Gypsy Blood (35 page)

“Hush, old man,” Momma said. “Close your flytrap, you are scaring the boy.”

He’s a Gypsy. Born to fearlessness.

Right Poppa. Carnival envisioned himself tied to a telephone pole, heaps of old newspapers and wicker furniture piled about his feet, just waiting for the kerosene and the struck match.

The banging got louder.

And then he heard a steady buzzing.

It was the door bell.

It sounded as if someone had pressed their thumb against the button and leaned.

“That’s the police,” Momma said. “I can hear their badges jingle.”

She’s right, boy. It is policemen. I can smell the donuts on their breath. You had better make up your mind, run one way or the other.

For a brief instant Carnival hesitated. How could he be certain the two of them weren’t trying to get him away from the bodies.

Is that a bad thing?

“Have I ever lied to you before?” Momma asked.

“Never.”

So far as you know.

“Shut up, Poppa,” the two of them said in unison.

That convinced him.

Carnival ran for the door, trying not to panic. While he was trying to get up the ladder and through the trapdoor before they beat down the window glass, he caught one last look at Momma, moving through the bodies like a shopper in a grab sale, looking for the best of buys.

While upstairs, the police continued to bang on the door.

Fleetwood Mama

T
here were two policemen, as big as life and twice as blue. Carnival figured he was safe. In all the television shows he’d ever watched the cops always called for back-up before making a big arrest.

My son, the street savvy Gypsy. I told you that television was educational.

The first of the two introduced himself as Officer Vincenzo. He was a small neat man, with hard eyes. If he knew how to smile he wasn’t showing any of it off.

Playing Hardy to his
Laurel
was Officer Michael Mallory. He made it a point to give Carnival both of his names, like he was getting set to apply for a job. He was a big fellow with thick shoulders and virtually no neck. His hair was cropped so closely Carnival thought he might be bald.

“Are you the owner of this establishment?” Vincenzo asked.

“That’s me. The owner, staff, and prime stockholder.”

Mallory grinned. Vincenzo made a movement with his mouth that might have been a twitch.

“Did you order a pizza two nights ago?”

“Is there a law against that? Some sort of trade embargo I wasn’t aware of?”

Vincenzo made that small motion with his mouth again. Carnival thought he might be pissed off.

He’s not angry. He has hemorrhoids and a small penis and he thinks his woman is cheating on him. What kind of Gypsy are you that you can’t read a face better than that?

“Just answer the question, please.” Vincenzo reiterated.

“Yes, I ordered a pizza. It never came. So I settled for Chinese. It was a better plan. Less heartburn.”

Mallory nodded. He was a man with a stomach. Vincenzo just stared. If he ate anything, it was probably made of obituary newsprint.

Mallory sniffed, as if somebody had quietly farted.

“It smells like a rat in your walls,” he said. “You ought to have that checked out.”

Carnival shrugged.

“It’s an old building. There are rats and cats and a couple of alligators prowling around the drainpipes.”

Mallory spread his hands. They looked like catcher’s mitts. You wouldn’t want to try resisting any kind of arrest with him on the other end of the cuffs. Carnival tried to stay polite. It didn’t pay to mouth off to the police. They could hurt you in any number of ways, and most of them legal.

“So you’re a fortune teller,” Mallory said. “I guess you knew we were coming, already, didn’t you?”

He grinned, pleased with his joke.

Such a wit. I’ve never heard that joke before. Have you, son?

Carnival ignored his Poppa and made out like everything was hunky dory. He grinned and smiled and tugged his forelock.

Vincenzo just stared.

“Do you got any of that Chinese leftover?” He asked.

Carnival nearly panicked.

“I threw it out. You keep it too long it draws the rats.”

He nodded at Mallory. Two buddies sharing a private joke.

“So what’s the problem? Did you lose a pizza driver, or something?” Carnival asked.

That was a stupid mistake. Watch your mouth before you bite your tongue off.

It was too late to take the words back. Vincenzo’s eyes narrowed. They were blue and pale and hard as a pair of frozen dimes. “Why do you want to know?”

Stupid. Why not just arrest yourself?

Carnival showed them the palms of his hands. No hard feelings.

“Hey, just being curious is all.”

They asked a few more questions. Carnival answered as briefly as he could. He thought about trying to blank their minds. Then he thought better of it. It might work on Mallory, but Vincenzo was another ball of worms. Besides, when they saw they weren’t going to get much of anything more useful than an educated grunt and a wisecrack, they folded their tents.

You don’t have to be a mind reader to know what they both are thinking.

Carnival watched their backs heading up the sidewalk. He thought about what was hidden in the basement. How long before they’d caught Dahmer?

When they smelled the stink. Buy some incense and take up cigarettes.

“Are they gone?” Momma asked from the shadows.

Carnival looked up and nearly fainted.

Just look what you have done to your Momma.

There, standing over him was the ghost of Stevie Nicks, or her twin sister.

Actually it was neither.

It was Momma, wearing the body and the bathrobe of the lady who took in sailors. She looked oddly attractive in the darkness of the room - until Carnival saw his Momma’s eyes moving behind the mask.

Was he still turned on?

He tried not to think about that.

“Are you okay?” Momma asked.

Carnival sat up. He touched his nostrils.

They were bleeding.

