Stuart Kaminsky - Never Cross A Vampire

“You had a call, Mr. Peelers,” she said. “Don’t remember who it was. I think he said Charlie McCarthy. Couldn’t be.” Her almost-eighty-year-old frame turned away. “And there’s no hot water. I forgot to pay the gas bill again. I’ll take care of it first thing Monday.”

“Thanks,” I said, completing my journey up the fourteen stairs, clutching my Walgreen’s bag to my bosom.

Gunther came into the hall and looked with some concern at my leg. “Phil,” I explained.

Gunther had encountered Phil before and needed no further explanation.

“No hot water,” he said.

“I know,” I said back.

“I’ll boil some on your hot plate,” he volunteered and disappeared into my room. I followed him, threw my coat on the one semicomfortable chair in the room, and took off my clothes. Gunther went back to his room for a huge pot. I stripped to my underwear and watched him struggle with the pot that weighed about as much as he did, but I didn’t offer to help. Pride should be respected.

I made it to the bathroom, found it unoccupied, and went inside. I brushed my teeth and let some cold water into the tub.

I got through a few lines of the Hope book: “There was a great excitement at the little house next door to the Barretts of Wimpole Street. My best friend was having a baby. Me.”

That was as far as I got. Gunther, like a diminutive Gunga Din, lugged the boiling water in and dumped it into the tub. I climbed in and let out a groan. Gunther climbed up on the toilet seat and waited patiently. “You wish company or not?” he asked.

I explained the Faulkner case and asked Gunther to try to track down someone at Bernstein’s Fish Grotto who might have seen or remembered Faulkner or Shatzkin and find out whether Shatzkin had made a reservation the day he met Faulkner. I would try for Mrs. Shatzkin and Vernoff the writer. I also had some guilt pangs about Lugosi and again considered picking up Dave and Nate later in the afternoon and taking them to the show where I could spend a few minutes with Billings.

“Life gets ted-jus, don’t it,” I said.

“That is an idiom?” Gunther said seriously, perched upon the toilet seat.

“Line from a song by a guy named Bert Williams,” I said, pulling myself out of the tub. “And now to work.”

With Gunther’s help, I got my knee bandaged tightly. With a couple of pain pills Shelly Minck had given me months earlier for my back, I was ready to work, provided I didn’t have to run and no one kicked me in the kneecap. I made some phone calls. I got the home address of Jerry Vernoff, the writer who had worked with Faulkner the night before, from the telephone directory. Using Martin Leib’s name got me Shatzkin’s home address in Bel Air from Warner Brothers. Shatzkin’s office was listed in the phone book.

A call to Vernoff told him who I was and told me he would be home to see me in a few hours. A call to Shatzkin’s office let me know that his secretary was there helping the junior members of the firm keep their world in order. Her name was Miss Summerland, and she wearily expected to be in the office for many hours. I didn’t call Mrs. Shatzkin. She might not want to see me. I simply got in my pigeon-egg-green car and headed for Bel Air, admiring the frost on the few people in the streets. Even Westwood was nearly empty of UCLA students.

Bel Air is as exclusive as you can get and still be within bragging distance of the movie studios. It has its own police and its own privacy. I talked my way past the guard at the entrance by telling him I was from the funeral parlor handling “things” for the Shatzkin family. He was properly professional and sympathetic, which means he made it clear he didn’t much care. My car made him a bit suspicious, but I told him it was a loaner while my Rolls was being repaired. The story was idiotic, but the business card I handed him reading “Simon Jennings, Brentwood Funeral Services” was real enough. I had a whole stack of assorted cards given to me as payment by a job printer whose sister-in-law had stolen his 1932 Ford.

I found the house on Chalon Road, a big two-story brick building set back in a wooded area on a hill. It was impressive. A chauffeur was washing a real Rolls in the open garage and trying not to freeze. I knocked at the door, and it was opened almost immediately by a Mexican girl in black who looked so somber that I wasn’t sure whether to believe her.

“Peters,” I said seriously, opening my wallet to show her my identification and knowing she wouldn’t take a close look. “I’m investigating the crime. I’d like to talk to Mrs. Shatzkin.”

The maid stood back, I moved forward, and she said she’d get Mrs. Shatzkin.

I held my hat in my hand and kept my coat on, looking as serious and official as I could. I examined the hall mirror with suspicion and continued to do so when I heard the footsteps behind me and saw Camile Shatzkin in the mirror. I turned to face her.

“Officer?” she started. She was a good-looking woman, dark, dressed in black, with her hair worn up in one of those complicated hairdos. She was a little plump, but certainly not little. She reminded me in some ways of my former wife Anne, but in some ways she didn’t. Camile Shatzkin’s furrowed brow and wringing hands complete with handkerchief evoked Kay Francis in a melodrama, and Kay Francis was always up to something.

“Peters,” I said and then before she could think of questions, “Officer Cawelti talked to you, but a few things have come up since last night that I need confirmation on.”

“I’m not sure…” she began, looking back into the house for someone who didn’t come. “It’s been a very… horrible… I’m sure you understand.”

“Fully,” I said sympathetically, “but this will only take a few minutes.

“Very well,” she said with a pained smile, but she didn’t offer to guide me to another room or a seat. We talked in the Mexican decorated hall. I pulled out my new Walgreen’s notebook and pretended to read questions.

“Who invited Mr. Faulkner here last night?” I began.

“My husband,” she replied, turning her eyes to the floor.

I pretended to write and nodded in approval.

“How did you know the man who came here last night was Mr. Faulkner?” I said as sympathetically as I could. “You’ve never met the man.”

“Well, yes,” she said a bit nervously, “but I have seen his picture on book jackets and in the newspapers, and Jacques did tell me he was coming. I recognized him as soon as he came through the door. I…”

She was ready to break down so I came to her rescue.

“I understand, Mrs. Shatzkin. We have to be sure. Can you identify this picture as Mr. Faulkner?” I pulled out my wallet, reached in, and withdrew a small photograph that I handed to her.

“That’s the man,” she said with a sob, handing the photograph back to me.

“You’re sure?” I said, taking it and putting it back.

“I’ll never forget that face,” she said, covering her eyes.

Well, that was a step toward Faulkner’s defense. The photo she identified was one of Harry James that had come with the wallet when I bought it at the dime store. I decided to push Mrs. Shatzkin a bit.

“We’ll need a photograph of Mr. Shatzkin,” I said, putting my notebook away.

“There are no photographs of Jacques,” she said sadly. “I wish to God there were. He wasn’t fond of being photographed.”

“Everyone has a photograph of himself somewhere,” I said. “Especially a man as prominent as Jacques Shatzkin.”

Suspicion flared in Camile Shatzkin’s eyes.

“Do you have a photograph and some identification, Mr. Peters?” she said. “I’d like to make sure you are not a reporter trying to get a story at the expense of my grief.”