Stalking the Vampire (13 page)

“Thanks.”

“I have a question, John Justin.” she continued.

“Yeah?”

“What does ‘permanently' mean?”

“You'd think a joint called the Belfry would be
up
, not down,” remarked Mallory as they finally came to the end of the stairs.

“It used to be,” replied McGuire. “In fact, it was at the top of the Rockefeller Rectangle (which should actually have been called the Rockefeller Demipolytetrahedron, but let it pass).”

“So what happened?”

“Harpies kept begging at the tables, so they enclosed the place, and then new vampires who hadn't adjusted to flying by sonar began flying into the windows and bouncing off, and some of the patrons found that they couldn't drink and look down at low-flying clouds without getting sick, and then the elevators stopped working every time there was a brownout, and—”

“Okay, I get the picture,” said Mallory.

The entry foyer was small and dimly lit. The entire club was built to give the impression of a cave, with ersatz stone walls, floors that looked damp but weren't, and indirect lighting. There were tunnels leading to the various dining rooms, and Mallory decided that if a bat couldn't find a perch in a belfry, it would probably be comfortable in his current surroundings.

A waiter, dressed in a tux and a red velvet cape and sporting truly impressive canines, approached them. “May I help you?”

He noticed Mallory staring at him and Nathan tightening his grip on his spear. “It's standard dress uniform for employees, sir,” continued the waiter, removing his eyeteeth. “It makes the customers feel more at home.”

“Has a Winnifred Carruthers shown up yet?” asked Mallory. “We're supposed to meet her here.”

“I really couldn't say, sir,” replied the waiter. “Perhaps if you could describe her?”

“Stocky woman, gray-haired, probably wearing khakis and carrying a Nitro Express.”

The waiter smiled. “Ah! The lady with the wicked-looking rifle. Yes, she's waiting for you in the next room.” He turned to the dragon. “Would you care to check your spear, sir?”

“I never let it out of my sight,” answered Nathan.

“And you, sir?” he said to Mallory. “We have a small kennel on the premises where a number of wizards and witches leave their familiars, if you would care to place your cat there while you're eating.” Felina hissed and flashed her claws. “Perhaps not,” said the waiter smoothly without missing a beat. “If you will follow me, then…. ”

He headed off to an adjoining room, and a moment later Mallory and his party were standing in front of Winnifred's table.

“I'm sorry about Rupert,” said Mallory, sitting down and nodding to the others to do so too. “The Grundy told me he got word to you.”

She nodded. “The poor boy. At least he's really dead. Another bite or two and that would have been denied him. Have you found Aristotle Draconis yet?”

“He didn't do it.”

She looked dubious. “Can you be sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“I was with him all evening,” chimed in Nathan.

“And who are you?”

“Scaly Jim Chandler at your service, ma'am,” replied the dragon.

“The mystery writer?” asked Winnifred.

The dragon's face lit up. “You've
read
me?”

“
Kiss the Blood Off My Shoes
,” she said. “Not bad.”

“Wait'll you read the sequel!” said Nathan enthusiastically. “Wings O'Bannon has to solve a crime in high society.”

“I'll look for it,” promised Winnifred. “What's the title?”

“
Kiss the Blood Off My Spats.
”

“You ever been around high society?” asked Mallory.

“No, but—”

“Maybe you ought to write about what you know.”

“
Kiss the Blood Off My Manuscript?
” said Nathan. He frowned. “I think it lacks a little punch.”

“Excuse me for getting back onto the subject,” said Winnifred, “but if the killer isn't Aristotle Draconis, who is it?”

“Right at the moment, it looks like a transplanted Transylvanian named Vlad Drachma.”

“I've always had a strict rule,” said Nathan. “Beware of Transylvanian vampires named Vlad.”

The waiter stopped by the table just then. “May I take your orders, please?”

“Give the lady anything she wants,” said Mallory. “The rest of us are just here to visit.”

“
I'm
not,” said Felina. “I want three parakeets, two mice, a guinea pig, a trout, four salamanders, a water buffalo, a whale, and some catnip.”

