Never Cross A Vampire

CHAPTER ELEVEN

My gun was in my hand, and my senses were returning to near normal, which meant that I could see, hear, and feel about as well as the average living Civil War veteran.

I went back up the stairs with Lugosi following. This time I went slowly, not because of fear, but because of an aching body.

“Go downstairs, call the cops. Get the Wilshire District. Ask for Lieutenant Pevsner or Sergent Seidman,” I said. “If Vernoff’s not dead, get an ambulance. And see if you can find the fuse box and get the lights on.”

“Yes,” said Lugosi, and he swept down the stairs with his cape billowing. I went up, not trying to be quiet. The candle was still on. It guided me. I went into the room, picked it up, and found Vernoff’s gun.

“Billings,” I shouted. “I’m in no mood for this. Get your ass out here. If I have to find you…”

Something scrambled above my head. I went into the hall and found a wooden ladder to what looked like a loft.

“Billings,” I shouted up into the darkness. “I don’t want to climb this thing. I’ve got a game knee. Stop sucking your thumb and get down here.”

Something shuffled and moved above and stopped.

“Would a couple of bullets up there help make up your mind?” I asked.

The trap door opened. I could hear it, but I couldn’t see anything. Billings’s voice came down in a high quaver.

“What do you want?”

“There’s a corpse in your living room,” I said sweetly. “And we have some things to talk about.”

“How do I know you won’t hurt me?” he said.

“Cross my heart,” I said. “I promise. Will you just get down here before the cops come? If I have to climb up there in my present condition and state of mind, our conversation will be far less pleasant than…”

The lights went on. The place was not exactly lit like a sound stage, but it was lit, and I could see Billings’s pale face. He started to draw back into his hole and I shouted, “Oh no, ease your belly down here, Count.”

He came down slowly, sheepishly, heavily. He was wearing his vampire costume, and he looked frightened. He had reason to be.

“Let’s go downstairs,” I said, letting him lead the way. I blew out the candle and put it on the landing.

“I didn’t…” he began on the second floor when he saw his broken railing.

“Yes, you did,” I said, prodding him gently with my hand. The point on my back where Vernoff had hit me was throbbing violently.

On the main floor, Billings tried to turn toward the rear of the house, but I guided him into the living room. Vernoff was lying there, his eyes open, staring at his hand, which would type no more of the plots his smashed skull could not deliver. Billings tried not to look at the corpse, but he was fascinated and finally fixed his eyes on it.

“That’s what a real dead one looks like, Count,” I said. “Does it get you all excited? Ah, ah, no running for the toilet. You’re a great big vampire, aren’t you? You were going to put the fear of heaven and hell into Bela Lugosi with your threats.”

“How did you know it was me?” he said, his eyes still fixed on Vernoff’s body.

“Sam,” I said. “I’ve got a blow for you. You are the only member of the Dark Knights who takes the thing seriously. The others have their own hobby horses. Riding Lugosi was yours. I’d like to know why.”

Billings forced his eyes away from Vernoff and roamed the room. I followed him and realized that I had seen the place somewhere before. I was getting that feeling a lot.

“This is Dr. Seward’s living room.” he said softly. “His office is next door.”

Lugosi appeared at the door behind Billings. He was about to speak, but his eyes too scanned the room in recognition.

“It’s exactly like the rooms in Dracula,” Billings said. “That was more than a movie for me. It was a possibility, a possibility that couldn’t be betrayed. Don’t you see? I couldn’t let Lugosi, the real Count, sink to ridicule.” Billings still did not see Lugosi, who watched from the door and listened.

“You see,” continued Billings, “he is not a real vampire, but an inspiration to those of us who are.”

“You’re a real vampire?” I said.

Billings nodded in confession.

“You have a coffin you sleep in and the whole works?” I said in disbelief.

“Yes,” said Billings. “In the cellar.”

“Have you ever…” I began. “I mean blood.”

“Not yet,” he said seriously. “But soon.”

Lugosi took a step into the room, and Billings turned toward him with a gasp.

“Mr. Billings,” Lugosi said gently. “Neither you nor I are vampires. We are simply men with dreams that do not come true and with which we must learn to live.”

“No,” said Billings defiantly. His next no was less defiant and more to a voice within him than to Lugosi or to me. Finally, he looked at Vernoff’s corpse and sank into a chair with his eyes closed.

“The police will be here momentarily,” Lugosi said. “I fear your Mr. Wernhoff is dead.”

I looked at Lugosi with curiosity through my pain, and he looked down at his costume and gave a smile of understanding.

