Never Cross a Vampire (21 page)

I took her hand, gave it a loud kiss that caused heads to turn, and ordered a corned beef on rye with ketchup to go. It's hard to be romantic in a kosher restaurant. While I waited, I called Lugosi's house. He was home. I told him I expected his problem to be over by morning and that I was going to see Billings.

I got the sandwich, chucked it under my arm, bid adieu to Carmen, and went out to meet my fate or my maker.

A second call to my murderer resulted in no answer, which concerned me. I had called a few hours earlier and said I was coming over to talk about something related to the Shatzkin murder. The murderer had promised to be home from ten o'clock on. I still had time to wrap up one of my cases before then, so I headed into Los Angeles to do it. By now I knew the way.

When I got where I was going, the sun was down, and the sky was rumbling with the threat of rain. What made it worse was the general blackout. There wasn't much to see.

I parked next to the theater and walked up to the box office. It was closed and the theater was dark. I tried the doors. None were open.

Moving around the side of the building just as the first few drops fell, I found a house behind the theater on top of a little hill. It was an old three-story frame house that had once been white, but time and inattention had turned it gray. There was no light, but I walked up the hill on my still aching leg and climbed the steps. They creaked mightily and the sound mixed with the whirl of the rainy wind.

The porch held an old swing that rocked gently back and forth in the wind as if someone were sitting in it. I knocked. No one answered. I knocked again. Still no answer. My next step was to pull the flashlight out of my pocket and hit the windows with its beam. The place looked empty. I backed off the porch into the rain and shined the light on the second floor. I thought I caught one of the curtains fluttering, but I couldn't be sure. Whistling an invented tune, I went back on the porch and tried the door. It opened with a perfect creak of hinges that would have sent the Three Stooges scrambling out into the downpour.

My flashlight beam hit a stairway and several rooms. From what I could see in the fading beam, it was decorated in early Lizzie Borden.

“Billings,” I called. No answer. I thought I heard something above me.

“Come on, Sam,” I called, pointing my beam up the stair. “Just take out your fangs and let's talk. I've got a lot to do tonight.”

Again something creaked above. My yellow light went dim, and I turned what was left of it to the walls, in search of a light switch. I found it and flicked it, but nothing happened.

My flashlight decided it had done enough for one Eveready lifetime and closed its eye. Outside, the rain was coming down hard, heavy, and tired. A little lightning joined it, and I reached for my gun. My eyes began to adjust to the liquid gloom in a few seconds, during which I held my gun ready. When I could see a little, I put the gun back in the holster.

“Sam,” I sighed falsely, “you are being difficult.”

The dank smell of the house caught me with a touch of nausea as I put my foot on the first step. Above, in the flashes of lightning, I could make out the top of the stairway. I went up slowly, my back sliding against the wall, my knee counting each step in pain.

It only took me four or five days to get to the landing where I was sure Billings would leap out at me with artificial fangs and either go for my neck or offer me a Hires Root Beer. He didn't, and I resigned myself to hide and seek. I remembered a “Suspense” episode with Ralph Edwards in which he played a scoffing radio reporter who spends a night in a haunted house and goes crazy. It was not a good thing to remember, but one has little control over such things. I tried to think that MacArthur had it worse on Bataan, but that didn't help. I couldn't believe in Bataan. It didn't really exist. What did exist was this matchstick house and my fear.

“Billings,” I shouted. “I'm getting angry.”

The hall light switch didn't work either. The storm had knocked off the power, or maybe the place just didn't have any power. Or maybe someone had pulled some fuses.

Bedrooms lined the hall wall, and each one seemed to be empty when I opened the door. None of them looked lived in. At the end of the hall was a balcony looking down on the living room. I stepped on the balcony and waited till the lightning cut cold light and showed me nothing. I heard another movement, higher above. I turned and found the stairway in front of me going up to what I assumed was the last floor of Billings's manor.

“Sam,” I said, “this is aggravating a sore knee, and you have nowhere to go. Sooner or later, this game will be over.”

I moved up. These stairs were even narrower than the ones below. When I got to the landing, I thought I could hear someone breathing. The three doors on the floor looked as if they were closed. I moved to the first one, kicking ft open. Nothing.

Below I thought I heard something, a slight creak, and then I was sure. Someone was opening the front door and being announced by the musical hinges.

“Who's down there?” I yelled, stepping back into the hall. No one answered. I stopped, trying not to breathe, but that proved to be too much to ask of a sorely tried soul.

I thought I heard the creak of stairs. I moved to the stairwell and leaned over. I couldn't see anything. The lightning chose that moment to penetrate the house with a crack of light, and my eyes caught a shadow on the stairs.

“Far enough,” I said. “I've got a gun.”

The answer to my threat was a pinging near my head. The shot had missed me by what seemed not at all. I pulled out my .38 and aimed down the stairs.

It was a good time to break my record for never having shot anyone. I leaned forward, took aim, and fired. Something moved out of the room behind me, and I turned to meet it. Whatever it was jostled me, and I tried to keep from tumbling head first over the railing and down the stairs. I could hear the figure who bumped into me scrambling for a dark hole, and I could feel the gun fly out of my hand while I desperately grabbed for something to hold onto. The stairway had been narrow enough so my hand caught the far side, and I pushed myself back. My .38 hit the wooden stairs and thumped six or seven steps.

