Never Cross A Vampire Part 20

"Makes sense to me," I lied. "You're not sticking around Los Angeles, then?" I hurriedly changed the subject.

"No," he sighed. "I will leave my agent to try to negotiate something here. I'm needed in Oxford. I'm the area chief for the local aircraft warning system, though I can see little chance or reason for an air attack on the hinterlands of Mississippi.

I've actually got an office over a drug store where I can recruit observers. My daughter Jill likes it. She's always complaining that she doesn't know what to indicate on school forms that ask what her daddy does. She thinks I don't work, but now she can list me as an air-raid warden." "It's something," I said, turning down the block in front of the Hollywood Hotel.

Faulkner reached over to shake my hand when we stopped in front of the hotel. I hadn't been to the Hollywood for years and didn't realize how fast it had fallen to just this side of Gothic decay.

"If something ever brings you to Mississippi, Mr. Peters, I would be pleased if you would visit my family and me in Oxford. You could join a few friends in a hunt for racc.o.o.n or squirrels, and we could spend a night in the woods by a lake eating Brunswick stew and was.h.i.+ng it down with lots of bourbon while we play nickel poker."

"I wouldn't miss it," I grinned.

Faulkner got out quickly and hurried into the hotel without looking back. His gray jacket was badly wrinkled, and he looked a little frail as he moved, but his back was straight with a dignity I knew I could never pull off.

Time didn't mean much anymore. I turned on the radio and was told again that a j.a.panese general said an invasion of California would be simple and that Pat Kelly had fought to a draw with heavyweight wrestling champ Jim Londos. While Jean Sablon sang "I Was Only Pa.s.sing By," I spotted an all-night eatery I had stumbled on before. It was small, just on the fringe that turned Sunset from cla.s.s to working-cla.s.s, and it always had a group of guys who looked like truck drivers sitting at the counter and tables chewing coffee and settling the world's problems. I never saw any trucks on the street, so I didn't know what these guys really were or did.

Maybe they were movie producers traveling incognito looking for talent. I didn't want to be discovered, so I didn't bother to flash my glowing smile when I came in and found an open red-leather stool at the counter.

"What'll it be?" said the guy behind the counter as he cleaned off a pile of crumbs in front of me. He was covered with hair, on his arms and neck, and looked as if he could hold Londos to a draw. I wondered whether Jeremy Butler had ever wrestled against Londos or Pat Kelly.

I ordered a cheese omelette, not well done, a bowl of cereal, and coffee. Three tons of fun in a corner table argued, but I couldn't get interested. The omelette was good, the cereal was crisp, and the coffee strong. I was regaining the idea that I was a functioning human being. I could have stopped at County Hospital before I went home for an X ray of my back, just in case something was cracked or broken, but without young Doc Parry there, the place held no challenge.

I got home before dawn and found a parking s.p.a.ce right in front of the boarding house on Heliotrope. No one bothered me when I went in and up. No one was in my room when I flipped the lights on and locked the door with the little hook and latch provided by Mrs.

Plaut. My one-year-old niece Lucy could have pushed through the locked door without pausing.

My suit went on a chair, and I noticed the big pile of handwritten paper on my table. It looked like a few thousand pages. Maybe it was papers I had to fill out to get an apology from the Internal Revenue Service for being hara.s.sed by them when I had no income. It turned out to be Mrs. Plaut's ma.n.u.script.

I looked at the first page of chapter fourteen on top, "What could Seymour do?" it began. "The Indian had destroyed the pianoforte and had turned on him and Sister. He dispatched the heathen with his weapon." She didn't mention what the weapon was. Maybe instead of billing Faulkner, I could send him Mrs.

Plaut's ma.n.u.script and ask him for comments I could feed her, but I decided against it. A simple bill would be less cruel. My sleep was the sleep of the self- satisfied and unemployed. In a few hours I would get up, go to my office, make out my bills, and hope there was a job lead. There were no dreams of vampire women, haunted houses, the Old South, or Cincinnati. There was just sleep.

