I stared at them, but I didn’t move. After a long moment Copernik said almost gravely: «Nice, ain’t they? Would you feel like telling us a story about now, Mis-ter Marlowe?»
I stood up and pushed the chair from under me, walked slowly across the room and stood looking down at the pearls. The largest was perhaps a third of an inch across. They were pure white, iridescent, with a mellow softness. I lifted them slowly off the card table from beside her clothes. They felt heavy, smooth, fine.
«Nice,» I said. «A lot of the trouble was about these. Yeah, I’ll talk now. They must be worth a lot of money.»
Ybarra laughed behind me. It was a very gentle laugh. «About a hundred dollars,» he said. «They’re good phonies — but they’re phony.»
I lifted the pearls again. Copernik’s glassy eyes gloated at me. «How do you tell?» I asked.
«I know pearls,» Ybarra said. «These are good stuff, the kind women very often have made on purpose, as a kind of insurance. But they are slick like glass. Real pearls are gritty between the edges of the teeth. Try.»
I put two or three of them between my teeth and moved my teeth back and forth, then sideways. Not quite biting them. The beads were hard and slick.
«Yes. They are very good,» Ybarra said. «Several even have little waves and flat spots, as real pearls might have.»
«Would they cost fifteen grand — if they were real?» I asked.
«Si. Probably. That’s hard to say. It depends on a lot of things.»
«This Waldo wasn’t so bad,» I said.
Copernik stood up quickly, but I didn’t see him swing. I was still looking down at the pearls. His fist caught me on the side of the face, against the molars. I tasted blood at once. I staggered back and made it look like a worse blow than it was.
«Sit down and talk, you bastard!» Copernik almost whispered.
I sat down and used a handkerchief to pat my cheek. I licked at the cut inside my mouth. Then I got up again and went over and picked up the cigarette he had knocked out of my mouth. I crushed it out in a tray and sat down again.
Ybarra filed at his nails and held one up against the lamp. There were beads of sweat on Copernik’s eyebrows, at the inner ends.
«You found the beads in Waldo’s car,» I said, looking at Ybarra. «Find any papers?»
He shook his head without looking up.
«I’d believe you,» I said. «Here it is. I never saw Waldo until he stepped into the cocktail bar tonight and asked about the girl. I knew nothing I didn’t tell. When I got home and stepped out of the elevator this girl, in the printed bolero jacket and the wide hat and the blue silk crêpe dress — all as he had described them — was waiting for the elevator, here on my floor. And she looked like a nice girl.»
Copernik laughed jeeringly. It didn’t make any difference to me. I had him cold. All he had to do was know that. He was going to know it now, very soon.
«I knew what she was up against as a police witness,» I said. «And I suspected there was something else to it. But I didn’t suspect for a minute that there was anything wrong with her. She was just a nice girl in a jam — and she didn’t even know she was in a jam. I got her in here. She pulled a gun on me. But she didn’t mean to use it.»
Copernik sat up very suddenly and he began to lick his lips. His face had a stony look now. A look like wet gray stone. He didn’t make a sound.
«Waldo had been her chauffeur,» I went on. «His name was then Joseph Coates. Her name is Mrs. Frank C. Barsaly. Her husband is a big hydroelectric engineer. Some guy gave her the pearls once and she told her husband they were just store pearls. Waldo got wise somehow there was a romance behind them and when Barsaly came home from South America and fired him, because he was too good-looking, he lifted the pearls.»
Ybarra lifted his head suddenly and his teeth flashed. «You mean he didn’t know they were phony?»
«I thought he fenced the real ones and had imitations fixed up,» I said.
Ybarra nodded. «It’s possible.»
«He lifted something else,» I said. «Some stuff from Barsaly’s briefcase that showed he was keeping a woman — out in Brentwood. He was blackmailing wife and husband both, without either knowing about the other. Get it so far?»
«I get it,» Copernik said harshly, between his tight lips. His face was still wet gray stone. «Get the hell on with it.»
«Waldo wasn’t afraid of them,» I said. «He didn’t conceal where he lived. That was foolish, but it saved a lot of finagling, if he was willing to risk it. The girl came down here tonight with five grand to buy back her pearls. She didn’t find Waldo. She came here to look for him and walked up a floor before she went back down. A woman’s idea of being cagey. So I met her. So I brought her in here. So she was in that dressing room when Al Tessilore visited me to rub out a witness.» I pointed to the dressing-room door. «So she came out with her little gun and stuck it in his back and saved my life,» I said.
Copernik didn’t move. There was something horrible in his face now. Ybarra slipped his nail file into a small leather case and slowly tucked it into his pocket.
«Is that all?» he said gently.
I nodded. «Except that she told me where Waldo’s apartment was and I went in there and looked for the pearls. I found the dead man. In his pocket I found new car keys in a case from a Packard agency. And down on the street I found the Packard and took it to where it came from. Barsaly’s kept woman. Barsaly had sent a friend from the Spezzia Club down to buy something and he had tried to buy it with his gun instead of the money Barsaly gave him. And Waldo beat him to the punch.»
«Is that all?» Ybarra said softly.
«That’s all,» I said licking the torn place on the inside of my cheek.
Ybarra said slowly: «What do you want?»
Copernik’s face convulsed and he slapped his long hard thigh. «This guy’s good,» he jeered. «He falls for a stray broad and breaks every law in the book and you ask him what does he want? I’ll give him what he wants, guinea!»
Ybarra turned his head slowly and looked at him. «I don’t think you will,» he said. «I think you’ll give him a clean bill of health and anything else he wants. He’s giving you a lesson in police work.»
Copernik didn’t move or make a sound for a long minute. None of us moved. Then Copernik leaned forward and his coat fell open. The butt of his service gun looked out of his underarm holster.
«So what do you want?» he asked me.
«What’s on the card table there. The jacket and hat and the phony pearls. And some names kept away from the papers. Is that too much?»
«Yeah — it’s too much,» Copernik said almost gently. He swayed sideways and his gun jumped neatly into his hand. He rested his forearm on his thigh and pointed the gun at my stomach.
«I like better that you get a slug in the guts resisting arrest,» he said. «I like that better, because of a report I made out on Al Tessilore’s arrest and how I made the pinch. Because of some photos of me that are in the morning sheets going out about now. I like it better that you don’t live long enough to laugh about that baby.»
My mouth felt suddenly hot and dry. Far off I heard the wind booming. It seemed like the sound of guns.
Ybarra moved his feet on the floor and said coldly: «You’ve got a couple of cases all solved, policeman. All you do for it is leave some junk here and keep some names from the papers. Which means from the D.A. If he gets them anyway, too bad for you.»
Copernik said: «I like the other way.» The blue gun in his hand was like a rock. «And God help you, if you don’t back me up on it.»
Ybarra said: «If the woman is brought out into the open, you’ll be a liar on a police report and a chisler on your own partner. In a week they won’t even speak your name at Headquarters. The taste of it would make them sick.»