“No dessert?” asked Mallory sarcastically.

“More catnip.”

“She'll have a small glass of milk,” Mallory told the waiter.

“And a straw,” added Felina.

“And a straw,” said Mallory.

“Made of hummingbird,” said Felina.

“Quit while you're ahead,” said Mallory. He turned to Winnifred. “Where did you park your trolls?”

“They're in the bar,” she said. “They'd rather drink than eat.”

“And they haven't even spoken to Felina yet,” said Mallory. “Amazing.”

“So have you any leads on this Vlad Drachma?” asked Winnifred.

“Not really,” said Mallory. “We know he's a vampire, we know he was on the
Moribund Manatee
, we know he's the one who bit Rupert—or at least we think we know it. We know that Draconis actually chased him out of Rupert's room and was the kid's secret protector. And we know he's got to have a coffin filled with Transylvanian soil somewhere in Manhattan.”

“Do you have a description of him?”

Mallory shook his head. “Just that he's a vampire.”

“That's not much help,” replied Winnifred. “Mr. McGuire here is a vampire, and he doesn't look a thing like vampires are
supposed
to look.”

“I take that as a high compliment,” said McGuire.

“So what's our next step, John Justin?” asked Winnifred. “We've got no description and it's a big city.”

“Well, he probably thinks he's safe, since we don't know what he looks like and he's not aware that I've spoken to Draconis. He won't be looking out for us, so that's to our advantage.”

“But we have no idea what he looks like, and that's to
his
advantage.”

“Bats,” said Mallory, turning to the little vampire, “where would a vampire go to celebrate?”

“Celebrate what?” asked McGuire. “Killing young Rupert or getting away with it?”

“Either.”

“Well, the Zombies' Ball is probably in full swing by now. If you want to mingle with the undead—vampires, zombies, ghouls, whatever—that's the place to be.”

“But we still don't know who we're looking for,” protested Nathan.

“That's not so,” replied Mallory. “We just don't know what he looks like.”

“What's the difference?”

“If we try to describe him, none,” said Mallory. “But if we start asking around for Vlad Drachma, maybe someone will point him out to us.”

“To a shamus?” said Nathan dubiously.

“I won't tell them if you won't,” said Mallory. “Of course no one will ID him for a detective, at least not unless we cross their palms with more silver than we can lay our hands on—but they might point him out to a guy who's selling the security codes to the blood bank over on West Hades Street.”

The dragon considered it. “You know, they might at that.” He smiled apologetically. “I'm so used to Wings O'Bannon just beating the information he needs out of cheap punks, or seducing it out of beautiful women…”

“Don't plain women ever have any information?” asked Winnifred.

“Plain women don't travel in the same circles as O'Bannon,” explained Nathan. “After all, there are hallowed traditions to be upheld. I mean, you'd never write a romance in which the hero wasn't a wildly attractive vampire, or a horse race story in which the winner wasn't a long shot that everyone except a little girl and her grandpa wanted to sell or shoot as a yearling, or a fantasy novel that doesn't have a magic sword and goes less than two pounds…”

“Price?” asked Mallory.

“Weight,” explained Nathan. “So, since all serious fiction is so rigidly defined, you can't really expect me to write a mystery where Wings takes a normal-looking woman to bed.”

“Or fails to perform like a combination of Don Juan and Secretariat?” suggested Mallory.

“Precisely,” replied the dragon. “After all, these books go to discriminating readers.”

“Sorry,” said Mallory. “Every now and then that truism escapes me.”

“May we get back to the subject at hand?” suggested Winnifred.

“Hard-boiled mystery stories?” said Nathan as the waiter arrived with Felina's milk. The cat-girl threw the straw away, leaned over, and began lapping it up with her tongue.

“Vlad Drachma,” replied Winnifred. “I suppose we should continue to split up and cover more ground, but we need a plan.”

“It's only about half an hour past midnight,” said Mallory. “That gives us maybe six or seven hours to find him before daylight. I suppose I'll start at the Zombies' Ball. You might get a list of mortuaries that'll board a coffin, so to speak—and you can skip Creepy Conrad's. We've been there.”

