P N Elrod Omnibus Read online

  P.N. Elrod Omnibus

  The Lunch Time Reading Series

  Smashwords Edition, Front Matter and License Notes:

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author!

  * * *

  A Night at the (Horse) Opera, Smashwords Edition copyright 1995, 2011, P.N. Elrod

  Originally in Celebrity Vampires, DAW 1995

  Breath of Bast, Smashwords Edition copyright 2011, P.N. Elrod

  Originally in Kittens, Cats, and Crime Five Star, 2003

  Bossman, Smashwords Edition copyright 2011 by P.N. Elrod

  Originally in Death By Horoscope, edited by Anne Perry, Carroll & Graf, 2001

  Slaughter, Smashwords Edition, copyright 2011 by P.N. Elrod

  Originally in The Repentant, DAW, 2003

  The Devil’s Mark, Smashwords Edition, copyright 2011, by P.N. Elrod

  Originally in Time of the Vampires DAW 1996

  You’ll Catch Your Death, Smashwords Edition copyright, 2011, by P.N. Elrod

  Originally in Vampire Detectives DAW 1995

  Izzy’s Shoe-In, Smashwords Edition, copyright 2011, by P.N. Elrod

  Originally in White House Pet Detectives, Cumberland House 1992

  The Quick Way Down, Smashwords Edition, copyright 2011, by P.N. Elrod

  Originally in Mob Magic DAW 1998

  The Scottish Ploy, Smashwords Edition, copyright 2011, by P.N. Elrod

  Originally in Murder Most Romantic, Ace, 2002

  Grave-Robbed, Smashwords Edition, copyright 2011, by P.N. Elrod

  Originally in Many Bloody Returns, Ace, 2007

  The Company You Keep, Smashwords Edition, copyright 2011, by P.N. Elrod

  Originally in Dracula and the Legions of the Undead, Moonstone 2009

  Death in Dover, Smashwords Edition, copyright 2011, by P.N. Elrod

  Originally in Death by Dickens, Berkley, 2004

  Drawing Dead, Smashwords Edition, copyright 2011, by P.N. Elrod

  King of Shreds and Patches, Smashwords Edition, copyright 2011, by P.N. Elrod

  Originally in Rotten Relations, DAW, 2004

  Fugitive, Smashwords Edition, copyright 2011, by P.N. Elrod

  Originally in Women at War, Tor, 1995

  The Wind Breathes Cold, Smashwords Edition, copyright 2011, by P.N. Elrod

  Originally in Dracula Prince of Darkness DAW 1992

  * * * * * * *

  __________

  A NIGHT AT THE (HORSE) OPERA

  Author’s Note: I was asked to do a story for a collection called CELEBRITY VAMPIRES for DAW and being a fan of the Marx Brothers, it was a no-brainer write about one of them crossing paths with my Depression era vampire PI. It’s still one of my favorites.

  Chicago, Autumn, 1936

  The smell of buttered popcorn was distracting until I settled in my seat and stopped pretending to breathe. I wasn’t able to drink soda pop anymore, and the darkness wasn’t really dark anymore, but a movie was still a movie, and it was rare that I didn’t drop in on one of Chicago’s shadow palaces two or three times a week take in the latest show.

  This particular one wasn’t especially new; The Plainsman had been out for a while, but I’d somehow missed it until now, a sad lapse for a Gary Cooper fan. Of course, I also liked Jean Arthur, who was mighty eye-catching done up in Hollywood cowgirl style. I lost track of the dialog at one point, speculating how my girlfriend, Bobbi, might look in a similar outfit of made of buckskins. Probably very good, I thought; then things started happening in the plot I couldn’t follow because of my internal wandering.

  “I fell asleep—what’s going on?” I whispered to the man next to me. Not looking away from the screen, he obligingly leaned over and filled me in, speaking low and with a decided New York accent. I’d lived there for a long time before moving to Chicago and was mildly curious to find out why he’d left, but it could wait until after the feature.

