Thirst Page 8

  “You were mad at Brad because he’d been stalling about divorcing his wife and marrying you. You knew he’d never divorce his wife. This guy was talking about very large money, a lawsuit Brad would want to settle out of court. You decided to go for it. This guy planted the bugs then and the next time Brad came to see you, he was taped. It all happened just recently. I know it did. Don’t try to deny it. As soon as enough footage of Wilcox was taped, the same man came back and took the evidence. Would you say that’s a fair summary of what happened? Answer me.”

  Tracy answered in a slow, dead voice. “That’s what happened, Anton. How close are you to Brad, Anton?”

  “I love him like a brother. If you’re offering to cut me in, forget about it. Yale men stick together. Now to get back to the business at hand: How did Landau get involved? I asked you that before. This time tell the truth.”

  “This man told me to call Mr. Landau when he took away the equipment.”

  Van Diemen held up his hand. “You keep calling him this man. Didn’t he give you a name?”

  “He said he was Det. O’Brien.”

  Now there was a safe name, Van Diemen thought. Even in modem society, with all the minorities crowding in where they weren’t wanted, there couldn’t be less than a hundred O’Briens on the force.

  “He was doing something illegal, yet he gave his name as Det. O’Brien. You’re lying again.”

  “You’re getting me mixed up. He just said his name was O’Brien.”

  “What did he look like?”

  Tracy had to puzzle over that. “Sort of average, like a lot of men you see. Sort of stocky, not tall, maybe forty, forty-five. A grey hat, I think, and—”

  “Never mind that. Did he have sex with you, Tracy?”

  “No, he did not. Listen. What about that drink?”

  Van Diemen gave her another small one and she knocked it back. She was getting her medicine in small doses, but she needed it. It steadied her until she had the next one.

  “Forgive me,” Van Diemen said, “but I need to get to the bottom of this. You’re under a strain—I can understand that—but so are we all, especially Wilcox. You probably see me as the heavy, but I’m not.”

  Tracy sighed. “What are you going to do with me, Anton?”

  “What am I going to do with you?” he said. “I’m going to have my way with you. What do you think of that?”

  Tracy perked up like the cheerleader she might have been back as a girl. She perked up so much she jumped out of her chair, and Van Diemen didn’t try to stop her. How far could she have run? But it looked as if she didn’t want to run.

  “I think it’s wonderful, Anton. I hope it means we can be friends. I hope it does. Do you think we can be friends, Anton?” The dressing gown was tossed aside, and she stood revealed in all her lightly tanned glory. She danced around slapping her boyish Bardot ass, her firm breasts jiggling.

  “What are you waitin’ for, Anton?” She sounded a little more Southern; maybe she thought that was more appealing or her accent was slipping. “Get those clothes off, honey. Hey, let me help you.” There was fear in her voice, but she was trying to talk herself out of it. Danger was close, and she knew it, but her smile was fixed and unhappy even as she tried to get into the stranger’s pants.

  Van Diemen was amused by her antics, excited by her sexy loveliness. He stood still while she danced her way over to him and started to undress him. First she unzipped his trousers. She pulled out his penis and expressed admiration for its size. ‘It’s so big, Anton. I don’t know if you’ll be able to get it all into me.” She looked up at him from a crouching position. “Let me taste it. I want to taste it.”

  She gave the penis a few tentative licks before putting it in her mouth and sucking it. But Van Diemen had to ask one more question. He reached down and pulled Tracy away from him. His action puzzled and frightened her and she looked up at him, saying, “What’s the matter, Anton? Don’t you like it?”

  “It’s very nice,” he said, offering faint praise indeed. “But there is something I neglected to ask you.” His voice was cold, formal; he wanted to laugh. ‘Where is Landau?”

  Her voice got a shake in it. “Can’t it wait, Anton?” And saying that, she tried to grab his penis and put it back in her mouth. Van Diemen took it out of her reach, wanting her to know that her sexual expertise was not enough.

