“I love you, too,” I said. “How about I give you some extra cat food?”

  “You can do that!” As long as I was feeding him, he didn’t care how I smelled. He hopped down off the sofa, which was part of my cunning plan. If he was on there, I’d have trouble sleeping there myself, and it was getting to the sleep-or-die point.

  I hung my hat on the hat tree. I shed my shoes, my belt, my coat, and my tie. That would do. I lay down on the couch. I’m not one of those sissies who need it to be pitch black to sleep. I closed my eyes. Old Man Mose’s little smacking noises as he committed gluttony there on the floor soothed me like a lullaby.

  Next thing I remember, I had thirteen pounds of fluffy red tabby on my stomach. “Do you have to?” I mumbled.

  “Damn right I do,” he answered. “I’ll eat on the floor, but I don’t want to sleep there.”

  Maybe that makes sense if you’re a cat. I was too worn to care. I moved him a little, so his sharp back foot wasn’t digging into my crotch. Then I closed my eyes again. He might’ve kept me awake for a minute and a half.

  The phone rang. I jumped. Old Man Mose jumped off me. He didn’t draw much blood, but some. As I stumbled to the desk, I looked at my watch. I’d had three and a half hours of sleep to stagger through the day on.

  “Hello?” I said, and then, remembering where I was, “Mitchell Investigating.”

  Wrong number. I hung up, thrilled as you’d expect. A perfect start to another perfect day. I love LA.

  ​V

  I did go home after that. Little studio apartment, a few blocks from the office. For once, the landlady wouldn’t complain my rent was late. I showered. I shaved. I put on clean clothes. I took three aspirins. Home is where the aspirins are. So is the office.

  On the way back, I had coffee and menudo and more coffee. Old Man Mose was curled up on the sofa when I came in again, his tail over his nose, looking for all the world as if he’d never heard of original sin. Cats have it rough. I shook my head. If you wanted some original sinning, Deacon’s was the place. Or some not so original sinning.

  After I looked at the bottle of Wild Turkey in my desk, I put it back. That made me feel like a good boy. I knew the feeling wouldn’t last. While it did, I called the number Lamont Smalls’d given me.

  It turned out to be the switchboard at the Los Angeles Lookout. “Can you put me through to Mister Smalls, please?” I said to the operator.

  “Who shall I say is calling?” She didn’t quite say Why would the editor want to talk to the likes of you? but that was what she meant.

  “My name’s Mitchell, Jack Mitchell.”

  “And what is this about?”

  “He’ll know.”

  No, she didn’t think I deserved to speak to The Man at all. “Hold on,” she said, clearly expecting to hang up on me and enjoy doing it. I heard some clicks and pops. Then she came back on the line. “I’ll connect you,” she told me. She had the grace to sound surprised.

  “This is Lamont Smalls. How are you today, Mister Mitchell?”

  How was I? Better not to think about that. “I’ll do,” I answered. “I have some news that’ll maybe interest you. Do you want to hear it on the phone?” Is that snooty switchboard girl listening in?

  “Why don’t I pay you a call? If I come in an hour, will that be convenient for you?”

  “Let me check,” I said, for all the world as if I might have something else going on. Five seconds later, I told him, “That will work.”

  “See you then,” he said. The line went dead.

  Fifty-eight and a half minutes later, he knocked on my door. Old Man Mose dove under the couch. I opened the door. There he stood, as natty as the first time he’d visited. We shook hands. “Come in. Sit down. Good to see you,” I told him.

  “I’m not nearly so sure it’s good to see you,” he said, which was understandable enough. I could see him bracing himself for what was liable to come next. “You … know something about Marianne?”

  “I saw her last night.” I saw her this morning would have been truer, but I came close enough. Then I gave him the other barrel: “At Deacon’s.”

  Whatever Smalls had braced for, that wasn’t it. He flinched as if I’d slapped him. “At Deacon’s? Good God, what was she doing there?” He didn’t ask what I’d been doing there. Either he thought I was working or he thought Deacon’s suited me, which it (mostly) doesn’t. Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

  “She was there with Jonas Schmitt. He plays in the house combo.”

