Calvin stared at the receiver for a moment, hoping it might rewaken. It buzzed at him like a Bronx cheer. Slowly he put it back on its cradle, then walked like a zombie toward his room. He heard sirens, and panic exploded within him, but they were far in the distance and receding. What am I going to do? he thought, his brain ticking like a broken record. What am I going to do? He closed and bolted his door and then turned toward the makeup case there on the table.
Its lid was open, and Calvin thought that was odd, because he remembered—or thought he remembered—closing it last night. The silver claw was licked with dusty light. Of all the stupid screwups! he thought, anger welling up inside. Stupid, stupid, stupid! He crossed the room in two strides and lifted the case over his head to smash it to pieces on the floor. Suddenly something seemed to bite his fingers and he howled in pain, dropping the case back onto the table; it overturned, spilling jars and crayons.
There was a red welt across Calvin’s fingers where the lid had snapped down like a lobster’s claw. It bit me! he thought, backing away from the thing.
The silver claw gleamed, one finger crooked as if in invitation.
“I’ve got to get rid of you!” Calvin said, startled by the sound of his own voice. “If the cops find you here, I’m up the creek!” He stuffed all the spilled makeups back into it, closed the lid, and tentatively poked at it for a minute before picking it up. Then he carried it along the corridor to the back stairway and down to the narrow alley that ran behind the building. He pushed the black makeup case deep inside a garbage can, underneath an old hat, a few empty bottles of Boone’s Farm and a Dunkin Donuts box. Then he returned to the pay phone and, trembling, dialed Deenie’s apartment number; there was no answer, so he called the Club Zoom. Mike, the bartender, picked up the phone. “How’s it goin’, Cal?” In the background the Eagles were on the jukebox, singing about life in the fast lane. “Nope, Cal. Deenie’s not comin’ in today until six. Sorry. You want to leave a message or something?”
“No,” Calvin said. “Thanks anyway.” He hung up and returned to his room. Where the hell was Deenie? he wondered. It seemed she was never where she was supposed to be; she never called, never let him know where she was. Hadn’t he bought her a nice gold-plated necklace with a couple of diamond specks on it to show her he wasn’t mad for stringing along that old guy from Bel-Air? It had cost him plenty, too, and had put him in his current financial mess. He slammed his fist down on the card table and tried to sort things out: somehow he had to get some money. He could hock his radio and maybe collect an old pool-hall debt from Corky McClinton, but that would hardly be enough to carry him and Deenie for very long in Mexico. He had to have that three thousand dollars from Mr. Marco! But what about Crawley? That killer would shave his eyebrows with a .45!
What to do, what to do?
First, Calvin reasoned, a drink to calm my nerves. He opened a cupboard and brought out a bottle of Jim Beam and a glass. His fingers were shaking so much he couldn’t pour, so he shoved the glass aside and swigged out of the bottle. It burned like hellfire going down. Damn that makeup case! he thought, and took another drink. Damn Mr. Marco: another drink. Damn Crawley. Damn Deenie. Damn the idiot who switched those lousy makeup cases. Damn me for even taking on this screwy job…
After he’d finished damning his second and third cousins who lived in Arizona, Calvin stretched out on the sofabed and slept.
He came awake with a single terrifying thought: The cops are here! But they weren’t, there was no one else in the room, everything was okay. His head was throbbing, and through the small, smog-filmed windows the light was graying into night. What’d I do? he thought. Sleep away the whole day? He reached over toward the Jim Beam bottle, there on the card table beside the makeup case, and saw that there was about a half-swallow left in it. He tipped it to his mouth and drank it down, adding to the turmoil in his belly.
When his fogged gaze finally came to rest on the makeup case, he dropped the bottle to the floor.
Its lid was wide open, the silver claw cupping blue shadows.
“What are you doin’ here?” he said, his speech slurred. “I got rid of you! Didn’t I?” He was trying to think: he seemed to remember taking that thing to the garbage can, but then again, it might’ve been a dream. “You’re a jinx, that’s what you are!” he shouted. He struggled up, staggered out into the hallway to the pay phone again, and dialed the antique shop.
A low, cold voice answered: “Marco Antiques and Curios.”