He licked the blood. The taste of the blood told him what to do.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m fine.”

But he wasn’t. Not by a long shot. Vincenzo and Mallory were going to keep on poking around until they found the truth. Nothing stays hidden forever.

He picked up his telephone.

Punched the number.

Someone picked up on the third ring.

“Hello, Chollo?” Carnival said.

He knew what he had to do. Blood washes blood. He told Chollo what he wanted and then Chollo told Carnival what he wanted in return.

“Yeah, I can do that,” Carnival said. “Just get me what I need. Compared to what I’m messing with, a curse would be easy. I need something for the curse, though.”

“Should I make a list?” Chollo asked.

“You ought to be able to remember this one.”

Carnival told him what he wanted.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Chollo said.

“Do I look like a kidder?” Which is a hard question over the telephone. “You’ll need to stop at a pet store to get it.”

“After the blood bank or before?”

“You figure it out.”

They both hung up. He sat for a while, counting the dust motes in a beam of sun. It grew quiet. He heard a buzz. Not the door bell, but softer.

Then he placed it.

It was the sound of the tattooist upstairs working his needle - working his designs while Carnival worked his own.

“Good. Maybe the noise will help keep me awake.”

The Great Red Robbery

D
ennis Lonaghan had worked as a desk clerk at the Third Street Blood Bank for the last three years. He’d been here just long enough to get bored with the whole job but it paid the bills, so he kept on working. At this time of the day, things got pretty slow. He fought to keep himself awake, singing a little song in the back of his mind.

…the bums crawl in, the bums crawl out….

“Look,” Dennis said to the bum who was trying to give blood for the second time in two weeks. “You can’t sell your blood today. It’s too soon since you last gave blood.”

“But I feel strong,” the bum said.

It was always this way. They wanted to push the rules, to sell their blood a little ahead of schedule. They’d do anything for a pint full of sweet oblivion.

Goddamn drunks.

Dennis tried to work on his breathing. His reiki master had warned him about the dangers of shallow breathing. You have to draw it in to the bottom of your soul, hold it for the count of three, and force it up and out through your nose.

Circulation.

It was an important concept, like blood, only through the air.

“It doesn’t matter,” Dennis replied. “You’ve still got to wait until the waiting period’s passed.”

Dennis blamed his shallow breathing on the bums. He’d had to learn to breathe shallowly to avoid their crapulous stench. He wondered if it would be considered politically incorrect to hand out bars of soap with every transfusion they took.

…the bums crawl in, the bums crawl out…

“You’re just too skinny, is all. Somebody as light as you is going to have to wait another three weeks.”

He almost said some bum as light as you, instead of somebody. That would be bad. You can’t call them bums anymore he reminded himself for the third time today.

“It’s the rules. You can’t change what’s written down.”

It was politically incorrect to even call them bums nowadays. Now you had to call them the homeless or houseless. The worst euphemism had been given to him in last week’s sensitivity session. The instructor referred to the bums as the disenfranchised. Now what did that mean? It sounded as if they could no longer sell MacDonald’s hamburgers.

Dennis knew damn well what they called themselves.

Bums.

They knew what they were, and they didn’t bother putting on any airs about it - although it would be nice if they’d put on a little cologne.

…the bums crawl in, the bums crawl out, the bums play pinochle on your snout…

God this job sucked.

At least it was better than that parking lot attendant job he’d left to come here, but not by much. This job was safer. He’d been held up a couple of times at the parking lot. I mean what kind of money did they think they’d get at an unpaved parking lot?

At least here he was dealing with blood. Who the hell would steal blood? Even if they wanted to, there was a security guard standing at the doorway.

“Look, I feel strong,” the bum protested.

He made a pitiful muscle to show how strong he was but his head exploded in mid-flex.

Dennis knew the bum’s head hadn’t really exploded. Heads don’t really explode, except in movies but it erupted into a fast wet rain of blood and bone bits and a gravy of grayish pink brain jelly. And then his skull was open and gaping and his mouth kept moving for at least half a half of a minute like the old bum was still trying to speak.

Dennis couldn’t understand what the bum might be trying to say but it looked to as he was saying – “I’ll show you all the blood you’ll ever need to see.”

“Nobody move!”

A man in a rubber Frankenstein mask came charging into the lobby waving the pistol that had just fired the bullet that had exploded the skinny bum’s head.

Dennis thrust his hands into the air.

“Take the money,” he bravely shouted. “Just don’t hurt any of us.”

The security guard came stumbling into the lobby, kicked by the size thirteen boot of a second man dressed in a Dracula mask. Those are cool masks, a crazy part of Dennis’s mind said but he was too busy shoveling out the contents of the cashbox.

“Take it. It’s just money. We don’t need it.”

A pistol that thought it was part cannon jammed its barrel into Dennis’s left ear. The man holding the pistol was the third robber. He was wearing what looked to be a hockey goalie’s mask with a rubber jammed through it.

“Keep the money, clown,” the third thief said in a very Spanish sounding accent. “We’re here for the blood.”

Why steal blood, Dennis crazily thought.

The winos practically give it away.

And then for some strange reason he reached out and touched the third thief’s rubber machete. He didn’t know why he did it. It was just one of those stupid things you do sometimes. He just had the crazy urge to see if the damned thing was real. Just as quick as that the third thief squeezed the trigger.