Never Cross a Vampire by Stuart M. Kaminsky

Author:Stuart M. Kaminsky [Kaminsky, Stuart M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: library, PI
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2012-06-26T20:05:15+00:00

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.

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