The Devil's Mirror (14 page)

‘You think I don’t read
Publishers Weekly
and
Variety
and
The Hollywood Reporter
?’ screamed The Pusher. ‘One million skins is exactly what he got!’

‘One million skins,’ said Sid, ‘is what he
grossed.
The Government took most of that. Of course, my client didn’t mind too much, because he’s done very well on his other books, and I haven’t done so bad myself since I
did
collect commission on those... all of which has nothing whatever to do with you. So long, Mr P. My client has no business to conduct with you. Why don’t you try dragging the Department of Internal Revenue to damnation? It would make you an awful lot of friends.’

At last report, The Pusher was working on that, along with several other deals, through his newly authorised representative, Sidney K. Armstrong. Nowadays, he never makes a move without his agent.

Alan sold himself to the Devil for a mirror.

The moment the contract was signed, Alan’s front doorbell rang and the Devil slipped out the back. When Alan answered the ringing, two thick-thewed delivery men carried into his house a large flat oval shape wrapped in brown paper. Alan instructed them to bring it into his study and lean it against the south wall. After they left, he locked himself into the study, drew the blinds, and tore the paper off his acquisition.

The oval mirror was as tall as Alan, of good quality glass set in an ormolu frame. It was quite handsome. Alan was pleased.

But the image that stared back at him from the glass was obviously displeased. It was merely himself, dressed exactly as the real Alan, in shirtsleeves and pearl-grey slacks, but the expression on the face was angry and the writhing mouth spat three silent syllables, the last of which (Alan deduced from the placement of upper teeth on lower lip) began with an ‘f’.

Alan grew furious and blurted out: ‘It’s a fraud!’

The image in the glass turned its back to Alan and strode out of sight.

Alan, perplexed and vexed, turned away from the mirror and left the room.

Having carefully relocked the door to his study, Alan now paced the floor outside that room. His furrowed face hardened into a mask of bitterness as the truth became clear.

He had requested, for his private use, a magic glass in which he could see the future. The Devil had given him precisely that.

What Alan had
meant
was a glass that would foretell all future events, like the crystal ball of fable, magazine cartoon, and cliché.

Of what conceivable earthly or, for that matter, unearthly value was a mirror that did no more than reflect an image
five seconds
ahead of time?

If the reflection were twenty-four hours in the future, or even twelve, he could put it to some use; hold up newspapers to the mirror, read the next day’s racing results and stock market listings. He could win wagers on elections, predict earthquakes and other disasters, beat Broadway critics to the punch, become famous as a prophet, make a lot of money, be praised and feared and sought after.

But five seconds?

Alan howled with rage. The stinking goat had tricked him?

He did not sleep all night. He paced, cursed, smoked cigarettes, drank whiskey, drank coffee, scribbled thoughts on paper, tore up the paper in frustration, pounded his head with his fists, formed and rejected a dozen ideas, two dozen, a hundred. None of them were any good. He could do
nothing
with those absurd five seconds. The mirror was utterly worthless.

As the dawn began to reach hesitantly into his house, he fell into a sleep of total exhaustion. Five hours later he awoke, much refreshed, with a new idea in his head. That evening, he would have cause to wonder who had put it there.

He made several telephone calls, inviting a variety of people to cocktails in the afternoon. He then phoned a modish caterer, to order liquor and exotic hors-d’oeuvres.

Next, he carried the mirror out of the study and into the living room, where he hung it in a conspicuous place.

Alan’s idea was simple, if not brilliant. The mirror would be made useful to him, after all. Not as directly as he had hoped, but indirectly. It would become a conversation piece. It would fascinate all sorts of people. Among his invited guests were a nationally-syndicated gossip columnist, several show people of all sexes, tattle-tales of all ages, beauteous if vacuous ladies of the beau monde, a nice sampling of that worthless world Alan despised and admired.

