“Then you have no real interest in…”
“No,” he finished for me. “The group itself is somewhat interesting but I’ve gathered about as much from them as I care to, and I have been contemplating removing myself from their midst, though it is difficult, considering the small membership. One develops a certain affection and understanding.”
“Los Angeles must be a pretty good area for your work,” I said, draining my tea cup and getting a refill. “It is, indeed,” said Wong. “I think that is one of the reasons I concentrated on this specialization. I would be foolish to attempt to study the social life of the Eskimo with a base in Los Angeles.”
“I see your point,” I said. “Can you give me any suggestions or ideas about who might be the one in this group I’m looking for? What I know of vampires comes from some movies and reading Dracula when I was about twenty.”
Wong got up and walked to his desk with a sigh, looking for something.
“Like so many of the lower-California groups,” he said, “this one consists of individuals who are particularly ignorant of that in which they profess to be most interested, leading one to conclude that they are committed not to a belief in vampires and vampire lore but to role-playing and dressing-up. For example, no member of the Dark Knights is at all aware of the Aztec rituals that took place in this very area hundreds of years ago, rituals that are more closely allied to vampirism and its meaning than that of Dracula. The Aztecs regularly sacrificed young women and children and consumed their blood and bodies in the belief that this would prolong their own lives. “The Chinese vampire,” he continued, still searching for something on his desk, “is far more frightening than the Transylvanian vampire or Oupire. The body of the vampire in China is said to be covered with greenish white hair and to have long claws and glowing eyes. Chinese vampires can fly without turning into animals. To prevent a corpse from becoming a vampire, animals-particularly cats-must be kept away from the body, and the rays of the sun or moon must not touch it or the corpse may receive Yang Cor and be able to rise and prey on others.”
“Fascinating,” I said, shifting the weight on my leg.
“But you are interested in the group,” he said, “and not in being a vampire historian. My assessment from past experience suggests that the short thin man with the New York accent is not a believer either-though, I confess, I do not know what he is trying to gain from the group. He is certainly no scholar. Ah, here it is.”
Wong pulled out a sheet from a pile before him.
“I wrote some notes on the members and planned to do a bit of follow-up, but not really very much,” he said. “Getting the names was no great problem, though I do not plan to use them in my writing. However, I thought some background on each might be useful. If you do gather such information that might be helpful and if it does not violate your ethical code, I would be glad to pay a research fee.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said. “I’m not sure what my ethical code is on this thing. What about the woman?”
“Yes,” said Wong, looking at his sheet. “Bedelia Sue Frye. In some ways a very interesting example, totally within the role, totally the vampire during the meetings, never a break or flaw, but the vampire she portrays is not one of historical significance or myth but one of movies. A definite possibility for you, Mr. Peters.”
“Hill?” I said, referring to the tall guy who had said nothing.
“A voyeur, I would guess,” said Wong. “Respectable by day. Likes to do something dangerous, but not too dangerous. He needs to have a secret. He is never comfortable engaging in any of the rather juvenile rituals, but he clearly gets satisfaction from watching. A possibility for you, Mr. Peters.”
“And Billings,” I said.
“A sad man unable to sustain his fantasy within his body and abilities. A sad man. But that is an observation from outside. I view his state as sad. I have difficulty knowing how he perceives his own state.”
“Well, Mr. Wong,” I said, getting up on my incredibly stiff leg. “You’ve been a big help.”
He walked over and extended his hand.
“Then I take it I am no longer a suspect?” he said.
“You’re still a suspect,” I said. “The only way to get off my list is to become a victim, and I’ll still be suspicious.”
Wong laughed.
“Academic research lost a good man when you decided to become a detective,” he said.
“I didn’t decide,” I said, following him to the door. “It just happened.”
Wong walked at my side through the restaurant and out the front door.
“If I can be of further assistance,” he said, “please feel free to return.”
I thanked him and turned. The parking lot was not quite as full as it had been, and there was no one in sight when I reached my car door. The sky suddenly went dark or a shadow went over the sun. At least that was my impression. I looked up to see which it was. What I saw should have moved me into action, but it didn’t. It simply froze me on the spot. On top of my Buick stood a caped figure in black. The sun was directly behind it so I could see no features. It leaped at me, swinging some object in its hand. My body finally reacted, dropped flat, and rolled away, taking only part of the blow from the object on my retreating head. The dark figure turned to try again, and I covered my face and head with my arm as I rolled away on the gravel parking lot.
“Nosferatu,” came Wilson Wong’s familiar voice, and the black-caped figure turned to face him. The guy in the cape swung his shiny club at the Chinese professor, who dropped to the ground and threw a well-timed kick at the back of the leg of our daylight vampire. The guy lost his balance and his club, righted himself before he hit the grave and ran out into the street with billowing cape.
“Are you all right Mr. Peters?” Wong said, sitting up, his suit a mess.
“I think so,” I replied, joining him and touching my bleeding scalp. “Was that judo?”
