Never Cross a Vampire

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Haliburton checked in at one in the morning?” Seidman said, consulting his notebook. It was almost dawn.

  “Yes,” said the clerk.

  “And Mr. Mann in 303?” Seidman continued. Phil simply stood with his arms crossed, looking angry. The clerk couldn’t keep his eyes from him.

  “Let’s see,” he said, finding a pair of glasses and checking his register. “Checked in a few minutes later. Said he was a colleague of Mr. Haliburton and wanted a room very near him. I gave him 303 right below, which didn’t seem …”

  “What did he look like?” Seidman interrupted.

  “Mr. Haliburton?” asked the clerk.

  “Mann.”

  “Glasses, dark mustache, hat tilted forward, a fairly large man, not as large as Mr. Haliburton,” said the clerk.

  “Think you could identify Mann again without the hat, glasses, and mustache?” asked Seidman.

  “Without … I don’t know. I didn’t really stare at him. We were busy at the time …”

  “Thanks,” said Seidman, closing his notebook.

  “Our killer has flair,” I said as we walked back to the car. “A wooden spear in the stomach and a shotgun blast through a floor.”

  “If the same guy did both these jobs tonight,” Phil said.

  “It’s possible,” I said, getting into the car.

  “You thought Billy Conn was going to beat Joe Louis,” Phil reminded me. “I think we should talk to Mrs. Shatzkin.”

  Seidman nodded. The sun was definitely coming up and it was Tuesday. On the way to Bel Air we stopped at a stand for coffee and some sinkers. The guy had no cereal. I looked at the counterman’s newspaper while he read it and caught only the headline that said the United States had sunk a Japanese warship and crippled a battleship from a secret air base near Manila.

  It was just before seven when we got to the front door of the Shatzkin house. Phil knocked instead of pressing the bell. The Mexican maid answered. She was wearing a robe and a yawn.

  “Mrs. Shatzkin is still sleeping,” she whispered.

  “Wake her up,” Phil said.

  “But …”

  “But hell,” Phil shouted, “Tiene prisa. Move.”

  The frightened girl moved. We could hear her going up the stairs as we entered the hall. Phil led the way and found the living room. He looked at the furnishings with distaste, probably comparing the place to his own in North Hollywood and not enjoying the comparison and the lack of sleep.

  Camile Shatzkin came down in about five minutes. She had taken the time to put on her face and a robin’s-egg blue robe that cut a nice V at the neckline, which could distract us.

  “What is this?” she said.

  “We’re the scorekeepers,” I said.

  Phil told me to shut up.

  “Mr. Peters says you admitted yesterday to being a close friend of Thayer Newcomb,” Phil said. “Is that right?”

  “Why yes,” she said with a slight fluster and hand movement. “I’ve known Thayer for …”

  “And you rented an apartment in Culver City where you could meet him secretly,” Phil went on.

  Mrs. Shatzkin bit her lower lip prettily.

  “I don’t see what this has to do with my husband’s murder,” she said. “If you are going to persist along these lines, I’m going to have to insist that I can say no more until I talk to my lawyer.”

  “Newcomb is dead,” I said.

  Phil shot me a look that should have sent me skidding on my heels through the wall.

  “Thayer is dead?” she said, putting her right hand up to her throat. “That’s awful. How?”

  “Someone shoved a wooden stake into his chest,” I said.

  Phil stepped toward me with a ready fist. I tried to watch him and Camile Shatzkin. I interpreted her look as shock and fear, but I didn’t see any grief coming for a lost lover. She sobbed and sat with shaky knees on the nearest chair.

  “When did you see Mr. Newcomb last, Mrs. Shatzkin?” Seidman asked, to draw Phil’s attention from me.

  “I don’t know,” she said weakly, “Maybe a week, two weeks. I don’t know. We were … we had decided not to see each other again. I regretted the whole thing. And then Jacques died.”

  I still didn’t see any grief and neither did Phil or Seidman.

  “Do you know where Mr. Haliburton is?” Seidman went on.

  She looked up in something resembling surprise.

  “Why? I mean, he left last night. Quit. He was very devoted to Jacques, almost a son to us. He just couldn’t stand being around here. I understood.”

  If there was any devotion in Haliburton, it had been directed at Mrs. Shatzkin, and if there was maternal love in his looks, Oedipus could move over to make room for one more on the couch.

  “Haliburton is dead,” I said, taking two steps back from Phil.

  Seidman stepped between us and said softly, “Phil, Phil … not here.”

  “He’s dead?” Mrs. Shatzkin said with eyes opening in bewilderment.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Isn’t it curious how men who get too close to you wind up dead? The count is three, and the way I see it, there’s one left. Care to come up with a name, Camile?”

  Camile coughed like her namesake and almost had a fit.

  “Maria,” she called through the cough, “Maria.”

  The maid came running in.

  “Call Doctor Gartley now. Tell him to come quickly. I’m going to my room.”

  Without a goodbye or final comment, she made her exit.

  “I’d give her one and a half stars on that performance,” I said. “She wasn’t upset about Newcomb’s death, and maybe she knew about Haliburton getting it.”

