Countess Dracula

by Guy Adams

  ‘Fabio,’ said Giuseppe Avati, a man who would one day fry like overcooked bacon in the electric chair for innumerable counts of murder, ‘this just ain’t your line of work.’

  Which was how Fabio had ended up making his second fresh start. While he was no use at convincing people with his fists, his tongue had considerably more effect and he began to make money working as a salesman. Handling everything from encyclopaedias to stockings, he found that he could charm people and therefore sell to them.

  Then, one day, he looked up at the billboards outside the Regent Theater in New York and decided there was a new product on the market, one that he liked very much. The business seemed childishly simple to him: you found someone beautiful and you sold them to the studios, you wrapped them up in a fiction, you told stories, you made audiences fall in love. People were simple and it was no more difficult to press the right buttons in the entertainment industry than it was when you had a suitcase of nylons to shift.

  Fabio styled himself as a manager rather than an agent. He worked better with the personal touch and sitting in an office peppering studios with head shots and résumés was not his style. He had gathered a select list of actors over the years, always taking them when they were unknown and then building a story around them, developing them and promoting them until they became something so much bigger than they really were. This had stood him in good stead and he’d always been sharp enough to lift thirty per cent on all the deals he arranged, a high commission but one that he could justify when the actor was suitably hungry for what he had to offer.

  The years went by and his childhood in Sicily now seemed a long way away. Still, at heart he was a rural creature, a man of limited origins. However much he played the role of the civilised urbanite that was what he held at his core.

  All of which helped to explain why his first response on seeing Elizabeth that night was to cross himself and offer up a prayer to a God whose phone number he had lost many years ago.

  Fabio was sitting in the lounge of the Crystal Heart, a new club that had managed to cut itself a slice of the local glitterati’s custom and become a hot destination for those looking for fun before midnight. In his opinion, the reputation of the place wouldn’t last. Its decor was too contrived and its staff too easily pleased by the sight of a Fairbanks or Pickford taking a table. Treatment of stars was a tricky business: you had to show that you knew who they were but you should never fawn too hard – that was the job of the audiences – and the moment a busboy was allowed to ask for an autograph the place was destined for the dogs. Exclusive clubs were where stars went to get away from that sort of thing.

  That moment had yet to come. For the time being the Crystal Heart was the place to be.

  The band had a great deal to do with it. They beat good rhythm and the horn section had a sensuality to it that would have had Martin Quigley shedding his trousers and making a beeline for the dance floor.

  That was where Fabio saw Elizabeth, spinning at the centre of a crowd of adoring onlookers.

  At first he was quite convinced that it wasn’t Elizabeth at all – couldn’t be, in fact – but he spotted Frankie Nayland brooding at a table in the corner and, as much as his eyes doubted what they were seeing, he had known the woman long enough. This was the Elizabeth he had first met, the firebrand, the sex siren. He had had no doubt that he could make a star of her – she was halfway there already. She had that rare ability that could never be taught: she made people stare. You just couldn’t take your damned eyes off her. She was having the same effect on him now. He watched her dance as if she was the only woman in the room.

  ‘Elizabeth!’ said Henry, his latest protégé and the reason he was here tonight, getting the boy’s face out and about as well as the promise of a ‘chance meeting’ for him (it had taken Fabio seven phone calls to arrange it) with Barbara Stanwyck.

  ‘Sit down, you great ape,’ said Fabio, yanking at the young man’s coat-tails.

  ‘But I want to dance!’

  ‘The night is still young.’

  Fabio stared at Elizabeth, catching every nuance of her performance. And it was a performance: she was working the crowd in the room just as surely as she did a camera lens. One thing he could never have criticised her for was her ability to sell herself. The fact that she was also as poisonous as a hatbox full of rattlesnakes was the unfortunate price you had to pay.

  ‘How has she done it?’

  ‘What?’ asked Henry, unaware of anything but the beauty he saw before him.

  ‘Never you mind.’ Fabio caught Elizabeth’s eye and waved. He gestured towards their table.

