He had two stops to make before he faced his destiny at the foot of Canal Street. His first stop was the E-Z Mart at the corner of South Claiborne and Tulane Avenues, in the dusty shadow of the Pontchartrain Expressway overpass. The proliferation of these little all-night convenience stores had been one aspect of progress that’d made a vampire’s existence easier. He located his two items quickly. The total for the tin of Qwik-Start lighter fluid and the book of matches came to three dollars and forty-three cents. Jules handed the clerk a five-dollar bill and told him to keep the change. The two items fit easily in one of his safari jacket’s huge Velcro-flap pockets.

Jules clambered into his despised Lincoln for what he hoped would be the last time. He had to turn the ignition key and give the accelerator five pumps before the big, gutless motor finally turned over. It didn’t matter. Real soon now-just another few blocks-and this shit bucket would be somebody else’s problem.

He turned onto Claiborne Avenue, driving beneath the vibrating canopy of the elevated expressway until he reached the New Orleans Police Department’s impoundment lot, an open-air jail for dozens of vehicles. They ranged from jalopies held together with Bondo and duct tape, hauled in for unpaid parking tickets, on up to Porsche Speedsters confiscated from drug dealers. The impounded cars were protected from the elements by the thick ceiling of the expressway, and protected from vandals and thieves by a twelve-foot fence topped with razor wire.

Jules briefly reviewed his options. As he idled the Lincoln, he observed two cops in the guard shack, watching TV. Option One: He could park the Lincoln, go over to the gate, and call the guards over. Then, once they were within eye contact, he could hypnotize them to open the gate for him. That would be the prudent way. Option Two: He could throw prudence to the winds and do it the fun way.

Option Two was it.

He drove past the lot, then swung the Lincoln around with an earsplitting shriek of cheap tire tread. He gunned the engine, heading toward the gate with all the momentum he could muster. His speed when he hit the gate wasn’t very impressive, barely twenty miles an hour. But the Lincoln’s sturdy frame and two-and-a-half-ton bulk were more than adequate for the job. The big coupe lost its grille and front bumper, but the fence got the worst of it-both sides of the gate were hurled toward the guard shack in a shower of sparks and broken metal.

He swung the Lincoln into an empty patch of weeds in a corner of the lot and cut the engine. He didn’t bother removing the key before he flung the door open and got out. Hell, he was donating the car to the NOPD, so he might as well leave them the keys. The guard shack’s door burst open. The two cops came running out, one of them sporting just- spilled gravy from a half-eaten roast beef po‘ boy all over his blue shirt.Definitely not two of New Orleans’s finest, Jules thought.

“Shit!Lookit myshirt!” the gravy-splattered cop hollered. “Mister, you’d betterpray you can convince us that was an accident-”

“He ain’t stoppin‘, Carl,” his partner said. “I don’t think that was any accident.” The cop unholstered his revolver. “Freeze right where you are, mister-”

Jules concentrated on an image of a train set, chugging steadily along its toy tracks. “No,you freeze,” he said.

And they did.

“Now here’s the deal,” Jules said, barely pausing long enough to register surprise at his mental feat. “I was never here, okay? You never saw me crash through your gate. Another thing-that white Cadillac Fleetwood over there? It was never on this lot. What you guys hadinstead was this pile-a-shit Lincoln here. In three minutes, you two dream-birds are gonna wake up. Gravy Boy is gonna feel all mortified about joyriding in the Lincoln and mashing down the gate when the brakes went out on him. By the time the next shift arrives, you two will’ve pieced together some phony-baloney story to feed your bosses.”

Jules walked over to his Cadillac. It was parked between a racing-green Jaguar XJS convertible and a gleaming BMW 8-Series coupe, but to Jules it was the finest car on the lot. He lovingly caressed one of its long, white tailfins. Boy, had he missed this automobile.

He dug the spare key out of his pocket and opened the door. The scent of aged leather was almost intoxicating. The Caddy’s faithful old big-block V-8 turned over on the first turn of the key, without a hiccup of complaint.

If Fate insisted he go where final death waited, he’d go there in his own damn car.

NINETEEN

So this is how it feels to be inside a pinball machine,Jules thought as he walked inside the casino. He strode past row after row of slot machines, all busily flashing, pinging, and jingling for row after row of empty chairs. On the outside the gambling hall at the foot of Canal Street resembled a gigantic suburban bank building, festooned with tons of neon in a vain attempt to disguise its pedestrian origins. On the inside Jules thought it looked more like Vegas… in the aftermath of an army germ-warfare experiment gone wrong. Apart from costumed employees, the place was practically deserted. Many of his fellow cabbies had been enthusiastic when the casino had first been approved by the legislature. They’d all figured it would attract more big-spending tourists. But rather than pulling in tourists, the casino had mostly attracted locals. And when they exited for home, empty-pocketed, they left in city buses, not cabs.

He walked to the side of the main room closest to Convention Center Boulevard. Just as he’d been told, there was the private elevator, flanked by two tuxedoed guards. Guards, not doormen; doormen didn’t sport holsters and squared-off bulges beneath their suit jackets.

Jules approached the guard on the left. Both of the men were white; Jules wondered whether Malice X got a little charge out of lording it over white employees. “I’m Jules Duchon. I got business with your boss downstairs.”

“Ah, yes. The fat man. We were told to expect you.” The guard pressed the elevator’s call button. A few seconds later, the door swished open. “Don’t forget to press theDOWN button once you’re inside. It’s the one with the little red arrow that points to the floor.”

“Thanks, wise guy.” Jules flipped him a nickel before entering the elevator. “Here’s a tip for your trouble.”

The elevator was trimmed in tufted red velvet. “Looks like the coffin I could never afford,” Jules muttered to himself. The doors opened onto a shockingly large space, a high-ceilinged cavern where no cavern had any right to be. Jules felt like Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger, who’d descended to the South Pole and discovered dinosaurs instead of glaciers.

“So this is where they dug it,” Jules said softly, wonderingly. “The tunnel to nowhere.” He thought back to the time, decades ago, when Canal Street had been snarled with earthmoving machines. More than thirty years had passed since the demise of the ill-conceived Riverfront Expressway project, a spur of highway that would’ve cut the French Quarter off from the Mississippi and permanently shadowed Cafй Du Monde with six lanes of elevated traffic. While a group of dedicated preservationists had fought the project in court and in Congress, the road builders had pressed forward, digging a massive tunnel beneath the International Trade Mart, a twenty-story riverfront monolith that stood in the path of the planned highway.

Then, against all expectations, the preservationists won their fight. The highway was canceled. But the tunnel endured. Its entrances were closed off; it didn’t make sense to fill in the hole that remained, but no one could come up with a use for it. Over the years, everyone forgot it was there.

Almost everyone. The man who became Malice X hadn’t even been born when the tunnel was first dug, but someone older than he had remembered the big hole by the river. Someone who realized that, with enough money invested, the hole would make an ideal sunproof lair for vampires.