The Vampire Files, Volume Two

by P. N. Elrod

  “Moving out?” I asked.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Ten cents,” repeated the manager. He concentrated on her, ignoring me because he didn’t remember our earlier encounter at all. The sugges-tions I’d planted earlier were still strong in him. I fished out two nickels and tossed them on the desk.

  “Hey,” said the woman. “Don’t do me any favors.”

  “Life’s too short to spend time arguing, besides, I want to talk with you.”

  “Hey!” she protested as I took her elbow and steered her away from the desk. “I don’t want to talk to you. Lemme go or I’ll call a cop.”

  “You’re too late, they just left.”

  She stopped fighting me, suddenly curious. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  “A friend of a friend of Stan McAlister.”

  The name meant something to her but she pretended it didn’t. “Who?”

  “Your next-door neighbor.”

  “That lug. Well, he ain’t my neighbor anymore. He ain’t nobody’s neighbor now. The cops—the cops said—” She broke off with an involuntary shudder.

  “Yeah, I heard what happened to him.”

  “You a cop, too?” she demanded.

  “No, I’m here for a friend of a friend. Remember? Why are you in such a hurry to leave?”

  “That’s my business. Why are you so damn nosy?”

  “Because Stan got himself and my friend into some deep trouble tonight.”

  “I’d have never guessed with all the cops around.”

  “Are they why you’re leaving?”

  “So what if it is? I don’t like cops, it ain’t a crime. Look it up.”

  “I believe you. Look, I’m only trying to dig out some information on Stan.”

  Her hard eyes lowered in sulky thought. “What kind of information?”

  “What people he saw, how he made his living, that kind.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t help you.”

  “Not even for some extra cab fare?”

  “I don’t know nothing worth that much. A place like this, it don’t pay to get curious about anything.”

  I could believe that. “You ever talk to him in the hall?”

  She almost laughed. “He talked to me.”

  “What about?”

  She looked at me with pity. “What do you think? Mugs like that are always on the make, but I wasn’t interested.”

  “He have a girlfriend?”

  “Yeah, there’s always some noodle-brain around who’ll fall for his kind of line.”

  “So he brought ’em here?”

  She nodded and drew heavily on her cigarette, affecting boredom, but I could almost smell the fear rolling off her.

  “You see any of them?”

  “I’m not the housemother here.”

  “He have any other kind of visitors?”

  Her eyes were less hard now than tired. “I already told all this to one of those goddamn cops. I don’t know nothing, which means I can’t say nothing. You want to know about the guy, ask the management.”

  “I will, but you’re better looking.”

  She put on a thin, disillusioned smile. “Nice try, kid. Maybe some other time.”

  “Hold on—”

  “I can’t, my cab just pulled up.”

  “You hear of anyone called Leadfoot Sam?”

  A little noise came out of her throat and she shook her head. She was plenty scared. “Please, I just wanta get out of here.”

  “I’ll walk you out.”

  Her mouth dropped a little, but she was grateful for the release. I carried her heavy suitcase and put it in the trunk for her.

  “Where will you go?” I asked, holding the door as she climbed in behind the driver.

  “Anyplace where I can get an unbroken night’s sleep. Hey, you don’t have to do that.”

  I passed a five to her and shut the door. “Yeah, I know.”

  She rolled down her window. “You nuts or something?”

  “Probably. Sweet dreams.”

  Her mouth worked and her teeth started chattering from more than just the winter air. She rolled the window up and the cab drove away. I waited till it made the corner then went back inside.

  “What’s her name?” I asked the manager.

  “She’s too old for you, sonny,” he leered.

  I quickly decided that manners and charm would be a total waste on him. Since there were no witnesses around now, I opted for my usual shortcut, and had him talking like a mynah bird in a very few minutes.

  The guy said the woman’s name was Doreen Grey and that she called herself an actress. A lot of girls called themselves actresses. I shrugged and passed it off. Life was tough all over. I skipped her and asked about McAlister and got some answers.

  He’d moved in about six months ago and paid his rent on time, usually putting in a little extra on the side. He did the kind of entertaining that the management was content to ignore as long as the tips were good. He had a lot of different lady friends; Kitty had been only one in a long parade.

  I told the manager to catch up on his sleep and went to McAlister’s room to see what the cops had left. It was about the same as before, but with the drawers pulled open. The bed looked dirty and depressing. I didn’t like to think of Kitty ever being in it. Perhaps their assignations took place in her own room. The supplies stored in her nightstand lent some hopeful credence to that.

  Escott’s apparently idle play with the table lamp came to mind. 1 turned on the one overhead, once again wincing at the brightness. Two more lamps flanked the bed. I checked them over but found nothing odd. They were as cheap as the rest of the furnishings and had no hidden crannies for concealing expensive bracelets. They even worked. Their combined brightness made the dingy little room even more depressing. I shut them off and stared at the walls, trying to figure out what Escott had seen.

