Never Cross A Vampire tp-5

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  My Faulkner leads were running low. I could try Newcomb later or camp in the hotel lobby till he got there. Meanwhile, I could do a little work for Lugosi. I drank a Ballantine beer at the bar and listened to Vic ‘n’ Sade with the bartender. It was a little before one, and business was slow at that hour. I asked whether he had anything to eat, and he said he could slice up some cheese and slap it on a few pieces of bread with some mustard. I told him it sounded great. When he brought it back, it looked awful and carried a clear thumb indentation, but tasted fine, and I let myself sink into the amber afternoon darkness of the bar and beer, sharing a moment of repose with Sade, Uncle Fletcher, and Rush.

  My next stop was Clinton Hill, the contractor who doubled as a Dark Knight, he of the falling wig and voyeuristic inclination, as Wilson Wong had said. I found the contracting firm in Inglewood just where it belonged, but I didn’t find Clinton Hill. His brother was the Hill in the firm title. My boy, according to the angelic-looking girl at the desk, was an assistant librarian at St. Bartholomew’s College a few miles away. He picked up his mail at the contracting office and, according to the girl, often let people believe it was his business.

  The library was a few blocks down in a surprisingly large old stone building. It was surprising because the college itself consisted of a total of five decaying stone buildings enclosed by a rusting spiked fence and a couple of dozen acres of grass that could use mowing.

  I found a space and spotted a dark Ford slowing down a block ahead of me. I watched for a few seconds while he hesitated and drove on. I decided to start taking down the license number of every dark Ford I saw and then checking to see whether there were any match-ups to prove I was either observant, scared, or both.

  The library was impressive, like a chapel from another country. The lobby was marble and dark wood and the huge cathedral-size room with stained glass windows beyond was heavy, somber, and solid. The stained glass windows showed saints in various stages of torture or anguish. Saint Bart was the star of the show, and arrows abounded. I turned my head downward to more worldly things in the almost empty mausoleum. A few students were seated at the massive tables with books in front of them. Behind the wooden counter, which formed a protective circle, stood a librarian, a dry, tall man in a lint-catching dark suit. He actually wore pince-nez glasses.

  “Yes,” he said as I advanced. He made it clear that I was a foreign presence.

  “Chadwick,” I said “Professor Irwin Chadwick, UCLA, anthropology. I was talking to one of your librarians, a Mr. Hill, recently about your collection of works on the occult. I was wondering if he might be here to give me some assistance.”

  The dry man let gastric reaction take place, which faintly resembled human response. “Mr. Hill,” he said, “is not actually a librarian. He does work in the library, restacking primarily. He does, however, have a genuine knowledge of and interest in the occult. If you wish to go into the stacks, I think you will find him reshelving on the second basement level, in the four hundreds.”

  “Thank you,” I said, heading in the direction he had pointed.

  “You are welcome, Dr. Chadwick,” he responded.

  Behind us both the main door opened, but I didn’t turn to see who was coming in. I made my way down a narrow row of books on metal racks piled about seven feet high and found a spiral metal staircase going both up and down. I went down slowly, trying to clank as little as possible, At the first level down, light was provided by some naked overhead bulbs and a few dusty windows that were probably even with the ground. I looked down the rows of books in both directions and saw nothing. There was a remembered smell of crumbling paper about the place. I went down another level. The spiral staircase rattled a little at its bolts but held as it probably had for a generation.

  At the second level down were a few more naked bulbs of low wattage but no windows. I went to the left and realized that the floor was made of metal grillwork. I looked up and saw the ceiling was the same grillwork. There was a hollow emptiness to the place I didn’t like. A level below held more books, but it was even darker and there may have been a level below that. I thought I heard a sound above and turned to look up. My turn caused an echo of my footsteps. I touched my gun. I was getting addicted to it. A few more encounters and I’d surely whip it out and accidentally shoot myself.

  “Mr. Hill,” I whispered, hoarsely, moving deeper into the aisle between the stacks. I passed rows of books on each side, going back fifteen or twenty feet each. A few rows had lights on, but most had them off. Strings hung from each light, and to turn a light on, one had to grope in semidarkness halfway down the aisle.

  I moved slowly, peering down each aisle of books, right and left, trying to penetrate the corners, keeping a look of confidence on my face in case someone was hidden in one of the recesses. Maybe he or it would think I could see him.

  “Mr. Hill?” I repeated. I was almost at the solid wall at the end of the narrow corridor. I found another set of spiral stairs up and down. I was considering whether to go up or down or back when a rumbling sound came out of the darkness behind me. It was moving quickly and noisly out of a black aisle of oversized books. I reached for my gun and pulled it out, backing against the stairway.

