«Waldo wasn’t afraid of them,» I said. «He didn’t conceal where he lived. That was foolish, but it saved a lot of finagling, if he was willing to risk it. The girl came down here tonight with five grand to buy back her pearls. She didn’t find Waldo. She came here to look for him and walked up a floor before she went back down. A woman’s idea of being cagey. So I met her. So I brought her in here. So she was in that dressing room when Al Tessilore visited me to rub out a witness.» I pointed to the dressing-room door. «So she came out with her little gun and stuck it in his back and saved my life,» I said.
Copernik didn’t move. There was something horrible in his face now. Ybarra slipped his nail file into a small leather case and slowly tucked it into his pocket.
«Is that all?» he said gently.
I nodded. «Except that she told me where Waldo’s apartment was and I went in there and looked for the pearls. I found the dead man. In his pocket I found new car keys in a case from a Packard agency. And down on the street I found the Packard and took it to where it came from. Barsaly’s kept woman. Barsaly had sent a friend from the Spezzia Club down to buy something and he had tried to buy it with his gun instead of the money Barsaly gave him. And Waldo beat him to the punch.»
«Is that all?» Ybarra said softly.
«That’s all,» I said licking the torn place on the inside of my cheek.
Ybarra said slowly: «What do you want?»
Copernik’s face convulsed and he slapped his long hard thigh. «This guy’s good,» he jeered. «He falls for a stray broad and breaks every law in the book and you ask him what does he want? I’ll give him what he wants, guinea!»
Ybarra turned his head slowly and looked at him. «I don’t think you will,» he said. «I think you’ll give him a clean bill of health and anything else he wants. He’s giving you a lesson in police work.»
Copernik didn’t move or make a sound for a long minute. None of us moved. Then Copernik leaned forward and his coat fell open. The butt of his service gun looked out of his underarm holster.
«So what do you want?» he asked me.
«What’s on the card table there. The jacket and hat and the phony pearls. And some names kept away from the papers. Is that too much?»
«Yeah — it’s too much,» Copernik said almost gently. He swayed sideways and his gun jumped neatly into his hand. He rested his forearm on his thigh and pointed the gun at my stomach.
«I like better that you get a slug in the guts resisting arrest,» he said. «I like that better, because of a report I made out on Al Tessilore’s arrest and how I made the pinch. Because of some photos of me that are in the morning sheets going out about now. I like it better that you don’t live long enough to laugh about that baby.»
My mouth felt suddenly hot and dry. Far off I heard the wind booming. It seemed like the sound of guns.
Ybarra moved his feet on the floor and said coldly: «You’ve got a couple of cases all solved, policeman. All you do for it is leave some junk here and keep some names from the papers. Which means from the D.A. If he gets them anyway, too bad for you.»
Copernik said: «I like the other way.» The blue gun in his hand was like a rock. «And God help you, if you don’t back me up on it.»
Ybarra said: «If the woman is brought out into the open, you’ll be a liar on a police report and a chisler on your own partner. In a week they won’t even speak your name at Headquarters. The taste of it would make them sick.»
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.