I pointed at the wall bed and the door beside. Copernik’s head swiveled slowly, swiveled back. His eyes winked again. «And this kid had a gun,» he said.
I nodded. «And he got behind him. That takes guts, Copernik. You’ve got to give the kid a break. You’ve got to let him stay out of it.»
«Tag out for this kid?» Copernik asked softly.
«Not yet, he says. He’s scared there will be.»
Copernik smiled. «I’m a homicide man,» he said. «I wouldn’t know — or care.»
I pointed down at the gagged and handcuffed man on the floor. «You took him, didn’t you?» I said gently.
Copernik kept on smiling. A big whitish tongue came out and massaged his thick lower lip. «How’d I do it?» he whispered.
«Get the slugs out of Waldo?»
«Sure. Long twenty-two’s. One smashed a rib, one good.»
«You’re a careful guy. You don’t miss any angles. You know anything about me? You dropped in on me to see what guns I had.»
Copernik got up and went down on one knee again beside the killer. «Can you hear me, guy?» he asked with his face close to the face of the man on the floor.
The man made some vague sound. Copernik stood up and yawned. «Who the hell cares what he says? Go on, pal.»
«You wouldn’t expect to find I had anything, but you wanted to look around my place. And while you were mousing around in there» — I pointed to the dressing room —«and me not saying anything, being a little sore, maybe, a knock came on the door. So he came in. So after a while you sneaked out and took him.»
«Ah,» Copernik grinned widely, with as many teeth as a horse. «You’re on, pal. I socked him and I kneed him and I took him. You didn’t have no gun and the guy swiveled on me pretty sharp and Ileft-hooked him down the backstairs. O.K.?»
«O.K.,» I said.
«You’ll tell it like that downtown?»
«Yeah,» I said.
«I’ll protect you, pal. Treat me right and I’ll always play ball. Forget about that kid. Let me know if he needs a break.»
He came over and held out his hand. I shook it. It was as clammy as a dead fish. Clammy hands and the people who own them make me sick.
«There’s just one thing,» I said. «This partner of yours — Ybarra. Won’t he be a bit sore you didn’t bring him along on this?»
Copernik tousled his hair and wiped his hatband with a large yellowish silk handkerchief.
«That guinea?» he sneered. «To hell with him!» He came close to me and breathed in my face. «No mistakes, pal — about that story of ours.»
His breath was bad. It would be.
FOUR
There were just five of us in the chief-of-detective’s office when Copernik laid it before them. A stenographer, the chief, Copernik, myself, Ybarra. Ybarra sat on a chair tilted against the side wall. His hat was down over his eyes but their softness loomed underneath, and the small still smile hung at the corners of the clean-cut Latin lips. He didn’t look directly at Copernik. Copernik didn’t look at him at all.
Outside in the corridor there had been photos of Copernik shaking hands with me, Copernik with his hat on straight and his gun in his hand and a stern, purposeful look on his face.
They said they knew who Waldo was, but they wouldn’t tell me. I didn’t believe they knew, because the chief-of-detectives had a morgue photo of Waldo on his desk. A beautiful job, his hair combed, his tie straight, the light hitting his eyes just right to make them glisten. Nobody would have known it was a photo of a dead man with two bullet holes in his heart. He looked like a dance-hall sheik making up his mind whether to take the blonde or the redhead.
It was about midnight when I got home. The apartment door was locked and while I was fumbling for my keys a low voice spoke to me out of the darkness.
All it said was: «Please!» but I knew it. I turned and looked at a dark Cadillac coupe parked just off the loading zone. It had no lights. Light from the street touched the brightness of a woman’s eyes.
I went over there. «You’re a darn fool,» I said.
She said: «Get in.»
I climbed in and she started the car and drove it a block and a half along Franklin and turned down Kingsley Drive. The hot wind still burned and blustered. A radio lilted from an open, sheltered side window of an apartment house. There were a lot of parked cars but she found a vacant space behind a small brand-new Packard cabriolet that had the dealer’s sticker on the windshield glass. After she’d jockeyed us up to the curb she leaned back in the corner with her gloved hands on the wheel.
She was all in black now, or dark brown, with a small foolish hat. I smelled the sandalwood in her perfume.
«I wasn’t very nice to you, was I?» she said.
«All you did was save my life.»
«What happened?»
«I called the law and fed a few lies to a cop I don’t like and gave him all the credit for the pinch and that was that. That guy you took away from me was the man who killed Waldo.»
«You mean — you didn’t tell them about me?»
«Lady,» I said again, «all you did was save my life. What else do you want done? I’m ready, willing, and I’ll try to be able.»
She didn’t say anything, or move.
«Nobody learned who you are from me,» I said. «Incidentally, I don’t know myself.»
«I’m Mrs. Frank C. Barsaly, Two-twelve Fremont Place, Olympia Two-four-five-nine-six. Is that what you wanted?»
«Thanks,» I mumbled, and rolled a dry unlit cigarette around in my fingers. «Why did you come back?» Then I snapped the fingers of my left hand. «The hat and jacket,» I said. «I’ll go up and get them.»
«It’s more than that,» she said. «I want my pearls.» I might have jumped a little. It seemed as if there had been enough without pearls.
A car tore by down the street going twice as fast as it should. A thin bitter cloud of dust lifted in the streetlights and whirled and vanished. The girl ran the window up quickly against it.
«All right,» I said. «Tell me about the pearls. We have had a murder and a mystery woman and a mad killer and a heroic rescue and a police detective framed into making a false report. Now we will have pearls. All right — feed it to me.»
«I was to buy them for five thousand dollars. From the man you call Waldo and I call Joseph Coates. He should have had them.»
«No pearls,» I said. «I saw what came out of his pockets. A lot of money, but no pearls.»
«Could they be hidden in his apartment?»
«Yes,» I said. «So far as I know he could have had them hidden anywhere in California except in his pockets. How’s Mr. Barsaly this hot night?»
«He’s still downtown at his meeting. Otherwise I couldn’t have come.»
«Well, you could have brought him,» I said. «He could have sat in the rumble seat.»
«Oh, I don’t know,» she said. «Frank weighs two hundred pounds and he’s pretty solid. I don’t think he would like to sit in the rumble seat, Mr. Marlowe.»
«What the hell are we talking about anyway?»
She didn’t answer. Her gloved hands tapped lightly, provokingly on the rim of the slender wheel. I threw the unlit cigarette out the window, turned a little and took hold of her.
When I let go of her, she pulled as far away from me as she could against the side of the car and rubbed the back of her glove against her mouth. I sat quite still.
We didn’t speak for some time. Then she said very slowly: «I meant you to do that. But I wasn’t always that way. It’s only been since Stan Phillips was killed in his plane. If it hadn’t been for that, I’d be Mrs. Phillips now. Stan gave me the pearls. They cost fifteen thousand dollars, he said once. White pearls, forty-one of them, the largest about a third of an inch across. I don’t know how many grains. I never had them appraised or showed them to a jeweler, so I don’t know those things. But I loved them on Stan’s account. I loved Stan. The way you do just the one time. Can you understand?»