“He could leave his coffin
anywhere
,” protested Winnifred. “It doesn't have to be a mortuary. It could be an abandoned building, a rented house, anything.”

“All right, then,” said Mallory. “Why don't you see if you can trace his movements after he left the
Moribund Manatee?
I'll start hitting all the places a vampire might go for an evening's recreation.”

“It makes sense,” she said, as they all rose from the table. “Do you want my trolls? I don't think I'll need them.”

Mallory looked at his little party—a dragon, a vampire, and a cat-girl. “I think I'll attract more than my share of attention without a crew of trolls. Keep ‘em for protection.”

“
I
protected
them
from a gang of muggers not an hour ago,” said Winnifred.

“Sorry,” said Mallory. “I lost my head.”

“No,” said Felina, finishing her milk. “That comes at the Zombies' Ball.”

The Zombies' Ball was held in the vast ballroom of the L. Gonquin Hotel, which, it was pointed out on signs and placards throughout the premises, had nothing to do with the Algonquin Hotel but was named after Lamont “High C” Gonquin, the first musician to plug his instrument into an electric socket. His charred remains were no longer on display but could be seen at the Museum of Screech and Shout, a subsidiary of the Museum of Rock and Roll.

Mallory and his party walked through the plush foyer of the hotel. There were dirt-covered men and women in tattered rags, mummies wrapped in bandages, pale men in capes, elves, leprechauns, goblins, gremlins, even the occasional normal-looking man or woman.

“I see an awful lot of different types here,” said Mallory. “Are you sure we're in the right place?”

The strains of “The Second Time Around” came to their ears.

“We're in the right place,” McGuire assured him. “That's their theme song.”

They followed the music to its source and were soon in the ballroom, where they ran into even more nightmare creatures, most of them dancing, a few standing and chatting, a handful drinking at the makeshift bar at one end of the room.

“They're sure not sparing any expense,” noted Nathan. “You see that band up there at the front of the room?”

“You know them?”

The dragon nodded his head. “That's Charlie the Harp and the Dead Enders.”

“Never heard of them,” replied Mallory.

“Their CD of ‘The Graveyard Gavotte' went platinum last month,” said Nathan.

Mallory took a good, hard look at the band. There were two zombies, a winged monster of some type, a dragon that looked like a distant relative of Nathan's, and a goblin, each playing an instrument Mallory had never seen or heard before. Leading them was a man with wild, unruly red hair and a pair of white feathered wings that stuck out through the back of his tuxedo.

The band finished its number, and then a small, dapper man stepped out, carrying a microphone. He had regular features, he was well dressed, he moved with a certain grace, and it was only after Mallory had been studying him for a moment that he realized that the small man's throat had been slit, though no blood was coming out of it. A few seconds later he saw the bullet hole just above the man's left eye.

“Thank you, Charlie,” he said, “for starting off our ball in fine fashion.” He turned to the audience. “I'm your host, Third Chance Louie, and I want to welcome you to the Zombies' Ball. We have an evening of very special entertainment in store for you. Three of the meeting rooms on the mezzanine level have been converted into a small theater, and in just thirty minutes you'll be able to see the first performance of
Rebirth of a Salesman
, which they tell me is even better than last year's world premiere of
Life Takes a Holiday.
We have lots of other treats in store for you as the night goes on, so enjoy yourselves and let's not let this evening die too soon. Charlie, why don't you and the boys put them in the mood with your wonderful rendition of ‘The Termination Tango'?”

Charlie the Harp stamped his foot, waved his baton, cursed at it as it turned into a snake, slapped it on the side of its head, waited for it to hiss once and become a baton again, and began leading the Dead Enders in a tango that sounded more like a Brazilian dirge to Mallory.

“I think we'll get a lot more accomplished if we split up,” suggested the detective.

“And do what?” asked McGuire.

“See if anyone knows where we can find Vlad Drachma.”

“That could be dangerous,” said McGuire. “You tell something like
that
that you're looking for him, and he just might decide to go looking for you instead.”

