A wizard in a wrinkled robe sat in the room on the left. I might have asked him, but I was sure he wouldn’t tell me. Wizards are as coy about how they do what they do as actresses are about their age. And he was smoking a cigarette and reading a paperback with a cover so lewd, he might’ve bought it from Al Harris. He was relaxing till he had to turn the next desperate fool into something less than human.

  Mr. Renfroe opened the door at the end of the hallway. A different odor wafted out. Some of it was from sour, unwashed bodies. I’d smelled that stink around here and more in Italy, where it often came from me. I’d smelled fear in Italy, too, also often from myself. But even the odor of fear wasn’t what made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I’d never known before what dissolution smells like. I wish I still didn’t.

  That dreadful reek didn’t bother the dapper man one bit. Why would it? He made his living off it. By his suit and his pinkie ring, a good living it was, too.

  He waved me forward. “Here we are, Mister Mitchell. If you find this Jethroe among the workforce, we’ll talk. But you won’t.”

  Yes, I would sooner have been back on that farm south of the Po, trying to crawl close enough to that damn barn to chuck in a grenade without getting my spleen vented first. The fylfot boys only wanted to kill me. What was in that storeroom had had worse happen.

  A lot of courage is not wanting other people to see you’re scared green. I can’t imagine what else made me go in there. The other thing I was scared of was that Renfroe would close the door behind me and I’d never get out.

  An old-fashioned dim orange bulb that hung naked in a ceiling fixture gave the only light there was. People—well, things that had been people—stood close together, waiting till somebody wanted to use them. Mm, not waiting. They would have stood there forever and it wouldn’t have mattered to them.

  Tall. Short. Fat. Thin. (Mostly thin.) Men. Women. Black. White. (Mostly black.) A couple of Mexican-looking men. A woman who might have been Japanese or Chinese. Just enough room between the rows for a customer to pick out the merchandise he wanted.

  I liked being surrounded by zombies even less than I liked everything else about the whole deal. But I had to push along, making sure each blank face didn’t belong to Frank Jethroe. None of them did. Before I finished, though, I smelled my own fear along with theirs.

  After I’d checked the last one, I got out of there. Renfroe raised a questioning eyebrow. “You were right. He’s not there,” I said.

  “I didn’t think he would be,” the dapper man said. We went back to the room that opened on to the street. The bored wizard in the prep room didn’t look at me this time, either. The dirty book was a lot more interesting than I was.

  “Nothin’?” Oscar asked.

  “Nothing,” Mr. Renfroe and I said at the same time. That’s what zombies are, especially before the person using them charges them with a task. Nothings that used to be people.

  The worst of it was, I wasn’t done after I made my escape from that place. I knew of two more outfits on Avalon and another couple on Central. I visited them all that afternoon. One of the ones on Central wouldn’t let me past the front room. “Come back with a warrant if you want to snoop,” said the hatchet-faced woman in charge of that one. She knew I couldn’t. So did I.

  But the rest didn’t care. I had to wait at one place while a sad-faced, fortyish woman finished signing her papers. “There’s got to be a better way than this,” I told her.

  “Mind your own damn business,” she answered. “My people, they need the money they’ll get for me.” I shut up.

  Nobody’d ever heard of Frank Jethroe. Nobody recognized him from the photo I showed. He wasn’t in any of the workforce lounges (people who worked in the zombie dealerships all talked the same way—people in any business will).

  Okay. It was a smart idea. It didn’t pan out, that’s all. When I got back to the office, Old Man Mose pulled a face worse than the one he makes when I peel an orange at my desk. His tail bottlebrushed. “Wherever you’ve been, don’t go there again!” he said.

  “Good plan,” I answered. “Don’t let anybody ever call you a dumb animal again.”

  “As if I would!” he said indignantly.

  I drank dinner that night. You don’t approve, go to hell.

