“At least I can make a stab at finding out if they’ve been pawned anywhere in the city. What’s missing?”
Talisman appeared to be framing his answer carefully. “Nothing of mine, Joe. And yet something that I believe we must find, or try to find. And somehow I doubt that it is in a pawn shop. Yet we must try every possibility available. I think it is not many miles from where we sit.”
“What is it?”
“An edged weapon. Old. I regret that I do not know much about what it looks like.”
There was a pause. Joe said: “Unless you can tell me more, I don’t see how I can—”
“But you must try. I will tell you what I can.”
“Yeah. Sure.” Joe took another sample of his martini.
“Joe, there are not many people in the world in whom I can confide freely. So while I enjoy your company allow me to ramble on a little. It may help me to think.”
“Sure.”
“You see, Joe, I am compelled by circumstances to temporarily take up your profession. In fact, your friend in Homicide and I are interested in the same murder cases; from different viewpoints, naturally, yet I am as anxious as he to see them solved.”
“That’s good to know,” said Joe sincerely. “Then maybe my first private guess was right. When I first noticed the lack of blood. Whoever is killing these winos is…”
Talisman was nodding gently. “A member of my community rather than of yours. You may say the word: a vampire. Yes, I have determined that such a one is at least among the guilty.” Talisman made a sound like a sigh, but without full breath behind it. “I have, in my own community, as you probably know, a certain position of leadership. I have it only by default, perhaps, but there it is. I have discussed this case with other honorable members, who agree with me that some action ought to be taken. I have their moral support if probably no other kind. We will not willingly shelter such a guilty one among us.”
Oh? thought Joe. He felt sure that there was more to Talisman’s game here than he was yet telling. He also wondered what the couple at the next occupied table would think if they could overhear this chat.
Talisman went on: “Neither your police force nor your courts are equipped to deal effectively with vampires.”
“That’s for sure.”
“Yet you have information, and certain ways of gathering more information, that I lack. Therefore I propose that we informally join forces.”
The waitress arrived with Joe’s steak. When she had accepted Talisman’s insistence that he was not going to order food, and had departed again, Joe said, with a faint smile of his own: “This of course is the point where we always tell people to give us their information and then leave the investigating to the professionals. But naturally in this case—”
“—any such injunction to me would be imbecilic. Naturally. Alas, now that you are ready to help me, I still do not know exactly what aid I may require. There is, as I have said, the weapon to be located. And…”
An airliner, taking off, drew faint vibrations through the silverware and dishes.
“There is among the guilty, as I have said, at least one man of my own people.”
“How many people in all are there involved?”
Talisman conveyed ignorance.
“This one man who is of your people, as you put it. Do you know his name, what he looks like?”
A headshake, minimal but impatient, dismissed all such commonsensical, methodical questions for the time being. Now we are coming to the real point. “Among those somehow involved, Joseph, there is another man who interests me much more.” Talisman paused, gazing out the window again. On his face was an expression of quiet excitement, a look different from any that Joe had seen him wear before.
The vampire turned back from the unreflecting glass; he spoke softly, but with emphasis. “Compared to myself, Joe… compared to me, I say… this other man is something of an oddity.”
“Huh?”
Talisman’s manner relaxed a trifle. “But never mind the extremely odd man now. He is not a vampire, nor is he, I think, among the guilty. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Unfortunately one of my fellow nosferatu is killing helpless victims, and I intend to stop him. He is not killing for food; you know that we can obtain all that we really need from the blood of animals. Nor are his crimes of sexual passion. He is engaged in wicked ritual. I get the impression that he is offering blood sacrifice.”
Joe was too much the professional to be put off for very long from the professional attitude. “You mean one of these cults? Devil-worshippers and so on?” And immediately there crossed his mind the thought of the man from New Orleans, that Charley Snider and many others were presently trying to ambush. “I don’t know how frequently people in your, uh, community engage in that kind of thing.”
“Not as frequently,” said Talisman, “as people in your community might suppose. Of course, Joe, there are many ways of worshipping the Devil. Just as many, I suppose, as there are of praying to his great Adversary.”
The first taste of steak had been delicious, but already Joe had forgotten it. “Let’s stick to the facts, if we’re going to help each other. Give me all the details you can. Leaving the magic aside, you’re looking for two men, and one old knife.”
“Two men in particular, yes. One object. A weapon. It might be bigger than a knife. But we must be careful what we leave aside. Ah, Joseph, what is magic?”
TWO
The applause swept up enthusiastically, quite loud for the few dozen people in the audience. As plainly as if he could see her, Simon Hill knew what the woman in the tenth pew back, the most recent volunteer, looked like now: half pleased, half nervous, entirely mystified. It was all in the sound of her voice as she had to agree that it was indeed a diamond wedding ring that she had been holding in her fingers. Like most subjects she was glad that the trick had worked successfully, and at the same time she felt a core of resentment, perhaps unconscious, at not being able to figure out how it had been done. If Simon had explained the banal truth to her, about the elaborate voice-code established between magician and assistant, she would have felt quite disappointed.
It was the end of the performance. They’d done enough, though not quite everything planned, and he had to end it on a burst of applause like that, even though there was some chance of a certain kind of trouble whenever a mentalist failed to finish on an illusion-breaking note of farce. Signalling Margie by his gesture that they were cutting it off right here, Simon turned back to face the audience, meanwhile pulling off his white, thick blindfold, blending the two actions expertly into a sweeping bow. Margie, tripping lightly back from her place at the side of the last volunteer, took Simon’s outstretched left hand and joined him just in time for the second bow. The organ, in its loft far in the rear, sounded a long chord of finale.
Simon Hill was standing in the chancel of the great chapel of St. Thomas More University, on the lakefront on the north side of Chicago. A few spotlights, mounted under an immensity of gray pseudo-Gothic vaulting almost a hundred feet above his head, picked accurately down at him and Margie where they stood, rather like Our Lady’s juggler in the old fable, before the flat, plain, modern altar table. Some of the more liberal faculty members had been arguing for some time that if it was all right to perform The Play of Daniel here in the chapel, then why not also some other entertainment of the medieval tradition? Simon had heard the president quoted as objecting that if a conjuror were to be allowed this year, then next year someone would be milking a goat in the nave as well, in authentic medieval style; but eventually the liberals had prevailed, and here was Simon the Great working and getting paid. All the performances here were after all supposed to have something to do with the Summer Medieval Festival, and, short of goats, what more fitting than a jongleur of some kind in the cathedral? A mind-reader in the chapel came close, anyway.