Scratch on the Dark (A Mike Faraday Mystery Book 4)

by Copper, Basil

  He finished off his drink and thought for a moment. ‘You know Uccelli’s?’

  He named a cheap eating house over on the far side of town. It was a crummy sort of place and neither of us were likely to be recognized by anyone who knew us over there.

  ‘Why not here?’ I asked.

  He screwed up his face and another long driblet ran down from his chin. This time he did remember to wipe it off with the back of his hand. He made a vulgar and very expressive noise with his mouth.

  ‘Just as you say,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow at Uccelli’s.’

  We arranged to meet at around six p.m. I stopped near the hall as I got up to go. I could see through into the far room. There was a long curtain of some dark material down to the floor. But not quite. The curtains ended about six inches off the parquet. A woman’s bare legs were visible under the edge of the curtain. They wore stilt-heel shoes covered with diamond patterns of red, blue and jade green.

  ‘Tell your Auntie she’ll catch cold standing there,’ I said and went on out.

  I got outside the apartment and went down the steps. I walked over to the Buick and unlocked the driving door. It was only when I was halfway into the car that I saw there was someone sitting in the passenger seat.

  8 - Starr

  ‘You forgot to lock the off-side door,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a point I’ll have to remember,’ I said. A match flared inside the car; yellow light glinted on yellow hair. She wore a dark blue scarf over her head; the ends were tucked into the high collar of a bright red leather driving coat with big leather buttons. She put two cigarettes into her mouth, lit them. She passed one over to me. I put it into my mouth and inhaled the smoke.

  ‘Carol Foster,’ she said. ‘Dr Crisp’s secretary. You were going to give me a ring, remember?’

  ‘I would have gotten around to it,’ I said.

  She smiled. It looked good on her. ‘I’m sure you would. Dr Crisp asked me to bring you these.’

  She passed an envelope over to me. I turned up the dash light and opened it. Inside were half a dozen prints of Zarah Fayne; they were more recent than the cabinet print Crisp had shown me before. Good sharp pictures that would be useful to show around.

  ‘The doctor thought they might be some help,’ Carol Foster said. ‘In tracing Miss Fayne, I mean.’

  ‘They will be,’ I said. I put the envelope in the inside pocket of my jacket. ‘You shouldn’t have bothered, Miss Foster. I could have called in the office for them.’

  ‘No trouble,’ she said. Her expression was difficult to read in the dim glow of the interior lights.

  ‘I suppose Dr Crisp wants a progress report?’ I asked.

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing like that, Mr Faraday. He’s a man who lets people take their own time. You are finding it difficult to make contact, I take it?’

  ‘You talk like a girl who knows her Zarah Fayne,’ I said.

  She turned towards me in her seat.

  ‘I’ve been Dr Crisp’s secretary for four years,’ she said. ‘And I do know Miss Fayne. She’s been off before. Sometimes on a month-long bender. Then Dr Crisp gets her dried out in a private clinic. I expect you think I shouldn’t be talking to you like this, about my employer’s wife?’

  ‘Talk away,’ I said. ‘From what I hear Zarah Fayne didn’t have any private life. She lived it all in the spotlight — or nearly all,’ I added, remembering my two hours with Hud Gibson.

  ‘I take it your sympathies are with Dr Crisp?’ I said.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ she said cautiously. ‘But there’s two sides to every question. I tried not to take sides. But some of her activities haven’t been very good for his practice.’

  ‘In other words the only place you can rely on finding her is in a film tin,’ I said.

  She laughed. ‘That’s about it.’

  I glanced around. The street was almost empty now; the crowds were thinning out in the delicatessens and grocery stores.

  ‘How come you knew where to find me?’ I said.

  ‘I took a chance and rang up Stella at home,’ she said. ‘She stretched a point and told me where you were.’

  ‘I shall have to talk to that young woman in the morning,’ I said.

  Carol Foster put her hand on my arm. ‘Please, Mr Faraday,’ she said. ‘I hope it hasn’t caused any trouble.’

  ‘No harm done, Miss Foster,’ I said. ‘But tell me what was really so urgent about tonight?’

  She smiled for the third time. ‘I just couldn’t wait to take you up on that dinner engagement.’

