Hard Case Crime: Shooting Star & Spiderweb (29 page)

I was going to hell.

A tall young man with wavy hair and a professionally precise mustache stared at a tall young man with wavy hair and a professionally precise mustache who stared at a tall young man with wavy hair and a professionally precise mustache who—

But you get the idea.

It went on that way, endlessly. The man wearing the soft, sand-colored suit, the white shirt and the solid black knit tie gazed at himself in each of the eight mirror surfaces covering the octagonal office walls.

This octagonal inner office was as big as a barn, with a high ceiling and recessed lighting. The degree of brightness was controlled by a knee-switch behind the desk. That desk and its companion chair, set in the center of the room, constituted the only visible furniture. The rest was all space, light and mirrors—mirrors multiplying the presence and personality of Judson Roberts. Mirrors that dazzled and confused the client.

The mirrors caused self-consciousness and self-hypnosis, too. Of course I wasn’t susceptible any more. Three months here had made me acquainted with the layout, and with the man in the mirror whom I had become: Judson Roberts.

It had cost Professor Hermann a lot to set up
Y-O-U
— “Your Opportunities, Unlimited.” There was a big nut in the overhead, too, but already it was starting to come back.

I sat behind the desk and studied myself in those mirrors. Mr. Judson Roberts smiled back at me from all over the room. Well, why shouldn’t he smile?

The book was selling through direct mail, the ads were pulling, there was a big play for the weekly lectures at the hotel, the appointments poured in regularly. Strangers kept calling, mail arrived. And Judson Roberts was taking the suckers over the jumps, just as the Professor had predicted.

I didn’t resent the Professor any more, either. He was right, and our successful operation proved it. The Lorna Lewis mess was forgotten—I never saw her any more. For that matter, I saw less and less of the Professor these days. As he had promised, he got me started and then left me alone. He handled his office and I handled mine.

Of course he’d assigned little Sid Rogers to help steer me over the hard spots—and keep an eye on me, too, I suppose. Rogers even took an upstairs room in the new house I’d rented over on New Hampshire near Wilshire. But he didn’t intrude on my privacy, and his aid was welcome at the office.

He briefed May, our secretary. He ghosted my weekly lectures. He checked the appointments, sized up clients, studied the backgrounds of potential prospects. He offered me sensible advice.

“Always dress conservatively...flash is out. This isn’t the boardwalk. Remember to keep your voice soft, low...make it just a little hard for them to hear you...they’ll have to concentrate then, and that’s half the battle. Never turn your back on a sucker. Don’t give him a second to think about anything else.”

Tricks, gimmicks, angles. Always something to learn, something to remember, something to try out.

At first I’d been afraid, wondering if the bluff would work. Now I wondered why I’d ever wondered. The Professor was right: the seeker was always a sucker. And I wasn’t finding it difficult to keep up a front any more. The face smiling back at me from the mirrors was different, somehow. It wasn’t only that I wore a new mustache; I wore a new look of confidence. I looked like Judson Roberts now, I felt like Judson Roberts, I
was
Judson Roberts.

The phone rang. I lifted the receiver from the concealed alcove inside the round desk. May’s voice was crisply confident. That meant business was in the office.

“Mr. Roberts? A Mr. Caldwell to see you. He wishes an appointment.”

“Wishes” was a code word. It meant big money. “Appointment” was another code word. It meant a ten- or fifteen-minute stall, until Rogers could finish checking on the client.

“Right,” I said, softly. “Tell Mr. Rogers to give me what he can. I’ll buzz you when I’m ready. Meanwhile, give Caldwell the consultation routine.”

That meant May would phone the Professor’s office and ask for Doctor Altschuler. There would be a discussion of psychiatric treatment over the phone. “Mr. Roberts advises— Mr. Roberts recommends that the patient—Mr. Roberts finds indications of—” All for the benefit of the poor mark fidgeting in the handsome but contrivedly uncomfortable chair in the outer office.

