by Basil Copper
His blond hair and blue eyes and the style of the cheek-bones were unmistakeably Scandinavian in origin. There was a lot of blood. It had dried black and it was so cold in here that a thin film of ice had already begun to glaze it over. I looked at my watch. It was almost seven. Leaving a few minutes for his journey between the shop and the house he must have been dead about two and a half hours.
I tip-toed backwards out of the freezer and closed the door. I heard Janssen’s heels bump on the other side as it clicked shut. I went through the annexe and put the light switch off, using my handkerchief. The house was quite still. I used the handkerchief to wipe clean anything I might have touched, wiping off the kitchen and screen doors last of all. It was raining harder now, which would help wash out any foot marks I might have left on lawn verges. I doubted if the woman at the shop would have seen my licence plates. It had been too dark and the windows of the place had been misty with condensation anyway.
I put up the collar of my raincoat and went down the walk at a fast pace. Quick enough to get me away without being spotted, not fast enough to attract undue attention. I got into the Buick and started the motor. The house lay silent and sheeted behind the rain, the monkey-puzzle tree swaying slightly in the wind. I went past Bearcat Lake and drove out of town as soon as I could.
When I hit the high road I started putting miles behind me. I had been travelling about an hour when a light glared in my rear window. I pulled farther over into my own lane. A big car came up fast, overtaking me effortlessly, shovelling mud and water over its shoulder as it passed. I put the washers on to clear the screen. My car staggered slightly at the impact of the disturbed air. An angry siren whined away into the rain-soaked hills that led back to L.A.
I hadn’t been able to read the licence plate but it was a scarlet Oldsmobile for sure. I smiled wryly to myself in the rear mirror. I had some interesting material to work over in my mind on my way back to the city.
Chapter Six - Hullo, Doctor
The L.A. Examiner carried only a couple of sticks on the Alloway kill; on an inside page too. That type of crime was getting to be pretty small stuff around this town. Regrettable but a fact of life. I drank my orange juice and kept a wary eye on my three-minute egg from where I sat in the dining nook of the kitchen. Outside the window a keen wind whipped the tree-tops into fury but the rain had stopped. I decided to leave the side-arms home for today. I was just finishing off breakfast when the phone rang; it was Stella. She sounded relieved.
‘Dan Tucker rang in a few minutes ago,’ he said.
‘Anything special?’ I asked.
‘He seemed a bit cagey,’ she said. ‘Just checking, I think.’
‘That means he’s at a dead end,’ I said. ‘He figures I know more than I’m telling.’
‘And don’t you?’ she asked.
‘A P.I. doesn’t hand out his trade secrets to any flat-foot that happens along,’ I said. ‘Otherwise, where’s the integrity?’
‘Dan Tucker’s not just any flat-foot,’ she reminded me.
She had a point there.
‘I’ll chip in with the score when I know a bit more about what’s going on,’ I promised her.
She rang off and I demolished the last forkful of egg and looked thoughtfully into the bottom of my breakfast cup. That didn’t help any so I rinsed through my plate, knife, fork, cup and saucer and put them up in the sink rack to dry. Then I locked up, reversed the Buick out of the carport and drove across town.
I rode up in the creaking elevator and went down the familiar corridor to my office. Stella was on the phone when I got in. She looked great. She had on a blue jacket with a sailor collar and her honey-blonde hair was held back by a simple red ribbon. It was a different sort of beauty from that of Merna Freeman and all the other types of girl I met on assignment. This was untouched and sort of special, but Stella was the marrying kind and somehow she couldn’t get me around to seeing it her way. I often wondered how it would come out. She put the phone down.
‘That was Charlie Snagge,’ she said. ‘I told him we were making progress.’
I nodded. I went and sat down at the desk and sorted out my mail. Then I put up my feet on the scratched surface of my old broadtop and studied the cracks in the ceiling. It was a favourite occupation of mine and didn’t mean I intended to get the place redecorated. Stella went and sat at her desk opposite. I dictated her a few letters that needed answering urgently, told her what to do about the others and signed a couple of cheques. That about wound-up my executive operations for the day.