  “No, it can’t wait,” he said. “Where is Landau? Tell me or we can’t be friends.”

  Tracy tried to rise, but he kept her on her knees. He had two hands entwined in her hair, tugging a little. “I don’t know where he is, Anton. If he isn’t at home or at his office, he could be anywhere. He hasn’t called me for days. How do I know where he is? Please believe me. I—” Van Diemen believed her; he hadn’t expected her to know. To Landau, this delectable creature was just a tool to be used to further his own villainous design. “It’s all right,” he said tenderly, then stooped to kiss her.

  After that, he allowed her to remove the rest of his clothes. They moved into the bedroom and she stretched out, her legs wide apart, on the king-size bed. She held out her arms, uttering words of endearment, inviting him to come and take her. Van Diemen made no attempt to control the sexual frenzy that took hold of him. He could try but it wouldn’t do any good. He didn’t want to try. But there was no real outcry as he squeezed her breasts very hard and copulated with her.

  He enjoyed every minute with her. Then without warning, a terrible thing happened. He felt his powers begin to slacken, and his penis softened. A wave of panic swept over him. All the things he’d done that night, all the energy expended, were taking their toll. And he knew he had to feed. He sank his teeth into Tracy Lee’s neck, and her scream would have been loud and real if he hadn’t clamped his hand over her mouth. Her eyes were wild and her body thrashed beneath him, but he held her fast while he drank her blood and kept on having sex with her at the same time. He felt his strength returning as the life-restoring fluid flowed into him. His penis got so hard and big he could barely move it. Tracy wasn’t fighting him now; her eyes were glazing over, her body growing limp. He unjammed his penis with a mighty effort and drove it in as far as it would go. He climaxed as Tracy died.

  Dressing quickly, fully restored, feeling fine) he searched the apartment, not really expecting to find anything. Tracy Lee Dembroder might have had the tape and film duplicated before Det. O’Brien had come to pick them up. But he found nothing but 1,200 dollars, in hundreds, stuffed into the toe of a winter boot. No tapes, no film. He pocketed the money; he couldn’t have too much of it. One of Landau’s business cards was under the telephone and he left it there. Tracy lay naked and dead, but no blood had been spilled. Her light golden tan was turning pale, and drained as it was, her body had an emaciated look. Her face, no longer beautiful, was skull like and shrunken. If only Wilcox could see her now.

  All Van Diemen had to do was get rid of the body. Then he decided not to. Why not leave her as she was, for the cops to find and Landau to gnash his teeth over? Van Diemen smiled. The crooked lawyer was having a terrible night, and though the security company probably had found him by now, Tracy Lee’s death would be the second ton of bricks to fall on him.

  Van Diemen unlocked the gate, then the door, and he went out into the half darkness of the garden. Then he flew away.

  ~*~

  Back behind his writing table. Van Diemen could not have felt better. The ice in the bucket had long melted and the bottle was floating, but no matter, he felt wonderful. Although the night had not been a complete success, it had gone quite well. Quite well was not the way to describe it: astonishingly well was more like it. If he did think so himself, he had proved beyond all doubt what a 218-year-old vampire could do when he put his mind to it. But for all the excitement of the outside world, he was glad to be home, back in the safety of his castle and his library, with its muted light, its paintings, and its books.

  The hunter home from the hill, he thought. Though the line really wasn�
�t applicable in the present circumstance, he liked it. He allowed himself a glass of warmish champagne and pressed a button that caused a section of a bookshelf to slide back, revealing a large television set that he switched on with the remote control on the table. A cadaverous woman was talking about vampires on some ghoul show. Her name was Draculina, she was telling the host, and she was a direct descendant of Count Dracula himself. Get it right, you awful hag, Van Diemen thought. Dracul was the correct name, and he was a prince, not a count. But his mild irritation passed immediately; he was feeling too good to be annoyed by such nonsense. He would have stayed with the program if he hadn’t wanted news of the fire.

