The Dark Mirror Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One – Mr. Horvis

  Chapter Two – Dan Tucker

  Chapter Three – Mrs. Standish

  Chapter Four – Sherry Johnson

  Chapter Five – Captain Jacoby

  Chapter Six – Mandy Mellow

  Chapter Seven – Carol Channing

  Chapter Eight – Paul Mellow

  Chapter Nine – Bert Dexter

  Chapter Ten – Uncle Tom

  Chapter Eleven – Gregory

  Chapter Twelve – Mr. Stich

  Issuing classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!

  For private eye Mike Faraday it was just another routine case ... until his client, an antiques dealer named Horvis, was shot dead right before his eyes. Then Mike found himself involved in a web of intrigue and murder that eventually became all too personal. Along the way he found an ally in Police Chief Dan Tucker, the cop with a penchant for green apples. But there were enemies, too; like MacNamara, the sour-faced police surgeon, and the sadistic Captain Jacoby. Oh yeah ... and the hitmen who were responsible for all the killings that followed.

  MIKE FARADAY 1: THE DARK MIRROR

  First published by Robert Hale Limited in 1966

  Copyright © 1966 by Basil Copper

  First Kindle Edition: May 2014

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  Cover image © 2014 by Rob Moran

  http://robmorancomicart.blogspot.co.uk/

  The-Noir-Art-of-Rob-Moran

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editors: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Representative.

  For my wife Annie,

  With gratitude for her encouragement

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The L.A. of the story is a composite; any resemblance to an actual city is coincidental.

  B.C.

  Chapter One – Mr. Horvis

  It was hot in Jinty’s Bar, a damned sight too hot for comfort. Even the ice in my drink looked too tired to compete any more by the time it reached me. The bartender, a middle-aged ex-baseball player with cropped hair, wearing a crumpled white jacket that looked as though he’d slept in it, was visibly wilting.

  “Hot,” he said impassively as he put my drink down on a hexagonal fiber mat. A comic. He moved away, wiping invisible moisture from the bar, the way they all do. The long room was empty except for me and a fat old guy over in the corner in a pale green suit flecked with mauve, wearing a Harvard tie. He kept mopping his brilliantly polished forehead with a limp white handkerchief. He looked like a stranded fish.

  The fan in the ceiling seemed almost to warm the torpid air and its shrill squeak served only to accentuate the heat. Sweat ran down inside my shirt band as I finished my drink. I sighed heavily and thought over my day so far.

  Not an auspicious start. Three bills and an insulting letter sat sourly on the mat inside the large office I shared with the operative from Gimpel’s Agency. They dealt mostly with insurance, bad debts, minor bouncing jobs. Bert Dexter, whose desk was opposite mine, was a tall, gangling Texan who seemed to hate his job. I thought most agency men looked down on my sort of work, but he had an admiring respect that not only made the shared office bearable, but allowed me to think I was in a worthwhile line of business. When he had clients I walked the block, and he reciprocated. What the hell, it halved the rent and it seemed to work.

  That morning Bert hadn’t showed up for one reason or other. I’d soon read the bills and even killing flies was beginning to lose its charm. I sat back in my old swivel chair, added to the scratch marks on my broad top desk and counted the stains on the ceiling. Stella only came in every other day when things were slack and this wasn’t her day. It wasn’t my day either. It was Monday and the morning had that stale, worn look that Mondays often have in L.A., especially in office blocks that have old and poor air-conditioning, worn carpets and elderly lift boys.

  So I wasn’t too unhappy when the phone buzzed softly round about 11 a.m. I was just about to brew myself up some coffee on the small range in the annex back of the main office and I made the desk in three seconds flat. It had been almost a month since I had my last definite assignment and I was running short of cigarette money.

  “Hello.” The voice was low and oily but with an undertone of rocks in it. “Faraday Investigations?”

  I assented smoothly, seating myself in the chair and getting out my scratch pad. Somewhere I could hear milk frying on the range in back but this was no time to attend to it.

  “I wish to be connected to the principal,” the voice went on unctuously.

  I jiggled the phone and made with the sound effects. “Faraday speaking,” I said crisply with what I hoped was a note of authority in my voice, mentally blowing myself a raspberry for my snobbery.

  “Mr. Michael Faraday?” the voice went on. This was getting monotonous. We should be on come Thanksgiving at this rate. He was off the bumf at last.

  “My name is Adrian Horvis. I wish to engage your services in a somewhat delicate matter.”

  “How delicate?” I queried, my mind adjusting itself to the prospect of eating full-time.

  There was a moment of long hesitation. I could smell the folding money clear across from where he was phoning.

  “Shall we say, too delicate to discuss fully on the phone, Mr. Faraday.”

  His voice had a definite edge to it. I sat back and waited for him to speak again. I scratched my instep with my pencil where it itched beneath my thin sock and watched a spider tracing fancy patterns on the edge of the sun blind. From the street a car back-fired and a motor scooter, like an agitated gnat, went fretting down the boulevard. My caller was speaking again.

  “Might I know what your fees would be, Mr. Faraday? Full-time, that is.”