  “He would,” Lamont Smalls muttered darkly. After a few seconds digesting that, the editor added, “You’d think Deacon Washington could hire better.”

  I had to nod. “Yeah, you would. Don’t get me wrong—he isn’t terrible, not even close. He can do the job, but he’s about as exciting as Cream of Wheat with skim milk.” I didn’t tell him his wife thought otherwise. Why rub it in? Besides, it’s not as if he couldn’t work that out for himself.

  He did some more muttering, this time mostly to himself. I thought I heard ofay bastard. He stared down at his elegantly manicured hands. After a bit, he looked up to me again. “I don’t suppose you have photos?”

  “Sorry. No. I was there on other business.” I didn’t tell him taking pictures in Deacon’s was another good way to get yourself killed. He was bound to know that himself. I went on, “I didn’t even know he was the cat on piano till they reeled in the curtains and he backed up Bird.”

  Smalls looked as if I hadn’t just stuck in the knife—I’d twisted it, too. “Jonas Schmitt … backed up Bird?” Sure as hell, by the way he sounded, that hurt worse than Schmitt doing the nasty with his wife.

  “ ’Fraid so,” I said.

  “How was that? Do I want to know?”

  “It could have been worse. He’s a born sideman. He didn’t get pushy—he knew better than that.”

  “With Bird? God wouldn’t get pushy with Bird. Chick Webb might not’ve got pushy with Bird.” Dwarfed and crippled, poor Chick Webb died young, before the war. But what he couldn’t do with a drum kit, nobody ever will. And did he know it? Oh, he might have. Yeah, he just might.

  “If I try, I may be able to get pictures of them coming out of the place,” I said. “Have to buy some superfast film—you better believe I’m not gonna use flashbulbs around there.”

  “That will help … I suppose.” Lamont Smalls shook his head. “That may end up saving me money in divorce court, I should say. Nothing will help.” I didn’t need to be Einstein to work out what he meant. He still wanted Marianne back—still loved her, if you’d rather call it that. He wanted some sorcery to make it as if things’d never gone wrong between ’em.

  Sorcery can do all kinds of things. The wizards learn more about what it can do every single day. But I’m here to tell you, it can’t do that. Whoever says different’s no wizard, only a grifter. Lots of grifters running around loose, bleeding suckers dryer’n a vampire would.

  “Mister Smalls, you pick up the pieces and you go on the best way you know how. What else can you do?”

  When he eyed me this time, I wasn’t just a hired gumshoe in his eyes. I was a human being. I think it caught him by surprise. “You know what you’re talking about, don’t you?” he said slowly.

  “Uh-huh.” Not another word after that.

  “Not so easy when you’re in the middle of it, though.”

  “No. It isn’t. You’re crazy, only you don’t realize you’re crazy. Lasted a couple of years for me. I think I’m over it, but the guys with the butterfly nets still may pop me in a straitjacket and cart me off to a rubber room.”

  “Get your fast film. Take the photos if you have the chance. Expenses, of course, and good photos should be worth a bonus,” Smalls said.

  “Gotcha.” I nodded. And he might remember when the time came, and then again he might not.

  “If … If Jonas Schmitt had an accident, that would be worth a bigger bonus,” he said.

  I think I told you before, I don’t like strongarm work. If I do it at all, I have to figure the fella on the receiving end’s got it coming to him. Which I didn’t here. Schmitt didn’t need to stick an ether cone over sweet Marianne’s face before he jumped on her bones. He didn’t clout her with a caveman club and drag her into the bushes. She was looking for it at least as much as he was.

  When I didn’t rise to the bait, Lamont Smalls sighed. “Well, it was a thought,” he said.

  Old Man Mose chose that moment to come out from under the couch. “It was a dumb thought,” he said.

  For the first time since he stepped into the office, Smalls cracked a smile. “Another county heard from!” he said. “Why is it a dumb thought?”

  “Because if they throw Jack in the jug, who’s gonna keep me in tuna fish?” Mose said, as if the editor were an idiot. To my furry Falstaff, no doubt he was.

