“No. Sorry. Oxygen equipment.” He shook his head.

  “Oh, well.” I circled back toward what I was donating this pint to find out. “Ever have trouble with rats? Or with bats?”

  “We’ve got cats prowling the grounds, we’ve got traps, we’ve got the best ratproofing the building can buy—and we still have some, but not so much,” Berkowitz said, more proudly than not. “Bats …. You don’t see it like you do with the bars on the windows next door, but we’ve got wire mesh over them all, and on the vents to the attic. We try not to take chances. Your blood’s safe with us till it gets used. You don’t need to worry about that.”

  “Well, I won’t, then.” I was glad he thought I was having the vapors for personal reasons, not that I was pumping him.

  “Good. And we’re about done here.” He pulled out the needle and slapped a cotton ball and some adhesive tape on the inside of my elbow. When I looked at my watch, I was amazed. It only took fifteen minutes. He went on, “Stay here another little bit. Then we’ll take you out to the anteroom and feed you some cookies and orange juice to pep you up for when you head out.”

  “I feel all right,” I said. But I was shaky walking out to the anteroom. They made me sit down for the snack. The cookies were chocolate chip—good, but they didn’t go with the juice. I started getting woozy. Next thing I knew, my face was on the table.

  A nurse shoved smelling salts under my nose. “Don’t worry, sweetie,” she said as I coughed and pulled my head away. “Happens all the time.”

  They took me back to the chairs that reclined. After a while, another nurse brought me a mug of hot, salty chicken broth. That did the trick where the juice and cookies hadn’t. I felt like my old self, or at least like a pretty fresh carbon of me.

  “You sure you’re good to go?” Dr. Berkowitz asked when I got up again.

  “I’m fine.” I even meant it. I stuck my fedora on my head at what I hoped was a jaunty angle. “Thanks for everything.” Off I went, out into the heat.

  I got back to the office just as the sun was going down. After almost drowning myself in my orange juice, I was running late. But I wasn’t fretting about it, not on account of I had to get to Deacon’s early. Only early Deacon knows about is the wee smalls. His joint doesn’t even start to cook till after midnight. So I had time to kill.

  Grabbed myself some short-rib hash at a place up the street. You never had short-rib hash, I’m sorry for you. You don’t know what you’re missing, and that’s a fact. It was full dark by the time I came out, and already twenty, twenty-five degrees cooler than when I went to County General.

  I grinned. I purely did. Get a hot day back East, you suffer all night long, too. In LA, doesn’t matter how hot it is in the daytime. Triple digits, like today? Fine, triple digits. It’ll still drop into the sixties at night. You can sleep. You don’t stick to your pj’s and swelter under your sheet.

  If you aim to sleep at night, I mean. I didn’t, not that night. After supper, I strolled over to the office again to put on some glad rags for Central Avenue. Before I went in, I checked the alley behind the place, on the off chance I’d spot another snoop with a long, naked tail.

  Damned if something didn’t move back there. My hand started toward the .38 I wasn’t packing before I realized it wasn’t that kind of motion. Too big. Too slow. Too not afraid of me.

  Not a rat. Just the new zombie janitor from two doors down policing up the alleyway with a push broom. He not only wasn’t scared of me, chances were he had no idea I was there; he was deader than a vampire for the time being. His dark hair hadn’t been combed in what might have been months. It stuck out from his head like tufts of steel wool. But he was very light if he was a Negro—lighter than I am, even. His nose and chin said he probably wasn’t. Whatever he was, he looked like hell.

  I wondered how desperate he’d been, and over what, to unsoul himself on purpose. I didn’t ask. He wouldn’t know why he’d done it himself, not right now. He wouldn’t know where he had, either. Somebody behind a desk somewhere would have charge of his file and know the answers to questions like that.

  If he’d done it on purpose. You know those stories about shanghaiing people and zombifying them? Some of ’em are true, take it from me. Easier to fall through the cracks if you’re colored. But it can happen to a white man, too. They raise a bigger stink when it does.

  Sweep. Pause. Step. Sweep. Pause. Step …. Everything happened in slow motion. You can make a zombie work, but you can’t make him hustle. Whatever makes somebody hustle, that’s what goes away when you drop the spell on him.

