The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  Mendoza obliged us with a shrug that looked practiced. “A ring, a neck charm, and a single pierced earring. The ring is our Pi Rho fraternity ring, but his is solid silver. Most of us order it in gold or gold-plate. The neck charm is a silver filigreee cross. The earring is a tiny silver crucifix, the figure hardly visible to the naked eye.”

  I said, “Isn’t it a little ... unexpected for a dracula to wear crosses and silver?”

  “It would be,” Mendoza agreed, “for a purely theatrical dracula. Batory is entirely sincere about his vampirism. He has it figured out, you see, that as long as he behaves himself, silver crosses and the rest of it have no effect on him. He quite literally wears his conscience out in plain sight.”

  One of the Pi Sighs tittered.

  “He wants to advertise himself as a blasted saint,” muttered Stallion Drinkwater.

  “That really isn’t fair, M. Drinkwater,” said April Greenhill. “It also isn’t very kind to a fraternity brother.”

  “You’ve obviously never listened to birth siblings squabble,” Mendoza remarked. Then, turning back to Cagey, “Next question, Lieutenant?”

  “Where did he go?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You don’t have any idea.” Cagey looked around the room. “Any of the rest of you have any idea?”

  Fred Fletcher suggested, “We can guess he’s going to stay somewhere in town. If he plans on staying in school, and he’s a junior on a four-year full scholarship. I don’t think he’s about to chuck that over for who knows what.”

  “There you are, Lieutenant!” said Mendoza. “Somewhere in town. Hodag Crossing should be small enough to canvass door to door in less than a week.”

  “Not this week,” said Spuds. “A bunch of people will be out of town. For the holiday. Maybe Clemmie just went out of town, too. Visiting relatives or something.”

  “That’s true,” said a sorority woman. “He seems to have relatives everywhere. A really extended family.”

  “Most people do,” Cagey remarked. “Most people just don’t work very hard at keeping up family relationships.”

  “Batory’s relatives,” said Stallion Drinkwater, “are Batory’s friends.” He spoke tonelessly. He might have been using Evander Telstar’s famous “My friends are my relatives, and my relatives are my friends” in the spirit the Satellite Philosopher intended; but I got the unpleasant sense he meant to imply that Batory’s relatives were his only friends.

  “So he may just have popped out of town for the holiday weekend,” Cagey repeated with a transparent show of patience. “And you’re telling me that none of his frat brothers would know for sure?”

  “Hake might,” M. Saladin bravely volunteered. “I mean Fakhred.”

  Mendoza nodded and explained to Cagey, “Hakim Fakhred O’Reilly. He, Batory, and Barghoothi formed a sort of threesome. If we had a triple bedroom in the house, they’d probably have applied for it. I’m sorry to say that Barghoothi is the one we’re in mourning for.”

  “We were aware of that,” said Cagey. “Where is M. Fakhred O’Reilly?”

  Fred Fletcher jumped in to say, “He’s gone, too.”

  Mendoza looked, I thought, faintly amused as he told us, “Oh, don’t worry. There isn’t any mystery about Fakhred’s unavailability this weekend. He went to help Barghoothi’s mother and sister get through the first holiday weekend without their son and brother.”

  I said, “Could M. Batory have gone with M. Fakhred?”

  Spuds said, “No.”

  “Doubtful, anyway,” Mendoza qualified. “Several of us helped drive Fakhred to Eau Claire and put him on the needletrain to Milwaukee after his last class yesterday afternoon, which was over at fourteen hundred. His friendship with Barghoothi and his family dated from childhood. Batory had only met them here at the university, and nothing was said or hinted about the vampire joining them later. Had any of you fellows heard anything to suggest otherwise?”

  The other Greeks dutifully shook their heads and murmured that they hadn’t.

  “Mmm,” said Cagey. “So M. Hakim Fakhred O’Reilly, the most likely floater to know anything specific about Batory’s whereabouts, left town yesterday a number of hours before Batory disappeared. And there isn’t anyone else who might know?”

  “Prof Fairchild,” said Spuds.

