Red Wind
even have little waves and flat spots, as real pearls might have.”
    “Would they cost fifteen grand—if they were real?” I asked.
    “Si. Probably. That’s hard to say. It depends on a lot of things.”
    “This Waldo wasn’t so bad,” I said.
    Copernik stood up quickly, but I didn’t see him swing. I was still looking down at the pearls. His fist caught me on the side of the face, against the molars. I tasted blood at once. I staggered back and made it look like a worse blow than it was.
    “Sit down and talk, you —!” Copernik almost whispered.
    I sat down and used a handkerchief to pat my cheek. I licked at the cut inside my mouth. Then I got up again and went over and picked up the cigarette he had knocked out of my mouth. I crushed it out in a tray and sat down again.
    Ybarra filed at his nails and held one up against the lamp. There were beads of sweat on Copernik’s eyebrows, at the inner ends.
    “You found the beads in Waldo’s car,” I said, looking at Ybarra. “Find any papers?”
    He shook his head without looking up.
    “I’d believe you,” I said. “Here it is. I never saw Waldo until he stepped into the cocktail bar tonight and asked about the girl. I knew nothing I didn’t tell. When I got home and stepped out of the elevator this girl, in the printed bolero jacket and the wide hat and the blue silk crêpe dress—all as he had described them—was waiting for the elevator, here, on my floor. And she looked like a nice girl.”
    Copernik laughed jeeringly. It didn’t make any difference to me. I had him cold. All he had to do was know that. He was going to know it now, very soon.
    “I knew what she was up against as a police witness,” I said. “And I suspected there was something else to it. But I didn’t suspect for a minute that there was anything wrong with her. She was just a nice girl in a jam—and she didn’t even know she was in a jam. I got her in here. She pulled a gun on me. But she didn’t mean to use it.”
    Copernik sat up very suddenly and he began to lick his lips. His face had a stony look now. A look like wet gray stone. He didn’t make a sound.
    “Waldo had been her chauffeur,” I went on. “His name then was Joseph Choate. Her name is Mrs. Frank C. Barsaly. Her husband is a big hydro-electric engineer. Some guy gave her the pearls once and she told her husband they were just store pearls. Waldo got wise somehow there was a romance behind them and when Barsaly come home from South America and fired him, because he was too good-looking, he lifted the pearls.”
    Ybarra lifted his head suddenly and his teeth flashed. “You mean he didn’t know they were phony?”
    “I thought he fenced the real ones and had imitations fixed up,” I said.
    Ybarra nodded. “It’s possible.”
    “He lifted something else,” I said. “Some stuff from Barsaly’s briefcase that showed he was keeping a woman—out in Brentwood. He was blackmailing wife and husband both, without either knowing about the other. Get it so far?”
    “I get it,” Copernik said harshly, between his tight lips. His face was still wet gray stone. “Get the hell on with it.”
    “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 never met Waldo. She came up 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 nailfile into a small leather case and slowly tucked it into his pocket.
    “Is that all?” he asked gently.
    I

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