairs into the house. Going a little lower, Van Diemen caught a few words of what the head guard was saying: “Fucking wind ... the chair... blew the fucking chair.”

  Van Diemen landed on the terrace as soon as the guards went back inside, and when he got close enough, he saw the men moving out into the hall. Since all the glass in the door was gone, he just stepped into the game room. The only sound he made was crunching broken glass under his feet, and that was whipped away by the wind. He was in a closet pulling the door most of the way shut when two of the guards came back. One of them was the senior guard; Van Diemen recognized his voice. He said, “Stay right here till we get the door fixed. The emergency crew is on its way. I’ll be back when the crew gets here.”

  Van Diemen eased the door open a few more inches. The remaining guard was on the terrace looking over the terrace wall when Van Diemen came out of the closet and walked soundlessly over thick carpet to the door leading to the hall. He had to be quick; the guard could turn and spot him at any moment. Since no one was in the hall, Van Diemen walked quickly past an elevator and down the stairs to a landing, where he stopped and listened. All the hall lights were on, but no sounds came from the third floor. He didn’t hear anything until he got all the way down the stairs. Men were talking down below, probably on the first floor. That would be where the inside guards were stationed when they weren’t making their scheduled rounds of the house.

  Landau was not in the house, or Van Diemen would have seen him by now. Too bad about that, but Van Diemen would find him some other time. All the doors on the third floor opened into unoccupied bedrooms. He went down to the second floor, and the first door he tried led to a peculiar-looking dark-paneled office lined with bookshelves. The room was furnished with a faded Persian carpet, a late nineteenth-century desk with a blond-oak swivel chair behind it, and an old-fashioned Mosler safe standing against a wall. The black lacquer paint of the safe was peeling and so were the gilt decorations. On the desk was a brass study lamp with a green glass shade. Van Diemen switched the lamp on by pulling a chain. Then he turned off the overhead lights. Beside the lamp was a large cigarette lighter shaped like a covered gravy boat and a wide copper ashtray with an unsmoked cigar in it. Van Diemen picked up the cigar. It smelled stale, as if it had been there for a long time. There was no dust anywhere, yet the room had the feeling of disuse.

  A door slammed, probably the street door, and then came the whine of the elevator starting up. Nothing after that. The door of the ancient safe was closed, but not locked; a downward yank of the handle opened it. There was nothing in it besides a plastic bottle of lighter fuel and an old ledger that must have been in the safe when Landau bought it. A hurried search of the desk turned up nothing of interest: an unopened roll of Turns, a matchbook from Angelo’s Tuscany, a deck of cards, a Gay Nineties gambler’s sleeve garter, paper clips, a Waterman fountain pen, a yellow legal pad, and a plastic-sealed front page from the Daily News headlining the shooting of Dutch Schultz in a Newark chophouse.

  Apparently, Landau was a nostalgia buff, of all things. Coming here was time wasted; Van Diemen should have tried to get into Landau’s office in the Graybar Building. But he could hardly have expected to find Landau in his office on a stormy night, whereas there had been some chance of finding him at home. The elevator came down and went back up after a while. It could be men with new glass for the door. Van Diemen hoped it wasn’t the police, who might start searching all the rooms in the house. He needed time to start a fire, which he hoped would burn the house to the ground. The house would be insured, of course, but the fire would surely bring Landau out of hiding.

  The office was in the back of the house, and the desk light couldn’t be seen from the street. Just the same, Van Diemen had to get a move on. Landau might not have left the city, and if so, he could arrive at any moment. There were two tall windows, and Van Diemen made sure one of them was open before he set his fire. After that, he took the bottle of lighter fuel from the safe and splashed it on the window curtains, the shelves of law books, the wood paneling, and the carpet. He touched off the law books and the carpet before he climbed out onto the windowsill with the cigarette lighter in his hand. Then he set the curtains on fire, jumped off, and soared away from the house.

  It was wonderful to swoop and glide over the rooftops of the staid East Side streets, to know that he had beaten Landau’s alarm system and baffled his little army of guards. He was showing off—of course, he was—but didn’t he deserve to? The house was burning bright, and even from a distance, Van Diemen could see great gusts of flame belching from the windows. A fire bell sounded, then another and another. It was a shame Van Diemen couldn’t block the streets and prevent the fire engines from getting through. But the wind would help fan the flames.

  Landau needed a little shaking up; this might bring him to the realization that, despite all his money and legal tricks, he was not invulnerable. The fire might make him more careful, but caution wouldn’t save him.

  Van Diemen flew away from the fire. The firemen could be there for hours, and he had seen all he wanted to see. Anyway he could see the end of it on some news program or read about it in tomorrow’s newspapers. If Landau did arrive on the scene, it would be interesting to hear what he had to say. But no matter what he said for public consumption—naturally he’d downplay arson. Privately, Landau would wonder who had torched his house. He’d know the smashing of the terrace door was connected to the fire. And he’d wonder and he’d wonder. And maybe he’d sweat.

