A Matter of Taste

Chapter 8

Joe had departed Uncle Matthew's apartment around Twelve-thirty. For the two breathing people inside the apartment the next forty-five minutes or so passed uneventfully, tempting them to hope that the siege was really over. Then the phone rang, distracting Angie from another episode of the fantastic tale on the tape. There was no extension in the guest bedroom. Shutting off one machine, she ran toward the kitchen to answer the other.

John had reached the instrument before she did, and once again she could see the relief on his face at the first sounds he heard from the receiver.

"It's Joe," he told her in a quick aside.

Angie hurried on into the living room and picked up the extension there, slumping into a chair to listen.

"—the line might be tapped" were the first words she heard Joe Keogh pronounce. He sounded tired and worn.

"The phone line here?" John's voice asked in puzzlement.

"Yes. This one we're using. Today I got a good look at other parts of that building you're in. Up on the ninety-eighth floor, and elsewhere."

John sounded bewildered. "How'd that happen?"

"I don't want to go into a lot of detail on exactly what I did, because the phone might be tapped, as I say. But I did have some trouble getting away from the building." Joe paused to let them consider that. "I'm okay now, and I'll get back to you, don't worry. I promise you help is on the way, but I can't promise when it's going to get there.

"One thing you have to know. Elizabeth, the woman who was in there with you, is dead."

His listeners started incoherent questions. He brushed them aside. "We can talk it over later. The point is, you're in real serious trouble there. Deadly trouble. Stay inside the apartment, no matter who or what comes to the door. Don't try to leave. Don't even think about opening the doors, or talking to visitors except on the intercom. Have you had any more visitors, by the way?"

"No. We won't stick our noses out if you say we shouldn't."

"You definitely shouldn't."

"Joe?" This was Angie. "How did she die?"

"It wasn't of old age, but never mind that now. Just do what I'm telling you. I won't ask how your host there is doing, and be careful what you say about him over the phone."

"All right." John sounded subdued to the point of collapse.

Angie, on an impulse, hung up her phone, got to her feet, and walked softly into the master bedroom. The man who lay there opened his eyes as she entered, and—pleasant surprise!—focused them on her. For a moment his gaze was a hard, probing stare, then recognition came, and he smiled faintly. His lips moved as if he were trying to speak, but no sound came. He shook his head slowly and smiled once more before his eyelids closed again.

"Uncle Matthew?" She advanced quickly to the bed and touched him on the arm, but there was no response.

Still, she had a strong impression that progress was being made.

Hurrying back to the living room, Angie picked up the phone again and heard Joe Keogh still talking. "—what I'm going to do is, try to arrange a meeting between myself and these people. You and Angie won't be involved directly, and it won't take place in that building. I'll try to meet one of them, preferably their boss, alone. Broad daylight, very public place."

John was doubtful. "Joe, isn't that…"

"I know what I'm doing. I think maybe they understand now that I do, after some things that happened this morning. So maybe I can talk to them. What we still don't know is what they're really after, and why."

Angie considered, decided to take a chance, and cut into the conversation. "Joe? I just checked on that problem that was mentioned earlier. I'd say that there's a definite improvement."

There was a pause. Then: "Good," said Joe. "I'd like to hear details, but don't give me any on the phone. Not now, anyway, okay?"

"Okay."

There wasn't much more to say on either side. Joe soon concluded his phone call. Angie fought down an impulse to warn him to be careful. If she couldn't think of anything constructive to say at this point, she was going to keep quiet.

Hardly had she put down the receiver, and started toward the kitchen to meet John, when there sounded a kind of wooden pounding from the old man's room.

She hurried that way, encountering John in the hall, and they rushed into the bedroom together. Uncle Matthew had dragged himself out of bed and was lying on the floor naked, except for the sheet in which his body was half entangled. He had somehow managed to pull a dresser partially away from the wall, and was thumping with his open hand on the wooden panel that formed its back.

He quieted when John and Angie rushed in, and allowed them to try to help. In a few moments they had their host propped up in a sitting position on the floor, his back against the bed—he refused to cooperate in being put back in bed, and he was too heavy and too strong to be simply handled against his will. He was grunting now, moaning, pointing urgently at the panel he had been beating on.

"What does he want? What is it, Uncle Matthew?"

John began to feel around the panel. "There must be something there—does it open? Is it a door?"

He moved the dresser out farther from the wall, and Angie went to help. Eventually they located the catch, and the panel proved to be a door indeed. Inside was a secret compartment, broad and high though only a few inches deep. The cavity contained some small jars of dark glass, tightly capped, and a few pounds of earth packed snugly in plastic bags.

