by Basil Copper
Dan Tucker led the way through the entrance lobby. There were two big plain-clothes men behind us and a stiffening of patrolmen at the rear. There were only a few people sitting about on the divans. There was a blonde girl at the desk. I hadn’t seen her before. But then I hadn’t expected anything else. Dan Tucker showed her a card on a billfold he took out of his inner pocket; whatever it was, it galvanized the girl into activity. She picked up the phone from the alcove. I looked at a male clerk who was filling in a form at the other end of the counter. I hadn’t seen him before either.
‘Dr Krug will see you now, gentlemen,’ the girl told Tucker briskly. She opened the door in rear and the whole crowd of us followed her up to Krug’s reception chamber. The blonde job tapped on Krug’s door.
‘Go on in, gentlemen,’ she said with a bright smile. Tucker and I went in towards the big desk. The small red-haired man behind the desk wore a benevolent smile and a pair of gold pince-nez. I had to smile too. Tucker looked sourly at me and then back at the party behind the desk.
‘Dr Krug?’ he asked.
The red-haired man’s smile became even more benevolent. He got up from behind the desk and extended his hand to the Captain.
‘Why, yes,’ he said. ‘I am the Medical Director.’
‘You can prove that, of course?’ said Tucker shortly.
‘Certainly,’ the small man said.
‘I’m sure you can,’ I said. My voice must have sounded tired or cynical or something for the doctor started to look bewildered. He did it very well.
‘If you would care to see my credentials, gentlemen?’
‘I’m positive you can produce them, doctor,’ I said. ‘So there wouldn’t be much point, would there?’
The doctor’s smile became even broader. ‘As you say … ’ He spread out his hands in a general benediction.
‘We’re wasting our time here,’ I told Tucker. ‘I hate to say I told you so but you’ll find there’s been a complete switch in personnel. The only thing for the outfit to do under the circumstances.’
Dan Tucker snorted. He took the doctor aside. I stood and studied a wall-calendar advertising time capsules while their voices murmured on. I heard the phoney Dr Krug say, ‘Certainly, if you wish. You have a warrant to search, I take it?’
The two men drifted back toward me. ‘No, but I can get one inside an hour,’ said Tucker without any change in his voice.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ said the doctor, his eyes beaming behind his glasses. ‘We’ve got nothing to hide here, gentlemen. I’ll get my staff to show you around the premises. If you’ll excuse me, I have much work to do.’
‘Sure,’ said Tucker, a baffled note in his tones. He avoided my eye. We waited a moment while the doctor blipped a buzzer. The door opened and the blonde job wheeled back.
‘Dolores,’ the doctor told her, ‘please show these gentlemen anything they wish to see on the premises or in the grounds. Anything, you understand.’
He emphasised the last three words in the subtlest possible way but his meaning was unmistakeable. A pink flush was spreading out over Tucker’s cheeks, a sure sign that he knew he was on difficult ground.
‘Good day,’ said the Medical Director. He gave us each a warm, soft hand to shake. ‘I hope you find what you’re looking for.’
We went on out, following the well-upholstered rear of the blonde job. We went back into the main concourse of Eternity Inc. and on through the Hall of Immortality; the plain-clothes men and the uniformed officers disappeared throughout the building. They had already been briefed before we left. I looked at the freezer banks as we went down the hall. The main ones were as I remembered them; the dials had been removed from the secondary units and these were all locked. I guessed we couldn’t get permission to open them until we had cleared with relatives. That would take weeks and Krug knew it. They had thought of everything.
Tucker’s men took the whole place apart but they didn’t find anything. I should have been surprised if they had. Even the mechanics in the repair depot were different. I couldn’t see anyone on the premises who had the remotest connection with the Gardens when I had been there. Steel doors labelled: DANGER or CAUTION: CHEMICALS were locked and the keys couldn’t be procured without going through protocol. The whole thing was watertight.
