I came across a pile of rocks and climbed them. My head broke the turbulent surface. A bridge loomed over me, about three hundred meters from where I had ditched the car.

In the distance, police cars rolled close to the riverbank. A couple of helicopters hovered high above the water. Just as I thought, they expected me to float down with the current.

Would they issue an APB? Did they know who I was? If they had the license number to the Monte Carlo, then the rental agency would give them my name. I could see SEEKING FELIX GOMEZ, PERSON OF INTEREST flashing on those Amber Alert highway signs.

If I climbed out of the water now and ventured into public, my wet, soggy appearance would attract even more attention. I couldn’t risk it. Better that I hide until dark.

I used cracks in a concrete river wall as handholds to move upstream. Water poured from a culvert above my head. The opening looked big enough to squeeze through. With luck, it would take me far enough from the river, where I could get out and escape.

I reached for the lip of the steel pipe and hoisted myself up. The inside of the culvert was layered with smelly muck. I crawled through the mess for a hundred meters and emerged in a sewer, where I could stand up. Rats clung to my shoulders. Narrow shafts of sunlight beamed through the holes in a manhole cover above. I shooed the rats and hiked through the sewer to get more distance from the river.

My overnight bag was still in the Monte Carlo. I had packed light, a few extra clothes and toiletries. My other luggage and the bulk of the cash remained in my Cadillac back at the airport in Savannah. When I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and opened it, gritty water dribbled out. The screen remained dark.

My watch was gone, lost in the river along with my contacts. After what seemed like hours of spelunking through the sewer, I stopped in a chamber at the intersection of two tunnels. A steel ladder led to a manhole cover. Circles of light marked the holes around its inner circumference. Traffic rumbled on the street and the sunlight blinked as vehicles passed overhead. I’d wait here for darkness and pass the time in a cold, miserable, and disgusting funk.

I couldn’t believe the ordeal I put myself through. Other vampires lived in penthouses and were attended by a coterie of rich, beautiful women. The low point of the day was when the martini glass ran dry.

So what the hell was I trying to prove? Why was it my lot in eternity to champion the wronged and find justice? I was no superhero; I didn’t even own a pair of tights.

About the time in my youth when I gained my identity as a man, I’d always chosen the path that set me as a bulwark between the privileged and the underdog. I helped my mother and her sisters deal with unscrupulous salesmen and landlords. Later, when I joined the army, I might have talked about benefits, security, and opportunity, but deep in my heart, I saw myself as a patriot, the enemy of tyrants. Ironically, it was in service during a war we had no business starting that I murdered the innocent in the name of freedom, and it had taken my conversion to the undead to wipe the cosmic slate clean.

Maybe the slate wasn’t clean enough and I needed to atone a little bit longer, perhaps for another century.

The rays shining through the manhole cover slanted as the time passed. The lights dimmed and disappeared as night settled. I climbed the ladder, put my hands against the bottom of the cover, and pushed.

I had to rotate the cover until it lifted and allowed me to look out over an intersection. People loitered on the sidewalks of a seedy part of town. Good. There were plenty of smelly, dirty citizens I could hide among.

I tilted the cover up and scrambled onto the street. The cover dropped into place behind me.

I walked across the street toward an alley. An illuminated billboard for Rizè-Blu beamed its cheery message of chemical self-improvement onto the homeless and drunks.

Damp, filthy clothes and black slime covered my body. Before I did anything or went anywhere, I needed to wash up and change clothes. I smelled, well, like I’d been swimming with rats and turds.

Dumpsters covered with graffiti and piles of trash were set against the walls of the alley.

The skin on the back of my hands tingled. Danger.

The warning barely registered when something hard whacked against my back. I staggered forward from the blow. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a broomstick swinging to hit me again. I caught my balance, reached for the broomstick, and wrenched it free.

An obese homeless man stumbled from a doorway. “Hey, leave my stuff alone.” He grabbed the handle of a shopping cart to steady himself. A tarp covered a lumpy pile in the cart.

In the moonlight, the homeless man’s head looked as dark and wrinkled as an overripe fig. His clouded eyes were a pair of burnished nickels. The aura surrounding him pulsed with defiance.

I gave him the scariest stare I could manage, to snag him with hypnosis. Nothing. Great, I had let a blind man get the drop on me.

The homeless man stared vacantly at me. A sweatshirt rode over the enormous swell of his belly, exposing a hairy navel big enough to screw in a hundred-watt bulb. He yanked the shirt to cover his gut.

I tossed the stick and sent it clattering down the center of the alley. The homeless man’s aura blazed with alarm. He jerked his head toward the noise.

“I’m not after your stuff,” I said.

His head jerked back to me.

I stepped toward him.

He raised his arms and stumbled backward against his shopping cart. “I can see good enough. Come close and I’ll give you a whipping.”

I addressed him in a soothing tone. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

He circled his fists. “Folks say that before they hit me and take my things.”

“I need your help,” I said. “I need clothes and a place to wash up.”

He put his arms down and leaned toward me. He sniffed, then grimaced. “Damn right you need to wash up. I thought the sewer had backed up again.”

“I can pay.” I peeled a damp bill from my roll of hundreds.

The homeless man did nothing.

“Here.” I took his hand.

He tried to jerk it away but I held firm. I jammed the money into his palm.

He brought the bill an inch from his face. He wrinkled his nose and waved the bill as if to shake away the smell. He brought the bill close to his face again. His right eye bulged like the lens of a microscope as he examined the bill.

“You got a name?” I asked.

“You must not be from around here. If you were, you’d know who I was.”

“You’re right, I’m not from around here.”

“Then where are you from? Stink-alvania?” He laughed. The shirt rode over his belly again and he pulled it down. “Name’s Earl.” He handed the money back to me. “This is a hundred-dollar bill. No way anyone around here is going to accept that from me. Got any twenties?” He stood with his hand out.

I smoothed a twenty and swapped it with the hundred.

Earl fingered the bill. “Just the one?” He brought the bill to his eye. “You owe me eighty.”

“How do you figure?”

“You offered a hundred to begin with, didn’t you? That’s how I figure. You don’t want my help, then stay dirty and stinking. Move along then, ’cause you’re ruining my dinner.”

A bag stenciled with the name DARRYL’S BAR-B-Q rested in the doorway behind him, along with an upright paper bag big enough for a bottle of wine or a fifth of liquor. I would’ve preferred the aroma of barbecue over my own disgusting smell. I’d pay a hundred bucks for a bath.

“Okay, help me and you get the extra eighty. Where could I wash up?” I asked.

“The rescue mission. But you got to put up with all that preaching and holy-roller shit.”