Soukesian wasn’t home. Nobody answered that number. Carol Pride didn’t answer her number. I didn’t expect her to. She was probably having tea with Mrs. Philip Courtney Prendergast. But police headquarters answered their number, and Reavis was still on the job. He didn’t sound pleased to hear from me.
«Anything new on the Lindley Paul killing?» I asked him.
«I thought I told you to forget it. I meant to.» His voice was nasty.
«You told me all right, but it keeps worrying at me. I like a clean job. I think her husband had it done.»
He was silent for a moment. Then, «Whose husband, smart boy?»
«The husband of the frail that lost the jade beads, naturally.»
«And of course you’ve had to poke your face into who she is.
«It sort of drifted to me,» I said. «I just had to reach out.» He was silent again. This time so long that I could hear the loudspeaker on his wall put out a police bulletin on a stolen car.
Then he said very smoothly and distinctly: «I’d like to sell you an idea, shamus. Maybe I can. There’s a lot of peace of mind in it. The Police Board gave you a licence once and the sheriff gave you a special badge. Any acting captain with a peeve can get both of them taken away from you overnight. Maybe even just a lieuteuant — like me. Now what did you have when you got that licence and that badge? Don’t answer, I’m telling you. You had the social standing of a cockroach. You were a snooper for hire. All in the world you had to do then was to spend your last hundred bucks on a down payment on some rent and office furniture and sit on your tail until somebody brought a lion in — so you could put your head in the lion’s mouth to see if he would bite. If he bit your ear off, you got sued for mayhem. Are you beginning to get it?»
«It’s a good line,» I said,. «I used it years ago. So you don’t want to break the case?»
«If I could trust you, I’d tell you we want to break up a very smart jewel gang. But I can’t trust you. Where are you — in a poolroom?»
«I’m in bed,» I said. «I’ve got a telephone jag.»
«Well, you just fill yourself a nice hot-water bottle and put it on your face and go to sleep like a good little boy, will you please?»
«Naw. I’d rather go out and shoot an Indian, just for practice.»
«Well, just one Indian, Junior.»
«Don’t forget that bite,» I yelled, and hung the phone in his face.
SIX
LADY IN LIQUOR
I had a drink on the way down to the boulevard, black coffee laced with brandy, in a place where they knew me, It made my stomach feel like new, but I still had the same shopworn head. And I could still smell chloroform in my whiskers.
I went up to the office and into the little reception room. There were two of them this time, Carol Pride and a blonde. A blonde with black eyes. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.
Carol Pride stood up and scowled at me and said: «This is Mrs. Philip Courtney Prendergast. She has been waiting quite some time. And she’s not used to being kept waiting. She wants to employ you.»
The blonde smiled at me and put a gloved hand out, I touched the hand. She was perhaps thirty-five and she had that wideeyed, dreamy expression, as far as black eyes can have it. Whatever you need, whatever you are — she had it. I didn’t pay much attention to her clothes. They were black and white. They were what the guy had put on her and he would know or she wouldn’t have gone to him.
I unlocked the door of my private thinking-parlor and ushered them in.
There was a half-empty quart of hooch standing on the corner of my desk.
«Excuse me for keeping you waiting, Mrs. Prendergast,» I said. «I had to go out on a little business.»
«I don’t see why you had to go out,» Carol Pride said icily. «There seems to be all you can use right in front of you.»
I placed chairs for them and sat down and reached for the bottle and the phone rang at my left elbow.
A strange voice took its time saying: «Dalmas? Okay. We have the gat. I guess you’ll want it back, won’t you?»
«Both of them. I’m a poor man.»
«We only got one,» the voice said smoothly. «The one the johns would like to have. I’ll be calling you later. Think things over.»
«Thanks.» I hung up and put the bottle down on the floor and smiled at Mrs. Prendergast.
«I’ll do the talking,» Carol Pride said. «Mrs. Prendergast has a slight cold. She has to save her voice.»
She gave the blonde one of those sidelong looks that women think men don’t understand, the kind that feel like a dentist’s drill.
«Well —» Mrs. Prendergast said, and moved a little so that she could see along the end of the desk, where I had put the whisky bottle down on the carpet.
«Mrs. Prendergast has taken me into her confidence,» Carol Pride said. «I don’t know why, unless it is that I have shown her where a lot of unpleasant notoriety can be avoided.»
I frowned at her. «There isn’t going to be any of that. I talked to Reavis a while ago. He has a hush on it that would make a dynamite explosion sound like a pawnbroker looking at a dollar watch.»
«Very funny,» Carol Pride said, «for people who dabble in that sort of wit. But it just happens Mrs. Prendergast would like to get her jade necklace back — without Mr. Prendergast knowing it was stolen. It seems he doesn’t know yet.»
«That’s different,» I said. (The hell he didn’t know!)
Mrs. Prendergast gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket. «I just love straight rye,» she cooed. «Could we — just a little one?»
I got out a couple of pony glasses and put the bottle up on the desk again. Carol Pride leaned back and lit a cigarette contemptuously and looked at the ceiling. She wasn’t so hard to look at herself. You could look at her longer without getting dizzy. But Mrs. Prendergast had it all over her for a quick smash.
I poured a couple of drinks for the ladies. Carol Pride didn’t touch hers at all.
«In case you don’t know,» she said distantly, «Beverly Hills, where Mrs. Prendergast lives, is peculiar in some ways. They have two-way radio cars and only a small territory to cover and they cover it like a blanket, because there’s plenty of money for police protection in Beverly Hills. In the better homes they even have direct communication with headquarters, over wires that can’t be cut.»
Mrs. Prendergast put her drink to sleep with one punch and looked at the bottle. I milked it again.
«That’s nothing,» she glowed. «We even have photo-cell connections on our safes and fur closets. We can fix the house so that even the servants can’t go near certain places without police knocking at the door in about thirty seconds. Marvelous, isn’t it?»
«Yes, marvelous,» Carol Pride said. «But that’s only in Beverly Hills. Once outside — and you can’t spend your entire life in Beverly Hills — that is, unless you’re an ant — your jewels are not so safe. So Mrs. Prendergast had a duplicate of her jade necklace — in soapstone.»
I sat up straighter. Lindley Paul had let something drop about it taking a lifetime to duplicate the workmanship on Fei Tsui beads — even if material were available.
Mrs. Prendergast fiddled with her second drink, but not for long. Her smile got warmer and warmer.
«So when she went to a party outside Beverly Hills, Mrs. Prendergast was supposed to wear the imitation. That is, when she wanted to wear jade at all. Mr. Prendergast was very particular about that.»