Die Now, Live Later (A Mike Faraday Mystery Book 5)

by Basil Copper

  I’d dropped over at my rented place on Park West. I’d gotten on a sober suit with a conservative tie and the dark glasses masked my face. I looked like a man who might break out into mourning at any moment. All the way up Brea Canyon the tasteful marble markers had pointed the way to Sunset Gardens. I was afraid the place might be an anti-climax. I wasn’t disappointed.

  The drive snaked around a few times, between the lawns and fringing vegetation. Signs warned; Drive Slowly. 15 m.p.h. I came out in front of a bronze marker which said: RECEPTION AREA. I took my foot off the pedal and rolled slowly to a stop at the foot of a bank topped with an evergreen hedge. I sat and finished my cigarette. The wind moved the clouds along at a fast lick and whipped the tops of the trees.

  They soughed to themselves. Far off came the cry of a solitary bird. I got out of the car and locked it. I went up a flight of steps, following another arrow. The building was all white. It looked like the U.S. Pavilion at the World’s Fair. The year before last model. It sat there and sneered to itself under a low-browed portico. I wouldn’t have sent my worst enemy here.

  I went up more steps in front of a chrome and glass entrance lobby. A silver-painted aluminium ambulance stood at the bottom of the steps, just beneath a notice which said: Service Road. Staff Only. A puffy-faced elderly woman in black came down towards me. She looked like she’d been crying. She was supported round the shoulders by a silver-haired old gentleman wearing a snap-brim trilby and a white, belted raincoat.

  ‘There, there, mother,’ he said as we came abreast.

  He smiled at me sympathetically. Then went on down the steps. I kept on going towards the main door. The place was giving me the creeps and I wasn’t even inside yet.

  I went in under a heavy marble portico which had chiselled on it in gold letters; SUNSET GARDENS. Operated by Eternity Inc. for the Future of Humanity. A marble-paved hall reflected back soft light from concealed tubes in the oval ceiling. A tape-recorded organ played somewhere in the distance. Blue velvet drapes hid the windows. In front of me were a pair of bronze doors. The lintel bore the legend; HALL OF IMMORTALITY. A red velvet rope stretched the whole width of the lobby, barring off the doors.

  I turned to the left, over towards a reception desk which was built up on a rostrum which projected into the room. A few people were sitting in dejected attitudes on low velvet settees around the hall; the whole place reeked of incense. Warm draughts blew up concealed gratings as I crossed the floor. I figured the English writer-guy Evelyn Waugh would have felt at home here. A dark-haired girl in a tight-fitting black sweater and skirt to match looked up from the desk as I got to it. She had ‘Hostess’ in white piping across her left breast. She was all right. In any other setting, of course.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ she said, with just the right amount of sympathy in her voice. ‘You have, I presume, a loved one … ’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘An old uncle who’s on his last legs. He’s scared of dying so I thought I’d find out your rates.’

  A look of well-bred pain passed across the well-upholstered job’s face. Her voice was harder as she replied. ‘We should have to know a lot more details before we can make arrangements. Your name, please?’

  ‘Stint,’ I said. ‘Mordecai.’

  She started writing something on a piece of paper. She was frowning to herself all the time. A pale thin character with horn-rimmed spectacles hovered at the other end of the desk. He looked like the Chief Embalmer out of a B-horror movie. I looked at him so hard through my glasses that presently he went away. The dark-sweatered number was having trouble with my Christian name. She crossed it out a couple of times. I could almost hear her swearing under her well-bred breath.

  ‘You’ll have to fill in these forms, Mr Stint,’ she said frostily, pushing a lot of wastepaper across the desk towards me.

  ‘I hoped we could fix something up this afternoon,’ I said in what I hoped was a disappointed voice.

  She clicked her tongue. ‘There are a lot of formalities involved, Mr Stint. Legal consent and so on. And of course we have a long waiting list.’

  ‘Supposing my uncle can’t wait,’ I said.