  I’ve hurt myself worse. I had a headache the next morning, but not the whole set of jimjams. I didn’t need to worry about the sun seeming too bright: no sun. Rain pattered down out of a sky as gray and gloomy as the thoughts that chased one another through what passed for my mind.

  After menudo and coffee, I rode the Red Line and the connecting bus down to the US Rubber factory. Victor Howe’d told me I could go in, but I didn’t. After all, what’s a lawyer’s word worth? Its weight in gold, nothing more.

  I did stick my head into the diner across the street. When the counterman saw who I was, he shook his head. “What is it with you that drives the fat cats nuts?” he asked.

  “Must be my good looks,” I said. He made as if to spit.

  But he didn’t grouse when I parked my behind on a stool at the counter. He sold me more coffee. He shoved an ashtray at me when I lit up. And he said, “What is it this time?”

  “Same as the last. Can I ask you something?”

  “Yeah, go ahead. But that’s how you pissed ’em off before.”

  “It’s what I do.”

  “Piss off the fat cats?”

  I grinned. “I was thinking more about asking questions, but I try with the other one, too.” The counterman chuckled. I went on, “There any zombie dealers around here?”

  His face slammed shut as if he were closing a book, hard. “How come you wanna know about shit like that?” He had enough sense to be scared of zombies.

  “Because I do,” I answered. I laid a couple of singles on the counter. He left ’em there and didn’t say a word. I put them back in my wallet and took out a five instead.

  I thought he’d ignore the fin, too, but after a few seconds he made it disappear. “You never heard nothin’ from me,” he said. “You was never in here today. You ain’t comin’ back in here any time soon, neither.”

  “Deal,” I said.

  “It better be. One o’ them places over on Jillson, the west side o’ Eastland. You gotta be nuts, you wanna go near it.”

  “Of course I’m nuts. Where the hell is Jillson?”

  He pointed south and west. “That way, a few blocks over. It’s the last street this side o’ Washington.”

  “Thanks.” I finished the coffee and walked out. I could feel his eyes on my back even after I closed the door. I went southwest. Most places in the county, streets run north and south or east and west. I think I already said it’s turned forty-five degrees around the rubber plant. Jillson was easy enough to find. It was one of those streets that start out with houses on ’em but sprout little businesses as more people move into the neighborhood.

  Next question was, which way was Eastland? The counterman hadn’t said. But he had said it was on the west side of Eastland, so I went west—northwest, really. The rain drummed its fingers on my umbrella. I was glad I’d had my shoes half-soled not so long before; my feet didn’t get wet.

  I guessed right. After I crossed Eastland, I looked for the zombie dealer’s place. It didn’t say ZOMBIES FOR SALE OR RENT or anything like that. Zombie dealerships never do, any more than Al Harris’s place says DIRTY BOOKS AND FILTHY PICTURES. When I spotted a window across the street that read PERSONAL ASSISTANCE, PERSONAL ASSISTANTS, I figured I’d found it.

  After waiting for a couple of cars to splash by, I jaywalked across Jillson. Washington, I knew, was the more important street. In my part of town, dealers set up on the big streets. This place was more out of the way, maybe because rents on Jillson were lower, maybe because important people here didn’t want it on a main drag.

  I opened the door and went in, closing the umbrella as I did. Out of the way or not, this place did more business than any of the ones I’d seen on Avalon and Central. The out-front waiting room was bigger and cleaner. The smart guy behind the counter had not one but two tough guys for backup.

  The smart guy behind the counter …. He was about my age, tall and blond and fit. If I’d met him in Italy and he’d had the Lightning Runes on his helmet, I wouldn’t’ve been surprised. That would have disposed me not to love him on sight even if he’d found some other line of work.

  He was sizing me up, too. A tiny something changed on his face. He got the right answer, and showed what he thought of it: not much. If he’d been born over there and not over here, he probably would have been proud to wear the runes.