We left the grounds till last. When we got down where I figured the bodies were buried there was a tall wire fence dividing that section off from the Gardens. Prominent scarlet notices behind the wire said; PROPERTY ACME CONSTRUCTION COMPANY. CITY HOUSING PROJECT. Two durable-looking men in blue denims lounged behind the wire. They had a shotgun apiece and an Alsatian dog to guard a watchman’s hut, a few two-by-fours, a coke brazier and a dozen or two square yards of dug clay.
‘They must have worked hard last night,’ I said to no-one in particular. The nearest guard looked at me sharply. I thought I heard the hammer of his shotgun go back. I turned towards Tucker. I was smiling.
‘That was the only weak link in the set-up,’ I told Dan. ‘Krug thought real fast on this one.’
Dan pushed back his hat brim and scratched his forehead.
‘We’d have to go through City Hall records to find the owners of the lot if we wanted to search this area,’ he said. ‘I might take it up on my annual leave. I got another fortnight coming.’
There was real admiration in his voice. His eyes looked lazily across to the smog and the fumes which hung over L.A. He scuffed the gravel path moodily with the toe of one massive brogue.
‘All right,’ he called sharply to the file of men spread out through the grounds. ‘That wraps it up for today.’
One of the guards behind the fence cleared his throat loudly. He spat ostentatiously on to the ground. Then he turned and walked away, the dog at his heels. Dan and I followed the plain-clothes men down the Gardens and out to the cars. No-one said a word all the way back to L.A.
*
We went down to Central Police HQ. I spent about three hours there with Tucker. It was late afternoon before I got up to leave.
‘You’re heading north, I suppose?’ he said.
‘I might,’ he said defensively. ‘You got to pass all this stuff on, I take it?’
Tucker put the remains of an apple into his ashtray and wiped his fingers fastidiously on a handkerchief as big as a bell tent. His large florid face was passive.
‘That’s what the book says.’
His eyes held sparks of humour in them. He scratched his nose with the back of his hand.
‘’Course, I don’t always go by the book. In special circumstances. Knoxtown’s outside my jurisdiction. I just might sit on all this stuff. But no longer than twelve hours.’
‘That’s enough,’ I said. ‘Thanks, Dan.’
He furrowed his brows in mock-disgust. ‘Don’t thank me,’ he said. ‘I always did need my head examining where you were concerned. But remember, you’re on your own. I don’t know anything about you if the local law cuts up rough.’
I paused at the door when he called me.
‘If you should turn up something,’ he said. ‘Give me a ring.’
‘I thought it was outside your jurisdiction,’ I said.
He grinned. ‘That was for the record. Sheriff up there’s a friend of mine. And you may need some official backing.’
‘I got the number,’ I said and went on out. I picked up the Buick and drove across town. I found a place to park near my office and rode up in the dusty elevator. I found a note pinned on the door; Home all evening if you want me. Stella.
I went through the waiting room. The note might have seemed a bit ambiguous to the janitor. I crumpled it and threw it in my waste basket. The office seemed darker and shabbier than ever. Surprising the difference Stella’s presence made. I sat and thought and smoked. I had most of the pieces now. The rest depended on Krug. I rang Stella. She had just got in. I told her what I was going to do and gave her some numbers to ring. I rang off and picked up the cardboard folder Stella had left for me.
I riffed through it and then settled down to some hard reading. Halfway through it was getting dark so I switched the lights on. I turned back to Beale’s time in Germany. The record was thick with Kraut names; they were so long and difficult I decided not to break my teeth on them. I stubbed out my cigarette in the tray and picked up the phone again. It was nearly a minute before she answered.
‘Kathy?’ I said. ‘I’m ready to go. I think it’s time you got your story.’
*
It started to rain halfway to Knoxtown. Despite Kathy Gowan’s protests I was using the Buick. She sat beside me in the warm darkness without a word but I could sense the impatience with which she viewed the passing of the hours. To her, used to having her toe down in the Spitfire, my driving of the Buick must have seemed positively elderly. I grinned to myself in the mirror.
