Stuart Kaminsky - Never Cross A Vampire

“Talk fast,” he said. Age or war scare was creeping up on Phil. He actually responded to an emotional plea. I didn’t like it.

“I saw Mrs. Shatzkin. She’s pretending to be broken up, but she’s not. She never saw Faulkner in her…”

“Besides the time he came through the door and shot her husband,” Phil put in.

“But how did she know it was Faulkner? When I showed her a picture of Harry James, she swore it was Faulkner.”

“She’s a confused woman with a lot on her mind,” Phil said impatiently.

“She’s a confused woman who has devoted some of her first morning of widow’s grief to getting rid of photographs of her husband. Now why would she do that?”

“She doesn’t want to be reminded of her grief,” he said. “Is this all you’ve got?”

“Why did Shatzkin take Faulkner to Sixth Street to eat? It’s nowhere near his office, and he didn’t like seafood. It looks like he wanted to go somewhere where he wouldn’t be recognized.” “It looks that way to you,” said Phil. “To a jury and me it looks like he went to Bernstein’s. What has this got to do with anything?”

“Faulkner says Shatzkin called him to set up the meeting,” I went on. “Shatzkin’s secretary says it was Faulkner’s idea.”

“We didn’t book Faulkner for a lapse of memory or for lying about his business deals,” Phil returned to his growl.

“Okay,” I gave it another try. “Faulkner says Shatzkin was a loud-mouthed, fast-talking pusher at lunch. Shatzkin’s secretary says the dead man was a pussycat.”

“So where are you taking this?” Phil demanded. “We’ve still got the dead man’s statement. I’ve got it right here.” I heard him shuffle some papers and then read. “Officer Bowles: ‘Take it easy, sir.’ Shatzkin: ‘Faulkner shot me. William Faulkner. Why did he do that?’ Officer Bowles: ‘Take it easy, Mr. Shatzkin.’ Mrs. Shatzkin: ‘Officer, it was Faulkner. He came right in and shot Jacques for no reason, no reason.’ We also found the gun in Faulkner’s hotel room.”

“Someone’s trying to frame him,” I said.

“A unique argument,” rasped Phil.

“And no motive,” I said. “Take your tale to Dick Tracy,” he said and hung up the phone.

I invested another nickel and called Vernoff.

“I forgot to ask you something,” I said. “Why did Faulkner leave just before nine last night? Why not earlier or later? Just coincidence?”

“I don’t remember,” said Vernoff. “I think he just said he needed a break and would be back in an hour.”

“Thanks,” I said and hung up. I needed another talk with Faulkner, and I owed Bela Lugosi a day’s work. A few more of Shelly’s pain pills got me back to the station. This time I was led down to the lock-up where Faulkner was sitting in a cell.

“Mr. Leib believes there is a chance bail can be set for me in spite of the charge,” he said, putting aside the book he was reading. The turnkey hovered impatiently at my side.

“This’ll take a second or two,” I said. “I need some answers. Whose idea was it to eat at Bernstein’s?”

“I told you it was Shatzkin’s,” he said impatiently.

“Why didn’t you go up to Shatzkin’s office?”

“Because he was walking down the stairs when I arrived. He recognized me and we simply turned around and walked out. I fail to see the relevance of these questions.”

“I’m not sure I do either,” I said. And it was clear that the fat blue-uniformed turnkey didn’t see the point.

“Shatzkin called you to set up the meeting.”

“That is right.”

“On Friday night when you were working with Vernoff, whose idea was it to take a break just before nine?”

“I think it was mine. I found the man barely tolerable and had quite as much as I could absorb. Working with him was not my idea but a condition of the studio. He actually told me that he could reduce As I Lay Dying to one hundred fifty plot cards. The man is a menace to creativity.”

I bid Faulkner goodbye, resisted the temptation to chuck the turnkey under his five chins, and limped outside with the feeling that I had something in all this, but I didn’t know what the hell I had.

On the way back to Hollywood, I stopped at a fifteen-minute car wash, watched some guys in blue overalls fail to turn my speckled Buick into a pumpkin, paid my forty-nine cents and decided to stick with the Faulkner case. I’d give Lugosi a rebate or something for each day I didn’t work. I needed the money, but there wasn’t much of me to go around and what there was was fragile.

I was heading up Van Ness when I spotted my tail, a dark Ford two-door about a block behind. The sky had clouded fast and promised rain to give my car an extra wash it could now do without. The sudden darkness made it tough to see who was driving the Ford. I turned right on Santa Monica and then left on Western, moving slowly. Sure enough, the Ford appeared a block behind, taking cover behind a Rainer Beer truck. I went down on Fountain and made a circle around the block, turning on two wheels and hoping no patriot had spotted me burning rubber. U.S. Rubber was running full-page ads in magazines and the papers telling us that for the duration of the war “every ounce of rubber is a sacred trust.” I even had a copy of their free thirty-two-page booklet, “Four Vital Spots,” on how to make tires last longer, but I considered this a potential emergency. Arnie, my no-necked mechanic on Eleventh, could get me retreads if things got bad.

With my right fender rattling enough to frighten an old man walking his dog, I made it around the block in about ten seconds. Figuring the speed my tail was going, I should have wound up right behind him, but I didn’t. He was gone. I prowled the neighborhood for a few minutes and headed home to the boarding house on Heliotrope.

Assuming the dark Ford was not a ghost out of my past, and that was not an entirely reasonable assumption, then the likelihood was that it had something to do with the Faulkner case. Somewhere in this busy Saturday, I had touched a nerve. But why follow me? To see where I was going? Whom I was talking to? Probably. At this point, it wasn’t likely that I was on a potential victims list, but you never knew. When I parked a block away from the boarding house, I took my.38 from the glove compartment, convinced myself that it still worked, pocketed it, and got out. The rain caught me ten feet from the car. It was a cold rain that poked through my coat and made it heavy. My knee told me not to run so I plodded along, abandoning renewed plans for an assault on Carmen that night.

When I got to the porch, I looked like an enormous sponge. Mrs. Plaut was there, beaming down as I lumbered up the stairs and leaned against the wall.

“They bring May flowers” she said brightly.

“It’s January,” I said, “not April.”

I shed my coat to ease my burden up the stairs.

“You had another call, Mr. Peelers.”

“Charlie McCarthy again?” I asked.

“No, Baylah Lougoshe,” she said precisely, pronouncing it correctly. “She had a very strange accent.”

“He, Mrs. P.,” I corrected, “it’s a man.”

“I think she was Norwegian,” she guessed.

“Do Norwegians have different accents from Swedes?” I said before I could stop myself.

“Definitely Norwegian,” she said, turning to smile out at the rain.

The stairs were lonely, high, and steep, but I had promises to keep, so up I went, coat in hand, heart in mouth, brain in gear.

I fished Lugosi’s home phone number out of my sopping wallet and called on the hall phone. A child answered.

“Is Mister Lugosi there?” I asked.

“Hello,” he repeated brightly.