  ‘I can take a hint,’ I said. I looked back out of the rear window. There was a dark blue Dodge roadster parked just behind the Buick.

  ‘That your heap?’ I said. She nodded.

  ‘I’m not dressed for Ciro’s but I think I can run to something respectable,’ I said.

  She got into the Dodge and blipped her lights to show she was ready. She looked so nice in my rear mirror it made me a danger to other drivers all the way over to Jinty’s.

  *

  The place wasn’t so crowded as usual. We sat in a booth in a quiet corner of the big bar; Carol Foster drank a martini, I ordered a beer. In the light of the bar she looked even better than she had at Dr Crisp’s; the clinical atmosphere must have had something to do with it.

  ‘The doctor seems a bit worried lately,’ she said.

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  Her smile had a wary expression about it. ‘I’m not trying to pump you, if that’s what you think.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re not in Dr Crisp’s confidence?’ I said. ‘A girl with your talent and ability?’

  ‘Now you’re laughing at me,’ she said.

  ‘Never even crossed my mind,’ I said.

  She shifted her position on the bench cushion and looked out across the wide expanse of the bar.

  ‘Dr Crisp keeps the two halves of his life completely separate,’ she said. ‘But he can’t help talking about his domestic situation sometimes. He wouldn’t be real otherwise.’

  ‘Do we have to discuss Dr Crisp this evening?’ I said.

  She turned to look at me; she studied my face seriously for a moment.

  ‘Well, Mr Faraday, so you are human. What would you like to talk about?’

  ‘You first, Dr Crisp afterwards,’ I said.

  She selected a cigarette from a small silver case she took out of a crocodile-skin handbag. She lit the cigarettes in the same way as before and passed me one. She took a puff or two before she replied.

  ‘You seem bugged on Dr Crisp,’ she said. ‘If I had any feeling for him do you think I’d be out with you?’

  ‘You might,’ I said.

  She laughed. ‘Really, Mr Faraday. It must be the life you lead. Are you always this suspicious? I’ll bet your wife has a time of it.’

  ‘I’m not married,’ I said.

  ‘I knew that already,’ she said. ‘But it’s nice to hear it from your lips. Let’s call a truce. I’ll take a raincheck on the dinner if I may.’

  ‘Meaning what?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve got an invitation to a party tonight,’ she said. ‘Friends of Dr Crisp’s. It sounds like a real glossy affair. Film people, producers and so on.’

  ‘Well, it’s not my idea of an evening out,’ I said, ‘but seeing it’s you, why not. The drinks are free?’

  She studied me again for a long moment. ‘The drinks are free,’ she said softly.

  ‘Then what are we waiting for?’ I said.

  *

  The party was over on one of the hill locations near Brea Canyon. We parked my car around from Jinty’s and used her Dodge. She drove well. For a woman that is. You could hear the piano music and the voices coming from the house while we were still about four blocks away.

  Carol Foster drifted the car up the hill, round a set of fluted gateposts and up a drive lined with jacaranda trees. There were about forty or fifty cars parked on each side of the private road so we had quite a way to wal
k to the house.

  She handed her red leather driving coat and the scarf to a butler whose face was as impassive as a carved totem pole.

  ‘I didn’t know they still did them,’ I said.

  The butler raised his eyebrows. ‘They don’t,’ he said nastily. ‘They hired me out of Central Casting. Watch ‘A Gentleman’s Gentleman’ on Thursday night TV, Channel 9. That’s my show.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said politely. ‘If you’re this good then you’ll be a riot.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said gravely, moving away. Carol Foster was laughing to herself in the hall mirror.

  ‘Isn’t there anything for real in this town?’ I complained. ‘Does everyone have to be an actor?’

  ‘Even the phoneys aren’t what they seem,’ she said. She took me by the arm and steered me down the half-acre hall; the walls seemed to be lined with leather. Hand-tooled at that.

  ‘You’ll feel better when you’ve had a drink,’ she said.

