by Basil Copper
‘You’re frank at any rate. It’s all too real for my taste. Will you take the case?’
‘Let’s level, Miss Freeman,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do yet. You might not like my rates for one thing.’
She crinkled up her nose like I’d said something ill-bred. It probably was ill-bred come to think of it.
‘What are your rates, Mr Faraday?’
I told her. She laughed outright then. ‘I spend that much a day on telephone calls,’ she said. Now she was being ill-mannered.
‘We live in different worlds, Miss Freeman,’ I said.
She studied my face for a moment like my thoughts were stencilled on my forehead. That wouldn’t have helped her any with the Sunset Gardens business. I was still thinking about her legs. I put down the stub of my cigarette in the ashtray on my desk and lit another. I blew out the smoke at the ceiling.
‘My uncle was somewhat eccentric, Mr Faraday,’ the girl went on. ‘Not only about the Sunset Gardens but in the way he disposed of his money. Mr Snagge’s told you about the refrigeration angle?’
‘It didn’t register,’ I said. ‘Suspended immortality isn’t my field.’
She looked me straight in the eye then and there was nothing soft or bothered about her gaze.
‘I want the Sunset Gardens investigated, Mr Faraday. In a discreet way, of course. I want a complete rundown on the operation and I don’t care what it costs.’
She opened her handbag and passed over an envelope to me. Something crackled inside it as she put it down on my blotter.
‘This is just a retainer. There’s plenty more where that came from. Let me know when you want it.’
I drew on my cigarette and prodded at the envelope with my finger. I spread out the contents on the blotter. The five C-notes sat and smiled up at me. It was nice work being in the P.I. business some days, I thought.
‘Just what do you want me to do for this?’ I asked the girl.
She snapped her handbag shut. ‘It’s a long story, Mr Faraday.’
I spread out my hands on the desk. ‘I’ve got all the time in the world, Miss Freeman.’
She shook her head. ‘Not today. I’d like you to come up to the house tomorrow night. Then we can go into details and I’ll have all the papers.’
‘Just as you say,’ I said. ‘In the meantime I’ll give you a receipt for this.’
I wrote her out a docket for the five hundred on one of my few clean pieces of headed notepaper. She handed me a card when I’d finished. It was her address; 1234 Poinsettia. No trouble in remembering that. It had her phone number too. I let the card lay.
‘Just have a look out at Sunset Gardens, Mr Faraday,’ the girl said. ‘I’m told you can smell a bad set-up a mile off.’
‘Someone’s been overpraising me,’ I said modestly. ‘But I know what you mean. Refrigeration an expensive business?’
‘These people asked twenty thousand dollars down,’ she said. ‘They charge about half that every year but it’s not that which is burning me.’
It had gotten very quiet in the office now. Even a fly walking on the ceiling would have seemed like an intrusion. I waited for her to go on. The smoke from my cigarette went up very evenly and spread out as it hit the ceiling.
‘I only found out recently that Uncle left the bulk of his estate to Dr Krug. He’s one of the men behind Eternity Inc. Uncle’s original will was in favour of me. It appears he changed it a few months before he died. The money now goes to the propagation of the ideas of Eternity Inc. and to the research connected with it.’
‘Would it be impertinent for me to ask how much is involved?’ I said.
‘It would,’ said Merna Freeman crisply, ‘but you can take it from me that you could start at ten figures and work up from there.’
I sat up at that. Miss Freeman gave me a wintry smile. No wonder she sounded bitter.
‘You’ve taken advice on the will?’ I said.
‘Naturally,’ she said. ‘It’s being contested, of course. Process may take years. Neutral advice says the will is almost sure to be proved genuine. Unless I can come up with some evidence.’
‘Like the will was a forgery; or that Uncle was out of his mind,’ I said.
Merna Freeman stared at me with suddenly bright eyes. ‘You’ve got a nasty mind, Mr Faraday,’ she said with what sounded like admiration. ‘But not to mince matters, yes. I was not only my uncle’s closest living relative but his favourite. I kept house and acted as a sort of secretary for him for several years before he died. Only a few months before he got this Sunset Gardens idea he told me his will was in my favour.’
