Of course, that dapper Jew who walked past me, the one who rubs people out when he isn’t on Central, he’s from the east side of town, too. They aren’t all saints—not even close. Still and all, Jewish doctors and lawyers and writers have also done Negroes quite a bit of good. Like I say, they know what the shitty end of the stick smells like.

  As we walked along, I asked Dora Urban, “Do you know where Deacon’s is?”

  “I have never been there myself,” she said.

  I took a couple of steps before I realized she hadn’t answered me. “Yeah, but do you know where it is?” I persisted.

  She smiled wide enough so the tips of her fangs showed against her lips for a split second. Then they disappeared again. “It is good to know that you actually listen, Mister Mitchell,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I do have some idea, yes.”

  I didn’t have a cigarette going. I sniffed. If she noticed, she’d chalk it up to hay fever or something. Old Man Mose can say whatever he wants—my nose isn’t half bad for a person’s. I couldn’t smell anything undead about Dora Urban. She was wearing perfume, not a lot, with a sweet, musky scent. That was all my snoot picked up. Didn’t seem enough to mask anything.

  But what do I know? This skinny orange-and-white stray trotted up to me, stropped my ankles, and went into her spiel: “Hey, buddy, spare some chow for a hungry kitty? I—” Then her nose caught whatever it was mine couldn’t. Her back arched. Her tail puffed out. She bared her own fangs and skittered away.

  Dora Urban curled her lip. Did vampires learn that aristocratic sneer from the old-time Hapsburg nobility or the other way around? “Nasty creature,” she said.

  “What have you got against cats?” I asked her.

  “Their blood tastes like piss,” she answered.

  I opened my mouth. I closed it again. Second try, I managed, “Oh.” After a couple of coughs, I said, “I have a cat, you know. Or he has me.”

  “Oh, yes.” Her elegant head bobbed once, to show she did indeed know. “I do not hold it against you … too much.”

  “Thanks a bunch,” I muttered. Mose would have had more to say about that. Good thing he wasn’t there.

  We walked north up Central. It was the time it was, but life still filled the street. Just because the bars closed didn’t mean Central shut down. Even daybreak wouldn’t shut it down. The avenue might go from crystal carriage to pumpkin when the sun came up, but it’d still be one busy pumpkin.

  A guy across the street whistled at Dora. Her back got stiffer and straighter. I didn’t think it could. The fool was lucky—he only did it once. If he’d really annoyed her, he might have found out more about what she was like than he wanted to know.

  I counted myself lucky nobody yelled anything my way for walking along with her. If I were even a shade darker …. Colored man out strolling with a gorgeous blond woman? That’s trouble waiting to happen. And in the City of Angels plenty of guys are ready to make it stop waiting and start happening.

  Never mind that I’m not exactly a colored man and Dora Urban isn’t exactly a gorgeous blond woman. The numbskulls and hotheads who start trouble like that, they don’t exactly care about those details.

  But I am what I am, whatever that is. I can be one thing; I can be the other. Sometimes I wonder if I’m anything at all, to tell you the truth. Nobody on Central that early morning figured I was other enough to be worth taking a swing at, not even the boys with the blue suits and the badges. You take what you can get in this old world.

  “Ask you something?” I said.

  Dora Urban nodded. “You may always ask. I may not always answer.”

  “Sounds good.” I nodded, too. “All right—how come you call Rudolf Sebestyen your half brother?”

  “Ah. That I can answer. There is no better term in English. The one who made Rudolf what he is also made me what I am. We have … a family obligation, I think you would say. We do not always honor those, but people do not always honor theirs, either.”

  “Boy, you got that right.” If people did, I’d have less work than I do. “But you’re a good half sister?”

  “Good is a word with very murky meaning, especially to one like me. I am a dutiful half sister. I understand dutiful. I hope Rudolf would do as much for me, but I am not sure he would.”

  “Happy day.” I’d been watching the cross streets. “We turn here.”

