«He ought not to have tried to keep the pearls.»
She turned her head, quickly this time. She looked blank now, then she looked scared.
I reached down in my pocket and got out the wadded handkerchief, opened it up on the palm of my hand. They lay there together on the white linen, two hundred grand worth of murder.
«He could have had his sanctuary,» I said. «Nobody wanted to take it away from him. But he wasn’t satisfied with that.»
She looked slowly, lingeringly at the pearls. Then her lips twitched: Her voice got hoarse.
«Poor Wally,» she said. «So you did find them. You’re pretty clever, you know. He killed dozens of fish before he learned how to do that trick.» She looked up into my face. A little wonder showed at the back of her eyes.
She said: «I always hated the idea. Do you remember the old Bible theory of the scapegoat?»
I shook my head, no.
«The animal on which the sins of a man were laid and then it was driven off into the wilderness. The fish were his scapegoat.»
She smiled at me. I didn’t smile back.
She said, still smiling faintly: «You see, he once had the pearls, the real ones, and suffering seemed to him to make them his. But he couldn’t have had any profit from them, even if he had found them again. It seems some landmark changed, while he was in prison, and he never could find the spot in Idaho where they were buried.»
An icy finger was moving slowly up and down my spine. I opened my mouth and something I supposed might be my voice said: «Huh?»
She reached a finger out and touched one of the pearls. I was still holding them out, as if my hand was a shelf nailed to the wall.
«So he got these,» she said. «In Seattle. They’re hollow, filled with white wax. I forget what they call the process. They look very fine. Of course I never saw any really valuable pearls.»
«What did he get them for?» I croaked.
«Don’t you see? They were his sin. He had to hide them in the wilderness, this wilderness. He hid them in the fish. And do you know —» she leaned towards me again and her eyes shone. She said very slowly, very earnestly: «Sometimes I think that in the very end, just the last year or so, he actually believed they were the real pearls he was hiding. Does all this mean anything to you?»
I looked down at my pearls. My hand and the handkerchief closed over them slowly.
I said: «I’m a plain man, Mrs. Sype. I guess the scapegoat idea is a bit over my head. I’d say he was just trying to kid himself a bit — like any healthy loser.»
She smiled again. She was handsome when she smiled. Then she shrugged quite lightly.
«Of course, you would see it that way. But me —» she spread her hands. «Oh, well, it doesn’t matter much now. May I have them for a keepsake?»
«Have them?»
«The — the phony pearls. Surely you don’t —»
I stood up. An old Ford roadster without a top was chugging up the hill. A man in it had a big star on his vest. The chatter of the motor was like the chatter of some old angry bald-headed ape in the zoo.
Mrs. Sype was standing beside me, with her hand half out, a thin, beseeching look on her face.
I grinned at her with sudden ferocity.
«Yeah, you were pretty good in there for a while,» I said. «I damn near fell for it. And was I cold down the back, lady! But you helped. ’Phony’ was a shade out of character for you. Your work with the Colt was fast and kind of ruthless. Most of all Sype’s last words queered it. ’The Moors, Hattie — the Moors.’ He wouldn’t have bothered with that if the stones had been ringers. And he wasn’t sappy enough to kid himself all the way.»
For a moment her face didn’t change at all. Then it did. Something horrible showed in her eyes. She put her lips out and spit at me. Then she slammed into the house.
I tucked twenty-five thousand dollars into my vest pocket. Twelve thousand five hundred for me and twelve thousand five hundred for Kathy Home. I could see her eyes when I brought her the check, and when she put it in the bank, to wait for Johnny to get paroled from Quentin.
The Ford had pulled up behind the other cars. The man driving spit over the side, yanked his emergency brake on, got out without using the door. He was a big fellow in shirt sleeves.
I went down the steps to meet him.
SPANISH BLOOD
ONE
Big John Masters was large, fat, oily. He had sleek blue jowls and very thick fingers on which the knuckles were dimples. His brown hair was combed straight back from his forehead and he wore a wine-colored suit with patch pockets, a wine-colored tie, a tan silk shirt. There was a lot of red and gold band around the thick brown cigar between his lips.
He wrinkled his nose, peeped at his hole card again, tried not to grin. He said: «Hit me again, Dave — and don’t hit me with the City Hall.»
A four and a deuce showed. Dave Aage looked at them solemnly across the table, looked down at his own hand. He was very tall and thin, with a long bony face and hair the color of wet sand. He held the deck flat on the palm of his hand, turned the top card slowly, and flicked it across the table. It was the queen of spades.
Big John Masters opened his mouth wide, waved his cigar about, chuckled.
«Pay me, Dave. For once a lady was right.» He turned his hole card with a flourish. A five.
Dave Aage smiled politely, didn’t move. A muted telephone bell rang close to him, behind long silk drapes that bordered the very high lancet windows. He took a cigarette out of his mouth and laid it carefully on the edge of a tray on a tabouret beside the card table, reached behind the curtain for the phone.
He spoke into the cup with a cool, almost whispering voice, then listened for a long time. Nothing changed in his greenish eyes, no flicker of emotion showed on his narrow face. Masters squirmed, bit hard on his cigar.
After a long time Aage said, «Okey, you’ll hear from us.» He pronged the instrument and put it back behind the curtain.
He picked his cigarette up, pulled the lobe of his ear. Masters swore. «What’s eating you, for Pete’s sake? Gimme ten bucks.»
Aage smiled dryly and leaned back. He reached for a drink, sipped it, put it down, spoke around his cigarette. All his movements were slow, thoughtful, almost absent-minded. He said: «Are we a couple of smart guys, John?»
«Yeah. We own the town. But it don’t help my blackjack game any.»
«It’s just two months to election, isn’t it, John?»
Masters scowled at him, fished in his pocket for a fresh cigar, jammed it into his mouth.
«So what?»
«Suppose something happened to our toughest opposition. Right now. Would that be a good idea, or not?»
«Huh?» Masters raised eyebrows so thick that his whole face seemed to have to work to push them up. He thought for a moment, sourly. «It would be lousy — if they didn’t catch the guy pronto. Hell, the voters would figure we hired it done.»
«You’re talking about murder, John,» Aage said patiently. «I didn’t say anything about murder.»
Masters lowered his eyebrows and pulled at a coarse black hair that grew out of his nose.
«Well, spit it out!»
Aage smiled, blew a smoke ring, watched it float off and come apart in frail wisps.
«I just had a phone call,» he said very softly. «Donegan Marr is dead.»
Masters moved slowly. His whole body moved slowly towards the card table, leaned far over it. When his body couldn’t go any farther his chin came out until his jaw muscles stood out like thick wires.