Stella put a cigarette in her mouth and lit it for me. I inhaled the smoke gratefully. She lit one for herself and studied me through the blue haze.
‘Well?’ she said at last.
I told her. It didn’t take long. Last night’s freezer session. The tie-up with Alloway and some of my theories. The theories could have been written on a pin-head and still have left room for the Koran. Stella didn’t say anything for a minute. I could see she didn’t approve of my ducking out without reporting Janssen. But I couldn’t afford two in a row like that. She frowned.
‘The bit about the Olds looks funny.’
‘And significant,’ I said. ‘You dig up anything about Beale?’
She pointed to a brown paper folder on my blotter. ‘All there on the desk. War record, business contacts and so on. Quite ordinary.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. I flipped through the two typed sheets she’d prepared. I put them back in the folder. I figured I would look at them later when I had more time.
‘So somebody doesn’t like sanitary engineers,’ she said at last.
‘Looks like it,’ I said. ‘Except that both worked on the Sunset Gardens installations. Beale is Merna Freeman’s cousin. And Krug hopes to grab her uncle’s money.’
Stella drew hard on her cigarette and blew out a long plume of smoke. ‘So?’
‘So I get to see Krug,’ I said. ‘Failing that, over the wall after dark.’
I saw a familiar expression come over her face. I put out my hand.
‘Don’t worry, honey. There couldn’t be three kills in a row.’
‘You want to bet?’ she said. ‘The third might be you.’
‘A cheerful topic for a fine March morning,’ I said. ‘See if you can get Sunset Gardens for me. I feel a bereavement coming on.’
Stella handed me the phone. It was the pneumatic job with the black sweater up at Sunset Gardens.
‘This is Mr Stint,’ I said. ‘You remember, I came out the other afternoon.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Your papers are being processed.’
‘I wonder if I could see Dr Krug,’ I said. ‘It really is an urgent matter … this business of my uncle.’
‘He doesn’t see people, except by appointment,’ she said. I thought I caught a note of hesitation in her voice.
‘Would you ask him if he’s got a free half hour?’ I said. ‘I could come out this afternoon, if it’s convenient.’
Stella was smiling across from the other desk. My low, down-trodden voice was going over big with the Sunset job.
‘Hold on, Mr … ’ she said.
‘Stint,’ I told her.
I sat and smoked and looked out of the window across the boulevard. I was thinking of ringing off when she came back. Her voice sounded surprised.
‘Dr Krug finds he has a vacancy in his appointment book. As it is an exceptional case he has agreed to give you a personal interview. Will three o’clock be convenient?’
‘This afternoon?’ I said.
‘Very good,’ she said. ‘Please report to me at the desk,’
‘I’ll do that,’ I said. I rang off and my face must have looked smug with triumph because Stella burst out laughing.
‘Let’s hope you get out as easy,’ she said.
‘Why bring that up?’ I told her.
*
It was spitting with rain when I drove over to Sunset. I had gotten on my sober suiting again and I hoped my turn-out would
be enough to fool Dr Krug if it happened to be his off-day. I put on a pair of dark cheaters just to add to the effect. I parked the car down a way from the main entrance of Sunset Gardens, up off the road under the shade of a small grove of trees. Apart from my name and address on the windshield I didn’t want anybody up there picking up my licence plate numbers. And whoever had warned me off Merna Freeman by telephone might still be around somewhere.
I went in through the big gates. This time the man in the peaked cap didn’t salute. It was a long stroll up to the main building. It was five to three when I got to the parking lot below the U.S. Pavilion and when I reached the top of the steps it sounded like the last act of Lohengrin was just ending. People were milling around in the big hallway and a tape-recorded organ boomed melodiously from concealed speakers. I figured it must be visiting day for the relatives of the loved ones.
