The Dark Mirror (A Mike Faraday Mystery Book 1)

by Basil Copper

  Sherry Johnson lived over in the Bissell Building on Corona Avenue. In L.A. we called it Coronary Avenue on account of the rich old guys living there who sometimes dropped down dead from heart attacks. It was a pretty flash part of town and the commissionaire with the retired rear-admiral’s uniform and the fresh laundered white gloves stuffed through the braid of his epaulette gave me a supercilious sniff as my old Buick drifted in through the Parkway.

  He didn’t bother to come and open the door for me or even to direct me to the parking lot, so I drove on into the apron. He probably thought I was cracker-white. I parked next to a yellow Cadillac that looked like it had gold-plated door handles. It had Texas number plates, so I guess it had at that. I left the car in front of a long board fence; I went on into the lobby of the building. Admiral Dewey didn’t even give me another glance. A negro lift boy took me up about two hundred floors.

  Two-one-nine was down along a mile of grey-carpeted corridor flanked by lilac-coloured doors. I felt lost without a map and I was pretty well bushed by the time I got to the number I wanted. I blipped the buzzer and waited. The door opened and I stared. I don’t know what I’d expected but she was nice. She wore a suit of cornflower blue which seemed to go with her brown hair flecked with gold tints. Her eyes were grey and steady. She had dimples too, as she smiled, which she did right away, revealing regular white teeth.

  “My, but you’re tall,” she said.

  “That’s my press agent,” I said. “All done with built-up shoes.”

  She opened the door wide and I went on in. It was a nice room. The sky was quite dark now and through the long windows punched in one wall I could see stars like the reflection of the city lights below.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I said. “I’m Faraday.”

  “I hoped you would be,” she said. I let that one roll.

  “Would you like a drink?” she asked.

  There were a pair of small circular wall lights on one side of the room and they cast the apartment into dusky shadow. I went over and sat on the arm of a big leather chair and stared out over the city. A faint hum like bees on a summer day came up, mingled with the subtle whiff of flowers, hot concrete and gasoline fumes. It hadn’t exactly been my day but somehow I felt content.

  I didn’t move, neither did she switch on a light, but suddenly she was right beside me, one hand resting lightly on my shoulder as she passed me something long and cool in a long, cool glass.

  “Cheers,” she said, in the English way.

  The drink tasted of limes and old bourbon. We sat looking at the dusk and the neon signs and the smog.

  “Pretty, isn’t it?” she said. She sounded quite serious.

  “If you like that sort of thing,” I said. The drink tasted good and I could have sat there all night, but I had to go to work.

  I stood up to face her. She fidgeted and I couldn’t see her expression very well. The room had gotten quite dark by now and she went over and put on a big standard lamp which knocked all hell out of the shadows.

  “Come on, Miss Johnson,” I said. “I’ve had quite a day. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s rather difficult making a start.”

  “It usually is,” I said. “People mainly employ P.I.s because they find it even more difficult explaining to the police.”

  “It’s nothing like that,” she said.

  “It never is,” I said gently. I was used to awkward clients beating a roundabout way to the truth, but this girl had some quality which got me guessing. But it would be difficult to help without knowing what was burning a hole in her pants. Though of course I didn’t tell her that.

  “What sort of investigator are you?” she asked.

  “People usually send for me for their lousy jobs,” I said. “They want old scores settled, facts best left buried dug up, vicious truths verified. You name them, I get them. All the brutal, dirty, lowdown, tough, mucky jobs that no one else will tackle. I don’t come cheap but I do guarantee some sort of return.”

  Miss Johnson looked startled. “You sound rather bitter,” she said.

  “I didn’t mean to,” I replied, “but you asked what the score was. If you want level I carry a gun, rate fairly high marks for judo and can look out for myself in a roughhouse. But everything has to be square and above board. My L.A. licence was pretty hard to get and I’d like to hang on to it.”

