The Eye of the Moon (13 page)

Swann was impressed. That was a neat trick, no doubt
about it. Even so, he didn’t allow his face to give anything away, and he sat back in his chair without so much as a thank you.

‘So. You want out of this place?’ asked the man in the Warden’s chair.

‘Name’s Robert Swann, since you didn’t ask.’

‘I know who you are, thank you.’

‘And yet you haven’t bothered to introduce yourself. Kinda rude, if you ask me.’

The man smiled. ‘You can call me Mr E.’

‘As in Mystery Man?’

‘No. As in Mr E.’

‘Awright, keep your hair … on.’

Mr E smiled. Swann could sense that this man was admiring his attitude. In this he was right. Swann had exactly the kind of arrogant, sonofabitch, take-no-shit persona that Mr E was looking for.

‘I’ve arranged for you to receive a full pardon, Mr Swann.’

‘Thanks. Guess I’ll be on my way then,’ said Swann getting up from his seat.

‘No. You won’t. Siddown. The smartass act will get you so far, but don’t overcook it. It’s not cool, and you’re not twelve, so stop it.’

Swann sat back down. Mission accomplished. He’d pissed this guy off enough. Time now to listen and see what the deal on offer was.

‘Go on then. Gimme what ya got,’ he said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation of whatever might be coming his way.

‘I need a guy with iron balls to work undercover for me. A tough job. Life threatening.’

‘Undercover? Where?’

‘Santa Mondega.’

‘Go screw yourself.’ Swann’s reaction was instinctive.

‘Hold on a second. There’s something a little different about this job. The undercover agent will be infiltrating a gang of vampires, disguising himself as one of them.’

‘Go screw yourself again, you baldass muthafucker! Do I look like a cunt to you?’

‘Yes. But you’re not listening. This job is not as bad as it sounds. Let me finish.’ Mr E remained calm in the face of the insults and general shitty attitude of Robert Swann. ‘A Hubal monk has returned to Santa Mondega with the Eye of the Moon, and I want you to find him, and
it.
’

Swann still wasn’t quite listening. This was a mission for an idiot, and he was no idiot. ‘And just how the hell am I supposed to pass myself off as a fuckin’ vampire?’ he asked.

‘You won’t. First off, I just want you to find the guy who
will
work undercover as a vampire. We have developed a serum that will allow a mortal man to walk among the undead without them being aware that he is not one of them. I need your skills as an interrogator and your undercover experience to train this new guy so that he doesn’t get killed within five minutes.’

Swann breathed an inward sigh of relief. So at least he wasn’t expected to be the new soon-to-be dead undercover agent.

‘Who’s “we”?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘You don’t need to know that.’

‘But it’s official? From the Goddam highest-in-the-land, kinda thing?’

‘How else would I be here, talking to you now? And where do you think a free pardon comes from?’

‘Uh-huh. But only a complete and utter fuckin’ brain-dead moron would take on a job like this. And I gotta tell you, I don’t think I’ve met the moron that’ll take this one.’

‘Quite right,’ said Mr E. ‘You haven’t met him. Yet. But there is such a man.’

Swann shook his head. He thought he knew everyone in the Special Forces skilled and brave enough to take on the top jobs, and this sounded like the top job in a very short list of top jobs. So it had to be someone new. Someone who had flown up through the ranks in the few years he had been away.

‘Go on,’ he said, smiling now. ‘Enlighten me. Who’s the
man with balls enough to infiltrate a gang of vampires and pretend to be one of them, with only a serum and some white foundation as a disguise? I gotta know this. And even if he’s brave enough and stupid enough to do it, what exactly is his incentive? How much is this kamikaze joker gettin’ paid?’

‘Paid? Ha!’ Mr E sat forward again, leaning across the desk, smiling at Swann. ‘No, this guy will do it for free.’