  She flushed and then regained control of herself. ‘If his condition is critical then of course we could make emergency arrangements,’ she said icily. She pushed another form over.

  ‘Please fill this in now, being particularly careful to state the nature of the illness.’

  I looked at the form. It had about a dozen questions. It would have been easier to join the Russian secret service. I filled it up, giving a false address and phoney particulars. Against the entry, Nature of Illness, I put; Anno Domini. She drummed impatiently with her brittle fingernails on the desk while I went through this pantomime. She put the form on top of a pile of others without looking at it.

  ‘Now, Mr Stint, if you will write to us after reading the booklet I’m sure Eternity Inc. will be able to do something about your loved one.’

  ‘I wonder if I could have a word with someone in authority?’ I said. ‘The Managing Director, perhaps?’

  She looked at me as though I’d said a dirty word. ‘Eternity Inc. is administered by a trust,’ she said. ‘The Medical Director is Dr Krug. He isn’t here today but if you wrote to him, I’ve no doubt an appointment could be arranged.’

  ‘Many thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  I walked away from the desk and then came back. She was just picking up a little concealed phone from a cubby under the desk. She sure was a girl for unexpected flushes.

  ‘I suppose there’s no chance of having a look round the premises?’ I said in my best imitation of a confidential manner. ‘I’d just like to see the old man was well looked after.’

  I had been going to say ‘comfortable,’ but I thought perhaps that was going a little too far.

  ‘Certainly not,’ the dark job snapped. ‘Visiting Days are by appointment only and then not unless you have a loved one taken into care.’

  ‘Thanks again,’ I said. ‘You certainly give the customers a warm welcome.’

  I walked away quickly before she could come back. When I got outside I was able to give vent to my feelings. Then I straightened my face and went on down the steps. Two men in white coats were standing by the ambulance. They were manhandling a circular metal canister like an ice-cream container and perhaps twice as long as a laundry hamper. I knew what it was.

  I watched the two attendants for a moment and then went to my car. When I looked back they had put the capsule on a metal trolley with rubber wheels and were hefting it up a ramp at the side of the building. If the girl at the reception desk hadn’t aroused my suspicions the ambulance men had clinched it. I put the pile of waste paper the receptionist had given me on the passenger seat of the Buick and let in the gear.

  The attendants had been two obvious plug-uglies who looked like they could handle themselves in a rough-house. That alone wouldn’t have been enough but when the shorter one had bent over to pick up his end of the canister the tail of his white jacket had fallen back. Protruding from the hip pocket of his trousers was the serrated brown butt of an automatic.

  I turned the Buick through the gates of the Sunset Gardens, the gateman saluted, and I slotted back on to the main road. I was smiling as I drifted back towards town.

  Chapter Four- Account Closed

  Stella put the coffee cup on my desk and sat down opposite me. It was real coffee and warmth went percolating way down to the soles of my feet. I sat with the cup in front of me looking at nothing. The humming of the traffic on the boulevard was the only sound in the room.

  I picked up the cup and finished off the coffee. She got up without being asked and went over to the partitioned-off alcove and refilled the cup. She put it back on the blotter and fooled with my hair. She expertly intercepted my roving hand and re-seated herself with a smiling face.

  ‘What now?’ she said at last.

  ‘What now what?’ I said when my temperature had returned to norm
al.

  ‘Sunset Gardens,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve got three pages of notes there already,’ I told her.

  She snorted. ‘The real stuff. That’s for the files.’

  I put out my cigarette butt in the desk tray and tried to look professional.

  ‘I think Merna Freeman’s on to something. My bet is that Dr Krug has latched on to a nice fat racket somewhere behind the façade of Eternity Inc. But somehow I can’t see him getting his hooks on Uncle Jenson’s money. That girl had a glint of stubbornness in her eye.’

  ‘That wasn’t the way I read it,’ said Stella. A touch of frost had gotten back into her voice.

  ‘Anyway, I shall know more tonight,’ I said.