  De Mille’s epic danced over the screen with enough thrills and drama to keep the most jaded Western lover satisfied, myself included. If it was still playing here tomorrow, which was Bobbi’s night off, I’d ask her out. She wouldn’t need much persuading; she liked Gary Cooper, too.

  The movie rolled to its end, and the lights came up. Other people rose to leave, uniformed ushers appeared to clean up the trash, and the rest of the audience remained seated to wait for the next feature to start. Bobbi’s last show at the night club where she sang wouldn’t be over for another couple of hours; I was in no hurry to leave. The same apparently went for my seat mate, who pulled out a crumpled sack of peanuts from somewhere and began shelling and eating them in a leisurely manner.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  His bright eyes clouded slightly as he tried to recall why I was thanking him, then comprehension dawned. “Don’t mention it.”

  “New York?” I asked.

  “Ninety-third Streeter,” he promptly replied. He had a sloping nose, wide at the base, a wide, expressive mouth, receding hair, and enough mischief packed into his mug for a dozen Christmas elves. He looked as though he ought to be somebody, and I had a nagging feeling that I knew him. “You from there, too?” he asked.

  “Not since last August. You ever hang out at a place called Rosie’s? Across from the Dispatch?”

  He shook his head solemnly.

  “Thought I might have seen you there.”

  “You probably saw me here, is what I’m thinking.” He tossed a peanut high and caught it in his mouth with the easy skill of long practice. “Want some?” He shook the bag, open end toward me.

  “No, but thanks anyway.” Maybe I’d seen him here before and just hadn’t noticed him among the hundreds of other movie watchers. “Been away from New York long?”

  “Long enough. California’s home now, least when we’re not on the road.”

  “Salesman?” But that didn’t seem quite right for him. Another peanut shot high and dropped in. He chewed it slowly while his eyes, his whole expression, turned steady and serious. “Yeah. I’m a salesman, all right. I sell money.”

  “You what?”

  “I sell money. You never heard of the business?”

  “No . . .” I’d either stumbled across a counterfeiter or a lunatic. Now might be a good time to find another seat.

  The guy put away his bag of peanuts. “I know what you must be thinking, but it’s perfectly legal. I really do sell money.”

  Okay. He’d hooked me. I had to hear the punch line. “What is it? Like coin collecting or something?”

  “Nah, this stuff.” He pulled out his wallet and fished for a five dollar bill, holding it up. “Take a look. It’s real, right?”

  As far as I could tell it looked just like any other used bill. “Right. . .”

  “Okay, I’ll sell you this five for four dollars and fifty cents.”

  I shook my head, chuckling. “Ah. No, thanks.”

  “It’s not a fiddle,” he earnestly assured me. “Think of the profit.”

  “What do you get out of it?”

  “A sale.”

  “Maybe not this time, but thanks all the same.”

  “You sure? It’s a great bargain you’re passing up.” At this point he looked too innocent to be believed. He read that I wasn’t going to fall for whatever gag he had in mind, gave a good-natured shrug, and put away the bill and wallet. He brought out the peanuts again.

  The nagging set in a
gain with a vengeance. “I know you from somewhere.”

  “Go to the movies a lot?” he asked.

  “All the time.”

  “You really don’t know?”

  “You’re gonna have to tell me.”

  He grinned, his whole face going into it.

  “Wait a second. . .”

  He dropped his chin a bit and letting his mobile mouth hang slack in an exaggerated anticipation.

  “Oh, jeez, you’re—”

  A hand clamped down on his shoulder from behind and made him jump. He looked around in irritation to the source of the interruption. The man looming over us was big even by Chicago standards, and he had company: two large friends waiting in the aisle. The three of them looked as though they could take on the Wrigley Building and win. Their hundred-dollar suits were not well-tailored enough to hide ominous bulges under their left arms.

  The man’s hand flexed and lifted, and my seat mate rose like a puppet.

