I knew there was more Richardson wasn’t telling me, but it was time to go.
“About your girlfriend,” I said, aiming the gun at her corpse. “You’ll want to dispose of the body so it won’t be found.”
“Maybe I should just call the police when you go.”
“Believe me, Ron, you don’t want the coroner to do an autopsy. If they determine the cause of death, they’ll crucify you.”
Richardson looked again at his girlfriend’s body, as if he were trying to calculate just how much trouble she could cause him.
I took the bullets out of the gun and tossed them across the room, then dropped the gun on the floor and kicked it under the bed. I got up and walked to the door, pausing before going out. “You should go check on your bodyguards.”
“Fuck them! They deserve to spend the night out there.”
“I’m not sure what the big guy is worth, aside from the fact that he’s big and mean-looking. Frank is probably worth whatever you’re paying him.”
“Yeah? Why’d he let you in here, then?”
The question didn’t even merit a response.
•
I called Karla and instructed her to pick me up in the parking lot where she’d dropped me off. Something was nagging at me on the walk back; a feeling that had become all too familiar in recent years. A sense that my actions were somehow out of balance. I didn’t quite understand the feeling, but, as usual, I knew what caused it. I had used his girlfriend as a convenient tool for coercing money out of Richardson. This bothered me in a way that was very difficult to understand. It was not a matter of immorality or injustice. I was a vampire, a predator that required human blood to survive. I was not at odds with that. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help feeling that I had somehow failed to properly discriminate. I had made a decision in a situation that offered the possibility of greater balance, and I had not made the right choice. I had exploited an opportunity for blood without weighing the options. I had taken something for granted that I shouldn’t have. I just wasn’t sure what it was.
I could hear something Euro-synthish on the car stereo when Karla pulled into the parking lot. She turned it down as I got in.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“Could you turn that down a little more?”
“Don’t like Miss Kitten?” Karla asked.
“Miss Kitten?” I repeated, enjoying the name. “I have to confess, I haven’t been following her work.”
“She really tickles me. I think she used to be a stripper before she broke into the music scene.”
“I see,” I said, having no reason to think the move from strip club to recording studio wasn’t a natural one. “The lyrics are amusing.”
“So, how’d it go?”
“It went all right, I think.”
“I guess you wanted to surprise him? Or her?” she asked, tentatively.
“Him,” I said, and waited, not expecting that to satisfy her curiosity.
“That’s why you had me drop you off on in the parking lot, right? You wanted to surprise him?”
“If one of us was going to be surprised, I preferred it to be him.”
“Was he?” she asked, after a short pause.
“I believe so, yes. How was your evening?
“Not too exciting. I went home after I dropped you off.”
“You sounded like you were asleep when I called.”
“You could tell?” she asked, sounding slightly disappointed.
“Your voice was a little lower than normal.”
The streets were empty. Downtown Sacramento had an air of bleak desolation at night. City planners, people whose greed was only matched by their lack of vision, had tried various schemes over the years to “revitalize” the core. They generally got a lot richer in the process, while everything else got poorer. They had added a performing arts center and a convention center, but after about eight p.m., the surrounding streets remained distinctly uninviting.
“Is this city creepy at night, or what?” Karla said, having similar thoughts.
“I may have some errands for you in the next few days,” I said, “I’ll either call or email.”
She dropped me off at the footbridge. It was still early, time for a leisurely stroll home. I wondered if Richardson was right about Arnaud not being killed over drugs. But why would he be killed over the missing girl? I decided that was a question I would ask Danny Weiss.
Chapter 8
My current residence was a gift from Mio: a two-story house on American River Drive, about a mile from the university. I occupied the four upstairs rooms: study, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom, with a private entrance at the back of the house. The ground floor was occupied by Keiichi Sato, a Japanese gentleman employed by Mio to live in the house, take care of the grounds, and maintain a discreet indifference to me. Sato performed his duties impeccably. He and I rarely saw one another, and when we did, we just as rarely spoke. On those occasions when our paths crossed, more often than not we would acknowledge one another’s presence with nothing more than a slight nod of the head.
Mio’s relations with humans were not usually based on affection, but in Sato’s case, I think she was genuinely fond of him. She once told me how they had met. It was back in the 1980’s, during Japan’s economic bubble. Mio was walking very late one evening through Tokyo’s Ueno Park. Her path took her towards a solitary man sitting on a bench, staring lifelessly into the darkness. At first, she thought he was one of Japan’s countless salarymen for whom alcohol was the only refuge from the subservient monotony of their lives. But as she passed in front of him, he came out of his reverie and asked her very politely why she was walking alone so late at night. His speech was very precise, not at all slurred by drink. She replied that she was on her way home. He stood up and offered to escort her through the park.
Mio thought it was considerate of