  Mendoza nodded. “Dr. Matthew Fairchild Stanley, the retired but revered faculty father of all of us fortunate Pi Rhos and Pi Sighs. Retired, I should say, from instructing. Not from imparting the wisdom of his years to all his happy fledglings, even though his own residence is half an hour’s walk from ours.”

  “Twenty minutes, tops,” said Spuds. I guessed that he must be a fast walker for so large a man. Well, youth…and all that weight was surely solid muscle.

  Cagey said, “And this Dr. Stanley would have to approve Batory’s leaving the house?”

  “Dr. Fairchild, if you please,” Mendoza corrected her. “It is to Dr. Fairchild that we owe the Pi Rho guiderule of calling one another by our family names.”

  I was surprised into asking, “Then why didn’t he register Fairchild as his final name, too?”

  “In honor of his mother,” Mendoza explained. “He was old enough to claim the exemption and retain the family name from his same-gender parent, but in compensation he finished it off with his maternal grandfather’s family name.”

  I shouldn’t talk, having registered what should have been an old-style middle name for my own final name; but I persisted, “Wouldn’t it be less confusing for him to cancel his exemption and switch the order, now that everyone else is final-naming other people?”

  “Ah!” said Mendoza. “But in Dr. Fairchild’s wise opinion, confusion builds character.”

  “Darn it, Mendoza!” Fred Fletcher exclaimed. “One of these times you’re going to go just a little too far badmouthing the pater!” He left the room.

  One of the sorority women stood up, said, “Yeah, Ramon, and when you do, I hope I’m in on the kill!” and went out after Fletcher.

  Mendoza spread his hands and looked amused. “What can I do? I am the Greek Chorus—pun fully intended. I comment.”

  “Comment on this,” said Cagey. “Your vampire would have had to get Dr. Fairchild’s permission, or at least file plans with him, before leaving the Pi Rho house?”

  “Technically, yes,” Mendoza replied. “Before quitting residency, that is. Actually, our rules state that a brother should file plans with the pater or mater before any absence involving more than twenty-four hours, but in practice it isn’t considered ‘smooth’ to file for anything less than three days. None of this means, of course, that Batory did file his plans with Dr. Fairchild; but as a general thing he plays the rules more strictly than most of us.”

  “Who’s your mater?” said Cagey.

  “Dr. Rebecca Jazinski Grayling,” one of the remaining Pi Sighs volunteered. “Actually, she’s our faculty mother. The fellows share our mother and we share their father.”

  “I’ve heard of arrangements like that,” Cagey remarked. “Makes for a cozy little university. Where do I find them?”

  “Dr. Grayling’s gone with half our house on a joint retreat with the Tau Gammas to the other side of Clear Lake this weekend,” said the sorority woman.

  Mendoza added, “It’s very unlikely that Batory would have filed his plans with her instead of the pater anyway, unless Dr. Fairchild were out of town. And the mater and pater try never to be unavailable at the same time.”

  “Mm-hmm,” said Cagey. “Why is she ‘Dr. Grayling’ and not ‘Dr. Jazinski’?”

  “The family name business is Pater Fairchild’s rule,” the other remaining Pi Sigh said rather proudly. “Mother Rebecca believes in calling everyone what they want to be called. Where Grayling and Fairchild collide on anything, we do it her way and the boys do it his way.”

 
; “Compromise,” said Mendoza.

  “Uh-huh,” said Cagey. “Where do I find Fairchild, then?”

  “We can give him a chime,” said one of the Pi Rho lads who had hardly spoken until now—Achinua, I thought, wondering if that was his family or his final name.

  “No, thanks,” Cagey replied. “You can give us his phone number along with his address, but I’d rather make first contact myself.”

  “Catch him by surprise?” Mendoza lifted one eyebrow half mockingly. “So to speak.”

  “So to speak,” Cagey agreed. “Sergeant, take it down.”

  That wouldn’t have been strictly necessary, with both our pocket recorders taping the whole conversation; but it would be a little more convenient to have it ready on my notecom, which I had out anyway, because taking manual notes made us look a little more nearly “official.” I nodded, said, “Check, Lieutenant,” and keyed in the address and phone number of Professor Emeritus Fairchild as Mendoza supplied them, along with directions on finding the place.

  “Thanks,” Cagey told him when he’d finished. “Now, can you think of anyone else who might be likely to throw us a line on Batory’s present whereabouts?”

