“You think she was already planning to use you to get rid of her husband?” I said.
“That was my idea. It was all my idea.” He pointed to himself with his left thumb, and I could see that Jerry Vernoff was losing control. He didn’t want to be told he was a character and Camile Shatzkin was the author.
“I got the idea for getting rid of Shatzkin right out of my files,” he said proudly. “Thayer Newcomb was an old acquaintance who, like me, had never had a break. He was a good actor, but he had a reputation for doing wild things, violence. He called Shatzkin, said he was Faulkner, and made a lunch appointment for 1:30 on Wednesday. Then he called Faulkner, said he was Shatzkin, and made an appointment for noon on Wednesday. When Faulkner showed up in front of Shatzkin’s office, Thayer was on the stairway, waiting. He came down and bumped into Faulkner as if he were on the way out of his office. He got Faulkner in a cab and over to Bernstein’s restaurant. He did a good job.” “More B-picture stuff,” I couldn’t resist saying. “Newcomb didn’t study his part. He played Shatzkin as a loud, fast-talking agent right out of Ned Sparks. That was one of the first things that made me suspicious. Shatzkin’s secretary, a solid type, said her boss was anything but what Newcomb played for Faulkner.”
“Well…” Vernoff said, off-balance.
“Let me go on,” I said, inching, or quarter-inching, toward the door as I pretended to shift my weight. “He dumped Faulkner, promised to get back to him, and then went to the restaurant where he had made a reservation and date to meet Shatzkin. He put on a false mustache and played Faulkner, obviously doing a better job than he did as Shatzkin because he got a dinner invitation. Right?”
“Right,” Vernoff beamed, remembering his triumph as author-director of the crime.
“Then,” I continued, “Newcomb showed up at the Shatzkins’ and shot innocent victim Jacques. Luckily for your plot, Shatzkin lived long enough to actually identify his assailant as Faulkner, the man he had invited to dinner and had lunch with. Camile was happy to support his identification. You forgot to account for how Camile could identify Faulkner, whom she never met. She positively identified a photo of Harry James as Faulkner.”
“A slight error,” Vernoff agreed, “but I took care of that.”
“Sure you did,” I said, doing some more inching. “She panicked and ran to meet you at your Culver City love nest, and when I found out about the place, she tried to protect you by saying Newcomb was her lover. More complications.”
“I didn’t panic,” said Vernoff with self-approval.
“Not right away,” I went on. “Instead you decided to try to buy some time. I had told you about my Bela Lugosi case, and you decided with Newcomb to try to get me to work on that, to throw a few scares into me to head me in the wrong direction. Newcomb’s best acting jobs in this whole thing were his attacks on me.”
“He wasn’t just acting,” Vernoff said, “I told you he was a violent man.”
I said, “Why did you involve Faulkner in all this?”
“He was handy,” Vernoff said defensively.
“And you didn’t like him having the reputation you wanted,” I pushed. “He was the big man, the famous writer.”
“Maybe a little of that,” Vernoff agreed. The candle sputtered from a breeze somewhere, and I tensed, ready to go for the door, but it stayed on, and I let my weight fall back against the wall. “Faulkner is a self-satisfied, superior… he didn’t like me, made it clear that he thought I was a hack. I’ll tell you, he needed me. He stinks with plots.”
“So,” I went on, “on Friday night when you were working with him, you played into his feelings, made yourself…”
“Obnoxious,” Vernoff finished.
“Easy acting job,” I said. Vernoff shook his head in mock pity at my lack of understanding. “You suggested the break just before nine, and Faulkner jumped at it and ran for a drink. That way you couldn’t provide him with an alibi. But what if someone else did remember him?”
“I followed him, made sure. He came back to his room when he was sure I was gone. It was perfect.”
The rain eased slightly, went to calm, and then exploded in anger with the biggest torrent of all.
“Okay, we jump back ahead,” I said. “Newcomb is attacking me in parking lots and libraries. He calls Lugosi with a big threat-by the way, did he actually have to read that one line of telephone dialogue? He couldn’t even remember it? I found it in his wallet.”
