Stalking the Vampire (19 page)

“To find his”—McGuire gulped—“coffin?”

“Right.”

“You know,” said McGuire, “this is America.”

“What's that got to do with anything?”

“It's a land of second chances,” continued McGuire. “I think if Vlad apologizes and is really sincere in his contrition, perhaps we should all just forgive him, just like we forgive all the overpaid athletes and movie stars who apologize and tell us how sorry they are each time they get caught taking drugs and driving drunk, and go back to our normal everyday lives.”

“He's not a quarterback or an actress, Bats,” said Mallory. “He's killed people—including my partner's nephew.”

“Maybe it was an accident.”

“How do you accidentally bite someone in the neck, and then do it again the next night?”

“Nearsightedness?” said McGuire weakly.

“Look, Bats,” said Mallory, “if you're scared, if you want to back out, now's a good time. I've got Nathan with me, and it's just a matter of detective work, at least until I catch up with him.”

“I can't leave you!” said McGuire. “What kind of person do you take me for?”

“A frightened one.”

“Besides that!”

“Bats, I'm just thinking of you.”

“I've been thinking about me for forty-seven years,” said the little vampire, “and all it's gotten me is anemia and an unemployment check. It's time I started thinking about something else.”

“All right,” said Mallory. “Let's go find this Transylvanian bloodsucker.”

“I'm with you to the end,” said McGuire.

“One for all and all for one,” added Nathan.

“I'm hungry,” said Felina.

Mallory and his team walked back through Battery Park, heading toward the dock. They had just about crossed it when Bubba appeared.

“Hey, Bats!” he called out. “Twice in one night. What gives?”

“We're still on Vlad Drachma's trail,” answered McGuire. “This time it's leading us to the waterfront.”

“Bats, this is an island,” said Bubba. “Wherever you're standing, you're never more than a mile from the waterfront, and usually less.”

“We have to get down to the docks,” explained McGuire.

“There are docks all the hell over,” said Bubba. “Why those particular ones?”

“Because…” McGuire stopped and frowned, then turned to Mallory. “Why those?”

“Because that's where the Never Sink Cruise Line unloads its ships,” said Mallory.

“There's really a Never Sink Cruise Line?” asked Bubba.

“That's what the kid's aunt told me,” said Mallory. “And she's pretty good on details.”

“You sure you're looking for a vampire?” said Bubba. “We don't like the water much, you know. Shipwrecks scare the hell out of us. You want something worse than drowning? Be one of the undead whose ship goes down to the bottom of the sea and isn't salvaged for a few centuries.”

“They can just swim to the surface,” said Mallory.

“I can't swim,” said Bubba. “I spent all my time crippling halfbacks and falling on loose balls.”

“Besides, it's hard to push a coffin open under two hundred fathoms of water,” added McGuire.

“So he's probably not going to be there,” concluded Bubba.

“That's not a problem,” replied Mallory. “We don't really expect to find him there.”

“Makes sense,” said Bubba, nodding his head sagely. “If I was after a dangerous killer from the old country, I'd spend all my time looking where I didn't expect to find him too.”

“Why don't you tag along with us?” said Mallory. “We could use a big bruiser like you on our side—especially one who's already dead, so he can't be killed.”

“That's a really tempting offer—risking my neck for a man I've met once for maybe three minutes and trying to capture or kill a creature of my own kind who never did me any harm.” Bubba smiled in amusement and shook his head. “No offense, but I think I'll take a pass on it.”

“Our loss, no doubt,” said Mallory, starting to walk toward the docks again. His companions followed suit, he picked up the pace, and they reached their destination within ten minutes, despite Felina's tendency to stop and peer into every store window and then announce which five or six items she wanted Mallory to buy or steal for her.

When they reached the dock area, Mallory slipped the night watchthing a bill and found out that the Never Sink line owned only three ships, one of which, the
Moribund Manatee
, was docked there.

“Which one is it?” asked the detective.

“You can't miss her,” answered the watchthing. “She's the one that's kind of rust colored.”

“Funny color for a ship,” remarked Mallory.

“Ain't as if rust comes in a lot of colors,” said the watchman. “It's about the only thing holding the
Manatee
together.”

