“You’d have six weeks.”

“Why six?”

“Because in six weeks the first shipment of contaminated material from Building 707 will be trucked to the WIPP site, the Waste Isolation Pilot Project.”

“You mean burial deep inside Carlsbad Caverns?” I asked. “If that’s the case, why don’t you inspect the shipping manifests? I can’t believe you don’t have the power to do at least that.”

“What the manifests declare and what is shipped can be two different things.”

“Are you that powerless?”

“No, I’m not. I’ve got resources. You.” Gilbert turned to a section in my folder. “Besides the Blanford case, there was another assignment that told me you were the man for this. The Han Cobras.”

Chinese heroin smugglers. Ruthless. Maniacal. Killed three Federal Drug Enforcement agents, not to mention dozens of foreign cops. Invincible. Except against a vampire.

Gilbert read from my file. “Felix Gomez survived numerous ambushes…entered the most heavily guarded safe houses undetected…exhibited almost supernatural powers of stealth and escape.”

“Stop it, you’re embarrassing me.”

“Embarrassing or not, these, quote, supernatural powers, unquote, are what’s going to keep you alive. Somebody doesn’t want the truth to get out. Remember what happened to Karen Silkwood?”

“She died in a car wreck, or was murdered by thugs from the nuclear power industry, depending on your faith in conspiracy theories. What are you getting at, Gilbert?” My vampire sense blossomed into full alert. “I haven’t accepted anything. You want a hero, find someone else. I’ll even give back the twenty thousand, less expenses for driving my hairy ass out here from California.”

Gilbert closed my file and lowered his gaze. “You could leave now. All you’d prove is how much I misjudged you.”

The words cut like broken glass. My kundalini noir, the black serpent of energy that resided in every vampire’s breast in place of a beating heart, shifted uncomfortably.

Gilbert raised his gaze, his eyes pools of desperation. “Felix, that twenty grand came out of my pocket. And I’ve got another thirty thousand to hand over when the assignment’s done. If you won’t do it to help me, then do it for the money.”

Anger at Gilbert made my fangs grow. I pressed my lips together to hide my incisors as I forced them to retract. He had set me up. A friend begs for help, and how could I say no without looking like a chicken-shit gumshoe?

After a moment I was composed enough to say, “Okay, I’ll take your fifty thousand.”

MY HOME WAS MENLO PARK, California. Here in Colorado I needed a base for my investigation, and for that I needed a better place to stay than a motel.

I found an ad for a two-bedroom apartment in Edgewater, a tidy enclave swallowed but not yet digested by the Denver sprawl. Edgewater seemed perfect, right off the interstate, a convenient drive both to Rocky Flats and downtown Denver. It had quiet, short streets crowded with bungalows, a trailer park or two, and a couple of shopping strips. Bars and fast-food joints faced Sloan’s Lake, which always had a stream of people jogging along its shore and dog lovers taking their mutts for a walk.

I drove a Ryder rental truck with my Dodge in tow and parked in front of the apartment building. It was small, only eight units. A short, older man, maybe sixty, wearing faded bib overalls, poked a broomstick along a dormant flowerbed.

“I’m looking for the manager,” I yelled to him.

He straightened up and walked over, offsetting a limp by bracing against the broomstick. He hadn’t done a very good job shaving his wrinkled, dark face. “You the vato who called about the vacancy?” His northern-New Mexico lilt told me that he had been raised somewhere between Española and Raton.

Standing beside my truck in his overalls and leaning on the stick, the whiskered old man looked like he’d fallen out of a Norman Rockwell painting. All he needed to complete the folksy picture was a straw hat and a pig under his arm.

“Yeah, that’s me. Name’s Felix Gomez.”

He squinted suspiciously at my face.

“It’s a skin condition,” I said. “From the Iraq War.”

“You a veteran?”

“Sergeant. Third Infantry Division.”

“An enlisted man, eh?” He smiled. “Qué bueno. Soy Victor Lopez. I had my fill of candy-assed officers when I was in Vietnam. I got a war-related condition, too-commie shrapnel in my ass. Wanna see?”

I smiled back at Lopez. “No thanks.”

“Didn’t think so. No one ever does.” He turned around and limped to the apartment building. “Well, come take a look at the place. Where’s your familia from, Gomez?”

“Originally? Chihuahua, Mexico. I grew up in Pacoima, part of L.A.”

“One of those California Chicanos? A troublemaker.” The twinkle in his eyes matched his smile.

“I’ve been accused of that.”

“I was once married to a California chica,” he said. “Damn could she cook. In the kitchen and in the bedroom.” The old man sighed. “Then some big negro came riding on a Harley. She hopped on the back and adiós mi amor.”

“Happens. How’s the food in Edgewater?”

“Best goddamn pizza in town. And plenty of comida Mexicana close by.”

“What about meat markets? Butcher shops?”

Lopez pointed south. “Drive down Sheridan or Federal and you’ll find your pick of carnicerías. Tripas for menudo. Sesos. Lengua. You name it.”

It wasn’t tripe, brains, or tongue that I wanted but fresh animal blood. Any carnicería would do.

He showed me the apartment. It was recently repainted and overlooked the lake. The second bedroom would be a perfect office. The place was cable-ready, too.

I inspected the kitchen, looking specifically in the cabinets, to see where I could build a false partition to hide my laptop in case someone broke into the apartment.

I signed the lease and gave him a deposit. We returned to the Ryder truck. I detached the towing dolly and my Dodge, then opened the rear door of the truck.

Lopez watched. “Need help? I know a couple of teenagers down the block who could use the extra money.”

With vampire strength I could easily move all of my belongings, but for appearance’s sake I said yes.

Lopez pointed into the truck. “What the hell’s that?”

“It’s a Murphy bed,” I replied. “It folds up against the wall.”

Actually, it was my coffin. Some legends are true. Vampires are nocturnal creatures, and keeping a regular human schedule wears us out after a few days. And, of course, nothing is as refreshing as a good snooze in a comfortable casket.

Lopez left to find the teenagers. I started to move my belongings inside. The teenagers showed up, a chatty blond kid and his girlfriend. After we emptied the truck, I gave them each a twenty, returned the Ryder truck, and caught a cab back to Edgewater.

I put away my things and took a break to inventory my contact lenses. More than any other accessory, these custom eye covers were the most important item that modern vampires need to blend in with human society. I kept extra sets stashed in my clothes, my car, and about the apartment. Unfortunately, while masking our eyes the contacts also mute night vision and block our ability for hypnosis.

I practiced inserting and then flicking the contacts from my eyes into my hand. I had to be ready to go from friendly human to controlling vampire in an instant. I wished that I could’ve practiced in front of a mirror, but, well, you know.

There was no formal program in becoming a vampire, not even a correspondence course, and I had learned “on the job,” so to speak. I found other vampires and learned the tricks and ways of our culture, always mindful of this warning: “Above all, don’t let the humans know we exist.”