Never Cross A Vampire Part 13

"I'll give you the five when I come down," I said, moving to the stairs slowly.

"Mister," said Rouse, "you keep your five. I'm calling the cops." He disappeared into his apartment, locking the door behind him. The blood trail led right to the door of the apartment Camile Shatzkin had rented as Mrs. Offen. The door was open and the lights were out. I moved in slowly, kicking the door closed, and standing back with tire iron ready in case anyone was behind it. No one was. There was enough light from the street to follow the blood, but I reached over and turned on the wall light, tire iron ready.

The trail led toward the single bedroom.

I followed it, kicking that door open. He was there. The guy who had jumped me in the library and tried to kill me in the Ford. He was on the bed staring at me, but he wasn't seeing anything. A wooden stake was imbedded in his chest, and his dead hands were clutching it in a final useless effort to wrench it out.

CHAPTER EIGHT Before the police arrived, I went through.

the unpleasant pockets of the guy on the bed and found that he was Thayer Newcomb. That was two down for Mrs.

Shatzkin and a little confusing for me.

The apartment and Newcomb were tied to the Shatzkin murder, but Newcomb had acted more like a Dark Knight of Transylvania than a plotting lover. The stake in his chest seemed to confirm the vampire line, and the neatly typed card in his wallet, albeit a bit bloodstained, didn't help at all. The card bore the exact words of the threat Lugosi had received over the phone. I returned the wallet, complete with fifteen bucks, put my tire iron on a lower shelf in the kitchen, and waited for the screaming siren.

It came in about fifteen minutes. Heavy footsteps thundered up the stairs, a heavier knock hit the door.

"Police," said a high voice.

"Come in," said I, sitting on the sofa with both hands showing.

They came in with guns out, blue caps over their eyes, ready to create more blood trails if someone said the wrong thing. I said the right thing.

"In the bedroom," I said.

One guy was young, in his twenties, and looked as if he had tailored his uniform at his own expense to the body he had probably built up as a high school athlete. When I was young and twenty, I thought, looking at his frightened blue eyes. Cop Number Two was older by ten years, heavier by twenty pounds, and possessed of a skin that looked as if it had suffered a blast of BB shot when he was a kid. The older cop went into the bedroom. The younger one prepared to kill me if I scratched my nose.

"There's a dead guy in there," the cop with the bad skin said, coming out.

"I know," I said.

"I was telling my partner," he said.

"Sorry."

The partner kid ran into the bedroom, holding his holster in his free hand to keep it from slapping his thigh. He came out fast.

"He's dead," he said. "What do we do?"

"Call the cops," I suggested.

"You're not funny, guy," said the older cop. "Where's the phone?"

"None in here," I told him. "Downstairs, janitor has one." The younger guy hurried downstairs, and the older guy kept his hand on his gun.

"What happened?" he said.

"Beats the h.e.l.l out of me," I said.

A little over an hour later, after I watched the guys from the evidence lab try to figure out the difference between what was evidence and what was junk dropped by the cops, I was on my way to the Wils.h.i.+re District station. I had told the cop who questioned me that the murder was tied into a case being conducted by an Officer Cawelti. The cop called Cawelti and was glad to dump the case in his lap along with me and his report. He had his own big problem, a tire theft gang, and as far as he was concerned, with the shortage of rubber, that was more important than actors getting murdered.

"Actors have been getting murdered and killing themselves in this town for half a century," the cop told me philosophically while he chewed a wad of gum.

I told him that was true, though I didn't see what that had to do with his disinterest.

At the Wils.h.i.+re station Cawelti, hit hair still parted down the middle and slicked down, stood up when I was ushered into the squad room. There were a few cops in the room, and I thought I heard the sound of voices from my brother's office. A big cardboard box that had held sandwiches rested on one nearby desk.

From the smell I could tell they had come from a delicatessen.

Cawelti took the report from the officer, who said, "You're welcome."

"What do you want?" said Cawelti, "A tip?"

"I'll give you one," said the cop who had brought me in. "Some day you might run into me again when you need a favor.

Think about that."

"Guys," I said sweetly. "There's been a murder."

The cop who had brought me turned in disgust and walked out. Cawelti threw me a snarl. I smiled at him as sweetly as I could, and he turned to read the report.

It took him about three minutes. He didn't read it twice. He should have.

"Why did you kill him?" he said, looking up at me.

"He was dead when I got there," I said.

"I met the building janitor downstairs, and we saw a trail of blood. I followed it.

The janitor's information is in the report."

"You probably stabbed him with that wood spear and followed him up there to be sure he was dead," he tried.

"Then I waited for the cops to come," I said.

"Why not?" he said, leaning back with his hands behind his head. He wanted me to squirm, but I wasn't playing it.

"Come on," I said, "I was on a case. I think this guy had something to do with the Shatzkin murder."

"The guy Faulkner shot," he said.

"Mrs. Shatzkin rented the apartment where the body was found, and according to her, the dead guy was her boyfriend. Take out both your hands and all your pinkies and add it up. It comes out to a pile of rotten fish." "It comes out to your pipe dreams," said Cawelti, leaning forward to tap at the report.

