Never Cross a Vampire (16 page)

The only thing I could hear was our heavy breathing in the darkness. Then above us a voice.

“What is going on down there, Hill?” shouted the dry librarian from the upper world.

My enemy's head turned upward toward the sound and caught a shaft of light. I saw the face clearly and knew I wouldn't forget it. I also knew I had never seen it before. He turned and ran into the darkness, the faint light of the grillwork making a rippling pattern on his retreating back.

I made my way upward toward the complaining voice of the librarian and met him on the first level.

“What on earth was going on down there?” he demanded.

“Something was going on,” I panted, “but I don't think it's reasonable to say it was on earth.”

“And where,” he demanded further, “is Mr. Hill?”

“I have no idea. He was no part of it. I was attacked by the devil and saved by Saint Bartholomew.”

“Dr. Chadwick, have you been drinking?”

“No,” I said, leaning against a nearby heavy oak table, “but I did lose a gun down there. I heard it drop down.”

“Professors at UCLA carry guns?” he asked, but this time it wasn't a question for me but for himself. “I think I had best call the police.”

“What about my gun?”

“It would take some time to search the lower level,” he replied, heading back for his desk. “We plan a cleaning tomorrow. If there is a gun there, you can retrieve it.”

There was no changing his mind, so gunless I returned to the afternoon. The face of the man who attacked me on level two was about forty, thin, and frenzied. The body that went with it was agile and able. I wouldn't forget either one.

I tried to put the pieces together on the way to Lugosi's house, but they wouldn't fit, not yet. My two cases kept getting in each other's way. When it came to figuring out my expenses, assuming I lived long enough to do that, there would be a lot of items I wasn't sure of. For example, I didn't know whom my friend in St. Bart's library belonged to, though he seemed more out of a Lugosi film than a Faulkner novel.

When I got to Lugosi's house, I found Jeremy Butler on the lawn showing the kid next door how to get a stranglehold.

“The boy spotted me,” Butler said. “I told him and his mom I was working for Lugosi, special protection from the Japanese.”

“He's a good wrestler,” the boy told me, looking at Butler.

“I know,” I said.

I asked Jeremy to stick it out for a few more hours and go home if everything looked quiet. He said he would, and I left, wondering how Lugosi would explain the bodyguard to his neighbors. I figured the truth would be best, but since I seldom used it, I didn't see how I could wish it on others.

It was almost six when I got to my office. Shelly was just closing up.

“One message,” he said. “I left it on your phone. I'll clean up tomorrow.”

For Shelly, there was always tomorrow. The office got cleaned up every three or four months by Jeremy Butler, who couldn't tolerate the mess and potential breeding ground for vermin. Each time Jeremy cleaned the place, Shelly complained and threatened to move out because his “system” had been disrupted.

“That guy with the fang problem,” he said, heading for the door and pushing his glasses up on his nose, “is nuts. Good teeth, but they'll be gone in a year, maybe two. I'll probably have to pull them. Man was not meant to wear fangs. If God had wanted man to wear fangs, he would have given us fangs. You wouldn't have to buy them at a costume shop, for God's sake. Is it raining out there?”

“No,” I said, shaking the coffee pot on the counter. There was only a rancid remnant in the pot, but the heat was still on. I turned it off.

“What was I saying?” Shelly asked.

“Fangs,” I reminded him.

“Yes, fangs,” he said, shaking his head. “If … but what's the sense in talking? I'll do what I can. How was your day?”

“All right,” I said as he opened the door and looked around as if he had forgotten something. “I almost shot a guy. I was attacked by a lunatic in the library, and I lost my gun.”

“Right,” said Shelly. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow, Shel.”

He closed the door and I went into my office. The phone message was from Bedelia Sue Frye. She wanted me to call her back. I looked out the window. It was almost dark. I had no intention of talking to her at night.

Then I called Levy's on Spina and asked for Carmen. I had almost sixty dollars of my clients' money left and a nightclub to go to as part of my expenses. I invited Carmen, but she had to work.

“Can I pick you up after work?” I said.