  The zombie paid me no attention. He wouldn’t unless I stood there till he tried sweeping my feet. I had better things to do. As for him, he’d keep on until he finished what he was ordered to take care of. Then he’d go back in the lightless, airless closet with the broom. He wouldn’t notice, either, any more than it did. He’d just stand there till the boss man needed him again.

  I have a closet of my own in the office. No zombies inside. I don’t care to deal with the people you get ’em from. Not the licensed ones who say they’re legit, and especially not the others, the scary ones. No, thanks! I was talking about glad rags? That closet’s where they live.

  You want to go strutting on Central, you can’t just throw on your $23.95 Sears suit. Well, you can, if you want to scream chump! to the world. You put on a zoot suit now, you’re a different kind of chump, one who doesn’t know the dragon already pulled that train out of the station. Central’s about now, not day before yesterday.

  Maroon silk shirt. Pale blue tie that lights up against a maroon silk shirt. The jacket with the stripe that’s barely there and with the lapels just so. My shoes shined till I could shave in ’em. The good fedora—near as good as Lamont Smalls’s—with the brim rolled down. Pimps roll theirs up. I didn’t want that look.

  Buying those clothes was one reason I couldn’t pay my bills before Dora Urban walked in. Gotta have ’em, though. You show up on Central, you gotta look like you belong on Central. I do a lot of work there. I have a lot of fun there, too. When I’m lucky, it’s both at once. I’m not lucky often enough. Who is?

  Old Man Mose came in and jumped up onto the sofa while I was getting the knot on my tie exactly how I wanted it. He was as impressed as you’d expect a cat to be. “If you had fur, you wouldn’t need to mess with all that stupid crap,” he said.

  “If I had fur, I’d look the same all the time. It’s boring,” I said.

  Mose’s sharp-toothed yawn said people didn’t know much about what boring was all about. He has a little black spot on his tongue. I don’t know if he’s ever seen it; cats don’t do much with mirrors. I gave him fresh water and a can of mackerel, so he stayed happy. Then I headed for the avenue where they plug Los Angeles in.

  Explaining Central’s like explaining jazz. If you don’t already dig it, you never will.

  The lights are brighter on Central. Damn right they are. Everybody wants to suck you into whatever place he’s running. The lights are the lure. Once you get inside, he sets the hook. You go out again with all the cash you came in with, he’s doing something wrong.

  Music pours out of open doorways. Some of it’s jukebox hits from the cheap saloons. Some of it’s house combos, guys who’re good enough to eat with their music but won’t ever strike it rich. Don’t waste your time on ’em. You can find the best in the world on Central. All the colored jazzmen who come to town and the hottest, hippest white guys play there, with the house combos or with their own sidemen or by their lonesome. And sometimes they face off against each other, to see who’s best of the best. Run across one of those shows, whatever you spend is cheap. You’ll keep talking about it till they shovel dirt on you.

  Central when the sun’s up, that’s where the Negroes do their business. Real estate, insurance, the dentist, a scryer, a secondhand car …. You know what I mean. But Central’s a different story when the sun goes down. Oh, is it ever. Everybody comes to Central when the sun goes down.

  Still more Negroes than anybody else. Hey, it’s their—our—part of town. Not like they’re—we’re—allergic to a good time. But white men who wouldn’t be caught dead on Central in the daytime show up when it gets dark. Some are looking for easy women. With money in your pocket, you can find ’em. Pick what you’re after. Pick your price.

  But some come for the scene, for the music. I saw myself a natty Jew strolling along the avenue. I touched the brim of my hat to him as we passed. He nodded back and smiled. Mickey kills people … but not on Central. On Central, he’s a nice guy and a big spender.

  And every once in a while, one goes native. There’s this Greek who plays drums …. Look at him, you figure he’s light-skinned, light enough so he could pass if he wanted to, and if he didn’t talk like he does. But he is passing, passing the other way. I know Negroes who’ll call you a liar if you say Johnny’s anything but colored. Believe ’em if you want to. I know better.

