The Vampire Sextette

by Edited by Marvin Kaye

  In no sense "a real film," El conde Dracula is a scrapbook of images from the novel and Welles's imagination. He told Henry Jaglom that he considered the project a private exercise, to keep the subject in his mind, a series of sketches for a painting he would execute later. As Francis Coppola would in 1977, while his multimillion-dollar Dracula was bogged down in production problems in Romania, Welles often made comparisons with the Sistine Chapel. While Coppola invoked Michelangelo with some desperation as the vast machine of his movie seemed to be collapsing around him, Welles always resorted playfully to the metaphor, daring the interviewer with a wave and a wink and a deep chuckle to suggest the Pope probably did turn up every day wanting to know when the great artist would be finished and how much it was going to cost.

  In 1973, Welles assembled some El conde Dracula footage, along with documentary material about the real Count Dracula and the scandals that followed his true death in 1959: the alleged, much-disputed will that deeded much of his vast fortune to English housewife Vivian Nicholson, who claimed she had encountered Dracula while on a school holiday in the early fifties; the autobiography Clifford Irving sold for a record-breaking advance in 1971, only to have the book exposed as an arrant fake written by Irving in collaboration with Fred Saberhagen; the squabbles among sundry vampire elders, notably Baron Meinster and Princess Asa Vajda, as to who should claim the Count's unofficial title as ruler of their kind. Welles called this playful, essaylike film—constructed around the skeleton of footage shot by Calvin Floyd for his own documentary, In Search of Dracula (1971)—When Are You Going to Finish el conde Dracula?, though it was exhibited in most territories as D Is for Dracula. On the evening Premier Ceausescu withdrew the Romanian Cavalry needed for Coppola's assault on Castle Dracula in order to pursue the vampire banditti of the Transylvania Movement in the next valley, Francis Ford Coppola held a private screening of D Is for Dracula and cabled Welles that there was a curse on anyone who dared invoke the dread name.

  Gates, ibid.

  The someone on her steps was truly dead. In his left chest, over his punctured heart, a star-shaped blotch was black in the moonlight.

  Geneviève felt no residue. The intangible thing—immortal soul, psychic energy, battery power—which kept mind and body together, in nosferatu or the warm, was gone.

  Broken is the golden bowl, the spirit flown forever.

  She found she was crying. She touched her cheek and looked at the thick, salt, red tears, then smeared them away on her handkerchief.

  It was Moondoggie. In repose, his face looked old, the lines his smile had made appealing turned to slack wrinkles.

  She took a moment with him, remembering the taste of the living man, that he was the only one who called her "Gidget," his inability to put in words what it was about surfing that made him devote his life to it (he'd been in pre-med once, long, long ago—when there was a crack-up or a near-drowning, the doctor he might have been would surface and take over), and the rush of the seas that came with his blood.

  That man was gone. Besides sorrow at the waste, she was angry. And afraid.

  It was easy to see how it had happened. The killer had come close, face-to-face, and stuck Moondoggie through the heart. The wound was round, not a slit. The weapon was probably a wooden stake or a sharpened metal pole. The angle of the wound was upwards, so the killer was shorter than the rangy surfer. Stuck through, Moondoggie had been carefully propped up on her doorstep. She was being sent a message.

  Moondoggie was a warm man, but he'd been killed as if he were like her, a vampire.

  He was not cold yet. The killing was recent.

  Geneviève turned in a half circle, looking out across the beach. Like most vampires, she had above average night vision for a human being—without sun glare bleaching everything bone white, she saw better than by day—but no hawklike power of distinguishing far-off tiny objects or magical X-ray eyesight.

  It was likely that the assassin was nearby, watching to see that the message was received. Counting on the popular belief that vampires did have unnatural eyesight, she moved slowly enough that anyone in concealment might think she was looking directly at them, that they had been seen.

  A movement.

  The trick worked. A couple of hundred yards off, beyond the trailer park, out on the beach, something—someone—moved, clambering upright from a hollow depression in the dry sand.

  As the probable murderer stood, Geneviève saw a blonde ponytail whipping. It was a girl, mid-to-late teens, in halter top and denim shorts, with a wispy gauze neck scarf, and—suggestive detail—running shoes and knee pads. She was undersized but athletic. Another girl midget: no wonder she'd been able to get close enough to Moondoggie, genial connoisseur of young bodies, to stab him in the heart.

  She assumed the girl would bolt. Geneviève was fast enough to run her down, but the killer ought to panic. In California, what people knew about vampires was scrambled with fantasy and science fiction.

  For once, Geneviève was tempted to live up to her image. She wanted to rip out the silly girl's throat.

  (and drink)

  She took a few long steps, flashing forwards across the beach.

  The girl stood her ground, waiting.

  Geneviève had pause. The stake wasn't in the dead man's chest. The girl still had it. Her right hand was out of sight, behind her back.

  Closer, she saw the killer's face in the moonlight. Doll-pretty, with an upturned nose and the faintest fading traces of freckles. She was frowning with concentration now but probably had a winning smile, perfect teeth. She should be a cheerleader, not an assassin.