  I told him. The name was beginning to click with me now and I upped the rate by twenty-five per cent. As we talked I leafed through the L.A. Business Directory. There was a short puff of indrawn breath when I named the fee and another silence. I was beginning to get irritated and the conversation was boring me.

  “Your fees come high, Mr. Faraday.”

  “No one’s twisting your arm,” I told him. “I work on results. No joy, no fee, other than nominal out-of-pocket expenses.”

  Horvis brightened, as far as a voice like his could.

  “Eminently reasonable, Mr. Faraday. I think we can take it as settled, then.”

  “Not so fast,” I said. “Let’s quit horsing around. I haven’t said I’ll take the job yet. I shall have to know quite a bit more than I know now, and I’m told the city phone rates are going up in the fall. It’s going to be pretty cold in this office with all that snow around.”

  He almost laughed at this. “Tut-tut, Mr. Faraday. Please don’t be impatient. I would like you to meet me to discuss the nature of my business. But I can say that it is connected with the Braganza affair....”

  The rest of his sentence fell with a thud into the air. I took a moment or two to register, then I had it.

  “You mean the guy that got his ass all shot to pieces over on Sunset Canyon?” I asked.

  “Picturesquely put, Mr. Faraday,” Horvis said dryly. “But substantially correct in outline. My interest in this matter is most intimate, I can assure you. And the pay
would be good— on results, of course.”

  “It would have to be on this caper,” I said.

  “Would five hundred suit you as a small retainer? And there would be more to follow.”

  It would and it was. I made up my mind on the spot.

  “Why did you contact me in particular?”

  A dry chuckle. “I got your name from Charlie Snagge. He said you were a good man.”

  Things began to add up. I had worked with Charlie Snagge out of the County Sheriff’s Office a half dozen years before and he was a good man too.

  “All right, Mr. Horvis,” I said more cheerfully. “I’ll be by around half past three this afternoon, if that will suit you.”

  “Admirable,” he said. “This is in strictest confidence, of course.”

  I took down his address on my pad, thanked him and hung up. When I had mopped up the mess in the annex I put some fresh coffee on to brew and considered just what I knew. That didn’t take long so I rang Charlie Snagge. He knew Horvis, mainly as a witness in the Braganza shooting. He seemed reliable enough; solid, respectable, wealthy. It appeared he had a business appointment with the dead man, but he never showed up.

  When I had thanked Charlie and gone back to my coffee, the room seemed twice as bright, the pile on the carpet fresh and unworn and even the spider seemed to be benevolent as he jiggled in the dusty sunlight. It was now around noon and I had a little checking to do. I read Horvis’s address again; 2168 Avocado Boulevard. It appeared to be over to the north of town, about a twelve-mile drive into the hills. I turned back to the commercial directory; Horvis, Adrian. Fine art dealer and antiquarian. It gave a swank address on one of the smartest boulevards in the business section.

  I decided to have a look over there on my way to lunch. I had an idea Horvis had phoned from home and I wanted to see what sort of lay-out he had. I put in a call to Stella and asked her to drop by around six. It looked like being a busy day, what with one thing and another. I found myself whistling as I went down the hall.

  ii

  My five-year-old powder blue Buick with the tan hide upholstery positively sparkled in the sun, despite the thick white dust that coated it and the negro attendant on the parking lot risked a heavy rupture as he rushed to fling open the door for me. I drove west into the swanky section of town, along 23rd and Maple and presently found a hole in the traffic and sneaked in to park, risking my bumpers.

  I fumigated my upholstery with a Camel and waited. The place looked pretty good. There was a red and white striped sun-blind over the top of the window, copper-bronze grille work and fluting and plenty of cream and white stucco. Inside, the shop was dim and cool-looking with lots of Chippendale and that sort of stuff lying about.

  I went in and a bell started to play Tchaikovsky’s Fifth. A blonde woman of about forty-five materialized with a soft swishing sound. She had on steel-rimmed glasses and her bust would have graced a windjammer.

  “Yes?” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Mr. Horvis?”

  I was taking a chance here but I was pretty sure he wasn’t in.

  “I’m sorry.” The frost in the voice helped to lower the temperature. “He doesn’t come in on Mondays. Can I help?”

  “Not unless you play pool,” I said. “But you haven’t the waistline for one thing and your assets might interfere with your shooting angles.”

  I couldn’t help it. Her snooty manner had me riled up. She flushed and her face cracked abruptly.

  “Suit yourself.” She turned away disdainfully as the bell began to play the opening fanfare from Parsifal. I kept watch as she fussed around an elderly couple with Palm Beach tans. They evidently wanted a Sheraton dining set and the blonde figurehead was trying to shake them down for about three times its real value.

  I could see she was winning hands down so I went on out and drove across town. The bell played what sounded like the 1812. Whatever it was, it was derisive. At the Central Library I settled myself into one of their institutional bum-creasers and prepared for a smooth half hour with the Examiner. It took me some little while and I didn’t find much at that.

  It appeared that Cesare Braganza—an unlikely name if ever I heard one—had been shot full of holes and his breath stopped in a lonely spot in Sunset Canyon about two miles off the State Highway. The shooting was close range stuff, from the front, and Braganza, who was forty-nine and described as a dealer in precious stones, had died instantly.