  Central has streetlights. The cops and the shops both like ’em. The little streets that run into Central, the ones where ordinary—and not so ordinary—Negroes live? Nope. It’d cost too much money. In most of that part of town, any money counts for too much.

  I waited a minute to let my eyes get used to the dark. Dora Urban waited with me, even if hers were fine right away. We went half a block, then turned down an alley. It stank of garbage. You had to be careful where you put your feet. Not easy, when it was darker than dark.

  If you didn’t already know they were there, you’d never find the wooden stairs that went up from the alley. I did know, and I was still groping for them when Dora Urban started up. I followed her toward Deacon’s.

  ​IV

  Up at the top of the stairs, a boardwalk leads you to Deacon’s. The joint has other ways in and out; I’ve used some of them, anyhow. My guess is, the Deacon’s got one for himself nobody else knows about. Or more than one. But the boardwalk’s the one for the paying customers, so that’s the one Dora and I took.

  People make jokes about that boardwalk. The guys who built it, they learned what they thought they knew about carpentry from one of those courses you find out about on the inside of a matchbook cover. Some of the boards are higher than others. If you run your hand along the plank on top of the guardrails, it’ll get full of splinters in nothing flat. I’d learned better, so I didn’t.

  And, without lights up there, you can trip and break your neck if you aren’t careful. I am careful, or I try to be, but I damn near killed myself anyway. The front of my right heel caught the edge of a board that stuck up a quarter of an inch higher than the ones to either side of it, and I started to go forward on my face.

  Dora grabbed my arm and hauled me upright again. I’m a good bit bigger than she is; she turned out to be a good bit stronger than I am. And a good bit quicker—anybody on the Angels would kill for reflexes like that. She could see in the dark like Old Man Mose, too, because it was as black as the inside of an LA cop’s soul up there.

  “Thanks,” I managed. I’ve had my nose rearranged once. I wasn’t eager for those pine planks to do it again.

  “You are all right?” she asked.

  “I am now, yeah,” I said, and we went on toward the entrance.

  She kept her hand in mine, which I hadn’t expected. It might have been to keep me from falling over my own two feet again, or it might not. I squeezed her hand a little, in an experimental way. If she didn’t fancy that, I figured she’d let me know. She didn’t seem to mind. She might even have squeezed back, though I wouldn’t have sworn to it.

  I noticed she didn’t feel cold, the way vampires usually do. That was … interesting. Had she fed just before we met up? Was that the warmth I was feeling? Or was she just strange for her kind, the way some humans are strange?

  Me? I didn’t say anything about me. Not a word.

  No, I didn’t ask her. For one thing, it was none of my business. Far as I’m concerned, long as you don’t hurt anybody else, you can live your life—um, go on with your existence—however you want. For another thing, she might tell me, and I didn’t want to know that bad.

  Dora and I shoved our way through what felt like the thickest, most clinging spiderwebs in the world. I know of one fellow—a tough guy, too, or he thought he was—who didn’t expect that, and ran away screaming when soft stuff seemed to stick to his face.

  Only they weren’t spiderwebs. They were blackout curtains. Who’s cared about blackout curtains since the war ended? Who in the States has cared about blackout curtains since six months after we got into the war? The Deacon, that’s who.

  After we made it past the curtains, we could see again. Well, I could; Dora, I guess she’d been able to all along. I blinked a couple of times. The lights weren’t bright, but they felt that way. And there in front of us, big as life, stood the Deacon.

  When you talk about Deacon Washington, big as life says a lot. He’s got to be six eight, maybe six nine, and he’s damn near, I mean damn near, as wide as he is tall. He’s one of the blackest black men you’ll ever see anywhere. Only makes his teeth look whiter when he grins (he’s had them capped).

  He grinned when he saw me. “Hey, Jack. Been a while,” he said. His voice is smooth as cream, deep as a well.

  I nodded. “It has been.”

  He held out his hand. He didn’t want to shake mine, he wanted his cover charge. I set two engraved portraits of Andrew Jackson on his palm. The hand closed, engulfing them.