“I'm on till two in the morning,” she said. “And after nine hours on my feet, I don't feel like playing games with you. I'm off Wednesday.”

“Great,” I said. “How about a movie?”

“What happened to the nightclub?” she asked.

“We'll see,” I said. “I gotta go now, important client just came in.”

I hung up, looked around the office, folded Bedelia Sue Frye's message. I tried the Augusta Hotel again. This time they told me that Camile Shatzkin's playmate Thayer Newcomb had checked out.

With the sun going down and my .38 gone, I went home carefully, got rid of my empty holster, showered, shaved, and shared a thirty-nine-cent can of Spam with Gunther. I asked Gunther whether he wanted to go to a nightclub, but he said he had too much work. I almost considered asking Mrs. Plaut.

I caught “A Man Called X” on the radio. Herbert Marshall was telling Leon Belasco where to find some hidden papers. Herbert Marshall always sounded sure of himself. Herbert Marshall had a lot of writers.

Just before nine I made myself as presentable as possible, even changed to my emergency tie, and drove off to Glendale. I knew Glendale. I had grown up there, worked in my old man's grocery store there, been a cop there. It had some pockets of near-poverty along its commercial strip, but Glendale was mainly rising middle class and easy hills. On the borders where it touched other towns, like Burbank, it had a potential blight it couldn't ignore.

The Red Herring was a nightclub on the border. The proprietor called the place a nightclub, but it was really a medium-sized saloon that had gone through a lot of hands and a lot of names. I remembered picking up a kid thief with a broken bottle hiding under the bar there when I was a cop. Two owners ago was a guy named Steele, whom I knew and who disappeared one night and never came back.

The Red Herring was the mailing address of the only member of the Dark Knights of Transylvania I hadn't talked to, Simon Derrida. The place wasn't exactly in a delirium of gaiety when I walked in. There was a barkeeper, two guys at the bar, a couple at one of the six tables, and four guys at another table. The guys wore suits and looked like salesmen. The couple looked like a guy and a pro hustler. Behind them was a small curtained platform and a piano standing empty.

I walked up to the bar and asked for Simon Derrida.

“He's on in about two minutes,” the bartender said, consulting his watch. “What'll you have?”

I ordered a Rainier, took it past the fish-eyed drunk at the bar, who eyed me like he wanted to talk, and went to one of the empty tables.

The woman at the next table looked over at me to see whether I was a better possibility than the guy she had and I shook my head no. She had lots of red hair that wouldn't stay in place and a smile painted on her large mouth that promised more sadness than fun.

I was almost through with my beer when a guy with a ratty tux came out from behind the curtain and sat at the piano. He was about seventy. He smiled at the four businessmen, the woman, and me and being playing and singing.

He played “Jealous,” doing a kind of Tony Martin imitation, and followed it with “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” and a finger flourish. I clapped. The businessmen clapped, and the guy at the piano beamed.

“Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Now let's all sing “We'll Throw the Japs Back in the Laps of the Nazis.'”

He began to play and sing, but no one joined him. Undiscouraged, he tried to feed us the lines quickly before he played them. I mouthed a little, and the drunk at the bar followed us both by four muddled lines. If the old duck at the piano played another song, I was going to go to the bathroom, but he didn't. Instead, he thanked us all again and said, “And now, the man you've all been waiting for, the man who can scare you and tickle you to death at the same time, our own Doctor Vampire, Simon Derrida.”

He played “Hall of the Mountain King” to applause from the drunk, and the last Dark Knight walked out on the platform, complete with the costume he had worn at the meeting. He couldn't cover his New York accent, though he tried and came up with an awful combination of Bela Lugosi and the Bronx.

“Good evening,” he said. “It's good to see some fresh blood in the club. I'm going to give you some stories in a new vein. My friends, do you know what is worse than a werewolf who had to get rabies shots? A vampire who has to get braces.”

The drunk burped.