  Across from the bed was the bureau and its mirror. As I ran an eye from one wall to the other, I noticed the crummy prints hung up for decoration. They had been left a little crooked on their wires by the cops; I’d been careful to leave them straight. They served to remind me that the mirror had been bolted to the wall. It was about the only thing in the place that might have been worth stealing. Because mirrors give me the creeps, I’d pretty much ignored it before, with my eyes purposely not focusing on its reflection of an empty room. I crossed over for another look. At each corner a bright new screw held the mirror’s frame fast in place.

  I gave one edge a tug and the whole thing snapped free with a sloppy crunch. The mirror was a fancy one-way job to hide a hole in the wall. The hole went right through the lath and plaster to Doreen Grey’s room.

  And I’d given her cab fare.

  After indulging in a quarter-minute of intense self-recrimination, I put the mirror down and slipped through the wall to look around. Doreen’s room was an appropriate reverse of McAlister’s except the bureau had been pushed over a few feet. There were three faint dents in the bare floor beneath the hole, probably where she’d set up the tripod. Normal room light wouldn’t have been sufficient for her photography, but she’d seen to that by giving McAlister some extra-bright bulbs to leave on during the show. They’d had a nasty little racket going, either for blackmail or pornography, but I could admire the planning involved.

  None of it was any too good for Kitty. If McAlister had tried putting the squeeze on her, she’d have plenty of motive for killing him. She was a little doll, cute and demure looking as you please, but I was beginning to have serious doubts—the kind that send people to death row.

  I shook out of them and finished searching the room.

  Doreen hadn’t missed a thing. Her wastebasket held wads of soggy tissues, indicating she’d suffered a bout of genuine grief for her partner’s demise, but the rest of the place was clean. I speculated that both she and McAlister had lived ready to pull stakes and leave on a moment’s notice. With the kind of business they’d worked, it would h
ave been a necessity.

  She could be on her way to Timbuktu by now and only the cops had the resources to find her—unless I got smart and called the cab company.

  I went downstairs and borrowed the business phone. It was getting late and things were slowing down. They didn’t have much trouble finding the driver who’d just picked up a fare from the Boswell House address. He showed up again about five minutes after my call and I went outside to meet him.

  “Where to?” he asked when I got in.

  “Noplace.”

  He threw a suspicious glance up to the mirror, missed me, and turned around. “What’s the scam, then?”

  “The woman you picked up here, where’d you take her?”

  He hesitated.

  “My intentions are honorable,” I said, and pulled out a couple bucks for him to see, as if money could indicate a man’s honesty.

  He shrugged. It wasn’t his business. He gave out with a street name and some general directions on how he got there.

  “This another hotel?” I asked.

  “Nah. It’s a rough patch like this, stores and things. She paid me and stood in the street till I drove off.”

  “No hotels, apartments, stuff like that?”

  “Nope.”

  “Were any of the stores open?”

  “Nah. There was a bar doing business down on the far corner, but it looked like a lot of walking for her to do with that suitcase. She didn’t want any help with it, I’m glad to say. That thing looked fifty pounds if it was an ounce, and my back’s bad enough.”

  “Here, get yourself some liniment.” I gave him the two bucks in lieu of a regular fare and got out. He shook his head, but grinned as he left. Crazy customers like me were always welcome. The exhaust had hardly settled when I heard the thunk of a car door as it slammed shut just up the street. A big bald guy stood next to the Cadillac I’d noticed earlier. He smoothed down the vast lines of his overcoat and started walking toward me.

  He seemed harmless enough, at least at a distance. I was alone and not too worried about being able to take care of myself. As he drew near I started having second thoughts.

  He was closer to being seven feet tall than six, with a massive, muscled body under the coat. He wasn’t naturally bald, but shaved his head. He carried his hat in hand and swung it up in place as he came closer. I settled my own more firmly so it wouldn’t fall off as I looked up at him. He stopped about a yard away and regarded me with a calm, confident eye.

  “I want you should come with me,” he said in an even, unhurried voice. He could have said something about the weather and it would have sounded the same.

  A dozen smart-ass answers to that one popped into mind and just as quickly died away. He wasn’t a cop, because I never heard of a cop driving a Cadillac. That left two other possibilities and I didn’t think he was some kind of overgrown hustler.

  “You work for Leadfoot Sam?” I asked.

  He smiled, not showing his teeth, which was a relief. As it was, he was more than enough to scare Boris Karloff, let alone a solitary vampire.

  “I hope it’s not a formal occasion,” I said, walking with him back to I he Caddy. He didn’t bother to enlighten me as he held open the rear door. I climbed in, sitting behind a gum-chewing driver who looked only mildly interested in what was going on. Sleepy eyed, he put it in gear and we rolled away as soon as the big guy had settled in.

  It did occur to me early on that I could have turned down the invitation. I wanted to chase after Doreen Grey and get the details about her racket with McAlister. On the other hand, Leadfoot was another source of information, and he was going out of his way to make himself available. His method was unorthodox, but for the moment not too threatening.

  The drive was short; we stopped at an all-night drugstore less than a mile away. My escorts took me around to the back entrance, used a key, and walked me in. We stood in a cluttered storage and pickup area, full ol crates and all kinds of bottles.

  “That you, Butler?” a man called from farther in and down.

