Never Cross a Vampire (19 page)

“Mr. Mann from downstairs?” said Rnzini.

Phil winked sourly, and Rnzini got on his knees and moved the rug. The pattern of holes in the floor under it was almost symmetrical. The room below was dark.

“Mr. Mann,” I began, “put shaving cream on his face, threw a towel over his shoulder, stood on a chair, and put the blast on Haliburton, who must have been surprised as hell.”

“He put down the shotgun,” Seidman continued, “ran out in the hall, and started to yell about the gunshot upstairs before anyone had a chance to think or say that the shot might have come from his room. He went up the stairs and got to the door of Haliburton's room, broke it down and told everyone to get away and call the cops. He wanted to make sure Haliburton was dead and to buy himself some time. He put the body on the bed, moved the rug to cover the holes, and waited for you to show up. Then he told you his story.”

“But,” said Rnzini, “why the shaving cream?”

“Hide his face,” I said. “He could wear a mask right in front of you. He probably used his towel to move the body, keep from getting blood on him. Then he just walked into the washroom over there and took another clean towel. Bloody one's probably under the body or the bed. Then he gave you his story, walked down to his room, grabbed his already packed bag, if he even had one, and went out the door.”

One of the two forty-watt bulbs in the ceiling fixture sputtered and died. Phil pointed downward.

“We can go downstairs now and find an empty room and no fingerprints,” he said, “then we can start doing legwork.”

“I didn't …” Rnzini started.

“You didn't ask enough questions,” Phil said wearily. “You weren't suspicious enough. You didn't make everyone sit down someplace where you could keep an eye on them. You get a crime and witnesses, you sit them down where you can see them till someone who knows what he's doing shows up. I don't care if it's your mother or your priest.”

Rnzini had nothing to say. Phil got off the bed slowly and walked out of the room into the hall. I stayed long enough to give Rnzini a look of sympathy.

“My brother and old man have a dry cleaning business in Pasadena,” he said. “I could go in with them.”

“Your report was good, really good,” I said.

“What's with him, anyway?” Rnzini said, nodding in the general direction of my departed brother.

“He's a cop,” I said. “If you stick around a couple of dozen years, you've got a chance at being as good a cop and as miserable a man as he is. It comes with the badge.”

By the time I caught up with Phil and Seidman, they were already back in the lobby, leaning on the desk clerk, who looked surprisingly unseedy for the Belvedere. His suit was wrinkled but a suit nonetheless. It looked better than mine. His tie was neat. His dead giveaway was the stubble on his face. He needed a touch of grime and that was it. His face was pale and somewhere between twenty-five and forever years old, with a few strands of dark hair combed, brushed, and plastered forward to give himself and no one else the illusion that something was growing up there.

“Haliburton checked in at one in the morning?” Seidman said, consulting his notebook. It was almost dawn.

“Yes,” said the clerk.

“And Mr. Mann in 303?” Seidman continued. Phil simply stood with his arms crossed, looking angry. The clerk couldn't keep his eyes from him.

“Let's see,” he said, finding a pair of glasses and checking his register. “Checked in a few minutes later. Said he was a colleague of Mr. Haliburton and wanted a room very near him. I gave him 303 right below, which didn't seem …”

“What did he look like?” Seidman interrupted.

“Mr. Haliburton?” asked the clerk.

“Mann.”

“Glasses, dark mustache, hat tilted forward, a fairly large man, not as large as Mr. Haliburton,” said the clerk.

“Think you could identify Mann again without the hat, glasses, and mustache?” asked Seidman.

“Without … I don't know. I didn't really stare at him. We were busy at the time …”

“Thanks,” said Seidman, closing his notebook.

“Our killer has flair,” I said as we walked back to the car. “A wooden spear in the stomach and a shotgun blast through a floor.”

“If the same guy did both these jobs tonight,” Phil said.

“It's possible,” I said, getting into the car.

“You thought Billy Conn was going to beat Joe Louis,” Phil reminded me. “I think we should talk to Mrs. Shatzkin.”

Seidman nodded. The sun was definitely coming up and it was Tuesday. On the way to Bel Air we stopped at a stand for coffee and some sinkers. The guy had no cereal. I looked at the counterman's newspaper while he read it and caught only the headline that said the United States had sunk a Japanese warship and crippled a battleship from a secret air base near Manila.