“I think I see it now,” said Mallory, looking down the dock. “Anyone aboard her?”

“She'll have a skeleton crew.”

“Thanks for the information,” said Mallory. “I guess we'll pay her a visit.”

“Go ahead,” said the watchthing. “I'll give a howl if anyone comes looking for you.”

“Like who?” asked the detective.

“How should
I
know?” replied the watchthing. “Gangsters. Bill collectors.
Revenue agents. Mesopotamian spies. Sweet young things who misconstrued your flights of poetic fancy as bona fide proposals of marriage.”

“But no vampires?”

“Around here? They ain't much for water.”

Mallory began walking down the dock, past one impressive cruise ship after another. When he came to the one that seemed to have no earthly reason for remaining afloat, he knew he had come to the
Manatee.

A rickety gangplank led up to the main deck, and Mallory began walking it, followed by the others. When he had almost reached the top, a very strange-looking man with scaly skin and not-quite-concealed gills on his neck suddenly appeared.

“Who goes there?” he demanded.

“My name is Mallory,” said the detective, “and these are my associates. We'd like to speak to someone in authority.”

“That'd be the captain.”

“Then that's who we want.”

“Against protocol. You can't just walk up here and demand to see the captain. There's red tape galore. I'll need your birth certificate, proof of citizenship, union card if any, library card if any, blood sugar and cholesterol readings, death certificate if you are among the undead, voter registration card, and driver's license—and the same for all your friends.”

“Or perhaps I could just slip you five dollars?” suggested Mallory.

“It'd save both of us a lot of time and trouble,” agreed the man, extending his hand and grabbing the bill when Mallory offered it. “Welcome aboard the
Moribund Manatee
, flagship of the Never Sink Cruise Line.”

Mallory looked around the decrepit main deck. “Why is this one your flagship?”

“It's the one that's still afloat,” answered the man.

Mallory nodded. “Yeah, that's about the only answer that'd make sense. Where's your captain?”

“On the aft deck, disciplining a crewman” was the answer.

A moment later a trio of gunshots rang out.

“I think Captain Blight will see you now.”

“Captain Blight?” repeated Mallory. “I seem to remember someone with a similar name.”

“That'd be Captain Bligh of the
Bounty
,” said the man. “They're like two peas in a pod, except for Captain Bligh being friendlier and more compassionate. Also, Captain Bligh went ashore from time to time. Captain Blight never leaves the ship.”

“Why not?”

“Things die when he walks too near them.”

“Things?” said Mallory.

“Plants, flowers, the occasional tree,” answered the man. “Those sort of things.”

“But not men?”

“They wouldn't have the guts to make the captain mad by dying while they were on duty. He'd follow ‘em right down to hell and bring ‘em back.”

“Sounds like the kind of man who's sorry flogging at the mainmast went out of style,” remarked Mallory.

“It fair broke his little black heart” was the answer. “Until he found out that flogging at the flagpole worked just as well, and could even be construed as patriotic.”

A burly man dressed all in black began approaching them. He had a thick black beard that was starting to turn gray and was armed with two pistols, a sword, and a bullwhip.

“Captain Blight, sir,” said the man, “these here gents would like a word with you.”

Blight glared at them. “Are you ACFO?”

“I beg your pardon?” said Mallory.

“You heard me,” snarled Blight. “Are you from the American Civil Freedoms Organization?”

“No, I'm John Justin Mallory of the Mallory and Carruthers Detective Agency,” said Mallory. “These are my assistants.”

Blight stared at each in turn. “But you're definitely not ACFO?”

“Definitely not,” Mallory assured him.

“All right,” muttered Blight. “You get to live—until I find out you're lying.”

“Thanks,” said Mallory.

“What can I do for you, as long as it doesn't inconvenience me in any way?”

“I've got some questions concerning one of your passengers on your recent trip from Europe.”

“She said she was nineteen,
she
supplied the handcuffs, cattle prod, aqualung, and apricot preserves, and that's all I'm saying until I see my lawyer.”

“A
different
passenger.”

“He challenged me to a swordfight. It doesn't make any difference whether he was drunk or sober, he was the instigator. And besides, the ship's surgeon offered to sew them back on if anyone could find them.”