  You’ll see Mexicans going from a bar to a club to another bar like anybody else. You’ll see vampires up from VV. Some aren’t out for anything more than a drink, same as some of the whites aren’t there for anything more than a whore. But some of them have rhythm and blues in their blood, too, even if you don’t want to think about how it got there.

  Two cops with faces like clenched fists clumped by me. I didn’t tip my hat to them. I looked down at the sidewalk and made like I wasn’t there. LA cops, not getting rousted is the most you can hope for. The colored ones are worse than the others. I’d say they sold their souls to get where they’re at, but I don’t think they were issued any to begin with.

  Half a minute later, a black-and-white cruised slowly down the street. The red lights on the bar on top told the world what it was. The world, or the part of the world that’s Central, ignored it. Cops don’t like getting ignored. Two blocks farther along, the clowns in this car squealed their siren and pulled somebody over. Did he do anything? They said he did. Nothing else mattered.

  I walked along. I was almost to Eddie’s, which is a bar I’m known to visit, when sweet reefer smoke thick enough to slice poured out of a doorway. I could smell it even with an Old Gold in my mouth. If I could, the flatfoots who’d gone by must’ve smelled it, too.

  Why didn’t they charge in and cuff every hophead in the place? You know why, same as I do. Somebody’d paid them off, that’s why. That’s how things get done here.

  When I went into Eddie’s, I slid onto a stool somebody else’d just slid off of. “Hey, Jack,” the barkeep said. “What’ll it be?”

  “The usual, Gus. Wild Turkey, coupla rocks. Make it a double.” I wanted to wash the taste of crooked cops out of my mouth.

  “Comin’ up.” Gus has one of those double-ended shot glasses, all shiny chrome. Ordinary jigger on one side; flipped over, it’s a double. He gave full measure—I watched. I’m regular enough there, they treat me right.

  I drank that one fast, the next one slow. Bourbon makes you not care so much what the cops on Central are like. It’d be worth drinking if it didn’t do anything else at all.

  Soon as I got off the barstool, someone else got on. If a bar ever goes out of business, either the people running it are really dumb or they aren’t lining the right pockets.

  Three doors down from Eddie’s is the Blue Lobster Club. The sign on the sidewalk out front said Bird was there. Two bucks cover, two-drink minimum. For Bird, I paid. Or I tried to. The guy sighed and said, “Don’t know if I can squeeze you in. The fire marshal ….” So I greased his palm, and he squeezed me in. And to hell with the fire marshal.

  I bet he made plenty with that Don’t know if I can. The room was packed. The fire marshal would’ve spit rivets. He wasn’t there, though. They kept squeezing in. I wound up at a table with two blond guys from South Gate and the girl who was with one of ’em, or maybe with both.

  They gave you little drinks at big prices, and I swear they watered the booze. Soon as Bird came out, everybody stopped caring. It had been noisy and smoky and hot. It stayed hot and smoky, but as soon as he took the stage with his sax you could’ve heard a pin drop in there. A pin, nothing. A pinfeather.

  He started to play. If you don’t know, I can’t tell you. I’m sorry for you—I’ll tell you that. He does things with a sax you didn’t know anyone could do. And he must have got just enough junk just enough long ago, because he was on fire. Not herky-jerky-gotta-get-a-fix; not nodding off, either. On fire. If he sold Satan his soul for licks like those, Old Scratch gave better than he got.

  After a while, he put down the saxophone and gestured. A pretty girl wearing not much brought him a drink while the crowd went nuts. I’ll tell you how good he was. The place he sent me to, I hardly noticed her. That good.

  I turned to one of the guys from South Gate and said, “Way he blows, he makes me think I grew wings outa my back and flew straight on up to heaven.”

  Maybe it came out like that because I’d taken Angel’s Flight not long before. Any which way, both blond fellas busted up. So did their lady friend. Her name was Babs. She probably had other stuff wrong with her, too.

  I must’ve looked sore. Cripes, I was sore. One of them held up his hand. Calluses with ground-in grease on the palms; he worked hard, whatever he did. And he told me what: “Sorry, ace. Don’t get torqued. No offense, honest. But all three of us work at the United Rubber plant south of here, the one with the old-time guys with the beards and the wings on the walls.”

