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

  DIE NOW, LIVE LATER

  Basil Copper

  A Mike Faraday Mystery

  © Basil Copper 1968

  Basil Copper has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as author of this work.

  First Published in 1968 by Robert Hale Limited

  This edition published in 2016 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.

  For John McLellan and Eric McLellan,

  Father and son, Layman and Priest,

  loyal friends

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One - Eternity

  Chapter Two - Uncle on Ice

  Chapter Three - Sunset Trip

  Chapter Four- Account Closed

  Chapter Five - Strike Two

  Chapter Six - Hullo, Doctor

  Chapter Seven - Two Heads are Better

  Chapter Eight - Striking Likeness

  Chapter Nine - Two For The Ice Box

  Chapter Ten - Sunset and Evening Star

  Chapter Eleven -Flamer

  Chapter Twelve - The Fourth Estate

  Chapter Thirteen - Small Calibre Stuff

  Chapter Fourteen – Death’s Head Division

  Chapter Fifteen - Shoot the Chute

  Chapter Sixteen - Sieg Oder Tod

  Chapter Seventeen - Long Goodbye

  Chapter Eighteen - A Voice From the Grave

  Author’s Note

  The freezer cemeteries described in this book are already in operation in America. They are not, of course, operated in the manner described here and I have taken certain liberties with procedures in order to further the plot; it need not be emphasized that the Sunset Gardens of the story is not based on, nor should be taken as representing, any actual freezer cemetery. The book does not seek to throw doubt on the possibilities of the scheme, but describes the fictional operation of such a set-up for purposes of crime. All the characters, settings etc. are fictitious and no reflection is intended on the operations or integrity of those connected with the workings of any real life organization in this field.

  B.C.

  Chapter One - Eternity

  I’d never heard of Eternity Inc. until this friend of mine in the County Sheriff’s Office, Charlie Snagge, rang me up one morning in late March. It was one of those days in L.A. when the early sunshine and wide, clear skies make you begin to think of fishing poles and camping equipment. Until a sudden squall of sleet sends you rushing to the sideboard for the whisky bottle and the lumbago pads. Leastways, the whisky bottle; the lumbago pads don’t bother me at thirty-three. Not yet.

  It had been a slack period even for March and the accumulation of bills was beginning to silt over my in-tray; I’d had my third cup of coffee, practised a few golf swings, dictated the letters and polished the seat of my swivel chair with my pants. For the last fifteen minutes I’d been looking at Stella’s legs as she sat across from me typing. They were beautiful legs and I can’t say it was wasted time, but there didn’t seem to be much future in it at the moment and March was a dangerous time of the year to start that sort of speculation. She smiled like she knew what I was thinking and crossed her legs the other way.

  The phone buzzed around eleven a.m. and Stella put Charlie through on the extension. We chewed the fat for a couple of minutes before he got to the point.

  ‘I might have a customer for you, Mike’, he said.

  ‘Business is bad right now, but not that bad,’ I said. ‘Haw, haw,’ said Charlie without mirth. ‘You want the work or don’t you?’

  ‘All right, Charlie,’ I told him. ‘I was only kidding. But if some old lady busted a corset over a pet dog going astray, do me a favour by not passing it on. I got a drawerful of that sort right now. They don’t pay me eating money.’

  ‘This ain’t that sort,’ he said in a pained voice. ‘But it might be more in your line, seeing like you work unofficial when it suits you.’

  I let that pass and waited for him to go on. Stella nibbled reflectively at the end of her pencil with very white teeth and looked pensively at me. She had the extension to one ear and was waiting to take some useable notes.

  ‘Seems a bit unusual,’ Charlie went on. ‘What you know about the mortuary business?’

  ‘Sounds like your customer needs an undertaker,’ I said.

  ‘She’s got one,’ he said. ‘That’s why she wants your help.’

  I sighed and looked up at the ceiling. That didn’t make the cracks seem any better so I lowered my gaze on to Stella’s legs again.