  Using the remote, he jumped from station to station until he found a local news program on cable. The newscaster was a well-fed black man with a guardsman’s mustache and a bouncy delivery, and he was going on about another toddler killed by a stray bullet during a drug shootout. Then there was a bit about a group of crazy women staging a sit-down in the offices of a fur company. Landau leaned forward when the newscaster got to the fire on East Sixty-third Street. There was a lot of hand-held camera work, smoke and noise.

  “Here on East Sixty-third Street,” he was saying, “firefighters have finally gotten the fire at the residence of controversial attorney Jack Landau under control. Hampered by high winds, firefighters battled the blaze for two hours before it was brought to a halt. Extensive damage has been reported. Questioned by our news team, Fire Marshal McCloskey refused to say if he suspected arson. ‘It’s too early to tell,’ Marshal McCloskey said. ‘We’ll know more when the lab report comes in.’ Mr. Landau, who is said to be on vacation, was not at the scene.”

  Before the newscaster moved on to something else, the cameras showed pictures of the still smoldering house. Extensive damage? Van Diemen thought. The house is ruined.

  That success called for another glass of champagne, a final celebration of work well-done. It was after five now, and it wouldn’t be light until seven or so, but he felt he should get his rest and enjoy a few additional hours of mental relaxation. That night, rather that morning, there was none of the unexplained uneasiness that sometimes bothered him as he went to his bed-chamber. Peace—it was wonderful.

  His coffin awaited him; it was his favorite place to be in all the world. Stretching out in its silken, padded length, he murmured, “I am great. I am invincible.”

  Seven

  Van Diemen rose at nightfall, feeling no less content. He had inflicted grievous harm on Landau, his house, and his threats against Wilcox. Van Diemen’s sense of achievement remained undimished. There was the problem of Maggie Connors to be considered, but was it such a problem after all? He had thought about her while he had rested. She was a well-known photo journalist, a woman with a worldwide reputation for tough-minded integrity: A story about a vampire in the Bronx Zoo, even with pictures, or especially with pictures, could make her the laughingstock of her profession. So she might do nothing.

  Everything was in order in the library: the bottle in its ice bucket, that day’s mail stacked neatly beside the telephone. Most of the mail was the usual junk from Ed McMahon, Save the Seals, Congressman Perez, UNESCO Christmas cards. Only two letters looked as if they were written by humans rather than computers. One was from a crazy nun in Canada; he recognized the handwriting and threw it in the wastebasket with the letters from Ed McMahon and the others. The other letter was from someone called Vincent Mara; the return address was on West Twenty-second Street, New York City. Van Diemen s first impulse was to dispose of the letter. But he was feeling benevolent that evening.

  Dear Mr. Van Diemen:

  I take the liberty of writing you directly because the telephone company has refused to give me your phone number. They even claimed you don’t have a phone. My reason for communicating with you by mail is important, however, and I hope you will agree when I explain my motives. I happen to be a writer of some repute in that I have a historical novel and a number of newspaper and magazine articles to my credit Maybe you have heard of me. Does the name of Vincent Mara ring a bell? Or am I hoping for too much?

  At this point I must confess my novel, Hester, I Am Coming alas is what is what is sometimes referred to in a facetious tone as a bodice ripper, though I myself cannot condone such a slighting. My novel, an update of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is well researched and well written, and to quote from the West Coast Review of Books (photocopy enclosed), “Mara is on to something here. Hester Prynne as we never knew her. Hester, I am Coming is as steamy as a commercial laundry, hot as a pizza oven, uninhibited as a sex-crazed chimpanzee. We can only wonder what Mr. Maras target will be: Little Women, Mary Poppins, Elizabeth and Her German Garden.”

  Van Diemen sighed and looked at the address at the top of the page. West Twenty-second Street, New York, NY. Not a good address and what was this fellow going on about? Van Diemen was well accustomed to begging letters, threatening letters, letters from demented or scheming wretches who claimed to be his legitimate children. A former nun in Canada, confined to a madhouse for the religious, had heard of his castle and wanted to convert it into a convent order devoted to St. Marilyn. But what did this man want? Something wasn’t right here: suspicion nagged at Van Diemen.

