The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (83 page)

“Stop or I’ll shoot!” he bawled.

The man on the wall considered the proposition and rejected it. He turned and jumped. It was a ten-foot drop but he landed catlike and was scuttling across the road by the time we reached the base of the wall.

“After him!” Shea grunted.

The man ran along the other side of the road, making for a clump of trees ahead. I dashed along behind. The fugitive reached the grove a few steps ahead of me and I decided on a little football practice.

It was a rather ragged flying tackle, but it brought him down. We rolled over and over, and on the second roll he got on top. He didn’t waste time. I felt powerful fingers dig into my throat. I tore at his wrists. He growled and twisted his neck. I felt his mouth graze my cheek. He was trying to bite me.

I got his hands loose and aimed a punch at his chin, but he ducked and pressed his thumbs in my eyes. That hurt. I aimed another punch, but that wasn’t good either. By this time he had those hands around my neck again, and things began to turn red. The red turned black. I heard him growling and snarling deep in his throat, and his fingers squeezed and squeezed.

This was no time for Queensbury rules. I kicked him in the tummy. With a grunt of appreciation he slumped back, clutching his solar plexus.

Sheriff Shea arrived, wheezing, and together we collared our prisoner and dragged him to his feet.

He was not pretty. He wore one of those one-piece overall outfits, and between the spikes on the wall and the tussle, he’d managed to destroy its integrity. Patches of his skin showed through, advertising the need of a bath. His yellow hair was matted and hung down over his eyes, which was just as well. They were as blue as a baby-doll’s – and just as vacant. His lips hung slackly, and he was drooling. A prominent goitre completed the ensemble.

“Why, it’s Tommy!” said the Sheriff. “He’s a little touched,” he whispered, “but harmless.”

He didn’t have to tell me the kid was touched. That I could easily believe. But the “harmless” part I doubted. I rubbed my aching eyes and neck while Shea patted Tommy on the back.

“What were you doing on the wall, Tommy?” he asked.

Tommy lifted a sullen face. “I was looking at the bats.”

“What bats?”

“The bats that fly at twilight. They fly out of the windows and you can hear them squeaking at each other.”

I glanced at Sheriff Shea. He shrugged.

“Ain’t no bats around here except the ones in Tommy’s belfry.”

I took over. “What else were you looking at, Tommy?” I inquired.

He turned away. “I don’t like you. You tried to hurt me. Maybe you’re one of them! One of the bad people.”

“Bad people?”

“Yes. They come here at night. Sometimes they come as men, wearing black cloaks. Sometimes they fly – that’s when they’re bats. They only come at night, because they sleep in the daytime.”

Tommy was in full cry, now. I didn’t try to stop him.

“I know all about it,” he whispered. “They don’t suspect me, and they’d kill me if they thought I knew. Well, I do know. I know why Petroff doesn’t have any mirrors on the walls. I heard Charlie Owens, the butcher, tell about the liver he sends out every day – the raw liver, pounds of it. I know what flies by night.”

“That’s enough,” said Sheriff Shea. “Whatever you know, you can tell us inside.”

“Inside? You aren’t going in there, are you? You can’t take me in there! I won’t let you! You want to give me to him. You’ll let him kill me!”

Again, Shea cut him off. Grasping his arm, he guided the halfwit across the road. I followed. We made straight for the gate.

Shea halted. “Push it open,” I said.

“It’s locked.”

I looked. A shiny new padlock hung from the rusty handle.

“It was open half an hour ago,” I said.

“He always keeps it locked,” Shea told me. “Usually has a man out here, too – a guard. And dogs in the kennels back of the house.” He eyed me suspiciously. “You sure you were up here, Mr Kirby?”

“Listen,” I advised him. “I was up here a little over half an hour ago. The gate was open. I went in and found Petroff on the floor. He had two holes in his throat and I’m not sure whether he was still breathing or not. I’ll give you every explanation you want later, but let’s go inside, quick. He may be dead.”

Shea shrugged. He stood back and drew his revolver. The shot resounded, the lock shattered. I held Tommy tightly and pushed him through the gateway.

After that I took the lead. Up the steps, through the door, down the hall. It was slow going in the gathering twilight. We stumbled along toward the room behind the staircase.