  ‘This is a bit too much like hard work over the phone,’ I said. ‘You’d better come on over.’

  Something like a snort came along the wire to me.

  ‘We have to work down at the County Office,’ he said.

  ‘Since when?’ I told him. ‘It’s a pity because I got the best part of a pint of old bourbon taking up space in the bottom drawer of my desk.’

  ‘That’s different,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m allowed a little rubbing alcohol by my medical advisers on account of this rough March weather shot my tubes to hell and gone. Be with you in twenty minutes.’

  I grinned at Stella and put the phone back. She shook her head and closed her notebook. She went over to the alcove where we brewed the coffee and started rinsing out a couple of tumblers. I sat and looked at my blotting pad. I couldn’t make out whether yesterday’s doodle was supposed to be a site plan of a launching pad or the Mayor’s face in profile. Stella came back and put down the clean glasses on the blotter in front of me. I got out the bourbon from the desk and broke the seal. I didn’t have long to wait for Charlie.

  He was a tall, thin man with a lugubrious face. I’d worked with him out of the County Sheriff’s Office some years before. He was a good man to have around and he’d given me some useful tips. He didn’t often come to the office so it was quite an occasion. He sat gingerly in the chair across from me and smiled shyly at Stella.

  I poured him a generous slug. He sat back in the chair, squinted at the rich yellow liquid against the light spilling in at the window, like he suspected I’d watered it while he wasn’t looking. A satisfied expression spread across his face as he got it down him.

  ‘Here’s to crime,’ he said.

  The empty glass was back on the desk in front of me in an amazingly short time. I filled it again. He drank it neat and put the glass down reluctantly. He looked at me expectantly. I slid the bottle across to him.

  ‘Help yourself,’ I said. ‘It’ll save time.’

  He smiled slowly and settled back in his chair. He let the bottle stand.

  I took a sip at my glass. It wasn’t bad stuff.

  ‘So you got a problem,’ I said.

  Charlie’s smile widened about two millimetres.

  ‘Not us,’ he said. ‘But this kid might have. Seems like her uncle died and she decided to have him refrigerated and resurrected around the Year 2,000.’

  I passed him my package of cigarettes. ‘You been reading too much Ray Bradbury,’ I told him.

  Charlie blinked at me reproachfully.

  ‘Where you been all winter?’ he said.

  ‘You mean this is on the level?’ I said.

  Charlie nodded. ‘It’s the latest thing,’ he said. ‘You’d better mug this up if you’re going to take the case.’

  I took a long, cool look at Stella over Charlie’s shoulder. She got out a gold compact rather too ostentatiously and started to powder her nose.

  ‘O.K., Charlie,’ I said at last. ‘I’m listening. I got an open mind.’

  ‘You’ll need one without sides for this busine
ss,’ Charlie said. ‘Trouble is, this idea’s either the biggest break-through since some guy invented the safety-pin, or the greatest racket since Capone. In the case of Eternity Inc., we ain’t decided yet. And we ain’t got time to investigate. We’d need a staff of two hundred to follow up every complaint like this. That’s where you come in.’

  ‘That’s what I’m here for,’ I said.

  *

  ‘What’s this girl’s name?’ I said.

  Charlie leaned back in his seat and focussed his eyes on the ceiling. He looked so comfortable I figured he was set for the day.

  ‘Merna Freeman,’ he said. ‘Nice little slip of a thing. She first came in to see me last week. I was out so she went away. She came back again yesterday. I told her it was really a Fraud Squad case; that is, if they could prove anything. Like I said we got no time. First I’d heard of Sunset Gardens.’

  I could hear Stella’s pencil scratching over the paper.

  ‘Take it slowly, Charlie,’ I said. ‘And from the beginning.’

  Charlie turned sleepy eyes to me. He reached out a lazy hand for the bourbon bottle. It was the only time he’d refilled since the start of the conversation and that was more than half an hour ago. He measured himself out a small tot and put it down carefully on the desk in front of him.