  Flying southwest over Manhattan, Van Diemen felt better than he had in a wolf s age. To think he was more than two hundred years old and still at the peak of his powers. The pitiful bastards— Landau and his clients—didn’t stand a chance. If they wanted war, war was what they were going to get.

  Meanwhile, it was time to look in on Ms. Tracy Lee Dembroder.

  Six

  Although West Thirteenth Street was deserted except for a fearless senior citizen leading a very large dog, Van Diemen felt a bit conspicuous in his red smoking jacket and soft Gucci slip ons. The senior citizen wore a good-looking quilted coat, one of the new ones that didn’t bulk so much, a sealskin hat with earflaps like those that the Mounties wore, fur-lined suede boots, and gloves. Van Diemen thought he’d like to get hold of the warm hat and coat not because he was cold—he was never cold, or even hot, for that matter—but it would look better to be dressed for the weather.

  Robbery was out of the question. Only a fool—and vampires
could be fools—would want to tangle with one of the powerful long bodied hunting dogs, a killer among killers. The old man came on with the dog—the dog was leading him—as if daring Van Diemen to try something. The dog growled and the crest of reverse hair along its spine stood up as Van Diemen walked past. There ought to have been a city ordinance forbidding such dangerous creatures, he thought like the big taxpayer he was. When he looked back, the old man was staring after him. That was life in the big city: No one trusted anyone. Van Diemen hoped the dog would kill its master someday when it was feeling playful.

  The single restaurant on the street was closed. West Thirteenth Street between Sixth and Seventh was one of the best blocks in Greenwich Village. At one end was a venerable apartment house; at the other stood an Art Deco Salvation Army hostel for women. Tall trees shaded brownstones and the street was very clean. Every dog owner cleaned up after his pet because the block-association zealots were usually on the prowl, but not that night.

  Bradford C. Wilcox’s mistress lived in a well-kept brownstone broken up into flats. Van Diemen walked around for a while so he could think how best to handle Tracy Lee. To kill her was his intention, and he would if she were at home and he could get close to her. But there was more to the situation than that. He would need to question her, to discover what, if anything, she knew of Landau’s strategy. Naturally Landau would have told her about all the money she was going to make, and for Tracy Lee, that might be enough. She would feel herself in no danger from Wilcox, who wasn’t the sort of man to send killers after her or even to consider murdering her. She would be under orders from Landau not to talk to Wilcox under any circumstances, in person, on the telephone, or through an intermediary. But she wouldn’t be barricaded inside her apartment with a can of Mace close at hand, ready to dial 911, that magic number the youngest New Yorker knew by heart. That being the case, or so Van Diemen hoped, he might be able to get into Tracy’s apartment simply by ringing her bell and explaining by means of the intercom that he had a package addressed to her and sent by air express from Kingston, Jamaica. If she asked for the sender’s name, he would say B.C. Wilcox. Hearing Wilcox’s name might not get her to open her apartment door, but he was betting that it would. Curiosity might make her accept the package if nothing else. She’d be bound to wonder what Wilcox could be sending her from the Caribbean. If she asked, Van Diemen would say he had a small package. Then he would say, “Hey, lady, you want it or not? It’s cold out here.” He would assume an Irish accent; very few muggers and burglars, if any, had Irish accents.

  His plan wasn’t great—it had been used before—but it was worth a try. If that strategy didn’t work, he would have to try to get in through the garden behind the brownstone. There were padlocked gates on the door and the windows to Tracy’s apartment, and probably an alarm. How in hell was he to get through steel accordion gates? Contrary to popular wisdom, vampires did not possess superhuman strength. Besides, to get at the gates, he’d have to break a window or door, and by then, the police would be on their way.

  Van Diemen walked back to Tracy’s building and rang the bell. A few moments later, the intercom squawked. “I think you have the wrong apartment. Who is it?

  “Air express,” Van Diemen said with a thick brogue. “Package for Ms. Tracy Lee Dembroder. You Ms. Dembroder?”

  “Wait a minute,” Tracy said, sounding a little sloshed through her slight Southern accent. “Where’s it from? Who sent it?”

  “Hold on. Let me take a look.” Van Diemen muttered to himself, then said, “It’s from B.C. Wilcox, Hilton Hotel, Kingston, Jamaica. You want it or not?”

  “All right,” she said. “I’m at the end of the hall.”

  She buzzed Van Diemen in, but her door was still closed when he got to it. He hoped she wasn’t looking at him through the peephole. He had no uniform, and the smoking jacket was a dead giveaway. He rang the bell and she opened the door still tying the belt of a dressing gown. “Hey you’re not—” she yelled and tried to slam the door in his face.

  Van Diemen hit the door with his shoulder and knocked her back into the inside hallway. Then he had her by the throat, and he kicked the door shut with his heel. If her yell had disturbed any of her neighbors, they weren’t bothering to see what was the matter.

  “Don’t fight me,” Van Diemen said quietly, still holding Tracy by the throat. “Struggling won’t do you any good. All I have to do is squeeze a little harder and you’ll be dead. I’m going to let you go now, and you must promise to behave yourself. I want to ask you a few questions—that’s all.”

