"EB - Edward L. Ferman - The Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction 23rd EditionUC - SS" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine)

"It all amounts to the same thing, doesn't it?" I shrugged. "Oh, well," she sighed, "vampires are stupid." She reached over and plucked at the hair on my chest. "I haven't had an indecent proposition in hours," she grinned.
So I made one.
Wednesday morning I made a dozen phone calls. Of the nine victims I knew about, I was able to find the information on six.
All six had the same blood group.
I lit a cigarette and leaned back in the swivel chair. The whole thing was spinning around in my head. I'd found a pattern for the victims, but I didn't know if it was the pattern. It just didn't make sense. Maybe Detweiler was a vampire.
"Mallory," I said out loud, "you're cracking up."
Miss Tremaine glanced up. "If I were you, I'd listen to you," she said poker-faced.
The next morning I staggered out of bed at 6 A.M. I took a cold shower, shaved, dressed, and put Murine in my eyes. They still felt Eke Td washed them in rubber cement. Mrs. Bloomfeld had kept me up until two the night before, doing all the night spots in Santa Monica with some dude I hadn't identified yet. When they checked into a motel, I went home and went to bed.
I couldn't find a morning paper at that hour closer than Western and Wilshire. The story was on page seven. Fortunately they found the body in time for the early edition. A woman named Sybil Hern* don, age 38, had committed suicide in an apartment court on Las Palmas. (Detweiler hadn't gone very far. The address was just around the corner from the Almsbury.) She1 had cut her wrists on a piece of broken mirror. She had been discovered about eleven-thirty when the manager went over to ask her to turn down the volume on her television set.
It was too early to drop around, and so I ate breakfast, hoping this was one of the times Detweiler stuck around for more than three days. Not for a minute did I doubt he would be living at the apartment court on Las Palmas, or not far away.
The owner-manager of the court was one of those creatures peculiar to Hollywood. She must have been a starlet in the Twenties or Thirties, but success had eluded her. So she had tried to freeze herself in time. She still expected, at any moment, a call from The Studio. But her flesh hadn't cooperated. Her hair was the color of tarnished copper, and the fire-engine-red lipstick was painted far past her thin lips. Her watery eyes peered at me through a Lone Ranger mask of Maybelline on a plaster-white face. Her dress had obviously been copied from the wardrobe of Norma Shearer.
"Yes?" She had a breathless voice. Her eyes quickly traveled the length of my body. That happened often enough to keep me feeling good, but this time it gave me a queasy sensation, like I was being measured for a mummy case. I showed her my ID, and asked if I could speak to her about one of the tenants.
"Of course. Come on in. I'm Lorraine Nesbitt" Was there a flicker of disappointment that I hadn't recognized the name? She stepped back, holding the door for me. I could tell that detectives, private or otherwise, asking about her tenants wasn't a new thing. I
36 Tom Reamy
walked into the doilied room, and she looked at me from a hundred directions. The faded photographs covered every level surface and clung to the walls like leeches. She had been quite a dish—forty years ago. She saw me looking at the photos and smiled. The make-up around her mouth cracked.
"Which one do you want to ask me about?" The smile vanished and the cracks closed.
"Andrew Detweiler." She looked blank. "Young, good-looking, with a hunchback."
The cracks opened. "Oh, yes. He's only been here a few days. The name had slipped my mind."
"He's still here?"
"Oh, yes." She sighed. "It's so unfair for such a beautiful young man to have a physical impairment."
"What can you tell me about him?"
"Not much. He's only been here since Sunday night. He's very handsome, like an angel, a dark angel. But it wasn't his handsomeness that attracted me." She smiled. "I've seen many handsome men in my day, you know. It's difficult to verbalize. He has such an incredible innocence. A lost, doomed look that Byron must have had. A vulnerability that makes you want to shield and protect him. I don't know for sure what it is, but it struck a chord in my soul. Soul," she mused. "Maybe that's it. He wears his soul on his face." She nodded, as if to herself. "A dangerous thing to do." She looked back up at me. "If that quality, whatever it is, would photograph, he would become a star overnight, whether he could act or not. Except —of course—for his infirmity."
Lorraine Nesbitt, I decided, was as nutty as a fruitcake.
Someone entered the room. He stood leaning against the doorframe, looking at me with sleepy eyes. He was about twenty-five, wearing tight chinos without underwear and a tee shirt. His hair was tousled and cut unfashionably short. He had a good-looking Kansas face. The haircut made me think he was new in town, but the eyes said he wasn't. I guess the old broad liked his hair that way.
She simpered. "Oh, Johnny! Come on in. This detective was asking about Andrew Detweiler in number seven." She turned back to me. "This is my protege, Johnny Peacock—a very talented young man. I'm arranging for a screen test as soon as Mr. Goldwyn returns
The Detweiler Boy
37
my calls." She lowered her eyelids demurely. "I was a Goldwyn Girl, you know."
Funny, I thought Goldwyn was dead. Maybe he wasn't.
Johnny took the news of his impending stardom with total unconcern. He moved to the couch and sat down, yawning. "Detweiler? Don't think I ever laid eyes on the man. What'd he do?"
"Nothing. Just routine." Obviously he thought I was a police detective. No point in changing his mind. "Where was he last night when the Hernddn woman died?"
"In his room, I think. I heard his typewriter. He wasn't feeling well," Lorraine Nesbitt said. Then she sucked air through her teeth and clamped her fingers to her scarlet lips. "Do you think he had something to do with that?"
Detweiler had broken his pattern. He didn't have an alibi. I couldn't believe it
"Oh, Lorraine," Johnny grumbled.
I turned to him. "Do you know where Detweiler was?"
He shrugged. "No idea."
"Then why are you so sure he had nothing to do with it?"
"She committed suicide."
"How do you know for sure?"
"The door was bolted from the inside. They had to break it down to get in."
"What about the window? Was it locked too?"
"No. The window was open. But it has bars on it. No way anybody could get in."
"When I couldn't get her to answer my knock last night, I went around to the window and looked in. She was lying there with blood all over." She began to sniffle. Johnny got up and put his arms around her. He looked at me, grinned, and shrugged.
"Do you have a vacancy?" I asked, getting a whiz-bang idea.
"Yes," she said, the sniffles disappearing instantly. "I have two. Actually three, but I can't rent Miss Herndon's room for a few days— until someone claims her things."
"I'd like to rent the one closest to number seven," I said.
I wasn't lucky enough to get number six or eight, but I did get five. Lorraine Nesbitt's nameless, dingy apartment court was a fleabag. Number five was one room with a closet, a tiny kitchen, and a tiny bath—identical with the other nine units she assured me. With
38
Tom Reamy
a good deal of tugging and grunting, the couch turned into a lumpy bed. The refrigerator looked as if someone had spilled a bottle of Br'er Rabbit back in 1938 and hadn't cleaned it up yet. The stove looked like a lube rack. Well, I sighed, it was only for three days. I had to pay a month's rent in advance anyway, but I put it down as a bribe to keep Lorraine's and Johnny's mouths shut about my being a detective.