“I'm talking about a passenger from Transylvania named Vlad Drachma.”

“Can't help you out,” said Blight. “Transylvania's not one of our ports of call.”

“He probably got on in England.”

“What about him?”

“Did he buy anything during the trip? And if he did, how did he pay for it?”

“How the hell should I know?” bellowed Blight. “You know the penalty for wasting the captain's time?”

“No, I don't,” admitted Mallory. “But you're in Manhattan now. Do you know the penalty for withholding information in a murder case?”

Blight stared at him for a long moment. “Are you
sure
you're not from the ACFO?”

“I told you: I'm a detective.”

“Then go detect something and leave me to run my ship!”

“Your ship's in port,” said Mallory. “It's not running anywhere.”

“There's cargo to load and unload, decks to swab, crewmen to discipline. You think a captain's life is easy? I've flogged so many crewmen on this latest voyage that I've damaged my rotator.”

“Happens to pitchers all the time,” remarked McGuire, not without sympathy.

“So are you going to tell me what I want to know,” said Mallory, “or am I going to get a court order to impound the ship and everything in it?”

Blight glared at him again. “If I had a yardarm, can you guess who I'd hang from it right this minute?”

“Just tell me what I want to know and I'll be out of your hair,” said Mallory.

“But
I
won't be,” said a smooth, cultured voice.

They all turned and saw a very well-dressed man reaching the top of the gangplank. His suit was custom tailored and European, his tiepin held a huge diamond, and his shoes were handmade Italian.

“You again?” roared Blight.

“Me again,” said the man, totally unflustered by Captain Blight's belligerence.

Blight turned to Mallory. “I was right! You're just his stalking horse!”

“I never saw him before in my life,” said Mallory.

“Then you don't watch the news on television often enough,” said the man. “I am Clarence Drummond at your service.” He handed Mallory an embossed business card.

“You're goddamned ACFO, is what you are,” muttered Captain Blight.

“My good man,” said Drummond, “as long as you insist on keeping the cargo aboard ship, I shall continue to file legal briefs to force you to relinquish it.”

“What's this all about?” asked Mallory.

“It's about seven thousand cartons of cigarettes in the hold of the
Moribund Manatee
,” explained Drummond.

“What about them?”

“Captain Blight refuses to unload them.”

“They were smuggled by a couple of crewmen who have since gone on to their rewards in Davey Jones's locker,” said Blight. “That makes them mine, and I can get a better price in Patagonia. Now why can't the ACFO leave me alone?”

“Because American citizens have every right to smoke those cigarettes,” answered Drummond.

“Maybe the Captain's doing them a favor,” said Mallory. “That's a lot of cancer in the hold of the ship.”

“The ACFO's position is that Americans have a constitutional right to contract cancer, and Captain Blight is standing in the way of their exercising
that freedom,” said Drummond. “I'd stay and explain our position in detail, but I just stopped by for a moment to see if he's changed his mind.” He looked at his diamond-studded Rolex. “I really must run. I'm due in court in another twenty minutes.”

“Another cigarette case?” asked Mallory.

“No,” answered the lawyer. “This one involves a college binge eater who gobbled down thirty-four cheeseburgers and twelve chocolate malts in a single sitting.”

“He must have been as sick as a dog,” said the detective.

“That's beside the point,” answered Drummond. “It was his legal right to order that meal.”

“Then what's the suit about?”

“The American Civil Freedoms Organization is suing the short-order cook who filled the order and let him get that sick. Wherever there is suffering, there must be a culprit.”

“Sounds like your organization has more business than it can handle.”

“True, true,” agreed Drummond. “Tomorrow we're defending two innocent souls who were prevented from exercising their freedom of self-expression at the Temple of All Saints.”

“They weren't allowed to speak?”

“I didn't say freedom of speech. I said freedom of self-expression.”

“What's the difference?” asked Mallory.

“They were suicide bombers.”

“Well, it's sure comforting to know that you're out there protecting us from our worst tendencies,” said Mallory.

“It's a dirty job, standing up for the poor and disadvantaged whether they want you to or not, but someone's got to do it,” said Drummond. He turned to Blight. “I'll be back. You can't prevent the public from exercising its rights forever.”