Read Online Red Wind by Raymond Chandler - Free Book Online Page A

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.

VII
     
    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.
    “Dalmas,” 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 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 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.
    I went out after breakfast and the wind was all gone. It was soft, cool, a little foggy. The sky was close and comfortable and gray. I rode down to the boulevard and picked out the best jewelry store on it and laid a string of pearls on a black velvet mat under a daylight-blue lamp. A man in a wing collar and striped trousers looked down at them languidly.
    “How good?” I asked.
    “I’m sorry, sir. We don’t make appraisals. I can give you the name of an appraiser.”
    “Don’t kid me,” I said. “They’re Dutch.”
    He focussed the light a little and leaned down and toyed with a few inches of the string.
    “I want a string just like them, fitted to that clasp, and in a hurry,” I added.
    “How, like them?” He didn’t look up. “And they’re not Dutch. They’re Bohemian.”
    “O.K., can you duplicate them?”
    He shook his head and pushed the velvet pad away as if it soiled him. “In three months, perhaps. We don’t blow glass like that