Swann was now beginning to suspect that this was a joke of some kind. Maybe even at his expense, but he continued to play along nonetheless. ‘Jeez, he really
is
a moron. So … What’s his name?’

Mr E slid a stiff brown envelope over the desk. The convict picked it up. It was reasonably light, suggesting that details about this mystery man were fairly limited. He opened the flap at the top and pulled out a black-and-white five-by-eight photo of a guy dressed in a Terminator outfit. He placed it on the desk and then pulled out the remaining contents, which amounted to nothing more than a few typewritten sheets of paper containing the personal details of the man in the photo. It didn’t take Swann long to scan the information and realize that this clown had no military or law-enforcement background. He pulled out the last sheet, which was headed ‘Mission Details’. He scanned that, too, realizing at once that there was little danger in this charade for him. Mr E had told the truth: it was this guy who was at risk.

‘What the fuck? Who the fuck is Dante Vittori? And why the fuck is
he
your man?’

Mr E surprised Swann by allowing himself a slight snigger. The bald head and sunglasses gave the impression that he didn’t have much of a sense of humour.

‘Actually, this man is more than qualified. Firstly, he knows about the vampires in Santa Mondega, so there’s no issues with breach of confidentiality, because this guy has seen the undead in action with his own eyes.’

‘Okay.’ Swann sounded as unconvinced as he felt.

‘And secondly, as well as being a total moron, our research shows that he’s almost completely fearless, if only because he’s
too fucking witless to realize when he’s in danger.’ He paused a moment. ‘Thirdly, he’s got an incentive. I have with me a tape of a film made by the Santa Mondega Police Department. It’s a short re-enactment of the shootout in a bar called the Tapioca during last year’s eclipse, using actors. The bartender, Sanchez, gave an eyewitness account of the events as they happened, and a short film was compiled in order to try to track down the culprits. The footage shows Dante Vittori dressed as the Terminator, shooting up the place with a monk in a Cobra Kai outfit, and that well-known serial killer the Bourbon Kid. The three of them will probably all get the chair if they ever get caught alive. Here, watch.’

Mr E turned around and pointed a remote control at the Warden’s portable television, which stood on a small table in a corner of the office. The screen fizzled on and after a few seconds the picture became lighter, and Robert Swann realized he was watching what was probably a fairly accurate reconstruction of the Tapioca eclipse massacre. Mr E began to narrate the action as he pointed at the TV. On screen was a scene filmed inside the bar. There were a number of mannequins scattered around the floor of the barroom, representing the vast number of corpses that had been revealed when the eclipse ended and daylight returned.

‘You will see at the bottom of the screen
here –
’ he pointed – ‘as the eclipse ends, that Dante Vittori, dressed in his Terminator outfit, comes charging out of the toilets and joins in the action.’ Mr E paused the tape for a moment. ‘Now you’ll see there’s a young Hubal monk –
here –
aiming a gun at the Bourbon Kid, and there’s a girl on the ground –
here –
who’s barely alive.’

Swann was fascinated. Catching just a glimpse of some of this exciting footage was a real privilege. Since being imprisoned he had been lucky to watch any television at all, and what he had seen had all been family viewing. Mr E continued the video playback and carried on with his narration.

‘Now you’ll see that instead of aiming his shotgun at the Bourbon Kid, who’s just killed about a hundred people, our
man Vittori instead points it at the back of the monk’s head. This is the first clue we have that he’s an idiot. The monk then discusses something with our man before retreating out through a back entrance. Then comes the second clue that our man Dante is a total meathead. Instead of killing the Bourbon Kid, he next turns his gun on the dying girl on the floor. The Kid joins in, and the pair of them blow her pretty much to bits.’

The two men watched the footage in silence for a few moments before Mr E picked up his commentary again.

‘After that it gets a bit crap. The bartender Sanchez, who’s meant to be the guy –
there –
dressed as Batman, jumps over the bar and beats the Bourbon Kid in a fist fight and the Kid runs away like a coward.’

