CHAPTER EIGHT

B efore 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 hell 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 Wilshire 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 Wilshire station Cawelti, his 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 ran 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 pisshead.”

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 in 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 shift. 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. There 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.

“I don’t like it,” he said, “but I need it.”

“Then why are you holding your hands like that? If I forgot your words, I’d think you wanted to crush my head.”

“Different reason,” he said. “You scared the hell out of Dave. You were supposed to take him to see Dumbo. You took him to see some zombie movie. He had nightmares last night. You forget he almost died last year after the car hit him? He’s eight years old and living with the idea that he was almost killed.”

“I was wrong,” I said quietly.

“You’ve been wrong ninety-nine times out of one hundred since you were …”

“Since I was eight,” I finished. “Where are we going?”

“Mrs. Shatzkin’s friend Haliburton just had an accident,” said Seidman.

We didn’t say anything more. Seidman drove and turned on the police radio to break the pained silence. It purred numbers and addresses to us, soothed us with reports of vandalism and possible mayhem, made us think about something besides ourselves.

We got where we were going in about ten minutes. It was a downtown hotel on Main Street a few doors from the bus depot. A sign outside said rooms were two dollars and up, with separate bath.

When we hit the lobby, the desk clerk came around the counter and moved toward us, his mouth open to speak. Phil held up his hand to stop him from saying anything and told Seidman, “Talk to him.”

A young cop, his face pale, sweat on his collar and his LAPD badge new and shiny, was waiting at the elevator. The lobby, which wasn’t much beyond some sagging stuffed chairs and three stunted palms, was empty.

“Elevator’s out, Lieutenant,” the young cop said. “I’m Officer Rnzini. The crime was on the fourth floor.”

“I think I can walk it without a heart attack,” Phil shot back.

“I didn’t mean …” Rnzini began, but Phil was already taking the stairs two at a time, trying not to pant. I followed behind Rnzini, trying not to smell the building’s rancidness.

“It’s crazy,” Rnzini whispered confidentially to me but loud enough for Phil to hear. “The guy looks like he was shotgunned, but he was alone in a locked room, window locked tight, looks like it hasn’t been opened in years. Doesn’t make any sense.”

Phil stopped suddenly on the stairs, and Rnzini had to throw himself against the wall to keep from bumping into my brother, who looked like an angry refrigerator. Phil had stopped to catch his breath, but he masked the reason by turning on the cop behind him.

“Maybe you did it,” he said. “Just to confuse the police department. Maybe you’re bored. Maybe seeing crime has warped your brain.”

Rnzini started to smile and stopped. Phil wasn’t smiling.

“Lieutenant, I’m Catholic,” he said seriously.

“Of course,” Phil answered and started up the stairs again. Rnzini stayed a bit farther behind him.

There was a small crowd on the fourth floor and a sleepy uniformed cop standing outside a room with a door snapped off its hinges. The cop woke up.

“You talk to all these people?” Phil said over his shoulder.

“All the ones who admit hearing anything,” Rnzini said, catching up.

Phil elbowed his way past two young Mexican kids. One of them turned an angry face, and Phil looked back at him.

“Something on your mind, Chico?” he said.

The two kids backed away.

Inside the small room, Phil looked around, but there was no doubt what we were drawn to. The body on the bed.

“That Haliburton?” he said to me.

I walked over to the body. Shotgun victims do not look peaceful, and depending on how close the shotgun was, they may not look like anything at all. Haliburton still had his face. He was also clutching a .45 in his right hand.

“That’s him,” I said.

“Your notebook,” Phil spat at Rnzini and pulled it out of the hands of the sweating young cop before he could hand it over. Phil moved into the small washroom and read it through slowly. Rnzini stood next to me, trying not to breathe or think. In a few minutes, Sergeant Seidman came into the room and looked around. There was no change in his expression when he looked at Haliburton’s big body on the bed.

I had told Haliburton to pack and leave earlier, and it looked at if he might have taken my advice, but he hadn’t run fast enough or far enough. Seidman walked to the washroom, and Phil got off the toilet seat, handing him the notebook. I followed Seidman and watched Phil take off his tie, stuff it in his pocket and sit on the bed next to the dead man but far enough away to keep from getting bloody.

“He had that gun in his hand and the door locked because he was afraid that someone might be looking for him who wished him no good,” said Phil. “Make sense to you, Rnzini?”

I read the notes over Seidman’s shoulder. It was printed carefully in neat letters and easy to read. After the preliminary business about time and call, it consisted mainly of a statement from a witness, a Richard A. Mann, 1488 Sagamore Drive, Cleveland, Ohio.