Uncle Matthew was grunting in satisfaction, pointing at the bags. Angie opened one, and then stared blankly at the dry, crumbled soil that leaked out on the carpet. "What on earth—?"

"Earth of his homeland," John explained tersely. "I suppose he still needs it, from time to time at least."

The old man growled at them, impatient and inarticulate. He made swift gestures. It took them a few moments to understand that he wanted them to open the bags of earth, pour out the dirt and scatter it over him, spread it on the carpet so he could roll his body in the stuff.

They did this, and it seemed to bring him genuine relief.

Not knowing what else to do, Angie reached into the hidden place for one of the little jars, brought it out, and examined it. Both the jar and its pressed-on metal cap had the slightly irregular look of handmade things. The glass was too dark to let her see what was inside, but the jar was too heavy to be empty. "And what's this?"

"I have no idea." John shook his head.

The old man saw what she was doing, smiled faintly, shook his head, and made a pushing motion with his hand. Carefully she set the jar back on its shelf.

Joe Keogh hung up the receiver of the public phone and stepped out of the downtown booth. He hadn't called from home, nor was he anywhere near Uncle Matthew's condo. Joe Keogh's first effort on completing his morning getaway had been to complete the process already begun of getting Kate and the kids as much out of the way of this horrible situation as possible, into a position of such safety as could be managed under the circumstances.

Fortunately for Joe's current relative peace of mind, he'd made preparations for such an emergency a long time ago. It was something you had to take into account when the extended family included a vampire. Like having wooden bullets ready.

It was late in the lunch hour by now, and the sidewalks were jammed as he started walking back toward north Michigan. He hadn't thought it wise to discuss plans on the phone, but assuming the crisis wasn't resolved by evening, he wasn't sure he ought to go back to Uncle Matthew's condo to spend the night. Whatever the enemy were up to, he thought he might be able to pose them more problems by staying away. For overnight shelter he had in mind another condominium, in another part of the city. A hotel wouldn't quite do, or at least Joe wasn't at all confident about hotels. He wasn't sure that a room occupied by a succession of uprooted strangers would qualify, when the chips were down, as a genuine dwelling place.

What Angie had said on the phone strongly suggested that the old man was at least starting to recover. So it was even possible that this evening after sunset, when his powers waxed, Matthew Maule might recover more or less completely from whatever kind of attack had struck him down. Of course the powers of his vampire enemies would also be at their strongest between sunset and dawn.

Joe kept hiking the crowded Loop sidewalks, moving steadily north and east. He was carrying a briefcase, packed hastily at home, that held a few essentials. Thinking back to his adventures of the late morning, Joe wondered if the enemy were still occupying the apartment with the dead woman in it. Or if they'd managed somehow to get rid of her.

The dead vampire was already gone, of course, but the gunfire could possibly have left some traces on the scene. And the modifications in the bathroom were bizarre. Still, if the woman was gone, there wouldn't be a whole lot for cops to look at there. Once the old man had snapped out of it, the cops could be called in—of course, once he recovered, cops might not be necessary.

Joe, as he had announced on the phone, was going to try to arrange a meeting with Valentine Kaiser. The purpose of the meeting was mainly to stall for time, though he hadn't wanted to say that on the phone.

Joe had left Uncle Matthew's condo around half-past twelve, and his escape from Valentine's apartment had brought him out on the pavement a little after one. The days were short this time of year; he meant to do his best to set up the meeting he wanted this afternoon, but it might well have to be postponed until tomorrow. He wasn't going to risk being caught out after sunset.

The other condominium, the one he had in mind to stay in, was owned by the wealthy Southerlands. Andrew Southerland, father of John and Kate, sometimes used the place when for business reasons he had to stay in town overnight; or when some visiting VIP needed to be housed for a day or two. Joe, who now spent most of his ordinary working hours as a private contractor in the security field, did a lot of business with his father-in-law's corporation, and he always had a key to the condo too.

In a little while Joe had worked his way east to Michigan Avenue. Shortly after that he was standing on the plaza in front of the gigantic structure housing Uncle Matthew's dwelling. His plan was to hang around here in plain sight, being overtly conspicuous, until he got the enemy's attention. There was a sizable gang of them. One of them at least, he hoped, would be keeping an eye on things out here, and would observe his behavior, read it as a signal that he wanted to open communications, and come out to talk. Of course, especially after what had happened this morning, the Valentine vampires and their breathing friends might have other ideas, like killing Joe on sight. But now that the bloodshed had started, no course of action could be described as safe.