“And,” Derrida went on with a flourishing of his cape (he looked more like a dry pear than a vampire), “do you know why the vampire walked around in his pajamas? He didn't have a batrobe. Quick, what has one wheel and gets twenty miles to the gallon of plasma? A vampire on a unicycle. Or tell me what the first building is that Dracula visits when he goes to New York? The Vampire State Building.”

No one was laughing. Nobody but the drunk and me were really listening. I had a fixed smile, and Derrida started to play to me, which forced me to pay attention and fake a laugh. He didn't seem to recognize me from the Dark Knights meeting. My hope was that his act was short or that he would be discouraged by the lack of response, but he just plowed on when he asked, “What do vampires hate to have for dinner?” and the drunk answered, “T-bone stakes.” Derrida simply ignored him and delivered the line again.

“Why don't you like Count Dracula?” Derrida asked an imaginary character at his side. Then he moved over, raised his voice and answered, “Because he's a pain in the neck.”

I squirmed through, “Why did the man think Dracula had a cold? Because the vampire told him he kept a coffin,” and “What do you get if you cross a vampire with a brontosaurus? A monster that sleeps in the biggest coffin you ever saw.” Then I had a simulated coughing fit that sent me to the men's room, which was small, dirty, and without toilet paper, but at least I didn't have to bear the pain of being Simon Derrida's sole emotional support. The burden was too much.

I stayed in the toilet till I heard about three people clapping, which could mean only that Derrida was done. I hurried out and ducked behind the curtain. “Just a second,” he said and stepped out for more applause. The drunk and the hustler applauded and Derrida came “backstage,” which was just big enough to hold us.

“Great show,” I said. “Can I buy you a drink?”

Derrida smiled, “It did go pretty well, didn't it? Not a bad audience for a weekday.”

We went back to my table, completely ignored, while the old guy at the piano played “Always.”

“I'll have a double scotch,” Derrida shouted to the bartender.

“Another beer for me,” I added.

“I know you from somewhere,” Derrida said, looking at me.

“Dark Knights,” I said. “I was there with Lugosi.”

“Inspiring man,” Derrida said solemnly. “Gave me lots of ideas for new material just looking at him. I'm getting my imitation down perfect. What do you think?”

“Uncanny,” I said.

“So,” he said, sitting back and throwing his cape over the chair, “you found me out. It was bound to happen. Hell, you expect that kind of thing in show business. Heartaches, disaster. You gotta learn to live with it. I got enough material out of them, anyway.”

“You mean,” I said as the bartender plopped the drinks on the table and stood waiting for his pay, “that you don't believe in the Dark Knights?”

“Use 'em for material, that's all. Too bad you happened to come in tonight. I could have gotten a little more out of them.”

That made everyone in the Dark Knights except Sam Billings a fraud. A fang overbite and no true friends.

“I didn't just happen in here,” I said. “I was looking for you.”

I told him my tale.

“You think I was putting the bite on Lugosi?” he said. “Get that joke?”

“I got it,” I said, gulping my beer. “I considered it, but I think you're off my list.”

“Why?” he said. “Say, I can be scary too, not just funny if I want to be, buddy.”

“I can see that,” I said, “but you're a trooper. A professional. You wouldn't stiff another professional.”

That worked.

“Right,” he said seriously, finishing his drink. “Say, I wish I could help you but I've got nothing going. Why don't you stay around for the second show? I have new material for part of it.”

“I don't think so,” I said. “I've got a big day tomorrow. By the way, I don't plan to turn you in to Billings. I think he needs you more than you need him.”

“I don't get you, pal,” Derrida said.

“Skip it,” I said and headed for the door.

The drunk waved. The bartender read a book. The redhead talked, and the old guy at the piano tinkled. I walked out the door and headed for my car.

The sound of screeching rubber came from the parking lot of the rival tavern across the street. I paid no attention and kept on walking till I realized that the car had crossed the street and was coming down the sidewalk right behind me. I faked a move to the wall and took a dive toward the street, feeling the pull in my knee. The car swerved and passed me, and a bullet chunked a piece of street near my face. There were two figures in the Ford. I couldn't see the driver, but the guy in the passenger seat was my attacker from the library.