Five Murderers
GOLDFISH
ONE
I wasn’t doing any work that day, just catching up on my footdangling. A warm gusty breeze was blowing in at the office window and the soot from the Mansion House Hotel oil burners across the alley was rolling across the glass top of my desk in tiny particles, like pollen drifting over a vacant lot.
I was just thinking about going to lunch when Kathy Home came in.
She was a tall, seedy, sad-eyed blonde who had once been a policewoman and had lost her job when she married a cheap little check bouncer named Johnny Home, to reform him. She hadn’t reformed him, but she was waiting for him to come out so she could try again. In the meantime she ran the cigar counter at the Mansion House, and watched the grifters go by in a haze of nickel cigar smoke. And once in a while lent one of them ten dollars to get out of town. She was just that soft. She sat down and opened her big shiny bag and got out a package of cigarettes and lit one with my desk lighter. She blew a plume of smoke, wrinkled her nose at it.
«Did you ever hear of the Leander pearls?» she asked. «Gosh, that blue serge shines. You must have money in the bank, the clothes you wear.»
«No,» I said, «to both your ideas. I never heard of the Leander pearls and don’t have any money in the bank.»
«Then you’d like to make yourself a cut of twenty-five grand maybe.»
I lit one of her cigarettes. She got up and shut the window, saying: «I get enough of that hotel smell on the job.»
She sat down again, went on: «It’s nineteen years ago. They had the guy in Leavenworth fifteen and it’s four since they let him out. A big lumberman from up north named Sol Leander bought them for his wife — the pearls, I mean — just two of them. They cost two hundred grand.»
«It must have taken a hand truck to move them,» I said.
«I see you don’t know a lot about pearls,» Kathy Home said. «It’s not just size. Anyhow they’re worth more today and the twenty-five-grand reward the Reliance people put out is still good.»
«I get it,» I said. «Somebody copped them off.»
«Now you’re getting yourself some oxygen.» She dropped her cigarette into a tray and let it smoke, as ladies will. I put it out for her. «That’s what the guy was in Leavenworth for, only they never proved he got the pearls. It was a mail-car job. He got himself hidden in the car somehow and up in Wyoming he shot the clerk, cleaned out the registered mail and dropped off. He got to B.C. before he was nailed. But they didn’t get any of the stuff — not then. All they got was him. He got life.»
«If it’s going to be a long story, let’s have a drink.»
«I never drink until sundown. That way you don’t get to be a heel.»
«Tough on the Eskimos,» I said. «In the summertime anyway.»
She watched me get my little flat bottle out. Then she went on: «His name was Sype — Wally Sype. He did it alone. And he wouldn’t squawk about the stuff, not a peep. Then after fifteen long years they offered him a pardon, if he would loosen up with the loot. He gave up everything but the pearls.»
«Where did he have it?» I asked. «In his hat?»
«Listen, this ain’t just a bunch of gag lines, I’ve had a lead to those marbles.»
I shut my mouth with my hand and looked solemn.
«He said he never had the pearls and they must have halfway believed him because they gave him the pardon. Yet the pearls were in the load, registered mail, and they were never seen again.»
My throat began to feel a little thick. I didn’t say anything.
Kathy Horne went on: «One time in Leavenworth, just one time in all those years, Wally Sype wrapped himself around a can of white shellac and got as tight as a fat lady’s girdle. His cell mate was a little man they called Peeler Mardo. He was doing twenty-seven months for splitting twenty-dollar bills. Sype told him he had the pearls buried somewhere in Idaho.»
I leaned forward a little.
«Beginning to get to you, eh?» she said. «Well, get this. Peeler Mardo is rooming at my house and he’s a coke hound and he talks in his sleep.»
I leaned back again. «Good grief,» I said. «And I was practically spending the reward money.»
She stared at me coldly. Then her face softened. «All right,» she said a little hopelessly. «I know it sounds screwy. All those years gone by and all the smart heads that must have worked on the case, postal men and private agencies and all. And then a cokehead to turn it up. But he’s a nice little runt and somehow I believe him. He knows where Sype is.»
I said: «Did he talk all this in his sleep?»
«Of course not. But you know me. An old policewoman’s got ears. Maybe I was nosy, but I guessed he was an ex-con and I worried about him using the stuff so much. He’s the only roomer I’ve got now and I’d kind of go in by his door and listen to him talking to himself. That way I got enough to brace him. He told me the rest. He wants help to collect.»
I leaned forward again. «Where’s Sype?»
Kathy Home smiled, and shook her head. «That’s the one thing he wouldn’t tell, that and the name Sype is using now. But it’s somewhere up north, in or near Olympia, Washington. Peeler saw him up there and found out about him and he says Sype didn’t see him.»
«What’s Peeler doing down here?» I asked.
«Here’s where they put the Leavenworth rap on him. You know an old con always goes back to look at the piece of sidewalk he slipped on. But he doesn’t have any friends here now.»
I lit another cigarette and had another little drink.
«Sype has been out four years, you say. Peeler did twentyseven months. What’s he been doing with all the time since?»
Kathy Home widened hem china-blue eyes pityingly. «Maybe you think there’s only one jailhouse he could get into.»
«Okey,» I said. «Will he talk to me? I guess he wants help to deal with the insurance people, in case there are any pearls and Sype will put them right in Peeler’s hand and so on. Is that it?»
Kathy Home sighed. «Yes, he’ll talk to you. He’s aching to. He’s scared about something. Will you go out now, before he gets junked up for the evening?»
«Sure — if that’s what you want.»
She took a flat key out of her bag and wrote an address on my pad. She stood up slowly.
«It’s a double house. My side’s separate. There’s a door in between, with the key on my side. That’s just in case he won’t come to the door.»
«Okey,» I said. I blew smoke at the ceiling and stared at her.
She went towards the door, stopped, came back. She looked down at the floor.
«I don’t rate much in it,» she said. «Maybe not anything. But if I could have a grand or two waiting for Johnny when he came out, maybe —»
«Maybe you could hold him straight,» I said. «It’s a dream, Kathy. It’s all a dream, But if it isn’t, you cut an even third.»
She caught her breath and glared at me to keep from crying. She went towards the door, stopped and came back again.
«That isn’t all,» she said. «It’s the old guy — Sype. He did fifteen years. He paid. Paid hard. Doesn’t it make you feel kind of mean?»
I shook my head. «He stole them, didn’t he? He killed a man. What does he do for a living?»
«His wife has money,» Kathy Horne said. «He just plays around with goldfish.»
«Goldfish?» I said. «To hell with him.»
She went on out.
TWO
The last time I had been in the Gray Lake district I had helped a D.A. ’s man named Bernie Ohls shoot a gunman named Poke Andrews. But that was higher up the hill, farther away from the lake. This house was on the second level, in a loop the street made rounding a spur of the hill. It stood on a terrace, with a cracked retaining wall in front and several vacant lots behind.