Countess Dracula by Guy Adams Page B

what he was doing and he was paying, so let him play it however he wanted to.
    ‘I’ll have the steak and eggs,’ Henry told the waitress. ‘Keep cooking the steak until the chef cries.’
    ‘Philistine,’ said Fabio, before ordering eggs benedict with blueberry pancakes to follow.
    ‘Two breakfasts?’ Henry asked with a smile.
    ‘Pancakes are dessert – why shouldn’t breakfast come with dessert? Every other damn meal does.’
    He got up and walked over to a newspaper stand next to the food counter, grabbed a copy of the daily
Variety
and brought it back to the table. ‘Am I going to find you in this?’ he asked, ‘I damn well hope so … “Bright young thing lights up—”’
    He stopped speaking, a rare event in itself, struck by the front page.
    Henry glanced over. ‘That’s Elizabeth, the girl I was with last night.’
    Fabio couldn’t tear his eyes away from the picture. ‘But it can’t be …’ he muttered.
    The waitress arrived with their coffee and had to work around what appeared to be a statue of a fat man holding a newspaper. Fabio gave no indication that he even saw her.
    ‘You know her?’ Henry asked eventually, feeling someone had to get the conversation moving again.
    ‘Know her?’ Fabio finally put the paper down, though he still didn’t take his eyes off the photo. ‘She’s another one of my clients.’
    ‘Is that incest?’ Henry joked.
    Fabio looked at him. ‘You shitting me?’ he asked. ‘You actually slept with her?’
    ‘Well …’ Henry suddenly realised that maybe he had spoken out of turn. He tried to think of a way he could retract what he had already said. There was little point in doing so.
    ‘Oh Jesus …’ sighed Fabio, ‘you slept with Elizabeth.’
    ‘She did say she was married,’ Henry admitted, ‘but that it was a business thing …’
    ‘Then maybe both of you need lessons in how to keep your goddamn mouths shut. What am I working my ass off for here if everyone’s going to run around contradicting my careful work?’
    ‘Sorry …’
    ‘Don’t apologise, I’m just amazed you got out with your dick still attached. I mean, Elizabeth … she’s a piece of work.’
    Henry assumed Fabio was paying Elizabeth a compliment and smiled. ‘She certainly is – the most beautiful woman in the room and she knew it.’
    ‘The most …’ Fabio pulled the paper closer and scrutinised the grainy black and white picture intently. ‘How old would you say Elizabeth is?’
    Henry shrugged. ‘Older than she looks, I guess. I know she’s been in the business a little while. Maybe twenty-five?’
    Fabio stared at him for a moment, then returned to the picture in the newspaper. He didn’t think Henry was bullshitting him: he wasn’t the sort of kid who would lie about that sort of thing. He called a spade a damned spade.
    Fabio put the newspaper down. ‘We need to wrap this up quick. I think I should pay Elizabeth a visit.’
    ‘Have I done something wrong?’
    ‘Probably not. Or if you have it’s nothing that countless other guys in this town haven’t done over the years.’
    Henry took that to be a general point rather than a reference to Elizabeth in particular, thereby misunderstanding Fabio completely. Which was probably for the best: while the young man didn’t know Elizabeth well he was old-fashioned enough to the point where he would have tried to defend her honour, whether she actually possessed any or not.
    The waitress arrived with their breakfast. Fabio’s sense of urgency wasn’t strong enough to stop him eating it.
    Filled with carbohydrates and caffeine, Fabio had his driver take him to Elizabeth and Nayland’s house. As if his mood wasn’t unsettled enough already he met the police in the driveway.
    ‘What the hell are they doing here?’ he asked nobody in particular. ‘Jesus … are these two trying to give me a heart attack?’
    The fact that he was doing a good enough job of that on his own escaped him, naturally, and he lit a