1927:

Katie Belle had a head of flaming red curls, with a thirst and a temper to match. She took a good slug of the fine bootleg whiskey, the real thing from Ireland, set down her glass with a thunk that shook the round table and glared at the man across from her. On the stage five blonds in top hats, spangly coats and fishnet stockings shook their tails to the music of the band.

“Now, what might you want things like that for?” she demanded, light flashing from the gold crucifix on her shining bosom. She was far too smart to add a disclaimer like, “And mind, I aint sayin’ I got em.” She just waited for the man on the other side of the table to declare himself.

The tall, slender young man regarded her lazily through his monocle while his other eye looked at nothing. His long face was a study in sober dignity with its black mustache and regal top hat. “Surely, zet need not concern you, hmmm?” He opened a sliver case, removed a cigarette, lit it with a gold lighter and inhaled without emotion.

Katie Belle waited. But though she had the will to out-stare a man, she had not the patience. “Fine, fine,” she snapped. “Then let’s talk price, shall we? I’d say a cool three grand, wouldn’t you?” She flashed her eyes at him, daring him to protest her high price.

But he nodded soberly and said, “Agreed” with such calm that she realized she could have named a much higher price. “I am sure you have zeh items where you can easily lay a hand on zem, have you not?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Yes, I do. You just wait right here, now.”

But he rose when she did. “Surely a transaction like this should take place in more private and intimate settings?”

If she stood glaring at him, people would start to notice. So she nodded, and led him to one of the side doors while people continued to watch the show, and down the carpeted hall, knocked on the door of a private office and walked in.

Behind the desk, smoking a Cuban cigar, was a scarred black man in a cream-white suit and fedora. He pushed a pair of wire-rim spectacles down his nose and looked over them. “Katie Belle, what you be wantin’, now?”

“Now I’m right sorry to be intrudin’ Mr. Fenster, but this gentleman has some business to conduct with me involvin’ enough money that I naturally thought of you.” She spoke with familiar, affectionate flippancy, but her eyes watched carefully for an explosion.

But Mr. Fenster was all charm. “Sweet girl, aint nothin’ to apologize for where money is concerned.” He turned his bland face on the young German who for the first time looked uncomfortable.

“It is merely the matter of a collection of items I wish to purchase.”

“For five thousand dollars, I believe you said?” Katie Belle’s eyes could look alluringly innocent when she wanted them to.

The German took it without blinking. “If that was the price, then I must have agreed to it, must I not?”

“Well dear, you can pay me right here where Mr. Fenster can see, and then I’ll go get your … items.”

Mr. Fenster took the cigar from his mouth, blew a ring of smoke, and watched the tall man. He understood completely that Katie Belle had blown up the price by at least 40%, enough for him to take a cut in exchange for the security he now provided while she still got her full price. A black man didn’t get to own a nightclub in the 1920s by being stupid. But he also was honorable with the women who danced for him. Paul Fenster, though he had a temper to match Katie Belle’s, was a man a girl could trust.

The young German, coolly and with what might be regarded as overabundant trust, took another silver case from his coat pocket and counted out five crisp bills with Alexander Hamilton’s picture and the words “One Thousand Dollars in Gold Coin.” He laid them on the desk and replaced the silver case. Fenster studied his face, then pushed three of the black bills with the orange numbers across to her and said, “Miss Katie, I believe you can go fetch this gentleman the items he bought from you.”

Katie Belle felt a chill run down her spine, as if she was in deep water over her head. But she had done the best she could. “Wait here,” she said.

She left Fenster’s office, climbed a set of stairs carpeted in red and gold and walked along a narrow hall where the music from the main room came muffled and dead. The third door on the left was the room which was hers to use. Ordinarily a girl would be crazy to keep valuables in a room where strange men came regularly but honestly, they were as safe here as in her little room ten blocks away across from the Rialto, where The Jazz Singer was thrilling audiences with Al Jolson actually talking.

She had the strangest belief that the items here kept her a mite safer from things a girl could catch than she’d otherwise be.

Katie Belle had not seen the new talking picture but her spine still thrilled with the memory of a movie she’d seen five years ago in Berlin while on her Grand Tour of a Europe healing from the ravages of war. It had been terrifying.

Not sure why her fiery heart was pounding now, she closed the door with a quiet snickt, turned the key on her maroon-shaded bedside lamp – and nearly screamed at a tall, angular shadow in the corner. With feathering terror tickling up her spine, she knew, knew, what stood there.

It was the vampire from that film she could not forget.

Frightened as she was, it was not in Katie Belle’s fierce heart to run. This woman, who would organize suffrage movements and take on City Hall more than once in the years to come, lifted with her right hand the golden cross about her neck.

The vampire came forward from its quiet corner, moving silently like a strange spider. Its fingers were slender and pointed, its head gleamed like a polished marble tomb, its ears were sharp as a bat’s, its face hungry and evil.

Katie Belle Malachite was not a praying woman but she swept the crucifix from around her neck, believing with all her dreamer’s heart that it would protect her. She held the precious thing out and with a flamboyant cringe, the vampire raised its hands to its face, just like in the movie.

She felt behind her. Her sweating hand grasped the doorknob.

The door burst open, nearly knocking her forward into the arms of the monster.

She did not scream, but a cuss word escaped her lips as she recovered her balance, expecting needle claws to thread their way along her skin.

But the vampire was gone. The ceiling light flashed on. Mr. Fenster and the stranger stood in the doorway, Fenster’s hand on the light button. Fenster’s cool gaze swept the room, empty except for the ornate bed and the dresser, then he said to the stranger, “Look like you paid me fi’ hundred dollars extra for nothing, son.”

But the young German saw the crucifix in Katie Belle’s hand and answered her questioning look with a small nod.

“Mr. Fenster,” she said breathlessly, “if this gentleman has paid such an amount just to be allowed in my room, I will accommodate him.”

He looked at her, then nodded sharply. “You need anything, you give a holler, hear?” And he left them alone.

Katie Belle found her heart pounding in a different way. She waited until Fenster’s heavy shoes clumped down the stairs. Then she faced the German man, who stood politely, left eye still looking off at nothing.

“You know what I saw?” she asked sharply, realizing in that instant that his eye was glass. She fingered the gold cross which would eventually pass down to her great grandson Jesse.

“I have quite a good idea,” Herr Dietrich Casselberger, who would one day wear an eyepatch, answered calmly.