Calvin shuddered; it was Crawley. “This is Calvin Doss,” he said, summoning up his courage. “Doss. Doss. Let me speak to Mr. Marco.”
“Mr. Marco doesn’t want to speak to you.”
“Listen, I need my three thousand bucks!”
“Mr. Marco is working tonight, Doss. Stop tying up the phone.”
“I just… I just want what’s comin’ to me!”
“Oh? Then maybe I can help you, you little punk. How’s about two or three forty-five slugs to rattle around in your brain-pan? I dare you to set foot over here!” The phone went dead before Calvin could say another word.
He put his head in his hands. Little punk. Little man. Little jerk. It seemed someone had been calling him those names all his life, from his mother to the juvenile-home creeps to the L.A. cops. I’m not a little punk! he thought. Someday I’ll show them all! He stumbled to his room, slamming his shoulder against a wall in the process, and had to turn on the lights before darkness totally filled the place.
And now he saw that the black makeup case had crept closer to the table’s edge.
He stared at it, transfixed by that silver claw. “There’s something funny about you,” he said softly. “Something reeeeallll funny. I put you in the garbage! Didn’t I?” And now, as he watched it, the claw’s forefinger seemed to…move. To bend. To beckon. Calvin rubbed his eyes. It hadn’t moved, not really! Or had it? Yes! No. Yes! No…
Had it?
Calvin touched it, then whimpered and drew his hand away. Something had shivered up his arm, like a faint charge of electricity. “What are you?” he whispered. He reached out to close the lid, and this time the claw seemed to clutch at his hand, to pull it down into the box itself. He shouted “Hey!” and when he pulled his hand back he saw he was gripping one of the jars of makeup, identified by the single number 9.
The lid dropped.
Calvin jumped. The claw had latched itself into place. For a long time he looked at the jar in his hand, then slowly—very slowly—unscrewed the top. It was a grayish-looking stuff, like greasepaint, with the distinct odors of… What was it? he thought. Yes. Blood. That and a cold, mossy smell. He dabbed in a finger and rubbed it into the palm of his hand. It tingled, and seemed to be so cold it was hot. He smeared his hands with the stuff. The feeling wasn’t unpleasant. No, Calvin decided; it was far from unpleasant. The feeling was of…power. Of invincibility. Of wanting to throw himself into the arms of the night, to fly with the clouds as they swept across the moon’s grinning face. Feels good, he thought, and smeared some of the stuff on his face. God, if Deenie could only see me now! He began to smile. His face felt funny, filmed with the cold stuff, but different, as if the bone structure had sharpened. His mouth and jaws felt different too.
I want my three thousand dollars from Mr. Marco, he told himself. And I’m going to get it. Yessssssss. I’m going to get it right now.
After a while he pushed aside the empty jar and turned toward the door, his muscles vibrating with power. He felt as old as time, but filled with incredible, wonderful, ageless youth. He moved like an uncoiling serpent to the door, then into the hallway. Now it was time to collect the debt.
He drifted like a haze of smoke through the darkness and slipped into his Volkswagen. He drove through Hollywood, noting the white sickle moon rising over the Capitol Records building, and into Beverly Hills. At a traffic light he could sense someone staring at him from the car beside his; he turned his head slightly, and the young woman at the wheel of her Mer
cedes froze, terror stitched across her face. When the light changed, he drove on, leaving the Mercedes sitting still.
Yessssss. It was definitely time to collect the debt.
He pulled his car to the curb on Rodeo Drive, two shops down from the royal-blue-and-gold canopy with the lettering MARCO ANTIQUES AND CURIOS. Most of the expensive shops were closed, and there were only a few window-shoppers on the sidewalks. Calvin walked toward the antique shop. Of course the door was locked, a blind pulled down, and a sign that read SORRY WE’RE CLOSED. I should’ve brought my tool kit! he told himself. But no matter. Tonight he could do magic; tonight there were no impossibilities. He imagined what he wanted to do; then he exhaled and slipped through the doorjamb like a gray, wet mist. Doing it scared the hell out of him, and caused one window-shopper to clutch at his heart and fall like a redwood to the pavement.