She was silent for a moment. I killed my second cigarette in the tray. I frowned at the blotter. The silence was so heavy it felt like a physical weight in the room.
‘How old was your uncle, Miss Freeman?’ I asked.
‘Around seventy-five,’ she said. ‘Why?’
‘Just thinking,’ I said. ‘You got his death certificate? Somewhere safe I mean.’
She looked at me with pink cheeks. ‘You’re not suggesting … ’
‘Anything,’ I finished for her gently. ‘Just thinking out loud. We could get a warrant to search Sunset Gardens if necessary.’
She nodded slowly. ‘You’ve given me a lot to consider, Mr Faraday. I’m glad I came. I think I got the right shop.’
She stood up and I got up with her. We went over to the door.
‘I’ll take a look out at Sunset Gardens,’ I promised her. ‘I’ll let you know what I think tomorrow night. Around nine suit you?’
‘Fine,’ she said. We were standing very close together by the waiting room door. ‘I think this will work out very satisfactorily. We’ve got a lot in common.’
‘Like a billion dollars worth of business?’ I suggested.
She gave a tinkling laugh. We were like that and my mouth was almost on hers when I saw Stella standing by the outer door. We hadn’t heard her come in because we were otherwise engaged. Stella’s cough sounded wryly sarcastic. We came unglued in a hurry.
‘This is Miss Freeman,’ I said to break the awkward silence. ‘We’ve got some business together.’
‘So I see,’ said Stella dryly. I’d walked right into that one.
There was a glint in Stella’s eye as she shook hands with Merna Freeman. The Freeman girl was completely self-possessed.
‘Until tomorrow night, then,’ she said, turning to me.
‘Surely,’ I said.
When I came back from seeing her out I could hear Stella’s disapproval in the way she grated the coffee beans round the bottom of the cups with the spoon. I grinned and sat down at my desk.
‘A bit young for you, isn’t she?’ Stella said, coming up behind me with a plate of biscuits. She put them down on the desk.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said airily. ‘I think we’re pretty evenly matched.’
‘A man of your age,’ she said in a muffled voice from behind the screen as she poured boiling milk into the cups.
‘What’s wrong with my age?’ I told the filing cabinet.
‘Nothing,’ said Stella, reappearing at my elbow with the brimming cups. ‘So long as you’re with the right woman.’
‘The Freeman girl’s about the same age as you,’ I said. ‘So that makes the same gap as between me and you.’
‘That’s different,’ said Stella and her eyes were smiling.
‘Wipe the powder off your coat, drink the coffee and tell me all about it.’
Chapter Three - Sunset Trip
The wind blew cold and steady as I drove across town. It seemed to cut right through the windscreen of my old powder-blue Buick. I kept telling myself I’d trade her in but I never had the heart to do it. A convertible is all right in summer but winter driving is another thing. And March can be winter in California sometimes, especially on the coast.
I skirted the freeway intersection and found the boulevard I was looking for. A sandy-haired Irish cop blew his whistle feroc
iously at the crossing. A woman with a couple of pounds of green salad on the top of her hat screeched to a halt in a maroon coupe. She looked sheepish and started to back up over the line. The cop glared at her and then his eyes met mine. He winked. I engaged my gear as the light changed.
‘Dames,’ the cop grunted out of the corner of his mouth as I went by. I pulled the Buick up in front of a long, low, white-stucco building that covered about two blocks. The windows were full of white porcelain sanitary ware and photostat drawings of plumbing installations. A red neon signed winked out; ALLOWAY. Refrigeration Engineers. Heating. Plumbing. I’d chosen them, firstly, because they were the biggest of their kind in L.A.; secondly, because the owner was a friend of mine.
I went in through an open, close-boarded gate beside one of the blocks and across an asphalted yard still wet with rain. Two blue-denimed mechanics stood in grave consultation over the bonnet hood of a truck at one side; the noise of a suction pump came from one of the buildings fringing the yard. I walked in through a frosted-glass door which had Administration and Accounts stencilled on it. The clatter of typewriters sounded from pinewood cubicles. A white-haired woman with square-framed spectacles sat in an old-fashioned swing-back chair behind a scratched old desk. Her face cracked up in what would have been a grimace in anyone else; in her I recognised it as a smile of welcome.
