Never Cross a Vampire

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “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.”

  “So,” I said, “you heard some of what he said?”

  “Enough to know he killed some people,” sighed Lugosi. “And this poor fellow,” he said looking at Billings, “is the one who sent me those notes and the dead bat?”

  “All except that last call, the death threat; that was the work of our friend on the floor. It was just to get me going in the wrong direction.”

  “Yes,” sighed Lugosi. “Again I have been the red herring.”

  “In a way,” I said, wobbling.

  “Forgive me,” said Lugosi, helping me to a chair and fishing out a cigar.

  The three of us sat in silence, watching Vernoff’s corpse, for about twenty minutes. Lugosi, his cape draped over the back of his chair, smoked and threw an occasional look of pity or concern at Billings, who couldn’t bring himself to meet Lugosi’s eyes.

  When Phil came in followed by Seidman, we probably looked like a quartet of corpses.

  “What the hell is this?” Phil said in that combination of amazement and anger that was his alone. It meant, What has the force of evil come up with this time to make my life a walking hell.

  “Guy on the floor is Vernoff,” I said.

  The name rang a bell.

  “The one who couldn’t give Faulkner an alibi?” said Phil.

  “He didn’t want to,” I said. “He killed Shatzkin, Newcomb, and Haliburton. He was in it with Mrs. Shatzkin. He told me, and I have a reliable witness, Mr. Lugosi.”

  Lugosi looked up and waved his cigar in greeting.

  Phil didn’t know what to say to the familiar figure dressed like a vampire. I also realized that Phil had recognized the room but couldn’t place it. Seidman simply looked tired.

  “This isn’t our jurisdiction,” said Seidman.

  “It’s your case,” I said.

  “Who’s that?” said Phil, pointing at Billings.

  “It’s his house,” I explained.

  “What has he got to do with this and why is he dressed like that?” Phil bubbled, his rage and confusion ready to burst red.

  “It’s a long story,” I said, and I began to tell it while Seidman took my statement. I talked slowly but didn’t have to. Seidman knew shorthand. The slow tale was for the benefit of the rest of us.

  Lugosi followed with his part, playing it with flourishes and enjoyment.

  We all looked at the corpse some more while Seidman found the phone and called for someone to take care of Vernoff and Billings. Phil looked as if he wanted to throw a couple of kicks at Vernoff and might have done it if the rest of us weren’t there. I was clearly in agony from the blow to my back, my knee, and my roll down the stairs, and Lugosi was too old and well known to be hit. That left Billings, and I could see Phil savoring the possibility of a hard right to the soft figure. I watched desire rise in my brother’s eyes, the wish to hit something solid, but Billings wasn’t solid, and Phil gave up the desire and sat boiling.

  Cawelti was the next one through the door. He spotted me and Phil and hesitated. He looked at Vernoff and Billings and didn’t know what to do. Seidman handed him his notebook as two uniformed police came in behind him.

  “My notes will explain,” he said to Cawelti. “Get Mr. Lugosi wherever he wants to go and get this cleaned up.”

  Cawelti considered a question or protest, but Phil, looking for a victim, caught his eye, and he shut up.

  “Come on,” Phil said to me, pushing himself from the chair.

  I got up and so did Lugosi. I took Lugosi’s frail hand and shook it.

  “Thanks for saving my live,” I said.

  “And thank you for a most interesting interlude,” he said. “Please send me your bill for services.”

  “Right,” I said and followed Seidman and Phil into the night. The rain had turned to drizzle. I knew where we were going.

  “Can you drive?” Seidman asked.

  I told him I could and went to my own car. We drove in tandem through Los Angeles. I caught part of a boxing match on the radio to keep me company, but I couldn’t keep my mind on it long enough to know who was fighting or winning. The patter of the announcer and his false rise in excitement as he described the blows was like a friend at your side who jabbers on and you don’t listen to, but you like having him there.

  When we got to Bel Air, no one tried to stop us. The move up Chalon was getting routine for me, so I pulled ahead of Phil and Seidman and led the way.

  The Shatzkin house was dark except for an upstairs light.

  Phil was about to ham-hand the door when I put out my hand to stop him. He wheeled, ready to take my head, and then waited. I knocked gently. Then I knocked a little louder. In a while footsteps came down the stairs inside.

  “Who is it?” came Camile Shatzkin’s voice.

  “Jerry,” I said.

  “Jerry?”

  She fumbled with the door and kept talking. There was a touch of shrewish anger seething in her tone that Jerry Vernoff would never have the chance to be disillusioned by.

  “I thought you were going to stay away from here,” she hissed. “What happened? Did Peters …”

  And the door flew open on the bright trio of Peters, Pevsner, and Seidman, a group that could have wilted an innocent person, let alone one as guilty as Camile Shatzkin.

  “Trick or treat,” I said.

  She almost fainted, but Seidman moved forward to keep her from falling.

  “I thought it was a delivery I was expecting,” she said, pulling herself together.

  “Do you usually faint when the delivery man comes?” I said.