“Let's hope so,” said Mallory. “It'll save us a lot of work.”

“I think I just resigned from the detective business,” said McGuire. “I
can't just walk up to these people and tell them my friend wants to jail Vlad Drachma and could they please tell me where he's hiding?”

“Let him come,” said the dragon, hoisting his spear. “I'm ready for him.”

“Put it down,” said Mallory. “You're not going to hurt him with a spear.”

“Will bullets hurt him?” asked Nathan.

“I very much doubt it.”

“Then maybe McGuire has a point. We could just tell your partner that the young man died of heart failure, or maybe a social disease. I could write you such a brilliant speech that she'll never see through it, or my name isn't Scaly Jim Chandler.”

“Your name
isn't
Scaly Jim Chandler, and I never lie to my partner,” replied Mallory.

“All right, then,” said Nathan. “I stand ready to battle him to the death.”

“Whose?” asked McGuire.

“His, I hope,” answered the dragon. “But if it's mine, at least I'll die in a noble cause.”

“What's so noble about annoying a vampire when he wants to be left alone?” persisted McGuire.

“Whose side are you on, anyway?” snapped Nathan.

“Ours. But I have a unique ability to see the vampire's point of view.”

“Cut it out, both of you,” said Mallory. “You're not going to have to face Vlad Drachma. That's
my
job.”

“It is?” said McGuire, his face brightening noticeably. “Then I'm back on the case.”

“Fine. What I want you to do is pass the word that I'm looking for him.”

“Right,” said McGuire. “Tell him that a detective is looking for him in connection with a hideous murder.”

“No,” said Mallory, trying to control his temper. “You will tell anyone who'll listen that I'm a lawyer, that Drachma's inherited a lot of money and some real estate, and that I need to meet with him so that he can sign for it and I can turn it over to him.”

“Who died?” asked McGuire.

Mallory simply stared at him.

“Oh, I see,” said McGuire, who definitely did not see.

“All right,” said Mallory. “Spread out.” He turned to Felina. “Not you.”

“But there's food on that table!” she protested.

“Later.”

“All you ever say is Later,” grumbled Felina.

“I'm a man of few words.”

“And I know them all,” protested the cat-girl. “They're ‘Later' and ‘No' and ‘Stop' and ‘Flyaway's running today.' That's not even true,” she pouted. “Flyaway doesn't run. He plods.”

“Surely I say something else from time to time.”

“Just ‘Look at the knockers on that Playmate,'” answered Felina.

“All right,” said Mallory. “If we get you something to eat, will you stick around and keep quiet?”

“Probably.”

“I guess you're going to go hungry.”

“Yes,” she amended.

“You're sure?”

“Almost.” He stared at her silently. “Yes.”

“Okay, let's go over and see what they've got.”

There was a long table at the back of the room, with a punch bowl at each end of it. In between were little finger cakes, cookies, brownies, and other sweets.

“Where are the fish?” said Felina, frowning.

“What you see is what you get,” said Mallory.

She leaned over and sniffed at a frosted devil's food cake. “There's nothing dead here.”

“I promise you that cake isn't going to get up and walk away,” said Mallory. “It's one of the deadest cakes I've seen.”

Felina tapped a zombie on the shoulder. “Hey, Mister,” she said, “where are the canaries?”

“The one who killed me is buried in about five different places,” answered the zombie. “I can't speak for any of the others.”

“I don't like this place,” said Felina. “There's nothing to eat here.”

“I wish I could help you,” said the zombie. “But the only person I know here is my lawyer.”

“What's a lawyer, and can you eat one?”

The zombie shook his head. “It'd take you forever to clean it first.”

He wandered off, and when she turned back to Mallory, she saw the detective handing a five-dollar bill across the table to one of the servers on the other side and receiving a small box in exchange.

“What's that?” asked Felina.

“It's for you,” said Mallory. “Animal crackers.”

She sniffed at the box. “They're just cookies.”

“True,” he admitted. “But you can bite each of their heads off. That ought to keep you happy for a while.”

