“People.” How he said it told me he knew Dora Urban and Rudolf Sebestyen lived in, inhabited, however you want to put it, Vampire Village. You aren’t supposed to discriminate against vampires. You aren’t supposed to discriminate against Negroes or Jews, either. Theory’s wonderful, ain’t it?

  “Should I talk with your supervisor?” I asked him. No guarantee. If his supervisor was as warm and caring as he was, I’d be up the well-known creek without a paddle. Worth a shot, though.

  He scowled, so I figured his boss might be guilty, or at least accused, of humanity. “With things the way they are, I can’t promise you anything even if you talk with the Secretary of State,” he said.

  “Do what you can,” I told him. “My client will be happy to see we mean it when we say everybody’s welcome in this country.” I’d be happy if I saw that, too. We say a lot of things we don’t mean, starting with All men are created equal and rolling downhill from there.

  “I’ll see what I can manage. You understand that I can’t promise when I’ll be in touch, or what—if anything—I’ll accomplish.” He didn’t like my making him live up to what we say we are, not what we really are.

  I knew I’d got as much out of him as I was going to get—more than I’d expected, really. “Thanks very much, Mister Timmons. I’ll be here.” I read his name from the plaque on the counter. Broderick Timmons. Some handle, huh? I added, “I know Miss Urban will be glad to learn how conscientious you are.”

  “Is there anything else?” he asked, in lieu of telling me, Get the hell out of here. Since there wasn’t anything else, I got the hell out of there. I wondered if I’d ever hear from him. I kinda doubted it, but you never can tell.

  It was still pretty early. Old Man Mose wouldn’t starve, or start imagining he was starving, for a while yet, not with the extra chow I’d given him. I didn’t need to go straight back to the office. So I didn’t. I wandered down toward Hill Street instead.

  A guy leaning against a wall that didn’t really need bracing took a step out toward me as I walked by. “Got any spare change, pal?”

  A few years younger than me. Nasty scar on one cheek; just missed his eye. Khaki jacket that’d seen a lot of wear. Toes leaking out from boots even more battered than the jacket. We say nothing’s too good for dogfaces when they come home. The parades’ve been over for a while now, and you never could eat ’em.

  I dug in my pocket and found half a buck. I put it in his dirty palm. With only a little less luck, I could’ve been him. One of these days, I may be.

  He gaped at the silver. He gaped at me. Panhandling doesn’t pay off much. “Thanks, Mister!” he managed.

  “It’s okay. Next time you can give somebody a hand, do it, that’s all.” I got going again. I’m no preacher. We’re all bound to be lucky.

  When I got to Hill, I turned right. A few minutes later, I ambled into the little shop at 231-3/4. From behind the counter, Al Harris said, “Hey! How ya doin’?” A couple of other guys were in the place, looking over the … merchandise. Al is a gentleman, of sorts. He didn’t use my name where anybody who didn’t already know it could hear.

  “Could be worse,” I said. I gave his stock in trade a quick once-over. Now, don’t get me wrong. I like looking at pretty women as much as the next guy, maybe more than the next guy. The less they’re wearing, the better, too. But enough is enough and too much is too much, if you know what I mean.

  Or I think so, anyhow. Enough guys don’t to keep Al in business, at least when the cops don’t try and shut him down. They have a time or three, but never for long. Al looks like an unmade bed, sure. Some of what he sells’d make a zombie puke. He knows people, though, and he knows about people.

  I didn’t eyeball the customers. In a place like that, you don’t. I picked up a magazine. It was called Bound to Please. It was what it said it was. If that was what got you going, you could give Al a fin and take it home in a paper sack. If it wasn’t, he had stuff for other tastes, too. Variety is the life of spice, right?

  I put it back on the rack and looked at another magazine. I put that one down again in a hurry. Other tastes, uh-huh.

  One fellow bought something. The other guy just left, his eyes on the ground, trying to tell himself and the world he’d never been in there to begin with. When we had the place to ourselves, Al said, “Nu, what’s going on?”

