The Vampire Files, Volume Three

by P. N. Elrod

  “Too late for that—at least in your case.”

  I ignored that one. “You know that in a deal like this I should have been the one talking to McCallen.”

  “First come, first served.”

  “Huh?”

  “I was the one to set up the meeting with him in the first place. He would deal with me because he’d know my voice. Having another man to reckon with might have scared him off.”

  “Nothing short of an earthquake would have scared that bruiser off.”

  “True, but I didn’t know that until I saw him. Next time you set up the appointment, then you can make the negotiations.”

  “Not fair, you know I’m out of things during business hours. How about we take turns?”

  He didn’t say no right away, but pulled his pipe out and took his time getting it stoked and smoking. “I’ll think it over,” he finally said.

  “Bullshit, Charles.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “That’s another way of saying no.”

  He gave a mild scowl. “I’m discovered, then. Very well, I concede that you have a valid point about raising the success and efficiency of this firm by making use of your abilities, but I was under the impression you were reluctant to do so. After the incident with that woman—”

  “I was stupid and made a mistake. I’m past that now.” Stupid and greedy and out of control with my appetite. The woman he referred to had recovered from my feeding, thank God, with no memory of what I’d nearly done to her, but the whole thing was burned forever into my mind. It would never happen again.

  “Right, then. We’ll take turns, providing your involvement is appropriate to the situation.”

  “What d’you mean by that?”

  “Should the next case be the mere delivery of an item, such as the last time, I should think you’d feel rather wasted. It required a cross-country train journey, which for you is rather complicated.”

  “What complication? I just lock myself into my trunk and have it shipped to the right city.”

  “Really, Jack.” He sounded pained.

  “Yeah, I know, the porters could load me onto the wrong train and I end up in Cucamonga instead of Boise. Okay, I’ll concede some as well, but if we get in another like this one, you put me on the front lines.”

  “Done and done, but the final decision is mine.”

  I wanted to argue him out of that one, but held off. It was his agency, after all. I could count myself lucky to have gotten this much from him and quit while I was ahead. “Okay. What else do you have planned for tonight?”

  “Writing out a report on what happened for the files, then I’ll probably go home.” He opened a panel in his desk and drew out a portable typewriter.

  “Have you eaten lately?” Sometimes he needed reminding.

  “I’ll pick up some Chinese on the way back,” he said absently, fitting two sheets of paper and a carbon into the carriage.

  More than once my girlfriend, Bobbi, had insisted that the odd plate of chow mein did not make for a good diet, but Escott seemed to thrive on the stuff. He rarely cooked for himself beyond opening a can of soup or beans, more often than not eating the stuff cold from the can. Only his passion for neatness kept the kitchen from collecting cobwebs.

  “Will you be going to the club as usual?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Bobbi’s been rehearsing that new show all week and it opens tonight. You’re welcome to come along; she’d love to see you there.”

  “Tomorrow, perhaps. Let them work out of their opening-night jitters.” He spoke from experience.

  “I guess. She said the last rehearsal was a disaster, people missing cues, sets falling down . . . ”

  “Really?” He looked up from the typewriter, his expression warming. “Excellent.”

  “Excellent? How can you say that?”

  “Because tradition has it that when you have a smooth dress rehearsal, the opening will be a flop, but if it’s a string of disasters, then success is guaranteed.”

  I digested that one. “I’ll let her know.”

  “She already does, I’m sure. Do give her my regards.”

  A clear signal for me to remove my charming self so he could get to work. “Right, see ya.”

  I shut the door and went downstairs to my waiting car as he began hammering away on the machine, which was something of a reversal for us. At home I was usually the one doing the typing, with him providing the interruptions. I harbored a dream of becoming a writer of fiction, having until some months back been a writer of fact in my career as a newsman. I’d worked for one of the minor New York papers for several years, fighting for bylines, fighting for this, fighting for that, before deciding that I needed a change; hence my move to Chicago.

  Most of it had been inspired by the disappearance of my girlfriend at that time, Maureen. Hell, we were lovers, passionate, devoted lovers. She was a vampire, though that had never been an obstacle to either of us. The lovemaking was incredible and created the potential for my own possible conversion. Then one night she just wasn’t there, and the cryptic note she’d left me about returning when things were safe nearly drove me out of my mind with doubt, worry, surmise, betrayal, and a hundred other forms of self-torture. My one defense against them was the solid knowledge that I knew she loved me and that only something very extraordinary had to have come up for her to leave as she’d done.

  And so I waited for her to return, placing ads in all the papers for her every week like clockwork. I waited for five goddamned years before despair finally set in and I decided to move and start fresh in Chicago. There were too many memories in New York, too many people who knew my problem, too much cloying sympathy from some or exasperated chagrin from others who thought I was a sap and wasting my time. I left plenty with forwarding addresses in case Maureen returned, and she knew my parents’ address in Cincinnati. If she wanted to contact me, she could.

  She never did, but other things happened to keep me busy. My first day in Chicago I got caught up in some mob business and shortly thereafter was murdered because of it. But Maureen’s unique gift to me during our many exchanges of blood allowed me to come back from death. I suppose some might think it a ghastly life to return as a vampire, but for my money it beat the hell out of a cold unmarked grave at the bottom of Lake Michigan.