  The body might never have been discovered but that a courting couple had chanced that way a couple of nights later. Captain Dan Tucker of the County Police had been assigned, but neither then nor at the hearing which followed had anything ever emerged to identify the killer or killers. Little was known of Braganza or where he came from and no relatives ever came forward.

  I sat smoking for a few minutes, puzzling this out. A pert little librarian with a high, tip-tilted bust clip-clopped out, made a move and pointed energetically to a “No Smoking” sign. I flashed her the old charm smile, putting all I could into it and she went out grinning. I carried on smoking.

  I went on through the files. There didn’t seem to be much else. Adrian Horvis had been called early in the hearing. He said Braganza had called at the shop two days before the shooting and explained he had a pair of jade figurines he wanted to sell. He was able to prove ownership through documents he carried but these were never found, neither was the brown leather valise in which he had the figures. Horvis was to have met him for a further talk but he didn’t return. I was still frowning as I went out and my concentration must have been terrific because I drew a startled look from the little librarian.

  I made her a courtly bow and went on through the swing doors. In the booth outside I got Stella at the first ring. No one had called her at home and she was going to look in at the office around five. I sat in the car and ruminated on. The sun threw back a blinding heat from the windshield and even in the open-top the air was stifling, tasting of gasoline and foliage, the way it often does in L.A.

  After ten minutes a smog started coming on and I drove over to Jinty’s. It was after two when I got outside a sandwich and about twenty to three when I left the bar. I had allowed myself nearly an hour, mainly in order to tool quietly along and get the pieces in place. Trouble was there were few pieces and those wouldn’t fit.

  I drifted off Highway 44 and turned in over the dirt road up through the brushwood hills that led to Avocado Boulevard. It wasn’t the regular way but I wanted to take in the countryside. After twenty minutes I hit the metalled road again. The garish neon of the Jazz Inn, ablaze even in the hot sunshine of early afternoon swung by and then the Buick took the corner with a crunch at the intersection of Avocado and Peartree. I was looking for something pretty high-living but I had to whistle to myself when I saw it.

  There was about three miles of patio-style whitewash wall and something like a wing of Buckingham Palace sticking up beyond a fringe of catalpa trees. Next door, in an open-style lot modeled on an English garden with closely manicured lawns, an old guy stood in a tennis court set against one of Horvis’s inner walls. He wore pink linen slacks, white sneakers and a canary yellow open-neck shirt. He evidently thought himself hot stuff.

  He was playing tennis with himself against the high wall, despite the heat, and not making a bad job of it. I drove on round the block and when I passed again, he missed a shot. He threw the racket on the ground and danced a gopak. The Buick drifted up the drive and stopped in front of a twenty feet flight of marble steps. I was sweating when I got to the top. Below me, the drive curved round a shoulder of hill and I could see a negro chauffeur hosing down one of two cars. I was impressed despite myself. Horvis himself answered my ring.

  “Lot of money in the junk business,” I said. He didn’t flinch. He was a shortish man, stoop-shouldered, wearing a white tropical suit with a pale blue polka-dot tie. He showed a lot of expensive bridgework when he smiled. It was about five millimeters wide.

  “Ha! Mr. Farada
y.” He laughed mirthlessly. “You have a great sense of humor. Come along in.”

  He waved a hand expansively and I followed him across a hall the size of a small aerodrome. Gray marble, black and white tiles, a cedar wood patio with plants that gave off a sickly perfume; there was even a small fountain playing in the middle. The carpet in the lounge which opened up off the patio was of mustard yellow. It stretched for several acres and the pile almost caught me behind the knees.

  “Quite a lay-out,” I said reluctantly, instantly regretting my heavy praise.

  Mr. Horvis’s lips opened deprecatingly and he gave a slight shrug. A snap of the fingers produced a Filipino houseboy in a white coat who glided noiselessly across the carpet as though on castors. He probably was at that.

  “A drink, Mr. Faraday?”

  I assented to a modest Scotch and allowed myself to be steered to a divan about a block and a half long. The whole place was like Xanadu in Citizen Kane and I kept waiting for the camera boom to come down out of the ceiling. But it didn’t so I said nothing and waited for Horvis to speak.

  He took his time about it, and it was some while after the drinks had appeared, again borne by the rubber-footed Filipino, before he spoke again.

  “What do you know about the Braganza shooting, Mr. Faraday ?” The oily voice was free from guile, but I never felt at ease with Mr. Horvis in the short time I knew him. So I swilled my drink around and gazed up at the ceiling before I replied.

  “Only what I read in the papers. He was shot about six times wasn’t he? Nobody knew anything about him and the marksman was never found.”

  Mr. Horvis seemed satisfied. He crossed his immaculately clad legs and looked seriously at his mustard yellow floor.

  I went on, “You had a business deal with Braganza, paid him off and your check was found on him after he was cooled. You were in the clear.”

  Mr. Horvis fingered his nose thoughtfully and commenced to pick it as though he were alone.