  “Stop,” I shouted, and my voice echoed below and above in shadows.

  The sound stopped and I could make out a shape in the murk.

  “You were calling me?” it said.

  “Hill?”

  “Yes,” he said, emerging into the light, pushing a book cart ahead of him that rattled noisily on the metal grill floor. He was the same man I had seen at the Dark Knights meeting, without the black hair. He had some hair, but it wasn’t enough to try to save. He looked at my gun in clear terror. I put it away.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve had a few scares in the past several days. You know who I am?”

  A wave of bitterness crossed Hill’s face.

  “You were at the Dark Knights meeting Friday. You are not a member. How did you find me?”

  There was a sob in his voice.

  “I…” “I’ll quit,” he said, near hysteria. “Billings promised, promised in blood not to disclose anyone’s identity.”

  “Blood?” I said.

  “Simulated human blood,” he explained. I looked incredulous, I guess. “Chicken blood,” he clarified.

  “I’m a private detective,” I said. “My name’s Toby Peters. I’ll make it fast and easy, and I don’t care if you quit the Dark Knights or the Morning Tulips, but I want answers.”

  Hill tried to push his cart past me, but I kicked it back with my good leg, trapping him in the narrow aisle he had come out of.

  “Someone is trying to scare Bela Lugosi, maybe do more than scare him, and I’m damned sure it’s one of the Dark Knights, and I think I’ve got the suspects narrowed down to two. And you, old bat, are one of them.”

  “No,” cried Hill. “I’m not one of those people. I just go to watch. I could never do any… I couldn’t do things. I just stand around and keep my mouth shut. I couldn’t even touch the chicken blood for the ceremony. You can ask the Count.”

  “Billings.”

  “Yes,” he cried. “I live here, in the library. I don’t even go out except to get some food, pick up my mail, and go to the meetings. I wouldn’t hurt anybody or anything. I’m a vegetarian.”

  “You’re a vegetarian?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “What has that… Forget it.” If he couldn’t stand the sight of blood he sure as hell hadn’t sent an impaled bat to Lugosi. I would check his story, but I had the feeling it would hold up, which left me with damn few members of the Dark Knights.

  “I practically live on ice cream alone,” he went on.

  “Okay,” I said. “Forget it. Forget I bothered you.”

  I started down the aisle, leaving him behind.

  “Are you going to tell them?” he pleaded. “Tell them what I really do, who I am?”

  “No,” I shouted. “Forg
et it.”

  He went silent with a small shell of a sob, and I hurried toward the stairway I had come down, but something stopped me. I stood still. Some of the side aisles had lights on when I had come down earlier. Now all the lights were off. It could have been a mass fatigue of ancient bulbs or my imagination. I considered going back to the far stairwell, but that meant dealing with Hill again. I couldn’t face his complete breakdown. I pulled out my gun and inched forward very slowly and very quietly, but I still made some noise. I could see no one moving above or below and could hear nothing behind.

  I made it almost to the stairway, convincing myself that fear does strange things. Then fear appeared. It was almost noiseless and caught me in a near-dreamlike instant. It was a sound behind me, a movement of air. I turned in time to see the outline of a black-caped figure swooping down in a crouch from one of the stacks. I tripped backward, landing on my rear, and raised my gun. The black figure kicked, catching me on the wrist, and the gun spun upward out of my hand, hitting a bookshelf and going off. The bullet parted the distance between the black figure’s face and mine and made him pause before he could deliver another kick. I could hear the gun drop to the steel floor below and into something beyond that. I told my body to roll fast. It listened and the next kick missed my head. I threw a kick of my own and caught the figure in the general area of the stomach. He let out a pained groan and something clanged near my head. He had a heavy object and was trying to spread what was left of my brains over the 400 section of the St. Bartholomew Library.

  Enough is usually enough, though I’ve found it amazing how much more than enough the human body can take. I scrambled to my knees, ignoring the pain in the injured one, and threw my arms around the guy who was trying to kill me. He took another swing with his piece of metal, but I was too close and he caught me on the fleshy part of my buttocks. In desperation, I sank my teeth into his stomach. He shrieked and shouted. “You crazy bastard!”

  “I’m a crazy bastard?” I panted. “Who’s trying to kill who?”

  I got to my feet and brought my head up hard in the general direction of his chin. I made contact with about the same spot on my cranium he had softened in the parking lot of the New Moon Restaurant. He groaned and I let go of him. We both backed away. I was seeing flashes of color. I didn’t think either one of us wanted to go at it again, but something was at stake for both of us. I could see him take a shadowy step toward me, and I got ready to meet him, knowing that I’d never be able to run away and that to turn my back would be my end. 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 Alexandra 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 h
e 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.