  ‘You want me to come along and take notes?’ she said.

  ‘You’re joking,’ I told her.

  She grinned and went back to her own desk. Presently I heard her typewriter start up again. I sat on and finished my coffee and felt that life might be worse.

  *

  I lived in a rented cottage over on Park West. It lay back behind a clipped lawn with a car-port at the side. I drove over there in the late dusk with the car radio playing and long streaks of crimson cloud painting the western sky. I fixed myself a Scotch on the rocks while I grilled a steak. When I had eaten the steak and washed it down with a cup of coffee, the light had entirely faded from the sky. The wind was gusting round the house. I went up and showered and changed my shirt.

  Then I checked over the cupboard where I kept my small armoury of weapons. I broke out my favourite Smith-Wesson but on second thoughts put it back and re-locked the cupboard. It wasn’t that sort of case — yet. I went downstairs again, locked up the house, turned the car around and headed downtown. It was already nearly half-eight and I was due at the Freeman girl’s place by nine.

  Neon painted the darkness scarlet, green and gold as I pulled in at Jinty’s. I went into the room with the long bar and ordered a long, cool drink to go with the room. The place was full, even for this time of the evening, but there was no-one I knew. I eyed the crowd for a few minutes, fenced optically with a striking number in a silver lame gown so low cut in front it was in serious danger of exposing a mole on her right thigh. We were at an interesting stage when a heavily-built character with shoulders as broad as a Pan-Am jetliner broke up the proceedings. I gave her one of my best smiles and went on out.

  It had just turned nine when I got to the old turnpike at the edge of town. I had an idea Poinsettia was the third boulevard down from the canyon. I wasn’t far wrong. It was a nice lay-out. Palms fringing the sidewalks, low-cut hedges, the obligatory swim pools, well-trimmed lawns with the houses discreetly back from the road. The house I wanted was up a winding drive which meandered between evergreens and box hedges. I tooled the car up the drive and towards the house. It was a rambling place on two storeys, with an underground, drive-in garage that could have accommodated a Greyhound Bus fleet. Right now there were the dark shapes of two cars out front. I killed my motor and sat there for a moment, taking in the night air.

  I got out the car and went up a flight of marble steps flanked by urns in the Grecian style. Lights winked on as I went up. They came from brass carriage lanterns set on either side of the porch, which splashed gold down the steps in front of me. I went in over a tessellated paving in green and red under a veranda that ran off alongside the house. I pushed the brass button set next the massive oak door and waited. The door was opened by a negro houseboy in a blue velvet coat with brass buttons.

  ‘My name’s Faraday,’ I said. ‘Miss Freeman’s expecting me.’ He looked at me unblinkingly. ‘Come right this way, sir,’ he said in a faultless Harvard accent. He shut the door behind me softly and led the way down a hall with a pale pink carpet that bore us effortlessly forward like we were floating on cotton wool. I didn’t have time to try my penknife on the picture frames but the gold leaf looked real enough.

  We went up a staircase. The houseboy knocked on a rosewood door, opened it, said something in a soft voice I didn’t catch, and melted back down the corridor. By this time I felt like second-class postal matter. I went on into a room that seemed to be floored in mink. There was a white grand piano up at one end, and very little else. A log fire burned in a marble fireplace.

  There was a black leather divan that was all of fifty feet long and a white poodle that started to give sharp, fierce yelps in my direction. He was all brag though. I stared back at him and he jumped down from the divan and ran behind the leg of a table. He stood and scowled at me from behind the leg.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Merna Freeman. ‘He won’t bite.’

  ‘I was real worried there for a minute,’ I said. ‘It looked like touch and go.’

  She smiled and held out her hand. She was wearing dark velvet ski-pants that looked like they’d been sewn on her and a white cashmere sweater that shot my morale full of holes as soon as I looked at it. She’d done something different to her hair. I couldn’t see what it was but it made her look as bright as the morning.

  ‘Come and sit by the fire,’ she said. ‘It’s a chilly night.’