  She smiled, then gave a slight nod.

  Fabio looked over to Nayland, lost in the circle of revelry that surrounded him yet which never came close enough to touch him.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked Henry, following Fabio’s gaze. ‘He looks like he’s at a funeral.’

  ‘Perhaps he is,’ Fabio replied. ‘That’s the husband of the woman you slept with. Maybe you should go and introduce yourself.’

  Henry laughed. ‘No, thanks. Anyway, I thought their marriage was a sham.’

  ‘In this town what isn’t?’ Elizabeth was making her way towards them. ‘Now do me a favour, Henry, my boy, and make yourself scarce for five minutes.’

  ‘I want to talk to her.’

  ‘And I’m sure you will, but not now. First business and then pleasure. She and I have things to discuss. Scram.’

  Henry sighed but did as he was told, though not before stepping in close to Elizabeth and whispering in her ear. Whatever he said must have amused her greatly because she laughed loudly enough to challenge the clarinet player as he tried to channel Benny Goodman.

  ‘He likes you,’ said Fabio as she sat down.

  ‘Who doesn’t?’ Elizabeth replied, taking a glass from the table next to them and pouring herself some of Fabio’s champagne.

  ‘So, this is the result of your new regime?’

  ‘Indeed it is. Are you impressed?’

  ‘Spellbound. And cynical … Frankie wouldn’t tell me how you’d managed it.’

  ‘Dear Frank, such a gentleman to keep a lady’s secrets.’

  ‘I don’t like secrets.’

  ‘And yet your career is built on them.’

  Fabio conceded that point by raising his glass. ‘All right, let me rephrase it: I don’t like secrets kept from me.’

  ‘Does it matter? Do I look good?’

  ‘You look wonderful.’

  ‘Good enough for you to get me work?’

  ‘There’s still the problem with your accent …’

  ‘To hell with my accent. With looks like there do you really think an audience cares?’

  ‘As self-effacing as ever.’

  ‘And honest.’

  ‘Yes.’ Fabio took a sip of his drink, pretending that he needed to think. Elizabeth didn’t believe it for a moment but was gracious enough to allow him the showmanship. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘You look great. The camera will love you as it always did.’

  ‘So you’ll get to work?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘I don’t want rubbish, Fabio. I want big pictures. This is a comeback and it has to be huge.’

  He laughed. ‘You never did want much. Anything else?’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked over towards Henry who was making his way towards the bar. ‘I want him.’

  ‘Greedy.’

  ‘You think I make a good match with Frank any more? Let’s be honest, he’ll be a weight around my neck. I need you to find a way to sell our divorce.’

  ‘The Great American Public doesn’t like divorce.’

  ‘It’s your job to make them like it. I want Henry.’

  ‘Do his feelings come into it?’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. Since when did you worry about things like that? You want your boy to make it big and I’m offering you the chance to get that. You win twice over.’

  That was certainly true. Fabio looked over toward
s Henry who had now been joined by Nayland. He could guess what they were likely to be talking about.

  ‘When Nayland gets nasty,’ he said, ‘– and he will, you know he will – does he have anything on you that could be a problem?’

  ‘Like what?’ Elizabeth smiled, a passable imitation of innocence.

  ‘Don’t play games with me, Elizabeth. You wanted to talk business, so fine, we’re talking business. Can Nayland damage you?’

  ‘He never would.’

  ‘Don’t assume. He loves you, you know that. You think he’s just going to roll over and let you do what you want?’

  Elizabeth drained her champagne and stood up. ‘Of course. That’s what Frank’s for.’

  She turned to leave and then remembered something. ‘Don’t forget the party, will you?’

  ‘How could I forget?’

  ‘Make sure we both have something to celebrate.’

  She swayed her way back to the dance floor and Fabio felt a sharp pain in his belly. Goddamn the woman, she always made him nervous. She was lethal, always had been. He could talk to Nayland, maybe get him to see the business sense in a divorce. After all, if it was played right it would bring them both some much-needed publicity. Still, Fabio knew him better than that. Nayland didn’t care about much but he certainly cared about Elizabeth. If that was taken away from him then who knew what he would do?