  “Obliged,” he said, and then, “Shall I stop by later on?”

  I nodded again. “If you want to, sure. We might talk a bit.”

  “Okay. I will, then.” His eyes slid to Dora, then back to me. “You have a, a … curious choice in friends.”

  My eyes slid to Acolyte Adams, who was hovering in the background the way he always does. “You know what? I’m not the only one.”

  If you get the Deacon sore at you, you’re in more trouble than you know what to do with. But he threw back his head and laughed and laughed. “Not me, Jack. What I have is, I have a queer choice in friends.” He laughed some more.

  Acolyte Adams looked pained, as if he wished the Deacon wouldn’t say things like that. He’s a prissy little guy, as short and skinny as Deacon Washington is big and round. They’ve been together for, I don’t know, twenty years now? Something like that, anyway.

  Most men who go for men, they try and hide it. For starters, it’s against the law. Even if it weren’t, other people look down their noses at men like that (at women who like women, too) because they’re the way they are. Of course, when you’re a Negro, other people look down their noses at you for that first. When you’re a Negro and you’re queer—a lot of the time, it’s just too much.

  Acolyte Adams, he felt that weight all the time, sometimes heavy enough to squash him. He was what he was, but part of him wished he were something else.

  The Deacon? The Deacon didn’t care. He liked what he was. More than that—he reveled in it, wallowed in it, threw it in people’s faces. More fun than a barrel of monkeys? Deacon Washington had more fun than a Barnum and Bailey three-ring circus. He was a three-ring circus all by himself.

  “Go on in,” he told Dora and me. “Have yourselves a time. That’s what we’re here for.” He laughed again. Then he forgot about us, because more people were coming in and he had to get his big old hands on their covers, too.

  We went on in. Deacon’s is a funny place. Somebody who knows what she’s talking about said one time that it’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. It feels that way to me, too. No, I can’t tell you how it’s done. Maybe he owns more of those upstairses than even the law knows about. Or maybe it’s wizardry. Those are my two best guesses. I can’t prove a thing. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

  For that matter, it could be the lights, too. Windows? You’re kidding me. The lamps all have shades of one funny green or gold or blue or red or another. Some of ’em are cut peculiar, so the glow that goes out through ’em gets peculiar. And they mix and they mingle and they go on and go off till you don’t know what’s real and what’s your brain getting shell-shocked.

  Wherever you are when you’re in Deacon’s, you aren’t on Central in South Central. Which I guess is the point.

  No clocks anywhere in there, either. They do the same thing in Reno and Vegas. You need to know what time it is, you better wear a watch. I do, so I mostly don’t have to worry about that. That night, that morning, whatever you want to call it, I turned to Dora and asked, “You’ll know when the sun’s gonna come up?”

  What I saw on her face for half a split second, I don’t know for sure whether it was a trick of those crazy lights or raw fear. Whatever it was, it was there and then gone. When she answered, “Believe me, I will know,” she sure sounded calm through and through.

  “Okay,” I said, hoping it was.

  We flopped down on a couple of big cushions and waited for somebody to notice us. You’ve never been to Deacon’s if you’re wondering cushions? If a Hollywood designer went nuts halfway through designing the wildest Arabian Nights set ever, you’d have Deacon’s. Hell, for all I can prove, that’s just what happened.

  Carpeting thick enough so you can flop on that, too. Cushions, big, small, and in-between. You can build yourself whatever kind of seat or bed you want. Curtains, some see-through, some spangled, some near as thick as the blackout jobs at the entrance.

  Everything in bright colors, or else in brighter ones. Mix all that in with the wild and crazy lights and it’s quite a place.

  Waiters and waitresses wove through the joint, bringing the customers what they wanted. Whatever you want at Deacon’s you can get it. Including the waiters and waitresses? Sure. They’re all young. They’re all good-looking. Some of them don’t wear much. Some wear less than that. There are little dark alcoves off the main space. Anything can happen in those. Everything probably has.

