When he reached us, Scanlon stopped and looked me over. “I heard you were dead,” he said finally. “Looks like the reports are only half right.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” I told him.

“Me, too,” Karl said.

Scanlon gave him a look and turned back to me. “I’ve heard about six different stories about you,” he said. “You know how cops are – they gossip worse than a bunch of old ladies.”

I gave him raised eyebrows. “They?”

“I just listen,” he said with a shrug. “That doesn’t count.”

“If you say so,” I said.

“One version says that you were jumped by a bunch of guys behind Jerry’s and managed to take out three of them before they finally took you off the count.”

“I think I’ll encourage that one,” I said. “The first part of it, at least. Makes me sound dangerous.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Scanlon said. “Another story has you in Mercy Hospital, deep into a coma due to a fractured skull.” He leaned a little to one side to get a better look at my bandaged lump. “Looks like they weren’t far wrong,” he said. “About the fractured skull, I mean.”

“I’m doing OK,” I lied. “They say I don’t even have a concussion. Just some bruises, a big lump, and frequent visits from the Headache from Hell.”

The sudden whoop of an ambulance siren sent a fresh jolt of pain through my head. When it had receded a little, I said, “Look, I dragged myself out of my bed of pain because it seems like the gang war’s escalating. I want to know what the fuck happened here and why.”

“Short version,” Scanlon said. “The answer to your first question is ‘car bomb’, and I’m guessing the answer to the second one is ‘to kill a bunch of folks’.”

“Well, duh,” Karl said, which earned him another look from Scanlon.

“How many dead?” I asked him.

“They’re still bringing bodies out,” he said. “Nine that we know about, so far.”

“They’re all human, aren’t they?” Karl said.

“How the hell do I know?” Scanlon said. “That’s for the Medical Examiner’s people to figure out.”

A third-story parapet that had run across the front of an apartment building directly across from Ricardo’s suddenly came loose and fell to the sidewalk with a crash. I was glad nobody had been standing underneath it. There’d been enough dying on this street tonight already.

“My point is,” Karl said, “that I’m pretty sure none of them were vampires.”

“Yeah?” Scanlon said. “And you reached this conclusion how, exactly?”

“Because you can’t kill vampires with a bomb.”

Scanlon and I both stared at him, then we looked at each other. “He’s got a point”, I said.

“Does he?” Scanlon frowned. “Look, I freely admit this isn’t my area – I mostly deal with humans who kill other humans.” He looked at Karl again. “You’re telling me you can sit a vampire on top of a ton of TNT, set it off, and the vampire just gets up and walks away once the smoke clears?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Karl said.

“But the vampire’d be blown into a million pieces,” Scanlon said. “Do they all get –”

“No, he wouldn’t,” I said. “A human would be in a million pieces. The vampire wouldn’t discorporate like that. He’d probably be blown a fair distance by the blast, and he wouldn’t feel so great for a while – but, yeah. He’d get up and walk away.”

Scanlon shook his head slowly. “How the fuck is that possible?”

“Who the hell knows?” I said. “How are vampires possible? How is magic possible – and lycanthropy, and all the rest of it? It just is.”

“Wait a second,” Scanlon said. “What about that case down in Louisiana a few years back? Some religious nut turned himself into a suicide bomber directed against vampires. He made up an explosive vest, then hung a bunch of silver jewelry all over it. Showed up at a party some vamps were having, and boom. That killed a few, as I recall.”

“Yeah,” Karl said, “but that was the silver shrapnel that did it, not the explosion itself.”

“Maybe that’s what happened here,” Scanlon said.

“No way,” Karl said. “If there was that much silver around here, I’d be able to feel it – and I’m not getting anything at all like that.”

I tried to make myself think, despite the insistent pounding in my head. “This is fucked up,” I said.

“What was that word your partner used a minute ago?” Scanlon said. “Duh?”

“No, what I mean is, if you’re waging war against a gang of vampires, why would you use a weapon that’s not gonna kill any vampires?”

Karl looked at what had once been the front of Ricardo’s Ristorante. “I think you’re right, Stan,” he said. “What’s the point?”

“The point?” Scanlon made an impatient gesture that took in the whole street. “Maybe the fucking point is to make sure that nobody ever comes near this joint again, even if they do get it rebuilt someday. That bomb might not’ve hurt Calabrese’s body, but it sure as shit put a big, fat hole in the middle of his wallet.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not.”

“What the fuck’s that mean? Scanlon said.

“Think about it, Scanlon,” I said. “The restaurant wasn’t a money-maker for Calabrese – my guess is, he barely broke even on the place. And since this was his headquarters, he wouldn’t have had any of his illegal operations going on in there, so blowing the joint up probably wouldn’t even affect his main income stream.”

“And if Calabrese hasn’t got a ton of insurance on this place,” Karl said, “then the bastard isn’t half as smart as I think he is.”

Scanlon spent a few seconds with his eyes closed, rubbing the bridge of his nose with two fingers. Behind him, the work of cleaning up the devastation continued.

EMTs brought out the dead and injured as soon as the Fire Department could locate them. Cops were trying to secure the crime scene so that evidence could be systematically gathered from it later. Men and women in yellow hardhats from PG&E went around deactivating the live electrical wires before somebody stepped on one and got fried. And clergy from several faiths were ministering to those among the injured who the EMTs didn’t think were going to make it as far as the hospital.

“Let me see if I understand this,” Scanlon said at last. “Whoever set the bomb off wasn’t trying to kill vampires with it, cause you can’t kill vamps with a bomb.”

“That’s right,” Karl said.

“And they didn’t do it to destroy the business,” Scanlon went on, “since Calabrese doesn’t use the place to make money.”

“Seems that way,” I said.

Scanlon looked at me, then at Karl, then back at me again. “Then why the fuck did the Delatassos do it?”

“That’s a hell of a good question,” I said. “But I’ve got one that might be even better.”

“Which is…?”

“What if the Delatassos didn’t do it?”

As Scanlon walked away, I noticed Dennehy from the State Police bomb squad standing a couple of hundred feet away, giving orders to some of his people.

“Come on,” I said to Karl, and we made our slow, careful way over to where Dennehy was standing. I stumbled once and Karl tried to take my arm, but once I’d glared at him, he let go again. We came up on Dennehy just as he was finished deploying his troops – four guys and a woman, all dressed in identical blue jackets that read “State Police BDU” on the back.

“Don’t forget to check for fragments buried in the sides of buildings.” He practically had to yell to be heard over the noise from all the other people and vehicles in the area. “You see anything unusual, dig it out and bag it. We’ll figure out if it’s relevant later. OK, get to work.”

As the four bomb techs trotted away, Dennehy turned toward Karl and me. “I wish I could say it was good to see you fellas again, but under the circumstances…”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said.

Dennehy looked at me for a few moments, his head tilted a little to one side. “Christ, what happened to you, Stan?.”