Calvin stood in a beige-carpeted display room filled with gleaming antiques: a polished rosewood piano once owned by Rudolph Valentino, a brass bed from the Pickford estate, a lamp with bulbs shaped like roses that had once belonged to Vivien Leigh. Objects of silver, brass, and gold were spotlit by track lights at the ceiling. Calvin could hear Mr. Marco’s voice from the rear of the shop, through a door that led back into a short hallway and Marco’s office. “…that’s all well and good, Mr. Frazier,” he was saying. “I hear what you’re telling me, but I’m not listening. I have a buyer for that item, and if I want to sell it I must make delivery tomorrow afternoon at the latest.” There was a few seconds’ pause. “Correct, Mr. Frazier. It’s not my concern how your people get the Flynn diary. But I’ll expect it to be on my desk at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon, is that understood?…”
Calvin began to smile. He moved across the room as silently as smoke, entered the hallway, and approached the closed door to Marco’s office.
He was about to turn the doorknob when he heard Marco put down his telephone. “Now, Mr. Crawley,” Marco said. “Where were we? Ah, yes; the matter of Calvin Doss. I very much fear that we cannot trust the man to remain silent in the face of adversity. You know where he lives, Mr. Crawley. I’ll have your payment ready for you when you return…”
Calvin reached forward, gripped the doorknob, and wrenched at it. He was amazed and quite pleased when the entire door was ripped from its hinges.
Marco, his three hundred pounds wedged into the chair with the lion faces on the armrests behind a massive mahogany desk, gave out a startled squawk, his black eyes almost popping from his head. Crawley had been sitting in a corner holding a Hustler magazine, and now the towering height of him came up like a released spring, his eyes glittering like cold diamonds beneath thick black brows. Crawley s hand went up under his checked sport coat, but Calvin froze him with a single glance.
Marco’s face was the color of spoiled cheese. “Who…who are you?” he said, his voice trembling. “What do you want?”
“Don’t you recognize me?” Calvin asked, his voice as smooth and dark as black velvet. “I’m Calvin Doss, Mr. Marco.”
“Cal…vin…?” A thread of saliva broke over Marco’s double chins and fell onto the lapel of his charcoal-gray Brooks Brothers suit. “No! It can’t be!”
“But it is.” Calvin grinned and felt his fangs protrude. “I’ve come for my restitution, Mr. Marco.”
“Kill him!” Marco shrieked to Crawley. “Kill him!”
Crawley was still dazed, but he instinctively pulled the automatic from the holster beneath his coat and stuck it into Calvin’s ribs. Calvin had no time to leap aside; Crawley’s finger was already twitching on the trigger. In the next instant the gun barked twice, and Calvin felt a distant sensation of heat that just as quickly faded. Behind him, through the haze of blue smoke, there were two bullet holes in the wall. Calvin couldn’t exactly understand why his stomach wasn’t torn open right now, but this was indeed a night of miracles; he grasped the man’s collar and with one hand flung him like a scarecrow across the room. Crawley screamed and slammed into the opposite wall, collapsing to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. He skittered past Calvin like a frantic crab and ran away along the corridor.
“Crawley!” Marco shouted, trying to get out of his chair. “Don’t leave me!”
Calvin shoved the desk forward as effortlessly as if it were the matter of dreams, pinning the bulbous Marco in his chair. Marco began to whimper, his eyes floating in wet sockets. Calvin was grinning like a death’s-head. “And low,” he whispered, “it is time for you to pay.” He reached out and grasped the man’s tie, slowly tightening it until Marco’s face looked like a bloated red balloon. Then Calvin leaned forward, very gracefully, and plunged his fangs into the throbbing jugular vein. A fountain of blood gushed, dripping from the corners of Calvin’s mouth. In another few moments Marco’s corpse, which seemed to have lost about seventy-five pounds, slumped down in its chair, its shoulders squashed together and the arms up as if in total surrender.
Calvin stared at the body for a moment, a wave of nausea suddenly rising from the pit of his stomach. He felt lightheaded, out of control, lost in a larger shadow. He turned and struggled out to the hallway, where he bent over and retched. Nothing came up, but the taste of blood in his mouth made him wish he had a bar of soap. What have I done? he thought, leaning against a wall. Sweat was dripping down his face, plastering his shirt to his back. He looked down at his side, to where there were two holes in his shirt, ringed with powder burns. That should’ve killed me, he realized. Why didn’t it? How did I get in here? Why did I…kill Mr. Marco like that? He spat once, then again and again; the taste of blood was maddening. He probed at his gums with a finger. His teeth were all normal now, everything was back to normal.