  Smalls’s smile got wider. “You’re right, of course. I should have worked it through.”

  “Yeah, you should have.” The cat submerged again.

  Before Smalls left, I said, “Just on the off chance, have you ever heard of something called vepratoga?” Newspapermen hear about all kinds of strange things.

  But he shook his head. “No. What is it?”

  “I’m trying to find out. If you hear the name, give me a call, will you? Vepratoga.”

  “Vepratoga,” he repeated, and wrote it down in a little notebook he pulled from an inside jacket pocket. Then he did leave. Okay. I tried.

  Just after sundown, I called Dora Urban’s number again. She’d be out of her coffin, I figured, but maybe not going anywhere yet. The guy or vampire or whatever he was who barely spoke English answered the phone. When I told him I needed to talk to her, he said, “Pliz vait,” same as he had the last time.

  So I vaited. Before too long, she came on the line. “Good evening, Jack. What do you want from me?”

  No beating around the bush. She was a vampire. Wanting, she understood. Anything else? Maybe not so well. I said, “I need the answer to a question I should’ve asked you sooner.”

  “Go ahead.” No promise she’d answer or anything. Well, I wouldn’t’ve made a promise like that or anything, either.

  “I remember you said you and your half brother were having permit problems with City Hall. What kind of permit problems? It may have something to do with whatever happened to him, you know.”

  “Ah.” Pause. “It is … not impossible, I suppose.” She conceded as little as she could, then paused again. “We … have been running a small import-export business, Rudolf and I.”

  What did vampires import and export? Did I want to know? I decided I didn’t, at least not right then. Instead, I asked, “Import-export? Did you have any problems with Federal officials, too?”

  One more pause. Then she repeated, “It is … not impossible, I suppose.”

  If she’d been human, I would’ve wanted to kick her. I still did, but I also recalled how much stronger than me she was. Sighing, I said, “How can I do a job for you if you don’t tell me things I need to know?”

  “Now I have told you. Are you happy?” By the way Dora said it, being happy was a way sicker perversion than being queer. When I didn’t answer right away, she hung up.

  I listened to the dial tone for a few seconds. Then I hung up, too. And then I said one of those words everybody says all the time and nobody will let you print. She’d paid me in gold. But she was finding ways to make me pay, too.

  Before I went home, I made sure I put extra food and water in Old Man Mose’s bowls. Yes, I know he’s a cat. Yes, I know he can find things for himself. But I don’t want him doing it. I want him thinking I’m the gravy train. Cats are practical beasts. They remember who feeds ’em better’n most people do.

  Of course he noticed. “What’s this?” he said. “You fattening me up for dinner?” He might’ve been kidding, or he might not.

  “No, chowderhead. I’ve got to go downtown in the morning. I don’t know if I’ll be back here at all. In case I’m not, I don’t want you starving.”

  “That’s good. I don’t want me starving, either.” To make sure he didn’t, Mose stuck his nose in the cat food.

  I rode the Red Line up to downtown, however little sense that makes. City Hall, then the Federal building across Temple from it. Joy. Rapture. Almost as much fun as visiting police headquarters.

  City Hall, at least, has signs that tell you where to go, not cops who do. I found the Business Permits room without any trouble. Then it was hurry up and wait. I hadn’t seen anything like it since I got out of the Army. After what only seemed like forever, I worked my way to the head of a line.

  “I represent Dora Urban and Rudolf Sebestyen,” I told the clerk. If she wanted to think I was a lawyer, I didn’t mind a bit. I was thinking I should’ve brought mine along. Wally Baker is way more patient than I am. Smarter, too. I went on, “I’m trying to get to the bottom of the permit troubles they’re having.”

  She yawned in my face. “Let me have the names again, please.” I wrote them on a sheet of scratch paper and shoved it across the counter to her. She looked at it without pleasure. “I have to go look in the files.” She stood up and walked into a back room.

  For all I can prove, she had a couple of Chesterfields in there, or a plate of bacon and eggs. Eventually, very eventually, she came out again. The look on her face said she didn’t understand happy any better than Dora did.