  Fabio’s guts ached. Things were about to get deeply unpleasant. For the first time in his fifty-odd years he felt a passing pang for the simple world of his youth.

  ‘I saw you talking to my wife.’

  Henry, his mind on nothing more complex than a spritzer, turned around to find himself face to face with Frank Nayland.

  ‘As long as that’s all you saw me do,’ he replied, intending to joke his way out of the situation. Nayland clearly didn’t see the funny side, scowling in open disgust.

  ‘You admit it, then?’ he said. His voice was slurred and Henry realised he was facing a man who was definitely on the wrong side of a bottle of whiskey.

  He was a big man, the unfit side of forty, yes, but Henry wasn’t stupid enough to think that would make him a pushover if things got out of hand.

  ‘I was just making a joke,’ he replied, trying to make his voice sound as calm and reassuring as he could. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it.’

  ‘By what?’ Nayland was not in the mood to be talked down to and people on either side of them were beginning to pay close attention, there was nothing a party crowd liked more than scandal and upset. ‘She was just a one-night affair – is that what you’re telling me?’

  ‘Whoa there! I wasn’t saying anything like that.’

  ‘Oh, so you plan on making a habit of it, then? And I’m supposed to just stand by and allow it, am I?’

  ‘Look, this is getting out of control.’ Henry raised his hands. ‘You said you saw me talking to your wife, I joked about it. I don’t know what you’re after from me but there’s no fight here.’

  ‘You expect me to believe that you only talked to her? What about last night? I saw the two of you together. Until you both vanished, that is.’ Nayland started to step closer, wanting to loom over the shorter man. The drink made him unsteady, though, and he swayed a little, knocking into a group of people who were sipping at their cocktails and pretending not to listen.

  ‘Hey,’ said one of them, turning around to address Nayland directly. ‘Steady on, old feller. You made me spill my drink.’

  Nayland turned to look at the man, screwing up his eyes in an attempt to focus.

  ‘I know you,’ he announced. ‘You’re that queer who prances about with a sword.’

  The man’s expression lost all semblance of politeness, turning into a snarl. ‘If you want to embarrass yourself in public, then feel free. But I’ll ask you to leave the rest of us out of it.’

  ‘Look,’ said Henry, still foolishly convinced that the situation could be defused with a few soothing words. ‘Let’s just calm down. This is stupid – nobody wants a fight here.’

  ‘Speak for yourself, you cuckolding little shit!’ roared Nayland and punched him as hard as he could on the nose.

  Henry went down fast, not having expected the blow. Unfortunately he managed to take a young woman and her partner with him as he fell.

  ‘You drunk idiot!’ said the man Nayland had insulted, channelling the screen hero he so often played and getting a punch of his own in. Nayland was more prepared than Henry had been and he managed to deflect the main force of it, flailing his arms and shoving his attacker backwards into the crowd. He hadn’t finished with Henry yet, though, and, when the young man sat upright, dabbing at his bleeding nose, Nayland got a solid kick in, sending him back down, yelping with pain.

  That was the last blow that Nayland managed to land. From that point on he was surrounded by people only too happy to take him down.

  He struggled as someone pinned his arms against his side while somebody else sneaked a low punch to his gut which took the wind and impetus out of him. After that it was all he could do not to throw up the last few rounds he’d drunk onto his attackers.

  ‘Frank!’ Elizabeth shouted as she appeared.

  Even though she’d called his name Nayland wasn’t blind to the fact that it was Henry she ran to, helping him up and dabbing at his bleeding face with a napkin snatched from a waiter.

  There was the blinding pulse of a couple of flashbulbs and Frank Nayland realised he had just made another in a long history of stupid mistakes.

  Detective Scott Harrison (consistently referred to as ‘Scotty’ by his friends, despite his best attempts to discourage it) did not like movies. In this he found himself in a select club of one, surrounded by friends and colleagues who made great sport of goading him over the fact.