The place seemed, if anything, slightly more awful than the last time. With the difference that I could leave. It must have been worse for the inmates. The hostess number with the black sweater was sitting at the desk making like she was busy. She cracked one of her Grade A smiles as I came through the door.
‘Ah, Mr Stint,’ she said.
‘You got it right this time,’ I told her. That took care of the smile.
‘Dr Krug is busy right now,’ she said. ‘He left word you were to wait.’
‘If I’d have known it was Embalming Day I’d have come properly equipped,’ I said. ‘I understand you do cheap rates for Bury-Your-Mother-in-Law Week.’
She cracked me a frosty smile which briefly writhed her cheek muscles. ‘This is a serious undertaking, Mr Stint, and I must ask you to observe proper decorum while you are under our roof.’
‘Sure,’ I said humbly. ‘I apologise for my lack of breeding.’
I went over and sat down on one of the divans which lined the wall and studied a black onyx ashtray which bore the legend, ‘Live not for Today — but for Eternity.’ I still thought they were being optimistic.
*
Nearly half an hour must have passed away while I sat there. I began to appreciate what Eternity was all about. Then a buzzer sounded and the job in the black sweater glided towards me. She didn’t have a bad pair of legs either. But as I was busy being Mordecai Stint I didn’t make any audible comment.
‘Dr Krug will see you now,’ she said like she was conferring a great favour. The organ boomed again as we went across the tiled floor and another flood of people went into the Hall of Immortality. A white-coated attendant unclipped the velvet rope and ushered them through like they were going on the dollar tour of Radio City.
The girl led the way through an oak door set at the side of the reception desk. It closed softly behind us with a hiss of pneumatic cushions. It was quiet in here except for the faint humming of a fan. The walls were grey and there was a thick grey carpet underfoot in the corridor. There was a scent like incense wafting through the ventilators. It was too warm in here and I took off my raincoat as we walked and carried it over my arm. We turned a corner and went up stairs, along another corridor and through a door marked Reception.
‘Wait here,’ the dark job breathed like we were in church. The office was tricked up for reception purposes; pastel walls, filing cabinets, purple wall-to-wall carpeting. The girl glided over the carpet and disappeared through a far door which had Medical Director painted on it.
A blast of organ music coming from a hidden speaker nearly made me hit the ceiling. It sounded like Lon Chaney Sr. was having one hell of a fine time in the organ loft on the set of Phantom of the Opera. I thought Krug was going to come out and announce that it was an Inner Sanctum Mystery. I was just reaching around the office for a set of earplugs when the hostess came back. The stop-manipulator was having an attack of St Vitus Dance at the keyboard by then and the static was ferocious.
‘Do you think we could have a little less of the Mighty Wurlitzer?’ I asked the dark job. She frowned. I had to repeat the question twice before she got it. She went over to the side of the room and flipped a dial. The recital died to a hoarse gargling.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Dr Krug’s secretary usually has it up high to catch any announcements. She must have forgotten it was on.’
She led me over to the far door, tapped on it and opened it for me.
‘Mr Stint,’ she said. She cracked me another two-second smile and went on out, closing the door behind me.
I know I was already prejudiced before I ever met Dr Krug but if I hadn’t been his appearance would have clinched it.
‘Do come in, Mr Stint,’ he said. ‘I won’t keep you a moment.’
He beckoned me forward with an emaciated hand and I sat down in a hard wooden chair across from him. He sat behind a desk as big as a baseball park. I relaxed behind my smoked glasses and studied him. His eyes were so dark they looked like holes burned in the whiteness of his face. His cheekbones were high and the stubble of hair showed on them as a thin blue line. The forehead was knobbled and wide and greasy black hair stippled with grey grew thinly on a scalp as fragile as eggshell.
The lips were so full for such a face that they took one by surprise. The nose was a reddened beak and when he opened his mouth decaying yellow teeth showed in a ragged line. He looked so pious he ought to have had stained glass in his spectacles. These were thin square things made of tortoiseshell and riveted with gold pins. It would have been a great face for being under the black and gold cap of the S.S. Death’s Head Division.