When I woke up my watch told me it was two o'clock, but I didn't know which two o'clock it was. The Beech- Nut clock said it was three, and the sun said it was day. Considering my line of work, it would have been reasonable to invest in a new watch. Slavick Jewelry Company on Seventh had an Elgin eighteen-jewel for $33.75. I could get twelve months to pay it off, but I knew I'd consider that a betrayal of my old man's gift. Gunther wasn't in so I left him a note on his desk explaining that the world had been put right again with thanks to his efforts in tracking down the Culver City hideaway. Then I grabbed a coffee, stopped at a stand for a pair of chili dogs, and headed for my office.

Jeremy Butler was escorting a drunk out the front door of the Farraday Building when I arrived. The place was a mecca for the unwashed and pickled of the neighborhood. It was as if drunks could breed. Jeremy held the man gently under one arm, and the thin guy took it philosophically and quietly.

"It's over," I told Butler. "Lugosi's all right."

"Good. I've been preparing a series of poems related to vampirism," Butler said. The drunk looked interested.

"I'd like to read them when they're ready," I lied.

Jeremy nodded and took his bundle out the door.

Sh.e.l.ly was sitting in his single dental chair when I came in. Customerless, he was reading a dental journal.

"You know, Toby," he said, pus.h.i.+ng his gla.s.ses back on his nose, "I can't make up my mind about who to submit the thing about vampire teeth to, a journal or Collier's."

"I don't think Collier's would be interested," I said, moving toward my office.

"But they pay," he said reasonably.

"Dental journals don't pay anything."

"I thought you were interested in prestige?" I reminded him.

Sh.e.l.ly shrugged, wiped his moist forehead with his soiled white jacket, and said, "Maybe I can have both."

"Maybe," I said, opening my door, "but you'll have to go with what you have on it. I don't think Sam Billings will be showing up here again. There's a good chance he'll be giving up fangs, too."

"I thought I convinced him," Sh.e.l.ly said, lighting a fresh cigar.

"You're very persuasive, Shel," I said, about to close myself into the windowed tomb that served as my office.

"Hey," he shouted, flipping a few pages, "you had a call."

"Who?"

"I don't know," he said. "I didn't take it.

Jeremy wrote it on one of your envelopes."

Looking through my mail, I found no messages, and I didn't feel up to opening the mail. It looked like a pile of bills and no potential work. One of the bills was from Doc Hodgdon for my leg.

The task at hand was to make up my bills, but that didn't fill me with enthusiasm. Faulkner had no money, and Lugosi was just coming out of a period in which he had been on welfare. I neatly printed letters to each of them stating that my expenses had been negligible and that they owed me a fee for three days' work, since they had both given me two-day advances. Both the two-day advances were almost gone. My bill to Faulkner totaled a little over $100, and he wouldn't be paying for some time. I billed Lugosi $30. There was a good chance I'd be making the rounds in a week or two, trying to pick up subcontracts for skip tracers and fill in vacations for hotel detectives I knew.

I shoved my mail into my jacket pocket just as I heard the outside door to the dental office open. When I turned off my light and got to the door, Mrs. Lee was back in the chair.

"You remember Mrs. Lee," Sh.e.l.ly said to me.

Mrs. Lee's frightened eyes had trouble focusing. She clutched a knitted purse to her many bosoms like a teddy bear.

"Today we have something special prepared for our favorite patient," Sh.e.l.ly said in his most phony bedside manner as he patted the fat lady with his right hand and searched through the newspapers on his work stand with his left.

"Today," he continued, "we are going to do something to Mrs. Lee's bicuspids that would make the headlines tomorrow if it weren't for the war, right, Mrs.

Lee?" She moved her head in a variety of directions at the same time.

"Good afternoon, Shel," I said. "See you, Mrs. Lee."

Mrs. Lee was practicing her groaning sound when I closed the outer door and moved into the hall. My back was aching, but with an ache I recognized, which told me it would eventually go away. My knee was holding up with only a faint reminder of what had happened, and the pain in my head from Newcomb's attack in the parking lot of the Chinese restaurant was now an undetectable part of the frenetic nightmare of my cranium. I was feeling fine.

When I got to the lobby, my disposition cooled. A figure I recognized was going over the listings in the lobby, which was tough since the lights were out and he had to use the trickle of sun filtering in from outside.

"I'll save you the trouble," I said.

Cawelti the cop looked at me, and we both listened to my footsteps echo on the tile.