  “Only some of ’em’re bulls with men’s heads and wings,” Babs put in.

  “Gotcha.” I nodded. I had to. I knew the factory he was talking about. You go past it once, you never forget it. I almost drove off the road the first time I saw it, I was rubbernecking so hard. It’s like a palace from Assyria or Babylonia or one of those ancient places dropped down ten miles or so from LA City Hall. Only they don’t send out gleaming cohorts from there. They make tires. People who say all the romance has leaked out of the modern world know what they’re talking about.

  Or I think so most of the time. Anybody who fought in Italy would. But as soon as Bird finished that drink—he didn’t take long—and picked up the sax again, everybody in the Blue Lobster Club breathed in together. He started to blow some more. Long as he played, the world not only made sense, it made beautiful sense.

  When he finally stopped, the room stayed quiet a second or two. We still heard the music, even after it was gone. Then we blistered our palms for the man. He dipped his head. That silence seemed to touch him. You don’t win it every day.

  I give the club credit. They waited till things died down. Then a fellow said, “People, we got to clear the hall. I’m sorry, but we do. Bird has another show, startin’ a quarter to one. It’s a new cover, a new minimum. You can see him again, but you gotta go on out now—and there’s already a pretty fair crowd out front, waitin’ to be as lucky as you were.”

  Out we went. Sure enough, we waded through people trying to crowd in. Babs and the South Gate blonds headed home. They had to work in the morning. I was already working, so I went back to Eddie’s.

  Gus was off by then. Well, Vic knew me, too. He held up a fifth of Wild Turkey. I nodded. He poured. The small jigger, not the big one. That was fine. After Bird, I might like a drink, but I didn’t need one. Even without wings sprouting from my shoulders, he put me on a higher plane.

  For a little while, anyhow.

  Other people came in gabbing about the music. I let them. Why not? But I didn’t join in. I’d heard it. That was plenty. For once in my life, I’d got better than I deserved, not worse.

  At five to two, Vic said, “Last call, everybody!” Whoever needed one more drink bought it and gulped it. Bars close from two to six. Oh, there are after-hours clubs, but they aren’t exactly legal. The police give them grief when they find them—and when the fix isn’t in.

  Deacon’s is a place like that. Well, Deacon’s isn’t a place like anything. But it stays open after two. It’s just warming up when other joints shut down. You can get a drink there. You can get anything you think you want there.

  Of course, somebody who’s already there might think he wants you. He can get you, too. Chance you take. It’s one of the things that make going to Deacon’s … interesting.

  I tossed back the last of the bourbon in my glass. I set it on the bar. The ice cubes sparkled. I walked out onto Central. I didn’t look back. You never look back. It doesn’t do any damn good.

  I hadn’t gone far before a beautiful blonde fell into step with me and said, “Would you like some company?”

  “Not especially,” I said. It was Dora Urban.

  “You are going to Deacon’s,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

  “And so?”

  “I would like to come with you. Someone with my abilities may prove valuable.”

  “You can come if you want. I can’t stop you. But how long can you stay? Don’t you have to be somewhere safe before sunup?”

  “I intend to go back to my own apartment. But at need they also have arrangements for my kind there. So I am told by those who have used them.”

  “Terrific. Did Sebestyen use them, too?”

  That made her miss a stride. She could be rattled. I wouldn’t’ve believed it if I didn’t see it. She said, “I presume he did at one visit or another. Whether he did the last time he was at Deacon’s, I do not know.”

  If he did, his movie didn’t have a happy ending. You lie down in your coffin, you’ve got to trust the people who can move around during the daylight. If somebody’s got a grudge or just a nasty sense of humor, he’s liable to drag you out into the back yard and let the sun shine in. Then you’re finished, all right.

  Most of the watchmen, guards, whatever you want to call ’em, who patrol Vampire Village in the daytime are Jews from Boyle Heights. I mean Jews from, or Jews with parents from, places like Poland and Hungary and Russia and Romania. Almost joking, they call themselves Shabbas goys. They know what getting it in the neck on account of who you are is all about. They don’t like it no matter who’s on the receiving end, and they stop it when they can.