  Whatever you want. All you have to do is pay. The joke is, everything comes at Deacon’s, but nothing comes cheap.

  A waitress stopped in front of Dora and me. She was pretty enough so a lot of the time I would’ve wished I were with her instead of the company I was keeping. Most of the time, but not that early morning. Interesting.

  She noticed, too. It annoyed her. “What’ll it be?” she asked, spitting out the words.

  “Wild Turkey on the rocks,” I said.

  “A Bloody Mary,” Dora said.

  “I might’ve known,” the girl said. Dora … looked at her. You don’t want to get a vampire sore at you. Believe me, you don’t. The girl flinched. Me, I would’ve run. Quickly, she told me, “That’s twenty-five.”

  I paid her. Prices like those, you see why Deacon’s doesn’t go broke. She got the hell out of there.

  Dora said, “It must be hard to get good help now.” I had the sense not to laugh. She sounded like every aristocrat ever born, pining for the Good Old Days.

  The drinks came back fast, I will say that. The waitress didn’t get cute more than once. She disappeared as soon as we had them. I bet she wished she could’ve disappeared for real.

  “Here’s to you,” I told Dora.

  “Your health,” she said.

  We touched glasses. We drank. It was Wild Turkey—a good slug of it, too. What I ordered. Fine. Dora took one sip of hers. She said something that wasn’t English and was mostly consonants. “Something wrong?” I asked. Was the Deacon’s girl trying to get payback for that look? Could you poison the undead?

  “It’s … a Bloody Mary,” she said.

  “That’s what you ordered, right?” I knew damn well it was.

  She gave me a look. Not the kind she’d aimed at the waitress. This one said, You dumb jackass. She held out the glass to me. “It’s a bloody Mary. Taste it.”

  Warily, I did. Not tomato juice, nope. You ever get hit in the mouth, or even bite the inside of your own cheek, you know that taste right away. I’d never had it mixed with vodka before, though. “Is that … human blood?” I asked, gulping. I think I would’ve hurled if she’d nodded.

  But she shook her elegant head. “No. Horse, I think—the vodka confuses me a little. I never dreamed the Deacon could do, would do, that.”

  “He takes care of everybody,” I said, and then, “What do you usually drink?”

  “Scotch, of course.” She seemed surprised I had to ask. Playing the aristocrat again. Or not playing, for all I knew of what she’d been before she met the vampire who made her.

  A little combo started playing. We could hear them but not see them. Good clarinet, outstanding bass, pretty good piano. He might’ve sounded better in other company, but he was the weak link here.

  They went on for fifteen or twenty minutes. You could listen to them. You didn’t have to. That was how you knew they were a house combo. The next step up, an outfit grabs you by the ears and won’t let go.

  Then they finished whatever number they were playing and clammed up. A buzz went through the Arabian Nights, a buzz that rose to a roar: “Bird is in the house!”

  The lights came up—some, anyhow. All the way from murky to dim, you might say. Curtains pulled back, so you could see more of the place. There was the stage where the combo’d played. The clarinetist and the bass man had already got down. The guy at the piano—a white cat—still sat there.

  I sighed. “Why’s he hanging around?” I said to Dora. Not loud, because he wasn’t terrible. But I said it just the same.

  “Because we’re lucky.” She didn’t keep her voice down. Vampires are like cats. They don’t give a damn.

  I don’t think the pianist heard. He didn’t make like he did. Before I could worry about it, the Deacon’s big, deep voice boomed out: “Ladies and gentlemen and whatever else paid the cover, here he is, the one, the only, Bird!”

  He walked by me, no more than three or four feet away. He was heading for the bar, only he had trouble getting there. Folks were hanging on to him: women, men, whatever else paid the cover. Some of them wanted the fame to rub off. Some wanted the power, the mana, the juju, the thing that made him what he was, to rub off. And you can bet they all wanted the money to rub off. Oh, yeah. They wanted that.