‘Nice to see you, Mr Faraday,’ she said. ‘It’s been a long time.’
‘Sure, Maggie,’ I said. ‘Stan in?’
She jerked her finger over at the glass door at the back of the office. ‘Go right in,’ she said. ‘He’s alone.’
Stan Alloway was a broad, rugged-looking individual with a brown moustache tinged white by time. His greying hair, cut en brosse, made him look like a Prussian general from World War One, but his blue eyes and his frank smile redeemed the rest. His welcome was genuine though we hadn’t met for five years. He waved me into a black leather Swedish chair with tubular steel legs that was in marked contrast to the fittings of the outer office. He grinned like he could read my thoughts.
‘You know Maggie,’ he said defensively. ‘So far as she’s concerned nothing’s moved in the world since Coolidge ended his term. She likes the old things around her and I haven’t the heart to alter her office all the while she wants the job.’
‘Sure,’ I said. His own office was all pale golden timber, from the desks and drawing boards to the walls. Everything had a rinsed-out blond look, reinforced by the soft light from the shaded draughtsmen’s lamps.
Alloway sat down at his desk opposite me and frowned. He pushed a box of cigarettes over in silence. I lit one and gazed out across the yard. There were three men standing round the bonnet of the truck now.
‘This wasn’t just a social visit, Mike,’ said Alloway.
I leaned back in the chair and looked at a drawing of a waist level toilet unit that was pinned up on the wall over his head. It looked like something out of the art gallery Stella had taken me to visit the week before.
‘Just a little information, Stan,’ I said. ‘That is, if you’re the party I’m looking for.’
‘If it’s some trouble,’ he began, in the same defensive voice.
“Nothing like that,’ I told him. ‘But seeing you run the biggest outfit of its kind in L.A., it seemed logical to start here.’
He relaxed then and chose one of his own cigarettes out of the box. He lit it with a methane-gas lighter he took out of his waistcoat pocket. His hand seemed pretty steady. He studied the pin-point of light like it fascinated him and then snapped the lighter shut. He put it back in his pocket.
‘I’m listening,’ he said.
‘What do you know about the deep-freeze business?’ I asked. ‘Not domestic. Corpses. And particularly a setup called Eternity Inc. who operate out of the Sunset Gardens’
I got the prize straight away. He looked at the end of his cigarette before replying, like he was afraid it was going to die on him.
‘This is between these four walls?’ he said at last.
‘You know my methods, Watson,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘Sure, Mike. But I got bills to pay and a business to run. You got a good reason for asking?’
I nodded. ‘Party needs a little research done on the financial background of these people.’
Alloway straightened himself in his chair and glanced out of the window. I saw there were now four mechanics clustered about the truck.
‘How much do you know about corpse refrigeration?’ he asked, turning his heavy-lidded eyes back to me.
‘Only what I read in the papers,’ I said. ‘Regard me as strictly junior grade.’
‘This is a pretty new field,’ he said. ‘There are about five set-ups in L.A. and a handful elsewhere in the States and that’s about the world market so far. We don’t know about Russia.’
‘Leave Russia out,’ I advised him. ‘Concentrate on the home market. Particularly Eternity Inc.’
He got up and went to a filing cabinet at the side of the room. He got out a fat sheaf of papers sandwiched in a scarlet folder. He sat down at the desk again with a grunt and started leafing through the paper.
‘These people have been operating about a year now. They approached me some while back and contracted me to supply the first bank of freezing units. Dr Krug is the Medical Director of the Foundation and a number of L.A. business people are on the notepaper. I dealt mainly with the doctor and his assistants. I put in the first four units, which had a capacity of two hundred bodies. This was the pilot scheme, you understand.’
He paused a moment and looked at the end of his cigarette again. ‘This is an expensive operation,’ he said. ‘Mainly because of the technical control, which means complex, reliable equipment and secondly because of the low temperatures necessary. I don’t know a tremendous lot about whether corpses can be resuscitated after a hundred years, which is what this scheme’s all about. That’s a medical problem and way beyond my depth. But Dr Krug thinks it’s feasible and who am I to argue when he hands me such a big contract?’
