Joe looked at Kate.
“Joe. He saved our lives. To us he’s never been anything but perfectly—”
“I know. All right, I’ll go, all right.”
“We can be pleasant to him,” Kate reiterated firmly. “Ugh.” This last was in reaction to what the opened diaper had disclosed. “You can hardly say that he’s made a pest of himself. It’s been over a year since we’ve heard from him. This must be something important.”
“Yeah.” Now he really did want to go. All it would take now was a little courage.
Courage. He was a tough cop, and carrying a gun, and it still came down to that.
When Joe asked for Mr. Talisman’s table, he was conducted to a luxuriously padded booth right beside one of the large, curved windows that looked out over ramp and runways. Tonight clouds had brought darkness before true sunset. Earlier in the day it had rained, and it was misting still, and the outside view was a melange of inky darkness and the glistening reflections of a thousand lights in all colors, flashing, spinning, moving, stationary. The sound of jet engines was muted by thick glass, but still came through. Joe had always liked airports and it had crossed his mind tonight, as it usually did when he approached the place, that he wouldn’t mind having duty out here. Airport security was CPD; years ago the city limits had been stretched to take in the square miles of O’Hare along with a narrow corridor of land reaching through the suburbs to connect the airport to the metropolitan center.
The sole occupant of the booth, as usual, a model of courtesy, rose to shake Joe’s hand firmly and gesture him to the opposite seat. The voice was just as Joe remembered it, deep and faintly tinged with a central European accent.
“I am told that the Chateaubriand here is quite good. Ah, but you would like a cocktail first, perhaps?” Talisman had a glass of mineral water, still full, in front of him. The waitress, no doubt already somehow charmed, was hovering patiently nearby. It was past Joe’s usual dinner time, and he suddenly discovered that he was hungry; these first moments weren’t going anywhere nearly as badly as he had somehow feared they would. He ordered a vodka martini, and then expensive food. The waitress disappeared.
“I love aircraft,” Talisman commented, turning his head to better observe them through the glass. Joe looked out too, then focused on the faint, vastly distorted reflections of the restaurant’s interior on the curved surface of the window. With a little effort he could pick out parts of his own image. That, for example, had to be his own hand, impossibly broadened in a way suggestive of superhuman strength, lying on the white tablecloth. Joe flexed his hand, and watched titanic fingers shift. Of Talisman’s image, of the white hands that had no particular look of strength, the elegant dark suit, the angular brooding face, there was not a trace in the reflection. But no one was going to notice that fact who did not look very carefully into the distorting glass. And if anyone should notice, who was going to believe it?
The dark eyes turned back toward Joe. “And how are Kate, and your dear child?”
“Fine.” No question had been asked about Judy. That was good. Or was it?
The martini arrived promptly. Joe lifted it in an informal, silent toast. His host, smiling pleasantly, raised his own glass for the first time, barely touching it to his thin lips. The man who called himself Talisman tonight appeared to be about forty years old, a couple of decades younger in looks than when Joe had seen him last. His dark hair, almost straight, almost black, bore at the temples just a trace of distinguished gray. On the third finger of the relaxed right hand was a worn gold ring that Joe remembered seeing there before.
A cup of soup arrived. Joe picked up his spoon and ate. The soup was thinner than he liked, but like the martini very good.
He realized that somehow, with very few words spoken, he had been put at his ease. Or almost. His host, still smiling pleasantly, watched him eat.
“You’ve been traveling?” Joe asked. He felt no pressure to break the silence, but he was genuinely curious. “I mean, meeting here at the airport…”
“Yes,” said Talisman vaguely. “Also, as I say, I enjoy watching the aircraft.” The dark eyes looked outside, as if yearning, then came back to Joe again. “To business. Tell me, Joe, how are things with the Chicago Police Department these days?”
“Busy, as usual. Varied.”