The statement read:

“My name is Richard A. Mann. I live at 1488 Sagamore Drive in Cleveland, Ohio. I’m a salesman, costume jewelry. I usually stay at the cheapest clean hotel I can find. You know, profit margin, but I’ve been a little down in sales. I’m not the only one. No one’s sure what’s going to happen with the war. They don’t want to buy. Tell the truth, if I knew just how bad this place really was, I wouldn’t have stayed.

“It was just about one in the morning, maybe an hour ago. Couldn’t sleep. Read the news and Li’l Abner. Got up, lathered my face for a shave. Threw a towel around my neck. This place is made out of balsa wood. The guy above me had been pacing back and forth. I had half a mind to go up and tell him to sit down, but I’ve had nights like that on the road, you know. So, I figured, let the guy alone. Maybe he’s got enough troubles. Live and let live.

“I was in the room by the bed, shaving cream on my face, you know. Not much room to wander with one small room and that little bathroom. I could tell exactly where the guy upstairs was, and I’m sure the guy below me knows where I was. Well, I was standing next to the bed deciding whether to watch the wallpaper peel for a few hours or listen to the radio after I shaved when I heard the shots. Loud, real loud. And I knew right away where they came from. A blast and an echo. For a second, I thought the building’s boiler blew. Probably happen some day. Radiator’s rattling all night. It probably hasn’t been checked in years. Well, there I was, ready to shave, just standing there for a second. I put everything down and went out into the hall. My face was still covered with cream, towel over my shoulder, you know.

“The Belvedere doesn’t have a lot of curious tenants. In a place like this, and I’ve been in plenty of them, people have their own problems and aren’t about to get into anyone else’s troubles. But there were a few people in the hall. One old guy with white whiskers looked like a scared bird. He had on an undershirt with a big hole in it. His mouth was open like he was trying to say something, but nothing came out.

“‘Shots upstairs,’ I said, and went for the stairs. Maybe I should have minded my own business, but I didn’t think. The pacing guy might have killed himself or someone else. Those shots were too damn close.

“The stairs sagged as I went up. You can see I’m not a little guy, but hotel stairs should be made to hold a lot more than me. This whole damn place is coming apart. When I got up to the fourth floor there were maybe three, four people in the hall. One woman looked like … well, officer, you know this place better than I do. Most of the doors were closed and quiet, like they hadn’t heard what they must have heard.

“‘In there,’ I told them, and I pointed at the door of the room above mine. I must have looked like a foaming screwball. They backed away, and I knocked on the door. No answer. The door was locked. I told everyone in the hall to get back and I went with my shoulder against the door. It snapped away, banging open. I think my ten-year-old daughter could have gone through it. Then I saw him. Lying on the bed covered the way he is now. I’ll never forget it. I went back into the hall before any of the others could see it. I was sorry I had seen it. I told the nearest guy, a thin guy in his sixties I think, to call a cop. Then I went back into the room to see if he might still be alive. Believe me, I didn’t want to check and I didn’t think he could be, but you know, there might have been a chance. He was dead. I yelled at the people in the hall not to come in, not to touch anything, and I just waited till you got here. Now if there’s nothing else, officer, I’m feeling kind of shaky, and I’d like to get back to my room and clean up. If you need me, I’ll be in the room right below.”

It was the most unnecessarily complete statement I had ever seen. It must have been Rnzini’s first murder, and he didn’t want to leave anything out. If he stayed a cop, the reports would get sloppier and sloppier and reach a point where they’d start getting better again or deteriorate to where he’d be one of the crowd.

“You know who killed this guy, Rnzini?” Phil said, looking straight at the young cop.

“No,” Rnzini answered. He looked like he was going to giggle and confess himself.

“You should,” sighed Phil. “By God, you should.”

“He’s right,” said Seidman, coming back into the room and handing the notebook back to Rnzini.

“It’s right in your book, kid,” I said.

Rnzini looked at his notebook, wondering whether someone had written something inside it he hadn’t seen.

Without looking at the body, Phil said in a rumble of familiar anger, “Look at our friend Haliburton on the bed here. Pellet holes in him with a narrow pattern, powerful. Pellet holes in his feet, from the bottom up. Strike you as strange, Rnzini?”

“He was shot while he was lying on the bed?” Rnzini tried.

“No pellet holes in the bed by his feet. Lots of blood, but no holes. Blood on the floor,” said Seidman, looking around the room and at the floor.

“Someone moved him, Rnzini,” said Phil, looking at the wall. “Any idea who?”

“It wasn’t me,” Rnzini said defensively.

