Never Cross a Vampire (5 page)

“William Faulkner murdered someone?”

“I just said that,” continued Phil, looking at me with growing impatience.

“Do you know who he is?” I asked.

Phil's face turned red, starting at his neck and going up.

“I'm busy, but I'm not illiterate,” he said. “I don't give a crap and a holler if he's the pope.” Phil pointed at me. “He did in a citizen and he's going up for it. Leib can pull his strings downtown, and you can pull your tricks, and this whole thing can stay tight for a few days, but it's going to blow and he is going over.”

The rage that festered beneath Phil's uncalm exterior sometimes boiled into the air and threatened the closest person, who was frequently me.

“Hold it, Phil,” I said soothingly. “I'm just doing a job.”

“Read the report,” he said with a grunt, “but don't sit behind my desk. I'm going out for a coffee. Cawelti will bring Faulkner up here.”

“Thanks,” I said to the closing door. It had been the most civil conversation I had had with my brother in years.

I picked up the file and pulled the report. The file had a few statements by witnesses and the coroner and a report by the detective in charge, Cawelti. I sat in the chair opposite Phil's desk and started to put my feet up, then remembered what had happened the last time Phil had caught me with my feet on his desk. I almost wound up two inches shorter, which I could ill afford. The report was good and Faulkner was surely in trouble.

“Report—Detective Officer John Cawelti, Wilshire.

“At 9:20 p.m. on January 3, 1942 I was called to 3443 Benedict Canyon in Beverly Hills. I arrived just after the ambulance. Doctor, Bengt Lidstrom of County, said victim, Jacques Shatzkin of that address, was dead. Three bullets in chest. Officer Steven Bowles was on site and said he had been called. Bowles (report attached) arrived before Shatzkin died. Shatzkin identified William Faulkner, writer, as his assailant. Camile Shatzkin, deceased's wife, also identified Faulkner. Jacques Shatzkin's identification was positive. Shatzkin was author's representative and had met previously with Faulkner. Faulkner had been invited for dinner to talk business. He arrived late, according to deceased and his widow, fired point-blank at Shatzkin, and then left. Though victim was unable to do more than identify assailant, the wife said that she knew of no quarrel between the two, though husband had described Faulkner as moody during their one lunch meeting. Faulkner was picked up at the Hollywood Hotel at 10:10 p.m. He denied knowledge of Shatzkin murder or dinner invitation and was singularly uncooperative. He admitted having had lunch with Shatzkin two days earlier (Wednesday). Check with Shatzkin's office confirmed luncheon meeting on Wednesday with Faulkner. Search of Faulkner's hotel room, conducted 4:30 a.m. Saturday, January 4, with Sergeant Veldu present and two security officers from Warner's, Lovell and Hillier, led to discovery of .38 caliber revolver, recently fired. Ballistics run indicates this was weapon used to kill Shatzkin. Faulkner charged with murder 7 a.m. Saturday, January 4, 1942. Asked to call lawyer, Martin R. Leib of Westwood. Made no further statement.”

I had just finished the report when the door opened and Cawelti of the sleek dark hair ushered William Faulkner into the small office.

CHAPTER THREE

F
aulkner was a wiry guy about my age and height with a small mustache and a chip on his shoulder the size of Catalina Island. He had a high-bridged, almost Indian nose with heavy-lidded, deep-set brown eyes. His face was tan and he held a blackened pipe in his thin lips. I couldn't tell what was going on in his head other than that he had a distaste for the room, the situation, me, and possibly life in general. His eyes seemed to show melancholy, calculation, and a private sense of humor at the same time, as if he saw himself as a tragic figure and accepted the role, maybe even welcomed it. I can't say I liked him immediately. I wondered whether he knew any vampire poems.

“Your client,” Cawelti said, ushering Faulkner to the chair across from Phil's desk and backing out with feigned respect. Faulkner didn't sit. He didn't offer his hand. He took the pipe out of his mouth and examined me.

“Forgive my lack of social grace in these surroundings, Mister …”

“Peters,” I said. “Toby Peters. Private investigator working for Martin Leib and, I guess, Warner Brothers on your behalf.”

Faulkner's voice was a little deeper than I had expected and distinctly Southern. I was having trouble with my words, trying to be formal and knowing I was unnatural. He had that effect. Faulkner stood behind the chair playing with his pipe, and I walked over to the window behind Phil's desk and pretended to look out. Since it faced a brick wall four feet away and hadn't been cleaned for a generation of two, I couldn't see anything.

“I don't think they're going to give us a lot of time in here,” I said, “so I'd appreciate it if you'd just tell your story.”

I pulled out my notebook with the worn spirals. It had a few ragged pages left. I could finish up on the back of the letter in my pocket from a hotel in Fresno complaining that I owed them for a night's lodging from a lifetime or two ago. I turned my eyes to Faulkner, who looked as if he might be deciding to tell me to go to hell. An almost nonexistent move of his shoulder made me think he had chosen possible salvation over dignity. I almost wrote that down, but I didn't have enough paper and the nub of my pencil might not last long. I also thought I had stolen the line from the one Faulkner novel I had read.

“There is irony in your request,” Faulkner said, examining his pipe for defects and appreciating the embers. “I've just delivered a collection of stories to my publisher, none of which is as bizarre as this. I was going to start by saying—as I told the police—that I have killed no one.”