I knew what Rogers was doing, too. He was working on Caldwell’s name, out of the little office down the hall from me. He and the girl we hired to play “nurse” were tracking down Caldwell’s history with the aid of three telephones and an entire wall-cabinet full of city directories, phone books, detailed city and county street maps. They were looking for biographical sketches in
Who’s Who,
in business directories, fraternal publications, school annuals. They were phoning for credit ratings, tracing leads to newspaper morgues. They were checking cross-indexed files furnished by the Professor’s friends in similar rackets. And they would get results, fast. Sometimes fairly spectacular results.

Given a little luck, Rogers could work even without a sucker’s name. All he needed was a glimpse of the license plate of the car he drove. In fifteen minutes, working according to plan and system, he could come up with name, address, occupation, age, financial status...wife’s name, names and ages of children, names of parents and close relatives...present residence and previous residences for the past ten years. In addition there were the little convincing touches: hobbies and club memberships, school background and nickname, and a fairly detailed description of his home and its landmarks. From this it was often easy to guess the character and present problems of the sucker. Yes, Rogers was a good man and he had a good system.

He came in through the concealed entrance behind the rear-wall mirror and laid the typewritten cards on my desk.

“Looks like we’ve got a live one,” he said. “Airline corporation counsel—inherited money, too. But it’s all down here.”

“Thanks, Sid. You’re a fast worker.”

“Good luck.”

He vanished. I read the
dossier
very carefully. Then I read it again. I looked at my watch. Fourteen minutes since May had called. Time enough.

I put the cards down next to the phone, picked up the receiver and buzzed May.

“Send him in,” I said. I leaned back and pressed the light switch. The mirrors seemed to rise out of the walls, glaring and pressing forward.

The door opened and Edgar Clinton Caldwell stepped into the room.

Now there are three ways to use the information I’d just received from Sid Rogers. The first would be to put on the old mystic act—telepathic impressions. It works well with women and with swishes. The second method is the arch, inscrutable approach: “Yes, we have our own sources of information, you know.” That’s for the wise guys, the loud blusterers.

Looking at Edgar Caldwell, I decided to try the third routine.

He stood there, fat and flustered under the blinding light, gazing at his rumpled reflection in the mirror. He had been sweating, and his coat hung soggily from broad, stooped shoulders. The lower button was open, revealing a wrinkled white triangle with a broad base over a protruding stomach. His gray hair was plastered back over a high, ruddy forehead. He was fat and he was also big—all his features seemed a little larger than life-size.

I could tell he was frightened, but he didn’t know I could tell. He thought he was looking fierce. His eyes glowered. His chin—and its accessory folds—thrust forward aggressively. But I was watching his hands; the large, red, knob-knuckled hands, the hands that clenched and unclenched in unconscious, uncontrolled apprehension. Those hands were looking for something to hang onto in a room of emptiness. Those hands wanted to smash out at the mirrors that multiplied and distorted their reflections. Those hands wanted to come up, cover the eyes and shut out the glare of light, shut out the spectacle of my complacency. But the hands were powerless.

The hands could not grasp. The hands could not destroy. The hands could not conceal.

I looked at Caldwell’s hands and decided on the third approach. I’d increase his fright, then reassure him.

“You are Edgar Clinton Caldwell?”
Soft voice, but phrase the question as though the man is on trial.

“Yes. Mr. Roberts?”

Good. His voice trembled a little on my name. Got him.

“I am Judson Roberts. Won’t you come in?”

Get him to cross the room. Make him sweat and falter as he tries not to watch himself in all those mirrors. He’ll notice everything he’s tried to hide from others and himself: the way he looks in profile, the unflattering angles of his head, his poor posture, his ridiculous waddling butt sticking up from behind. Get him to cross the room and he’s licked before he starts.

“Trick layout you got here.”

Start the next gambit. Frank, open smile. Look up. Let him feel reassured, just for a moment.

“It’s meant to impress the credulous. I must apologize to you, sir. There’s no need of any further stage effects.”

I dimmed the lights. He blinked his relief, standing there and waiting for me to confide in him.

Third gambit, now.

I reached into the desk recess and drew out the typed notes. I held them out to him.

“Here, Mr. Caldwell—I’m going to ask you a small favor before we go any further. Will you please verify the accuracy of these statements?”