  “Yeah, Sam,” answered the big guy, ducking as he came through the door. He carefully shut and locked it. The driver hung back and Butler urged me in the direction of a rusty spiral staircase.

  I wasn’t too sure the steps would hold our combined weight. They protested a little, but not alarmingly so as we trudged down to a dry, dusty room stacked with more crates. A metal-shaded bulb hung low over a table that must have been assembled from pieces, since it was too big for the stairway opening. A long, weedy man in his late thirties lounged in a chair at the far end with his feet up on it. He wore two-tone shoes, plaid pants, and a flowered vest. He wasn’t following a fashion so much as trying to set one of his own.

  Off to one side, he’d placed a straw hat, brim up, and was tossing cards at it with tremendous concentration. We had to wait until he’d finished out the deck. When the cards were used up, he stared at the hat with regret, then turned his attention to us. He had a narrow face, weak chin, and rather wide, innocent eyes. His brow furrowed, as though he were trying to remember something.

  “Who’s that?” he asked Butler, staring at me with sincere puzzlement.

  “He was at McAlister’s hotel. He put Doreen in a cab, goes into the hotel. I see lights come up in McAlister’s room. The lights go out and he comes out. He calls a cab, but don’t leave in it, just talks with the driver. I thought you should maybe want to talk to him, too.”

  “I’m Sam. Who’re you?” he asked me.

  “Leadfoot Sam?”

  He was a study in blank astonishment. “You can’t be. I’m Leadfoot Sam. Butler, take this man away, he’s an imposter.” Then he roared out with a room-filling laugh and Butler grinned.

  I didn’t know whether to join them or bolt out before it got worse.

  “You’re a killer, Sam,” said Butler.

  “That’s right.” Sam stopped laughing and stared at me meaningfully. “And don’t anyone forget it.”

  If his game was to disconcert me, it was working. Lunatics always leave me unnerved.

  He pointed at a chair. “Sit.”

  I looked to make certain he wasn’t talking to Butler and walked over to take the chair. It was a plain wooden job with a worn chintz pad on the seat that didn’t seem to belong there. Sam was blank eyed again, so I lifted the pad to see what was under it. He was visibly disappointed when I tossed his hidden whoopee cushion onto the table.

  “Get us something to drink,” he told Butler.

  Butler located a crate and wrenched off the lid, nails and all. He pulled out a flat bottle of booze and set it down between us. Sam unscrewed the cap to let it breathe.

  “No glasses,” he apologized. “But this stuff should kill off most anything catching.” He offered me the first swig.

  The last time I’d swallowed something other than blood, I’d ended up heaving it into a gutter. Once again, I was trapped by the demands of social ritual.

  He misinterpreted my hesitation and took a quick drink to show that it was all right. I accepted the bottle, put it to my lips, and held my tongue over the opening, pretending to drink. The drop of booze I did taste was bitter and burned.

  “Is it that bad?” He really seemed concerned.

  “I’m not used to the good stuff,” I hedged.

  He laughed, a single barking explosion. “Good stuff! Sonny, this is what we had left over after Roosevelt made it legal again. It’s been sitting down here for—Butler, how long has it been sitting down here?”

  “A long time, Sam.”

  “A long time.”

  I tried to look impressed. “You use to run this yourself?”

  “I don’t remember the cargos so much as the driving. It was a goddamn long haul from Canada to here, and you wouldn’t believe the hours.”

  “Gave you a good name at any rate.”

  “Yeah, it gave me a good name. Now what’s yours?”

  I started to say Jack the Giant Killer and thought better of it, not bein
g too sure of Butler’s temper. I opted for my middle name and the name of my favorite radio hero. “Russell Lamont.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Russell Lamont.” He took his feet off the table to lean over and shake hands. “You a cop?”

  “No.”

  “ ’ S’funny, ’cause I’m getting a cop smell off you.”

  I showed him an old press card and covered up the name with my thumb. “I’m a reporter. Is that close enough to cop to get the smells mixed?”

  He didn’t like it, but was still too curious to throw me out. “How about telling me what your interest is in Sam McAlister?”

  “He’s a friend of a friend.”

  Sam shook his head, his narrow shoulders slumped tragically. “Aw, that’s not nice, Russell. You come down here, drink my booze, and then fib. Shame on you.”

  “That’s the best I can do unless there’s something in it for me.”

  “What’d’ya have in mind?”

  “Information on McAlister and Doreen Grey.”

  “Gonna write a big story and name names?”

  “Nah, I just want to help some kid out of a jam.”

  It was the truth, but he didn’t want to believe it. “Ever think that you might be in a jam?” His gaze flicked to Butler, who was still looming somewhere in the back.

  “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  That was a barrel of monkeys to both of them. I smiled, too, just to show them I was a good sport. I was still smiling when Butler appeared behind me, gripped the seat of the chair, and steadily lifted it and me to the ceiling.

  ”You sure about what you can handle?” asked Sam.

  Butler bumped the chair up and down a few times so that my head brushed a ventilator conduit.

  I couldn’t help but smile again. “You should rent him out to carnivals. He’d make a great ride.”