“When I came out, they were both gone. The guy had taken Wally with him. And he’d taken something else. This morning, I noticed my jewel box had been moved. The bracelet Wally gave me for my birthday was gone. It had real stones. Sapphires.”
We sat out another bout of sobbing, Lange shifting his big feet around like the floor had suddenly gotten hot.
Then Paddy asked, “Can you describe this visitor for us? He was a big man, I suppose. Blond-haired, maybe? Any scars or monocles?”
“I don’t know if you’d call him big. He was very tall, but very skinny, too. But he did have blond hair, very blond, as blond as mine. He was just a kid, really. That was another reason I let him in. I should have slammed the door in his face.”
Paddy slipped in ahead of the next sob. “Are there any of Wally’s papers around? It would help if we could see anything he left behind, even a phone number. Help Wally, I mean.”
Palmer pointed to a little table that held a phone and a cardboard manger scene. “He was working on some papers over there. Something to do with a big movie deal he has going. But I haven’t seen them since yesterday. Since Wally took the trash down to the incinerator.”
“Thoughtful guy,” Paddy said.
He retrieved a pad from the table, looked it over, and passed it to me. There were daisies around the border of each page, but nothing written on any of them, not even an impression passed through from a missing sheet.
Paddy said he’d take a cup of coffee if the offer was still good, and Palmer headed for the kitchen. When its swinging door closed behind her, Paddy issued his orders, first to Lange.
“Toss the place. We’re looking for a Browning thirty-two or anything related to where it might be, such as a claim check or a locker key.”
To me, he said, “Try the incinerator. A tire iron makes a great poker.”
I didn’t need to dirty the Clipper’s hardware. The incinerator, which was in the weedy lot behind the apartment building, came equipped with an iron rod three feet long that hung from a hook by the burner’s heavy door. That door was stone cold, which was heartening. The contents of the big metal box were less encouraging, being ash and a rusted tangle of things that wouldn’t burn, none of which was a Browning automatic.
But persistence paid off. Caught in a crack in the firebox near the flue was the unburned corner of a sheet of notepaper bordered in daisies. On it was written “flight” and below that “Mexico City.”
7
Paddy and Lange were exiting the apartment building when I came around from in back, vital clue in hand. Paddy took it hard, by which I mean he chuckled ruefully.
“Looks like we’ve bitten a rubber peach and no mistake. Lange, cab it out to the airport and check on the Mexico City departures since last night. See if anyone matching Wilfong’s description took one. Scotty, you can drop me by the office on your way to find the pawnshop where that bracelet ended up.”
“Why trace the jewelry? Why not the Austrian?”
“Because I’m starting to wonder if there is such a creature.”
“You think the dame’s lying?” Lange asked.
“No. But I think Miss Palmer would make the ideal audience for a Punch and Judy show.”
Paddy raised his homburg in the air, and a passing taxi pulled to the curb. When Lange was in it and on his way, Paddy steered me toward my car, lecturing as we went.
“How’s this scenario? Wally Wilfong had a big movie deal in the works — though he told us he didn’t even have one on the horizon. He needed room to maneuver, but a certain Tip Fasano was crowding him so hard he couldn’t even sleep in his own bed. He heard the story of the four Brownings, maybe from an old pal or maybe not. Maybe he really was in Salzburg in ’forty-five or maybe not. Either way, he saw a chance to lay down a smoke screen for himself. He got his hands on a Browning Nineteen-ten and wove us a little bedtime story. Then he passed on a fragment of the same tale to Fasano, giving us prominent billing, and arranged to be kidnapped. That gave him time to do whatever he’s got to do in Mexico City. He counted on Fasano coming after us and on us chasing will-o’-the-wisps, like this so-called Austrian.”
“But why bother with pawnshops?”
“There’s no better place to buy a used gun. If Wilfong picked his up at a hockshop, he likely took the bracelet back to the same one. We’re all creatures of habit. So if you find the bracelet, you’ll probably clear up the question of the gun.”
“Sounds to me like you’re sure of the gun already.”
“Almost sure,” Paddy conceded. “But ten to one against means there’s still a slim chance it’s legit. If it is, it could be our ticket out of this mess.”
When I delivered Paddy to the office, I picked up a message for myself. Peggy had reached Professor Carey and arranged for me to call him at his home around three our time. That call would be step one in the process of identifying a creature Paddy no longer believed in — the avenger with the German accent — but I pocketed the number and headed out.
I started with the pawnshops nearest the major studios, the territory Wilfong usually traveled. This close to Christmas, they were all busy, both with bargain hunters and with people working the old O. Henry dodge: trading in used treasures so they could buy new ones for new loves. I was a long time getting short answers at the first two places I visited. Then I tried an older establishment called Nackenhorst’s Jewelry and Loan Company.
Despite its fairly specific name, Nackenhorst’s had the usual variety of merchandise on display, including a rack of guns. I started at the jewelry case, looking for sapphire bracelets and not finding one. Still, my stocking wasn’t entirely empty. The clerk hovering nearby was very tall and very thin and very blond, matching all three of the superlatives Dolly Palmer had used to describe Wilfong’s foreign caller.
“Wie geht’s?” I said, which was German for “How’s it going?” Or so I’d been told during the postwar occupation.
“Sehr gut,” the beanpole replied. Then, perhaps remembering where he’d last used his German, he stammered in English, “May I help you?”
I asked about a recently pawned sapphire bracelet, which happened to be stolen, and his stammer became life-threatening. He was saved by Nackenhorst himself, a bent, horse-faced gentleman in an unlikely Stanford letter sweater, patched at the elbows.
“Stolen, you say,” the old man lisped once he had me in a back room and well away from the holiday shoppers. He had several pieces of jewelry on his desk, one of them a very nice bracelet with blue stones. “I’m a pretty good judge of that, usually. Good judge of customers, I mean, especially regulars. This customer—”
“Wally Wilfong,” I cut in, to hurry us along. “That bangle belongs to his girlfriend. Your clerk—”
“My nephew, Kurt.”
“Kurt helped Wilfong lift it by posing as a German caller last night. If we ask him, he’ll say he thought the whole thing was a practical joke, which is probably true. Wilfong will say that he only borrowed the bracelet, if anyone asks him. So will its rightful owner, once Wilfong’s had a chance to work on her.”
“So what’s the problem?” Nackenhorst asked. “And what’s your interest, Mister...” He consulted the business card I’d handed him. “Mr. Hollywood Security?”
“I’m not interested in the bracelet. I’m interested in a gun Wilfong bought sometime in the last couple of days.”
“What did he do with it? Stick up an orphanage?”
“We’re more of a YMCA,” I said. “Did Wilfong buy a gun from you?”