Maybe his plan wasn't much good, maybe it was a mistake, but it was the best he could come up with. Joe stood around on the plaza, fighting the wind, watching shoppers, office workers, wanderers come and go. North Michigan was definitely an upscale neighborhood. There were no police cars in sight, but that meant nothing. The cops, on being summoned to the big building, would doubtless pull into its indoor parking garage.

Today the weather kept threatening to turn sunny, but as a veteran Chicagoan Joe had no faith that it was really going to come out that way. With a cop's acquired patience, he put in a couple of hours standing around on the street, watching and feeling the precious hours of daylight slide away. He broke his vigil once for a grilled cheese sandwich and hot coffee, in a coffee shop whose large front window allowed him to keep an eye on the plaza where he had been standing. Twice, at intervals, he stepped into a plaza phone booth to call Angie and John. They were glad to hear from him, as might be expected. Each time he talked with the frightened young people, he could hear them hesitating, sometimes in midsentence, as if there was something they wanted to tell him, but couldn't, keeping in mind the warning he had given them earlier. Joe in turn let them know openly what he was doing now and why—except of course that his main goal was stalling for time. If the enemy overheard that he wanted a conference, so much the better.

Whether the information was passed along through a phone tap or not, Joe's plan eventually succeeded. Shortly after three o'clock Valentine Kaiser's representative showed up to talk to Joe and see what was going on.

The emissary appeared in the shape of a breathing woman. Joe identified her while she was still fighting the wind halfway across the plaza, walking toward him through one of the temporary wooden pedestrian tunnels. Not a vampire. She was wearing the same army surplus field jacket she'd had on when he'd clubbed her down and stuffed her in a closet up in Valentine's high-altitude apartment.

She came walking right up to him; this time she had shoes on. Nothing coy in her approach. "You bastard. You're Joe Keogh who used to be a cop?" Her voice sounded rusty, as if perhaps she had a sore throat, or maybe just didn't use it all that often.

"That's right." He watched her warily, planning what he would do if she suddenly produced a weapon. "Glad to see you're still alive. What's your name?"

No answer for that one. She was looking at him with what seemed curiosity, perhaps studying the miracle man who'd walked away from a vampire who'd wanted to keep him prisoner, and had somehow made the vampire vanish too. Her long dark hair kept blowing into her eyes. "Val Kaiser sent me. He wants to know what the fuck you're hanging around out here for."

Even now it still bothered Joe, on some level, when women used that kind of language. Not that he would react visibly. "I figured he'd get curious and send someone. You can tell Val Kaiser I'm here because I want to talk to him."

"You want to talk about what?"

"Several things. I think there's plenty of material. Tell him that if I knew what he wanted from the old man, or out of the old man's apartment, what he really had to have, maybe we could work something out. Whatever it is Kaiser wants, he doesn't seem to be getting anywhere the way things are going now."

"You'll have to talk to him yourself."

"That's what I'm trying to tell you." Joe looked at his wristwatch. "Within an hour from now, or else early tomorrow morning. The Art Institute—you know where that is?—right inside the Michigan entrance, by the main stairway. I'm heading there now, but I'm cutting out before it gets dark. If I don't see him today, I'll come back in the morning. If he absolutely can't make it either time, tell him to send someone with a message. If he wants to name another place and time, I'll consider it, provided it meets my conditions, broad daylight and very public."

She looked at him with narrowed eyes. She had come out here really hating him. "The old man send you to try to make a deal?"

"I'll talk to Kaiser about that."

"Wait here, I'll see what he says."

Joe waited where he was, stamping his feet in the chill wind, aware of how the dull daylight was sliding almost perceptibly away, while the emissary trotted across the street and ducked into another building. She might be going to phone from there, to pass along his message. Or Kaiser himself might be in there. It didn't matter; Joe could wait.

In less than five minutes the young woman was back. In the tones of a stern boss, she ordered him: "Be where you said, in the Art Institute, at the time you said."

"The time I said this afternoon, within an hour, or tomorrow?"

"He's going to try to make it this afternoon. If he doesn't, he'll be there in the morning. Val says he don't think you'll need any warnings, about certain things you shouldn't do."

"I'll be there, alone. I guess Val has some sense anyway."

The young woman glared at him, turned, and walked away. If his revolver barrel had left a wound, it was hidden beneath her dirty hair. Her fatigue jacket was rumpled in the back.

Joe looked at his watch, and decided to phone the apartment once more, tell them the time and place of the meeting he'd set up. Then he'd catch a cab, not wanting to waste any time. The Art Institute was a little over a mile south on Michigan, and there was an old German proverb the old man had once repeated for him, something about the dead traveling fast.