  She nodded and got a cigarette out of a box on a long mahogany coffee table.

  “About what I thought,” she said. “I picked the right man.”

  “Now suppose we sit and get down to some serious conversation,” I said.

  A low laugh chased the shadows off her face. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I lost my brother about a year ago and I need help rather badly.”

  I studied my toecap assiduously. The old brother gag had been rather overworked this season.

  “Before we begin, Miss Johnson,” I said, “just why did you pick my name out of the Examiner like that? It was an awful small paragraph.”

  “Curiously enough,” she said, “it had nothing to do with you originally. What jumped out of the page at me was the name of Horvis. Horvis is a big name in Detroit.”

  I sat up. Neither of us said anything for a minute.

  “Why should you be interested in the death of Horvis?” I said. “I know his brother is a big shot in Detroit but that seems to me highly incidental.”

  “There is a connection, Mr. Faraday. Of that I’m convinced.”

  Sherry Johnson’s voice had drastically changed and I looked at her sharply. Her skin seemed to be tightly drawn around the eyes and she puffed nervously at her cigarette.

  “I had a brother who was a brilliant engineer,” she said. “Ralph was engaged first with General Motors in Detroit and then some while later he met Leslie Horvis. Leslie was in a much smaller way then and Ralph took over research in his design and production department and helped him build up his business; his future looked bright.”

  She stopped and looked fiercely out over the multi-coloured glare of the night sky.

  “Everything went well until about two years ago. It was only gradually that I began to learn Ralph was working on something and it was worth a lot of money.”

  Her brother’s invention was a fully automatic, electronically controlled set-up for car assembly lines that was one hundred percent foolproof. It needed only about half a dozen men to run and would have been worth millions.

  “Is it feasible?” I asked.

  “Miss Johnson looked at me straight. “Not only feasible,” she said. “Ralph had the problem licked. That’s why he was killed.”

  This time I really sat up. “Go on.”

  “There would be millions in it, of course,” she said. “Not only for the inventor but for the company or companies which controlled the line-up. And lots of people would be interested in its suppression. From rivals who might go to the wall to the thousands of motor workers made redundant.”

  “To say nothing of their union bosses,” I said.

  There was a silence again for a moment. A silence broken by, a long way off, the wail of an ambulance siren down in the city, under the neon and the stars. I sighed in the semi-gloom. It had been a long day and I was only at the beginning of the tangle.

  “You still haven’t told me about your brother,” I reminded her. She went over and looked out of the window.

  “He went out one night about a year ago,” she said. “I didn’t see him until about two days later. The police found him on an empty lot. He’d been shot and they never got the killer.”

  A trace of green still lingered in the evening sky. I’d gotten out my scratch pad to take some notes but it fell to the ground unnoticed.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be,” she said. “It seems a long time ago now and it doesn’t hurt any more.”

  Trying to make my voice sound casual, I asked, “How was your brother shot?”

  “I believ
e the gun was a .45,” she said. “It was a close-range job, the police told me. His clothes were scorched and they said a silencer must have been used because the autopsy established that he’d been shot right in broad daylight, just behind a row of houses.”

  I felt a tingling along my nerve ends and went to join her at the window. I didn’t know what the hell all this was about, why she had chosen me, whether the story she had just told me was phoney or real, but somehow the whole added up in a queer, crazy, distorted sort of way. The two Horvis brothers, the silenced gun, the three murders, two separated by nearly two thousand miles and a year in time. I’d once seen a film in which the camera was supposed to have seen the story through the eyes of a madman. I felt rather like that tonight.

  “What made you come out here?” I asked.

  “Don’t you see, it can’t be a coincidence,” she said, turning to face me. “The deaths had to be linked; that’s why I flew straight out.”

  “Why not leave all this to the police, Miss Johnson?” I asked. “That’s what they’re for. Anyway, why pick on me? I’m off the case — came way off when my client died.”

  “You needn’t be,” she said. “I have money.”