"Why not ask Mrs. Shatzkin about her boyfriend and check with the janitor?

Show him her picture."

"She jabbed the spear into this guy Newcomb?"

"I don't think so," I said. "It might have been a monster who laps at her heels named Haliburton. He was jealous.

Maybe he found out about Newcomb earlier today."

"Mrs. Shatzkin sure plays around a lot,"

Cawelti said with acrid sarcasm. "Even if you're right, what about Shatzkin's dying statement that Faulkner killed him?" "I'm working on that," I said, looking over at my brother's door, which had just opened. He and Seidman walked out.

Cawelti spotted them and sat forward businesslike, finding a pencil.

"And what were you doing following that Thayer guy into the Culver City apartment?" Cawelti said evenly, letting his eyes but not his head turn toward the advancing Phil and Seidman.

"I promised the janitor a five if he called me when he heard anyone go in the apartment."

Phil and Seidman were in easy earshot now.

Cawelti attacked. "Rouse called you, left a message at your boarding house, and you arrived two minutes later? And you live over on Heliotrope in Hollywood? You made good time."

"I was trailing Newcomb. He had tried to run me down because I was getting too close to him. I was protecting some innocent cop like you who should have been digging up what I was digging up and worrying Newcomb instead of sitting here trying to prove what it means to be a true p.i.s.shead."

Cawelti started to get up and threw a look at Phil, who didn't move, just watched without a word. Seidman looked at his watch.

"You got a report on whatever's going on here?" Phil asked as Cawelti reached forward and grabbed my jacket, pulling me out of the wooden chair. The chair went skidding across the squad room, ramming the table with deli refuse and sending it tumbling along the floor, where it would feel right at home.

Cawelti paused but didn't take his eyes from mine or his fist from my jacket.

"Let him go," Seidman said softly.

Cawelti looked at Phil, who had moved to his desk to get the report. "Do what you think best," Phil said, looking down at the report and loosening his tie to the point that it was no longer tied at all.

What Cawelti thought was best was to throw an open fist at my face. It caught my nose and cheek and a corner of my eye. I spun around and started to fall but grabbed the edge of the desk. I knew I had wanted Cawelti to do that and that I was going to hit him as hard and fast as I could, but I was too late. Phil had moved around Cawelti's desk like a handball on a hard court and had him by the neck.

Cawelti's bewildered face turned red and then redder as he tried to pry Phil's fingers off.

"You ever touch him again," he said through teeth that looked as if they would break from the pressure, "you won't be able to eat anything but jello for a long time. You understand?"

Cawelti tried to talk, but Phil's hands around his neck wouldn't let him. He was turning slowly from red to blue.

"Phil," Seidman said without moving, "Enough."

Somewhere deep inside, Phil heard and slowly responded, letting Cawelti slip from his reluctant thick fingers. The part in his hair showed Cawelti's crimson scalp as he staggered back against a desk.

I didn't say anything.

"Come with us," Phil said over his shoulder in my general direction and went to the door with Seidman trailing back to be sure I didn't throw one at Cawelti, who was choking.

"I think you have a sore throat," Seidman said to Cawelti. "Go on home, gargle, stay in bed till noon tomorrow."

Hate would have been bliss compared to the look Cawelti shot me as he staggered back to his desk, gasping and holding his neck. I limped quickly and caught up with Seidman and Phil, who was reading the Newcomb report as we walked.

"Phil," I said.

"Shut up," he hissed, going down the stairs. "Just shut up. I don't like what I just did, and I may do it to you, which I would like. So shut up."

"We're on a call," Seidman said as we went through the lobby, stepping over an overturned garbage can that almost blocked the doorway.

"Clean this thing up, Swartz," Phil shouted at the old cop on the desk.

"I'm Clayton," the old guy shot back, "and it didn't happen on my s.h.i.+ft. Some guy tried to run. Swartz should have cleaned it. If I stopped and . . ."

Phil stopped and turned to face Clayton, who shut up.

"I'll clean it up now, Lieutenant," he said softly, and out we went into a car at the curb.

When we were in the car with Seidman driving and Phil next to me in the back seat, Phil put down the report and said, "Now talk. No jokes, no lies, no errors and you'll have a no-hitter."

I talked as we shot through the early morning darkness, headed I didn't know where. I told him the truth from start to finish including the Shatzkin and Lugosi material.

"So," said Phil, "what do you make of it?"

"I don't know," I said. "There's no link between the two cases. It's crazy."

"There's a link," said Seidman from the front seat. I could see his sunken-eyed skull of a face in the rearview mirror.

"Yeah," I said. "Me. I'm the missing link."

"And . . . ?" said Phil.

"I'll work on it," I said. "How's your knee?" Phil said, turning his head away from me out the window.

That was the blow I almost couldn't handle. My mind went blank, and I reviewed more than four decades of life with Phil. Three had never been anything like this.

"Ruth told me," he explained.

"Told you?"

"The money," he said.

Seidman pretended to hear nothing.

"I thought you'd break my head if you found out," I said.

Phil's hands were in his lap. They wanted to do something, but his mind was stopping him.