by P. N. Elrod
The stairs led down to pitch darkness. I was reluctant to enter it and investigate; the hair on my nape was already on end. It was my own fault, since I’d shattered the overhead bulb myself.
I swallowed dryly, went transparent, and slowly coasted along the twisting metal rail into the basement. At the foot of the steps I was solid again with my nerves running on full. The breathing from a single set of lungs continued with the undisturbed regularity of sleep. I took a chance and lit a match. The burst of yellow fire flared and settled, revealing the room pretty much as I’d left it, except for the man sprawled senseless on the floor. He gripped a flashlight in one hand. It was on, but the batteries were exhausted.
His clothes were sprinkled with liquor and shards of brown bottle glass, and there was a hell of a bump and cut on his forehead. He was the driver who was supposed to be watching Doreen. She must not have expected me to return and had aced him herself when she got the chance. I couldn’t blame her, but it was an unexpected nuisance. First Kitty and now Doreen … it was really my night for losing people.
I searched the rest of the store, but she was long gone. I left him to sleep it off, got in the Caddy, and drove quickly back to the studio. It was empty. Sam and Butler had pulled themselves together and left, hopefully for good. They were probably busy right now finding the driver in the drugstore basement.
Doreen’s clothes were still scattered all over the place. I packed whatever I could find into her suitcase, then carried it away with me as I went to pick up Escott’s car. Before leaving, I left a note for her hanging prominently from a slightly dented tripod. Chances were that if she had the moxie to smash a bottle over a guy’s head, she’d eventually return to pick up her things. My note had Escott’s office number and directions to call him for the stuff. I still had some questions for her and no doubt so would Escott after he’d heard about the evening’s events.
His Nash had come to no harm sitting on the street, but I decided to take it home and pick up my more expendable Buick later. Though his concern for the safety of his car had only been a blind to get me here in the first place, it could do no harm to follow through with the ruse. Lieutenant Blair was a detail-minded man and I wouldn’t put it past him to check up on me. I wondered if Escott had managed to talk his way out of his spot. If anybody could, he was the one to do it. I’d find out later; I had an errand to run now that I didn’t dare put off.
The Stockyards were cold and quiet. The cattle huddled in their small pens and only rarely did one of them vocalize their collective misery at this late hour. The time was ideal for me, with no human eyes to watch as I crouched by an animal and sucked blood from a vein I’d opened with my teeth. It sounds pretty bad, but as Bobbi had once pointed out, I didn’t have to kill in order to feed myself.
What had happened tonight, though, had shaken me from that confident complacency. I was running scared. The fusion of desire and appetite that I’d experienced with Doreen had nearly been too much to handle. After all these months, I thought I knew all there was to know about being a vampire, but circumstance and opportunity had proved me wrong, almost dead wrong, as far as Doreen was concerned.
I was never going to place myself or anyone else into that kind of a situation again.
The emotional temptation was easily avoided; all I had to do was swear off hypnotizing people. The intimate bond required for such deep hypnotic control was a two-way trap. Breaking free of the one I’d fallen into with Doreen had been one of the most difficult things I’d ever done. The next time, I might not be able to do it, therefore, there would be no next time. I would stick with simple and direct suggestions, nothing more.
As for the physical temptation, I was taking care of that by drinking deeply from a safe source. Usually I had only to drop by the Stockyards once every three nights, sometimes four, depending how often Bobbi and I got together. That would be altered to every other night. My hunger was inescapable, but easily remedied. To ignore it was to take chances with other lives.
I drank as much as I needed and more until the hot strength surged through and filled me with its red tide of life. Appetite and a shadowy mental bond that I barely understood had contributed to the incident; both would be under sharp control from now on. I only hoped that it would work.
Escott’s office by the Stockyards was closed tight and deserted, so I moved on and purposely took a route home that led past Bobbi’s hotel. Her living-room window on the fourth floor was visible from the street. It was just after three A.M., but her lights were glowing. She always spent at least an hour winding down from her work at the Top Hat; this was an open invitation for me to drop in on her. Without thinking, I found a place to park and went inside.
I took the elevator up and exchanged meaningless pleasantries with the sleepy operator. He opened the doors and I walked out as I had done a hundred times before. The doors slid shut behind me and the thing descended back to the lobby again.
I was halfway down the hall when I realized I absolutely could not go in to see her, at least not tonight. The truth of it was that I was still uneasy and Bobbi was perceptive enough to be able to spot it. She would want to know what was wrong and this wasn’t something I could talk about. Especially to her.
What I was capable of doing and what I had done frightened me, but mixed in with the fear was a large chunk of guilt. It wouldn’t matter much to Bobbi that I’d fed from Doreen as if she’d been one of the cattle in the pens. The simple fact was that I’d been with another woman. As I saw things, it was more than enough to destroy our relationship.
No, going in to see Bobbi tonight would be another big mistake. I needed time to settle down. Tomorrow night would be soon enough. I punched the button and waited for the elevator to return. The operator didn’t ask questions about my change of mind, which was just as well.