  Phil grabbed my arm and squeezed hard enough to let me know he wanted me to shut up.

  Camile Shatzkin, in glimmering red robe, her dark hair down, looked every inch the opera star in her big moment.

  “I’ve been under a great strain,” she explained, pulling herself away from Seidman’s support.

  “That ‘great strain’ business might carry you about a week,” I said. “Then you’ll have to think up another line.”

  “Why are you here?” she demanded.

  “Do you want to invite us in, or do you want to get dressed right now and come with us?” Phil asked wearily.

  Camile Shatzkin flushed in indignation. We all expected her to say, “How dare you talk to me like that?” but she disappointed us by letting her nostrils flare in anger and stepping back to u
sher us into the living room. We’d been there before. We weren’t impressed.

  Mrs. Shatzkin sat down on a sofa after flipping on some lights and folded her hands in her lap, ready for anything. She looked at me briefly, trying to read some answers in my face, but my face doesn’t hold any answers. My face is a weary question mark. I was willing to stare her down. The advantage was mine. She was easier to look at than I was, and I could read her with no trouble.

  “Jerry Vernoff has confessed before two reliable witnesses that he killed your husband, Thayer Newcomb, and Haliburton,” said Seidman. “He also said that you conspired with him to commit those murders.”

  I sat down without taking my eyes from Camile Shatzkin, and Phil looked around the room feigning boredom, acting as if this was the routine part of a case already wrapped up. There was nothing to read in Seidman’s voice or face. He was simply giving information and withholding some. He didn’t tell her that Vernoff was dead and probably in the morgue by now. He didn’t tell her that all she had to do was say nothing to stay out of this, to walk away clean with her estate. There was no case on her, just the accusation of a dead man, a murderer three times over.

  “How could he say such a thing?” she said, trembling. “I don’t believe he … I think you’re lying. And I think I’ll have to ask you to leave and talk to my lawyer.”

  “I guess we’ll have to book her and take her downtown,” Phil said, examining a painting of a French landscape on the wall.

  Camile Shatzkin said nothing.

  “He’s dead,” I shot in.

  Phil’s head turned in my direction and Seidman shook his head.

  Mrs. Shatzkin looked at me, but nothing dawned. Almost all the “he’s” in her life were dead. I had to be more specific.

  “Jerry Vernoff,” I said. “He’s dead. His neck is broken and he’s lying in the morgue by now. One more on the slab and you’ll have killed a whole basketball team worth of men.”

  “Jerry is …?” She smiled with a touch of madness and a shake of her head. “No. This is another trick.”

  “No trick,” said Seidman, going along because there was nothing else to do. Phil was at my side. I hoped he wouldn’t hit me in my sore back if he decided to strike. But he sensed a crack in Camile Shatzkin and stood waiting.

  “Look,” said Phil, “what’re we bothering with this for? We have a man’s dying confession and testimony. That’s enough to hang her. If she wants to shut up, let her shut up.”

  Phil clearly had a way with words. We all looked down at Camile the Widow and waited to see which way she would go. If she told Phil to go chew on an electric eel, that was the end of it. If there was a clock ticking you could have heard it, but there wasn’t. Luckily no one’s stomach growled.

  “I loved him,” she said very quietly.

  “What?” growled Phil.

  Camile Shatzkin looked up with tears starting in her eyes. “I loved him.”

  “Jerry Vernoff?” Seidman said.

  “Darryl,” she said.

  “Darryl?” said Phil, looking at me and Seidman. “Who the hell is Darryl?”

  “Darryl Haliburton,” she said, her eyes red. “I didn’t know he was going to kill Darryl. I didn’t really realize how much I loved him, needed him.”

  “Vernoff said it was your idea to get rid of your husband,” said Seidman.

  “It was his,” she said, pulling a handkerchief from her robe. Her chest rose with a sob.

  “How did you help?” I asked.

  This was it, but she didn’t know it.

  “I didn’t have to do anything, just let Newcomb in, watch him shoot Jacques, and make no effort to follow him. All I had to do was identify William Faulkner as the murderer.”

  “That lets my man off the hook?” I asked.

  Phil nodded.

  Seidman went upstairs with Mrs. Shatzkin to check her room and be sure there were no weapons of self- or other destructiveness. While she dressed, Phil and I sat in the living room ignoring each other.

  “My knee’s getting better,” I said, sitting down.

  Phil grunted. That was our conversation for the night.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I n which a famed writer returns home and this obscure private detective finds that financial security is hard to come by even in the best of times.

  It was well after two in the morning when Faulkner was released. I was surprised that I wasn’t particularly sleepy, though I was tired. I had been working a lot of nights since the two cases began. Faulkner looked composed, though I detected below that wry, thin exterior a tight sheet of controlled anger. He accepted his belongings and, to give him credit, didn’t give the usual line about suing the Los Angeles Police Department for false arrest.

  “Can I give you a ride back to your hotel?” I asked him, trying to reach the spot on my back where Vernoff had clobbered me with his gun.