  Valentino Saladin said, “There’s April, right there!”

  M. Greenhill replied, “If I’d known, I would have told them, wouldn’t I?”

  “Oh,” said Valentino. “You mean you came in with them? I mean, I just sort of thought you’d all met each other just outside or something.”

  Folding his arms with the Courvoisier bottle tucked in the crook of one elbow, Mendoza turned to eye the much younger man. “Abernathy,” he explained, “I think the rest of us had already assumed that the respectable M. Baxter would hardly be likely to darken our doorstep unless she had actually guided Lieutenant Thursday to us.” Turning back to Cagey, he went on, “And if M. April Baxter Greenhill has no clue to our dracula’s whereabouts, Lieutenant, then no, I can’t think of anyone else who might know. Any further questions?”

  “They tell me you brothers keep some pretty strict privacy guidelines in your house here,” said Cagey.

  “As a general rule, yes, we do. Very strict.”

  They locked stares for a moment. I could almost hear Cagey weighing the odds whether our chance of being allowed up to see Czarny’s room would be worth the loss of face if we were refused. Cagey never completely lost awareness of the fact that we were only playacting at being officers of the Law. At last she said, “Well, for now we’ll go along with you. We might be back later with a search warrant, if it turns out to be necessary, so I’d advise you to leave anything he left, just exactly the way he left it.”

  Mendoza grinned. “Not much problem, Lieutenant. We’ll warn the new man coming in, but Batory himself helped clear Solomon Barghoothi Goldfein’s half of the room last week after the funeral. He also seems to have left ... whatever he left of his own things shut up in his trunk or shoved to the back of the closet, so there isn’t that much left of him to see, anyway.”

  “Mm-hmm. Good.” Cagey stirred in her chair. I guessed that she was getting restless to leave; otherwise, she’d have asked for more coffee by now.

  “And now, Lieutenant Thursday,” said Mendoza, “if I may ask what we’re all dying to know, why are you so interested in our vampire?”

  “No law against you asking, M.,” said Cagey. “And no law that says I’ve got to answer.”

  “My, my!” He tsked his tongue. “Don’t tell me he’s actually bitten someone.”

  “That’s right—I’m not telling you,” she agreed cheerfully. Then, back in tough-cop mode, “You can get all you need to know about it from the newscasts.”

  Spuds began, “It isn’t about—”

  “For myself,” said Stallion, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Batory can take his crosses and silver off, do whatever he likes, and then put them back on when he’s ready to be good again.” He spoke up so quickly that we could never be sure, even on reviewing the chip, whether he had cut Spuds off on purpose or whether the stocky boy’s sentence had been dying under its own weight.

  “As a matter of fact,” Mendoza said, looking—I thought—more at Stallion than at Cagey, “there are some symbols that seem to affect him rather more than crosses. Ankhs, for example. Regular crosses and crucifixes hurt him only when he misbehaves himself. The ancient Egyptian loop-headed cross bothers him a bit even when he’s been good as gold. And the pentagram reversed—with two points up—can actually make him yelp even with the best of consciences. As for the twisted—”

  “Wires,” said Stallion. “He’s got some wires twisted in his head somewhere.”

  April Greenhill said, “So do you, M. Clearwater Drinkwater! Worse! Clement is worth a hundred of you.”

  Stallion looked at her and leered. I believe she would have walked out at that point, if it hadn’t been too much like what Fred Fletcher had done a few minutes earlier. And for Cagey and me being there with her.

  Mendoza smiled, spread his hands again, and turned back to Cagey. “But I’m sure Batory will be glad to give you the whole catalog himself, when you find him. He usually is. Meanwhile, should we find something else to talk about until the ambulance arrives? Speaking of newscasts, Lieutenant, what do you think about the arrest of Walter Brouyer Volsung this morning? I believe I heard on New-BC or CNN that he’s saying his father wasn’t the Beast of Buchenwald, that it was a case of mistaken identity. I’ve been trying to find someone else who happened to hear that same footnote.”

  “He must be lying,” said M. Greenhill. “They couldn’t have made a mistake, not with modern records and techniques.”