“Ah. I have no doubt that in such a large and complex city the unusual must be usual, if you take my meaning. But what I had in mind was certain specific crimes. I was wondering whether word might have reached you from some of your fellow officers regarding a very unusual series of…” Talisman, watching Joe’s face carefully, didn’t bother to finish.
Joe now told him, quietly and as completely as possible, of the dead man he had seen in an alley, and of the other dead men who went to make up the pattern seen by Charley Snider. “I guess he came to me with it because—well, we’re friends. And he must be convinced that I have at least one—somewhat unusual source of information.”
“I see.”
“Oh, not that he has any idea who my source is. I mean…”
Talisman waved two fingers, regally dismissing any ideas that Charley Snider might have regarding him. “Perhaps I shall be able to do something for your friend in Homicide… and he, unknowingly, for me… yourself, you are still attached to the Pawn Shop Detail?”
“Yeah.”
“Therefore you are concerned, sometimes at least, with the location of missing objects?”
“At least I can make a stab at finding out if they’ve been pawned anywhere in the city. What’s missing?”
Talisman appeared to be framing his answer carefully. “Nothing of mine, Joe. And yet something that I believe we must find, or try to find. And somehow I doubt that it is in a pawn shop. Yet we must try every possibility available. I think it is not many miles from where we sit.”
“What is it?”
“An edged weapon. Old. I regret that I do not know much about what it looks like.”
There was a pause. Joe said: “Unless you can tell me more, I don’t see how I can—”
“But you must try. I will tell you what I can.”
“Yeah. Sure.” Joe took another sample of his martini.
“Joe, there are not many people in the world in whom I can confide freely. So while I enjoy your company allow me to ramble on a little. It may help me to think.”
“Sure.”
“You see, Joe, I am compelled by circumstances to temporarily take up your profession. In fact, your friend in Homicide and I are interested in the same murder cases; from different viewpoints, naturally, yet I am as anxious as he to see them solved.”
“That’s good to know,” said Joe sincerely. “Then maybe my first private guess was right. When I first noticed the lack of blood. Whoever is killing these winos is…”
Talisman was nodding gently. “A member of my community rather than of yours. You may say the word: a vampire. Yes, I have determined that such a one is at least among the guilty.” Talisman made a sound like a sigh, but without full breath behind it. “I have, in my own community, as you probably know, a certain position of leadership. I have it only by default, perhaps, but there it is. I have discussed this case with other honorable members, who agree with me that some action ought to be taken. I have their moral support if probably no other kind. We will not willingly shelter such a guilty one among us.”
Oh? thought Joe. He felt sure that there was more to Talisman’s game here than he was yet telling. He also wondered what the couple at the next occupied table would think if they could overhear this chat.
Talisman went on: “Neither your police force nor your courts are equipped to deal effectively with vampires.”
“That’s for sure.”
“Yet you have information, and certain ways of gathering more information, that I lack. Therefore I propose that we informally join forces.”
The waitress arrived with Joe’s steak. When she had accepted Talisman’s insistence that he was n
ot going to order food, and had departed again, Joe said, with a faint smile of his own: “This of course is the point where we always tell people to give us their information and then leave the investigating to the professionals. But naturally in this case—”
“—any such injunction to me would be imbecilic. Naturally. Alas, now that you are ready to help me, I still do not know exactly what aid I may require. There is, as I have said, the weapon to be located. And…”
An airliner, taking off, drew faint vibrations through the silverware and dishes.
“There is among the guilty, as I have said, at least one man of my own people.”
“How many people in all are there involved?”
Talisman conveyed ignorance.
“This one man who is of your people, as you put it. Do you know his name, what he looks like?”
A headshake, minimal but impatient, dismissed all such commonsensical, methodical questions for the time being. Now we are coming to the real point. “Among those somehow involved, Joseph, there is another man who interests me much more.” Talisman paused, gazing out the window again. On his face was an expression of quiet excitement, a look different from any that Joe had seen him wear before.