“Well, that eases my mind and narrows the list of suspects,” Phil said. “Any ideas beyond that?”

“You’ve got a guy alone in a room,” Seidman picked up the conversation. “He’s got a gun and he’s afraid someone is after him. Suppose you were after him and found him here. What would you do?”

Rnzini tried to think, but nothing came, nothing except a look that showed that being a cop might not be such a good profession after all.

“Rnzini,” Phil interrupted.

“I don’t know, Lieutenant.”

“Well, in a tin-can hotel like this,” Phil said, looking at the circular imitation Oriental rug on the floor that had long since lost its pattern, “you might get a room next door or below or above the guy you were after. You might get a shotgun with a hell of a kick, listen to our old friend Haliburton here pace the floor for a few minutes, figure out where he was standing and send a blast through the wall or floor or ceiling. You wouldn’t have to be too accurate. You see any holes in the walls or ceiling, Rnzini?”

Rnzini looked. There was nothing.

“Five will get you ten if you move that dime-store Chinese rug, you’ll find some holes in the floor,” said Phil.

“Mr. Mann from downstairs?” said Rnzini.

Phil winked sourly, and Rnzini got on his knees and moved the rug. The pattern of holes in the floor under it was almost symmetrical. The room below was dark.

“Mr. Mann,” I began, “put shaving cream on his face, threw a towel over his shoulder, stood on a chair, and put the blast on Haliburton, who must have been surprised as hell.”

“He put down the shotgun,” Seidman continued, “ran out in the hall, and started to yell about the gunshot upstairs before anyone had a chance to think or say that the shot might have come from his room. He went up the stairs and got to the door of Haliburton’s room, broke it down and told everyone to get away and call the cops. He wanted to make sure Haliburton was dead and to buy himself some time. He put the body on the bed, moved the rug to cover the holes, and waited for you to show up. Then he told you his story.”

“But,” said Rnzini, “why the shaving cream?”

“Hide his face,” I said. “He could wear a mask right in front of you. He probably used his towel to move the body, keep from getting blood on him. Then he just walked into the washroom over there and took another clean towel. Bloody one’s probably under the body or the bed. Then he gave you his story, walked down to his room, grabbed his already packed bag, if he even had one, and went out the door.”

One of the two forty-watt bulbs in the ceiling fixture sputtered and died. Phil pointed downward.

“We can go downstairs now and find an empty room and no fingerprints,” he said, “then we can start doing legwork.”

“I didn’t …” Rnzini started.

“You didn’t ask enough questions,” Phil said wearily. “You weren’t suspicious enough. You didn’t make everyone sit down someplace where you could keep an eye on them. You get a crime and witnesses, you sit them down where you can see them till someone who knows what he’s doing shows up. I don’t care if it’s your mother or your priest.”

Rnzini had nothing to say. Phil got off the bed slowly and walked out of the room into the hall. I stayed long enough to give Rnzini a look of sympathy.

“My brother and old man have a dry cleaning business in Pasadena,” he said. “I could go in with them.”

“Your report was good, really good,” I said.

“What’s with him, anyway?” Rnzini said, nodding in the general direction of my departed brother.

“He’s a cop,” I said. “If you stick around a couple of dozen years, you’ve got a chance at being as good a cop and as miserable a man as he is. It comes with the badge.”

By the time I caught up with Phil and Seidman, they were already back in the lobby, leaning on the desk clerk, who looked surprisingly unseedy for the Belvedere. His suit was wrinkled but a suit nonetheless. It looked better than mine. His tie was neat. His dead giveaway was the stubble on his face. He needed a touch of grime and that was it. His face was pale and somewhere between twenty-five and forever years old, with a few strands of dark hair combed, brushed, and plastered forward to give himself and no one else the illusion that something was growing up there.

“Haliburton checked in at one in the morning?” Seidman said, consulting his notebook. It was almost dawn.

“Yes,” said the clerk.

“And Mr. Mann in 303?” Seidman continued. Phil simply stood with his arms crossed, looking angry. The clerk couldn’t keep his eyes from him.

“Let’s see,” he said, finding a pair of glasses and checking his register. “Checked in a few minutes later. Said he was a colleague of Mr. Haliburton and wanted a room very near him. I gave him 303 right below, which didn’t seem …”

“What did he look like?” Seidman interrupted.

“Mr. Haliburton?” asked the clerk.

“Mann.”

“Glasses, dark mustache, hat tilted forward, a fairly large man, not as large as Mr. Haliburton,” said the clerk.

“Think you could identify Mann again without the hat, glasses, and mustache?” asked Seidman.

“Without … I don’t know. I didn’t really stare at him. We were busy at the time …”

“Thanks,” said Seidman, closing his notebook.