  I was waiting for Phil’s fist and backed away when I saw it coming out of the corner of my eye. He missed by inches, and I went behind the couch.

  “You bastard,” he said. “I told you to keep your mouth shut. I wanted to move this thing slowly.”

  “I’ve got a client in jail,” I said. Seidman was touching Phil’s arm to suggest restraint. He wasn’t actually going to step in my brother’s way if he lost control.

  “She’s in this with somebody,” I said.

  “In what?” said Phil. “Shatzkin’s murder? Newcomb, Haliburton? Is she keeping busy on the side by threatening Bela Lugosi? It sounds like a cheap movie.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?” I said, getting a germ of an idea. I knew the germ would sprout, grow, and itch until I made something of it.

  I sat as far away from Phil in the back seat as I could when we drove back, and I didn’t say anything. They parked at the Wilshire station and got out.

  “You want me to come upstairs?” I said.

  “I think we want you to go away, Toby,” Seidman said.

  “My car is in Culver City,” I said.

  “Take a streetcar,” Phil said.

  “What about Lugosi?” I called at the two detectives going up the stairs.

  “We’ll put a man on him,” Seidman said and disappeared through the dirty glass doors that caught the sun and sent it dancing in my mind.

  I caught the streetcar, paid my nickel, and fell asleep. At the end of the line, the motorman woke me up and I rode back again trying to stay awake. I could easily have become the Flying Dutchman of the Los Angeles transit system. It took me almost an hour to get back to my car.

  Since I was there, I dropped in to see Rouse, the janitor.

  When he saw me in the hall, he said, “No,” and closed his door.

  “I left my tire iron upstairs,” I shouted.

  No answer.

  “I owe you five bucks,” I shouted. The door opened.

  “Give it to me and go,” he said, chewing away as he had before. I wondered whether it was food consumption or a nervous habit.

  “One last question,” I said. “For another five.”

  Rouse looked toward the stairs.

  “I been up hours cleaning that blood,” he said. “Didn’t get back to sleep. My wife wants
to move. Where am I going to get another job?”

  “Sorry to hear that,” I said. “Did you get a look at the body before they took it out?”

  “Yeah,” he said, looking up the stairs.

  “You recognize him?”

  Rouse shrugged.

  “I told the police maybe, but there was another guy who went there. Bigger guy, not big-big, but good-sized. I could tell by hearing them over my head. Never got a look at him. I thought he was Mr. Offen.”

  I gave him the five and said thanks.

  “Police said not to touch anything up there,” he said. “I’ll get your tire iron when I can.”

  He went back inside. I’d dropped my gun in a library and my tire iron in an apartment. I checked to be sure my wallet was still in my back pocket. It was.

  I drove back home slowly to keep from killing any more Los Angelians and got there by nine. I pulled myself up the stairs, fished out some change, and made some calls. First I called Shelly and told him if he saw Jeremy Butler to tell him to drop the watch on Lugosi. Shelly said I had two more messages from Bedelia Sue Frye. Then I called Lugosi’s house and left a message to tell Butler to go home if he showed up. My next call was to my brother. I got Seidman instead.

  “Phil’s gone home for a few hours,” he said. “And I was on the way out. What’s up?”

  “How about a suggestion for the medical examiner who does the autopsy on Newcomb?” I said. “Have him look for a bullet.”

  “There was no bullet hole in the corpse,” Seidman said. “Just the wooden spike.”

  “What if there was a bullet hole,” I said, holding back a yawn, “but someone didn’t want you to know it and …”

  “… he shoved the stake in to cover the wound,” Seidman completed. “What the hell for?”

  “To make it look like a vampire caper,” I explained. “To link Newcomb to the Lugosi case. Newcomb had been cropping up and giving me scares. He was working with someone to keep me as far away from the Shatzkin murder and as close to the Lugosi case as possible. Remember, I’m probably the thing that links the two.”

  “I’ll tell the medical examiner,” said Seidman. “Anything else?”

  There was nothing else. I hung up, drooped to my room, and closed my shades. I put my clothes on the chair near the table and hit the mattress with a roll. I was out before a vampire bat could blink a blind eye.

  I dreamed of blood and roses, shaving cream and dark basements. Out of the crash of images, I found myself a little kid again in the basement below the store my old man had owned in Glendale. I hated to go down there and get boxes. It was dark with wooden shelves and places for nightmares to hide. An old Negro named Maury had slept down there from time to time. Maury used to help in our store and others in the neighborhood. Maury died when I was about seven, and I didn’t want to meet his ghost in the basement. In my dream, I went down and looked around. I wasn’t alone. The room was the same, unchanged in any way. I could see along the floor, in some light without a source, my own footsteps in the dust. In the light opposite me were three women. Even in the dream I thought I had to be dreaming because the light was behind them, and they threw no shadow. Two of the women were dark. One was Bedelia Sue Frye in her vampire costume, and the other was Camile Shatzkin in her widow’s black dress. Their eyes were dark and seemed almost red. The other woman was blonde with great wavy golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face and couldn’t remember how or where. All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the red of their soft lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my chest a hope that they would kiss me with those red lips. They whispered together and laughed. It sounded like waterglasses tinkling. The blonde girl shook her head and the other two urged her on. Camile said:

  “Go on. You’re first and then us.”

