Free Joe Pitt 1 - Already Dead by Charlie Huston Page A

    
    
     the kids call it. They go down there in their worst clothes and live on the street and
     panhandle and sleep in the park and pretend to be homeless. I guess.
    I nodded. It was true, there were more than a few well-off kids slumming on Avenue A in
     the summer. When the real squatters found them out they usually kicked the shit out of
     them and sent them home to mommy and daddy.
    Marilee takes a sip and plays with her ice some more.
    I make a little grunting noise and she looks up.
    --Yes?
    --No offense, but you seem pretty calm about your daughter being missing and all.
    She nods.
    --Well as I say, it's not exactly new to us, and it's only been a few days. But more to the
     point, we know she's OK.
    --How's that?
    --She's been withdrawing money from her account.
    --That could be anyone with her card and code.
    --Yes, she used her card at first, but her last two withdrawals were in person from a
     teller. It was her. They require photo ID.
    --When and where was the last withdrawal?
    --The Chase at Broadway and Eighth, two days ago.
    --How much?
    --Two hundred.
    --How much does she have access to?
    --She can withdraw up to a thousand a week, but never more than two hundred a day. If she
     wants more she needs her father or me to cosign.
    --And she's taken two hundred every day she's been gone?
    --Yes. First with her card, and the last two, as I said, from a teller. Perhaps she lost
     the card.
    --OK. Did you bring a picture?
    --Yes.
    She lifts a pocketbook that matches her suit from the floor, finds the picture and passes
     it to me.
    Her mother's eyes and neck, but the resemblance stops there. The girl in the photo is
     decked out in head-to-toe black with white pancake makeup on her face, hair dyed black,
     black lipstick, black eye shadow and black nail polish. Jesus fuck, she's a goth. Marilee
     sees something in my face.
    --Yes, Amanda does have something of a fascination with the undead. So really, Joseph, you
     can see why it is I called you.
    I look up from the photo, and Marilee smiles ever so sweetly.
    I've been outed. Dexter Predo has outed me.
    It's a given that a woman like Marilee has some sense of how things work, the exchanges
     that take place behind, beneath and above the scenes in Manhattan, the give and take of
     power. It is for that kind of favor brokering
    
    
     that
    
    
     the Coalition is known to a select few outside the Clans. But the fact that I have been
     outed by Predo indicates that she is operating at a much higher level of awareness, a
     level of knowledge at which most people are murdered to keep them silent.
    There are people that know about us. But they are few and most play a specific role. There
     are the Van Helsings, the righteous who stumble upon us and make it their mission to hunt
     us down. The Renfields like Philip, who glom on to us, half servile and half envious. The
     Lucys, both male and female, who have romanticized the whole vampire myth and dote over us
     like groupies. And the Minas, the ones who know the truth and don't care, the ones who
     fall in love. Van Helsings are killed, we use the Renfields and the Lucys to serve us and
     insulate us from the world. Minas are rare and precious beyond value. There is only one
     way to know if you have a true Mina: tell her or him what you are and what you do to stay
     alive. Not many make that final cut.
    Then there are the few men and women with true power and influence who know us. These are
     the ones to be feared. These are the ones the Coalition deals with and the Society hopes
     to sway. But the Society's goals will never be realized. We will never live in the open
     unless it is as freaks or prey. The people who might guide us out of obscure myth will
     never risk their positions and reputations to say to the world,
    
    
     Hey, look, vampires are real!
    And Marilee is one of them, a person who knows, and knows I know she knows. And so on. And
     here she is in the Cole having a drink