PERSON #5 (Morrisania): So he’s a werewolf. So what? A woman turns into a monster from hell once a month, and I’d vote for a woman D.A., so why not vote for Big Charlie, know what I’m sayin’?

PERSON #6 (Edenwald): You only be carin’ ’cause he be a loup garou. He ain’t no loup garou, nobody’d even be givin’ no BLEEP if he was just bein’ Big Charlie runnin’ for office again. I voted for him three times, and didn’t nobody come out to be askin’ me who I voted for with no news cameras then, now, did they?

— 13 —

Mia Fitzsimmons was sitting in the Daily News city room writing up her story on Big Charlie’s victory. It wasn’t official yet, but the early exit polls made it look like Hugues Charles would win the primary in a walk over Mickey Solano.

Bart Mosby, her editor, walked up to her. “Looks like your guy’s gonna do it.”

“He’s not ‘my guy,’ Bart.”

“Bullshit. Just make sure the big guy remembers how far up his ass your face was during this campaign.”

Mia made a face. “Bart, seriously.”

“I am serious. The vampire shit meant he was good copy, and now the D.A. owes one of my reporters a favor. And with Kapsis’s murder, it makes even better copy. People’re eating this vampire shit up.”

“Yeah.” Mia was looking over the M.E.’s initial report on Kapsis’s murder — it was fast-tracked, since he was a U.S. senator, and Mia had a friend in the medical examiner’s office — and frowning. “It’s funny, I thought it might hurt Big Charlie, but it didn’t.”

“What would?” Bart asked.

“Hm? Oh, the murder. I mean, it was obvious that someone with I1V1 killed him.”

“Yeah, the nephew.”

Mia shook her head. “I don’t think so. He’s a vyrkolatios. They just feed, they don’t murder — certainly not like that. He doesn’t have the strength to tear him apart like that, and the M.E.’s report says there were both teeth and what looks like claw marks.”

“Who gives a fuck?” Bart asked. “He’s a vampire. They can do that shit. Whatever, I’m gonna go get a cigarette. Worst day in the history’a the world was when they —”

The rest of Bart’s harangue was lost to distance — though Mia had heard his railing against the laws that prevented indoor smoking since her first day in the city room — but she wasn’t paying much attention.

Nate Kapsis didn’t have claws. Something here didn’t add up.

On the TV, Big Charlie was being questioned about the senator’s murder outside his campaign headquarters. “Nathan Kapsis has always been a very troubled man. His violent tendencies go back many years.”

“Yes,” one reporter was saying off-camera, “but he’s never killed. Do you believe that contracting I1V1 made him —”

“As I said,” and now Big Charlie was sounding testy, “he was always a troubled young man. I1V1 did not change that. Recall, if you will, that he had failed to appear before the court in answer to an assault charge on the senator.”

“But Senator Kapsis wasn’t exactly your best friend,” said the same reporter, and Mia was wondering who it was, now.

“The senator and I were friends for many years.”

Mia winced. That sounded rehearsed.

“But he threw you under the bus on Helen Lashmar’s show the other day. Do you think —”

Judy Alejo stepped in at that point and cut the questions off.

Kapsis certainly hadn’t sounded much like a friend to Big Charlie on Lashmar. Could that have been seen as a betrayal?

She finished writing up her notes — both for the piece that would be in tomorrow’s News and for the story about Big Charlie that she was finding herself composing in light of the senator’s murder — as the night wore on.

Eventually, Bart wandered by and said the news story was in the queue. Curious, Mia called it up on her laptop.

Big Charlie won sixty-three percent of the vote, and the turnout was seventy percent of the registered Democrats in the Bronx. Mia wasn’t sure, but she was fairly certain those were both records.

“Now it’s just the election,” she muttered.

Bart laughed. “Right. Are the Republicans even runnin’ anybody?”

“No,” Mia said, “but Escobar’s gonna be on the ticket.”

“Who’s that?”

“The Right-to-Life candidate. Hell, Big Charlie’s gonna be on the Conservative ticket, along with Liberal and Green.”

“Right, so the election’s gonna matter.” Bart snorted and walked off.

It will matter if Big Charlie can’t run due to being in jail for murder. It was a crazy thought — Mia had spent most of the last four months around Hugues Charles, and he didn’t have a murderous bone in his body.