  While I was attempting to wreak havoc on my killers, I met Escott and not long after started rooming with him, eventually becoming his mostly silent and, when required, invisible partner. To earn my living I provided occasional supernatural muscle, and he gave me protection while I was helpless during the day; it was an arrangement that suited us both.

  As for what happened to Maureen, that’s a dark story I’ve told elsewhere. Look it up sometime.

  I climbed into my Buick and headed home to change clothes. Though I had the pull to get into the Nightcrawler Club as is, it would hardly be, as Escott might have said, “the done thing.” Tonight was the opening of a brand-new show, The Shanghai Review, starring Bobbi Smythe. My girlfriend. My lover. The light of my otherwise murky life. I wanted to dress up sharp and do her proud.

  The review was an important step up in her career. When we’d met she was the top singer at the Nightcrawler Club—and also the mistress of its mob manager. He was dead now, replaced by another mobster named Gordy, who was more of a protective big brother toward her than anything else. He didn’t have a problem with me courting her, which was fortunate for us all. I considered Gordy to be a friend by now, and I don’t hypnotize friends into being cooperative to my wishes.

  Not unless it’s absolutely necessary, of course.

  Bobbi’s singing earned her a steady living at various Chicago clubs, but she wanted to move up in her corner of the world. Last fall she’d been featured on a nation-wide radio broadcast, but she and her agent waited in vain for fresh offers to come in afterward. She went back to nightclub singing, but during the day invested in dance lessons and an acting coach. Her dream, like others before her
, was to take on Hollywood and win, but she knew she’d have to work for it.

  “One step at a time,” she said. “First the clubs, then some shows, mixed with more radio to get noticed. One step at a time, but walk fast.”

  She wanted to be in films, but going out to California and knocking on studio doors like five thousand other girls wasn’t her style. Bobbi was a bombshell with lots of talent, but she knew she’d get lost in the crowd unless she could get herself established, recognized by the right people, and specifically invited. She was now walking very fast indeed, because at twenty-five, she worried that she might be getting too old to be considered for movie work.

  I parked the car as usual on the street in front of Escott’s house. The garage in the alley running along the back of the house was for his Nash. I didn’t mind, it only meant I could come and go that much faster. One of our neighbors walked past and threw a half wave at me. I responded in kind and decided not to go transparent and slip through the cracks between the door and its frame as I sometimes did. Key in the lock like everyone else this time.

  Inside, I turned on a few lights, not that I really needed them, but so things would look right, then went upstairs. Escott had done a lot of work on the place, knocking out walls here and there, making small rooms big. The building was old and a couple decades back had been a brothel, and while a chamber just big enough to hold a bed and a night table was all the management needed then, the new owner had other ideas.

  Escott had picked up a lot of carpentry skills during his acting days and put them to good use knocking through walls. He made himself a princely suite at the far end of the hall with its own bath. My territory was just off the upper landing, slightly smaller because the bath was the next door down, but more than enough for my needs. The third floor he worked on when the mood struck and he had the time. I didn’t know what he eventually planned to do with it.

  My room had two windows overlooking the street, a bed that I never slept in, and a pleasant mess of magazines and books that had piled up during my occupancy. The closet and drawers were stuffed with clothing, most of it new.

  Two months back, in the course of trying to prevent a gang war, I’d walked away with a sizable chunk of money that the mob didn’t know existed. For all the crap I’d been through it seemed a fair enough compensation. At just a hair over sixty-eight grand, I was a rich man for the time being and still figuring out what to do with it. That kind of big cash could make for all sorts of problems.

  There was Uncle Sam to be reckoned with for one. He didn’t care how I earned my money so long as I paid the taxes on it, which I intended to do. Honest. But until I came up with a way of legitimizing the stuff, I pretty much had to sit on it. A part-time employee at an extremely modest investigations agency doesn’t just walk into a bank with that kind of dough and no explanation, especially in this town. So I bided my time, bought a lot of pricey clothes, took Bobbi out to expensive restaurants, and generally celebrated my good fortune, albeit quietly.

  With the window shades safely down, I took a moment to vanish, which cured my head of any lingering ache from the knock against the table. After that I changed into one of my two tuxedos. Yeah, I went nuts and bought two. The one with the snow-white dinner jacket was at the cleaners. The black one looked just as sharp, or so I’d been told since mirrors are as useful to me as a third thumb. Because of this handicap I had to make my best guess whether or not my tie was straight. I’d never been especially vain, but I did miss the satisfaction of seeing the final result once I was ready to leave.

  The Nightcrawler Club was up on the north end of town and, museums, aquariums, and public parks aside, was still fairly close to the lake. It really shouldn’t have been in the area, but when it was built the mobs were openly running things in this patch, and if they wanted something done, it got done.

  It was both a showplace and a fortress, though most people would miss the subtleties of the latter. There were grilles set in the walls on either side of the entry where armed goons could keep an eye on things. The walls were angled to create a cross-fire area on the street and fitted with steel shutters. All the windows in the joint also sported steel shutters on the outside, though whoever built them did a damn good job of disguising them as ordinary painted wood. The glass was thick enough to be bulletproof.

