Stuart Kaminsky - Never Cross A Vampire

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Jerry,” I said. “You’ve got the plot in your files. Good-looking hulk like Haliburton. You think your roving Camile never dallied in the garden?”

“She was just stringing him along, using him,” Vernoff explained.

“You’re giving me B dialogue again, Jerry,” I said.

“And I can blow a hole right through…” he stopped.

“More B dialogue,” I said, pointing out what he had already noticed. “That’s your problem.”

“I can write,” Vernoff said. “Now that Camile and I are going to have money, control of a big agency, I’ll get the ins, the breaks. That’s all you need, good connections. Talent isn’t enough.”

“I think Warner Baxter said that in 42nd Street,” I pushed.

“That’s enough, Peters,” he shouted, and I could see it was enough. I went in another direction. “You met Camile Shatzkin while you were her husband’s client?”

“Right,” he said, calming down a bit. “A party at his place. I talked to her for a while. She was interested in my work, my career. One thing led to another, and she said she wanted to read some of my material. I invited her to drop by whenever she wanted to. Then it started.”

“You think she was already planning to use you to get rid of her husband?” I said.

“That was my idea. It was all my idea.” He pointed to himself with his left thumb, and I could see that Jerry Vernoff was losing control. He didn’t want to be told he was a character and Camile Shatzkin was the author.

“I got the idea for getting rid of Shatzkin right out of my files,” he said proudly. “Thayer Newcomb was an old acquaintance who, like me, had never had a break. He was a good actor, but he had a reputation for doing wild things, violence. He called Shatzkin, said he was Faulkner, and made a lunch appointment for 1:30 on Wednesday. Then he called Faulkner, said he was Shatzkin, and made an appointment for noon on Wednesday. When Faulkner showed up in front of Shatzkin’s office, Thayer was on the stairway, waiting. He came down and bumped into Faulkner as if he were on the way out of his office. He got Faulkner in a cab and over to Bernstein’s restaurant. He did a good job.” “More B-picture stuff,” I couldn’t resist saying. “Newcomb didn’t study his part. He played Shatzkin as a loud, fast-talking agent right out of Ned Sparks. That was one of the first things that made me suspicious. Shatzkin’s secretary, a solid type, said her boss was anything but what Newcomb played for Faulkner.”

“Well…” Vernoff said, off-balance.

“Let me go on,” I said, inching, or quarter-inching, toward the door as I pretended to shift my weight. “He dumped Faulkner, promised to get back to him, and then went to the restaurant where he had made a reservation and date to meet Shatzkin. He put on a false mustache and played Faulkner, obviously doing a better job than he did as Shatzkin because he got a dinner invitation. Right?”

“Right,” Vernoff beamed, remembering his triumph as author-director of the crime.

“Then,” I continued, “Newcomb showed up at the Shatzkins’ and shot innocent victim Jacques. Luckily for your plot, Shatzkin lived long enough to actually identify his assailant as Faulkner, the man he had invited to dinner and had lunch with. Camile was happy to support his identification. You forgot to account for how Camile could identify Faulkner, whom she never met. She positively identified a photo of Harry James as Faulkner.”

“A slight error,” Vernoff agreed, “but I took care of that.”

“Sure you did,” I said, doing some more inching. “She panicked and ran to meet you at your Culver City love nest, and when I found out about the place, she tried to protect you by saying Newcomb was her lover. More complications.”

“I didn’t panic,” said Vernoff with self-approval.

“Not right away,” I went on. “Instead you decided to try to buy some time. I had told you about my Bela Lugosi case, and you decided with Newcomb to try to get me to work on that, to throw a few scares into me to head me in the wrong direction. Newcomb’s best acting jobs in this whole thing were his attacks on me.”

“He wasn’t just acting,” Vernoff said, “I told you he was a violent man.”

I said, “Why did you involve Faulkner in all this?”

“He was handy,” Vernoff said defensively.

“And you didn’t like him having the reputation you wanted,” I pushed. “He was the big man, the famous writer.”

“Maybe a little of that,” Vernoff agreed. The candle sputtered from a breeze somewhere, and I tensed, ready to go for the door, but it stayed on, and I let my weight fall back against the wall. “Faulkner is a self-satisfied, superior… he didn’t like me, made it clear that he thought I was a hack. I’ll tell you, he needed me. He stinks with plots.”

“So,” I went on, “on Friday night when you were working with him, you played into his feelings, made yourself…”

“Obnoxious,” Vernoff finished.

“Easy acting job,” I said. Vernoff shook his head in mock pity at my lack of understanding. “You suggested the break just before nine, and Faulkner jumped at it and ran for a drink. That way you couldn’t provide him with an alibi. But what if someone else did remember him?”

“I followed him, made sure. He came back to his room when he was sure I was gone. It was perfect.”

The rain eased slightly, went to calm, and then exploded in anger with the biggest torrent of all.

“Okay, we jump back ahead,” I said. “Newcomb is attacking me in parking lots and libraries. He calls Lugosi with a big threat-by the way, did he actually have to read that one line of telephone dialogue? He couldn’t even remember it? I found it in his wallet.”

“I wanted to be sure he delivered the exact line,” Vernoff explained.

“Mistakes, mistakes, Jerry,” I sighed. “Finding that card in his pocket, just like all the other cards in your apartment, gave me ideas. Why did you kill Newcomb?”

“It doesn’t take much to figure it out,” he said, shifting the gun in his hand to get a better grip. “Thayer and I followed you to that nightclub in Glendale and agreed simply to run you down and make it look like an accident. The police weren’t after us. You were. With you gone, we’d be in the clear.”

“Wrong,” I said. “The police would have started going over the same steps, especially if I coincidentally got hit by a car.”

“That’s your opinion,” he said testily. It was, but my opinion was based on experience, not daydreams.

“So you didn’t kill me, and I came chasing you.”

“Yes,” said Vernoff, “and while I drove I started to think. Camile had suggested that Thayer was her lover. If Thayer died, you might be at a dead end, especially if his death looked like it was tied in to the Lugosi case. Besides, who knows when or whether Thayer might someday start thinking of blackmail or might get caught and say things I wouldn’t like? I headed for the Culver City apartment. I parked near the apartment and shot him. Then I pushed the wooden stake into him to cover the bullet.”

“Got rid of a lot with one blow,” I said. “No need to give him a kickback and no need to worry about blackmail in the future.”

“I knew what I was doing,” he said proudly.

I shook my head and could see by the dancing candlelight in his eyes that he didn’t appreciate my lack of appreciation.

“What was wrong?”

“Everything you did linked my two cases,” I explained. “All I had to do was to go back over the list of people who knew I was on both cases. I had told you because of our discussion over beer about plot. And the whole thing just kept getting more and more plot-complicated. I tell you, Jerry, you would have been better off just blasting your victims, tossing the gun in the ocean, and going to work as usual. What about Haliburton?”