She opened the box and pulled out a cookie shaped like an elephant, then bit off its head. She flashed Mallory a huge smile, and then proceeded to bite the heads off a lion, a zebra, and a rhinoceros.

“You'll behave yourself now?” said Mallory.

“These are
fun!
” said Felina, decapitating a gorilla.

“You didn't answer me.”

“Yes, I did. You said, ‘You'll behave yourself now?' and I said, ‘These are fun.'”

“You didn't answer the question.”

“That's not part of the rules,” said Felina.

“It's part of
my
rules,” said Mallory, taking the box back.

“Yes, I'll behave myself,” said Felina.

“Well or badly?”

“One or the other.”

“I didn't quite hear that,” said Mallory, pulling the box back out of reach as she grabbed for it.

“Well,” said Felina.

Mallory handed her the box. “Don't eat ‘em all at once,” said the detective.

“I won't,” promised Felina. “I'll eat them one at a time, right after each other.”

Mallory felt a heavy hand on his shoulder and turned to face its owner. He almost wished he hadn't.

Confronting him was a tall, burly man, though Mallory thought “men” might be more accurate, since he seemed to be composed of numerous disparate
parts, each sewn together with the stitching still visible. He had one blue eye and one brown, one cauliflower ear and one small delicate one, a huge skull with a tiny chin, one arm longer than a basketball center's, the other shorter than a jockey's, and equally mismatched legs and feet. He was dressed all in black, with a turned-around collar.

“Good evening, friend,” he said in a deep voice. “Billy-Bob Lazarus is the name—the Reverend Billy-Bob Lazarus, to be precise. You look to me like a man who longs to be born again.”

“I haven't gotten over being born the first time yet,” said Mallory.

Billy-Bob Lazarus threw back his head and laughed. “That's a good one!” The laughter stopped as suddenly as it had begun. “Now, friend, are you
sure
you don't have a secret driving desire to join my Born Again Brigade?”

“If I do, it's so secret it hasn't informed me yet,” said Mallory.

“Would you like to discuss it?”

“My secret desire or your brigade?”

“Don't make light of being born again, friend. We all do it, each in our own way.”

“Hard to argue that, given the crowd here,” said Mallory. “But I'm afraid I'm not interested.”

“Is there anything I can say to make you change your mind?” said Lazarus.

“Yeah, there is,” said Mallory. “Tell me where I can find Vlad Drachma.”

“Room 666 of this hotel,” came the answer. “Now, how much would you like to contribute to our poor box?”

“He's right here at the Gonquin?”

“Damned if I know,” said the Reverend. “Personally, I never heard of this Drachma before.”

“But you just told me he was in this hotel,” said Mallory irritably.

“You said you'd join my Born Again Brigade if I told you where to find him. You never said I had to be right.”

“Go away.”

“Hey, we have a deal!” protested Lazarus.

“I never said you had to be right. You never gave me a time frame. I'll join in another eighty-three years.”

“I'll hold you to that,” promised Lazarus, walking off to hunt up fresh blood.
Or
, thought Mallory,
exceptionally old, tired blood.

Mallory began circulating through the room, passing himself off as a lawyer with an inheritance for Vlad Drachma, but no one knew the vampire in question, or at least no one was willing to admit to knowing him. He'd spent about twenty minutes when the music stopped and Third Chance Louie came out again, microphone in hand.

“Thank you, Charlie,” he said. “That was just what the coroner ordered. Revelers, let's all give Charlie and his Dead Enders a hand.”

Most of the revelers applauded politely. Three of them threw severed hands in the direction of the band, which bowed and walked off the stage.

“That's just the beginning, folks. Coming up in a few minutes, all the way from Bucharest, is the hottest band on the Continent, Igor and the Graverobbers.” More applause. “But first, fresh from his record-breaking run at the Shady Glen Memorial Home, here's Morty Pickman, the funniest comic hanged!”

A pudgy zombie walked out, the remnants of a noose around his neck, wearing a tux that was a little too tight and a little too old, and took the microphone from Louie.