The last streaks of sunset were fading as we left the freeway, and when the first rain came on, about a couple of hours later, I pulled in to a lunch counter. We drank coffee and got outside some sandwiches. She was wearing a blue reefer jacket with silver buttons and a dark wool beret with a red bobble. On anyone else it would have looked like something out of Captains Courageous but on her it looked good. She only asked one question all the way up.
She cupped the plastic beaker in her two hands and looked at me searchingly through the steam from the coffee. She had to raise her voice slightly over the raging of a jukebox at the far end of the room.
‘What makes you think Dr Hauser’s got the answer, Mike?’
I shook my head. ‘Just a hunch. He’s got something to hide, that’s for sure. And anything could have happened over the will deal that weekend when the old man died. Morey Wilson wasn’t in this for car fare. And Beale knocked him when the heat was on.’
Kathy shrugged. She looked sombrely at the rain beading the windows.
‘You may be right, Mike. But win or lose we’re having a real cosy trip together.’
She smiled again as I got up to pay the check. We left right away and soon started picking up time on the big road. The suburbs of Knoxtown were coming up around a quarter of eleven. Kathy lay back on the seat, her hair just resting with the faintest pressure on my right shoulder.
I pulled the car past Bearcat Lake for the third time in my life and turned off the lake drive down the side streets. I missed Amaryllis in the dark and had to circle; I came in the other end eventually but soon located the white frame house of Dr Hauser. It sat quietly behind a solid wall of rain and kept its own counsel. There were several cars out front.
‘Stay here and keep your eyes peeled,’ I said.
Kathy Gowan nodded. She slid over behind the wheel as I got out. I closed the door very quietly behind me. One bleared eye of a lit window showed behind the rain. The curtain was pulled across it so I couldn’t see anything. I went up the crazy paving path, walking lightly in the night, my footsteps covered by the thin hiss of falling water. I stood in the porch in front of the white panelled door and listened for something. I didn’t know what I was listening for but whatever it was it didn’t make a noise. Nothing that could have been heard above the rain, that is.
Thirty seconds went by. I eased my Smith-Wesson in the holster, made sure I could get at it in a hurry. I tried the ornamental brass catch on the white door. It opened with a faint click. I pushed it quietly and went on into the hall. I closed the door with my fingertips and felt the catch settle back in place. I can smell a bad atmosphere a mile away and this smelt like a fishmonger’s on Saturday night.
I moved down the wall, keeping close in, my feet making no sound on the thick carpet. Dim lights burned here and there. I listened at the parlour door. There was a low, recurrent sound like someone sobbing. I opened the door cautiously, slipped through and pushed it to behind me. It was darker in here, the only illumination coming from a shaded table lamp. I stood in the shadow, adjusting my eyes. The first thing I smelled was powder smoke.
Dr Hauser sat at the oval table where we’d had our talk. The back of his head had been blown clean away and thick blood spilled and clotted among the sodden leaves of the medical books. His eyes were veined and staring and his two stainless steel teeth gave me their last insincere smile. His hands were spread out in clawed agony. The bullet had come out near his eye and spread, doing a lot more damage. His thin gold spectacles that had been welded so firmly to his nose were lying a yard or two away from the table. I noticed without really taking it in that the glass of one lens had been cracked; the other was misted with a fine spray of blood.
Dr Krug sat in the ladder-back chair to the right of the body. He had his face buried in a glass and I didn’t think he’d seen me. He was a fantastic sight. He wore the black and gold uniform of a Colonel in the S.S., complete with hat. The skull and cross-bones insignia of the Death’s Head Division glittered dully on the front of his full-dress cap. It would have been, of course, with his record. I didn’t wait to see any more. I stepped out from the shadow, reaching for the Smith-Wesson.
‘Could I have one of those or is it embalming fluid?’ I said.
It didn’t win the prize for originality but it had a galvanic effect on the doctor. His voice was shrill with hatred as he raised his head. It was only then that I saw the barrel of his Browning, black and deadly as a battleship’s turret-gun, aligned squarely on my midriff; it had been resting on the elbow of the dead Hauser, trained on the door.
‘I thought you’d show, Faraday, if I waited long enough,’ he said in his high-pitched whine.