  She went and sat back on the divan. The dog stood and growled from behind the table leg. After a bit he lost interest and started investigating the fur in back of his ears. I sat down on the divan about six feet away from Miss Freeman and studied her face. She sat looking into the fire and didn’t say anything.

  Then she got up rather abruptly. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Faraday. I’m a bad hostess. What would you like to drink?’

  ‘Scotch,’ I said. Tonight looked like being a bender.

  She went over to a long sideboard and busied herself with glasses. She came back and put a crystal goblet into my hand. Ice tinkled coolly in the depths of it.

  ‘Let’s go into the study,’ she said. ‘Uncle Jenson kept all his stuff in there when he was living in L.A. I’ve got everything out that might be relevant.’

  She walked me down the room. We went through a sliding door into an immense library. It must have contained at least ten thousand books. There was a big gallery round the top and book stacks on that. All the ground floor was filled with books too. I went over and picked one or two out. I’d never seen anything so incongruous. They were all paperbacks; thousands and thousands of them, all the colours of the rainbow. They had the most lurid titles; mostly cheap thrillers, romances or adventure stories, written by authors I’d never heard of.

  Merna Freeman laughed at the expression on my face.

  ‘Uncle wasn’t exactly noted for the quality of his mind,’ she said.

  ‘That’s an understatement,’ I said. ‘Not a Simenon among them.’

  She laughed again and motioned me over to the far end of the study. There, where the book galleries descended in two small spiral staircases, was the important part of the room. Standard lamps with parchment shades; an immense desk surfaced with tooled red leather. Glassed-in bookshelves with real books in them. They were sets, mostly in blue and brown leather. I went over to have a closer look. The bookcases were locked. The volumes were on tax and company law and real estate.

  I lowered myself on to an overstuffed armchair at the side of the desk and drank a hole in my Scotch. Merna Freeman sat down in a carved-back chair behind the desk; she looked lost in it. The shaded lamps caught the glints in the gold of her hair. They came and went in the lamplight as she sipped her drink. She placed the glass on the red leather top in front of her and put her slim pink hands together. The nails were varnished almost the same shade as the desk so that it seemed like the tips of her fingers had disappeared. There was a leather case on the desk and several cardboard folders.

  ‘That the stuff?’ I said.

  She nodded.

  ‘Guess we’d better get at it,’ I said.

  It was very quiet and peaceful here except for the faint ticking of a clock somewhere up on the gallery. The coloured covers of the books sat on the stacks and screamed at us. Merna Freeman took a bundle of papers out of the
briefcase and sifted through them. The noise sounded like the surf breaking on Malibu Beach it was so quiet.

  ‘Ever heard of Knoxtown, Mr Faraday?’ the girl said.

  ‘Little place about two hundred miles from here isn’t it?’ I said.

  ‘Uncle Jenson had a big spread up there,’ she said. She leaned forward over the red surface of the desk and her voice sounded far away. ‘It was a lovely spot. Uncle always had a story about how he got it at half its real value in a deal he made with W. R. Hearst, the newspaper millionaire. I never did get to hear the inside story, but I had my doubts. It didn’t sound like W.R. It was a beautiful place, though. We spent most of our time up there, except when Uncle was travelling and then we wintered down here on the coast.’

  I said nothing but shifted my gaze from her face and out over the bookstacks. There was a copy of The Bible sandwiched between The Abattoir Kill and The Case of the Bibulous Blonde. Later I found I’d misread the title. The top and lower halves were in small type and it really read; The Crime Aficionado’s Bible and Murder Mystery Companion. It worried me for a bit though.

  ‘I’d better have the address,’ I said. ‘I may want to run up.’

  She smiled again. ‘You should see it in high summer. It made up for Uncle’s unpleasantness as a person. I felt at home there.’

  ‘But your uncle really liked you?’ I said.

  She wrinkled up her face. It only made her look more beautiful if that were possible. She picked up her glass and swilled the amber liquid around in it.