“Our killer has flair,” I said as we walked back to the car. “A wooden spear in the stomach and a shotgun blast through a floor.”

“If the same guy did both these jobs tonight,” Phil said.

“It’s possible,” I said, getting into the car.

“You thought Billy Conn was going to beat Joe Louis,” Phil reminded me. “I think we should talk to Mrs. Shatzkin.”

Seidman nodded. The sun was definitely coming up and it was Tuesday. On the way to Bel Air we stopped at a stand for coffee and some sinkers. The guy had no cereal. I looked at the counterman’s newspaper while he read it and caught only the headline that said the United States had sunk a Japanese warship and crippled a battleship from a secret air base near Manila.

It was just before seven when we got to the front door of the Shatzkin house. Phil knocked instead of pressing the bell. The Mexican maid answered. She was wearing a robe and a yawn.

“Mrs. Shatzkin is still sleeping,” she whispered.

“Wake her up,” Phil said.

“But …”

“But hell,” Phil shouted, “Tiene prisa. Move.”

The frightened girl moved. We could hear her going up the stairs as we entered the hall. Phil led the way and found the living room. He looked at the furnishings with distaste, probably comparing the place to his own in North Hollywood and not enjoying the comparison and the lack of sleep.

Camile Shatzkin came down in about five minutes. She had taken the time to put on her face and a robin’s-egg blue robe that cut a nice V at the neckline, which could distract us.

“What is this?” she said.

“We’re the scorekeepers,” I said.

Phil told me to shut up.

“Mr. Peters says you admitted yesterday to being a close friend of Thayer Newcomb,” Phil said. “Is that right?”

“Why yes,” she said with a slight fluster and hand movement. “I’ve known Thayer for …”

“And you rented an apartment in Culver City where you could meet him secretly,” Phil went on.

Mrs. Shatzkin bit her lower lip prettily.

“I don’t see what this has to do with my husband’s murder,” she said. “If you are going to persist along these lines, I’m going to have to insist that I can say no more until I talk to my lawyer.”

“Newcomb is dead,” I said.

Phil shot me a look that should have sent me skidding on my heels through the wall.

“Thayer is dead?” she said, putting her right hand up to her throat. “That’s awful. How?”

“Someone shoved a wooden stake into his chest,” I said.

Phil stepped toward me with a ready fist. I tried to watch him and Camile Shatzkin. I interpreted her look as shock and fear, but I didn’t see any grief coming for a lost lover. She sobbed and sat with shaky knees on the nearest chair.

“When did you see Mr. Newcomb last, Mrs. Shatzkin?” Seidman asked, to draw Phil’s attention from me.

“I don’t know,” she said weakly, “Maybe a week, two weeks. I don’t know. We were … we had decided not to see each other again. I regretted the whole thing. And then Jacques died.”

I still didn’t see any grief and neither did Phil or Seidman.

“Do you know where Mr. Haliburton is?” Seidman went on.

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 range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and I could feel the skin of my throat begin to tingle the way your skin feels when you expect someone to tickle you. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on my throat and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes and waited. But something made a noise, and I opened them to see Bela Lugosi.

“Go, go,” he shouted at the three women, taking his cigar out of his mouth to wave them from the basement. “I must awaken him, for there is work to be done.”

And I woke up. My mattress was soaked with sweat.

“Toby,” came a voice. I looked around and saw no one. Then I made out a face and figure.

“You screamed,” said Gunther Wherthman, standing near my mattress on the floor.

“Nightmare,” I told him, sitting up. “What time is it?”

“It is just after 6:30,” he said, looking at the Beech-Nut gum clock.

I got up, flexed my good leg, and moved my sore knee to be sure it would work. Then I turned on the radio and listened to Fibber McGee and Molly for a while while Gunther volunteered to scramble a few eggs and make toast. Mayor LaTrivia tried to convince McGee to run for water commissioner against Gildersleeve, but McGee said he had his own fish to fry. I didn’t say anything through the meal, and Gunther didn’t ask me anything more. Things were coming together, and my mind was clearing. I poured some ketchup on the eggs and put them between two pieces of toast.

“I think I’ve got it,” I said, taking a bite that left me about half a sandwich.”

“You know who your murderer is?” Gunther asked politely, taking a small forkful of egg.

“Right,” I said, chewing. “Now all I need is some evidence.”

“Or a confession from the culprit? Is that an archaic word, ‘culprit’?”

“It isn’t used much in my circles,” I said, finishing the sandwich.

I borrowed a couple of nickels from Gunther, got dressed, and called the murderer.