  ‘Jesus but you’re a miserable son of a bitch,’ they would say. ‘Lighten up and enjoy yourself once in a while.’

  Harrison had no difficulty doing just that. He simply preferred to do so in a manner that didn’t involve flickering pictures of ego-driven idiots acting out stories in which he had precious little interest. It wasn’t a case of his being miserable, he just didn’t understand the fuss. When cinema had first dragged its unwieldy self into being, he had watched as excessively made-up actors mimed their grotesque way across the screen and had wondered precisely what he was supposed to be impressed about.

  ‘It’s like they’re in the room with you!’ his wife had said. Infuriatingly, she was a great devotee of the medium.

  ‘Except they can’t speak, respond or tell a story using their mouths,’ Harrison had replied. ‘If I want to see a mime show I’ll head down the park.’

  Then the talkies had arrived and he was dragged along again to see this latest innovation. He sat bored while Bela Lugosi professed his admiration for the ‘creatures of the night’.

  ‘See?’ his wife had said. ‘Now they can talk! Do you get it now?’

  ‘I see they’ve taken one of the all-time classics – a book about sensuality, violence and honour – and reduced it to a Hungarian in too much make-up moaning at a cocktail party,’ he replied.

  His wife had washed her hands of him after that and now went to the pictures with her friends, despairing of him ever seeing the positive side of the medium.

  His recent move to the West Coast had therefore been something of a kick in the teeth for him as he was now utterly immersed in a world of which he understood little. It had done nothing to change his mind. In his opinion, anyone in the movies was a egomaniacal waste of space and if he could only have locked the lot of them up and returned home to the cool, familiar streets of New York he would have been a happy man indeed.

  That seemed depressingly unlikely to happen but now, standing in the bar of the utterly horrible Crystal Heart, he wanted it more than ever.

  ‘He just went wild,’ a man was bleating in his ear, no doubt someone he was supposed to know. ‘I just bet he was on drugs.’

  Harrison looked the man in th
e eye. ‘You think I should be searching everyone here for illicit substances?’ he asked. ‘That what you’re saying?’ Predictably enough, the little man’s bravado crumpled instantly and he shoved his hands into his pockets.

  ‘No, no, I’m sure that won’t be necessary. I mean, it was only Frank Nayland who was out of control, wasn’t it? Nobody else was misbehaving.’

  ‘Then it was a rare night in Hollywood,’ Harrison replied, moving away from the irritating fellow and over to his partner.

  ‘All good fun, eh, Scotty?’ his colleague said, his smile, as always, big enough to take a bite out of the wall. Harrison’s partner, a short fat man called Brunswick, was another reason why Harrison had grown to truly hate his job. The man was a walking gland of enthusiasm, for anything. He ate as though the government had just announced a ban on food, drank like alcohol was the antidote to a poison he had been injected with and walked around the streets in a constant state of glee as he recognised every face he encountered.

  ‘It’s a waste of time,’ Harrison said. ‘So some ageing ham took a swing at another – who cares?’

  ‘Frank Nayland wasn’t a ham,’ Brunswick insisted. ‘Did you never see him in Walk of Fire? The man was an idol.’

  ‘With clay feet.’

  Brunswick looked confused at that, not understanding the reference. ‘No idea …’ he replied, not wanting to admit his ignorance.

  ‘It means he had an inherent weakness,’ Harrison said. ‘It’s from the Bible.’

  ‘Oh yeah, like The Ten Commandments. I loved that movie.’

  ‘Of course you did.’ Harrison was quick to change the subject. ‘Anyway, there’s nothing for us to do here. It’s not like anybody’s going to press charges.’

  ‘I don’t know – he fetched the kid one hell of a punch.’

  ‘Right now somebody’s agent is talking to somebody else’s agent, they’re both going to be having a breakfast meeting with someone from the studios and before you know it we’ll hear about how they’ve all kissed and made up.’

  ‘I can’t see that happening. Nayland was pretty pissed at the guy.’