The vampire turned back from the unreflecting glass; he spoke softly, but with emphasis. “Compared to myself, Joe… compared to me, I say… this other man is something of an oddity.”
“Huh?”
Talisman’s manner relaxed a trifle. “But never mind the extremely odd man now. He is not a vampire, nor is he, I think, among the guilty. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Unfortunately one of my fellow nosferatu is killing helpless victims, and I intend to stop him. He is not killing for food; you know that we can obtain all that we really need from the blood of animals. Nor are his crimes of sexual passion. He is engaged in wicked ritual. I get the impression that he is offering blood sacrifice.”
Joe was too much the professional to be put off for very long from the professional attitude. “You mean one of these cults? Devil-worshippers and so on?” And immediately there crossed his mind the thought of the man from New Orleans, that Charley Snider and many others were presently trying to ambush. “I don’t know how frequently people in your, uh, community engage in that kind of thing.”
“Not as frequently,” said Talisman, “as people in your community might suppose. Of course, Joe, there are many ways of worshipping the Devil. Just as many, I suppose, as there are of praying to his great Adversary.”
The first taste of steak had been delicious, but already Joe had forgotten it. “Let’s stick to the facts, if we’re going to help each other. Give me all the details you can. Leaving the magic aside, you’re looking for two men, and one old knife.”
“Two men in particular, yes. One object. A weapon. It might be bigger than a knife. But we must be careful what we leave aside. Ah, Joseph, what is magic?”
TWO
The applause swept up enthusiastically, quite loud for the few dozen people in the audience. As plainly as if he could see her, Simon Hill knew what the woman in the tenth pew back, the most recent volunteer, looked like now: half pleased, half nervous, entirely mystified. It was all in the sound of her voice as she had to agree that it was indeed a diamond wedding ring that she had been holding in her fingers. Like most subjects she was glad that the trick had worked successfully, and at the same time she felt a core of resentment, perhaps unconscious, at not being able to figure out how it had been done. If Simon had explained the banal truth to her, about the elaborate voice-code established between magician and assistant, she would have felt quite disappointed.
It was the end of the performance. They’d done enough, though not quite everything planned, and he had to end it on a burst of applause like that, even though there was some chance of a certain kind of trouble whenever a mentalist failed to finish on an illusion-breaking note of farce. Signalling Margie by his gesture that they were cutting it off right here, Simon turned back to face the audience, meanwhile pulling off his white, thick blindfold, blending the two actions expertly into a sweeping bow. Margie, tripping lightly back from her place at the side of the last volunteer, took Simon’s outstretched left hand and joined him just in time for the second bow. The organ, in its loft far in the rear, sounded a long chord of finale.
Simon Hill was standing in the chancel of the great chapel of St. Thomas More University, on the lakefront on the north side of Chicago. A few spotlights, mounted under an immensity of gray pseudo-Gothic vaulting almost a hundred feet above his head, picked accurately down at him and Margie where they stood, rather like Our Lady’s juggler in the old fable, before the flat, plain, modern altar table. Some of the more liberal faculty members had been arguing for some time that if it was all right to perform The Play of Daniel here in the chapel, then why not also some other entertainment of the medieval tradition? Simon had heard the president quoted as objecting that if a conjuror were to be allowed this year, then next year someone would be milking a goat in the nave as well, in authentic medieval style; but eventually the liberals had prevailed, and here was Simon the Great working and getting paid. All the performances here were after all supposed to have something to do with the Summer Medieval Festival, and, short of goats, what more fitting than a jongleur of some kind in the cathedral? A mind-reader in the chapel came close, anyway.
Still hand-in-hand with Margie, Simon was taking the fourth or fifth bow, to gradually diminishing applause, when a pale, masculine face toward the rear of the occupied section of pews caught at his eye and then tried to catch at his memory. The face and the short figure that went with it were undoubtedly familiar. But they were so out of context here that it was hard to assign them a name or a relationship.