  “Hans Schott was arrested almost half a century ago,” Mendoza reminded her.

  “Yes, but even by the 1990s,” April protested. “And besides, they had to be sure. They’d never have put him on trial unless they’d had good, solid, undeniable evidence.”

  Cagey said, “It isn’t my work to put anybody on trial for anything, just to find ’em and bring ’em in. Anyway, M. Mendoza, thanks for the concern, but it sounds like you’re laboring under some kind of communications snafu. We aren’t waiting for the ambulance. I think this old trick ankle of mine should be just about back in place by now.”

  She pivoted her foot, nodded, got out of her chair, and walked to the door. In the doorway she turned, grinned at the Greeks, and said, “Well, chums, thanks for the coffee, sympathy, and answers, such as they were. We may be back. Meanwhile, you two, come on. We’ve got places to go and people to see.”

  V

  (From the Memoirs of Sylvia Tomlinson Marlene)

  “I could have told you as much as they did,” M. Greenhill said as we got back to our rented car. “I don’t know why ... Well, yes, maybe I do ... Clement, anyway.” Without saying anything else, she got into the car.

  “Care to enlighten us?” Cagey asked pleasantly.

  “About what?”

  “Your theory concerning M. Czarny and, I suppose, why he became a Pi Rho.”

  “Oh.” M. Greenhill might not have been aware how much she had spoken aloud. “Well, I ... I’m afraid he’s a little of what you might call a social climber.”

  “Isn’t that atypical, too?” I said. “For a vampire.”

  “Probably,” Cagey agreed, getting in the front passenger seat. “But then, most of your vampires—the famous ones, anyway—seem to be born counts or dukes or some kind of nobility. Maybe he feels he needs to climb up to the proper social rank for a dracula. I’m afraid,” she added after a short pause, “that it doesn’t sound as if he’s doing particularly well in that direction.”

  “The Purple Rose is the most hoitytoit fraternity on campus,” M. Greenhill said with a hint of scorn.

  “No argument,” said Cagey, “but I begin to get the impression they’ve—some of ’em anyway—made him ... well, not exactly the house fall guy, let’s say more like
the house mascot. Their own pet vampire. Didn’t one of the women even call him that? Cripes, did we ever treat anybody that way, back in the Sapphos?”

  M. Greenhill’s mouth had dropped open. “You mean ...” she said. “Is that why they took him in? I’ve wondered so often ...”

  “Could be.” Cagey shrugged, as if in imitation of Mendoza. “Not that all of them seemed so bad to me. Quite a few of them seemed pretty decent, in fact.”

  “Which ones?” I asked.

  “Use your own judgment, Tommi. Draw up your own list without input from me. We’ll compare notes later. Meantime, get in and drive. What are you waiting for?”

  “For a stroke of inspiration to make clear to me the ways of Greeks,” I said, getting in and starting the motor. “Where to? Dr. Fairchild’s?”

  “Then you’ll wait a long time,” Cagey answered my first comment, “because they aren’t even clear to me yet, and I was one. Still am, officially speaking. Right, Doc Fairchild’s.”

  “Please to goodness,” said M. Greenhill, “don’t call him ‘Doc’ to his face! Or ‘Prof,’ either. But I can even tell you someone the Pi Rhos didn’t. I mean, someone else who might be even more likely to know where Clement is than Dr. Fairchild. Kayko Cocoa.”

  “Come again?” said Cagey.

  M. Greenhill repeated the name and spelled it for us: “Keiko Kato Ko-Ko. ‘Kayko Kayto Cocoa’ is exactly the way she pronounces it herself. She’s Pureblood Butterscotch—Japanese—and Clement’s best friend. She still lives in Thelwell Hall. Room three hundred ... something. I’m not sure of the exact number, but you can punch it up on the lobbyscreen.”

  “I thought you were his best other-gender friend,” I said.

  Cagey murmured, “Well, the old Count had his Lucy as well as his Mina. And several more back home in Transylvania, as I recollect.”

  M. Greenhill blushed. “That’s different. Clement doesn’t have an actual ‘girlfriend,’ I don’t think ... unless he’s after me for that. He just has relatives, frat brothers, and general friends outside the house. I’m one of the general friends. Keiko’s another one.”