  “Here we go again,” I said. “All right. Consider me engaged, but you may not like what I come up with.”

  “That’s understood,” she said. I had an insane idea that I was seeing the same picture around for the fourth time when she went to a satinwood table and started writing out a cheque. I went over and angrily studied the sky and the bloodshot neons. Something wasn’t right — hadn’t been right for a long while, and I was riled because I seemed to be picking up all the wrong ends. I unfolded the piece of paper she handed me. The cheque was made out for four hundred dollars. My stock was going down. Nevertheless, nice eating money. “I’ll get you a receipt for this,” I said.

  I made arrangements to call her in a couple of days and got up to go. I finished my drink and went on over to the door.

  “If I were you I wouldn’t advertise your presence in L.A. or your business,” I said. “Going to be here long?”

  “As long as it takes,” she said.

  “Hope you won’t be disappointed,” I said.

  In the corridor the heat was stifling, but the coolness of later evening was beginning to come on. The key was still giving confidence to my finger tips as I gum-shoed back to the apartment door. I listened for a long ten seconds but there was no stir. No scratch of a telephone dial or other unusual noise; like for instance a door opening in the apartment and a concealed eavesdropper coming out.

  I shook my head. You have a nasty mind, Faraday, I told myself. All the same Miss Johnson, I’d like to believe you. I went on down in the lift. In the foyer I went in a booth and dialled. Admiral Dewey was bent double with unctuous humility, earning a tip from a visiting senator and his wife. He made Uriah Heep look like a straight-shooting, clean-cut All-American. I heard assorted static for what seemed like half an hour and then Dan Tucker’s boom. I told him all about my new client; his breath came out in a big poof when I mentioned Ralph Johnson.

  He was shot with a silenced .45, she thinks,” I said. ‘‘Should be easy to check.”

  “I got MacNamara’s report in front of me,” he said. “Horvis was shot with a silenced .45, the same gun that killed Braganza, ballistics say. That ain’t conclusive, of course. We’ll have to check with ballistics in Detroit, but things are beginning to move.”

  “Thanks, Dan,” I said. “In the meantime I’d appreciate it if you’d leave the girl to me. I’ll let you know if anything breaks.”

  “A deal,” he said. “But if the D.A. starts getting any hotter under the collar he may put the whole thing at a higher level, in which case I can’t help much.”

  I thanked him and hung up. I stared at the wall of the booth. Someone had scrawled a rude couplet on the front cover of the directory. I called Admiral Dewey over.

  “Disgraceful. We don’t expect this of the Bissell Building,” I told him, wagging a forefinger.

  His eyes popped. “Most unfortunate, sir. I’ll have it removed right away.”

  “Very wise,” I said. “Otherwise you might find yourself demoted to Post Captain.”

  I left him bawling out the hall porter and went on out. It was a beautiful night but I had no time to fool around with the skyline and the date palms. I went on over to the parking lot. The gold-plated Cadillac had gone but the Buick had plenty of company. The night was very quiet except for the chirping of crickets and I paused by the board fence before going on over to the car.

  Someone lit a cigarette in one of the parked autos, there was a breath close to my face and something tore out a long sliver of board from the fence about two feet from where I stood. I went down and hit the dirt, rolling over and reaching for the butt of the Smith-Wesson all in one movement, as the small plop of the report reached me.

  My nerves were screaming and I was calling myself bitterly all kinds of a fool, but I felt better as I eased back the safety catch. The click, small as it was, set something scuttering on the other side of the park. I saw a dark shape pass the rows of cars. I slid on my belly over towards the shadow of the Buick and as I felt gravel rasp under my hands I saw a figure momentarily silhouetted in front of a row of trash cans.

  I chanced a shot, without much hope but just to boost my morale. It went wide, sending a garbage lid clattering with a great clang, but it put the seven bells of fear into my friend. He took the board fence in a rush and I heard feet receding into the distance. As I gained the sidewalk a car engine gunned behind me. I whirled just in time to see a tourer parked next to my Buick streak forward and pull out of the lot with a slurring of tyres.