Joe reached the indoor spot he'd chosen for the meeting well ahead of time, and settled down to wait, finding a spot on a padded bench, amid a bustle of art enthusiasts passing to and fro. It was great to be out of the cold and wind, and he had a little time to prepare himself. Not that there was much to prepare. This time Kaiser would have to take him seriously; beyond that Joe could only estimate what might be going to happen.

He couldn't see a lot of art, just a handful of massive statues, from the spot he'd chosen. Some of this stuff around him was doubtless older than the man he was going to meet. Joe thought about that. He thought about a great many things that ordinarily he tried to avoid considering. He looked at his watch frequently. At four o'clock, no matter what, he was leaving. He'd take no chances on not being locked up safely, behind private doors and walls, before today's invisible sun went down. He might be a little stupid, setting up a conference with a murderous vampire, but he wasn't completely crazy.

At about a quarter to four Valentine Kaiser showed up. The vampire had changed his suit since this morning. He looked jaunty and very handsome this afternoon, extremely youthful in appearance. That was often a sign of recent heavy feeding, thought Joe, and felt an inward shudder. He hoped it didn't show.

He'd chosen his corner bench so he had a wall at his back, and whoever sat down to talk to him would be on his left. It would be easier that way for Joe to reach for the holster under his left arm, pull a gun and aim, or to shoot from the holster through his own coat if it came to that. The revolver snuggled against his ribs was vastly comforting, freshly reloaded now, all six rounds tipped with lead-cored lignum vitae bullets. Hard wood, so heavy that it wouldn't float in water. Someone—probably the old man himself—had told Joe that the Latin name of the stuff meant "wood of life." But he knew that it was far from certain protection.

And then suddenly the vampire had arrived, and with a nod and a smile was sitting down beside him. Sitting too close for comfort, considering how fast one of them could move.

Joe shifted openly away, positioning his body with his back against one wall, right shoulder against another. People observing his retreat might get the idea that Kaiser, for all his snappy clothes, didn't smell too good.

"What do you want?" Joe asked.

Kaiser smiled faintly at Joe's maneuvers to increase the distance between them. But when he spoke he sounded genuinely sympathetic. "Tell me, how's the old man doing?"

"Great. He was up early this morning and went out jogging."

The other nodded, almost as if he had taken the answer seriously and was considering the implications. "Good. I hope he did. And I hope you'll believe me when I say this is all very much a misunderstanding."

"There's already two people dead that I know about. If it's all a misunderstanding maybe we better stop it before it really turns serious."

Kaiser looked innocently hopeful. "You do count us as people, then. Even when you kill us."

"Oh, I know you're people. I know that. But I kill people when I have to."

The other looked at him as if he found it sad and disheartening that Joe could have such a reckless attitude.

"I was trying to frighten your two young friends, nothing more. We wouldn't have done them any harm if they'd let us in."

"What about Elizabeth Wiswell?"

The handsome, young-looking man frowned. "I didn't know she was a friend of yours. Actually I don't see how she could have been."

"I'm interested anyway."

Friendliness disappeared, as if a little switch had been turned off somewhere behind the vampire's dark eyes. "One of my friends was alive this morning but she isn't now. Lila was with you in my apartment when she was last seen alive. Do you want to make this a personal matter between the two of us, or shall we call it even?"

Joe's lips were very dry. He resisted the urge to lick them. "All right, let's call it even between us. I'm here trying to make peace."

The other looked off into the distance as if meditating. At length he sighed. As if he were the one who had a right to be doubtful of Joe's motives. Suddenly he asked: "Now are you willing to go back with me, and ask me in?"

"Back to the old man's place? He can ask you in there himself if he wants you in."

Kaiser looked sadly misunderstood. It was an attitude that he wore very well; perhaps he practiced it a lot.

When he spoke he sounded perfectly sincere. "We both know that the old man, as you call him, is in no shape to do that. I'm not going to rob him or kill him." His tone, his manner, assured Joe that that was the most preposterous idea anyone had ever heard of. "I just want to talk with him, to see him face-to-face. I'm really concerned about his welfare."

"He's doing fine."

"Then why doesn't he answer his door himself?" After allowing time for Joe to answer, Kaiser went on. "Probably you think you're protecting him. But have you considered that you might be putting him in danger, and your young friends also?"

"I don't think so."

Kaiser shook his head. "How many years have you known him?"

Joe was silent.

The vampire persisted. "How many? Ten years? Fifteen?"

Joe said: "About eleven." He realized that he was starting to respond, almost to cooperate, automatically. The feeling was almost one of relief.

