backward, landing on my rear, and raised my gun. The black figure kicked, catching me on the wrist, and the gun spun upward out of my hand, hitting a bookshelf and going off. The bullet parted the distance between the black figure’s face and mine and made him pause before he could deliver another kick. I could hear the gun drop to the steel floor below and into something beyond that. I told my body to roll fast. It listened and the next kick missed my head. I threw a kick of my own and caught the figure in the general area of the stomach. He let out a pained groan and something clanged near my head. He had a heavy object and was trying to spread what was left of my brains over the 400 section of the St. Bartholomew Library.
Enough is usually enough, though I’ve found it amazing how much more than enough the human body can take. I scrambled to my knees, ignoring the pain in the injured one, and threw my arms around the guy who was trying to kill me. He took another swing with his piece of metal, but I was too close and he caught me on the fleshy part of my buttocks. In desperation, I sank my teeth into his stomach. He shrieked and shouted. “You crazy bastard!”
“I’m a crazy bastard?” I panted. “Who’s trying to kill who?”
I got to my feet and brought my head up hard in the general direction of his chin. I made contact with about the same spot on my cranium he had softened in the parking lot of the New Moon Restaurant. He groaned and I let go of him. We both backed away. I was seeing flashes of color. I didn’t think either one of us wanted to go at it again, but something was at stake for both of us. I could see him take a shadowy step toward me, and I got ready to meet him, knowing that I’d never be able to run away and that to turn my back would be my end. The only thing I could hear was our heavy breathing in the darkness. Then above us a voice.
“What is going on down there, Hill?” shouted the dry librarian from the upper world.
My enemy’s head turned upward toward the sound and caught a shaft of light. I saw the face clearly and knew I wouldn’t forget it. I also knew I had never seen it before. He turned and ran into the darkness, the faint light of the grillwork making a rippling pattern on his retreating back.
I made my way upward toward the complaining voice of the librarian and met him on the first level.
“What on earth was going on down there?” he demanded.
“Something was going on,” I panted, “but I don’t think it’s reasonable to say it was on earth.”
“And where,” he demanded further, “is Mr. Hill?”
“I have no idea. He was no part of it. I was attacked by the devil and saved by Saint Bartholomew.”
“Dr. Chadwick, have you been drinking?”
“No,” I said, leaning against a nearby heavy oak table, “but I did lose a gun down there. I heard it drop down.”
“Professors at UCLA carry guns?” he asked, but this time it wasn’t a question for me but for himself. “I think I had best call the police.”
“What about my gun?”
“It would take some time to search the lower level,” he replied, heading back for his desk. “We plan a cleaning tomorrow. If there is a gun there, you can retrieve it.”
There was no changing his mind, so gunless I returned to the afternoon. The face of the man who attacked me on level two was about forty, thin, and frenzied. The body that went with it was agile and able. I wouldn’t forget either one.
I tried to put the pieces together on the way to Lugosi’s house, but they wouldn’t fit, not yet. My two cases kept getting in each other’s way. When it came to figuring out my expenses, assuming I lived long enough to do that, there would be a lot of items I wasn’t sure of. For example, I didn’t know whom my friend in St. Bart’s library belonged to, though he seemed more out of a Lugosi film than a Faulkner novel.
When I got to Lugosi’s house, I found Jeremy Butler on the lawn showing the kid next door how to get a stranglehold.
“The boy spotted me,” Butler said. “I told him and his mom I was working for Lugosi, special protection from the Japanese.”
“He’s a good wrestler,” the boy told me, looking at Butler.
“I know,” I said.
I asked Jeremy to stick it out for a few more hours and go home if everything looked quiet. He said he would, and I left, wondering how Lugosi would explain the bodyguard to his neighbors. I figured the truth would be best, but since I seldom used it, I didn’t see how I could wish it on others.
It was almost six when I got to my office. Shelly was just closing up.
“One message,” he said. “I left it on your phone. I’ll clean up tomorrow.”
For Shelly, there was always tomorrow. The office got cleaned up every three or four months by Jeremy Butler, who couldn’t tolerate the mess and potential breeding ground for vermin. Each time Jeremy cleaned the place, Shelly complained and threatened to move out because his “system” had been disrupted.
“That guy with the fang problem,” he said, heading for the door and pushing his glasses up on his nose, “is nuts. Good teeth, but they’ll be gone in a year, maybe two. I’ll probably have to pull them. Man was not meant to wear fangs. If God had wanted man to wear fangs, he would have given us fangs. You wouldn’t have to buy them at a costume shop, for God’s sake. Is it raining out there?”
“No,” I said, shaking the coffee pot on the counter. There was only a rancid remnant in the pot, but the heat was still on. I turned it off.
“What was I saying?” Shelly asked.
“Fangs,” I reminded him.
“Yes, fangs,” he said, shaking his head. “If… but what’s the sense in talking? I’ll do what I can. How was your day?”
“All right,” I said as he opened the door and looked around as if he had forgotten something. “I almost shot a guy. I was attacked by a lunatic in the library, and I lost my gun.”
“Right,” said Shelly. “See you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow, Shel.”
He closed the door and I went into my office. The phone message was from Bedelia Sue Frye. She wanted me to call her back. I looked out the window. It was almost dark. I had no intention of talking to her at night. Then I called Levy’s on Spina and asked for Carmen. I had almost sixty dollars of my clients’ money left and a nightclub to go to as part of my expenses. I invited Carmen, but she had to work.
“Can I pick you up after work?” I said.
“I’m on till two in the morning,” she said. “And after nine hours on my feet, I don’t feel like playing games with you. I’m off Wednesday.”
“Great,” I said. “How about a movie?”
“What happened to the nightclub?” she asked.
“We’ll see,” I said. “I gotta go now, important client just came in.”
I hung up, looked around the office, folded Bedelia Sue Frye’s message. I tried the Alexandra Hotel again. This time they told me that Camile Shatzkin’s playmate Thayer Newcomb had checked out.
With the sun going down and my.38 gone, I went home carefully, got rid of my empty holster, showered, shaved, and shared a thirty-nine-cent can of Spam with Gunther. I asked Gunther whether he wanted to go to a nightclub, but he said he had too much work. I almost considered asking Mrs. Plaut.
I caught “A Man Called X” on the radio. Herbert Marshall was telling Leon Belasco where to find some hidden papers. Herbert Marshall always sounded sure of himself. Herbert Marshall had a lot of writers.
Just before nine I made myself as presentable as possible, even changed to my emergency tie, and drove off to Glendale. I knew Glendale. I had grown up there, worked in my old man’s grocery store there, been a cop there. It had some pockets of near-poverty along its commercial strip, but Glendale was mainly rising middle class and easy hills. On the borders where it touched other towns, like Burbank, it had a potential blight it couldn’t ignore.
The Red Herring was a nightclub on the border. The proprietor called the place a nightclub, but it was really a medium-sized saloon that had gone through a lot of hands and a lot of names. I remembered picking up a kid thief with a broken bottle hiding under the bar there when I was a cop. Two owners ago was a guy named Steele, whom I knew and who disappeared one night and never came back.
The Red Herring was the mailing address of the only member of the Dark Knights of Transylvania I hadn’t talked to, Simon Derrida. The place wasn’t exactly in a delirium of gaiety when I walked in. There was a barkeeper,