  This wasn't a vampire, but Geneviève knew she was no warm cream puff, either. She had killed a strong man twice her weight with a single thrust, and was prepared for a charging nosferatu.

  Geneviève stood still, twenty yards from the girl.

  The killer produced her stake. It was stained.

  "Meet Simon Sharp," she said. She had a clear, casual voice. Geneviève found her flippancy terrifying.

  "You killed a man," Geneviève said, trying to get through to her, past the madness.

  "Not a man. One of you, undead vermin."

  "He was alive."

  "You'd snacked on him, Frenchie. He would have turned."

  "It doesn't work like that."

  "That's not what I hear, not what I know."

  From her icy eyes, this teenager was a fanatic. There could be no reasoning with her.

  Geneviève would have to take her down, hold her until the police got here.

  Whose side would the cops take? A vampire or a prom queen? Geneviève had fairly good relations with the local law, who were more uneasy about her as a private detective than as a vampire, but this might stretch things.

  The girl smiled. She did look awfully cute.

  Geneviève knew the mad bitch could probably get away with it At least once. She had the whole Tuesday Weld thing going for her, pretty poison.

  "You've been warned, not spared," said the girl. "My plan A was to skewer you on sight, but the Overlooker thinks this is better strategy. It's some English thing, like cricket. Go figure."

  The Overlooker?

  "It'd be peachiest all around if you left the state, Frenchie. The country, even. Preferably, the planet Next time we meet, it won't be a warning. You'll get a formal introduction to the delightful Simon. Capisce?"

  "Who are you?"

  "The Slayer," said the girl, gesturing with her stake. "Barbie, the Vampire Slayer."

  Despite herself, despite everything, Geneviève had to laugh.

  That annoyed Barbie.

  Geneviève reminded herself that this silly girl, playing dress-up-and-be-a-heroine, was a real live murderess.

  She laughed more calculatedly.

  Barbie wanted to kill her but made no move. Whoever this Overlooker—bloody silly title—was, his or her creature didn't want to exceed the brief given her.

  (Some English thing, like cricket)

 
Geneviève darted at the girl, nails out Barbie had good reactions. She pivoted to one side and launched a kick. A cleated shoe just missed Geneviève's midriff but raked her side painfully. She jammed her palm heel at Barbie's chin, and caught her solidly, shutting her mouth with a click.

  Simon Sharp went flying. That made Geneviève less inhibited about close fighting.

  Barbie was strong, trained, and smart She might have the brain of a flea, but her instincts were pantherlike, and she went all out for a kill. But Geneviève was still alive after five hundred and fifty years as a vampire.

  Barbie tried the oldest move in girly martial arts and yanked her opponent's hair, cutting her hand open. Geneviève's hair was fine but stronger and sharper than it looked, like pampas grass. The burst of hot blood was a distraction, sparking lizardy synapses in Geneviève's brain, momentarily blurring her thoughts. She threw Barbie away, skittering her across the sand on her can in an undignified tangle.

  Mistake.

  Barbie pulled out something that looked like a mace spray and squirted at Geneviève's face.

  Geneviève backed away from the cloud, but got a whiff of the mist. Garlic, holy water, and silver salts. Garlic and holy water didn't bother her—more mumbo-jumbo, ineffective against someone not of Dracula's bloodline—but silver was deadly to all nosferatu. This spray might not kill her, but it could scar her for a couple of centuries, or even life. It was vanity, she supposed, but she had got used to people telling her she was pretty.

  She scuttled away, backwards, across the sand. The cloud dissipated in the air. She saw the droplets, shining under the moon, falling with exaggerated slowness, pattering onto the beach.

  When the spray was gone, so was Barbie the Slayer.

  "… and, uh, this is exactly where you found Mr. Griffin, miss?" asked the LAPD homicide detective.

  Geneviève was distracted. Even just after dawn, the sun was fatiguing her. In early daylight, on a gurney, Moondoggie—whose name turned out to have been Jeff Griffin—looked colder and emptier, another of the numberless dead stranded in her past while she went on and on and on.

  "Miss Dew-dun-ee?"

  "Dieudonné," she corrected, absentmindedly.

  "Ah yes, Dieudonné. Accent grave over the e. That's French, isn't it? I have a French car. My wife says—"

  "Yes, this is where I found the body," she answered, catching up.

  "Ah. There's just one thing I don't understand."

  She paid attention to the crumpled little man. He had curly hair, a gravel voice, and a raincoat. He was working on the first cigar of the day. One of his eyes was glass, and aimed off to the side.

  "And what might that be, Lieutenant?"

  "This girl you mentioned, this—" he consulted his notebook, or pretended to, "—this 'Barbie.' Why would she hang around after the murder? Why did she have to make sure you found the body?"

  "She implied that she was under orders, working for this Overlooker."

  The detective touched his eyebrow as if to tuck his smelly cigar behind his ear like a pen, and made great play of thinking hard, trying to work through the story he had been told. He was obviously used to people lying to him, and equally obviously unused to dealing with vampires. He stood between her and the sun, as she inched into the shrinking shadow of her trailer.

  She wanted to get a hat and dark glasses, but police tape still barred her door.

