“Are you interested in joining?” Billings said eagerly.
“I don’t know.” I shifted my weight on the coffin to reach for the last of the crackers. Billings’ hand indicated the impulse to race me for the remnants, but courtesy and the possibility of new blood stayed his chunky grasp.
“These people are the only ones who know about the meetings?”
Billings put down his now-finished Hires, stifled a burp, and said, “We are secret and exclusive.”
I turned my head to the group of vampires and Lugosi, whose eyes moved from his tormentors to me to the door.
“Can you tell me who everyone is?” I said, looking casually around and trying not to choke on my cracker.
“Certainly,” said Billings. “There’s Baroness Zendelia, Sir Malcolm.” “No,” I pushed in. “Their real names.”
“No,” Billings countered, sitting up to his full five foot five. “That is private. Our human identities must remain secret.”
“Then how do you mail notices to them?” I tried, but Billings had other things on his mind.
“Well… you think these coffins are a bit hard? I’ve thought of putting cushions on them, but it might look too tacky.”
“How about red velvet?” I suggested.
“Maybe,” Billings sighed, unconvinced, as he looked at the empty cracker dish.
Lugosi was clearly trying to break through the ring of bodies, and I considered the possibility of following the most likely suspect in the group but gave it up. The odds were too slim, the hour too late, and my gas too low. Lugosi made his way through the group and advanced toward me. I stood up and Billings joined me, almost falling back on his coffin.
“Whose idea was it to invite Mr. Lugosi tonight?” I asked Billings loud enough for the others to hear and tried to make it sound like the start of a thank-you-for-the-lovely-evening. Lugosi was at my shoulder listening, the quartet of fluttering capes in pursuit. “I don’t recall,” said Billings, playing with his fangs.
“It was mine,” whispered the dark woman, her voice somewhat foreign, amused, and a little sleepy. She stared immodestly at my much-traveled neck and I pulled up my collar.
“No,” interjected a lean vampire with a jagged nose and a too-small cape that choked his words into a crimson gasp. His accent was definitely more New York Jewish than Transylvanian.
“No, no,” came in the Chinese vampire, billowing his broad cape and elbowing his way to the foreground. The cape was so long that he stepped on it and tripped forward into Lugosi.
The tall dark vampire who had been looking at me earlier was the only one who didn’t try to take any credit.
“Anybody oppose the invitation?” I tried, knowing no one would admit it in Lugosi’s presence but hoping vampire competition would emerge.
“No, why?” asked the Chinese guy.
“Because,” Lugosi said with a broad smile. “I like to be welcome. And I half-enjoyed our visit, but the sands of time fall relentlessly and the dawn approaches.” Lugosi pointed in the general direction of the dawn somewhere above the moldy ceiling. We headed for the stairs, the vampires behind us. I could feel the warm breath of the woman behind me, and I imagined her eyes on my not-too-clean collar.
They escorted us up the narrow stairs, through the theater lobby and to the door, where hands reached out to pass me my coat and Lugosi his coat and Homburg hat.
We exchanged thanks, well wishes, invitations, undying love, and promises to be pen pals before we opened the door.
“Good night,” Lugosi said over his shoulder and stepped into the cold darkness with me behind. In the past week, temperatures had hit lows of 29 and highs of 40. I had a coat from Hy O’Brien’s Clothes for Him on Hollywood. The coat had been a bargain. I got it for only three bucks more than I had sold it to Hy for a month earlier.
There was no sky and almost no light. Blackout conditions had cut off the street lights and most businesses didn’t keep a night light. They didn’t want the first Japanese bombs to land on their taco stands. We stood there for a few seconds, trying to adjust to the darkness, and then I started toward my car, but there were no footsteps behind me. I turned and made out Lugosi’s shape a dozen feet away.
“My hat,” he whispered.
At first I thought he had said, “My bat,” and considered the possibility that he had gone stark raving cuckoo, but he repeated it and I got it straight.
“It’s in your hand,” I said.
“And there is something in it,” he answered. My eyes were beginning to pick out little details now, like the trembling of his hands. I moved fast to his side and took the hat. I reached inside it and touched what felt like a sticky piece of cloth. I led Lugosi quickly to my car, got him in, and went around to get in on the other side. I started the engine and flipped on the overhead light. A lone car went down the deserted street, and we waited for it to pass before we looked down at the piece of black cloth I had pulled from the hat. The writing was in blood or a good imitation.
“It says, ‘You were warned,’” I told Lugosi, who was recovering a bit from the shock. I flipped off the light. His face was hidden but I heard a sound like a laugh and then his familiar voice.
“Worthy of a Monogram serial,” he said.
“Well,” I said putting the car in gear. “We’ve got our list of suspects down to five. We’re making progress.”
As I drove Lugosi back home, I kept him talking, about his life, his work, anything to get the world back to normal.
“Once,” he said, “I had ambition.” I glanced over at him to see the light from passing cars cast dark shadows on his face. “I was in the National Theater of Hungary. I played Shakespeare. Can you imagine? I played Romeo. I was distinguished, yes. I was an officer in the Forty-third Royal Hungarian Infantry in the war. Wounded. I saw real death. And here a foolish trick makes me tremble.”
“I’ve had better days myself,” I tried.
“No, Mr. Peters, I live on hope. I have made less money than people think, have spent more than I should have on vanity and foolishness.”
I was about to try to console him further when he laughed and elbowed me gently.
“No,” he said, “I try, but I can’t see myself as a tragic character. I’ve had good times. Let’s stop for a drink. I have to be at the studio at eight in the morning, but tonight, my new friend, we share a bottle and tell our life stories and fill them with lies and truth and romance.” We went to a little bar I know on Sprina. Lugosi mixed beer and scotch and I nursed two beers for an hour. He stood drinks for everyone and listened to the bartender tell us that he heard MacArthur had been wounded and Manila had fallen. Another guy with a black wig that tilted to the side added that he heard the Army was going to start taking cars away from civilians because there was a shortage of vehicles.
Lugosi listened with a patient smile to the war gossip and the background jukebox playing Tommy Dorsey’s version of “This Love of Mine.”
I thought my client was far away from thoughts of bloody messages, but he looked into the last drops of amber scotch at the bottom of his beer mug and said softly,
“But first on earth, as Vampyre sent,
Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent;
Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
And such the blood of all thy race…”
His words trailed off and then came back as the record stopped. Lugosi’s voice rose slightly and the half-dozen guys in the bar and the barkeeper went silent. “Thy gnashing tooth, and haggard lip;
Then stalking to thy sullen grave
Go-and with Ghouls and Afrits rave,
Till these in horror shrink away
From spectre more accursed than they.”
That pretty well killed the party. I got Lugosi home without any further conversation, promised to follow up on the Dark Knights, and left him in front of his door. I couldn’t bring myself to ask him for another day’s pay in advance.