The Shake

The Shake
by Mel Nicolai
Copyright 2012 Mel Nicolai
Smashwords Edition
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Named to Kirkus Reviews' Best of 2011
"...contemplative but lean and stylish ... intriguing narrative blend of philosophy and crime fiction ... thought-provoking and relentlessly entertaining ... An utterly readable fusion of vampire fiction and labyrinthine whodunit powered by a highly intelligent narrative ... Anne Rice meets Dashiell Hammett at a Zen Buddhist monastery."
— Perry Crowe, Kirkus Reviews


Chapter 1
I could hear and smell them as they turned the corner, a young man and a dog coming down the sidewalk in my direction. The man smelled like a broth of testosterone, sweat, tobacco, and some remarkably foul cologne. The dog smelled like a dog. From the sound of its nails scratching the cement, I knew the animal was big and not well trained. The chain rattled every time the man reined in his disobedient darling.
They were about twenty yards away when they came into view. The guy was just a kid, maybe fifteen or sixteen, wearing a baseball cap cocked at a bizarre angle, an oversized t-shirt, clownish pants with the crotch at his knees, and court shoes trailing their laces. He looked like his mommy had dressed him in preparation for some precious home video footage. The dog was a big male mastiff, bulky with muscle, as if it were on steroids. It had that nervous determination dogs have when their owners finally take them out for their daily walk.
I was sure the kid would walk by without noticing my presence. What the dog would do was anyone’s guess. I waited as they drew nearer, wondering how the dice would fall. Would the dog, intended to shield its owner from a threatening world, end up being the cause of his death? People so often fell victim to their own defenses, stepping into their own traps, almost as if that had been their original intent.
I was downwind, so the dog didn’t notice me until they were quite close. When it caught my scent, its body froze and its head snapped around, eyes searching the darkness as it huffed through flared nostrils. I could tell from the direction of the dog’s gaze—well off to my left—that it couldn’t see me. The kid had continued walking, apparently confident that when the chain’s slack ran out, the dog would be pulled back into step. But the animal had other priorities. When the chain stretched taut, it just lowered itself slightly, and its master jerked to a halt.
“Justice!” the kid half shouted, yanking impatiently on the leash.
How appropriate, I thought. The dog’s name was Justice. No doubt justice was what Justice was expected to dispense, to anyone or anything foolish enough to violate their private space.
“Goddamnit, dog!” the kid shouted, yanking harder on the leash, “Move your ass!”
And that’s what Justice did. I made a low animal growl, just loud enough for the dog to hear. It lowered itself a couple more inches, not sure what to do, then took off like it was late for court. It shot past the kid and when it hit the end of the chain, it didn’t even slow down. The kid lurched like a cartoon figure and would have bit the pavement if he hadn’t let go of the leash. He yelled the dog’s name again, this time more disgusted than angry, before running down the street in pursuit.
There is often something comic about a brush with death. As if, by seeing how little of life is actually under our control, we can’t help laughing at the chaos of it all. Every moment teeters so delicately. We scurry about under a continuous rain of random variables, every second potentially disastrous. And all we can do is walk the dog. Our fate can be altered by the merest puff, so we bow to practicality. We inure ourselves to the chaos with our common-sense priorities. We attend to what we can process, and filter out the rest. And if we’re lucky, we make it through the day. Or through the night.
•
The house I was watching was just south of Highway 50, across the freeway from the university. It belonged to Francine Arnaud, my next “donor,” as I sometimes referred to people who were in line to make that singular contribution. She was twenty-eight years old, a widow, working as a clerk in a downtown law firm. I’d gathered these little facts a few weeks earlier by breaking into a psychiatrist’s office and spending a couple of hours in a very comfortable, very expensive chair, reading patient files behind a very large and expensive desk. According to the good doctor, Francine had been suffering for about a year from bouts of severe depression, a condition apparently brought on by the unexpected death of her husband. On paper, she was an ideal candidate for my standard suicide scenario.
The plan for tonight was just to check out the house. There was a time when I was less cautious, less inclined to bother. But as mishap followed mishap, I finally accepted the fact that if something can go wrong, it probably will. And something can almost always go wrong.
A few years back, I was following a man I’d chosen as a suitable donor. The man had gone into his house and, on the spur of the moment, I followed him in. After taking his blood, I noticed a security camera partially hidden on a bookshelf. I searched the house thoroughly and found several others, all connected to