‘No shit?’

‘Yeah, but no one believes that part. Apparently this Sanchez guy swears it’s true and wasn’t willing to cooperate with the video unless it was kept in.’

‘Jerk.’

‘Quite.’

‘So what actually happened to this Dante guy after the shootout?’

‘Well, he got away and probably thinks no one knows he was involved. But he was in the bar with this broad.’ Mr E slid a six-by-four-inch blowup of a very pretty, dark-haired young woman’s passport headshot over the desk to Swann. ‘Her name is Kacy Fellangi, and our guy Dante will do anything for her. So all we gotta do, is find Dante, find his girlfriend, and bingo! – we got ourselves an undercover vampire.’

Swann still wasn’t convinced. He didn’t think he was ever going to be, either.

‘Yeah yeah. But if this guy is such a moron, surely the vampires will see through him straight away?’

‘Sure, there’s a good chance of that, but it’s a chance I’m willing to take. You just find me Dante Vittori and Kacy Fellangi. Once we make him an offer he can’t refuse and give him the impression his girlfriend will suffer if he doesn’t do as
we ask, then he’ll be right on board.’

‘Okay. Any idea where I’m gonna start looking for this guy?’

‘It’s not gonna be too hard, in fact. I’ve had surveillance guys tracing him for some time, just waiting for him to stick his head above the parapet and pop up on our radar.’ He paused briefly, then asked, ‘Now, you know how I said he’s a total moron?’

Swann sensed that Mr E was placing a little more emphasis on the fact that Dante was a moron than was really necessary. The point had been established, so why keep bringing it up?

‘Yeah?’ he asked sceptically, intrigued in spite of himself as to what his would-be new employer was about to reveal.

‘Well, we know that he and Kacy left Santa Mondega right after the eclipse. And we think they moved to Florida, which is a pretty sensible thing to do if you know that Santa Mondega is rife with the undead. Right? But guess what? Two days ago he called the Santa Mondega International Hotel and booked the honeymoon suite for a week at the end of this month.’

‘You’re kidding?’

‘Nope. Turns out he’s planning on marrying the girl Kacy and sweeping her off for a surprise honeymoon in Santa Mondega.’

Swann shook his head. ‘What a fuckin’ loser.’

‘That same thought had occurred to me’

The two men finally shared a smile. An understanding had been reached after all. Mr E knew that Swann was smart enough to work out what was required from here on, and provided him just one more titbit of information.

‘In those files is what I believe to be the current address where Vittori and Fellangi are staying. We traced it from Vittori’s credit-card details. Now I want you to go and get the pair of them. Once you’ve got them on board, issue the guy with this mission.’

Instead of studying the paper with the mission details on it that he had pulled from the brown envelope, Swann picked
up the photo of Kacy and took a closer look at it.

‘This is the girl, huh?’ he asked, knowing perfectly well that it was.

‘Yes.’

He looked back up at Mr E. ‘And you’re gonna want them both killed when the mission’s done, right?’

‘I don’t recall having said that.’

‘But that’s the truth of it, ain’t it?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.’

‘Shame,’ said Swann, tutting. ‘I could really enjoy ruinin’ this chick.’

Mr E got up from the desk and turned his back on Swann, preferring to stare at the painting of the Warden between the two windows.

‘So fuck her before you kill her,’ he said without emotion. ‘Or … kill her … then fuck her. I don’t care which. Just make sure they’re both dead when the mission is over. Whether it’s successful or not.’ He pulled a small white envelope from the inside pocket of his grey suit and held it out to Swann. ‘That’s your pardon. Dated today, and signed by the President. Don’t lose it – such things are not easy to come by.’

Swann took it, popped it and the photo of the girl into the brown envelope with the details of the mission and of Vittori, and got up to leave.

‘Sure thing, boss.’ He raised an eyebrow and smiled to himself. ‘Consider it done.
All of it.
’