The applause, following the one law that inexorably governed it, died out, and with that the bowing had to cease also. Five or six people, mostly from the front pews, hesitantly moved forward to offer what promised to be more personal praise and congratulations. The pale-faced man in the rear edged forward too, but tentatively, as if he were modestly willing to wait until the others should be done, and only at this point did recognition of that face come. It brought something of an inward chill. Almost fifteen years, Simon counted up mentally, since he had seen that face. It hadn’t changed noticeably in fifteen years.
From the corner of his eye he noticed Margie’s face turn toward him, and he realized that his grip must have just tightened on her hand. Simon squeezed her fingers once more, this time lightly and reassuringly, and then he let her fingers drop. Together he and Margie nodded and smiled and murmured thanks to the people who had come forward to speak to them individually. Just as the last member of this group was moving up with timid determination to confront Simon, Father Gibson, the evening’s MC, approached also. With his microphone on its long cord looped round his sport-shirted neck, he was obviously eager to get in a few remarks before introducing the evening’s main event.
The last member of the group who had come up from the audience was a middle-aged woman, well dressed. Simon at once recognized not her but the look in her eye, and his heart sank a trifle.
“I’m sure you have some remarkable powers,” the woman began, with a quiet earnestness that he found frightening.
Simon shook his head, and smiled deprecatingly. “It’s all trickery, ma’m, I assure you.” And he broke eye contact with the woman at once and started down the center aisle toward the rear of the chapel, away from her and the altar and Father Gibson.
The woman kept pace. “My own wedding ring is lost, you see. And my husband has just recently passed away, and…”
It was too late now for anything farcical to be an effective mood-breaker. An attempt at lightness, humor, now would be a personal insult. Simon said as gently as he could: “What I do are only tricks. You could do them yourself with just a little practice.”
Margie came to his rescue, taking the woman by the hand and sympathetically leading her aside. For which act, Simon told himself, he ce
rtainly owed her one. In deference to the setting, Margie’s costume this evening was much more demure than usual: long, bloomer-like pantaloons and closed midriff, while Simon himself was in the evening dress that he usually wore on stage. He kept going now, pacing toward the rear of the chapel. The nave was almost long enough for a cathedral, and with tonight’s lighting concentrated toward the front, the rear was quite dim. There was to be an intermission now, probably just long enough for Father Gibson to get in a few announcements, and followed by the main event, the Play of Daniel itself. Simon and Margie had been planning to hang around in a rear pew and watch Nebuchadnezzar’s downfall.
“Mr. Hill?” The pale face, remembered voice to match, was waiting for him. But, Simon realized with surprise, it was as if the man speaking had never seen Simon before, had no idea that they had ever met. In a moment surprise vanished; of course it would have been more astonishing if Gregory Wedderburn had recognized him quickly. He hadn’t been Simon the Great as a boy in Frenchman’s Bend, or even Simon Hill. At five-nine he was now several inches taller than he had been then, and he was heavier by thirty or forty solid pounds. His brown hair was no longer short, but almost shoulder length, and he had grown a mustache.
And Simon certainly felt no necessity of recognizing Gregory Wedderburn as an old acquaintance. “Yes, what can I do for you?”
“My name is Gregory Wedderburn, sir. First of all, I would like to compliment you on the performance.” No, Gregory certainly didn’t look as if fifteen years had passed; he was almost exactly as Simon remembered him. Of short stature, age indeterminately somewhere between forty and sixty, a face that any casting director would immediately type as belonging to a tycoon and not a servant.
“Thank you,” Simon replied, neutrally.
“You’re very kind,” contributed Margie, just coming up. She must have managed to get away from the widow before the subject of seances could even be broached. Simon hoped so, anyway. There was a trace of a frown on Margie’s face as she regarded him; she knew him well enough now to be able to judge his sometimes sudden moods with considerable success.
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