“No,” said Wong, helping me up. “I was on the wrestling team at USC. A simple leg drop. But the years have eluded me. I was lucky. We’d best get you to a doctor.” I touched my head, trying to assess the degree of damage from years of experience. Koko the Clown was perched on my shoulder, ready to take me into the inkwell if I passed out, but I silently told him he’d have to wait, that we’d play some other time.
“I think I’ll be all right,” I said. “I just need some water and a bandage and a place to clean up a little.”
Wong led me back through the restaurant, past now-curious customers, and helped me clean up. The waiter gave us a hand and found some cloth for a bandage. A shot of something alcoholic offered by one of them sent a bolt through me, threatened nausea, and then gave me the power to move.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Whoever that was, he lacked true style,” Wong said.
“But he was effective,” I added.
“Yes,” said Wong. “It appears as if Mr. Lugosi is in some danger.”
I made it back to my car without further problems, fished my.38 and holster out, and clutched them to my bosom. A sudden chill ran through me, and I turned quickly, thinking someone was breathing down my back from the rear seat. It was empty. I locked the doors and eased into the street, looking for dark Fords and darker strangers.
I made it back to the theater by 4:30. Nate was eating Jujubees and David was wiping tears from his eyes.
“Hi, kids, how was the show?”
“Great,” said Nate, scrambling into the back seat.
“I got scared,” said Dave, moving next to me, “and Nate the Great wouldn’t take me out.”
Nate reached over to hit his brother on the head.
“Cut it out,” I said. “If you guys want to do this again with me, cut it out. Okay?”
“Okay,” they agreed.
Dave wiped tears from his red face and looked at my bandaged head with curiosity.
“What happened to you?” he said.
“Nazis,” I said. “I had t
o kill them.”
“How many?” Dave said, with his mouth open.
“Thirty-one,” I said.
“He’s kidding you, dope,” Nate said from the back seat, popping a handful of candy in his mouth and turning to watch a fire engine through the rear window.
I got them back home at five and Ruth greeted us at the door. “Baby’s taking a nap,” she said. “I’m just starting dinner. How was Dumbo?”
“Terrific,” said Nate. “It scared Dave.”
“The part where the zombies…” he began, and I cut in.
“The part where Dumbo’s mother dies,” I said. “Right, Dave?”
Dave nodded glumly.
“What happened to you?” Ruth said, looking at me up close. My bandage was high on my head, and my final suit was only partly presentable after a roll in the gravel.
“Near riot at the show,” I explained. “Kids trampled me in the rush for tickets.”
“Trampled right on his head,” Nate confirmed. “I saw it.”
Ruth didn’t know what to believe.
“Staying for dinner?” she asked. “Tuna on noodles.”
“Phil home for dinner?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“I think I’ll skip it,” I said. “I’ve got some work to do.”
I was almost to the car when I heard her say, “Toby, take care of yourself.” There was real concern in her voice, and I turned to look at her, wondering whether she saw me the way Wilson Wong saw Sam Billings. It was depressing.
I should have headed home to nurse my aches and see whether there were messages from my midget and giant investigators, but Ruth’s words had cut deep. My response, I knew, would be to push harder, to prove I could take care of myself and come out on top, which I was not at all sure I could prove.
My car and body knew where I was going without being told by my brain. The car took me from the valley down Laurel Canyon and headed toward Sherman Oaks and beyond to Tarzana. There was about as much chance that a beauty school would be open on Sunday night as there was that Japan would launch its attack on California in the morning. But I couldn’t face going back to the boarding house. I would have tried my ex-wife Anne but didn’t have the energy to talk my way into her apartment for a flash of sympathy and a firm goodbye, which would have been more discouraging than nothing at all. I found a parking space with no trouble and looked west to see the sun going down. Night would be here soon, and other peoples’ vampires would rise. My vampire paid no attention to such fineries as tradition. His trade tool was a tire iron and a good surprise.
Personality Plus was on the second floor of an ordinary neighborhood office building. It was open. The reception area had a counter behind which were shelves of bottles of hair products-hair conditioner, shampoos, mostly green with bubbles in them. A cardboard ad for Breck shampoo was displayed prominently on the counter. The carpet was marine blue and green, long-wearing but with no depth. Large color photographs, some of them badly faded, featured what were meant to be the latest hairdos, but the quality of the pictures led me to believe that they were probably a few years old.
There was a lot of traffic, women sitting in chairs waiting, some of them with children. I walked to the counter, behind which stood a youngish man wearing barber white. Behind him in a room with a lot of talk sat various women with white gook in their hair or wet red nails held out in front of them to dry.
“Can I help you?” said the young dark man.
I had expected a little mincing or a fey wrist, but he gave none and was all business. “Are you always busy like this on Sunday night?” I said.
“Many of our customers work in defense plants,” he explained. “We keep special war hours. Sunday is one of our busiest days. We’re open till ten. Can I help you?”
“Bedelia Sue Frye,” I said. “I’d like to see her. It’s important. Is she a student here?”
“Miss Frye is the director of the school,” he said, looking beyond me to see how the customers were taking me. I looked as if I were in search of an emergency room instead of a beauty operator. On second thought, maybe I could use a little cosmetic help to put me in presentable condition.