  We fought our way through a packed press of people to a bar in a corner of a room as big as a baseball stadium; over on a rostrum a five-piece orchestra had just as big a struggle to make an impression. A dark girl with striking good looks had taken off her skirt and her heels were beating a tattoo on a coffee table; several middle-aged men in white tuxedos with wilting button-holes stood in a circle around her and clapped hands and threw in a few half-hearted olés for good measure.

  Men trying to look like big producers bandied about names like De Mille, Sam Goldwyn, William Wyler and L.B. Mayer, none of whom they’d ever met. I recognized a few people who added up to something; those who had created good movies and were on Christian name terms with Orson Welles, Monty Clift, Joe Losey and Antonioni; like always, they sipped the drinks in their hands, smiled noncommittally and said nothing. In other words it was the average Hollywood party. I only hoped they wouldn’t get to showing movies before the evening was out.

  Carol Foster reappeared at my elbow; she had two long drinks in her hands in which ice-cubes and lots of green salad fought for survival. I took one from her and tasted it. It wasn’t half bad.

  ‘Shouldn’t we say hullo to our hosts?’ the Foster girl asked.

  ‘You’re joking,’ I said. ‘How long you been in Hollywood?’

  She grinned. ‘I only thought it might be polite.’

  ‘They won’t miss us,’ I said. ‘Whoever they are.’

  A thin man in a red velvet smoking jacket with braided epaulettes came weaving through the crowd; his hair was so thickly brilliantined you could have seen to comb your own hair in it. He had long sideboards that seemed to stretch nearly to his knees. He was smoking something that smelt like hashish from a yellow cigarette holder about two feet long.

  ‘Hullo, darling,’ he said as he minced by. I couldn’t figure whether he was talking to Carol Foster or to me. It was that sort of party. I took another swig of my drink and walked Carol Foster over to a corner that wasn’t too cluttered with bodies; the noise of the band went on, squeezed between the bursts of laughter.

  ‘The funny thing was she was a virgin!’ said an old party in a red dinner jacket with a black cummerbund. He had blue rinsed hair and his teeth looked too beautiful to be his own. It must have been a pretty good joke. The reaction from his audience, men and women both, nearly blew the side of the room out.

  ‘Some fun,’ said Carol Foster drily.

  ‘You wanted to come,’ I said. She didn’t answer. She tucked into her drink and kept her eyes open like she was on the lookout for someone.

  ‘Expecting company?’ I said.

  She shook her head. ‘Just interested in people.’

  ‘These aren’t people,’ I said. ‘Hollywood extras.’

  She smiled over the rim of her glass. ‘You really are the most cynical man, Mr Faraday.’

  ‘It goes with the job,’ I said.

  Just then we got separated by a short burst of revellers and when we met up again, we were farther across the room; there was a large alcove here, with a connecting arch. I thought I saw one or two familiar figures in the corner. I was certain De Lancia was there. I took Carol Foster by the arm to pilot her in the opposite direction. I didn’t want to get bogged down in another post mortem on Butt Malloy.

  But I stopped where I was. A man with a tough face and unwinking grey eyes had eased round a group in front of us. He looked the same as when I’d seen him on the two previous occasions except that he wore a midnight blue evening suit instead of the houndstooth jacket. I must say it suited him. We stood staring at one another, a lot of unspoken thoughts crossing and recrossing the space between us.

  Someone cannoned into me. I turned around. The unhandsome, flushed Roman-style face of Manny Freeman pushed up too close against mine. He looked and smelt pretty high.

  ‘’Lo Faraday. Some party, eh?’

  He focussed his eyes on me and Carol Foster and then on to the blond muscle boy.

  ‘This here’s Starr,’ he said. ‘Mike Faraday.’

  Starr nodded slowly. ‘Hullo, baby,’ he said in that withered voice.

  Manny Freeman reached out for another highball from a tray on top of a maple-cased piano; the top of the piano already had several hundred dollars worth of damage from cigarette burns and rings from the glasses.

  ‘Starr’s a great character around town,’ he said.

  The blond man must have read the thought in my eyes.

  ‘I’m in the disposal business,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll bet,’ I said.

  Starr drained his glass and put it down on top of the piano. His dead eyes looked unwaveringly at me. They seemed to be ranged on somewhere in the crowd over my shoulder.

  ‘Never had a complaint yet,’ he said stonily.