The hotel lobby should have been deserted at this time of the morning. The night clerk often napped on the office sofa, and Phil, the hotel detective, usually hung out in the radio room when he wasn’t making his rounds. Both of them were now at the front desk with two other men I didn’t know and there was something about their collective posture that caught my attention.
Phil was a leaner. He leaned against pillars, chairs, tables, whatever was handy, and rarely put his weight on more than one foot at a time. Now he stood straight and alert with his hands at his sides and a look on his face that was no look at all. He’d blanked out all expression and not once did his gaze flick over to me, though he was certainly aware of the elevator doors when they opened.
The clerk was a slightly younger man whose name I’d never bothered to catch. He was also standing straight, with his hands in front of him on the counter as though he needed it to keep his balance. His eyes were wide and flashed briefly on me as I emerged into the lobby.
It was subtle stuff to pick up within the space of a couple seconds, but enough to make me pause.
One of the two strangers slowly turned his head in my direction. The other continued to face Phil and the clerk and didn’t move. My pause became a full stop. Something was wrong, but I wasn’t sure what to do about it.
The one looking at me took his time. He had a dark, unpleasant face with an expression to match, and both his coat and overcoat were unbuttoned. It was very cold outside and I could think of only one reason why a man would not bundle up against it.
The hair on my nape began to rise as he broke away and walked over. I waited for him.
“That your Nash out front?” he asked.
He already knew the answer, so I nodded. “Who wants to know?”
“Come with me and find out.”
“You a cop?” I knew he wasn’t and he knew I knew, and so on. It was part of the game we were playing. He shook his head. I checked on his partner, who was still watching Phil and the clerk. No one had moved an inch. “He coming, too?”
“Yeah.”
“Then call him off.”
“Rimik.”
“Okay, Hodge,” the
other man answered.
He broke away from the desk, never once turning until he had enough angle and distance to cover us all. He wasn’t showing any gun, you just knew it was there. The clerk was freely sweating now. Phil threw a silent question at me; I shook my head.
“You boys get on with things,” I said. “Business as usual.”
They had their own skins to keep in one piece, so no one said a thing as I walked from the lobby door under escort. It was an armed escort, but we were busy pretending that everything was normal.
As we stepped outside, a Cadillac with smoked-over windows pulled up. Its motor was so silent that all you could hear were the tires rolling over the pavement. These guys liked the classy cars, all right, but I was getting a different feeling from this bunch. They were as far removed from Leadfoot Sam as a tiger is from a tabby cat, and proportionately more dangerous.
I got into the backseat and Rimik climbed in next to me. Hodge sat in front with the driver. The car was in top shape; I barely noticed when we started to move.
Rimik was focused on the back of the driver’s neck, but I had no doubt he was more than prepared to deal with any fast moves on my part. I kept my hands in the open and watched our route through the front window. I couldn’t see out the side ones. There was a divider between the front and back, which was probably also opaque, but they didn’t bother raising it. That could be good or bad. I was assuming the worse, but too curious to take action about it just yet. First I’d find out what they were after, then I’d think about getting away.
We drove over the river and into a familiar neighborhood, though 1 hadn’t been through the area since last August, when I’d first arrived in Chicago. Nothing seemed to have changed, it was only colder and more empty than before. The cheap hotels and pawnshops gave way to long blocks of warehouses and inadequate lighting. The drive was half an hour of total silence. The last leg of it took us along a narrow street running between two huge warehouses built out over the river. We stopped at a side door.
Hodge was out first to cover things. Rimik signed for me to move.
“What’s this about?” I asked, because it was time I showed some curiosity. I was also genuinely uneasy.
“Later,” said Hodge.
The driver was ahead of us and opened the narrow door into the warehouse, then hit the lights. The place was still gloomy. It was full of crates of all kinds and the sharp odor of new wood, excelsior, and machine oil. It looked naggingly familiar. The stenciled labels on the crates identified their contents as machine parts. That tripped the final switch in my memory. I fought down an involuntary shudder that had nothing to do with the winter air.
Hodge sat on a crate, Rimik stood and stared at me, and the driver went to the office I knew to be out front. He returned several minutes later, nodded once at Hodge, then leaned against the far wall and fired up a cigarette.
I looked at Hodge. “It’s later. What’s this about?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“I’ll find out now, or I’m walking.”
“You can try, kid.”
From out of nowhere, Rimik had produced a big bowie knife and polished it with a soft cloth. He was still staring at me.
“You take me out with that,” I said, “and your boss might not like it.”
“You’d like it even less, Escott,” said Hodge.
That shut me up.
Their mistake was a natural one. While I’d been talking with Bobbi they’d searched the Nash and found its registration and Escott’s name.
“Take off the coat,” he told me after a moment.
“It’s cold,” I reminded him.
“We’ll give it back.”
Rimik put the knife within easy reach—his reach—and came forward. His action distracted me, so I hadn’t noticed Hodge pulling out a forty-five automatic. These boys were moving as smooth as oil and I didn’t like the kind of teamwork that that implied.
He leveled the gun at my gut. “Take off the coat.”