“Terrific,” I said. “Now can I see her? Tell her it’s in connection with the Dark Knights. She’ll see me.”
“The dark nights?” he said incredulously.
“You’ve got it,” I said. He left me to face the gathered waiting women and children. A few looked at me. Most kept their noses in their magazines.
The young dark man came back and asked me to follow him. I went around the counter and down a hallway, where we met a trio of white-clad young women, each carrying a human head in her hands. The young man didn’t stop, and the women passed close enough for me to see that the heads were mannequins with hair done up in curlers. The deeper we went into the place, the stronger the smell, a sickly, almost sweet smell something like vinegar, but not quite.
“Through there,” said my guide, pointing to a room. “Miss Frye will be with you in a minute.”
I went through there and found myself in a white, bright office with a window showing out into a long room lined with chairs in which women were sitting having their scalps, hair, faces, and anatomies worked on, plastered, baked, and threatened by an ant colony of instructors and teachers. Even in the relatively thick-walled office I could make out the rumble of sound from the big room beyond. While I watched, a blonde woman in white strode down the aisle that separated the two rows of chairs. She was stopped every few feet by a student or customer with a question, a problem, or a crisis. Gradually, she made her way toward the room I was in. As she came closer, looking directly at me, I could see that she was somewhere in her thirties, built like Veronica Lake, and possessed of a white, gleaming smile that would have looked great in a Teal commercial. She opened the door, letting in the vibration of voices, and closed it again behind her.
“Yes, Mr. Peters?” she said.
“How did you know my name?” I said, leaning back against the small desk. “I didn’t give it to Wilhelm.”
“His name is Walter,” she said, “and we met Friday. You wanted to talk to me?” She moved over to the desk, reached for a cigarette in a silver box, changed her mind, and looked at me with a smile and folded arms.
“I’m trying to stop,” she said, crinkling her nose.
“You’re Bedelia Sue Frye?” I said.
“I’m Bedelia Sue Frye,” she said mockingly.
I looked at her for an incredible few seconds while her amusement grew. The height was right, but that was about it. This woman was a natural blonde with a healthy complexion and very little makeup. Her smile was as good as the sun, and she stood straight and was full of bouncing energy.
“The same one who’s a member of the Dark Knights of Transylvania?” I said.
“The same,” she said, holding up her right hand. “Honest. It’s like a release for me. I dress up for the meetings, put on a wig, change my face, do a little acting. I’m under a lot of pressure here,” she said with a shrug, “and at one time I had thoughts of going into movies. Actually got a few small roles and then I got into this.” Her hand swept the room broadly and took in the outside. “None of my staff knows about the Dark Knights, and I was under the impression that no one would find out.”
“I’m a private detective,” I explained. “I was with Bela Lugosi Friday because he’s had some threatening letters, phone calls, other things, and we have some good reasons to believe that one of the Dark Knights is responsible for the threats and that things may get worse.”
“That accounts for the way you look?” she said, finally unable to resist the cigarette, which she took quickly.
“I think so,” I said, reaching up to try my scalp.
“So,” she said, “what can I do for you?” Her will power returned and she put down the cigarette.
“Putting it straight,” I said, looking into her blue eyes, “I’m here to find out if you’re the one who might be re
sponsible for the threats on my client.”
“Me?” she said, returning my look. “Why would I want to… that’s ridiculous. I don’t even believe in any of that stuff. And I don’t care one way or the other about his movies. He looked to me like a tired old man. Anyone who would give him a hard time has to be an all-out looney, which I am not. Say, listen, I’d like to keep talking. I really would, but things are going crazy out there.”
“Maybe we could get together some time,” I said. “I mean get together and talk about the Dark Knights and Lugosi.”
Her smile was broad and direct.
“That might be nice,” she said. I reached into my pocket, got my wallet, and found my card. I grabbed a pencil from the desk and wrote my home address and the number of the phone in the hall of the boarding house. “I’ll give you a call.”
She took the card, looked at it, tapped it with her long fingers, and tucked it in the clean pocket of her blouse over her heart. Things were never what they seemed, I thought, as she went back through the door and into the colony.
I made my way out, wondering what Wilson Wong would make of his prime suspect if he had been with me. I also realized that of the five members of the Dark Knights at least two claimed to have no commitment at all to vampirism. Back outside in the darkness, I made up my mind to wrap up both the Lugosi and the Faulkner cases as quickly as possible and investigate possibilities with Bedelia Sue Frye. I was not so twitter-patted, however, that I didn’t watch my back and front as I went back to my car with my hand near my jacket and gun. I unlocked the car, checked the back seat, locked the door behind me, and headed home.
Home is where you go, and they have to take you in if you pay your rent and cause as little trouble as possible.
Back on Heliotrope, I found a message from Jeremy Butler saying the day had been uneventful, and I found an excited Gunther Wherthman, whose excitement waned when he saw me.
“I was attacked by a vampire,” I said.
“Yes,” said Gunther, following me into my room where I checked the corners and closet and locked the door behind us. “I too have something of singular import perhaps to report.”
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