“Tonight I am to appear at a screening of Dracula at an Army benefit performance. I have a little act taken from my stage role as Dracula which I can do. It’s not much, but it goes nicely with the picture. You told me you were coming here, and you sounded troubled, so I came in a cab. I found the theater closed and came to the house. The door was opened, and I heard your voice and Mr. Wernhoff’s above. I came up and saw him with the gun on you, so I moved into the next room, where I found the door leading to the room you were in. I listened and tried to time my entrance so that it would be most effective and beneficial.”

“So,” I said, “you heard some of what he said?”

“Enough to know he killed some people,” sighed Lugosi. “And this poor fellow,” he said looking at Billings, “is the one who sent me those notes and the dead bat?”

“All except that last call, the death threat; that was the work of our friend on the floor. It was just to get me going in the wrong direction.”

“Yes,” sighed Lugosi. “Again I have been the red herring.” “In a way,” I said, wobbling.

“Forgive me,” said Lugosi, helping me to a chair and fishing out a cigar.

The three of us sat in silence, watching Vernoff’s corpse, for about twenty minutes. Lugosi, his cape draped over the back of his chair, smoked and threw an occasional look of pity or concern at Billings, who couldn’t bring himself to meet Lugosi’s eyes.

When Phil came in followed by Seidman, we probably looked like a quartet of corpses.

“What the hell is this?” Phil said in that combination of amazement and anger that was his alone. It meant, What has the force of evil come up with this time to make my life a walking hell.

“Guy on the floor is Vernoff,” I said.

The name rang a bell.

“The one who couldn’t give Faulkner an alibi?” said Phil.

“He didn’t want to,” I said. “He killed Shatzkin, Newcomb, and Haliburton. He was in it with Mrs. Shatzkin. He told me, and I have a reliable witness, Mr. Lugosi.”

Lugosi looked up and waved his cigar in greeting.

Phil didn’t know what to say to the familiar figure dressed like a vampire. I also realized that Phil had recognized the room but couldn’t place it. Seidman simply looked tired.

“This isn’t our jurisdiction,” said Seidman.

“It’s your case,” I said.

“Who’s that?” said Phil, pointing at Billings.

“It’s his house,” I explained.

“What has he got to do with this and why is he dressed like that?” Phil bubbled, his rage and confusion ready to burst red.

“It’s a long story,” I said, and I began to tell it while Seidman took my statement. I talked slowly but didn’t have to. Seidman knew shorthand. The slow tale was for the benefit of the rest of us.

Lugosi followed with his part, playing it with flourishes and enjoyment.

We all looked at the corpse some more while Seidman found the phone and called for someone to take care of Vernoff and Billings. Phil looked as if he wanted to throw a couple of kicks at Vernoff and might have done it if the rest of us weren’t there. I was clearly in agony from the blow to my back, my knee, and my roll down the stairs, and Lugosi was too old and well known to be hit. That left Billings, and I could see Phil savoring the possibility of a hard right to the soft figure. I watched desire rise in my brother’s eyes, the wish to hit something solid, but Billings wasn’t solid, and Phil gave up the desire and sat boiling.

Cawelti was the next one through the door. He spotted me and Phil and hesitated. He looked at Vernoff and Billings and didn’t know what to do. Seidman handed him his notebook as two uniformed police came in behind him.

“My notes will explain,” he said to Cawelti. “Get Mr. Lugosi wherever he wants to go and get this cleaned up.”

Cawelti considered a question or protest, but Phil, looking for a victim, caught his eye, and he shut up.

“Come on,” Phil said to me, pushing himself from the chair.

I got up and so did Lugosi. I took Lugosi’s frail hand and shook it.

“Thanks for saving my life,” I said.

“And thank you for a most interesting interlude,” he said. “Please send me your bill for services.”

“Right,” I said and followed Seidman and Phil into the night. The rain had turned to drizzle. I knew where we were going. “Can you drive?” Seidman asked.

I told him I could and went to my own car. We drove in tandem through Los Angeles. I caught part of a boxing match on the radio to keep me company, but I couldn’t keep my mind on it long enough to know who was fighting or winning. The patter of the announcer and his false rise in excitement as he described the blows was like a friend at your side who jabbers on and you don’t listen to, but you like having him there.

When we got to Bel Air, no one tried to stop us. The move up Chalon was getting routine for me, so I pulled ahead of Phil and Seidman and led the way.

The Shatzkin house was dark except for an upstairs light.

Phil was about to ham-hand the door when I put out my hand to stop him. He wheeled, ready to take my head, and then waited. I knocked gently. Then I knocked a little louder. In a while footsteps came down the stairs inside.

“Who is it?” came Camile Shatzkin’s voice.

“Jerry,” I said.

“Jerry?”

She fumbled with the door and kept talking. There was a touch of shrewish anger seething in her tone that Jerry Vernoff would never have the chance to be disillusioned by.

