My brain is barely protected by scar tissue, and my back pops out more often than champagne corks at a Tommy Manville wedding. Such things are more or less visible to the keen eye of even your novice vampire. What couldn’t be seen was the fact that I’m a private detective with nothing in the bank but a bad credit rating, nothing in the world but a questionable reputation, and nothing on my mind but hard memories.

I had failed as a Glendale cop and a Warner Brothers security guard and I had only twenty-five bucks and an overdue bill on my office rent to show for nearly half a dozen years as a private investigator. Look at me, vampires. There are some bodies you can’t get blood out of. Amid the orgy of crackers, root beer, and Pepsi, I was trying to do the job I had been hired for by Lugosi. Someone had been playing games with him for over a month, sending messages written in animal blood through the mail saying, “He who mocks the vampire deserves his fate,” and “Respect what you represent or suffer for it,” or who ever can forget my own favorite, “Dignity or death.” It was an old story in Los Angeles. Movie people often found themselves a fan they could do without. Cecil B. DeMille had a guy who even jumped into his dining room once and ruined the cream of turnip soup. The cops locked the guy up, but he escaped and came back to DeMille from time to time like a truly irate critic.

Lugosi’s topper had been a hat box delivered to his home one morning. Inside the hat box was a cute little bat with a tiny stake through its heart.

Lugosi had shrugged this off as a sick prank. He’d pulled enough of them himself and had had them pulled on him. But Lugosi had told the tale to a fellow Hungarian over a few drinks, and the Hungarian, who was an extra at Universal, mentioned it to Boris Karloff.