  “Oh, hell,” he said, irritation suddenly changing to fear. The smell of it fairly leaped off him.

  “You don’t know the half of it yet,” the man told him.

  “Wait a minute . . ” I began, not thinking. “You’re Guns Thompson, aren’t you?” I’d heard he was working as muscle for a West Side mob these days.

  One of his goons sidled into the row behind me and dropped a meaty hand on my shoulder. “Or maybe not. I could be mistaken.”

  “Shhh!” someone down the row advised us severely.

  “Out of here,” said Thompson, and abruptly the five of us were marching toward the lobby just as the next show began. The noisy barrage of a newsreel theme was enough to drown any protests we might have. I could have made an issue at this point, but I’d heard that Thompson was a rough customer and wouldn’t put it past him to open up with his heater right then and there. Better I go along and put a few walls between the other theater patrons and whatever caliber of bullets he and his cronies were packing.

  We threaded past ushers with flashlights guiding latecomers in; no one noticed us. If they did, they were going to mind their own business and watch the movie. We were urged through doors into the lush lobby. The popcorn smell hit me again with a brief wave of nausea as they hustled us past the front exit. I’d been expecting a car ride or at least a short walk to the nearest dark alley; Thompson headed for the men’s room.

  We trooped in. A couple of guys were washing up, and some instinct told them to hurry the job and leave. The last one bolted before drying his hands.

  Couldn’t blame him, the brightly lighted background of patterned tile did nothing to improve Thompson’s looks. Despite their flashy clothes, he and his friends were as out of place as a trio of gorillas at a Sunday School picnic. It showed in their hard, impassive faces and the way they moved like intelligent bulldozers.

  “You’ve got the wrong man,” protested my seat mate. “You’re after Chico, aren’t you?”

  “Not anymore,” said one of the goons. He went to stand by the door, jamming his foot against the base to keep out interruptions.

  “I’m his brother—Harpo. You’ve got the wrong man!”

  Thompson stared, eyes so narrow you couldn’t read them.

  “It’s true,” I put in. “This is Harpo Marx.”

  “Oh, yeah, then how come he’s talking?” demanded Thompson.

  “Yeah,” said the goon at the door, suddenly giggling. “An’ if you’re Harpo, where’s your harp?”

  “Back in my hotel room,” came Harpo’s logical answer, but his voice was thin and nervous. He still clutched his forgotten bag of peanuts in one fist. They rattled against the paper because he was trembling.

  “Everyone knows Harpo is a dummy. Dummies don’t talk.”

  “That’s just a character I play!”

  “Stop wasting time,” Thompson growled and pulled out a forty-five that looked like it could drop King Kong in one shot.

  He wasn’t pointing it at anyone just yet, so I thought I’d try once more. “C’mon, Guns, give the man a real look. He’s not the one you want.”

  Thompson did but couldn’t see any difference. Then he focused on me for the first time and started pointing the gun. I must have the kind of face that sets off alarms for crazy debt collectors. “Where the hell do you know me? I never seen you before.”

  “Hey, everyone in town knows Guns Thompson.” I tried to make it sound like he was a respected celebrity. “You’re like Big Al—”

  “Shut up.”

  I shut up. Maybe he had a grudge against the long gone Capone. I didn’t know squat about Chicago mob politics, though I could recognize a few faces. All you had to do was study the Post Office portraits. There were plenty of local bad guys the FBI hadn’t gotten around to collecting yet. This one had gotten his nickname during the Prohibition gang wars with his talent for handling a Thompson machine gun. It was about his only asset, since he and his friends apparently didn’t have enough brains between them to fill a whiskey jigger.

  “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  “My name’s Fleming and I’m nobody special, honest.”

  “Fleming?” Thompson’s face screwed up in an effort to think. “Where do I know him from, Higgs?” he asked the guy by the door.

  Higgs shook his head.

  “Rinky?” This was directed to the thug guarding Harpo. Rinky shrugged.