  Van Diemen released Tracy, and she stood there trembling. The dressing gown had come undone; she was naked underneath. If Van Diemen were a real Irishman, he might have said, “Begorra,” or “Saints preserve us.” Tracy’s face was pouty but beautiful. Her body was sensational, like Bardot’s in her youth. Van Diemen could well understand why his lawyer was so upset at the thought of losing Tracy. Well, anyway, losing the use of that body. Van Diemen was getting aroused, but business came first.

  “Sit over there.” He pointed to a chair in front of one of the windows looking out on the garden. It was as far from the front door as he could put her, and the window had a gate on it. She couldn’t make a sudden dash for freedom; the next time she left the room, she would be in a body bag.

  “Who are you?” she said in a blurry voice, shaking her head, blinking.

  “I’m a friend of Bradford Wilcox,” Van Diemen said. “He thinks he’s a friend of yours. But you’re not one of his, are you? What you’re doing to him isn’t very nice. Helping Landau to destroy him is wrong. I know you’ll see how wrong it is when you think about it. So I want you to think about it.”

  Tracy was frightened, but not frightened enough, not yet. “Wait a minute, who are you?” She went on without waiting for an answer. “This is between Brad and me. It’s a legal matter. Mr. Landau is my attorney. You’d better talk to him. He won’t like it when he hears you broke in here and choked and threatened me. I don’t like it. I have nothing to say to you. Get out.”

  Van Diemen hadn’t interrupted her slightly hysterical outburst. Alcohol gave her courage, for a while anyway; but the effects were wearing off. A bottle of Kahlua and a glass stood on a coffee table between two small, white crushed-velvet couches.

  “Be quiet and listen carefully,” Van Diemen said. “My name is Anton Karolyi. I see no reason why my name should mean anything to you. What you must believe is I will kill you if you don’t answer my questions freely and truthfully. Nothing can save you if I decide you are lying to me. Is that understood?”

  Van Diemen spoke quietly, matter-of-factly, without scowling or putting a rasp in his voice. “Answer me,” he said.

  “I hear what you’re saying,” she said. “Ask anything you like. Suddenly she started to shake; for the first time the lady seemed to realize she was in real danger. “Could I have a drink first? The bottle there on the table.”

  “You can have a small drink.” Van Diemen watched her as he got the bottle and glass. The glass had melting ice in it. He poured out about an inch of the coffee liqueur and handed her the drink. She finished it before he got back to his chair.

  The alcohol steadied her a bit. “How about another? I need it.”

  “I need you sober. If I decide you’re cooperating, you can have another. You can drink the entire bottle after I leave.” He wanted her to believe that he would leave her alive. “Now tell me how you got mixed up with Landau. He came to you?”

  “No. Another man came, not Mr. Landau.” Tracy Lee Dembroder spoke quickly. “He said he was a vice detective. He showed me a badge. He said he was going to arrest me for engaging in prostitution. He said the police had planted cameras and tape machines in my bedroom. They had all the evidence they needed. That’s the truth, I swear.”

  Of course, Van Diemen had no doubt she was lying. “Did you believe this man?”

  “Why wouldn’t I believe him? He had a badge. He looked like a cop.”
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  “Did he show you where the cameras and recorders were planted? Did you ask him?”

  Tracy Lee Dembroder played with the empty glass. “Of course I asked him. He said the stuff had already been removed and was being held as evidence.”

  “What happened next?” Van Diemen decided to listen to a few more lies before he clamped down on the desperate woman.

  “He said there might be a way out of my problem.”

  “Meaning if you had sex with him?”

  “Yes.” She looked away, the Southern lady in her shocked by such a question. “That wasn’t what he said, but he made it plain enough. I was afraid. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “It never occurred to you that the whole thing was a setup?”

  “No, it didn’t. I don’t know how these things work. I was frightened.”

  “So what happened next?”

  Another downward glance. “I expected that to be the end of it, but it wasn’t. He said I was still in deep trouble. I was going to need a lawyer. I was shocked. I said I’d report him to his superiors. He laughed and said it was my word against his. Who was going to believe a whore? I begged him and I begged him, but he wouldn’t budge.”

  “How did Landau get into it?”

  “This detective gave me his name before he left. I didn’t know what to think. I’d never heard of such a thing.”

  “But you did call Landau?”

  “To tell the truth, I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Van Diemen clapped his hands. Tracy Lee Dembroder deserved applause, but the time had come to stop the charade. “Don’t say another word until I tell you to. You’ve been lying and I’ve been letting you to see how far you’d go. Now I’ll tell you what really happened. Somebody came to you all right—it wouldn’t have been Landau; he’s too smart for that. This man said he knew all about you and Wilcox. Maybe he was a real cop, maybe a private detective. He said there was a way you could make a lot of money if you let him bug your apartment. He said he wanted to get something to hold over Wilcox’s head, something that could be used as blackmail. He paid you some money with the promise of more later.