“Here,” I said. “Here’s where I found him.” I opened the door. The light was still on. I pointed to the floor. “Here,” I said.

“Yeah?” grunted Shea. “Where is he?”

The room was empty. The rug was on the floor, but Petroff was not. I stared, and the room began to whirl. I took a deep breath and inhaled fresh air.

It was coming from the open French windows at the end of the room.

Of course! The windows were open. I had made some kind of a mistake. Petroff had been breathing. He had fainted, or something. After I left he recovered, went for a stroll on the porch beyond the open windows, and locked his gate. The holes in his throat. Maybe he’d cut himself while shaving.

*   *   *

I was a fool. A glance at Sheriff Shea confirmed the suspicion. He grinned at me.

But Tommy was not grinning.

“You were here before,” he murmured. “You saw him lying here with holes in his throat.”

“I – I made a mistake,” I mumbled.

“No. When you were here it was still daylight. Now it’s dusk. When you were here he was still asleep. But he comes alive at night.”

“What do you mean? Who comes alive at night?”

“The vampire,” he whispered. “He comes alive. And at night he flies. Look!”

Tommy screamed. His finger stabbed at the dusk beyond the opened windows.

We stared out into the night and saw the black shadow of a bat skimming off into the darkness, a mocking squeak rising from its throat.

In just a little while there was the devil of a lot of activity. The ambulance I had sent for finally arrived, and Shea had to stall them off with a trumped-up excuse about a fainting fit. Then Shea wanted to play detective and go over the place. Personally, I think he was dying to case the joint merely to collect some gossip.

I won’t bother remembering the bawling-out he handed me. I had to take it, too. After all, my story sounded pretty phony now.

Tommy was the only one who believed me. And his support was not much help. A half-wit’s comments on vampires don’t make good testimony.

While Shea handled the ambulance men, Tommy kept talking.

“Look at the garlic wreaths on the doors,” he said. “He must have been trying to keep them out. They can’t bear garlic.”

“Neither can I,” I answered. “And I’m no vampire.”

“Look at the books,” Tommy exclaimed. “Magic.”

I stepped over to the built-in bookshelves. This time Tommy really had something. There were rows of blackbound volumes; musty, crumbling treatises in Latin and German. I read the titles. It was indeed a library of demonology. Where there’s smoke there’s fire.

But what did that prove? Occultism isn’t a rare hobby on the Coast. I knew half a hundred crackpots who belonged to “secret cults,” and down Laguna way there was a whole colony of them.

Still, I ran my eyes and fingers along the rows. One of the books on the lower shelf protruded a bit more than was necessary. It offended my sense of neatness. As I reached in to push it back, a card slipped out from between yellowed pages. I palmed it, turned around just as Sheriff Shea re-entered the room.

“Come on,” he sighed. “Let’s get out of here.”

Driving back to town, with Tommy wedged between us on the front seat, Shea gave me another going over. “I don’t understand all this monkey business,” he declared.

“I don’t know what you were doing in that house in the first place. Least I can do is hold you on suspicion of illegal entry. As for Tommy here, he’s liable to get booked on the same charges. I’m gonna see his folks about this. But what I want to know is – where’s Petroff?”

“I shot him.” I grinned. “But the bats flew off with his body.”

“Never mind that,” Shea snapped. “You smart-aleck reporters aren’t tampering with the law down here. I’d like to get the DA in on this, but there’s nothing to go on, yet. Maybe after I hold you on suspicion a few days you’ll be ready to talk. I want to know how you cut those telephone wires, too.”

“Now listen,” I said. “I’ve got work to do. I’m willing to play ball on this thing and help straighten matters out. If Igor Petroff has disappeared and I’m the last man who saw him alive – or dead – that’s important to me, too. The paper’ll want the story. But I’m down here on an assignment. I’ve got to move around.”

“No, you don’t. Case I didn’t mention it, you’re under arrest right now, Mr Kirby.”

“That,” I sighed, “is all I want to know.”

I eased the car door open gently and swiftly. We were going thirty, but I took my chances. I jumped and hit the road.

Shea swore. He brought the rattling Chevvy to a halt, but by that time I was running along the ditch on the other side of the road. It was good and dark.