  “Got a question for you,” I said.

  He chuckled. “Didn’t figure you came in to browse, like. Go ahead, shoot.” He pulled out the latest pack of Camels he was killing and started to light a new one.

  “Ever hear of something called vepratoga?”

  The hand with the lit match stopped halfway to his mouth. He stood there frozen for a couple of seconds, till he felt the heat on his thumb and first finger. If he’d dropped the match, we both would’ve roasted. But he blew it out. “Didn’t expect that one,” he said around the unlit coffin nail in his mouth. My best guess is, he forgot he had it in there.

  “Life is full of surprises,” I said. My surprise was that he’d heard of the stuff. Even Deacon Washington hadn’t, and the Deacon knows a thing or two about junk.

  “You don’t want to mess with it. Live people don’t want to mess with it. They better not mess with it, or they ain’t live people no more.” Al shuddered. All his chins did the shimmy and the shake. “I tell you what. People say I run a dirty bookstore. That stuff, that stuff makes all my shmutz look clean.”

  I tried to add two and two and not get twenty-two. “Who does mess with it? Somebody must. Is it—?”

  A man a few years older than I am walked into the place. I shut up and made like a customer again. I grabbed another … educational magazine. One of the girls in it was definitely worth looking at. If I met her somewhere and didn’t know how she paid the rent on her place, I might’ve tried to buy her a drink and see what happened next.

  That other guy didn’t case the magazines. He went for the books instead. A reader! He bought something, stuck it in an inside pocket, and beat it. No, he left. He’d probably beat it later.

  After he took off, Al remembered that cigarette. This time, he managed to get it going. He took the first drag as though he needed it bad.

  I’d done some remembering of my own. I tried my question a different way: “What does the stuff do for a vampire?”

  Al coughed when he blew out smoke. “You don’t know as much as you think you do.”

  “You can’t say that. You aren’t even married to me.”

  I made him wheeze laughter. Then he coughed some more. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, there or with the other shit. No vampire in the world would touch it.”

  “I know of at least one who wanted to,” I said.

  “That Sebestyen item.” It wasn’t a question. I nodded. Al muttered under his breath, not in English. Then he came back to talk I could follow: “I knew he was a bad one. I never figured he was that far out of his tree.”

  Which made sense, as much as anything made sense. Dora was as much a vampire as her half brother, and she’d never heard of vepratoga. Not never used it or never wanted to use it, but never heard of it. I asked, “You know of anybody who deals in it?”

  “Not me. Don’t want to, neither. You think I don’t got enough tsuris already?”

  He sounded like somebody who meant it. Which proved nothing, or two cents less than that. People I hang around with, they’re mostly good at sounding like they mean it. They’d be doing honest work if they didn’t.

  “Thanks,” I told him.

  “Any time.”

  “I’ll see you around, like a doughnut,” I said. He laughed some more. I left. I didn’t have to try very hard to look embarrassed when I did, the way you’re supposed to. I didn’t have to try at all, in fact. I damn well was embarrassed.

  When I got to the office after lunch, the zombie sweeper wasn’t manicuring the back alley. I pictured him standing in a closet with his broom, or maybe leaning against a wall like that beggar downtown. Only he wouldn’t have leaned there himself. The guy who was paying for him would’ve leaned him there, with the push broom next to him at the same angle.

  I spat. I don’t like those pictures. I make ’em anyway. Lucky me.

  As soon as I walked in, I saw the food dish was about empty. “Mose, you’re a pig, a furry pig,” I said.

  He came out from under the sofa—I might’ve been a burglar or a bill collector, after all. “It was there,” he said.

  Which makes sense if you’re a cat. Makes sense if you’re a good many people, too. Tomorrow? What’s tomorrow? Anyhow, arguing with a cat is a losing proposition to begin with. I called my answering service. “Any messages for me?” I asked.

  Usually, Hilda just says no. If I didn’t scuffle for business, I wouldn’t have any at all. That afternoon, though, she surprised me. “A Missus Jethroe called. Her husband is missing, and she wants you to help find him.”

