«Including my bills, and your letters.»
«Yeah. But the police are reasonable about things like that — unless you’re good for a lot of publicity. If you’re not, I think I can eat some stale dog downtown and get by. If you are — that’s the second thing. What did you say your name was?»
The answer was a long time coming. When it came I didn’t get as much kick out of it as I thought I would. All at once it was too logical.
«Frank C. Barsaly,» he said.
After a while the Russian girl called me a taxi. When I left, the party across the street was doing all that a party could do. I noticed the walls of the house were still standing. That seemed a pity.
SIX
When I unlocked the glass entrance door of the Berglund I smelled policeman. I looked at my wrist watch. It was nearly 3 AM. In the dark corner of the lobby a man dozed in a chair with a newspaper over his face. Large feet stretched out before him. A corner of the paper lifted an inch, dropped again. The man made no other movement.
I went on along the hall to the elevator and rode up to my floor. I soft-footed along the hallway, unlocked my door, pushed it wide and reached in for the light switch.
A chain switch tinkled and light glared from a standing lamp by the easy chair, beyond the card table on which my chessmen were still scattered.
Copernik sat there with a stiff unpleasant grin on his face. The short dark man, Ybarra, sat across the room from him, on my left, silent, half smiling as usual.
Copernik showed more of his big yellow horse teeth and said: «Hi. Long time no see. Been out with the girls?»
I shut the door and took my hat off and wiped the back of my neck slowly, over and over again. Copernik went on grinning. Ybarra looked at nothing with his soft dark eyes.
«Take a seat, pal,» Copernik drawled. «Make yourself to home. We got pow-wow to make. Boy, do I hate this night sleuthing. Did you know you were low on hooch?»
«I could have guessed it,» I said. I leaned against the wall.
Copernik kept on grinning. «I always did hate private dicks,» he said, «but I never had a chance to twist one like I got tonight.»
He reached down lazily beside his chair and picked up a printed bolero jacket, tossed it on the card table. He reached down again and put a wide-brimmed hat beside it.
«I bet you look cuter than all hell with these on,» he said.
I took hold of a straight chair, twisted it around and straddled it, leaned my folded arms on the chair and looked at Copernik.
He got up very slowly — with an elaborate slowness, walked across the room and stood in front of me smoothing his coat down. Then he lifted his open right hand and hit me across the face with it — hard. It stung but I didn’t move.
Ybarra looked at the wall, looked at the floor, looked at nothing.
«Shame on you, pal,» Copernik said lazily. «The way you was taking care of this nice exclusive merchandise. Wadded down behind your old shirts. You punk peepers always did make me sick.»
He stood there over me for a moment. I didn’t move or speak. I looked into his glazed drinker’s eyes. He doubled a fist at his side, then shrugged and turned and went back to the chair.
«O.K.,» he said. «The rest will keep. Where did you get these things?»
«They belong to a lady.»
«Do tell. They belong to a lady. Ain’t you the lighthearted bastard! I’ll tell you what lady they belong to. They belong to the lady a guy named Waldo asked about in a bar across the street — about two minutes before he got shot kind of dead. Or would that have slipped your mind?»
I didn’t say anything.
«You was curious about her yourself,» Copernik sneered on. «But you were smart, pal. You fooled me.»
«That wouldn’t make me smart,» I said.
His face twisted suddenly and he started to get up. Ybarra laughed, suddenly and softly, almost under his breath. Copernik’s eyes swung on him, hung there. Then he faced me again, bland-eyed.
«The guinea likes you,» he said. «He thinks you’re good.»
The smile left Ybarra’s face, but no expression took its place. No expression at all.
Copernik said: «You knew who the dame was all the time. You knew who Waldo was and where he lived. Right across the hall a floor below you. You knew this Waldo person had bumped a guy off and started to lam, only this broad came into his plans somewhere and he was anxious to meet up with her before he went away. Only he never got the chance. A heist guy from back East named Al Tessilore took care of that by taking care of Waldo. So you met the gal and hid her clothes and sent her on her way and kept your trap glued. That’s the way guys like you make your beans. Am I right?»
«Yeah,» I said. «Except that I only knew these things very recently. Who was Waldo?»
Copernik bared his teeth at me. Red spots burned high on his sallow cheeks. Ybarra, looking down at the floor, said very softly: «Waldo Ratigan. We got him from Washington by Teletype. He was a two-bit porch climber with a few small terms on him. He drove a car in a bank stick-up job in Detroit. He turned the gang in later and got a nolle prosse. One of the gang was this Al Tessilore. He hasn’t talked a word, but we think the meeting across the street was purely accidental.»
Ybarra spoke in the soft quiet modulated voice of a man for whom sounds have a meaning. I said: «Thanks, Ybarra. Can I smoke — or would Copernik kick it out of my mouth?»
Ybarra smiled suddenly. «You may smoke, sure,» he said.
«The guinea likes you all right,» Copernik jeered. «You never know what a guinea will like, do you?»
I lit a cigarette. Ybarra looked at Copernik and said very softly: «The word guinea — you overwork it. I don’t like it so well applied to me.»
«The hell with what you like, guinea.»
Ybarra smiled a little more. «You are making a mistake,» he said. He took a pocket nail file out and began to use it, looking down.
Copernik blared: «I smelled something rotten on you from the start, Marlowe. So when we make these two mugs, Ybarra and me think we’ll drift over and dabble a few more words with you. I bring one of Waldo’s morgue photos — nice work, the light just right in his eyes, his tie all straight and a white handkerchief showing just right in his pocket. Nice work. So on the way up, just as a matter of routine, we rout out the manager here and let him lamp it. And he knows the guy. He’s here as A. B. Hummel, Apartment Thirty-one. So we go in there and find a stiff. Then we go round and round with that. Nobody knows him yet, but he’s got some swell finger bruises under that strap and I hear they fit Waldo’s fingers very nicely.»
«That’s something,» I said. «I thought maybe I murdered him.»
Copernik stared at me a long time. His face had stopped grinning and was just a hard brutal face now. «Yeah. We got something else even,» he said. «We got Waldo’s getaway car — and what Waldo had in it to take with him.»
I blew cigarette smoke jerkily. The wind pounded the shut windows. The air in the room was foul.
«Oh, we’re bright boys,» Copernik sneered. «We never figured you with that much guts. Take a look at this.»
He plunged his bony hand into his coat pocket and drew something up slowly over the edge of the card table, drew it along the green top and left it there stretched out, gleaming. A string of white pearls with a clasp like a two-bladed propeller. They shimmered softly in the thick smoky air.
Lola Barsaly’s pearls. The pearls the flier had given her. The guy who was dead, the guy she still loved.