It was just before seven when we got to the front door of the Shatzkin house. Phil knocked instead of pressing the bell. The Mexican maid answered. She was wearing a robe and a yawn.

“Mrs. Shatzkin is still sleeping,” she whispered.

“Wake her up,” Phil said.

“But …”

“But hell,” Phil shouted, “
Tiene prisa
. Move.”

The frightened girl moved. We could hear her going up the stairs as we entered the hall. Phil led the way and found the living room. He looked at the furnishings with distaste, probably comparing the place to his own in North Hollywood and not enjoying the comparison and the lack of sleep.

Camile Shatzkin came down in about five minutes. She had taken the time to put on her face and a robin's-egg blue robe that cut a nice
V
at the neckline, which could distract us.

“What is this?” she said.

“We're the scorekeepers,” I said.

Phil told me to shut up.

“Mr. Peters says you admitted yesterday to being a close friend of Thayer Newcomb,” Phil said. “Is that right?”

“Why yes,” she said with a slight fluster and hand movement. “I've known Thayer for …”

“And you rented an apartment in Culver City where you could meet him secretly,” Phil went on.

Mrs. Shatzkin bit her lower lip prettily.

“I don't see what this has to do with my husband's murder,” she said. “If you are going to persist along these lines, I'm going to have to insist that I can say no more until I talk to my lawyer.”

“Newcomb is dead,” I said.

Phil shot me a look that should have sent me skidding on my heels through the wall.

“Thayer is dead?” she said, putting her right hand up to her throat. “That's awful. How?”

“Someone shoved a wooden stake into his chest,” I said.

Phil stepped toward me with a ready fist. I tried to watch him and Camile Shatzkin. I interpreted her look as shock and fear, but I didn't see any grief coming for a lost lover. She sobbed and sat with shaky knees on the nearest chair.

“When did you see Mr. Newcomb last, Mrs. Shatzkin?” Seidman asked, to draw Phil's attention from me.

“I don't know,” she said weakly, “Maybe a week, two weeks. I don't know. We were … we had decided not to see each other again. I regretted the whole thing. And then Jacques died.”

I still didn't see any grief and neither did Phil or Seidman.

“Do you know where Mr. Haliburton is?” Seidman went on.

She looked up in something resembling surprise.

“Why? I mean, he left last night. Quit. He was very devoted to Jacques, almost a son to us. He just couldn't stand being around here. I understood.”

If there was any devotion in Haliburton, it had been directed at Mrs. Shatzkin, and if there was maternal love in his looks, Oedipus could move over to make room for one more on the couch.

“Haliburton is dead,” I said, taking two steps back from Phil.

Seidman stepped between us and said softly, “Phil, Phil … not here.”

“He's dead?” Mrs. Shatzkin said with eyes opening in bewilderment.

“Yeah,” I said. “Isn't it curious how men who get too close to you wind up dead? The count is three, and the way I see it, there's one left. Care to come up with a name, Camile?”

Camile coughed like her namesake and almost had a fit.

“Maria,” she called through the cough, “Maria.”

The maid came running in.

“Call Doctor Gartley now. Tell him to come quickly. I'm going to my room.”

Without a goodbye or final comment, she made her exit.

“I'd give her one and a half stars on that performance,” I said. “She wasn't upset about Newcomb's death, and maybe she knew about Haliburton getting it.”

I was waiting for Phil's fist and backed away when I saw it coming out of the corner of my eye. He missed by inches, and I went behind the couch.

“You bastard,” he said. “I told you to keep your mouth shut. I wanted to move this thing slowly.”

“I've got a client in jail,” I said. Seidman was touching Phil's arm to suggest restraint. He wasn't actually going to step in my brother's way if he lost control.

“She's in this with somebody,” I said.

“In what?” said Phil. “Shatzkin's murder? Newcomb, Haliburton? Is she keeping busy on the side by threatening Bela Lugosi? It sounds like a cheap movie.”

“It does, doesn't it?” I said, getting a germ of an idea. I knew the germ would sprout, grow, and itch until I made something of it.

I sat as far away from Phil in the back seat as I could when we drove back, and I didn't say anything. They parked at the Wilshire station and got out.