  Mr. Van Diemen, what I would like to do is write a book or a series of articles about you—or both, why not? But first let me explain to you how I got this inspiration. It happened by accident, sir. I was in the main room of the New York Public Library, at Forty-second and Fifth, when I came upon your name in the bound indexes. I do not know why the name intrigued me, but it did. Then the name itself rang a bell. Why, sure,

  I thought to myself, William Van Diemen, the old line Hudson River Dutch aristocrat whose ancestor with the same name built the fabulous castle in Riverdale. I am no great scholar, sir, but I recognized the name after I thought about it. Sure, I thought to myself, that is the William Van Diemen who is carrying on the immense history of the Dutch people started by the original William Van Diemen close to two hundred years ago. Well, sir, you can’t know how excited I was. Real history in the Bronx, I thought to myself I am a Bronx boy myself, born and bred on Burke Avenue, if you know where that is, which you probably don’t since you have the name of being a hands-off scholar who values his privacy and seldom leaves his ancestral estate. However, don’t you think it’s time you shared your life and family history with the rest of the world? Dare I suggest it is your duty to do that. If you are willing to be interviewed anything you say will be treated with the utmost discretion. You will have complete editorial control and final say as to what may or may not appear in print.

  I sincerely hope your decision will be in the affirmative. Since I cannot call you, I would appreciate a reply by phone or mail

  The letter was signed Vincent Mara, no middle initial, and he professed himself to be sincerely yours. Van Diemen studied the self-dramatizing scrawl of the signature; clearly this was a man with an identity problem, feelings of inferiority: Nothing about the letter was sincere; insolence was barely concealed in its lines. But there was more to it than that, something false. Mara was up to something, and it had nothing to do with writing. Any semiliterate could have a book published, and if the regular publishers turned him down he could bring it out through a vanity press and pay through the nose to see his name in print.

  Van Diemen went to a bookshelf and took down the 1994 edition of Books in Print. Yes, there it was: Mara, Vincent. Hester, I Am Coming. Plantagenet Press. N.Y. 1994. Van Diemen smiled at the name of the vanity published. There was no address for the publisher, but in his mind’s eye Van Diemen saw the offices in a loft building on Varick Street, two rooms over a paper-and-twine company on lower Sixth Avenue, the publisher’s apartment on far West Forty-ninth Street. No matter, it was a schlock outfit.

  Back at his writing table, Van Diemen wondered what he should do. He wondered if he might not be wrong about the suspicions aroused by Mara’s letter. But, no, the feeling was too strong. The m
an wanted access to the castle, to worm his way into Van Diemen’s confidence, to discover what sort of man Van Diemen was so he could report his findings to Landau. It had to be Landau. Van Diemen trusted his instincts; it had to be Landau. Mara’s letter was rambling, not at all professional, and that could be a clever enough attempt to throw him off his guard. No letter drafted by Landau, however naive he tried to make it, could match something written by Mara himself. But that didn’t tell Van Diemen who Vincent Mara was. What was he besides a writer of historical romance? He could be a moonlighting cop. He could be anything from a high-school teacher to a process server. He could be—and probably was—a private detective who wiled away the idle hours by writing copycat novels he hoped would help him strike it big. An insecure guy with dreams of book clubs, talk shows, movie sales, women hanging off his arm.

  Van Diemen dialed Mara’s number and got an answer on the third ring. “Mara,” a man’s voice said.

  “This is William Van Diemen. I’m calling in response to your letter, Mr. Mara. You are Vincent Mara?”

  “Yes. It’s very good of you to call so soon, Mr. Van Diemen. Are you at all interested in my idea?”

  “I have some interest, but I can’t let it interfere with my working schedule. You may think me a woolly-headed historian lost in the past, but I do have a working routine.” Van Diemen allowed himself to fake an addled laugh. “And to be frank with you, I have little idea how these things are done. For instance, where would these interviews be conducted?”