What did that makeup case turn me into? He wiped the sweat from his face with a handkerchief and stepped back into the office. Yep. Mr. Marco was still dead. The two bullet holes were still in the wall. Calvin wondered where Marco kept his money. Since he was dead, he figured, he wouldn’t need it anymore. Right? Calvin leaned over the desk, avoiding the fixed stare from the corpse’s eyes, and started going through the drawers. In a lower one, beneath all kinds of papers and other junk, was a white envelope with the name CRAWLEY printed on it. Calvin looked inside. His heart leapt. There was at least five thousand dollars in there; probably the dough Crawley was going to be paid for my murder, Calvin thought. He took the money and ran.
Fifteen minutes later he was pulling into the parking lot beside the Club Zoom. In the red neon-veined light he counted the money, trembling with joy. Fifty-five hundred bucks! It was more money than he had ever seen in his whole life.
He desperately needed some beer to wash away the taste of blood. Deenie would be dancing in there by now, too. He put the money in a back pocket and hurried across the parking lot into the Club Zoom. Inside, strobe lights flashed like crazy lightening. A jukebox thundered from somewhere in the darkness, its bass beat kicking at Calvin’s unsettled stomach. A few men sat at the bar or at a scattering of tables, drinking beer and watching the girl onstage who gyrated her hips in a disinterested circle. Calvin climbed onto a bar stool. “Hey, Mike! Gimme a beer! Deenie here yet?”
“Yeah. She’s in the back.” Mike shoved a mug of beer in front of him and then frowned. “You okay, Cal? You look like you saw a ghost or something.”
“I’m fine. Or will be, as soon as I finish this off.” He drank most of it in one swallow, swishing it around in his mouth. “That’s better.”
“What’s better, Cal?”
“Nothing. Forget it. Jeez, it’s cold in here!”
“You sure you’re okay?” Mike asked, looking genuinely concerned. “It must be eighty degrees in here. The air conditioner broke again this afternoon.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m just fine. Soon as I see my girl I’ll be even better.”
“Uh-huh,” Mike said quietly. He cleaned up a few splatters of beer from the bar with a rag. “I hear you bought Deenie a present last week. A gold chain. Put you back much?”
“About a hundred bucks. It’s worth it, though, just to see that pretty smile. I’m going to ask her to go down to Mexico with me for a few days.”
“Uh-huh,” Mike said again. Now he was cleaning up imaginary splatters, and finally he looked Calvin straight in the eyes. “You’re a good guy, Cal. You never cause any trouble in here, and I can tell you’re okay. I just…well, I hate to see you get what’s coming.”
“Huh? What do you mean by that?”
Mike shrugged. “How long have you known Deenie, Cal? A few weeks? Girls like her come and go, man. Here one day, gone the next. Sure she’s good-looking; they all are, and they trade on their looks like their bodies are Malibu beachfront properties. You get my drift?”
“No.”
“Okay. This is man-to-man. Friend-to-friend, right? Deenie’s a taker, Cal. She’ll bleed you dry, and then she’ll kick you out with the garbage. She’s got about five or six guys on the string.”
Calvin blinked, his stomach roiling again. “You’re…you’re lying!”
“God’s truth. Deenie’s playing you, Cal; reeling you in and out like a fish with a hooked gut—”
“You’re lying!” Calvin’s face flushed; he rose from his seat and leaned over toward the bartender. “You’ve got no right saying those things! They’re lies! You probably want me to give her up so you can have her! Fat chance! I’m going back to see her right now, and you’d better not try to stop me!” He started to move away from the bar, his brain spinning like a top.
“Cal,” Mike said softly, his voice tinged with pity, “Deenie’s not alone.”
But Calvin was already going back behind the stage, through a black curtain to the dressing rooms. Deenie’s room was the third door, and as Calvin was about to knock, he heard the deep roll of a man’s laughter. He froze, his hand balled into a fist.
“A diamond ring?” the man said. “You’re kidding!”