  ‘You’d better put this under lock and key,’ he said at last. ‘Else I shan’t make it back to the office.’

  He grinned and then his face went serious again.

  ‘You’d best have a talk with this kid. Mike. Straighten her out a little. From what I can see her uncle died a month or two back. According to the girl he wasn’t exactly short of the folding stuff. The name of Jenson P. Whipfuddle III mean anything to you?’

  I shook my head. ‘I haven’t been down to the Yacht Club lately.’

  Charlie gave me a pained look. ‘This ain’t a boat,’ he said, ‘it’s a person.’

  ‘You could have fooled me,’ I said. Stella coughed discreetly in the background.

  ‘He’s in everything from canning to toilet paper,’ said Charlie. ‘Leastways, he was. He’s in coffins right now.’

  ‘So this Jenson F. Dillpickle is her uncle,’ I said. ‘Where does that get us?’

  ‘Whipfuddle,’ Charlie corrected me patiently. ‘He’s the party that died. According to his will he was to be taken care of by these people, Eternity Inc., who run the Sunset Gardens up near Brea Canyon.’

  ‘What good would that do him?’ I asked.

  Charlie scratched his head. ‘Now you’ve asked me something,’ he said. ‘They were supposed to refrigerate him so that he’d be in top condition come Resurrection Day. It’s the latest thing, they tell me.’

  I sat back at the desk and fished for my package of cigarettes.

  ‘We’re in deep waters, Watson,’ I said. ‘Cut it down to words of one size, Charlie. I’m a little short on capacity for grasping the higher metaphysics this morning.’

  Stella made a moue. ‘My, look who’s talking?’ she told the filing cabinet.

  Charlie assumed the look of a senior wrangler explaining the twice-two equation to the dullest member of the class.

  ‘Save time if you read this up,’ he said. ‘Lots of firms now refrigerate the dear departed. They guarantee to keep them in good condition till the Year Dot. By that time someone’s supposed to come up with the Elixir of Eternal Life. When a cure’s been found for what they died of, they can be restored to the world. Leastways, that’s the idea.’

  ‘Is this technically possible?’ I asked.

  Charlie shrugged. ‘How would I know?’ he said. ‘All I hear is people are taking it seriously. It’s getting to be big business.’

  ‘So is selling pieces of the moon,’ I said.

  I exhaled the smoke and fumigated an early bluebottle who had figured summer might be coming on a corner of my desk.

  ‘What’s all this cost?’ I asked Charlie.

  He twisted the corner of his mouth. I figured he might get a smile out of the expression if he worked at it.

  ‘Now that’s a good question. Big down payment. The rest in instalments. Regular income for a lifetime if a young daughter, say, keeps a refrigeration unit going on her old lady.’

  I looked over towards the window, where the shadows of the traffic made fretwork patterns on the pavement.

  ‘For as long as it takes,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘What a sweet racket. Thanks, Charlie. This sounds like my sort of party.’

  When Charlie had gone I sat on smoking and looking at the blotter in front of me.

  ‘You’d better dig out what you can on Eternity Inc. and the Sunset Gardens,’ I told Stella.

  Charlie had asked the girl to call in and see me that afternoon. I couldn’t bank on her coming but at least I could mug up on the background. It was the sort of set-up I would enjoy raking over even without a client.

  There was a click as Stella fussed with a filing cabinet. She slammed shut the steel door and laid down a cardboard folder on the desk. It was full of newspaper cuttings.

  ‘I thought I had something under file,’ she said. She couldn’t keep the smugness out of her voice.

  I flipped over the material. The name of Jenson P. Whipfuddle III leapt at me out of the headlines. He was launching an oil tanker in the first clipping I looked at.

  Suddenly I felt I might be getting in more trouble than I needed this sharp March morning. Stella skipped out as I nipped with thumb and forefinger at her most provocative areas.

  ‘We’ll leave the whole thing on ice,’ I said. ‘I’ll take you out for lunch.’