“You want me to come upstairs?” I said.

“I think we want you to go away, Toby,” Seidman said.

“My car is in Culver City,” I said.

“Take a streetcar,” Phil said.

“What about Lugosi?” I called at the two detectives going up the stairs.

“We'll put a man on him,” Seidman said and disappeared through the dirty glass doors that caught the sun and sent it dancing in my mind.

I caught the streetcar, paid my nickel, and fell asleep. At the end of the line, the motorman woke me up and I rode back again trying to stay awake. I could easily have become the Flying Dutchman of the Los Angeles transit system. It took me almost an hour to get back to my car.

Since I was there, I dropped in to see Rouse, the janitor.

When he saw me in the hall, he said, “No,” and closed his door.

“I left my tire iron upstairs,” I shouted.

No answer.

“I owe you five bucks,” I shouted. The door opened.

“Give it to me and go,” he said, chewing away as he had before. I wondered whether it was food consumption or a nervous habit.

“One last question,” I said. “For another five.”

Rouse looked toward the stairs.

“I been up hours cleaning that blood,” he said. “Didn't get back to sleep. My wife wants to move. Where am I going to get another job?”

“Sorry to hear that,” I said. “Did you get a look at the body before they took it out?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking up the stairs.

“You recognize him?”

Rouse shrugged.

“I told the police maybe, but there was another guy who went there. Bigger guy, not big-big, but good-sized. I could tell by hearing them over my head. Never got a look at him. I thought he was Mr. Offen.”

I gave him the five and said thanks.

“Police said not to touch anything up there,” he said. “I'll get your tire iron when I can.”

He went back inside. I'd dropped my gun in a library and my tire iron in an apartment. I checked to be sure my wallet was still in my back pocket. It was.

I drove back home slowly to keep from killing any more Los Angelians and got there by nine. I pulled myself up the stairs, fished out some change, and made some calls. First I called Shelly and told him if he saw Jeremy Butler to tell him to drop the watch on Lugosi. Shelly said I had two more messages from Bedelia Sue Frye. Then I called Lugosi's house and left a message to tell Butler to go home if he showed up. My next call was to my brother. I got Seidman instead.

“Phil's gone home for a few hours,” he said. “And I was on the way out. What's up?”

“How about a suggestion for the medical examiner who does the autopsy on Newcomb?” I said. “Have him look for a bullet.”

“There was no bullet hole in the corpse,” Seidman said. “Just the wooden spike.”

“What if there was a bullet hole,” I said, holding back a yawn, “but someone didn't want you to know it and …”

“… he shoved the stake in to cover the wound,” Seidman completed. “What the hell for?”

“To make it look like a vampire caper,” I explained. “To link Newcomb to the Lugosi case. Newcomb had been cropping up and giving me scares. He was working with someone to keep me as far away from the Shatzkin murder and as close to the Lugosi case as possible. Remember, I'm probably the thing that links the two.”

“I'll tell the medical examiner,” said Seidman. “Anything else?”

There was nothing else. I hung up, drooped to my room, and closed my shades. I put my clothes on the chair near the table and hit the mattress with a roll. I was out before a vampire bat could blink a blind eye.

I dreamed of blood and roses, shaving cream and dark basements. Out of the crash of images, I found myself a little kid again in the basement below the store my old man had owned in Glendale. I hated to go down there and get boxes. It was dark with wooden shelves and places for nightmares to hide. An old Negro named Maury had slept down there from time to time. Maury used to help in our store and others in the neighborhood. Maury died when I was about seven, and I didn't want to meet his ghost in the basement. In my dream, I went down and looked around. I wasn't alone. The room was the same, unchanged in any way. I could see along the floor, in some light without a source, my own footsteps in the dust. In the light opposite me were three women. Even in the dream I thought I had to be dreaming because the light was behind them, and they threw no shadow. Two of the women were dark. One was Bedelia Sue Frye in her vampire costume, and the other was Camile Shatzkin in her widow's black dress. Their eyes were dark and seemed almost red. The other woman was blonde with great wavy golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face and couldn't remember how or where. All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the red of their soft lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my chest a hope that they would kiss me with those red lips. They whispered together and laughed. It sounded like waterglasses tinkling. The blonde girl shook her head and the other two urged her on. Camile said: