As it was, I hadn't been very satisfied with White’s job performance, and was thinking about getting rid of him, anyway. He definitely had not been my best-ever choice for a driver. As is so often the case with humans, White was full of unpleasant surprises. He could project a veneer of modest competence, but it was just a smoke screen for the trash heap of dysfunction underneath. Losing his driver’s license settled the matter of his employment, leaving one little loose end to tie up. I was never very comfortable with firing an employee. Once out of my employ, once the money stopped flowing, they seemed to forget the rules, or they would make the mistake of thinking that the rules no longer applied. It was more prudent for me to terminate them, literally, even though I knew that feeding on someone with whom I had frequent contact could involve additional risk. In White’s case, I was spared both the inconvenience and the risk. Apparently the owner of the illegal guns was as unhappy with White as I had been. The day after his release from custody, White was found dead from multiple gunshot wounds.
Which left me without a driver. Unfortunately, a good driver wasn’t easy to find. I couldn’t just put an ad in the newspaper: “Vampire seeks chauffeur. Call for midnight interview.” All I could do was keep my eye out for possible candidates. This might take a long time, and often did, but there wasn’t any practical alternative. On this particular occasion, I thought I might have gotten lucky. A few days prior to my rendezvous with Francine, I’d spotted someone I thought might fill the bill. She worked in a place called the Triple Tavern on West Capital Avenue. A fairly sad place, as they go, it catered to dedicated local drunks, truckers, and prostitutes. Apparently, she also turned tricks in one of the many motels along the avenue that did business by the hour.
That was how she first caught my attention. It was about 2:00 a.m. and I was taking a little stroll, not particularly hungry because I had gorged myself the previous night on a young Arabian mare pastured in Fair Oaks. I was walking past a motel parking lot, when the door to one of the rooms flew open and a young woman lunged out of the brightly lit interior into the parking lot’s semidarkness. She was wearing panties and high heels, carrying the rest of her clothes bunched under one arm, and she was clearly pissed about something. Once outside, she balanced herself against a parked car with her free hand, bent over and spit blood on the pavement.
When she leaned on the car, she set off the alarm. These devices were as irritating to her as they were to me. Screaming “Fuck,” she spun around and slammed her fist onto the hood of the car. This seemed to help her focus and she began to dress herself. She had just gotten her jeans on when a man stepped into the motel room’s open doorway. Apparently the reason for her hasty exit, he was holding the side of his head and there was a lot blood running down his face and onto his chest. He seemed more confused than angry. He took a step toward the woman, but then changed his mind and sat down on the doorstep. He was a big guy. He looked like he was in his early forties, well over six feet tall, around two-fifty. It took some spunk for a woman to lay into a guy like that.
As the guy sat down, the door to the adjoining room opened. An older man in a bathrobe stood there for a moment, assessing the scene, then pointed his electronic gizmo at the car. The alarm stopped screeching, he shook his head sadly and closed the door.
By then the woman had the rest of her clothes on. She turned toward the guy still sitting there bleeding, took two quick steps toward him and spat. “Asshole!” she hissed, then turned and stalked out of the parking lot.
I watched her cross the street to the Triple Tavern parking lot where she got into an older model Honda Civic, and drove away. I liked the looks of her. Spirited, with a temper, but rather precise in her actions. A woman capable of making compromises in the name of survival, but with lines she wouldn’t cross. Not inclined to take a lot of shit, but with the good judgment to walk away when the situation called for it. Punctuating her exit by spitting in the guy’s face added a certain charm, as well.
This had taken place on a Thursday night. I confirmed the following evening that she worked at the tavern where she had parked her car the night before, and decided to pay a visit. I wore my usual black tennis shoes, jeans, and a black T-shirt. As usual, I looked like some kind of pseudo-beatnik, nerd-gothic wannabe, so I added a dark gray sport coat to give myself a slightly more moneyed appearance.
It was a little after 11:00 p.m. There were seven cars in the parking lot, including the woman’s Honda. Including the woman, there were seven people in the tavern. She was behind the bar. An older man, probably in his sixties, was sitting at a corner table, adding up receipts on a pocket calculator. The expression on his thin, deeply lined face suggested a habitual dissatisfaction with what the calculator was telling him. Five customers, four men and a woman, occupied seats at the bar and tables, chosen as if to maximize the space between themselves. Three of the men were in their fifties or sixties, the other one looked barely
