“Yes, this is where I found the body,” she answered, catching up.
“Ah. There’s just one thing I don’t understand.”
She paid attention to the crumpled little man. He had curly hair, a gravel voice and a raincoat. He was working on the first cigar of the day. One of his eyes was glass, and aimed off to the side.
“And what might that be, Lieutenant?”
“This girl you mentioned, this . . .” he consulted his note-book, or pretended to, “this ‘Barbie’. Why would she hang around after the murder? Why did she have to make sure you found the body?”
“She implied that she was under orders, working for this Overlooker.”
The detective touched his eyebrow as if to tuck his smelly cigar behind his ear like a pen, and made great play of thinking hard, trying to work through the story he had been told. He was obviously used to people lying to him, and equally obviously unused to dealing with vampires. He stood between her and the sun, as she inched into the shrinking shadow of her trailer.
She wanted to get a hat and dark glasses but police tape still barred her door.
“‘Overlooker’, yes. I’ve got a note of that, miss. Funny expression, isn’t it? Gives the impression the ‘Overlooker’ is supposed not to see something, that the whole job is about, ah, overlooking. Not like my profession, miss. Or yours either, I figure. You’re a PI, like on TV?”
“With fewer car chases and shoot-outs.”
The detective laughed. He was a funny little duck. She realized he used his likeability as a psychological weapon, to get close to people he wanted to nail. She couldn’t mistake the situation: she was in the ring for the killing, and her story about Barbie the Slayer didn’t sound straight in daylight. What sane professional assassin gives a name, even a partial name, to a witness?
“A vampire private eye?” the detective scratched his head.
“It makes sense. I don’t mind staying up all night. And I’ve got a wealth of varied experience.”
“Have you solved any big cases? Really big ones?”
Without thinking, she told a truth. “In 1888, I halfway found out who Jack the Ripper was.”
The detective was impressed.
“I thought no one knew how that panned out. Scotland Yard still have it open. What with you folk living longer and longer, it’s not safe to close unsolved files. The guy who took the rap died, didn’t he? These days, the theorists say it couldn’t have been him.”
“I said I halfway found out.”
She had a discomfiting memory flash, of her and Charles in an office in Whitechapel in 1888, stumbling over the last clue, all the pieces falling into place. The problem was that solving the mystery hadn’t meant sorting everything out, and the case had continued to spiral out of control. There was a message there.
“That wouldn’t good enough for my captain, I’m afraid, miss. He has to answer to Police Chief Exley, and Chief Exley insists on a clearance and conviction rate. I can’t just catch them, I have to prove they did it. I have to go to the courts. You’d be surprised how many guilty parties walk free. Especially the rich ones, with fancy lawyers. In this town, it’s hard to get a conviction against a rich man.”
“This girl looked like a high-school kid.”
“Even worse, miss. Probably has rich folks.”
“I’ve no idea about that.”
“And pretty is as good as being rich. Better. Juries like pretty girls as much as lawyers like rich men.”
There was a shout from the beach. One of the uniformed cops who had been combing the sand held up a plastic evidence bag. Inside was Barbie’s bloody stake.
“Simon Sharp,” Geneviève said. The detective’s eyebrows rose. “That’s what she called it. What kind of person gives a pet-name to a murder weapon?”
“You think you’ve heard everything in this business and then something else comes along and knocks you flat. Miss, if you don’t mind me asking, I know it’s awkward for some women, but, um, well, how old are you?”
“I was born in 1416,” she said.
“That’s five hundred and, um, sixty-five.”
“Thereabouts.”
The detective shook his head again and whistled.
“Tell me, does it get easier? Everything?”
“Sadly, no.”
“You said you had – uh, how did you put it? – ‘a wealth of varied experience’. Is that like getting cleverer every year? Knowing more and more of the answers?”
“Would that it did, Lieutenant. Sometimes I think it just means having more and more questions.”
He chuckled. “Ain’t that the truth.”
“Can I get into my trailer now?” she asked, indicating the climbing sun.