  “Yes, sir? What can I do for you today?” he asked. His voice held a salesman’s hammy good cheer, nothing more. He would have sounded the same if I’d had green and purple stripes.

  I set my card and the photo of Frank Jethroe in front of him. “I’m a private investigator. I’m looking for this man. He works for US Rubber. His wife is concerned that he may have been made into a zombie against his will.”

  Both bully boys had been standing there looking bored. They came alert as soon as they heard what came out of my mouth. So did the fellow who didn’t care for my face. “That wouldn’t happen here. It can’t happen here,” he said. Now his voice sounded flat, take-it-or-leave-it. The good cheer was gone.

  “Would you check your files, please? His name’s Frank Jethroe. You might have got him from somewhere else, not knowing there was a problem with him.” I didn’t think that was likely, not with what I’d heard about how he’d disappeared and not with how close to the US Rubber factory this place was, but I tried to stay polite.

  The blond man shook his head. “I don’t see any point. I told you, that kind of thing is impossible here.”

  “Maybe so. But I’ll tell you, the older I get, the fewer things look impossible to me. Unlikely, sure, but that’s different.”

  “I’m sorry”—his tone and the way he stood shouted he was lying—“but I don’t have to waste my time shuffling through papers because somebody with a card and a photo he got from God knows where tells me some stupid story. I’m going to ask you to leave. This is private property, and you aren’t welcome here.”

  “But—” I said.

  One of the guys with broad shoulders interrupted me: “Better listen to Dolf, pal. If you go out by yourself, you get to open the door first. We help you out, we won’t bother with none o’ that.”

  So I left. One against two or three isn’t betting odds. I wished I’d shown him a card that didn’t have my real name and address on it. I’ve got some, but I didn’t expect that from him. With luck, he wouldn’t remember my handle. With luck.

  What would Blond Boy have done if I’d asked him about vepratoga? He might’ve given me a blank look and gone Huh? Or he might have sicced the bouncers on me right then. Keeping my mouth shut could’ve been one of the smartest things I’d done, even if I did it by accident.

  “Oh, hell,” I muttered as I started back to the bus stop. When people act as though they’ve got something to hide, it’s usually because they do. Which meant I’d have to come back to try to find out what it was. The idea thrilled me as much as a root canal without novocaine would have. Maybe even more.

  That evening, I called Clarice Jethroe and let her know what I’d been up to. “The nerve of those people down there!” she said. “They wouldn’t even check for you?”

  “I’m afraid not, ma’am,” I answered.

  “They’re like the Pharisee in the Good Book, turning a blind eye to the poor robbed man and passing by on the other side of the road.” She sounded ready to go down there and give them a good piece of her mind.

  I didn’t want her doing that. If she did, I was afraid she wouldn’t come back. “They may be worse than the Pharisee,” I said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “He didn’t rob the man he walked past and leave him lying in the dirt. He just pretended the fellow wasn’t there.”

  “Oh!” She got the point right away. “You reckon these folks did?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll try to find out.” I hesitated. “There’s something else we should talk about, too.”

  Clarice Jethroe also got that right away. She sighed. “You’re gonna want more money from me, aren’t you?”

  “Afraid I am. I wish I could do this for nothing, but I’d be on a radio show if I did. I’m real. I’ve got to eat and pay the rent and the phone bill and things like that.”

  She sighed again. “I understand. I don’t much like it—I don’t much like any o’ this—but I understand. How much you have to have?”

  “Another hundred.” Considering how much time and aggravation I’d put into poking around after her husband, I should’ve asked for two or three times that much. I didn’t have the crust. If I were tougher over money, I wouldn’t have to worry about it so much. I tell myself so a lot. But if I were like that, I wouldn’t want to look at myself in the mirror any more than a vampire does.

  “I’ll bring it to you tomorrow. Thank you, Mister Mitchell.” Clarice Jethroe hung up. I believed her. She struck me as one of those people who’d sooner walk through dragonfire than lie about something like that.