  Bedelia continued, “He’s strong. There are kisses for us all.”

  The blonde girl came forward and I couldn’t move, couldn’t call my father or brother. She bent over me till I could feel her breath on me, honey-sweet and at the same time bitter. Then I smelled blood and recognized her. It was Bedelia Sue Frye as I had seen her in the early evening. She was two people in the same room with me, and I was frightened.

  She arched her neck and licked her lips like an animal till I could see the moisture shining on her lips and on the red tongue as it touched the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as her lips moved below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and I could feel the skin of my throat begin to tingle the way your skin feels when you expect someone to tickle you. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on my throat and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes and waited. But something made a noise, and I opened them to see Bela Lugosi.

  “Go, go,” he shouted at the three women, taking his cigar out of his mouth to wave them from the basement. “I must awaken him, for there is work to be done.”

  And I woke up. My mattress was soaked with sweat.

  “Toby,” came a voice. I looked around and saw no one. Then I made out a face and figure.

  “You screamed,” said Gunther Wherthman, standing near my mattress on the floor.

  “Nightmare,” I told him, sitting up. “What time is it?”

  “It is just after 6:30,” he said, looking at the Beech-Nut gum clock.

  I got up, flexed my good leg, and moved my sore knee to be sure it would work. Then I turned on the radio and listened to Fibber McGee and Molly for a while while Gunther volunteered to scramble a few eggs and make toast. Mayor LaTrivia tried to convince McGee to run for water commissioner against Gildersleeve, but McGee said he had his own fish to fry. I didn’t say anything through the meal, and Gunther didn’t ask me anything more. Things were coming together, and my mind was clearing. I poured some ketchup on the eggs and put them between two pieces of toast.

  “I think I’ve got it,” I said, taking a bite that left me about half a sandwich.”

  “You know who your murderer is?” Gunther asked politely, taking a small forkful of egg.

  “Right,” I said, chewing. “Now all I need is some evidence.”

  “Or a confession from the culprit? Is that an archaic word, ‘culprit’?”

  “It isn’t used much in my circles,” I said, finishing the sandwich.

  I borrowed a couple of nickels from Gunther, got dressed, and called the murderer.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I f you want to put things on an epic scale, fate intervened and stayed the course of the schedule I had set for the next few hours. If you want to put things in perspective, you simply say I had a flat tire, which is about ten minutes’ work, since I had a spare. That is, it’s ten minutes’ work if you have a tire iron, which I did not. Mine was in the kitchen of an apartment in Culver City.

  Mrs. Plaut had a car, a 1927 Ford that had remained untouched in her garage since 1928, the year Mr. Plaut died. I knew she had some tools in the garage with the car, and I hurried to get the key.

  “I wonder if I could borrow some tools,” I said after Mrs. Plaut opened her door and blessed me with a smile.

  “They are, they are,” she said with a wise, sad shake of her head and started to close the door on me. I had to put out my hand to stop her.

  “My car,” I shouted. “I need a tire iron,” I mimed the changing of a tire and held her attention. “Tire iron. Tools.”

  “Fools?”

  “Tools.”

  “Tools,” she said finally in comprehension. “Out in the garage. I’ll get the key.”

  Five minutes later I was changing the tire and trying not to get dirty. Time was shuffling away, singing a crazy old tune while I tried to catch up. The sun was still around when I finished and hurried in to wash my hands.

  “
When I returned the keys to Mrs. Plaut, she took my sleeve and dragged me into her living room.

  “You must listen to this part,” she said. Mrs. Plaut had been writing her family history for the last ten years. It was over 1200 pages long, and whenever she could trap me or Gunther, she read it to us. She was under the impression that I was a part-time writer. I never found out where she got this impression.

  “Mrs. Plaut,” I said patiently, looking at my watch and getting pushed into her overstuffed chair. “I’ve got to go. It’s a matter of life and death.”

  “Of course,” she said, finding the pages on her oak table. “Here it is.”

  She showed me a page with an oblong box that looked like a coffin drawn on it.

  “That’s California,” she explained.

  “And those arrows pointing at it from each direction?” I asked.

  “One on the left is England. Sir Francis Drake claimed California for Queen Elizabeth. One on top is Russia. They were after California. One on the right is France. They had the land the other side of the Rockies. The one below is Spain coming up from Mexico. Those poor damned Indians didn’t know what hit them.”

  “But if this is your family history,” I asked reasonably, “why are you giving California’s …”

  “Context,” she said with satisfaction. “Got to know what we came to. History of turmoil.”

  “Terrific,” I said, getting up with difficulty and barely escaping the plate of cookies she held waist-high. “Leave it in my room. I’ll look at it when I get back.”

  I went out the door and into the street without looking back. Seconds later, I was on my way to the St. Bartholomew Library. It was a few minutes after seven when I got there, and the same crust of a librarian watched my arrival with erect superiority. My footsteps echoed through St. Bart’s, and I wondered whether Clinton Hill was still burrowed below our feet in some dark clanking corner.