  I found Carol Foster at my side. ‘What a scrum,’ she said. ‘I’ve had enough if you’re ready to go.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Whenever you want.’

  When I looked up again Starr was pushing his way out; he wasn’t particular how he used his shoulders and there was a chorus of complaints marking his passage. Manny Freeman was humming a tune to himself, one fat forefinger keeping time. He looked like Nero in one of his more drunken moments.

  ‘You seem pretty cheerful for a man who just lost his second client,’ I said.

  He smiled to himself, eyes closed. ‘Plenty more where they came from,’ he said. ‘Esterbrook made lots of serials. And I still draw my ten per cent on the re-runs.’

  ‘You’re too sentimental for this business, Manny,’ I said. I left him there and went on out. We picked up our coats from the Great Stone Face in butler’s costume.

  ‘Don’t forget, Thursday night TV, Channel 9,’ he said as we went out.

  ‘I’ll write it down,’ I promised him. I looked at my watch as we went down the steps and was surprised to see we’d been inside two hours. A black Caddy gunned out as we got up to Carol Foster’s Dodge. It was the only time that evening I was sorry I had Carol Foster with me. I felt I’d be seeing Starr again anyway. He had the hard eyes of a professional; most likely an out of town character brought in specially. He had the look.

  Carol was quiet as she drove back over to Jinty’s. We sat in the car smoking for a few minutes.

  ‘Tell Dr Crisp I’m on the ball,’ I said.

  She nodded. She stubbed out her cigarette in the car ash tray. Then she leaned over and kissed me lightly on the lips. I felt it all the way down to my shoelaces.

  ‘Thanks, Mike,’ she said.

  ‘For what?’ I said.

  ‘That’s my business,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget that dinner.’

  ‘I’ll ring you,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to call in to see Crisp anyway.’

  I got back into the Buick and started the motor; Carol Foster blipped the lights of the Dodge a couple of times, edged carefully round my car and drove off fast towards the city. I warmed the motor for a moment longer, finished my cigarette and drove home to Park West. I put the Buick in the car port, brewed myself a cup of co
ffee in the kitchen and got ready for bed. The kitchen clock said a little after twelve-thirty when the phone rang. It was a woman’s voice, soft and low.

  ‘Mr Faraday? I’ve been trying to reach you earlier. I’d like you to come over.’

  ‘Who is that speaking?’ I said.

  ‘Zarah Fayne,’ she said. ‘I hear you’ve been looking for me.’

  9 - Gun Stuff

  The hotel was a small, cheap outfit off the main stem. An odd place for Zarah Fayne to be holing out, but a good one if she wanted to keep clear of her friends. Though she wouldn’t exactly be inconspicuous. She’d told me Room 27 on the phone; the night clerk obviously thought I was on the make and I had to slip him something to ease his quickly-aroused conscience. I went down the dim-lit corridor on the second floor, stepping noiselessly on the thick matting which stretched across its length. The door opened cautiously on a chain at my second knock; an attractive pair of feminine eyes studied me attentively.

  ‘Faraday,’ I said.

  ‘Have you any identification?’ she said. She kept the door on the chain, though the thing was so flimsy I could have booted it in without any effort. I got out the photostat of my licence in the plastic holder and held it up in front of the crack in the door. ‘Pass it in,’ she said. She studied the licence for a moment, obviously comparing me with the photograph for likeness. Then she unchained the door and opened it just wide enough for me to come in. She handed me the wallet as I passed and then locked the door quickly behind me.

  ‘I have to be careful, Mr Faraday,’ she said.

  She was younger-looking than I thought. The room was dimly lit, with just one shaded lamp throwing a half circle of light on the shabby wallpaper near the bed. The rest of the place was in shadow. I noticed there was a communicating door beyond the bed. Zarah Fayne went and sat in a deep chair near the bed; she was in silhouette and I couldn’t see her face very well but she could see me all right in the light of the lamp. She wore a white linen suit and had a scarlet scarf round her neck, tucked into the vee of the suit lapels. Like the housekeeper Jasmine had said, she looked great in it.

  ‘I had a hard time finding you, Mrs Crisp,’ I said.