These creatures would be impressed and awed by his mirror. They would squeal and gibber and ask how the trick was done. They would question him about the mirror’s origins; he would be deliciously cryptic, hinting at other dark, nameless forces at his beck and call. Word would spread, by mouth and print, about the mysterious Cagliostro in their midst. He would be lionised, feted, adulated. His lightest statement would carry weight. He would be a frequent guest on television talk shows, entering the homes of millions of people. He would be written up in magazines of huge circulation. His photo would appear everywhere. Publishers would offer him gigantic sums for his ghost-written autobiography. He would be in great demand on the lecture circuit, at stunning fees. He would be considered a sage, and his advice on all matters would urgently be sought. He would be deemed delightfully dangerous, and women would fall at his presumably cloven feet, yearning to learn the arcane amatory techniques of which surely he was a master. He would become a legend in his own time, for in our epoch, Alan well knew, it is not necessary to be gifted or accomplished in order to attain legendary status. And perhaps, some distant day, when he was very old, he might sell the mirror for a vast amount of money.

It would not be a bad life, he told himself, as he showered and prepared for the cocktail party.

His guests began to arrive at about six, and everything went as he’d wished. The mirror was a great success, and so was he. He saw the hot glitter in their eyes, heard their voices coarsen with a kind of lust, filled his grateful lungs with the acrid perfume of glamour (didn’t ‘glamour’ have a dazzling original meaning?—he’d have to look it up in the Unabridged in the morning).

All but a few of his guests were remarkably ugly, but it was a fashionable ugliness that passed for beauty in certain strata of society, and most of them were no longer young, although they strove to present the appearance of youth, aided by dyes, diets, corsets, injections, surgery, dentistry. One person of indeterminate age—Alan was fairly sure it was a woman—had hair bleached white as the well-known sepulchre and skin the texture of cold gravy. Several of the men wore hair not their own. Costly gems, throbbing with inner fire, pulsated on many a turkey neck and talon.

They cavorted before the glass like performing apes. They grinned, frowned, rolled their eyes, stuck out their tongues. Some made obscene gestures.

When the guests reluctantly left, one of them was persuaded to stay a little longer. She was beautiful, haughty, confident; her face was on the cover of every fashion magazine; she had starred in a chic movie—and yet Alan possessed her mere minutes after the last of the others had departed. It happened on the soft carpet in front of his marvellous, his glamorous’ mirror (an interesting experience, that: he told himself he might try placing the glass on the ceiling over his bed some time, just as an experiment).

He dismissed her somewhat later, after a cosy tête-à-tête supper, and only after solemnly promising he would call her the next day.

Alone, Alan stood in front of the mirror, intensely pleased with himself. His reflection appeared to be pleased, too. Why not? The Alan of five seconds from now would be just as content as the Alan of now. He had won. In stories, the Devil always wins by cleverly wording the contract and then sticking literally and precisely to that wording—observing the letter of it, but violating the spirit, for the Devil has a brilliant legal mind, and is The Father of Lawyers. By such a device he had triumphed over Alan—temporarily. But Alan had turned the tables on him by making those five useless seconds useful. He had traded on human curiosity, cashed in on human gullibility, much in the manner of the Devil himself. He had beaten the Devil at his own game. He had bested him. Alan’s image smiled broadly, and five seconds later, Alan did likewise.

A few moments after that, however, there were
two
figures in the mirror. The Devil’s image appeared behind Alan’s, and tapped Alan’s reflection on the shoulder.

The real Alan, though he’d felt nothing, quickly whirled around—but it was all right, there was no one behind him, he was alone.

He immediately turned back to the mirror. The images of both the Devil
and Alan
had vanished from the glass. It reflected an
empty room.

Icy sweat covered him in an instant as he recalled a condition of the contract: the mirror was ‘
for his private use
’. But Alan had put it on display, shown it to many others. He had violated the contract. The Devil was therefore entitled to... foreclose.

Alan smelled a goat-stink. He felt somebody tap him on the shoulder.

Tonite me & Hank got ourselfs another job to do for old Maggie. Some how i dont have the heart for it but there is $5000 for the 2 of us. Pretty good bread even tho $2500 dont go very far these days. Still it all adds up, 7 jobs last month, but only 3 of them for Maggie. Maggie pays best but what the hell it is some one elses money & i bet there is a lot more in it for Maggie than 5 gees.