  ‘Hot soup and roast,’ said Stella. ‘I’m all off frozen food.’

  She was still laughing as we went on out.

  Chapter Two - Uncle on Ice

  It was around three in the afternoon when the phone buzzed softly. Stella had gone out for half an hour to do some shopping. I lifted the receiver.

  ‘Faraday Investigations?’ The voice sounded muffled. You put a handkerchief over the mouthpiece to disguise the voice. I admitted it’

  ‘I want Faraday himself,’ said the voice.

  ‘Speaking,’ I said.

  There was a long silence. I could almost hear someone thinking hard on the other end.

  ‘You got a girl coming to see you presently,’ the voice went on. ‘If you know what’s good you’ll tell her to keep on walking.’

  ‘Dear me,’ I said. ‘I do mix with some tough characters in this business.’

  Something like a snarl came over the phone. ‘This isn’t a joke, peeper. Arms can get broke, legs can get broke … ’

  ‘Leave your name and address with my secretary,’ I advised him. ‘Or better still, come on in to the office, and we’ll split a beer over it.’

  I slammed the phone down before he could speak again. I got up from the desk feeling that I was two points to the good. The phone buzzed again as I got to the window. I let it ring. About two blocks down from my office building was a drug store. They had a public phone booth there. Just out of curiosity I kept my eye on it. It was almost opposite so I had a clear view. The phone kept on ringing. Then it stopped. A thickset man wearing a white belted raincoat came out of the store in a hurry. He got into a scarlet Oldsmobile parked in front. He meshed his gears twice he was in such a hurry to get away from the neighbourhood. I grinned. Definitely an amateur. I went back to the desk and sat down. I didn’t have long to wait.

  The door of the outer office clicked a short while later. I went over and opened the communicating door. A girl was sitting just inside. She got up with a flushed look on her face.

  ‘Miss Freeman I presume?’ I said.

  She smiled nervously and held out her hand. It was very small and cool. ‘Mr Faraday? Mr Snagge sent me.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Come on in.’

  She was only a small girl but the way she was put together added up to make bells start ringing somewhere. She wasn’t the sort of girl I expected to see in my office in March. Not at any ti
me of year come to that. Apart from Stella, of course. I always excepted Stella. She had a face to go with the hands and body. Her hair was fair and styled back in long, straight swathes that framed her face. The teeth were very white under full lips; they didn’t quite meet in the middle. The tiny gap would have been a flaw in anyone else but not in her. It only threw the rest of her beauty into high relief.

  She wore a cream tailored suit with a small gold clip on the lapel; the effect was plain, cool and distinctive.

  The neat crocodile-skin handbag was all of a piece with the rest of her get-up. It had class and style. I guessed that some of uncle’s money had rubbed off on to her. She sat down in the chair opposite my desk with a shirring of nylons that sounded twice as loud as it should have. She shook her head when I offered her a cigarette. I lit one myself and studied her face as I drew on it. It didn’t tell me anything except that she was one of the loveliest things I had ever seen. But I knew that anyway, as soon as I walked through the waiting room door.

  ‘Charlie Snagge tells me you’ve got some sort of trouble,’ I said in what I hoped was an encouraging voice. I had to get started some time and the conversation would take my mind off her legs.

  ‘Not trouble, really,’ she said in her well-modulated voice. ‘I mostly need some good advice.’

  ‘You’ve come to the right shop,’ I said.

  She shifted her position and studied the ends of her finger nails. ‘What do you know about my uncle, Mr Faraday?’

  ‘Only that he’s dead,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry if I missed out on my education but big business isn’t my line.’

  She smiled faintly. ‘Don’t apologise, Mr Faraday. You didn’t miss much. My uncle was an unpleasant man.’

  There didn’t seem much point in replying to that.

  ‘You’ve heard of the Sunset Gardens, I take it?’ she asked then.

  ‘Not till today,’ I said. ‘The whole set-up sounds pretty fantastic to me.’

  Merna Freeman smiled again. All the nervousness had gone out of her manner.