Shea bawled and waved his revolver, but he couldn’t spot me. Then he turned the car around and zoomed back up the road. I went into the field, kept going. In a few minutes the road was far behind me, and I headed across to the other side of the field and another dirt road running parallel.

Here I found the truck that took me back to LA. I hopped off downtown, found a drugstore, and called Lenehan at the office.

“Where in thunder are you?” he greeted me. “Just had this hick sheriff on the wire. He’s bawling you’re a fugitive from justice. And what’s all this business about a disappearing body? Give.”

I gave. “Hold the yarn,” I pleaded. “I’ve got a new angle.”

“Hold it?” yelled Lenehan. “I’m tearing it up! You and your disappearing Dracula! Petroff was drunk on the floor when you found him and you were drunk on your feet. He had the decency to wander off and sober up, but you’re still drunk!”

I hung up.

Then I fished around in my pocket and pulled out the card I had snatched from the book in Petroff’s library.

It was nicely engraved:

I turned it over. A man’s heavy scrawl spidered across the back read:

You may be interested in this volume on vampirism.
H. K.

The plot was thickening. Hammond King? I knew the name. A downtown boy. Wealthy attorney. What was the connection?

I called Maizie at the office.

“Hammond King,” I said. “Check the morgue.”

She got me the dope. I listened until she came to an item announcing that Hammond King was attorney for the Irene Colby Petroff estate. I stopped her and hung up.

It was eight o’clock. Not likely that Hammond King would still be at his office, but it was a chance worth taking. The phone book got me the number and I deposited my third nickel.

The phone rang for a long time. Perhaps he was going over a tort or something. Then a deep voice came over the wire.

“Hammond King speaking.”

“Mr King – this is Dave Kirby, of the
Leader
. I’d like to come over there and talk to you.”

“Sorry young man. If you’ll phone my office tomorrow for a more definite appointment—”

“I thought we might have a little chat about vampires.”

“Oh.”

That stopped him.

“I’ll be right over,” I said. “So long.”

He didn’t answer. I whistled my way out of the phone booth, ordered a ham sandwich and a malted milk, disposed of same, and took a cab downtown.

The night elevator brought me to Hammond King’s office. The door was open and I walked into one of those lavish layouts so typical of wealthy attorneys and impecunious booking agents.

I ignored the outer office and made for the big door marked “Private”.

King was examining a bottle of Scotch with phony nonchalance.

My nonchalance was just as phony as I examined him.

He was a short, stocky man of about fifty-five. Gray hair and mustache to match. His eyes slanted behind unusually thick bifocals. He wore an expensive gray suit, and I admired his taste in ties. He looked like a hundred other guys, but he sent books on vampirism to his friends. You never know these days.

“Mr Kirby?” he inquired, getting up and extending his hand. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“I told you over the phone,” I said. “I’d like to have a little chat with you about vampires.”

“Oh.”

The phony nonchalance faded away and the hand dropped to his side.

“I’d rather have talked to Mr Petroff about it,” I continued. “Matter of fact, I dropped in on him this afternoon. But he wasn’t there. That is, he was there, and then he wasn’t. You know how vampires get restless about twilight.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean, King,” I said. “I just thought I’d warn you. In case anybody tries to bite you in the throat, it’s your old client, Igor Petroff.”

“How’d you know he was my client?”

“I know a lot of things,” I told him, wishing it were true. “And what I don’t know you’d better tell me, but fast. Unless, of course, you want it splashed all over the front page of the
Leader
.”

“Let’s be reasonable,” Hammond King pleaded. “I’ll be glad to help you all I can. Anything involving my client—”

The phone rang. King reached for the receiver, then drew his hand back.

“Pardon me, please,” he said.

He got up and went into the outer office and shut the door.

I would have given my left arm to know who King was talking to. But I didn’t have to give my left arm. All I needed to do was reach out with it and gently pick up the receiver. Call it eavesdropping, if you wish. You do a lot of things in this business.

“Mr King?” a girl’s voice came over the wire. “This is Lorna Colby. I’m at the Eastmore Hotel, Room Nine-nineteen . . . No, Igor sent for me. He wanted to talk about a settlement on the will.”