The hammer clicked back on Copernik’s gun and I watched his big finger slide in farther around the trigger.
Ybarra stood up. The gun jumped at him. He said: «We’ll see how yellow a guinea is. I’m telling you to put that gun up, Sam.»
He started to move. He moved four even steps. Copernik was a man without a breath of movement, a stone man.
Ybarra took one more step and quite suddenly the gun began to shake.
Ybarra spoke evenly: «Put it up, Sam. If you keep your head everything lies the way it is. If you don’t — you’re gone.»
He took one more step. Copernik’s mouth opened wide and made a gasping sound and then he sagged in the chair as if he had been hit on the head. His eyelids dropped.
Ybarra jerked the gun out of his hand with a movement so quick it was no movement at all. He stepped back quickly, held the gun low at his side.
«It’s the hot wind, Sam. Let’s forget it,» he said in the same even, almost dainty voice.
Copernik’s shoulders sagged lower and he put his face in his hands. «O.K.,» he said between his fingers.
Ybarra went softly across the room and opened the door. He looked at me with lazy, half-closed eyes. «I’d do a lot for a woman who saved my life, too,» he said. «I’m eating this dish, but as a cop you can’t expect me to like it.»
I said: «The little man in the bed is called Leon Valesanos. He was a croupier at the Spezzia Club.»
«Thanks,» Ybarra said. «Let’s go, Sam.»
Copernik got up heavily and walked across the room and out of the open door and out of my sight. Ybarra stepped through the door after him and started to close it.
I said: «Wait a minute.»
He turned his head slowly, his left hand on the door, the blue gun hanging down close to his right side.
«I’m not in this for money,» I said. «The Barsalys live at Two-twelve Fremont Place. You can take the pearls to her. If Barsaly’s name stays out of the paper, I get five C’s. It goes to the Police Fund. I’m not so damn smart as you think. It just happened that way — and you had a heel for a partner.»
Ybarra looked across the room at the pearls on the card table. His eyes glistened. «You take them,» he said. «The five hundred’s O.K. I think the fund has it coming.»
He shut the door quietly and in a moment I heard the elevator doors clang.
SEVEN
I opened a window and stuck my head out into the wind and watched the squad car tool off down the block. The wind blew in hard and I let it blow. A picture fell off the wall and two chessmen rolled off the card table. The material of Lola Barsaly’s bolero jacket lifted and shook.
I went out to the kitchenette and drank some Scotch and went back into the living room and called her — late as it was.
She answered the phone herself, very quickly, with no sleep in her voice.
«Marlowe,» I said. «O.K. your end?»
«Yes… yes,» she said. «I’m alone.»
«I found something,» I said. «Or rather the police did. But your dark boy gypped you. I have a string of pearls. They’re not real. He sold the real ones, I guess, and made you up a string of ringers, with your clasp.»
She was silent for a long time. Then, a little faintly: «The police found them?»
«In Waldo’s car. But they’re not telling. We have a deal. Look at the papers in the morning and you’ll be able to figure out why.»
«There doesn’t seem to be anything more to say,» she said. «Can I have the clasp?»
«Yes. Can you meet me tomorrow at four in the Club Esquire bar?»
«You’re really rather sweet,» she said in a dragged out voice. «I can. Frank is still at his meeting.»
«Those meetings — they take it out of a guy,» I said. We said goodbye.
I called a West Los Angeles number. He was still there, with the Russian girl.
«You can send me a check for five hundred in the morning,» I told him. «Made out to the Police Relief Fund, if you want to. Because that’s where it’s going.»
Copernik made the third page of the morning papers with two photos and a nice half-column. The little brown man in Apartment 31 didn’t make the paper at all. The Apartment House Association has a good lobby too.
I went out after breakfast and the wind was all gone. It was soft, cool, a little foggy. The sky was close and comfortable and gray. I rode down to the boulevard and picked out the best jewelry store on it and laid a string of pearls on a black velvet mat under a daylight-blue lamp. A man in a wing collar and striped trousers looked down at them languidly.
«How good?» I asked.
«I’m sorry, sir. We don’t make appraisals. I can give you the name of an appraiser.»
«Don’t kid me,» I said. «They’re Dutch.»
He focused the light a little and leaned down and toyed with a few inches of the string.
«I want a string just like them, fitted to that clasp, and in a hurry,» I added.
«How, like them?» He didn’t look up. «And they’re not Dutch. They’re Bohemian.»
«O.K., can you duplicate them?»
He shook his head and pushed the velvet pad away as if it soiled him. «In three months, perhaps. We don’t blow glass like that in this country. If you wanted them matched — three months at least. And this house would not do that sort of thing at all.»
«It must be swell to be that snooty,» I said. I put a card under his black sleeve. «Give me a name that will — and not in three months — and maybe not exactly like them.»
He shrugged, went away with the card, came back in five minutes and handed it back to me. There was something written on the back.
The old Levantine had a shop on Melrose, a junk shop with everything in the window from a folding baby carriage to a French horn, from a mother-of-pearl lorgnette in a faded plush case to one of those.44 Special Single Action six-shooters they still make for Western peace officers whose grandfathers were tough.
The old Levantine wore a skull cap and two pairs of glasses and a full beard. He studied my pearls, shook his head sadly, and said: «For twenty dollars, almost so good. Not so good, you understand. Not so good glass.»
«How alike will they look?»
He spread his firm strong hands. «I am telling you the truth,» he said. «They would not fool a baby.»
«Make them up,» I said. «With this clasp. And I want the others back, too, of course.»
«Yah. Two o’clock,» he said.
Leon Valesanos, the little brown man from Uruguay, made the afternoon papers. He had been found hanging in an unnamed apartment. The police were investigating.
At four o’clock I walked into the long cool bar of the Club Esquire and prowled along the row of booths until I found one where a woman sat alone. She wore a hat like a shallow soup plate with a very wide edge, a brown tailor-made suit with a severe mannish shirt and tie.
I sat down beside her and slipped a parcel along the seat. «You don’t open that,» I said. «In fact you can slip it into the incinerator as is, if you want to.»
She looked at me with dark tired eyes. Her fingers twisted a thin glass that smelled of peppermint. «Thanks.» Her face was very pale.
I ordered a highball and the waiter went away. «Read the papers?»
«Yes.»
«You understand now about this fellow Copernik who stole your act? That’s why they won’t change the story or bring you into it.»
«It doesn’t matter now,» she said. «Thank you, all the same. Please — please show them to me.»
I pulled the string of pearls out of the loosely wrapped tissue paper in my pocket and slid them across to her. The silver propeller clasp winked in the light of the wall bracket. The little diamond winked. The pearls were as dull as white soap. They didn’t even match in size.