‘Drop it on the floor or you die now.’
I sensed rather than heard the hammer of his revolver go back as he brought pressure to bear on the trigger. I found myself sweating as I reached inch by inch inside my trench coat. I got out the Smith-Wesson and held it between my thumb and forefinger.
Dr Krug watched me with those black-paper eyes pasted on to his white skull. Their surface smouldered like gas bubbles bursting under swamp water.
I dropped the gun with a heavy thump on the carpet.
Chapter Fifteen - Shoot the Chute
Dr Krug’s eyes were like wells of black glass. There were no highlights or sparkle to their depths. They were dead eyes set in a dead face and the blue snout of his revolver was like the echo of a third eye. The parchment face was blank under the peak of his cap. He took another sip from his glass. The gun barrel lifted a fraction but his eyes were fixed unblinkingly on mine.
‘Sit down opposite me, Mr Faraday,’ he said. ‘Very slowly, please.’
I did as he said. I didn’t feel like committing suicide that early in the night. I turned slightly in my chair so that I was looking away from Hauser. I had to look at Krug to do that but it was a little more pleasant. At least he was alive.
‘You’re doing a lot of business outside the Gardens these days,’ I said. I looked down to where Hauser’s spectacles glinted in the light of the lamp.
‘Always the joker,’ said Krug softly. The high pitch of his voice has moderated. It grated in his throat, like he was speaking through loose gravel.
‘Now I am denied the use of my Headquarters, thanks to you.’
‘Not me,’ I said. ‘You got Beale to thank for that.’
‘A panic-stricken fool with the temper of a madman,’ he said. ‘Well, I shall settle with him in due course.’
‘I thought you did,’ I said. ‘Don’t tell me you hadn’t heard?’
I told him about Beale. His expression didn’t change but I could have sworn it was news to him. But he didn’t look too cut up about it.
‘I wonder who took a dislike to him,’ he said.
‘There was a wide choice,’ I told him.
He took another sip at his glass; the drink didn’t seem to affect him. His eyes were red-rimmed in the hollows. He looked over at Hauser. A flicker of emotion passed over his face.
‘Cover him up,’ he said.
I got up very slowly and did as he said. The barrel of the Browning swivelled steadily to follow all my movements. I went over
to the far side of the room and found a lace-edged cloth on the old-fashioned sideboard. I doubled it and covered Hauser over. Some of the life came back into the room. I stepped over my Smith-Wesson on the carpet. It was only about six feet from me but it seemed like a long way. Krug motioned me down with the gun barrel. I sank into the chair and spread my hands flat on the table. I was glad to see they didn’t show any tremor. I sat and looked steadily into his eyes. His mind was far away. The skull motif on his cap-badge seemed like a reflection of his own face.
After what felt like half an hour but could only have been five or ten minutes he got up. He took off his cap with his disengaged hand. He put it in a brown paper bag he picked up from somewhere in the gloom behind him. He backed away from me and shrugged one arm into an off-white raincoat. He started to put it on over his uniform. I sat still and waited for a move.
It didn’t come. I wondered how many Jews had their last sight of earthly things with his ugly face. He transferred the Browning to his left hand and put his gun arm in through the other sleeve of his raincoat. He took the gun back in his right and did up the buttons of the coat with the left. With the coat on he looked just like any ordinary inoffensive old guy. He motioned me up with his gun hand, picked up the brown paper bag.
‘Time to say goodbye, Mr Faraday. America is losing its attractions and the South has always been sympathetic to our causes. But first there is a debt to be repaid.’ I wondered what Kathy Gowan was doing. I couldn’t see out of the room. Thick curtains were drawn across the windows. There was nothing but the faint fret of running water on glass and tiles and concrete. Krug opened the door at the far end of the parlour. I walked in front of him down a passage. I stopped in front of an open doorway. It was dark inside and it smelt damp. Krug’s Browning dug me in the back. I stepped forward perhaps three feet. Krug reached in behind me and threw the light switch. A trembling neon stroked in the scene for me. When the light steadied I saw it was a combined kitchen and laundry room.