  “We haven’t been able to issue those permits because your clients haven’t given us the required Federal authorization forms. I can’t imagine how they will, either, because they’re seeking to deal with Hungary.” She eyed me as if wondering whether to call the FBI.

  I felt like an idiot. With those names, with that background, where else would they be dealing with? Hungary’d been on the other side in the war, but that wasn’t the problem. The war hasn’t been over for five years yet, but it might as well be ancient history. A lot of things have turned upside down and inside out since then.

  No, the problem was the Red tide rising in Hungary—and in a lot of other places close by, and in still others not close by at all. You try dealing with Hungary, somebody’s going to ask you Are you now or have you ever been? Somebody’s going to ask if you have red blood or Red blood. That’d go double or triple if you’re a vampire. The HUAC doesn’t think vampires make proper Americans anyway.

  And vampires who might be Red? Lord have mercy! They might as well be colored. Almost.

  “I’d better go talk to the Federal people, then,” I said, and I must have sounded as thrilled as I felt.

  “You do that.” The clerk sounded as if she hoped they’d grab me and ship me off to Alcatraz on the spot.

  Across the street I went. City Hall’s the only building in town more than 150 feet high, for fear of what the earth elementals do every so often. The Federal building comes real close to the limit itself. But, where City Hall’s an asparagus spear, the Federal building looks more like an oversized white toaster.

  The directory in the lobby admitted there were people who dealt with things that involved international commerce. I popped up to the room they inhabited. I had to wait in line again, but not for so long this time. “Yes?” said the man at the counter. He seemed more interested in the cardboard cup of coffee at his elbow than he was in me.

  “I represent Dora Urban,” I said. “She and her business partner, Rudolf Sebestyen, seem to be having some difficulties in getting the paperwork they need for their import-export business. I’m trying to get to the bottom of that.”

  After one more longing look at the coffee, he said, “Spell the names, please.” I did. He wrote them down himself. Then he asked, “And which country or area will the business be involved with?”

  “Mostly Hungary,” I answered.

  It wasn’t hot in there to begin with. As soon as he heard that, it got ten degrees colder. “I see,” he said. “That presents certain intrinsic problems, you understand.” By the way he said it, he could see the Red tide swirling around me, too.

  “Not if they’ve kept their noses clean. As far as I know, they have,” I said, hoping like hell I knew far enough. And I hoped that As far as I know gave me a foxhole in case I was wrong.

  “Let me see what the status on their documents is,” he said, and rose from his chair. He didn’t have to go into a back room, the way the gal at City Hall had. The file cabinet he needed stood only a few feet behind him. When he came back, he looked as if somebody’d died and he wished it were me.

  He didn’t say anything. He just kept looking at me like that. Okay, my move. “What’s the trouble?” I asked, ’cause I knew damn well there was some. More than some.

  He clicked his tongue the way your mama did when you were naughty. As sadly as your mama would have, he said, “You didn’t tell me these … individuals were PAFs. You are familiar with this term, PAFs?” He would’ve asked me if I knew about cooties the same way. Well, to him there wouldn’t be much difference.

  Since I did happen to be familiar with that term, I said, “Yeah.” Then I waited. I can be difficult, too. I’ve even known people who claim I’m good at it.

  He tried to wait me out. It didn’t work. Now he looked irked. Irked I could deal with. “Since you are familiar with it, you are also familiar with what it means?”

  “I sure am. It means they didn’t like the fylfot boys and their slimy pals before the politicians here got around to deciding not liking ’em was okay. Before I put in a year fighting ’em, too.” I threw in that last bit to head him off from asking if I’d done my hitch in the service.

  The way he closed his mouth told me he’d been about to ask me just that. I do know how to forestall ’em. Sometimes. When the wind is southerly. “Your attitude could be better,” he said.

  “That’s nice,” I said cheerfully. At least he didn’t get to question my patriotism, which is dangerous these days. Instead, I questioned his: “Doesn’t the government have better things to do than punishing people for being right?”