“I understand how you feel,” I said, scratching away to visible lead with my grimy thumb so I'd have a pencil to work with.

“Unfortunately,” Faulkner went on softly, “I don't need sympathy. I need professional help. My inclination is simply to be irate and insist on my release, but apparently someone has gone through quite an effort to make that impossible.”

“You mean you think you've been framed?” I said, to stay in the conversation.

“Consider the alternative,” he continued. “It is either that or else I have gone mad, which is certainly a possibility, given the state of the world, though I doubt my madness would manifest itself as an attack on my agent. I would be much more likely to attack a publisher. May I suggest we sit down?”

I nodded, and he sat in the chair across from the desk, leaving me Phil's chair in which I was forbidden to sit on pain of decapitation. I sat. It helped establish a client-professional air in the rancid room, and it gave me a little extra to worry about. Faulkner crossed his legs and examined the back of his right hand. My feet started to go up on the desk. I resisted and planted them on the wooden floor.

“My tale is simple,” Faulkner began with clear distaste for the task. “I met Jacques Shatzkin but once, for lunch at that restaurant with the aquarium window on Sixth Street.”

“Bernstein's Fish Grotto,” I supplied. “Why did you meet?”

Faulkner shifted the ashes in his pipe with a thin finger, cleaned his finger on a handkerchief from his tweed jacket pocket, made sure his tie was in place, and spoke softly.

“He called me and said he wanted to discuss a business arrangement that might be reasonably lucrative for me. I have an agent, but Mr. Shatzkin has—had—a good reputation, and I am somewhat in need of money.”

“May I …” I started, but stopped when I looked at Faulkner's face. It had turned slightly red.

“I do not suffer from false humility,” he said, “or at least I so delude myself. I earned less than thirty-two hundred dollars last year. I have a home and a family, and I carry the burden of assumption on the part of the public that I am financially solvent as the result of a family estate that does not exist and enormous royalties that have never existed. I have had but one economic success.”

“
Pylon
,” I tried. I had fond memories of the book. I had once hidden evidence, a pornographic photograph, in my copy.

“
Sanctuary
,” Faulkner corrected. “And the money from that has been long dispersed. I am in Los Angeles to seek employment from Warner Brothers with the help of my agent and Mr. Howard Hawks. Mr. Warner, so far, has not seen fit to make me a generous offer, or a firm offer of any kind. I am inclined to accept whatever offer I may get. So, when Mr. Shatzkin called …”

“Where did he call you?” I asked.

“At my hotel, the Hollywood,” said Faulkner, finding a match and getting his pipe going.

“He called you and you met at the restaurant?”

“We met at Mr. Shatzkin's office building,” Faulkner puffed, “and then went to the restaurant where I had lobster
naturale
and he had a large shrimp salad. You have that?”

I wrote it down. In spite of Faulkner's sarcasm, it might be something to check. It might not be, probably wouldn't be, but you took what you could get and carried it. I was tempted to tell Faulkner to stick to his writing and let me stick to my job.

“Mr. Shatzkin offered me the rings of Saturn, the moon, and Biloxi,” Faulkner went on. “I told him I would check with my agent and get back to him. We parted amicably outside the restaurant, and he promised to call me. He never did, and I never saw him again.”

“And you never met Mrs. Shatzkin?”

“I never had that pleasure,” he said sarcastically.

“How did Shatzkin seem?” I went on.

“Seem,” Faulkner repeated, making it clear I had chosen the wrong word. “A bit too earnest, too fawning, too false, exactly what I expected in and of Hollywood.”

“You own a gun?”

“Yes, several; they are all in Oxford, Mississippi, in my study at Rowan Oak. They are locked securely away; I have an eight-year-old daughter. I brought none with me. I did not expect to be attacked, nor to commit murder or robbery.”

That did it. I put down the envelope I was writing on and looked up at him. I noticed that my legs had made their way up to the desk when I wasn't looking. The hell with it.

“Look, Mr. Faulkner, I've got a job to do and you want to stay alive and out of jail and the newspapers—at least I think you do. We're in the same boat. I need the money for this case. I'm reasonably good at what I do, but I'm also somewhat human. If you tickle me and don't hit scar tissue, I laugh. If you torture me and hit an old wound, I cry.”

“I recognize the allusion,” Faulkner said, “and appreciate the point. I will try to be more civil, but the circumstances do affect my behavior. It is not just my life, but the world that is bitched proper this time, isn't it? I'd like to be dictator now. I'd take all Congressmen who refused to make military appropriations and I'd send them to the Philippines. On this day a year from now I don't think there'll be one present second lieutenant alive. And here we are playing games with a meaningless murder, and I sit a helpless … forgive me, Mr. Peters, but perhaps you can better understand my emotions.”

“Apology accepted,” I said. I didn't exactly like him now, but at least he seemed like a human being instead of a Southern imitation of George Sanders. “The shooting took place at nine or so last night. Where were you?”

“As I told the officer who brought me in here,” he said, drawing on his pipe to regain his calm exterior, “I was working with a writer named Jerry Vernoff. We were in my hotel room. My agent, Bill Herndon, and I had agreed to try to work up a story treatment for Warners as a preliminary step to possible employment. Mr. Vernoff has worked extensively on story treatments for various studios and has a reputation for working quickly and commercially. I believe someone at Warners suggested the possible collaboration. We ate dinner at the hotel.”