  The upstairs was sort of a free hotel to a few of the men working there, and sometimes a way station for guys passing through town. The previous manager used to live there, but not Gordy. He preferred to keep moving around. The basement had plenty of storage and a very well-concealed escape hatch leading to an ancient brick-lined passage that eventually emerged in a building some distance away. We’d used it once to avoid some crooked cops during a police raid.

  Those happened more or less regularly because of the casino that took up half the ground floor. The room was invitation only. If the goon at the door didn’t like your looks, you didn’t get in. The raids weren’t much of an inconvenience to Gordy. He just rode them out, had his lawyers deal with the law, paid his fine out of petty cash, and was usually back in business a day or so later. Sometimes the interruption was mob-ordered to distract the public from some other embarrassment and to make it look like the cops were on the job. Gordy found the notoriety good publicity; the place rarely had a slow night.

  The only thing they didn’t think to do for the place was improve the parking, but the whole city was like that. Most of the customers were well-heeled enough to take a taxi or have their chauffeur drop them off. I wasn’t one of them and circled the block a few times to find an open spot. Ordinarily I could could find one, but the papers had carried plenty of advertising on the show; it looked to be a full house for the nine o’clock opening. I finally gave up and used the valet parking, trusting the thin kid who took my keys would bring my buggy back.

  I checked my topcoat and hat and threaded through the drinks crowd in the club’s outer lobby bar to see if the hostess remembered to hold a table for me. In a black dress covered with silver sequins forming a spiderweb pattern, she wore a silly little hat made to look like a cheerfully smiling spider. The other girls had similar costumes, but with shorter skirts. The hat bobbed and the spider’s googly eyes rolled as the hostess pored over her seating roster.

  “I’m sorry, but we had to give your table to another party,” she said, sincerely apologetic. “Gordy said it was okay and for you to find him so you can sit at his table.” This drew the jealous attention of a few eavesdroppers who would have to wait for the second show.

  Well, it sometimes pays to be a privileged character.

  Not that I’d been worried or even annoyed about having my table yanked from under me. Being a familiar face here by now, I knew I’d easily find a spare chair with some acquaintance, but so much the better to get with Gordy as he’d have the best view in the house. And thanks to him I had the run of the place. After I saved his life a couple of times, he thought it was the least he could do.

  The orchestra was Ted Drew’s Melodians, and they were in full swing as I pushed through the dividing curtains into the club proper. They were ensconced upstage on risers overlooking the dance floor, which was surrounded by three ascending tiers of chairs and tables for the audience in a wide horseshoe shape. Gordy wanted an outrageously high cover charge of five bucks for tonight’s show, but that didn’t seem to deter anyone; the joint was packed. Dancing couples bumped shoulders in a haze of colored lights and cigarette smoke, and the padded walls were having a hard time muting the clamor of a large crowd trying to make themselves heard over the music and each other.

  The sight of it jolted me like a physical force. The faces seemed to smear and blend into one anonymous mass. The music and talk were unnaturally loud to my sensitive ears, and when I bothered to breathe, the smoke clogged my throat like a clenched fist. Most of the time I could ignore such distractions, but not now. The fancy clothes, perfumes, expensive surroundings, the clink of glasses, and shouts of laughter devolved into the sharp
memory of a dingy dance hall, the bite of damp wool clothing, old sweat, and shuffling feet on an unswept floor. Then, involuntarily, came the next inner picture of that floor cluttered with fallen bodies, the blood spreading wide and far, and the stink of cordite hanging in the air.

  I shut my eyes against the vision, willing it out of my mind. It had been two months, more than two months, since the killings at what had come to be known as “The Dance Hall of Doom” occurred. You’d think I’d be over it by now. I’d gotten away clean from the slaughter—except for the crap lingering in my head. The various investigations had pretty much closed the case; the smarter ones even hastened the closing lest some bright light decided the official version and the facts didn’t jibe quite as well as they should. It was a shoot-out between law and crooks with both sides killing one another off, no survivors, and that was that. Several government agents gave their lives in the performance of their duty and were honorably laid to rest, their sacrifice held up as an example to their peers. Nobody needed to hear the true story; times were discouraging enough.

  “’Lo, Fleming,” said a deep voice above and behind me.

  I gave a start in spite of myself. If my heart had been beating it might have gone on strike just then.

  2

  GORDY Weems, manager of the Nightcrawler and resplendent in the new tux he’d had tailor-made for the opening, loomed over me with a hint of smile on his normally phlegmatic face. “What’s up, you see a ghost?”

  “No, but you sure as hell move like one.” He was a huge man, not fat, and amazingly light on his feet for his bulk. Despite the surrounding babble I should have been able to hear his approach. Maybe I was having a case of opening-night jitters myself. Or more likely a hangover from a not-so-long-ago closing night.

  “You looked like hell for a moment,” he said. “Anything I should know about?”

  I shook my head. “Just remembering that damned dance hall.”

  What little hint of pleasure he’d shown instantly disappeared. “One rough job.”