I shrugged and waited for him to go on. The pump across the yard had ceased now and a couple of lorries gunned their way out past the office window.
‘Did you figure all this, Stan?’ I asked. ‘Or did Eternity Inc.?’
Alloway laughed. ‘Jesus, no,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got that sort of brain. Dr Krug provided all the data. He’d already worked out the pilot scheme and research had taken several years. I was given the specifications, told what materials to use and asked to prepare estimates based on what they’d told me.’
He shuffled the papers again. ‘For instance, Krug wanted the storage containers to be kept at a temperature of minus 200 degrees Centigrade. And the containers themselves had to be in stainless steel, sliding in racks. That alone comes high. There’s been a lot of men’s club jokes around L.A. about ice tombs and freezer cemeteries, but the operation is a serious one so far as Eternity Inc. is concerned and it means big money for the operators.’
‘What did they pay you, Stan, for this pilot scheme?’ I asked. ‘That is, if you can forgive such a crude question among friends.’
For the first time I thought a shadow passed over
Alloway’s face. He shifted in his chair. ‘Fair enough, Mike,’ he said, ‘and I know it’ll go no further than this room. It’s worth a multi-thousand dollar contract to me.’
I blew out my breath. It made a loud puff in the silence.
‘If this was the cost of the first units then you must be in for a pretty fat bankroll, Stan,’ I said. ‘I hear they propose storing thousands of bodies up there.’
Alloway shot me a cryptic glance. ‘That’s the funny thing,’ he said. ‘Three thousand “patients” was the figure mentioned to me, but I only got the first contract.’
‘Meaning what?’ I said.
‘Krug talked of putting the contracts round the city. Fair way of doing it, he said. Our workmanship was satisfactory; no question of that. We’re to be called in
again at a later stage of development.’
‘All right, Stan,’ I said. ‘Let’s look at another aspect of this. What’s the technical process involved?’
Alloway drew on his cigarette. He looked with a tired eye at the smoke circling up to the pale blond ceiling.
‘Krug says it’s a perfect system of preserving the human body against deterioration after clinical death. He calls it cryogenic interment. Simply, the bodies in the stainless steel capsules have liquid nitrogen pumped all around them to keep them at minus 200. Providing the plant operates satisfactorily, they can be kept indefinitely. Fifty, sixty, a hundred years. Then, when medical knowledge has increased and a way is found to cure the disease from which they died, they can be restored to life. This is only what Krug says, of course. And I gather many doctors are sceptical.’
‘And Eternity Inc. make their money by renting out ice-chests to the tenants,’ I said softly. ‘Very nice, as I’ve already remarked once today. Freeze now, live later.’
Alloway smiled wanly. ‘It may be a joke to you but a lot of people are taking it seriously.’
‘And investing money in it,’ I said. ‘Thanks, Stan. You’ve told me about all I wanted to know.’
I glanced out of the window again. There were five men and a jack unit around the front of the truck. I looked back at Alloway as I got up to go.
‘You might keep me posted, Mike,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a lot of money locked up in this.’
‘Meaning what?’ I asked as we shook hands.
‘Meaning that I haven’t been paid for the work yet,’ he said. ‘Krug says the capitalisation’s been so terrific that the contractors’ accounts are being settled as the money comes in.’
I stared at him for a long second. ‘I’ll do that, Stan,’ I said at last.
I left him there gazing unseeingly out through the window. There were six men standing around the truck by this time. I was just through the counter flap when I heard him slam the window back and start bawling across the yard. I gave Maggie my best smile and went on out.
*
Sunset Gardens was quite a lay-out. I drew the Buick up in front of the pink granite balustrades and took in the scenery. There seemed to be acres of the place behind the tall railings which spread off into the distance. Even the lawns looked pretty good considering the time of year. They stretched on under the poplar and cypress with which the pink gravel drives were lined. The big iron gates were open. An attendant in a black, belted uniform with a peaked cap loitered in the doorway of a cubbyhole set in the side of one of the fat granite pillars. He waved the car through without stopping it.
