Chapter 9
“Until when?” Annabelle asked. Cat saw her face. It looked pale.
“Until…” began Jack, suddenly looking past them across the room to the bar, “a few minutes ago.”
Everyone turned to follow his gaze. Davette recognized the young man standing up from his stool at the corner of the bar, had noticed that old WWII leather flying jacket when they had come in.
But I never would have guessed just by looking at him.
And then she thought, still watching the man approach them; But now that I’ve been told…
Yes. Yes, it’s him. He’s the one who did that.
Felix stopped beside their booth and stared down at Jack Crow. His voice was a harsh bitter crackle.
“Come to bust me at last, Crow?”
Jack’s smile was grim. “It’s worse than that.”
Felix barely nodded. “It would be.”
Chapter 10
Felix led the way up some back stairs to a small one-bedroom apartment and office with a huge picture window of one-way glass overlooking the bar. Felix sat down at his desk with his back to that window, chain- smoking and listening with stony silence as Jack spoke the tale of Vampire$ Inc.
His only discernible reactions came from his face, already thin, which seemed to stretch into a death mask’s gauntness, and from his eyes, already piercing, which became uncomfortable to meet.
Watching him all the while — for no one could take eyes from his steaming intensity — Annabelle could not pin down her feelings. She recognized Felix easily from Jack’s story. The laugh lines were there from the happy drunk who climbed Mexican trees.
And so was the helpless acuity of a man vised so tight he’d had to gun down four friends and a stranger at a kitchen table for a principle.
Eerie, she thought. I don’t know whether to run screaming into the night or pull him into my lap and cuddle him until he can sleep.
Something else bothered her. His few looks away from Jack were at Davette. Everyone else he had dismissed with his first glance. But his face, that rock face, kept coming back to the young journalist. His face did soften, Annabelle thought, when he did this. But damn well not enough for Annabelle.
Not nearly enough.
When Jack had finished, all were quiet for several seconds. Then Felix reached forward and stubbed out his last cigarette. He spoke in a harsh, rasping, bitter voice:
“Get out.”
“Take your band of merry men and your fairy tales and your” — he glanced briefly, painfully, at Davette — “your…
Team Crow, save for Jack, sat in collective stunned silence. It was absolutely the very last reaction they had expected.
No one had
Carl Joplin opened his mouth to speak, to protest, but Felix stood up quickly, cutting him off.
“
They left. Without anyone saying a word, they left, Felix by then standing in the center of the room glaring ferociously at them as they went.
Save for their limo, the street was all but deserted. Jack tapped lightly on the glass and the dozing driver scrambled out to open doors. But for a moment no one moved to get
“Well,” offered Carl at last, “he was pretty weird for us anyway.”
Jack looked at him and laughed. “Are you kidding, Joplin?” He laughed again. “The man is
All eyed him warily.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, O Great Leader,” said Carl. “But wasn’t that a ‘no’ he gave us?”
“I’ll correct you,” added Cat. He turned to Jack. “It was, in fact, about the firmest goddamn ‘no’ I’ve ever heard.”
The other three, Annabelle, Davette, Adam, nodded without speaking.
Jack laughed again.
“He’s ours, I tell you. You know what he’ll do? Next time I see him—”
“You’re going to see him again?” asked Annabelle.
“You think that’s wise?” added Davette.
Jack grinned. “Got to. He doesn’t know how to reach
They obeyed. Reluctantly, suspiciously. When they had all gotten situated, Cat finally spoke up for the rest.
“Bwana? Are you sure we’re all talking about the same dude?”
Everyone smiled.
“How,” Annabelle wanted to know, “can you be so sure, dear? I mean about the money and the rest. Why didn’t he just ask for it tonight?”
He smiled warmly at her. “He was bluffing tonight. Hoping we’d all go away. When it doesn’t work — which he knows damn well it won’t — he’ll just make it tougher on me out of spite. He needs the money as an excuse to give in to himself.”
Everybody thought about that for a second.
Finally, Cat asked, “Are you
“Let me tell you something, old buddy,” replied Jack before anyone else could speak. “More than you, more than me, that man was made to do this job.”
He paused, sighed. “Poor bastard.” He looked at the driver. “Hit it.”
If anyone noticed Davette’s furious blushing or triphammer heartbeat they didn’t say anything. Thank God! she thought. Because she couldn’t explain it either. But Lord, what a tug…
Thirty minutes later Felix still stood as he had when they had gone, stiff and silent in the middle of the room.
Why can’t I cry? he thought. And then he thought: I should be allowed to cry.
It isn’t fair.
He had doubted not one word Jack Crow had told him.
That a world existed where vampires really lived was no surprise at all. A world of evil incarnate gnawing men only made sense.
What surprised him was how long it had taken for that world to finally find him and drag him inside.
It’s not fair, he thought. I wanted to do something real.
Lord; but she was beautiful.
Jack Crow, lying sleepy-drunk in the huge bed of the suite’s master bedroom, felt oddly content.
He felt for Felix. He really did. But no more than he did for himself or for Cat. And besides, he’d really meant it when he’d said Felix was made for the job.
Funny, he’d thought of Felix a lot in the years since Mexico but almost never in terms of the killing. It was