But neither had Nate Kapsis. Hell, neither had Danika Dubov or Michael Fayne.

Maybe there’s no story here, but I have to play out the string in case there is one.

Luckily, Bart wouldn’t have any problem with her sticking close to the D.A.’s office moving forward.

— 14 —

Op-ed piece by Mia Fitzsimmons in the New York Daily News.

It started with Michael Fayne here in New York.

It’s gotten far far worse.

In Los Angeles, a Laker Girl was attacked by an ape-like man who seemed to suck the very life out of her.

In Chicago, TV personality Danika Dubov kept victims in her home while Illinois State Representative William Blevins and his wife were horribly murdered.

In Paris, a massacre beneath the City of Light’s very streets.

And here in New York, Anson Morris slaughtering his wife and best friend.

It’s become impossible to turn on the news or read a paper like this one without there being some new vampire on the scene.

A year ago, Hugues Charles was sworn in to serve his fourth term as District Attorney of the Bronx. A year and a half ago, he won the Democratic Primary, as well as a virtually uncontested general election, despite having revealed himself to be a loup garou.

It would be hard to imagine Big Charlie succeeding in such an endeavor now. The lines are being drawn, human vs. vampire, and there’s no real clear notion as to who will win.

Big Charlie knows which side he’s on, though. In a press conference held on the first day of the Anson Morris trial, the Bronx D.A., he said, “It does not matter that I’m a loup garou for the same reason that it doesn’t matter that I have dark skin or that my mother was born in Port-au-Prince. What matters is that I was elected by the people of this county to prosecute criminals. Anson Morris is a criminal. It also does not matter that he has claws and fangs that he did not have two years ago. What matters is that he committed a heinous crime, and he will be punished for that.”

The surety in Big Charlie’s voice makes him a lone voice in the wilderness these days. Violence committed by people with I1V1 has skyrocketed, and it’s been followed by increased violence committed against them, what one pundit referred to as “preventative self-defense.”

So far, Big Charlie has stayed above the fray. The question is, how long can he remain there?

His response when I asked him that very thing, was typically candid. “There is no fray to remain above. I am here to do my job. It is the same job I have done for twelve years, and I intend to do for another four, at least.”

That surprised me, as I recalled lots of talk about this being his final term.

“I do not wish to make predictions. Four years ago, I could not have imagined the circumstances that we face now. My presence as a prosecutor in a major city might well be important for people to see. Those of us who suffer from this virus — those people that have been dubbed ‘vampires’ — we are all simply people. So many barriers against prejudice have been broken in the last fifty years. Civil rights, gay marriage, an African-American president. But now we have found another group of people to oppress.”

Of course the big question is what Big Charlie will do if the proposed “Vampire Registration Act” currently on the Senate floor passes. One of the bill’s sponsors is Senator Emily Krascznicki, who was appointed to serve out Senator Alex Kapsis’s term after his murder.

“My job as District Attorney is to prosecute to the full extent of the law. I swore an oath to uphold the laws of the county of the Bronx, the city of New York, the state of New York, and the republic of the United States of America. If someone in my county is in violation of any of the laws under which we live, then they shall be prosecuted by my office.”

More thorny is the death penalty, which has been off the books in New York State since 2004. There’s talk in Albany of bringing it back solely for I1V1 cases.

“Again, my job as District Attorney is to prosecute to the full extent of the law. I can say that, personally, I am not comfortable with any legal decision that discriminates against a particular group of people. Imagine if the governor proposed a law that stated that only black people could receive the death penalty, or only Jews could. It would never even be considered.”

But Big Charlie won’t let ideology stand in the way of doing his job. “If it is put into law, then — if it’s appropriate — I will prosecute with the death penalty in mind. But that decision will have little to do with the virus and everything to do with whether or not that punishment fits that crime.”

Let’s hope that the state legislature’s object will be similarly all sublime.

— 15 —

Barel Grindberg honestly did not expect to ever be walking into Hugues Charles’s office in the Bronx County Courthouse again.

Big Charlie was on the phone, but he gestured for her to take a seat in the guest seat while he spoke. It was a lot of legalese flying back and forth that Barel didn’t even pretend to understand.

Finally, he said, “Thank you, Amelia” and hung up. “My apologies, Barel.”

“No problem,” Barel said neutrally.