“I wanted to be sure he delivered the exact line,” Vernoff explained.
“Mistakes, mistakes, Jerry,” I sighed. “Finding that card in his pocket, just like all the other cards in your apartment, gave me ideas. Why did you kill Newcomb?”
“It doesn’t take much to figure it out,” he said, shifting the gun in his hand to get a better grip. “Thayer and I followed you to that nightclub in Glendale and agreed simply to run you down and make it look like an accident. The police weren’t after us. You were. With you gone, we’d be in the clear.”
“Wrong,” I said. “The police would have started going over the same steps, especially if I coincidentally got hit by a car.”
“That’s your opinion,” he said testily. It was, but my opinion was based on experience, not daydreams.
“So you didn’t kill me, and I came chasing you.”
“Yes,” said Vernoff, “and while I drove I started to think. Camile had suggested that Thayer was her lover. If Thayer died, you might be at a dead end, especially if his death looked like it was tied in to the Lugosi case. Besides, who knows when or whether Thayer might someday start thinking of blackmail or might get caught and say things I wouldn’t like? I headed for the Culver City apartment. I parked near the apartment and shot him. Then I pushed the wooden stake into him to cover the bullet.”
“Got rid of a lot with one blow,” I said. “No need to give him a kickback and no need to worry about blackmail in the future.”
“I knew what I was doing,” he said proudly.
I shook my head and could see by the dancing candlelight in his eyes that he didn’t appreciate my lack of appreciation.
“What was wrong?”
“Everything you did linked my two cases,” I explained. “All I had to do was to go back over the list of people who knew I was on both cases. I had told you because of our discussion over beer about plot. And the whole thing just kept getting more and more plot-complicated. I tell you, Jerry, you would have been better off just blasting your victims, tossing the gun in the ocean, and going to work as usual. What about Haliburton?”
At some point before dawn, Vernoff’s tale would be over, and he would decide to leave another corpse. I would have liked the door closer and my odds better, but I’d have to take what I could get.
“You got him going,” Vernoff said. “You planted the idea in his mind that Camile might have been responsible for her husband’s death and might have been friendly with Thayer.”
“Which wasn’t true?”
“Not about Thayer,” said Vernoff. “I’m going to have to wrap this up, Peters. I don’t know who owns this place, but they might be coming back and I don’t want to be here.”
“You followed me here?”
“Yes,” he said. “You wanted to know about Haliburton. He heard Camile talking to me on the phone yesterday and confronted her, said he knew what had happened and was leaving. Camile called me and stalled him. She reached me a few minutes after I got back home from the Culver City apartment. I managed to get to Bel Air in time to follow Haliburton to the Hotel Belvedere.”
“Where you checked in and played Mr. Mann, complete with a shaving cream mask. Where did you get the shotgun?”
“My father’s. He hunts. I never could see the point in killing innocent animals you didn’t plan to eat,” he said.
“What about people?” I said. “Innocent ones like Haliburton?” And me for that matter, but I didn’t say it.
“That was different,” Vernoff said with emotion. “That was surviv
al. Him or me.”
“And Shatzkin? Was that survival, too? Your father will be proud of you when he hears about your hunting trip. Bagged three big ones, dad, all human.”
“Four,” Vernoff grinned. “You forgot yourself.”
“Why stop there?” I said “Why not kill Faulkner? He might start coming up with more details about his meeting with the fake Shatzkin. Or Camile? She hasn’t been a model of discretion. Why not Lugosi? There’s no end to the possible victims an enterprising writer with a distorted imagination can come up with.”
“That’s enough,” he said.
But I was going now. Survival was important, and I might get Vernoff angry now that I was running out of tales to swap with him, but I was angry too. I didn’t want to be lost in the list of victims in a plot right out of Vernoff’s card file.
“Jerry, you didn’t do anything right,” I said.