We ought to charge more from now on i think. The job is getting tougher. When we first started out it was a snap. But now we got an awful lot of compatition. A lot of amatures are getting in on the act, doing an odd job here & there for peanuts, $200 or $300, to support there habit. Punks. They do a messy job too, some times they screw it up so bad it is no good at all. They give the rest of us a bad name.

A few years ago we had a real scare. There was some talk in the papers & on the t.v. about how they was going to start up this farm in Florida or some place and breed gorrilas or apes just for this purpose. That would have put us out of business. But the whole thing fell threw for some reason. Hank says the gorrilas did not like the idea but he is all ways making with the jokes. I think maybe they found out gorrilas are no good for it of maybe the S.P.C.A. give them some static. What ever it was it sure worked out great for us but we did have a narrow squeek.

Then there is the fuzz. O they dont bother us too much, they know we are doing usefull work, why this job tonite Maggie says is for the police comisioner, but the fuzz half to make a few arrests just to look kosher so we got to be careful & watch our step.

Like last month. We was on a job, not for Maggie, for another one, and there we were in the alley just finishing up and we see these lights and it is a god dam squad car all most on top of us. Boy did we split. We had to leave the stiff where he was, just laying there & we could not deliver so we lost the fee. That is bad because word gets out that you are not dependable & the next thing you know you are threw.

One time it was funny. It was the time when Hank took sick & we had this job to do for Maggie so i had to do it myself. Well you better believe it was no picnic. There i was on the prowl for 2 hours & no luck when i see this square coming down the pike, young, in the pink, & no one else in sight. So I circle around behind him but he must have heard me & he turned around & who do you think it is but Red’s kid brother Jack & it turns out that HE has been tailing ME for a hit. So we laugh & say good luck & split, but i duck threw the alley & catch up with him around the corner & before he knows what is happening i cool him. It is too bad it was Red’s brother but hell i was out 2 hours & it was getting close to deadline.

Some times i think i am getting too old for this kind of work. It is not like the old days when you did a contract & that was that. Like falling off a log. Nothing to it. Now you half to treat them like they was a crate of eggs or some thing & you half to dump them into the car & get them to the client in just a few minutes while they is still warm or it is no good. If the delivery is too late, like if you run into trouble, you dont get paid & there you are with a stiff on your hands & Maggie gets sore.

Of course his name is not really Maggie, me & Hank just call him that behind his back. His name is Maguire, Dr Quentin Maguire M.D. He dont call us by our names either, he calls us Burke & Hare. One time i ask him what the hell does he mean Burke & Hare. So he kind of laughs & says that a long time ago in England or some place it was against the law to cut up stiffs to study them so the medics hired guys to dig them up from the cemetary, & when there was not enough burials these guys used to knock off live ones to collect there fee & the best of these guys was a team name of Burke & Hare. So Hank says well thats us all right, best in the west.

Nowadays naturly it is no good to dig up the ones that are planted in the boneyard, they got to be fresh. One time i ask old Maggie why we half to bring the whole stiff to him, why cant we just bring him the heart, that is all he wants anyhow. But he says he has to do it himself, it is a delacate operation he says.

I bet those delacate operations net him 20 gees a piece. At; least. Maybe 25, & tax free. He is not dum enough to declair the loot he takes in for these special jobs he handles for the rich customers. It is strictly a cash business. Some fat cat is fixing to croak from a bum ticker & so he sends for old Maggie & he is home free. Gets himself a nice new young heart & is good for 20 more years. He is happy, Maggie is happy, & me & Hank is happy. Of course it is not so hot for the stiff.

Maggie dont like it when we call them stiffs. He likes to call them doners’ That dont make them any less stiff Hank says. But old Maggie he is kind of stuck up & says he is a benafacter of mankind & all that. He talks about his proffesional pride. He is even got a picture on the wall of another dr., name of Bernard or some thing, he says did the first of these delacate operations way back in 67. Well maybe you are a benafacter but i wonder what the doners would say about that. Hank tells him. It is only one of his jokes but Maggie dont laugh.