I hadn’t really seen her before, even by the lights down at Castellamare. She looked about twenty-six and as if she hadn’t slept very well. She had a tired, pretty little face under fluffedout brown hair, a rather narrow forehead with more height than is considered elegant, a small inquisitive nose, an upper lip a shade too long and a mouth more than a shade too wide. Her eyes could be very blue if they tried. She looked quiet, but not mousy-quiet. She looked smart, but not Hollywood-smart.
«I read it in the evening paper that comes out in the morning,» she said. «What there was of it.»
«And that means the law won’t break it as a big story. They’d have held it for the morning sheets.»
«Well, anyhow, I’ve been doing a little work on it for you,» she said.
I stared hard at her, poked a flat box of cigarettes across the desk, and filled my pipe. «You’re making a mistake,» I said. «I’m not on this case. I ate my dirt last night and banged myself to sleep with a bottle. This is a police job.»
«I don’t think it is,» she said. «Not all of it. And anyway you have to earn your fee. Or didn’t you get a fee?»
«Fifty bucks,» I said. «I’ll return it when I know who to return it to. Even my mother wouldn’t think I earned it.»
«I like you,» she said. «You look like a guy who was almost a heel and then something stopped him — just at the last minute. Do you know who that jade necklace belonged to?»
I sat up with ajerk that hurt. «What jade necklace?» I almost yelled. I hadn’t told her anything about a jade necklace. There hadn’t been anything in the paper about a jade necklace.
«You don’t have to be clever. I’ve been talking to the man on the case — Lieutenant Reavis. I told him about last night. I get along with policemen. He thought I knew more than I did. So he told me things.»
«Well — who does it belong to?» I asked, after a heavy silence.
«A Mrs. Philip Courtney Prendergast, a lady who lives in Beverly Hills — part of the year at least. Her husband has a million or so and a bad liver. Mrs. Prendergast is a black-eyed blonde who goes places while Mr. Prendergast stays home and takes calomel.»
«Blondes don’t like blonds,» I said. «Lindley Paul was as blond as a Swiss yodeler.»
«Don’t be silly. That comes of reading movie magazines. This blonde liked that blond. I know. The society editor of the Chronicle told me. He weighs two hundred pounds and has a mustache and they call him Giddy Gertie.»
«He tell you about the necklace?»
«No. The manager of Blocks Jewelry Company told me about that. I told him I was doing an article on rare jade — for the Police Gazette. Now you’ve got me doing the wisecracks.»
I lit my pipe for the third time and squeaked my chair back and nearly fell over backwards.
«Reavis knows all this?» I asked, trying to stare at her without seeming to.
«He didn’t tell me he did. He can find out easily enough. I’ve no doubt he will. He’s nobody’s fool.»
«Except yours,» I said. «Did he tell you about Lou Lid and Fuente the Mex?»
«No. Who are they?»
I told her about them. «Why, that’s terrible,» she said, and smiled.
«Your old man wasn’t a cop by any chance, was he?» I asked suspiciously.
«Police Chief of Pomona for almost fifteen years.»
I didn’t say anything. I remembered that Police Chief John Pride of Pomona had been shot dead by two kid bandits about four years before.
After a while I said: «I should have thought of that. All right, what next?»
«I’ll lay you five to one Mrs. Prendergast didn’t get her necklace back and that her bilious husband has enough drag to keep that part of the story and their name out of the papers, and that she needs a nice detective to help her get straightened out — without any scandal.»
«What scandal?»
«Oh, I don’t know. She’s the type that would have a basket of it in her dressing room.»
«I suppose you had breakfast with her,» I said. «What time did you get up?»
«No, I can’t see her till two o’clock. I got up at six.»
«My God,» I said, and got a bottle out of the deep drawer of my desk. «My head hurts me something terrible.»
«Just one,» Carol Pride said sharply. «And only because you were beaten up. But I daresay that happens quite often.»
I put the drink inside me, corked the bottle but not too tightly, and drew a deep breath.
The girl groped in her brown bag and said: «There’s something else. But maybe you ought to handle this part of it yourself.»
«It’s nice to know I’m still working here,» I said.
She rolled three long Russian cigarettes across the desk. She didn’t smile.
«Look inside the mouthpieces,» she said, «and draw your own conclusions. I swiped them out of that Chinese case last night. They all have that something to make you wonder.»
«And you a cop’s daughter,» I said.
She stood up, wiped a little pipe ash off the edge of my desk with her bag and went towards the door.
«I’m a woman to. Now I’ve got to go see another society editor and find out more about Mrs. Philip Courtney Prendergast and her love life. Fun, isn’t it?»
The office door and my mouth shut at about the same moment.
I picked up one of the Russian cigarettes. I pinched it between my fingers and peeped into the hollow mouthpiece. There seemed to be something rolled up in there, like a piece of paper or card, something that wouldn’t have improved the drawing of the cigarette. I finally managed to dig it out with the nailfile blade of my pocketknife.
It was a card all right, a thin ivory calling card, man’s size. Three words were engraved on it, nothing else.
SOUKESIAN THE PSYCHIC
I looked into the other mouthpieces, found identical cards in each of them. It didn’t mean a thing to me. I had never heard of Soukesian the Psychic. After a while I looked him up in the phone book. There was a man named Soukesian on West Seventh. It sounded Armenian so I looked him up again under Oriental Rugs in the classified section. He was there all right, but that didn’t prove anything. You don’t have to be a psychic to sell oriental rugs. You only have to be a psychic to buy them. And something told me this Soukesian on the card didn’t have anything to do with oriental rugs.
I had a rough idea what his racket would be and what kind of people would be his customers. And the bigger he was the less he would advertise. If you gave him enough time and paid him enough, he would cure anything from a tired husband to a grasshopper plague. He would be an expert in frustrated women, in tricky, tangled, love affairs, in wandering boys who hadn’t written home, in whether to sell the property now or hold it another year, in whether this part will hurt my type with my public or improve it. Even men would go to him — guys who bellowed like bulls around their own offices and were all cold mush inside just the same. But most of all, women — women with money, women with jewels, women who could be twisted like silk thread around a lean Asiatic finger.
I refilled my pipe and shook my thoughts around without moving my head too much, and fished for a reason why a man would carry a spare cigarette case, with three cigarettes in it not meant for smoking, and in each of those three cigarettes the name of another man concealed. Who would find that name?
I pushed the bottle to one side and grinned. Anyone would find those cards who went through Lindley Paul’s pockets with a fine-tooth comb — carefully and taking time. Who would do that? A cop. And when? If Mr. Lindley Paul died or was badly hurt in mysterious circumstances.