  It went off down the street pretty fast and I knew it would be no use following. My athletic friend would be aboard once he had gone a couple of blocks. My first instinct was to follow in my car but I had managed to keep going for some years with the aid of a certain native caution. Though I had made at least a dozen elementary mistakes today, reason and method were beginning to take over.

  I replaced the garbage can lid and then went over the ground with my pencil flash looking for blood. There was none and it confirmed that I had missed him by a good yard. I decided not to bother Tucker again; it could do no good and my friends had my address anyway, if they wanted to come calling. I went over the Buick with the flash; I couldn’t see if it had been tampered with but I decided to make sure. I went on back to the Bissell Building and bought a reel of twine from the kiosk in the foyer.

  Admiral Dewey gave me a smart salutation from the other side of the lobby and pointed with pride to a new directory hanging up in the booth. I figured he must at least be a vice-president of the League of Decency. I went on out to the lot. It was deserted and I felt sure no one would be coming back after our little shooting match. I fixed up a piece of twine to the ignition and rove it through my side window to give a side pull into the on position.

  The other piece I tied round the starter switch on the dash and trailed it straight back over the car body. About thirty feet away I pulled cautiously on the first piece of twine. About four years before an old chum of mine on the regular force, one Barney Calleran had been blown to lace by a wired jalopy. It was unlikely tonight but you never knew.

  A moment’s pause and then the reassuring green wink of light from my dash. I had disengaged the gears and when I pulled the second piece of twine there was a thunderous purr. I let the engine idle for about half a minute and then walked in. I gunned out of the lot and drove for home. There was a cool wind coming up from the hills, which was welcome, and though it wasn’t yet midnight, traffic and lights were beginning to fade a little, like when the peak is past.

  When I got home I drove the car into the entrance of the lot and triggered the floodlights. The area blazed like daylight but there was nothing moving. I drove on into the carport; put the car hood up, went on in and locked up. I shuttered the windows, just in case, and made myself some coffee. Whil
e I undressed I listened to the local radio bulletin but there was nothing new on the Horvis killing; there was only a brief two-line mention of it right at the end, just before the baseball news.

  I flipped the switch, killed the lounge lights and went on up. In a corner of my bedroom was a little round Japanese inlaid table that sometimes did duty as an impromptu telephone stand or was pressed into use as a card table. It had small drawers let into three front edges of its octangle. It seemed just right for my purpose. It was too solid to knock over in the ordinary way, but just to make sure I jammed it up in an angle of the room, where two walls gave it added support. Underneath, it had deep panels of wood, which extended down about four inches. I got a roll of sticky tape out of the kitchen and up-ended the table as a start. After a minute I found a deep crack in the underside of the table, right where two pieces of the panelling joined.

  I slipped Mrs. Standish’s key into this crack and then gummed the whole thing over with the black tape. It fitted snugly into the shadow cast inside the join and couldn’t be seen, even under quite strong electric light. Then I turned the table the right way up, put the books back, doused the lights and went to bed. I slept badly for once.

  I kept having dreams in which a nude Mrs. Standish was pursued by an oddly animated Mr. Horvis. He kept saying, “Most amusing, Mr. Faraday,” and every now and again there was a popping noise which kept me twitching, even in my sleep. I awoke sweating at dawn.

  A bird was practising scales for the Met outside my window and plenty of light was spilling through the shutters. I turned over again and this time I slept well.

  5 - Captain Jacoby

  I was awakened by a loud hammering on the porch door. I shook the sleep from my eyes and went on down. It was only just gone half after seven. I looked through the gauze curtains on to the porch. Two big men in dark suits stood there admiring the view. They had cop written all over them. They obviously weren’t going away, so I opened up.

  “Take your time,” one of them said sourly. He looked nasty.