“Are you all right Mr. Peters?” Wong said, sitting up, his suit a mess.
“I think so,” I replied, joining him and touching my bleeding scalp. “Was that judo?”
“No,” said Wong, helping me up. “I was on the wrestling team at USC. A simple leg drop. But the years have eluded me. I was lucky. We’d best get you to a doctor.” I touched my head, trying to assess the degree of damage from years of experience. Koko the Clown was perched on my shoulder, ready to take me into the inkwell if I passed out, but I silently told him he’d have to wait, that we’d play some other time.
“I think I’ll be all right,” I said. “I just need some water and a bandage and a place to clean up a little.”
Wong led me back through the restaurant, past now-curious customers, and helped me clean up. The waiter gave us a hand and found some cloth for a bandage. A shot of something alcoholic offered by one of them sent a bolt through me, threatened nausea, and then gave me the power to move.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Whoever that was, he lacked true style,” Wong said.
“But he was effective,” I added.
“Yes,” said Wong. “It appears as if Mr. Lugosi is in some danger.”
I made it back to my car without further problems, fished my.38 and holster out, and clutched them to my bosom. A sudden chill ran through me, and I turned quickly, thinking someone was breathing down my back from the rear seat. It was empty. I locked the doors and eased into the street, looking for dark Fords and darker strangers.
I made it back to the theater by 4:30. Nate was eating Jujubees and David was wiping tears from his eyes.
“Hi, kids, how was the show?”
“Great,” said Nate, scrambling into the back seat.
“I got scared,” said Dave, moving next to me, “and Nate the Great wouldn’t take me out.”
Nate reached over to hit his brother on the head.
“Cut it out,” I said. “If you guys want to do this again with me, cut it out. Okay?”
“Okay,” they agreed.
Dave wiped tears from his red face and looked at my bandaged head with curiosity.
“What happened to you?” he said.
“Nazis,” I said. “I had to kill them.”
“How many?” Dave said, with his mouth open.
“Thirty-one,” I said.
“He’s kidding you, dope,” Nate said from the back seat, popping a handful of candy in his mouth and turning to watch a fire engine through the rear window.
I got them back home at five and Ruth greeted us at the door. “Baby’s taking a nap,” she said. “I’m just starting dinner. How was Dumbo?”
“Terrific,” said Nate. “It scared Dave.”
“The part where the zombies…” he began, and I cut in.
“The part where Dumbo’s mother dies,” I said. “Right, Dave?”
Dave nodded glumly.
“What happened to you?” Ruth said, looking at me up close. My bandage was high on my head, and my final suit was only partly presentable after a roll in the gravel.
“Near riot at the show,” I explained. “Kids trampled me in the rush for tickets.”
“Trampled right on his head,” Nate confirmed. “I saw it.”
Ruth didn’t know what to believe.
“Staying for dinner?” she asked. “Tuna on noodles.”
“Phil home for dinner?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“I think I’ll skip it,” I said. “I’ve got some work to do.”
I was almost to the car when I heard her say, “Toby, take care of yourself.” There was real concern in her voice, and I turned to look at her, wondering whether she saw me the way Wilson Wong saw Sam Billings. It was depressing.
I should have headed home to nurse my aches and see whether there were messages from my midget and giant investigators, but Ruth’s words had cut deep. My response, I knew, would be to push harder, to prove I could take care of myself and come out on top, which I was not at all sure I could prove.
My car and body knew where I was going without being told by my brain. The car took me from the valley down Laurel Canyon and headed toward Sherman Oaks and beyond to Tarzana. There was about as much chance that a beauty school would be open on Sunday night as there was that Japan would launch its attack on California in the morning. But I couldn’t face going back to the boarding house. I would have tried my ex-wife Anne but didn’t have the energy to talk my way into her apartment for a flash of sympathy and a firm goodbye, which would have been more discouraging than nothing at all. I found a parking space with no trouble and looked west to see the sun going down. Night would be here soon, and other peoples’ vampires would rise. My vampire paid no attention to such fineries as tradition. His trade tool was a tire iron and a good surprise.
Personality Plus was on the second floor of an ordinary neighborhood office building. It was open. The reception area had a counter behind which were shelves of bottles of hair products-hair conditioner, shampoos, mostly green with bubbles in them. A cardboard ad for Breck shampoo was displayed prominently on the counter. The carpet was marine blue and green, long-wearing but with no depth. Large color photographs, some of them badly faded, featured what were meant to be the latest hairdos, but the quality of the pictures led me to believe that they were probably a few years old.
There was a lot of traffic, women sitting in chairs waiting, some of them with children. I walked to the counter, behind which stood a youngish man wearing barber white. Behind him in a room with a lot of talk sat various women with white gook in their hair or wet red nails held out in front of them to dry.
“Can I help you?” said the young dark man.
I had expected a little mincing or a fey wrist, but he gave none and was all business. “Are you always busy like this on Sunday night?” I said.
“Many of our customers work in defense plants,” he explained. “We keep special war hours. Sunday is one of our busiest days. We’re open till ten. Can I help you?”
“Bedelia Sue Frye,” I said. “I’d like to see her. It’s important. Is she a student here?”
“Miss Frye is the director of the school,” he said, looking beyond me to see how the customers were taking me. I looked as if I were in search of an emergency room instead of a beauty operator. On second thought, maybe I could use a little cosmetic help to put me in presentable condition.
“Terrific,” I said. “Now can I see her? Tell her it’s in connection with the Dark Knights. She’ll see me.”
“The dark nights?” he said incredulously.
“You’ve got it,” I said. He left me to face the gathered waiting women and children. A few looked at me. Most kept their noses in their magazines.
The young dark man came back and asked me to follow him. I went around the counter and down a hallway, where we met a trio of white-clad young women, each carrying a human head in her hands. The young man didn’t stop, and the women passed close enough for me to see that the heads were mannequins with hair done up in curlers. The deeper we went into the place, the stronger the smell, a sickly, almost sweet smell something like vinegar, but not quite.
“Through there,” said my guide, pointing to a room. “Miss Frye will be with you in a minute.”
I went through there and found myself in a white, bright office with a window showing out into a long room lined with chairs in which women were sitting having their scalps, hair, faces, and anatomies worked on, plastered, baked, and threatened by an ant colony of instructors and teachers. Even in the relatively thick-walled office I could make out the rumble of sound from the big room beyond. While I watched, a blonde woman in white strode down the aisle that separated the two rows of chairs. She was stopped every few feet by a student or customer with a question, a problem, or a crisis. Gradually, she made her way toward the room I was in. As she came closer, looking directly at me, I could see that she was somewhere in her thirties, built like Veronica Lake, and possessed of a white, gleaming smile that would have looked great in a Teal commercial. She opened the door, letting in the vibration of voices, and closed it again behind her.