“We were keeping you out?” he asked, knowing perfectly well he was. “That’s dreadful, with your condition and everything. Of course you can go inside, miss. We’ll be able to find you here, if there are any more questions that come up? It’s a trailer, isn’t it? You’re not planning on hitching it up to your car and driving off, say, out of state?”
“No, Lieutenant.”
“That’s good to know.”
He gallantly tore the police tape from her door. She had her keys out. Her skin tingled, and the glare off the sea turned everything into blobby, indistinct shapes.
“Just one more thing,” said the detective, hand on her door.
The keys were hot in her fingers.
“Yes,” she said, a little sharply.
“You’re on a case, aren’t you? Like on TV?”
“I’m working on several investigations. May I make a bet with you, Lieutenant? For a dime?”
The detective was surprised by that. But he fished around in his raincoat pocket and, after examining several tissues and a book of matches, came up with a coin and a smile.
“I bet I know what you’re going to ask me next,” she said. “You’re going to ask me who I’m working for?”
He was theatrically astonished.
“That’s just incredible, miss. Is it some kind of vampire mind-reading power? Or are you like Sherlock Holmes, picking up tiny hints from little clues, like the stains on the cigar-band or the dog not howling in the night?”
“Just a lucky guess,” she said. Her cheeks were really burning, now.
“Well, see if I can luckily guess your answer. Client confidentiality privilege, like a lawyer or a doctor, eh?”
“See. You have hidden powers too, Lieutenant.”
“Well, Miss Dieudonné, I do what I can, I do what I can. Any idea what I’m going to say next?”
“No.”
His smile froze slightly and she saw ice in his real eye.
“Don’t leave town, miss.”
XIII
On rising, she found Jack Martin had left a message on her machine. He had something for her on “Mr A”. Geneviève listened to the brief message twice, thinking it over.
She had spent only a few hours asking about John Alucard, and someone had got killed. A connection? It would be weird if there wasn’t. Then again, as the detective reminded her, she’d been around for a long time. In her years, she’d ticked off a great many people, not a few as long-lived as she was herself. Also, this was Southern California, La-La Land, where the nuts came from: folk didn’t necessarily need a reason to take against you, or to have you killed.
Could this Overlooker be another Manson? Crazy Charlie was a vampire-hater too, and used teenage girls as assassins. Everyone remembered the death of Sharon Tate, but the Manson Family had also destroyed a vampire elder, Count von Krolock, up on La Cienaga Drive, and painted bat-symbols on the walls with his old blood. Barbie the Slayer was cutie-pie where the Family chicks had been skaggy, but that could be a 1980s thing as opposed to a 1960s one.
Geneviève knew she could take care of herself, but the people who talked to her might be in danger. She must mention it to Martin, who wasn’t long on survival skills. He could at least scurry down to Mexico for a couple of months. In
the meantime, she was still trying to earn her fifty dollars a day, so she returned Martin’s call. The number he had left was (typically) a bar, and the growling man who picked up had a message for her, giving an address in the valley where she could find Martin.
This late in the afternoon, the sun low in the sky. She loved the long winter nights.
In a twist-tied plastic bag buried among the cleaning products and rags under her sink unit was a gun, a ladylike palm-sized automatic. She considered fishing it out and transferring it to the Plymouth Fury, but resisted the impulse. No sense in escalating. As yet, even the Overlooker didn’t want her dead.
That was not quite a comfort.
XIV
The address was an anonymous house in an anonymous neighbourhood out in the diaspora-like sprawl of ranchos and villas and vistas, but there were more cars and vans outside than a single family would need. Either there was a party on or this was a suburban commune. She parked on the street and watched for a moment. The lights from the windows and the patio were a few candles brighter than they needed to be. Cables snaked out of a side-door and round to the backyard.
She got out of the Plymouth and followed the hose-thick cables, passing through a cultivated arbour into a typical yard-space, with an oval pool, currently covered by a heavy canvas sheet that was damp where it rested on water, and a white wooden gazebo, made up with strands of dead ivy and at the centre of several beams of light. There were a lot of people around but this was no party. She should have guessed: it was another film set. She saw lights on stands and a camera crew, plus the usual assortment of hangers-on, gophers, rubberneckers, fluffers, runners and extras.
