Talulla Rising Read Online Free PDF Page A

the job of finding a third restaurant, of which he’d be in sole charge. But the money, Lu, for Christ’s sake, where’s the money coming from? Two friends in Palm Springs looking to invest. What, those two gay guys? No, not them. You don’t know these two. I was at college with them... And so on, an ever-expanding fiction struggling to cover the mad truth that would otherwise kill him: Nikolai, your daughter’s a werewolf. Hair, claws, fangs, the whole B-movie deal. Twelve victims. You don’t want to know. Little Lula whose diapers you changed and whose rapt face listening to Facts About the Planets or Tales of Ancient Greece was one of your purest pleasures. Oh, yeah, and she’s got a bun in the oven. The father was a werewolf too, but he’s dead. He left her rich, mind you. That’s where the dough’s coming from...) The letter, which I sent Cloquet to pick up, was from Miles Porter, President of the Coralton-Verne International Private Bank on Fifth Avenue and 45th Street. Jake had left instructions: if, after a certain date, the bank had received no further instruction, Mr Porter was to contact me. I’d been authorised to access the safe deposit box held in Jake’s name. I had Porter’s direct line and, as per Jake’s instruction, ‘should call when I had the six-digit security code.’
    Which I didn’t have. Which I had no clue how to get.
    A vampire ruse? A WOCOP trap? During our first week in Manhattan together Jake had told me he’d made arrangements aside from the twenty million, but the subject was so morbid we never went into details. Now he was gone and I didn’t know what to do.
    I called Miles Porter and told him I was travelling (in fact I was at a small overpriced hotel with too much dark wood in Cold Spring, having let my apartment go) but that I’d be in touch when I got back to the city. Then I hired a private detective to make sure ‘Miles Porter’ was who he said he was. He checked out. Unfortunately this guaranteed nothing. WOCOP used civilians and vampires used familiars. In any case, I didn’t have the six-digit code.
    A week passed. I rang the new tenant of my old apartment to see if there were messages or mail as yet unforwarded. Nothing. Then Ambidextrous Alison called. St Mark’s Bookshop had telephoned the restaurant. My copy of Heart of Darkness was ready for collection. Ask for Stevie.
    I hadn’t ordered any books.
    Heart of Darkness.
    Marlowe.
    Jake.
    Conrad, not Chandler. Literary snob to the end. I sneaked back into Manhattan in a blonde wig and red-framed sunglasses. Stevie was a pudgy young guy with bleached hair and rosacea and a stare that said whatever your particular brand of assholery he’d seen it a thousand times before. He wore a Pearl Jam t-shirt and a white nose-stud I mistook at first for an enormous zit. Customer paid for this five months back and told us to call you on the specified date. As in yesterday. Didn’t leave a name but said you’d know.
    Pages three, eight, fourteen and seventy with corners turned down and digits circled. 3,8,1,4,7,0.
    A big risk, but I took it.
    Alone in one of the bank’s secure rooms I opened the metal case. Fifty-three journals, crammed with Jake’s tiny italic handwriting. Little black Moleskines in the recent years, further back calfskin or cloth bindings, half a dozen with broken jackets bound together with elastic or string, two or three water-buckled and freckled with mould. Some entries dated, others not. Long periods – decades, sometimes – when he gave up writing altogether.
    There was a sealed envelope placed to be the first thing I’d see on opening the box. On the envelope it said:
    In case we didn’t have enough time.
    Love you.
    Jake.
    Inside were instructions on how to access six Security Code Only bank accounts in Switzerland, plus a list of half a dozen names, phone numbers and services, headed: People You Can Trust . I didn’t recognise any of them.
    In case we didn’t have enough time.
    Love