He reminded me of something else too which escaped me for the moment. As I watched him he had been squinting at the papers in his hand but all the while his dead grey eyes were swivelling and I knew he hadn’t missed a thing on my side of the desk. Then he put down the papers with an insidious rustle and showed me a jagged promontory of teeth. ‘I am Dr Krug,’ he said.
It was just about the most superfluous comment of the week.
‘You have a problem, I believe?’
‘I filled in a form a few days ago,’ I said in as mild a tone as I could muster.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said in a voice like a rusty gate. ‘I have it here somewhere.’
He thrashed around among the papers on the desk. Then he came up with some forms and squinted at them for a long moment.
‘Ah, here we are.’ He breathed heavily as he held them up sidewise, his long-nailed thumb projecting like a claw.
‘Just why did you find it necessary to seek a personal interview with me, Mr Stint?’
He snapped out the question suddenly in that rusty voice, dropping the papers to the desk at the same moment. His tactics might have taken me unawares but they didn’t. I was in a nice relaxed mood and I wasn’t missing a trick. I leaned back in my chair and crossed my right leg over my left. The move seemed to irritate the doctor.
‘It seemed the thing to do,’ I said smoothly. ‘My uncle being so ill and all. Then again, no-one seems to know much about this freezer system.’
‘Quite so, quite so,’ he interrupted me. The breath came wheezing out of his nostrils as he faced up and gave me a sharp look across the desk. He seemed satisfied for the moment.
‘We shall mail you all the detailed procedures, of course, but I quite understand there will be some personal aspects that may be, shall we say, too delicate for the post … ’
He smiled a lop-sided smile that was extinguished as soon as it had begun. Then, before I had time to reply, he dug down with his lobster-claw into the muddle of papers and came up with my batch of forms again. I fished in my pocket for a package of cigarettes. I got one out and put it in my mouth. I didn’t offer one to Krug and I didn’t ask his permission. He smiled another sallow smile.
‘Allow me, Mr Stint,’ he said. He snapped a small metal container. The thin flame burned steady in the warm air of the office. I leaned over the desk and he lit me.
‘You are intrigued, I see,’ he said. His fourth crooked smile revealed his deadly bridgework. ‘It is quite unique, sir. You may see if you wish.’
He passed the lighter over. I examined it while he fished around for a small black cheroot. He stuck it in a corner of his teeth and lit it from another lighter on the desk. I held the beautifully engineered piece of metal and turned it over in my hand. It was made of stainless steel, meticulously turned and polished. The whole thing was stream-lined, without a projecting edge anywhere, and it gave off a blinding light under the neon tubes as I handled it.
I knew what it was, not only from the brochure the well-upholstered job had given me, but also from seeing what the white-coated assistants had been carrying outside the building. It was a perfect reproduction of the capsules in which the loved ones were refrigerated, even down to the small recesses in the casing which acted as handholds. The lighter was actuated by pressing a small catch in one of the recesses and a slim, white flame came from a pinpoint set in the end of the casing.
I tried it out once or twice. It was a joy to use, despite its macabre connotations. I turned it towards Krug and pressed the catch again. There was a curious click and it spun in my hand so that I almost dropped it. Krug changed colour and lunged forward behind the desk. He drew in his breath with a hissing sigh.
‘Be careful,’ he said in a high, strained voice. ‘It cost a lot of money to produce.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. I passed it over to him. He put it back inside his waistcoat pocket and wiped his hands with a none too clean handkerchief.
‘Yes, Mr Stint,’ he said. ‘A time capsule. As you will have no doubt read in the literature given you by my staff, the modern method of achieving immortality by cryogenic interment and resuscitation by improved medical knowledge in the years to come. The idea is gaining ground, particularly among intellectual and religious groups. You would do well, Mr Stint, to make an early booking if your uncle is as ill as you say he is. Once Sunset Gardens is functioning as I and my codirectors envisage, there may be long waiting lists.’