This was more like a “proper” movie set than the scene she had found at Welles’s bungalow, but she knew from the naked people in the gazebo that this was a far less proper movie. Again, she should have guessed. This was a Jack Martin lead, after all.
“Are you here for ‘Vampire Bitch, Number Three’?”
The long-haired, chubby kid addressing her wore a tie-dyed T-shirt and a fisherman’s waistcoat, pockets stuffed with goodies. He carried a clipboard.
Geneviève shook her head. She didn’t know whether to be flattered or offended. Then again, in this town, everyone thought everyone else was an actor or actress. They were usually more or less right.
She didn’t like the sound of the part. If she had a reflection that caught on film and were going to prostitute herself for a skinflick, she would at least hold out for ‘Vampire Bitch, Number One’.
“The part’s taken, I’m afraid,” said the kid, not exactly dashing her dreams of stardom. “We got Seka at the last minute.”
He nodded towards the gazebo, where three warm girls in pancake make-up hissed at a hairy young man, undoing his Victorian cravat and waistcoat.
“I’m here to see Jack Martin,” she said.
“Who?”
“The writer?”
She remembered Martin used pseudonyms for this kind of work, and spun off a description: “Salt-and-pepper beard, Midnight Cowboy jacket with the fringes cut off, smokes a lot, doesn’t believe in positive thinking.”
The kid knew who she meant. “That’s ‘Mr Stroker’. Come this way. He’s in the kitchen, doing rewrites. Are you sure you’re not here for a part? You’d make a groovy vampire chick.”
She thanked him for the compliment, and followed his lead through a mess of equipment to the kitchen, torn between staring at what was going on between the three girls and one guy in the gazebo and keeping her eyes clear. About half the crew were of the madly ogling variety, while the others were jaded enough to stick to their jobs and look at their watches as the shoot edged towards golden time.
“Vampire Bitch Number Two, put more tongue in it,” shouted an intense bearded man whose megaphone and beret marked him as the director. “I want to see fangs, Samantha. You’ve got a jones for that throbbing vein, you’ve got a real lust for blood. Don’t slobber. That’s in bad taste. Just nip nicely. That’s it. That’s colossal. That’s the cream.”
“What is the name of this picture?” Geneviève asked.
“Debbie Does Dracula,” said the kid. “It’s going to be a four-boner classic. Best thing Boris Adrian has ever shot. He goes for production values, not just screwing. It’s got real crossover potential, as a ‘couples’ movie. Uh-oh, there’s a gusher.”
“Spurt higher, Ronny,” shouted the director, Boris Adrian. “I need the arc to be highlit. Thank you, that’s perfect. Seka, Samantha, Désirée, you can writhe in it if you like. That’s outstanding. Now, collapse in exhaustion, Ronny. That’s perfect. Cut, and print.”
The guy in the gazebo collapsed in real exhaustion, and the girls called for assistants to wipe them off. Some of the crew applauded and congratulated the actors on their performances, which she supposed was fair enough. One of the “Vampire Bitches” had trouble with her false fang-teeth.
The director got off his shooting-stick and sat with his actors, talking motivation.
The kid held a screen door open and showed her into the kitchen. Martin sat at a tiny table, cigarette in his mouth, hammering away at a manual typewriter. Another clipboard kid, a wide girl with a frizz of hair and Smiley badges fastening her overall straps, stood over him.
“Gené, excuse me,” said Martin. “I’ll be through in a moment.”
Martin tore through three pages, working the carriage return like a gunslinger fanning a Colt, and passed them up to the girl, who couldn’t read as fast as he wrote.
“There’s your Carfax Abbey scene,” Martin said, delivering the last page.
The girl kissed his forehead and left the kitchen.
“She’s in love with me.”
“The assistant?”