  “Did she? Does she? What did you tell her?”

  “That you were out, and that I expected you back late this afternoon. She said she’d try then and hung up.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” I hung up, too, and sat there waiting for the phone to ring. Most of the time I’m in my office, I’m sitting there waiting for the phone to ring. This was different, though. This time, it might even happen.

  Only it didn’t. Somebody knocked on the door instead.

  “Come in,” I called. A split second later, I wondered if I should have. That was how I got mixed up with Dora. But the sun was still up. Whatever I’d just invited in, it wasn’t a vampire. Not the kind that sleeps in a coffin, anyway.

  The door opened. In walked a woman five or ten years older than I am, and three shades darker. She gave me an uncertain look, and who could blame her? “Are you Mister Mitchell?” she asked, as if she didn’t want to believe it.

  “Afraid so,” I answered—I have days when I don’t want to believe it, either. I thought I knew who she was, but I could have been wrong, so I went on, “And you are …?”

  “My name is Jethroe, Clarice Jethroe,” she said. “I gave it to your secretary.” She looked around my crappy little office. No secretary. No place for a secretary.

  “My answering service.” This time, I sounded resigned. “They said you told them your husband is missing.” As I talked, I sized her up. She was from down South, but she spoke better than she dressed. Her blouse and skirt weren’t cheap or flashy; she’d had them both a long time, though. She didn’t just look worried about her husband, either—she looked worn down. More education than luck, was my first guess. Well, a lot of people the color she was could sing that song. Or even lighter. Me, for instance.

  “That’s right.” She nodded.

  “What’s his name? How long has he been missing? How old is he? What does he do for a living? Where does he work? Does he have any enemies you know about?” All the obvious questions. I took a notebook and a pencil out of the top left desk drawer to write down the answers.

  “He’s Frank Jethroe. He didn’t come home five days ago. I went to the police yesterday, but—” She brushed the first two fingers of her right hand against the top of her left wrist. This part of town, you see that gesture a lot. It means I’m this color, so what are you gonna do?

  She eyed me again. Looking the way I do, there was a chance I wouldn’t follow that. I nodded to show I did. “You’re not the first person who’s told me that kind of story,” I said. “Okay, he’s Frank Jethroe. How old is he? What does he do?”

  “He’s forty-three, four years older’n me,” she answered. “He makes tires down at the big US Rubber factory on Scrying Crystal Road. You know the place I’m talkin’ about?”

  “I sure do,” I said. Funny that I’d been listening to Bird at the Blue Lobster Club with three people who worked there. Coincidence? Or somebody (or Somebody) pulling strings? You never know till later. Half the time, you don’t know even then. “Anybody there who doesn’t like him? Anybody there he’s running around with?”

  “One o’ those silver fox jacket hussies? I don’t think so, Mister Mitchell.” Clarice Jethroe knew what I was driving at, sure enough. She didn’t get mad. She thought it was funny. For a few seconds, she did. Then her face clouded over again. “Somebody who doesn’t like him, though …. He saw the way they were doin’ some things down there, an’ he spoke up to his boss about it, an’ to his boss’s boss. They weren’t real happy about that, let me tell you.”

  “Do you know their names? Do you know what Frank didn’t like?”

  “He never gave me details. The way he talked, the less I knew about it, the better off I was,” she said: interesting enough so I wrote it down, anyhow. “His boss down there is a fella called Pat Brannegan. Frank used to like him—said he was a good guy for an ofay. But he sure soured on him on account of this mess, whatever it was.”

  I wrote that down, too. “Have you got a picture of your husband?” I asked.

  “I do.” She pulled her wallet out of her handbag and extracted a photo from it. Setting the picture on my desk, she said, “You can keep this. I’ve got me another print.”

  “Thank you.” I looked at the black-and-white photograph. Well, a lot of what goes on in Los Angeles is about black and white, isn’t it? Frank Jethroe grinned up at me from the palm of my hand. He wore a coat and tie, but not with the air of somebody who did that a lot. “How big is he? What does he weigh?”