  I was about to go home when somebody knocked on the door. “It’s not locked. Come in,” I said.

  It wouldn’t have mattered if the door were locked. Dora Urban came in without bothering to open it. I’d just been thinking about vampires; now I had one in my office. I was glad it was this particular one.

  “I went to your apartment, but you were not there,” she said. “I thought you might still be here, then, and turned out to be right.”

  Had she knocked on my door and got no answer? Or flittered outside my window and seen the place was empty? It didn’t matter. “I was going to have a drink,” I said. “Want to have one with me?”

  “A drink, spelled with an i and not with a u,” she said. I hadn’t seen booze get to her much, but then I realized she was talking more about me than herself. And sure enough, she went on, “I was lonely. We mostly are, but I am less lonely with you than without you, especially at certain times.”

  She didn’t come right out and say what those certain times were, but I had a fair notion. I took the Wild Turkey out of the desk drawer and offered it to her. She drank, then gave it back to me. I drank, too. It tasted good. It felt fine. Bourbon always does to me.

  I went around the desk and sat on the sofa beside her. When I put my arm around her, she slid closer. I laughed a little. “What strikes you funny?” she asked, her lips maybe six inches from mine.

  “I was just thinking that if I did that and you didn’t want me to, it would be the last stupid thing I ever did.”

  “Oh.” She thought about that. She didn’t need long. “Yes. It would. But since I do want you to …”

  Things went on from there. Yes, I got nipped again; that did seem to be something she needed to do. If you want more details, you can find them in one book or another at Al Harris’s place.

  Afterwards, we untangled from each other and had another nip of Wild Turkey. “I feel less lonely when I’m with you, too,” I said.

  “It is not the same thing.” Her tone was as pointed as her canines. “You are lonely because you drink too much and you know too much about what brutes most people are to want anything to do with them. I am lonely because loneliness is an essential part of what a vampire is.”

  “The feeling is the same no matter how you get there,” I said.

  “Live people can cure it. They do not always, but they can. We are able to ease it a bit, but no more than a bit.”

  I started to say something, but sirens in the not too distant distance made me stop and listen. Fire engines, not police cars—the tone was deeper than the cops use. Rain or no rain, something was going up in smoke.

  “Do you want to see if you can ease it again?” I asked. Maybe the whiskey made me overconfident. I looked forward to finding out.

  I managed. Believe me, I had good help. What Dora felt …. Ah, how can a live man know what the undead feel or don’t feel? I know what she showed. How much what she showed had to do with what she felt and how much with what she wanted me to think she felt, I can’t tell you.

  After I came back from the bathroom, she asked, “Why aren’t you married to a live woman and raising a couple of babies?”

  We’d been round some of that barn before. Not all of it, though. “I never found one who suited me.” But that wasn’t the whole answer, was it? In Wild Turkey, veritas. “I never suited one of them, either. Not even close.”

  “They must not know what they are missing. Either that, or you do not know what you have missed.”

  “Maybe I know some of it.” I set a hand on her bare shoulder. She wasn’t as warm as a live woman would have been, but I was getting used to that.

  She shook me off. I’d annoyed her. “This is play. As long as you remember that, it can be enjoyable play. If you try to make it more than play, you will only wound yourself. I am as I am. I can be no other way, however much you might wish I could. You had best understand as much.”

  It wasn’t quite the Lord Jehovah’s I am that I am, but close enough. In my head, between my ears, I knew she was right. But I knew something else, too. Live people don’t always do things because of what they think. A lot of times, they should, but they don’t. Damned nuisanceful feelings …

  I’d made one glancing approach to talking about love, and she’d swatted me like a fly. Fool that I am, I was about to try another one when the world outside the office distracted me again. Since they pinned a Ruptured Duck on me and sent me back to civilian life, I’d heard the Emergency Thaumaturgic Response Team’s warbling hooter no more than twice. Here it was again.