  Faulkner accepted and on the way sat looking out the window listening silently and pulling at his pipe while I told him the tale.

  “That Vernoff should bear such rancor toward me suggests the frightening prospect of others who might harbor such thoughts about each of us without our knowing,” he whispered.

  Most of my enemies weren’t so subtle, but I just nodded in agreement. We paused at a red light and watched a drunk in a doorway trying to stand up and having a hell of a time at it. Faulkner and I both urged him up silently, and I forgot to move when the light went green. A kid in the car behind hit his horn and pulled me up to what passed for reality.

  “I have informed Mr. Leib that I will repay him for the advance he gave you,” Faulkner said, still not looking at me. “I would appreciate it if you would submit to me in Oxford the remainder of your bill. I do not wish to have any obligation to Warner Brothers or Mr. Leib.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “It may be several weeks or longer till I can forward the amount,” Faulkner continued in what was obviously a difficult statement, “but it will be forthcoming.” He laughed without humor. “I have been writing for years about honor, truth, pity, consideration, and the capacity to endure grief and misfortune and injustice and then endure again, in terms of individuals who observed and adhered to such principles not for reward but for virtue’s own sake in order to live with oneself and die peacefully with oneself, but there’s no denying the needs of the body. Romantic virtue is constantly preyed upon by our animalism.”

  “Makes sense to me,” I lied. “You’re not sticking around Los Angeles, then?” I hurriedly changed the subject.

  “No,” he sighed. “I will leave my agent to try to negotiate something here. I’m needed in Oxford. I’m the area chief for the local aircraft warning system, though I can see little chance or reason for an air attack on the hinterlands of Mississippi. I’ve actually got an office over a drug store where I can recruit observers. My daughter Jill likes it. She’s always complaining that she doesn’t know what to indicate on school forms that ask what her daddy does. She thinks I don’t work, but now she can list me as an air-raid warden.”

  “It’s something,” I said, turning down the block in front of the Hollywood Hotel.

  Faulkner reached over to shake my hand when we stopped in front of the hotel. I hadn’t been to the Hollywood for years and didn’t realize how fast it had fallen to just this side of Gothic decay.

  “If something ever brings you to Mississippi, Mr. Peters, I would be pleased if you would visit my family and me in Oxford. You could join a few friends in a hunt for raccoon or squirrels, and we could spend a night in the woods by a lake eating Brunswick stew and washing it down with lots of bourbon while we play nickel poker.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” I grinned.

  Faulkner got out quickly and hurried into the hotel without looking back. His gray jacket was badly wrinkled, and he looked a little frail as he moved, but his back was straight with a dignity I knew I could never pull off.

  Time didn’t mean much anymore. I turned on the radio and was
told again that a Japanese general said an invasion of California would be simple and that Pat Kelly had fought to a draw with heavyweight wrestling champ Jim Londos. While Jean Sablon sang “I Was Only Passing By,” I spotted an all-night eatery I had stumbled on before. It was small, just on the fringe that turned Sunset from class to working-class, and it always had a group of guys who looked like truck drivers sitting at the counter and tables chewing coffee and settling the world’s problems. I never saw any trucks on the street, so I didn’t know what these guys really were or did. Maybe they were movie producers traveling incognito looking for talent. I didn’t want to be discovered, so I didn’t bother to flash my glowing smile when I came in and found an open red-leather stool at the counter.

  “What’ll it be?” said the guy behind the counter as he cleaned off a pile of crumbs in front of me. He was covered with hair, on his arms and neck, and looked as if he could hold Londos to a draw. I wondered whether Jeremy Butler had ever wrestled against Londos or Pat Kelly.

  I ordered a cheese omelette, not well done, a bowl of cereal, and coffee. Three tons of fun in a corner table argued, but I couldn’t get interested. The omelette was good, the cereal was crisp, and the coffee strong. I was regaining the idea that I was a functioning human being. I could have stopped at County Hospital before I went home for an X ray of my back, just in case something was cracked or broken, but without young Doc Parry there, the place held no challenge.

  I got home before dawn and found a parking space right in front of the boarding house on Heliotrope. No one bothered me when I went in and up. No one was in my room when I flipped the lights on the locked the door with the little hook and latch provided by Mrs. Plaut. My one-year-old niece Lucy could have pushed through the locked door without pausing.

  My suit went on a chair, and I noticed the big pile of handwritten paper on my table. It looked like a few thousand pages. Maybe it was papers I had to fill out to get an apology from the Internal Revenue Service for being harassed by them when I had no income. It turned out to be Mrs. Plaut’s manuscript.

  I looked at the first page of chapter fourteen on top, “What could Seymour do?” it began. “The Indian had destroyed the pianoforte and had turned on him and Sister. He dispatched the heathen with his weapon.” She didn’t mention what the weapon was. Maybe instead of billing Faulkner, I could send him Mrs. Plaut’s manuscript and ask him for comments I could feed her, but I decided against it. A simple bill would be less cruel.