Kaiser leaned just a little closer to him on the bench. Lowering his voice, he confided: "The old man—as you call him—and I go back almost five hundred years. Believe that?"

"It's possible."

"It's quite true. Now, my friends and I didn't murder that woman, Elizabeth Wiswell. We didn't harm her in the least. We were trying to help her, though she died when she was with us. What you saw, what horrified you so, was part of our effort to examine her dead body, to see if she had been somehow used as a tool to poison him. But there was no indication of that. The results of our tests, that you found so alarming, were negative."

"I don't believe she was quite dead when I first saw her."

Kaiser dismissed this idle notion with a small wave of his hand. "What really killed her was something that the old man did."

"No, I don't believe—"

"What's really happening now is that the old man is having one of his seizures. I don't suppose you've ever seen one of them before?"

"Seizures?" Joe cleared his throat. His own voice sounded terribly weak and ineffective. "What are they?" He couldn't help it, he felt like a kid trying to argue with a grown-up, gripped by the conviction that nothing he said was really going to count.

"His seizures, or call them fits, occur four or five times a century, fortunately no more often. As a rule they begin suddenly, with an attack of extreme lethargy. Unnatural sleep, unconsciousness—I mean of course unnatural by his, our, standards, not by yours. The lethargy is followed in a day or two by a fit of violent madness."

"Sounds pretty horrible."

"It is pretty horrible," Kaiser said simply. "Do those symptoms sound like anything that you've observed recently?"

Joe forced himself to break eye contact, to get up off the bench. He walked five paces away, in the process several times almost colliding with people in the ceaseless flow of visitors through the museum. Then he turned and came back and stood confronting Kaiser, who had remained seated.

Joe said: "Look—you people poisoned him, somehow. You drugged him, using that woman. Getting something into her blood."

"Bah. I hardly think such a thing is possible. Besides, why should we want to do that?"

"You did something like that. Yes."

The vampire gestured casually. His attitude said that Joe was proving impossible to talk to.

"You drugged him," persisted Joe. "And then you tried everything to get into his apartment. To make sure he was dead, or to finish him off."

"Joe, Joe—it's all right if I call you Joe? You weren't there personally, last night, were you? Or early this morning?"

"I was in your apartment this morning. I saw that dead woman hanging over the bathtub."

A passerby looked at Joe Keogh curiously when he said that.

"I would suggest you lower your voice," said Kaiser. "Not that it will make any difference to me personally… but about last night. You weren't there. The truth is that when I came to the door, your young friends panicked, for no good reason—the young man in particular, John. He's had a bad experience, hasn't he, at some point? With one of us, nosferatu?"

"With more than one of you."

"Well, that's too bad. But everyone has bad experiences, and must learn to deal with them. Last night John panicked, as I say. Today I can only hope it's not too late to convince you that's the wrong response. I wish you could believe that my friends and I were really trying to save Elizabeth Wiswell's life. Regrettably we failed. But, as I said before, she died as a result of something the old man did to her."

"No."

Kaiser sighed. His attitude of trying to be helpful was so plausible that Joe had to fight more and more fiercely in his own mind to keep from believing it.

But he could not quite be convinced. The man talking to him seemed to slip away mentally now and then. Facts, comparatively minor points but meaningful, kept getting shunted aside. The aura of plausibility had nothing to support it but a fierce ego and an active brain. God, what a salesman. Charisma was the buzzword for it now. But all was not well, Joe thought, inside the handsome head that nodded and smiled at him and spoke such reasonable words.

With a freezing sensation, Joe realized just how close he had come to letting himself be convinced.

Joe moved away again. This time he leaned against the wall

"Can we make a deal?" he asked abruptly. "Arrange some kind of temporary truce at least?"

The other blinked at him. Kaiser, as if sensing the shift in Joe's attitude, relaxed the sales pressure. "Why not?" he said in an ordinary voice. "Your people in the apartment can come and go freely. Well give up badgering them to get in. Maybe the fit will pass over without going into the violent phase. I expect my old friend will live through it in any case. If in the meantime he should inadvertently harm someone he likes—well, I've tried. I've done about all that I can do. Meet me here again tomorrow? Say, ten in the morning? If you've decided you can trust me a little bit, there might still be time to help our mutual friend."

"Ten o'clock," said Joe. "Right here."

"Right." Kaiser stood up and put out his hand to shake, an honest and manly gesture. When Joe refused, shaking his head just slightly, he shrugged, smiled a faint but winning smile, and moved along, heading toward the Michigan Avenue exit.

Joe watched him out of sight, as far as the throng at the main door. Then he went to a public phone inside the museum and punched the number of Uncle Matthew's condo.