  " 'Overlooker,' yes. I've got a note of that, miss. Funny expression, isn't it? Gives the impression the 'Overlooker' is supposed not to see something, that the whole job is about, ah, overlooking. Not like my profession, miss. Or yours either, I figure. You're a PI, like on TV?"

  "With fewer car chases and shoot-outs."

  The detective laughed. He was a funny little duck. She realised he used his likability as a psychological weapon, to get close to people he wanted to nail. She couldn't mistake the situation: she was in the ring for the killing, and her story about Barbie the Slayer didn't sound straight in daylight What sane professional assassin gives a name, even a partial name, to a witness?

  "A vampire private eye?" The detective scratched his head.

  "It makes sense. I don't mind staying up all night. And I've got a wealth of varied experience."

  "Have you solved any big cases? Really big ones?"

  Without thinking, she told a truth. "In 1888, I halfway found out who Jack the Ripper was."

  The detective was impressed.

  "I thought no one knew how that panned out Scotland Yard still have it open. What with you folk living longer and longer, it's not safe to close unsolved files. The guy who took the rap died, didn't he? These days, the theorists say it couldn't have been him."

  "I said I halfway found out."

  She had a discomfiting memory flash, of her and Charles in an office in Whitechapel in 1888, stumbling over the last clue, all the pieces falling into place. The problem was that solving the mystery hadn't meant sorting everything out, and the case had continued to spiral out of control. There was a message there.

  "That wouldn't be good enough for my captain, I'm afraid, miss. He has to answer to Police Chief Exley, and Chief Exley insists on a clearance and conviction rate. I can't just catch them, I have to prove they did it. I have to go to the courts. You'd be surprised how many guilty parties walk free. Especially the rich ones, with fancy lawyers. In this town, it's hard to get a conviction against a rich man."

  "This girl looked like a high-school kid."

  "Even worse, miss. Probably has rich folks."

  "I've no idea about that."

  "And pretty is as good as being rich. Better. Juries like pretty girls as much as lawyers like rich men."

  There was a shout from the beach. One of the uniformed cops who had been combing the sand held up a plastic evidence bag. Inside was Barbie's bloody stake.

  "Simon Sharp," Geneviève said. The detective's eyebrows rose. "That's what she called it. What kind of person gives a pet name to a murder weapon?"

  "You think you've heard everything in this business and then something else comes along and knocks you flat. Miss, if you don't mind me asking, I know it's awkward for some women, but, um, well, how old are you?"

  "I was born in 1416," she said.

  "That's five hundred and, um, sixty-five."

  "Thereabouts."

  The detective shook his head again and whistled.

  "Tell me, does it get easier? Everything?"

  "Sadly, no."

  "You said you had—uh, how did you put it?—'a wealth of varied experience.' Is that like getting cleverer every year? Knowing more and more of the answers?"

  "Would that it did, Lieutenant. Sometimes I think it just means having more and more questions."

  He chuckled. "Ain't that the truth."

  "Can I get into my trailer now?" she asked, indicating the climbing sun.

  "We were keeping you out?" he asked, knowing perfectly well he was. "That's dreadful, with your condition and everything. Of course you can go inside, miss. We'll be able to find you here, if there are any more questions that come up? It's a trailer, isn't it? You're not planning cm hitching it up to your car and driving off, say, out of state?"

  "No, lieutenant."

  "That's good to know."

  He gallantly tore the police tape from her door. She had her keys out. Her skin tingled, and the glare off the sea turned everything into blobby, indistinct shapes.

  "Just one more thing," said the detective, hand on her door.

  The keys were hot in her fingers.

  "Yes," she said, a little sharply.

  "You're on a case, aren't you? Like on TV?"

  "I'm working on several investigations. May I make a bet with you, Lieutenant? For a dime?"

  The detective was surprised by that But he fished around in his raincoat pocket and, after examining several tissues and a book of matches, came up with a coin and a smile.

  "I bet I know what you're going to ask me next" she said. "You're going to ask me
who I'm working for."

  He was theatrically astonished.

  "That's just incredible, miss. Is it some kind of vampire mind-reading power? Or are you like Sherlock Holmes, picking up tiny hints from little clues, like the stains on the cigar band or the dog not howling in the night?"

  "Just a lucky guess," she said. Her cheeks were really burning, now.

  "Well, see if I can luckily guess your answer. Client confidentiality privilege, like a lawyer or a doctor, eh?"

  "See. You have hidden powers, too, Lieutenant."

  "Well, Miss Dieudonné, I do what I can, I do what I can. Any idea what I'm going to say next?"

  "No."

  His smile froze slightly, and she saw ice in his real eye.

  "Don't leave town, miss."

  On rising, she found Jack Martin had left a message on her machine. He had something for her on "Mr. A." Geneviève listened to the brief message twice, thinking it over.

  She had spent only a few hours asking about John Alucard, and someone had gotten killed. A connection? It would be weird if there wasn't. Then again, as the detective reminded her, she'd been around for a long time. In her years, she'd ticked off a great many people, not a few as long-lived as she was herself. Also, this was Southern California, La-La Land, where the nuts came from: folk didn't necessarily need a reason to take against you, or to have you killed.