I go home to my overpriced stucco shack in Sherman Oaks and to my girlfriend, who's got cheekbones like a runway model and lips that make men beg, but wears enough lipstick to stop a truck, and in any case is sick and tired of what I do for a living and probably has a right to be. I should know something besides killing people, even if they're people the police don't mind having dead and I'm as good at it as my father wanted me to be. It's too easy making excuses. Like a pool hustler who never leaves the back room. You start to think it's the whole world.
She can tell from my face that I've had one of those meetings. She shakes her head and says, 'How much?'
'I'm doing it for free.'
'No, Anthony, you're not.'
'I am.'
'Are you trying to get me to go to bed with your brother? He'd like that. Or Aaron, that guy at the gym? Or do you just want me to go live with my sister?'
She can be a real harpy.
'No,' I tell her, and mean it.
'You must really hate me.'
'I don't hate you, Mandy. I wouldn't put up with your temper tantrums if I hated you.' The words are starting to hurt-the ones she's using and the ones I'm using. I
do love her, I'm telling myself. I wouldn't live with her if I didn't love her, would I?
'And I live on what while you're away, Anthony?'
'I'll sell the XKE?'
'To who?'
'My cousin. He wants it. He's wanted it for years.'
She looks at me for a moment and I see a flicker of-kindness. 'You in trouble?'
'No.'
'Then you're lying or you're crazy but anyway it comes down to the same thing: You don't love me. If you did, you'd take care of me. I'm moving out tomorrow, Anthony Pagano, and I'm taking the Jag.'
'Please.…'
'If you'll charge for the work.'
'I can't.'
'You
are in trouble.'
'No.'
How do you tell her you've got to kill a man who isn't really a man but wants to be one, and that if you do God will forgive you all the other killings?
She heads to the bedroom to start packing.
I get the case out, open it, touch the marbleized surface of the thing, and hope to hell that God wants a horny assassin because I'm certainly not seeing any action this night or any other before I leave for Rome, and action does help steady my finger. Which Mandy knows. Which every woman I've ever been with knows.
When I get up the next morning, she's gone. The note on the bathroom mirror, in slashes of that lipstick of hers, says, 'I hope you miss my body so bad you can't walk or shoot straight, Anthony.'
We do the instruction at a dead-grass firing range in Topanga Canyon. My tutor is a no-nonsense kid-maybe twenty-with Chinese characters tattooed around his neck like a dog collar, naked eyebrows, pierced tongue, nose, lower lip. He's serious and strict, but seems happy enough for a vampire killer. He picks me up in his Tundra and on the way to the canyon, three manikins (that holy number) bouncing in the truck bed, he says, 'Yeah, I like it-even if it's not what you'd think from a
Buffy re-run or a John Carpenter flick-you know, like that one shot in Mexico. More like CSI-not the Bruckheimer, but the Discovery Channel. Same way that being an investigative journalist isn't as much fun as you think it'll be-at least that's what I hear. All those hours Googling the public record. In my line of work, it's the tracking and casing and light-weapons prep. But you know more about that than I do, Mr. Pagano. Wasn't your dad-'
'Sounds like you've been to college, Kurt,' I say.
'A year at a community college-that's it. But I'm a reader. Always have been.'
How do you answer that? I've read maybe a dozen books in my life, all of them short and necessary, and I'm sitting with this kid who reads probably three fat ones a week. Not only is he more literate than I am, he's going to teach
me how to kill-something I really thought I knew how to do.
'Don't worry,' he says. 'You'll pick it up. Your-shall we say 'previous training and experience'-should make up for your age, slower reflexes,
you know.'
What can I say? I've got fifteen years on him and we both know it. My reflexes
are slower than his.