“I thought you were going to stay away from here,” she hissed. “What happened? Did Peters…”

And the door flew open on the bright trio of Peters, Pevsner, and Seidman, a group that could have wilted an innocent person, let alone one as guilty as Camile Shatzkin.

“Trick or treat,” I said.

She almost fainted, but Seidman moved forward to keep her from falling.

“I thought it was a delivery I was expecting,” she said, pulling herself together.

“Do you usually faint when the delivery man comes?” I said.

Phil grabbed my arm and squeezed hard enough to let me know he wanted me to shut up.

Camile Shatzkin, in glimmering red robe, her dark hair down, looked every inch the opera star in her big moment.

“I’ve been under a great strain,” she explained, pulling herself away from Seidman’s support.

“That ‘great strain’ business might carry you about a week,” I said. “Then you’ll have to think up another line.”

“Why are you here?” she demanded.

“Do you want to invite us in, or do you want to get dressed right now and come with us?” Phil asked wearily.

Camile Shatzkin flushed in indignation. We all expected her to say, “How dare you talk to me like that?” but she disappointed us by letting her nostrils flare in anger and stepping back to usher us into the living room. We’d been there before. We weren’t impressed.

Mrs. Shatzkin sat down on a sofa after flipping on some lights and folded her hands in her lap, ready for anything. She looked at me briefly, trying to read some answers in my face, but my face doesn’t hold any answers. My face is a weary question mark. I was willing to stare her down. The advantage was mine. She was easier to look at than I was, and I could read her with no trouble.

“Jerry Vernoff has confessed before two reliable witnesses that he killed your husband, Thayer Newcomb, and Haliburton,” said Seidman. “He also said that you conspired with him to commit those murders.”

I sat down without taking my eyes from Camile Shatzkin, and Phil looked around the room feigning boredom, acting as if this was the routine part of a case already wrapped up. There was nothing to read in Seidman’s voice or face. He was simply giving information and withholding some. He didn’t tell her that Vernoff was dead and probably in the morgue by now. He didn’t tell her that all she had to do was say nothing to stay out of this, to walk away clean with her estate. There was no case on her, just the accusation of a dead man, a murderer three times over.

“How could he say such a thing?” she said, trembling. “I don’t believe he… I think you’re lying. And I think I’ll have to ask you to leave and talk to my lawyer.”

“I guess we’ll have to book her and take her downtown,” Phil said, examining a painting of a French landscape on the wall.

Camile Shatzkin said nothing.

“He’s dead,” I shot in.

Phil’s head turned in my direction and Seidman shook his head. Mrs. Shatzkin looked at me, but nothing dawned. Almost all the “he’s” in her life were dead. I had to be more specific.

“Jerry Vernoff,” I said. “He’s dead. His neck is broken and he’s lying in the morgue by now. One more on the slab and you’ll have killed a whole basketball team worth of men.”

“Jerry is…?” She smiled with a touch of madness and a shake of her head. “No. This is another trick.”

“No trick,” said Seidman, going along because there was nothing else to do. Phil was at my side. I hoped he wouldn’t hit me in my sore back if he decided to strike. But he sensed a crack in Camile Shatzkin and stood waiting.

“Look,” said Phil, “what’re we bothering with this for? We have a man’s dying confession and testimony. That’s enough to hang her. If she wants to shut up, let her shut up.”

Phil clearly had a way with words. We all looked down at Camile the Widow and waited to see which way she would go. If she told Phil to go chew on an electric eel, that was the end of it. If there was a clock ticking you could have heard it, but there wasn’t. Luckily no one’s stomach growled. “I loved him,” she said very quietly.

“What?” growled Phil.

Camile Shatzkin looked up with tears starting in her eyes. “I loved him.”

“Jerry Vernoff?” Seidman said.

“Darryl,” she said.

“Darryl?” said Phil, looking at me and Seidman. “Who the hell is Darryl?”

“Darryl Haliburton,” she said, her eyes red. “I didn’t know he was going to kill Darryl. I didn’t really realize how much I loved him, needed him.”

“Vernoff said it was your idea to get rid of your husband,” said Seidman.

“It was his,” she said, pulling a handkerchief from her robe. Her chest rose with a sob.

“How did you help?” I asked.

This was it, but she didn’t know it.

“I didn’t have to do anything, just let Newcomb in, watch him shoot Jacques, and make no effort to follow him. All I had to do was identify William Faulkner as the murderer.”

“That lets my man off the hook?” I asked.

Phil nodded.

Seidman went upstairs with Mrs. Shatzkin to check her room and be sure there were no weapons of self- or other destructiveness. While she dressed, Phil and I sat in the living room ignoring each other.

“My knee’s getting better,” I said, sitting down.

Phil grunted. That was our conversation for the night.