“Well, we’ll just have to see if I can learn from my mistakes from this point on,” he said, raising the gun in my direction. There was just about no chance that I could make it to the door without his getting a shot off, but he might miss, or he might not hit me someplace that would slow me down, or he might not… the time for guessing and thinking was over.
There was a creaking, something like the hinges of the front door. The sound came from behind the red-draped wall. Both Vernoff and I looked at the billowing drapes as the candle flickered. Vernoff’s gun turned toward the drapes, which parted. Dracula stepped out. He was in his familiar tuxedo and cape. He pulled the cape over his face to cover his nose and mouth. His eyes burned into Vernoff, and his long right hand rose and pointed a pale finger at the man holding the gun.
“Put down the gun,” he commanded. “Put it down.”
Vernoff fired wildly, his eyes wide. The shot went somewhere into the ceiling, and I scrambled forward at him before he could recover. I got him around the waist but couldn’t bring him down. He was a big man, but I was holding on for my life. He hit my back with the gun, and I punched at his groin. He let out a groan and doubled over. The gun clattered into a dark corner. On my back with a burning shoulder, I saw Vernoff looking at the figure of Dracula moving slowly toward him. In spite of his pain, Vernoff went for the door. He wasn’t moving fast, but I was having trouble moving at all. My gun was out there somewhere and he might find it, pull himself together, and realize he had to finish what he’d started.
I followed him out the door, moving past Dracula, who stood motionless. Vernoff was at the top few steps with his hand to his groin, where I had hit him. It was dark, but I could see him hunched over like Quasimodo. I went over the rail and onto his back, and we tumbled down the narrow stairs. It had happened to me before and I knew what to do. My arms held him tightly, and I curled my head in. He took most of the bumps. When we hit the landing on the second floor, I let go and Vernoff hit the wall with a thud.
He seemed to be through, but I wasn’t in the mood for much more. That would have been the end if my eye hadn’t caught my gun no more than a short reach from his hand. He started to rise, and I tried but wasn’t sure I could. Then the crack of lightning hit close, sending flashbulb brightness. Vernoff saw the gun and started to bend for it, but he paused to turn to the creak on the stairs above. Dracula was bathed in another lightning flash, and his voice rose above it in a warning, “STOP.”
Vernoff backed away, caught himself, and went for the gun. I pushed myself forward, and my head drove into his head. The crack sent a shock from my skull through the big toe on my right foot. Vernoff, his skull less experienced in pain, staggered back with a groan. He hit something in the dark that creaked and cracked, and then his outline disappeared.
My hand was on the wall to steady me, and another hand held me up.
“Where did he go?” I asked, my head dancing colors before my eyes.
“He fell through the railing on the balcony,” Lugosi’s voice came at my side.
He helped me to the railing, which had a gap where Vernoff had gone through. Looking down, we could see his shape in the living room. He wasn’t moving.
“It was an effective performance?” Lugosi asked.
“It saved my life,” I said.
In the next crack of lightning I could see a small smile of satisfaction on the actor’s face.
My rest was brief. There was a definite movement above us, and it wasn’t rats. It was footsteps, and I remembered the figure that had bumped into me when the shooting started.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
My gun was in my hand, and my senses were returning to near normal, which meant that I could see, hear, and feel about as well as the average living Civil War veteran.
I went back up the stairs with Lugosi following. This time I went slowly, not because of fear, but because of an aching body.
“Go downstairs, call the cops. Get the Wilshire District. Ask for Lieutenant Pevsner or Sergent Seidman,” I said. “If Vernoff’s not dead, get an ambulance. And see if you can find the fuse box and get the lights on.”
“Yes,” said Lugosi, and he swept down the stairs with his cape billowing. I went up, not trying to be quiet. The candle was still on. It guided me. I went into the room, picked it up, and found Vernoff’s gun.
“Billings,” I shouted. “I’m in no mood for this. Get your ass out here. If I have to find you…”
Something scrambled above my head. I went into the hall and found a wooden ladder to what looked like a loft.
“Billings,” I shouted up into the darkness. “I don’t want to climb this thing. I’ve got a game knee. Stop sucking your thumb and get down here.”