  Since my arrival in this town I’d been reluctantly bumping heads with its criminal element, so it wasn’t too surprising that Thompson had heard of me from somewhere. Most of the time I do whatever’s needed to cover my tracks and kept my head down. Apparently not well enough.

  “Where do I know you from?”

  I didn’t meet his eye and acted scared, only it wasn’t an act.

  He growled and dismissed me as annoying but not worth the effort, turning his attention and gun on Harpo.

  “Okay, Marx, you ran up a bill with Big Joey, and it’s past due. I can take it out of your pocket or your hide.”

  “This is a pretty public place for that kind of business,” I said. I wasn’t crazy about putting myself forward but had a better chance of surviving than Harpo. “We should take this elsewhere.”

  Higgs giggled again. “Big Joey owns this joint, bo’. Make noise if you want. Ain’t no one gonna come in to see why.”

  Which made for a pretty disgusting situation, I thought, as the three of them enjoyed my reaction. I checked to see how Harpo was doing, but he’d frozen in place, staring at something behind me, his mouth sagging. In no wise was that comical mugging. My nape prickled as I realized what he saw. Hells bells, why couldn’t these jerks have taken us into a dark alley?

  “Marx?” Thompson said, moving a step closer and raising his gun an inch.

  Harpo continued to stare until Rinky gave him a shake, then he looked vaguely at Thompson.

  “Stop playing the dope. Pay up, and we’ll let you go back to the movie.”

  “H-how much?”

  “Five grand.”

  The mention of such an enormous sum got Harpo’s attention as nothing else could, given his circumstances. He gulped. “My God, how long was he playing?”

  “Who?”

  “Chico.”

  “You’re Chico, you dope!”

  “Sorry, I forgot.”

  Thompson tapped him lightly on the side of the head with the barrel of his gun, just enough to jar him. “Pay up, or get busted up. I don’t want no more shit from you, sheenie.”

  Harpo had been drained of color up to this point; now he flushed a deep red. There was a lot playing over his face; anger, resentment, and outrage were mixed in with his fear. I’d seen hilarious exaggerations on the screen, but he’d been acting then, working hard to make people laugh. I’d been one of them. This took only a second, maybe less than a second, and then he exploded.

  It was foolish and almost too fast to follow. Harpo’s fist came up, connected, and Thompson staggered away, clutching a suddenly broken and bloody nose.


  Rinky surged forward, slamming Harpo back into one of the stall doors. They were designed to open out; this one’s hinges gave and it crashed inward, stopping abruptly when it struck the toilet inside. His bag of peanuts scattering, Harpo fell against it and dropped, but he was still mad and scrapping. From the floor he kicked at Rinky’s ankles. Rinky danced out of the way, reaching for his gun.

  Before he could haul it out, I was on him. I grabbed handfuls of Rinky’s coat and some skin under it; he yelped loud enough. One solid pull, turn, and shove and he was flying across the length of the room, crashing into the tiled wall. He dropped and stayed dropped.

  Then something roared, a horrendous explosion, stunning in the confined space. The sound was as solid as a bowling ball, and struck me high in the back. I saw a burst of blood leap from the middle of my chest, then the floor flew up too fast to dodge.

  I couldn’t tell if the silence that followed was a result of their shock at what had happened or my inability to hear. My ears felt stuffed and when the stuffiness wore off, it was replaced by a hot, unpleasant ringing.

  Couldn’t move. The pain crashing in was searingly familiar, which did not make it easier to bear. My initial, involuntary reaction to getting shot is to vanish. Once incorporeal I would be free of the pain, floating in a unique pocket of existence that’s always given me healing and comfort.

  Great stuff, but the drawback is that it always scares the hell out of anyone who sees me doing it. I wasn’t about to give away my real nature to these creeps, so I grimly hung on, gritting my teeth as flesh, bone, muscle, and finally outraged nerves began to painfully knit back together again.