  “He’s a big man. He’s six one, goes about two-ten. Strong, too. But gentle. He never smacked me around or anything like that.” Clarice Jethroe’s mouth turned down. “I don’t put up with that kind o’ nonsense. He ever tried it with me, he would’ve gone missing a long time ago.”

  “I understand,” I said. “I don’t know how much I’ll be able to do, Missus Jethroe, but I’ll see what I can find. Now we come to the nasty part.”

  “The money.” Her mouth turned down even farther. “We were gettin’ by, Mister Mitchell, but nobody who works on a line making tires is rich. We have two girls, too. So how much are you gonna hit me for?”

  “I wish I could say I’d do it just to be doing it. But—” My wave took in my banged-up desk, the rumpsprung sofa she was sitting on (and Old Man Mose was hiding under), and the rest of the cramped office. “A hundred up front to get me started, and we’ll go from there.”

  She sighed, but nodded. “I can do that. I can just about do that, anyways.” She took out her wallet again, and gave me eight tens and a twenty. “Here y’are. Tell you the truth, I thought you’d put the bite on me harder.”

  Which of course made me think I should have. I’ve always been a jerk about money; if I weren’t, I’d have more of it. “Let’s see how it goes,” I told her.

  “I hope it goes good. I hope that whatever’s happened to him, it’s somethin’ somebody can fix. I hope—” Clarice Jethroe broke off short. Hardly anybody ever says I hope he isn’t dead. If you have to hope that, you already know there’s a pretty fair chance whoever you’re hoping about is dead, and no one wants to think about that. Mrs. Jethroe sighed. “I do love that man.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll do what I can.”

  She nodded now. “Thank you,” she said, and got up to go. I stood, too. Chances were she didn’t realize how little I probably could do. Private eyes do all kinds of exciting things in books and in the movies. They have plenty of dough there. Pretty girls fall all over them.

  If I’m not living proof it doesn’t work that way in real life, I don’t know who the hell would be.

  After Clarice Jethroe left, Old Man Mose came out and started washing himself. Halfway through, he looked up at me and said, “I don’t like the smell of this.”

  “Maybe Frank Jethroe brought the rubber stink home with him,” I said.

  “Rubber? Who’s talking about rubber?” Mose went back to washing.

  ​VI

  I gave myself plenty of time to get down to the tire factory the next morning. I had to change cars at the Slauson Tower (all two stories of it), and then take a bus over to Scrying Crystal Road. That part of the county isn’t incorporated. It’s full of factories. They make more autos around there than anywhere but Detroit. Lots of train lines, too, to haul away what the factories turn out.

  That part of the county’s full of factories, yeah, but the US Rubber plant stands out. Oh, a little bit. Most of the places around there look like overgrown shoeboxes, sometimes with smokestacks, sometimes without. The tire factory’s more like a castle built from blocks of stone, complete with waddayacallems—crenelations—up top. Better to crenel late than never, I guess.

  And the decorations. Assyrian kings. Assyrian gods, I suppose they are, with wings so they look like Assyrian angels. Fierce hawk faces. Big curled beards. I don’t know who carved them, but whoever it was knew what he was doing.

  As I came up to the entrance, I checked my watch. It was half past nine. I’d got there sooner than I expected. The Red Line works. And the bus hadn’t been more than a couple of minutes late.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw one of the god-things flanking the doorway roll its eyeball at me. I shook my head. I hadn’t started my day with Wild Turkey for breakfast. I shouldn’t be seeing things now.

  I took off my charcoal gray fedora when I went in. My suit was charcoal gray, too—no Central Avenue glad rags today. There’s a season for everything, the Good Book says. White shirt. Maroon tie. Black shoes. Not quite an undertaker’s outfit, but leaning that way.

  A receptionist in a little booth in the lobby sized me up. A blonde, decorative enough but not gorgeous. Would she decide I was one thing or the other? I purely do envy people who don’t have to worry about that.