Silence. I was breathing hard and licking sweat from my upper lip, trying to see below, to see whether I had a chance at my gun before whoever was coming up and shooting at me got to it first. I didn't even worry about who or what had been behind me.

There was no lightning, and I could see no gun below, but I could hear the footsteps coming slowly, carefully upward. In a few seconds, maybe thirty or forty at most, whoever was on the way up would probably find my gun and know I was unarmed. Even if they didn't find it, they'd figure out that I had stopped firing back. What I needed was a weapon. Since this was Sam Billings's house, I doubted that I'd even find a heavy crucifix to throw, but what choice did I have? Don't bother to answer. It's always easier to find options when the knife is at someone else's throat.

I slipped off my shoes and carried them into the first room. There was a table in the corner and something that looked like a bench. I groped my way to the table, and my hand touched something erect and smooth. It was a candle. I moved to the wall, running my hand across it. Nothing. Below me the footsteps were moving upward. I hadn't counted the steps, but I knew they weren't infinite. A chair could be a weapon, but that would be a last resort against someone with a gun. The footsteps were moving up rapidly. It was time for last resorts. I grabbed a chair, almost losing it in my sweating hands, and placed my shoes on the table. I moved behind the door and waited and waited and waited. The stairs creaked, and the wind blew, and the rain fell, and I thought I was going to be sick. The trick would be to swing the chair just when the person with the gun stepped in. The chair was getting heavy and I was fighting an almost uncontrollable urge to giggle in fright.

My sensitivity shell was alive with nerves. I could hear a thousand aches and sighs in the building. My brain tried to sort them out, determine which was the right one. I thought I caught a creak on the floor outside and tried to tighten my grip, but I didn't want to make noise. Now, I thought, but another voice inside said, wait. I waited, waited, waited, and when I couldn't take another surge of my pulse, I stepped out and swung the chair. I hit something and heard a pained “Urrgg.”

Dropping the chair, I took a step into the hall to throw a kick, which would not have been devastating in my bare feet, but it beat trying to run or hide. The barrel of a gun jabbed my chest, and I stopped suddenly. My stockinged feet slid, and I was on my back in the room, which saved me from getting the bullet in the chest. I rolled back and kicked the door closed, but another bullet came through the wood close enough to make my right ear ring.

What could I do? I backed away. The door opened slowly, and I could see enough to know that I was in a room with the murderer I had been looking for. My idea had been to set the scene, but the murderer had decided not to wait.

The gun picked me out but didn't fire. I watched while the murderer kept me in sight and groped to the table. I was motioned away by the dark outline, and I moved away. The sounds told me that there was something being pulled out of a pocket, and the striking of a match told me what it was. The murderer lit the candle and turned to face me.

CHAPTER TEN

T
he light from the single candle revealed a small room. I was near the door. To my right was a blank wall with three old glass-covered oval photographs on it, all of women about fifty. The wall to my left was covered from ceiling to floor with heavy, blood-red drapes. I had seen curtains like this before, in the basement of the theater a few dozen yards away where the Dark Knights had met. That seemed a long time ago. But it had been only five days. On the wall opposite me was a single window, small, dirty, and crying with rain. There were a few chairs, and the one table with a cloth. On the table was a statue of some kind with a bunch of arms. Oh, in front of the table stood Jerry Vernoff, aiming a gun in my general direction.

“I know we were supposed to meet at my place later,” he said, leaning back against the table. He was dripping with rain and his yellow hair was plastered forward on his brow. “But I started to think that you had no reason to see me and maybe, just maybe you were putting things together. I can tell by your eyes that you're not surprised to see me, so I can also conclude that I was right. Pretty good, huh?”

“Third rate,” I said, slumped back against the wall. His face sagged, and his grip tightened on the gun. I had hit home. He wanted to shoot, but he wanted to hear more. I hoped I had read this whole thing and him right and that Vernoff would want to talk about it.

“Third rate?” he said irritably. “Come on. The plotting was …”

“… too complicated,” I finished. He reached over and threw me my shoes. I figured he wouldn't shoot until I got them on, and by that time we'd be deep in debate, and I might get to do something. He was about ten feet away, so there wasn't much chance to go for him. My best bet would probably be to catch him off guard in the middle of a sentence and try to go out the door and down the stairs. I didn't know how well my knee would do with that option, and a fleeting sense of morbid satisfaction took me. If Vernoff shot me in the back before I made it down the stairs, it would be Phil's fault for mashing my knee. Then he wouldn't be singing, “I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal you.”

“What do you mean, too complicated?” Vernoff pressed.

I stood up and looked around as if I had the duration of the war to while away.

“The Shatzkin murder,” I said. “Why not just shoot him and say a burglar did it? That's what started me thinking about you. Each murder, Shatzkin's, Newcomb's, Haliburton's, had a gimmick, a B-movie plot gimmick, your specialty.”

Vernoff was hurting, and my words were giving him head troubles.