He took the cards and I watched them disappear in the red folds of his huge hands. I watched him read, watched his eyes dilate, watched the eyebrows as they tried to climb his forehead and hide in his hair.

“What the—where the devil did you get all this dope?”

Smile. Let it hit him, let it sink in. Wait until he’s sold.

“I could make it sound mysterious, Mr. Caldwell, but the whole thing is really quite simple. I have a trained research staff, you know. The moment your name was announced, they went to work in the files. Naturally, a man in your position has left his mark in many places: newspapers, trade publications, directories. Our references yielded this preliminary data. Undoubtedly a more comprehensive checkup would afford us much more information on your background and position.

“Now the reason for all this is obvious to you, Mr. Cald-well. I am a professional psychological consultant, and as such I am a businessman. I conduct my affairs on a business basis, just as you do. Naturally, it is helpful for me to know as much as possible about a client before I see him, just as you try to find out what you can about a prospect. I’m sure that you also have your sources, Mr. Caldwell.”

Watch him grin. He isn’t frightened now. He thinks you’re taking him into your confidence. He’s flattered. You wouldn’t pull any tricks on him. He can see that because you’ve sized him up as an equal. In a word, the poor fish is hooked.

“I might as well be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Caldwell. Our relationship to come will demand such frankness, mutual frankness. Don’t you agree?”

He nodded. I wanted to keep him nodding from now on.

Build up a dependency. The patient and analyst relationship. Keep it in that stage. Flatter him with questions, inquire after every detail, endlessly. Everyone wants to talk about himself. That’s Y-O-U, the whole secret of it. Complete catharsis.

“And now, Mr. Caldwell, let’s talk about you and your problems. You have a problem, don’t you, Mr. Caldwell?”

He had a problem, all right. And now, he was ready to tell me. I listened, but I thought of other things. Problems. They all have problems. Every one is different, and they’re all the same. Always a common denominator—the basic fear.

The rabbity little man, Mason, who came on Thursday afternoons. He was afraid of his homosexuality. Mrs. Finch, Mondays and Fridays by appointment in her home, feared what happened to her when she tried stopping or cutting down on her dosage of luminol. Maxwell Solomon, very confidential (“apt to call you anytime I need you”), attempted to conceal in pyrophobia his dread of divine retribution for saving himself rather than his wife and child in the crash of their private plane. Miss Eudalie Vinyer was afraid of me because I was all men and all men were her father and at thirteen she had been too young to understand what her father was doing with that colored woman. Baker feared his boss, Klotscher feared God, Mrs. Annixter feared cancer, which was a polite term for syphilis, which was a polite term for intercourse, which was a polite term for the Sin Against the Holy Ghost, which was a polite term for the fact that she really enjoyed it. By a strange coincidence, Mr. Annixter was a patient too, and he feared—Mrs. Annixter.

It was all very simple, and all very complicated. Some of them knew and some of them didn’t know what was wrong. Some of them could be told and some of them didn’t want to be told. Some of them needed a doctor, some a psychiatrist, some a lawyer, some a priest, some an executioner. But all of them needed me. They needed an audience, a father confessor, a child, a mother, a lover, to listen and understand and flatter and cajole and condone.

They needed Y-O-U.

Detail. Endless detail. They wanted to tell everything. They wanted every test I could give them—coordination, color determination, mnemonics, word-association and free-fantasy sessions, work with charts, slides, ink blots and anything else I could think up. I would send them to a pal of ours, Dr. Sylvestro, for a complete preliminary physical checkup, and they loved that too.

That was the answer. They feared and they wanted love. Love in the form of interest, attention, an affirmation of their own self-importance. Y-O-U gave it to them. For Y-O-U, with all the metaphysical and practical psychology hokum boiled away, was simply an extension of the old bromides, “Know thyself” and “Be yourself.” The whole routine was built up to flatter the individual, make him think about himself. There were touches of the “charm school” and “expand your personality” routines here: we sent people to beauty parlors and plastic surgeons and dress designers and dancing schools. But in the end, we took them—to the cleaners.