As we hit the Ventura Freeway, he tells me what I'm packing. 'In the case beside you, Mr. Pagano, you've got a Horton Legend HD with a Talon Ultra-Light trigger, DP2 CamoTuff limbs, SpeedMax riser, alloy cams, Microflight arrow groove, and Dial-a-Range trajectory compensator-with LS MX aluminum arrows and Hunter Elite 3- arrow quivers. How does that make you feel?'
'Just wonderful,' I tell him.
The firing range is upscale and very hip. There are dozens of trophy wives and starlets wearing $300 Scala baseball caps, newsboy caps and sun visors. There are almost as many very metro guys wearing $600 aviator shades and designer jungle cammies. And all of them are learning Personal Protection under the tutelage of guys who are about as savvy about what they're doing as the ordinary gym trainer. They're all trying their best to hit fancy bull's-eye, GAG, PMT, and other tactical targets made for pros, but I'm looking like an even bigger idiot trying to hit, with my handfuls of little crossbow darts, the manikins the kid has lined up for me at fifty yards. The other shooters keep rubbernecking to get a look at us. The kid stares them down and they look away. If they only knew.
'Do the arrows made from the other material-' I begin. 'Do they-uh-act…?' I ask.
'Arrows with wood made from the Cross act the same,' the kid says, very professional. 'We balance them the way we'd balance any arrow.'
'When it hits-'
'When it hits a vampire, I'm sure it doesn't feel like ordinary wood. I've never taken one myself.'
'Glad to hear it.'
'Actually, someone did try an arrow once. Deer bow. Two inches off the mark. I've got a scar. Want to see it?'
'Not really. How would it feel to
us?'
'You mean mortals?'
'Right.'
'It would probably hurt like hell, and if you happened to die I doubt it would get you a free pass to Heaven.'
'That's too bad.'
'Isn't it.'
When I've filled the manikins with ten quivers' worth of arrows and my heart-shot rate is a sad 10%, we quit for the day. It's getting close to sunset, one of those gorgeous smoggy ones. The other shooters have hit the road in their Escalades, H3s, and Land Sharks and the kid is acting distracted.
'Date?'
'What?'
'You know. Two people. Dinner and a movie. Clubbing. Whatever.'
'You could say that. But it's a threesome. Can't stand the guy-he's a Red-State crewcut ex-Delta-Forcer-but the girl, she's so hot she'll melt your belt buckle.'
He can tell I'm not following.
'A job. It'll take the three of us about three hours. You know, holy number.'
'Yeah, I know.'
'Two Hollywood producers. Both vampires. They've got two very sexy, very coollow-budget vampire flicks-ones where the vampires win because, hey, if you're cool and sexy you should win, right?-in post-production, two more in production and three in development. These flicks will seduce too many teens to the Dark Side, He says, so He wants us to take out their makers. They'll be having late poolside dinner at Blue-on-Blue tonight. We'll be interrupting it.'
'I see,' I say. I'm staring at him and he beats me to it.
'You want to know what we eat if we can't drink blood.'
'Yes, I do.'
'We eat what you eat. We don't need blood since we came over.'
'Which means you don't-how to put it?-you don't perpetuate the species.'
'Right.'
'Which can't make the elders very happy.'
'No, it can't.'
By the end of the sixth day my heart-shot rate is 80% and the kid's nodding, doing a dance move or two in his tight black jeans, and saying, 'You're the man, Anthony. You're the man.' I shouldn't admit it, but what he thinks does matter.
When I get there, courtesy of Alitalia (the angel won't pay for Lufthansa), the city of Siena, in lovely Tuscany, country of my forefathers, is a mess. It's just after the horserace, the one where a dozen riders-each of them repping a neighborhood known for an animal (snail, dolphin, goose-you get the picture)-beat each other silly with little riding crops to impress their local Madonna. There's trash everywhere. I've got the crossbow in its case, and a kid on a Vespa tries to grab it as he sails by, but I'm ready. I know kids-I was one once-and I nail him with a kick to his knee. The Vespa skids and he flies into a fountain not far away. The fountain is a big sea