I took it off. There was no sense in forcing them to put holes in it or the suit. A shoot-out might force me to do other things as well. I knew what they wanted and stood by for yet another frisk. Rimik found Doreen’s gun right off.
“Déjà vu,” I said as he put it on the crate next to the knife.
“What?” asked Hodge.
“Nothing. Just French for ‘here we go again’.”
Rimik didn’t bother searching my wallet or they’d have realized their mistake about my identity. They were looking for weapons, not enlightenment. He turned it back over with the other stuff, and I was allowed to put my coat on again.
“Who’s your boss?” I asked.
Hodge answered readily enough. “Vaughn Kyler.”
If he expected a reaction, he drew a complete blank. “What’s he want with me?”
He carefully stowed the forty-five into its shoulder holster and let the edges of his coat and overcoat fall back into place. Unbuttoned.
“What does he want?”
He dug into a pocket for a cigarette and lighted it, paying no attention to my question. The temptation to make him answer was there, but I decided to wait. I had the time, and chances were his boss would tell me all about it. Right now they were playing a nerve game, but that only works if you can be intimidated. I sat on a crate and watched him smoke. Rimik picked up the bowie knife and slipped it into some kind of a hip sheath. I caught a glimpse of the gun under his coat as well. He was prepared for all sorts of weather.
Hodge smoked his cigarette down to a butt and tossed it accurately at a drainage grate in the floor. He looked ready to light another when we all turned in response to a distant noise from the office out front. The driver broke away from the wall, went into the office, and returned a moment later to usher in a new addition to the party.
He walked in without hurry, a medium-sized man in a vicuna overcoat with his hat pulled low. He paused in the penumbral area between the lights and checked things over before coming any closer. I had no problems making out his shadowed features, but he wasn’t trying hard to conceal them. If he were really worried, he’d have taken more effective steps.
Every instinctive alarm God ever invented to help us survive the wide world had gone off inside me. The urge to vanish and whip out the door away from him was that strong; it was all I could do now to stay solid as he walked over.
His movements were as fluid and controlled as a dancer’s. He had dark blue eyes and short black brows. His nose was long and fine lines led from it to a thin, hard mouth. His face was square, with dewlaps just starting to form, giving the illusion of a mournful look that was, indeed, only an illusion. The set of his mouth and stony eyes confirmed it. His pale skin was just a little puffy from soft living; he looked to be edging fifty. He had a fairly ordinary face, on the surface no different from a hundred others of the same general type. But there was something abnormal … about the man behind it that made my flesh crawl.
My own mug was easy enough to read. What he saw there didn’t bother him. Maybe he was used to such reactions.
He looked me over good and close, then wandered past to see Hodge. I turned as he went behind me, wanting to keep him in full view.
“What?” he asked in a low voice.
“Spotted him going into her studio,” said Hodge. “He came out wirli a suitcase, then drove to the Stockyards.”
My spine turned to ice. I hadn’t noticed anyone following me.
“He drove to a hotel off the Loop and went in. We got him coming out.
“Suitcase?”
“We searched it while he was in the hotel. Nothing inside but women’s clothes. Must be hers.”
“Name?”
“Escort.”
“No,” I said.
They each looked at me as though I had snot on my face. I was to speak only when spoken to. Well, to hell with that.
“The name they took from the car is wrong. My name is Fleming.” I’d thought of giving th
em a phony, but it would be too easy for them to frisk me again. “Are you Kyler?”
“Yes.” He studied me. “Where’s the woman?”
We both knew whom he was talking about. “I don’t know.”
“Why do you have her suitcase?”
“I’m keeping it safe.”
“When do you expect to see her again?” His voice was low, almost gentle, and had a slight East Coast accent.
“I don’t know. Why are you after her?”
He ignored that one. “What is she to you?”
“Just a friend.”
“Where is she?” he repeated.
My mouth is dry. “I’d cooperate better if I knew more about what’s going on.”
He didn’t answer right away. The silence stretched out as he focused on me. It was meant to make me uncomfortable and was working to some extent. If need be, I could handle him, but he gave me the cold creeps.
“Doreen Grey has something I’m looking for,” he finally stated.
“What’s that?”
“No one’s business but mine.”
“Why should I help you, then?”
“I need information, not help. I will pay for it, if that’s what you want.”
What I wanted was to know exactly why this ordinary-looking man was so frightening. I tried to read something, anything, from him and could not. Maybe that was the answer.
“How much?”
He assessed me, my clothes, and other details. “One hundred dollars,” he offered.
“You must have spent that on the hired help just to bring me here.”
“Two hundred.”
“Save your money. Tell me what you’re after and I might be able to do something about it.”
Kyler wasn’t used to such treatment. Rimik, who hadn’t said a word since I’d come in, shifted restlessly, perhaps hoping for orders to start committing mayhem. Hodge snorted. My nerves were acting up as well. My lips had peeled back just enough for the teeth to show.
“He thinks he’s hot shit,” observed Hodge. “We oughta show him better manners.”
“You could try, gunsel.” I didn’t know if he went that way or not. It didn’t matter, all I wanted was to make him mad and see which way his boss jumped.