“She’s the producer, actually. Debbie W. Griffith. Had a monster hit distributing Throat Sprockets in Europe. You should see that. It’s the first real adult film for the vampire market. Plays at midnight matinees.”
“She’s ‘D.W. Griffith’, and you’re . . .?”
Martin grinned, “Meet ‘Bram Stroker’.”
“And why am I here?”
Martin looked around, to make sure he wasn’t overheard, and whispered “This is it, this is his. Debbie’s a front. This is un film de John Alucard.”
“It’s not Orson Welles.”
“But it’s a start.”
A dark girl, kimono loose, walked through the kitchen, carrying a couple of live white rats in one hand, muttering to herself about “the Master”. Martin tried to say hello, but she breezed past, deeply into her role, eyes drifting. She lingered a moment on Geneviève, but wafted out onto the patio and was given a mildly sarcastic round of applause.
“That’s Kelly Nicholls,” said Martin. “She plays Renfield. In this version, it’s not flies she eats, not in the usual sense. This picture has a great cast: Dirk Diggler as Dracula, Annette Haven as Mina, Holly Body as Lucy, John Leslie as Van Helsing.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this yesterday?”
“I didn’t know then.”
“But you’re the screenwriter. You can’t have been hired and written the whole thing to be shot this afternoon.”
“I’m the re-writer. Even for the adult industry, their first pass at the script blew dead cats. It was called Dracula Sucks, and boy did it ever. They couldn’t lick it, as it were. It’s the subject, Dracula. You know what they say about the curse, the way it struck down Coppola in Romania. I’ve spent the day doing a page-one rewrite.”
Someone shouted “Quiet on set,” and Martin motioned Geneviève to come outside with him, to watch the shooting.
“The next scene is Dracula’s entrance. He hauls the three vampire bitches – pardon the expression – off Jonathan and, ah, well, you can imagine, satiates them, before tossing them baby in a bag.”
“I was just offered a role in the scene. I passed.”
Martin harrumphed. Unsure about this whole thing, she began to follow.
A movement in an alcove
distracted her. A pleasant-faced warm young man sat in there, hunched over a sideboard. He wore evening dress trousers and a bat-winged black cloak but nothing else. His hair was black and smoothed back, with a prominent widow’s peak painted on his forehead. For a supposed vampire, he had a decent tan.
He had a rolled up ten-dollar bill stuck in his nose.
A line of red dust was on the sideboard. He bent over and snuffed it up. She had heard of drac, but never seen it.
The effect on the young man was instant. His eyes shone like bloodied marbles. Fang-teeth shot out like switchblades.
“Yeah, that’s it,” he said. “Instant vamp!”
He flowed upright, unbending from the alcove, and slid across the floor on bare feet. He wasn’t warm, wasn’t a vampire, but something in-between – a dhampire – that wouldn’t last more than an hour.
“Where’s Dracula?” shouted Boris Adrian. “Has he got the fangs on yet?”
“I am Dracula,” intoned the youth, as much to himself, convincing himself. “I am Dracula!”
As he pushed past her, Geneviève noticed the actor’s trousers were held together at the fly and down the sides by strips of velcro. She could imagine why.
She felt obscurely threatened. Drac – manufactured from vampire blood – was extremely expensive and highly addictive. In her own veins flowed the raw material of many a valuable fangs-on instant vamp fugue. In New York, where the craze came from, vampires had been kidnapped and slowly bled empty to make the foul stuff.
Geneviève followed the dhampire star. He reached out his arms like a wingspread, cloak billowing, and walked across the covered swimming pool, almost flying, as if weightless, skipping over sagging puddles and, without toppling or using his hands, made it over the far edge. He stood at poolside and let the cloak settle on his shoulders.
“I’m ready,” he hissed through fangs.
The three fake vampire girls in the gazebo huddled together, a little afraid. They weren’t looking at Dracula’s face, his hypnotic eyes and fierce fangs, but at his trousers. Geneviève realized there were other properties of drac that she hadn’t read about in the newspapers.
The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror Page 53