Something shuffled and moved above and stopped.
“Would a couple of bullets up there help make up your mind?” I asked.
The trap door opened. I could hear it, but I couldn’t see anything. Billings’s voice came down in a high quaver.
“What do you want?”
“There’s a corpse in your living room,” I said sweetly. “And we have some things to talk about.”
“How do I know you won’t hurt me?” he said.
“Cross my heart,” I said. “I promise. Will you just get down here before the cops come? If I have to climb up there in my present condition and state of mind, our conversation will be far less pleasant than…”
The lights went on. The place was not exactly lit like a sound stage, but it was lit, and I could see Billings’s pale face. He started to draw back into his hole and I shouted, “Oh no, ease your belly down here, Count.”
He came down slowly, sheepishly, heavily. He was wearing his vampire costume, and he looked frightened. He had reason to be.
“Let’s go downstairs,” I said, letting him lead the way. I blew out the candle and put it on the landing.
“I didn’t…” he began on the second floor when he saw his broken railing.
“Yes, you did,” I said, prodding him gently with my hand. The point on my back where Vernoff had hit me was throbbing violently.
On the main floor, Billings tried to turn toward the rear of the house, but I guided him into the living room. Vernoff was lying there, his eyes open, staring at his hand, which would type no more of the plots his smashed skull could not deliver. Billings tried not to look at the corpse, but he was fascinated and finally fixed his eyes on it.
“That’s what a real dead one looks like, Count,” I said. “Does it get you all excited? Ah, ah, no running for the toilet. You’re a great big vampire, aren’t you? You were going to put the fear of heaven and hell into Bela Lugosi with your threats.”
“How did you know it was me?” he said, his eyes still fixed on Vernoff’s body.
“Sam,” I said. “I’ve got a blow for you. You are the only member of the Dark Knights who takes the thing seriously. The others have their own hobby horses. Riding Lugosi was yours. I’d like to know why.”
Billings forced his eyes away from Vernoff and roamed the room. I followed him and realized that I had seen the place somewhere before. I was getting
that feeling a lot.
“This is Dr. Seward’s living room.” he said softly. “His office is next door.”
Lugosi appeared at the door behind Billings. He was about to speak, but his eyes too scanned the room in recognition.
“It’s exactly like the rooms in Dracula,” Billings said. “That was more than a movie for me. It was a possibility, a possibility that couldn’t be betrayed. Don’t you see? I couldn’t let Lugosi, the real Count, sink to ridicule.” Billings still did not see Lugosi, who watched from the door and listened.
“You see,” continued Billings, “he is not a real vampire, but an inspiration to those of us who are.”
“You’re a real vampire?” I said.
Billings nodded in confession.
“You have a coffin you sleep in and the whole works?” I said in disbelief.
“Yes,” said Billings. “In the cellar.”
“Have you ever…” I began. “I mean blood.”
“Not yet,” he said seriously. “But soon.”
Lugosi took a step into the room, and Billings turned toward him with a gasp.
“Mr. Billings,” Lugosi said gently. “Neither you nor I are vampires. We are simply men with dreams that do not come true and with which we must learn to live.”
“No,” said Billings defiantly. His next no was less defiant and more to a voice within him than to Lugosi or to me. Finally, he looked at Vernoff’s corpse and sank into a chair with his eyes closed.
“The police will be here momentarily,” Lugosi said. “I fear your Mr. Wernhoff is dead.”
I looked at Lugosi with curiosity through my pain, and he looked down at his costume and gave a smile of understanding.
“Tonight I am to appear at a screening of Dracula at an Army benefit performance. I have a little act taken from my stage role as Dracula which I can do. It’s not much, but it goes nicely with the picture. You told me you were coming here, and you sounded troubled, so I came in a cab. I found the theater closed and came to the house. The door was opened, and I heard your voice and Mr. Wernhoff’s above. I came up and saw him with the gun on you, so I moved into the next room, where I found the door leading to the room you were in. I listened and tried to time my entrance so that it would be most effective and beneficial.”
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