Stuart Kaminsky - Never Cross A Vampire

There was no changing his mind, so gunless I returned to the afternoon. The face of the man who attacked me on level two was about forty, thin, and frenzied. The body that went with it was agile and able. I wouldn’t forget either one.

I tried to put the pieces together on the way to Lugosi’s house, but they wouldn’t fit, not yet. My two cases kept getting in each other’s way. When it came to figuring out my expenses, assuming I lived long enough to do that, there would be a lot of items I wasn’t sure of. For example, I didn’t know whom my friend in St. Bart’s library belonged to, though he seemed more out of a Lugosi film than a Faulkner novel.

When I got to Lugosi’s house, I found Jeremy Butler on the lawn showing the kid next door how to get a stranglehold.

“The boy spotted me,” Butler said. “I told him and his mom I was working for Lugosi, special protection from the Japanese.”

“He’s a good wrestler,” the boy told me, looking at Butler.

“I know,” I said.

I asked Jeremy to stick it out for a few more hours and go home if everything looked quiet. He said he would, and I left, wondering how Lugosi would explain the bodyguard to his neighbors. I figured the truth would be best, but since I seldom used it, I didn’t see how I could wish it on others.

It was almost six when I got to my office. Shelly was just closing up.

“One message,” he said. “I left it on your phone. I’ll clean up tomorrow.”

For Shelly, there was always tomorrow. The office got cleaned up every three or four months by Jeremy Butler, who couldn’t tolerate the mess and potential breeding ground for vermin. Each time Jeremy cleaned the place, Shelly complained and threatened to move out because his “system” had been disrupted.

“That guy with the fang problem,” he said, heading for the door and pushing his glasses up on his nose, “is nuts. Good teeth, but they’ll be gone in a year, maybe two. I’ll probably have to pull them. Man was not meant to wear fangs. If God had wanted man to wear fangs, he would have given us fangs. You wouldn’t have to buy them at a costume shop, for God’s sake. Is it raining out there?”

“No,” I said, shaking the coffee pot on the counter. There was only a rancid remnant in the pot, but the heat was still on. I turned it off.

“What was I saying?” Shelly asked.

“Fangs,” I reminded him.

“Yes, fangs,” he said, shaking his head. “If… but what’s the sense in talking? I’ll do what I can. How was your day?”

“All right,” I said as he opened the door and looked around as if he had forgotten something. “I almost shot a guy. I was attacked by a lunatic in the library, and I lost my gun.”

“Right,” said Shelly. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow, Shel.”

He closed the door and I went into my office. The phone message was from Bedelia Sue Frye. She wanted me to call her back. I looked out the window. It was almost dark. I had no intention of talking to her at night. Then I called Levy’s on Spina and asked for Carmen. I had almost sixty dollars of my clients’ money left and a nightclub to go to as part of my expenses. I invited Carmen, but she had to work.

“Can I pick you up after work?” I said.

“I’m on till two in the morning,” she said. “And after nine hours on my feet, I don’t feel like playing games with you. I’m off Wednesday.”

“Great,” I said. “How about a movie?”

“What happened to the nightclub?” she asked.

“We’ll see,” I said. “I gotta go now, important client just came in.”

I hung up, looked around the office, folded Bedelia Sue Frye’s message. I tried the Alexandra Hotel again. This time they told me that Camile Shatzkin’s playmate Thayer Newcomb had checked out.

With the sun going down and my.38 gone, I went home carefully, got rid of my empty holster, showered, shaved, and shared a thirty-nine-cent can of Spam with Gunther. I asked Gunther whether he wanted to go to a nightclub, but he said he had too much work. I almost considered asking Mrs. Plaut.

I caught “A Man Called X” on the radio. Herbert Marshall was telling Leon Belasco where to find some hidden papers. Herbert Marshall always sounded sure of himself. Herbert Marshall had a lot of writers.

Just before nine I made myself as presentable as possible, even changed to my emergency tie, and drove off to Glendale. I knew Glendale. I had grown up there, worked in my old man’s grocery store there, been a cop there. It had some pockets of near-poverty along its commercial strip, but Glendale was mainly rising middle class and easy hills. On the borders where it touched other towns, like Burbank, it had a potential blight it couldn’t ignore.

The Red Herring was a nightclub on the border. The proprietor called the place a nightclub, but it was really a medium-sized saloon that had gone through a lot of hands and a lot of names. I remembered picking up a kid thief with a broken bottle hiding under the bar there when I was a cop. Two owners ago was a guy named Steele, whom I knew and who disappeared one night and never came back.

The Red Herring was the mailing address of the only member of the Dark Knights of Transylvania I hadn’t talked to, Simon Derrida. The place wasn’t exactly in a delirium of gaiety when I walked in. There was a barkeeper, two guys at the bar, a couple at one of the six tables, and four guys at another table. The guys wore suits and looked like salesmen. The couple looked like a guy and a pro hustler. Behind them was a small curtained platform and a piano standing empty.

I walked up to the bar and asked for Simon Derrida.

“He’s on in about two minutes,” the bartender said, consulting his watch. “What’ll you have?”

I ordered a Rainier, took it past the fish-eyed drunk at the bar, who eyed me like he wanted to talk, and went to one of the empty tables.

The woman at the next table looked over at me to see whether I was a better possibility than the guy she had and I shook my head no. She had lots of red hair that wouldn’t stay in place and a smile painted on her large mouth that promised more sadness than fun.

I was almost through with my beer when a guy with a ratty tux came out from behind the curtain and sat at the piano. He was about seventy. He smiled at the four businessmen, the woman, and me and began playing and singing.

He played “Jealous,” doing a kind of Tony Martin imitation, and followed it with “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” and a finger flourish. I clapped. The businessmen clapped, and the guy at the piano beamed. “Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Now let’s all sing ‘We’ll Throw the Japs Back in the Laps of the Nazis.’”

He began to play and sing, but no one joined him. Undiscouraged, he tried to feed us the lines quickly before he played them. I mouthed a little, and the drunk at the bar followed us both by four muddled lines. If the old duck at the piano played another song, I was going to go to the bathroom, but he didn’t. Instead, he thanked us all again and said, “And now, the man you’ve all been waiting for, the man who can scare you and tickle you to death at the same time, our own Doctor Vampire, Simon Derrida.”

He played “Hall of the Mountain King” to applause from the drunk, and the last Dark Knight walked out on the platform, complete with the costume he had worn at the meeting. He couldn’t cover his New York accent, though he tried and came up with an awful combination of Bela Lugosi and the Bronx.

“Good evening,” he said. “It’s good to see some fresh blood in the club. I’m going to give you some stories in a new vein. My friends, do you know what is worse than a werewolf who had to get rabies shots? A vampire who has to get braces.” The drunk burped.