He stepped back with his hands in his coat pocket and a smirk on his face. He was trying to erase the humiliation I had witnessed when Phil almost strangled him. I could read it on his face. He could have taken some pointers from Faulkner and Lugosi on how to accept humiliation, but I had the feeling he wouldn't accept advice from me.

I walked right up to him, violating his s.p.a.ce as much as I could without having to actually smell his hair tonic.

"We going to have a shootout in the hall?" I said.

He snickered, maybe on the verge of breaking.

"No one gets away with what you did to me, Peters," he said through closed teeth. "Brother or no brother, I'm going to be on your back. You made yourself a bad enemy."

"Are there good ones?" I asked.

"Some time. Some place," he said, touching my chest with his finger, "you're going to have to even up with me."

"Look," I said, pulling out my notebook, "just give me your name and address and I'll put you on my mailing list. All my enemies are on it. I have a newsletter with the latest information about my injuries, personal life, the works."

He knocked the notebook out of my hand, and I threw a right into his stomach as hard as I could. I could have delivered a harder blow if I were a foot farther back, but it did just fine. He went against the lobby wall.

I thought he might go for his gun, but he came up with a mad smile.

"a.s.saulting an officer," he gasped.

I looked into a dark corner for my notebook and saw it coming at me in the hand of Jeremy Butler.

"No one hit you," Butler said to Cawelti.

"I've been standing there cleaning up.

You fell."

Cawelti faced us, his eyes darting from one to the other. "I . . ." he started, and then without another word he turned and went through the door.

"He has the persona of a victim," Butler said, his hands on his ma.s.sive hips, "and the ego of a spoiled child. A poor psychological combination."

"He's a cop," I explained.

Butler nodded, turned, and disappeared into the gray of the building to continue his attack on decay and dirt. I, in turn, went out into the late afternoon, saw no Cawelti, and drove to Griffith Park to watch a couple of sailors who looked like they were twelve feeding a camel peanuts. For part of a second I considered the possibility of lining up behind Tony Zale, Hank Greenberg, and Tony Martin and joining the Army or Navy, but I was too old and too torn up and the feeling pa.s.sed.

I found a theater in Hollywood that had The Maltese Falcon, which I had seen three times. I sat through it a fourth time, which made me feel better. By the time I got out, it was almost dark. I headed home to get some rest before I had to pick up Carmen.

Parking was bad. Someone was blaring a radio, and people were laughing. It was a party and I wasn't invited. When I found a place in the alley where I stood a fifty-fifty chance of getting a ticket, I looked up at Mrs. Plaut's boarding house. The light in my room was on. It could have been Gunther waiting for me over a cup of tea or Mrs. Plaut anxious for my literary comments on her m a.s.sive tome. It could have been Cawelti bent on vengeance or my former wife Anne ready to give up her life of sanity. But it was none of the above. I leaned against my speckled fender and looked up at the window. A figure pa.s.sed in front and out of sight and then it returned. It paused in the window, looking down. Our eyes met. It was Bedelia Sue Frye in her vampire character.

I considered the possibilities and options, weighed the rewards and pain, and waved up at her before climbing back into the car. She watched as I pulled out and drove away. I can take a lot of punishment, but the dark side of Bedelia Sue Frye was a consummation I could do without.

It wouldn't be the first time I had spent a night in Sh.e.l.ly's dental chair. It probably wouldn't be the last either. If I could crank it back past the rusty point, it would go almost horizontal. Of course there was always the chance Carmen would let me stay with her, but it had never happened, and I didn't expect it. I took off my jacket, brushed my teeth with the spare frayed brush in my drawer, and shaved, deciding to deal with the daytime Bedelia the next day.

The envelopes of junk mail tumbled from my pocket, and I picked them up. The flap on one of them came open, and I could see a handwritten note on it in Jeremy's fine hand. I scratched my smooth face, let out a yawn loud enough to shake Hoover Avenue, and read the message. There was a phone number and the following: "Call Gary Cooper. Urgent."

I tucked the envelope back in my jacket, crawled into the dental chair, adjusted my back so I wouldn't lie on the sore spot, and fell asleep to the lullaby of traffic, battles, and dead dreams that floated up from Hoover Street, penetrated the walls, and surrounded me with a familiar blanket.

THE END.