She looked up in something resembling surprise.
“Why? I mean, he left last night. Quit. He was very devoted to Jacques, almost a son to us. He just couldn’t stand being around here. I understood.”
If there was any devotion in Haliburton, it had been directed at Mrs. Shatzkin, and if there was maternal love in his looks, Oedipus could move over to make room for one more on the couch.
“Haliburton is dead,” I said, taking two steps back from Phil.
Seidman stepped between us and said softly, “Phil, Phil… not here.”
“He’s dead?” Mrs. Shatzkin said with eyes opening in bewilderment.
“Yeah,” I said. “Isn’t it curious how men who get too close to you wind up dead? The count is three, and the way I see it, there’s one left. Care to come up with a name, Camile?”
Camile coughed like her namesake and almost had a fit. “Maria,” she called through the cough, “Maria.”
The maid came running in.
“Call Doctor Gartley now. Tell him to come quickly. I’m going to my room.”
Without a goodbye or final comment, she made her exit.
“I’d give her one and a half stars on that performance,” I said. “She wasn’t upset about Newcomb’s death, and maybe she knew about Haliburton getting it.”
I was waiting for Phil’s fist and backed away when I saw it coming out of the corner of my eye. He missed by inches, and I went behind the couch.
“You bastard,” he said. “I told you to keep your mouth shut. I wanted to move this thing slowly.”
“I’ve got a client in jail,” I said. Seidman was touching Phil’s arm to suggest restraint. He wasn’t actually going to step in my brother’s way if he lost control.
“She’s in this with somebody,” I said.
“In what?” said Phil. “Shatzkin’s murder? Newcomb, Haliburton? Is she keeping busy on the side by threatening Bela Lugosi? It sounds like a cheap movie.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” I said, getting a germ of an idea. I knew the germ would sprout, grow, and itch until I made something of it.
I sat as far away from Phil in the back seat as I could when we drove back, and I didn’t say anything. They parked at the Wilshire station and got out.
“You want me to come upstairs?” I said.
“I think we want you to go away, Toby,” Seidman said.
“My car is in Culver City,” I said.
“Take a streetcar,” Phil said.
“What about Lugosi?” I called at the two detectives going up the stairs.
“We’ll put a man on him,” Seidman said and disappeared through the dirty glass doors that caught the sun and sent it dancing in my mind.
I caught the streetcar, paid my nickel, and fell asleep. At the end of the line, the motorman woke me up and I rode back again trying to stay awake. I could easily have become the Flying Dutchman of the Los Angeles transit system. It took me almost an hour to get back to my car.
Since I was there, I dropped in to see Rouse, the janitor. When he saw me in the hall, he said, “No,” and closed his door.
“I left my tire iron upstairs,” I shouted.
No answer.
“I owe you five bucks,” I shouted. The door opened.
“Give it to me and go,” he said, chewing away as he had before. I wondered whether it was food consumption or a nervous habit.
“One last question,” I said. “For another five.”
Rouse looked toward the stairs.
“I been up hours cleaning that blood,” he said. “Didn’t get back to sleep. My wife wants to move. Where am I going to get another job?”
“Sorry to hear that,” I said. “Did you get a look at the body before they took it out?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking up the stairs.
“You recognize him?”
Rouse shrugged.
“I told the police maybe, but there was another guy who went there. Bigger guy, not big-big, but good-sized. I could tell by hearing them over my head. Never got a look at him. I thought he was Mr. Offen.”
I gave him the five and said thanks.
“Police said not to touch anything up there,” he said. “I’ll get your tire iron when I can.”
He went back inside. I’d dropped my gun in a library and my tire iron in an apartment. I checked to be sure my wallet was still in my back pocket. It was.
I drove back home slowly to keep from killing any more Los Angelians and got there by nine. I pulled myself up the stairs, fished out some change, and made some calls. First I called Shelly and told him if he saw Jeremy Butler to tell him to drop the watch on Lugosi. Shelly said I had two more messages from Bedelia Sue Frye. Then I called Lugosi’s house and left a message to tell Butler to go home if he showed up. My next call was to my brother. I got Seidman instead.
“Phil’s gone home for a few hours,” he said. “And I was on the way out. What’s up?”
“How about a suggestion for the medical examiner who does the autopsy on Newcomb?” I said. “Have him look for a bullet.”
“There was no bullet hole in the corpse,” Seidman said. “Just the wooden spike.”
“What if there was a bullet hole,” I said, holding back a yawn, “but someone didn’t want you to know it and…”
“… he shoved the stake in to cover the wound,” Seidman completed. “What the hell for?”
“To make it look like a vampire caper,” I explained. “To link Newcomb to the Lugosi case. Newcomb had been cropping up and giving me scares. He was working with someone to keep me as far away from the Shatzkin murder and as close to the Lugosi case as possible. Remember, I’m probably the thing that links the two.”
“I’ll tell the medical examiner,” said Seidman. “Anything else?”
There was nothing else. I hung up, drooped to my room, and closed my shades. I put my clothes on the chair near the table and hit the mattress with a roll. I was out before a vampire bat could blink a blind eye.
I dreamed of blood and roses, shaving cream and dark basements. Out of the crash of images, I found myself a little kid again in the basement below the store my old man had owned in Glendale. I hated to go down there and get boxes. It was dark with wooden shelves and places for nightmares to hide. An old Negro named Maury had slept down there from time to time. Maury used to help in our store and others in the neighborhood. Maury died when I was about seven, and I didn’t want to meet his ghost in the basement. In my dream, I went down and looked around. I wasn’t alone. The room was the same, unchanged in any way. I could see along the floor, in some light without a source, my own footsteps in the dust. In the light opposite me were three women. Even in the dream I thought I had to be dreaming because the light was behind them, and they threw no shadow. Two of the women were dark. One was Bedelia Sue Frye in her vampire costume, and the other was Camile Shatzkin in her widow’s black dress. Their eyes were dark and seemed almost red. The other woman was blonde with great wavy golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face and couldn’t remember how or where. All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the red of their soft lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my chest a hope that they would kiss me with those red lips. They whispered together and laughed. It sounded like waterglasses tinkling. The blonde girl shook her head and the other two urged her on. Camile said:
“Go on. You’re first and then us.” Bedelia continued, “He’s strong. There are kisses for us all.”
The blonde girl came forward and I couldn’t move, couldn’t call my father or brother. She bent over me till I could feel her breath on me, honey-sweet and at the same time bitter. Then I smelled blood and recognized her. It was Bedelia Sue Frye as I had seen her in the early evening. She was two people in the same room with me, and I was frightened.
She arched her neck and licked her lips like an animal till I could see the moisture shining on her lips and on the red tongue as it touched the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as her lips moved below the
