LITMIR.BIZ

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a swine you can be.”

      I bowed a little stiffly. “So something goes wrong and Silvio doesn’t get in touch with you. Because you’re involved you don’t want the cops digging deep—at least until you’re satisfied you have no hope of recovering the emerald. So you circulate among your friends for a confidential investigator, pick up my name, and sic me after Silvio, not knowing what’s happened to him, but suspecting he might have skipped with the swag.” I paused. “It makes a nice little story, Iris. Like it?”

      “I despise it.”

      “The cops might like it,” I mused. “I’ve known some who would gobble it like pecan pralines. What would make them like it even more would be the knowledge of your estrangement from your husband.”

      Her lips formed an uncertain smile. “And how wrong they’d be.”

      “I wish I knew,” I said. “So far I’ve only got my little toe wet but the water looks awfully deep—and dark. Maybe you knew Silvio no better than you said, then again maybe not. He’s not around to say, and your testimony can’t be accepted as entirely disinterested. See what I mean?”

      “I see a rather vile estimate of my character.”

      “Who says you have any at all?”

      I got up, walked over to the telephone stand and looked up a number, and began dialing. From the sofa, she said, “Are you going to take the case?”

      “I’ve still got your money.”

      “Who are you going to call?”

      “A friend,” I said. “One who doesn’t chase foxes or keep a pack of beagles or even hang out in Georgetown. So in your book he’s probably small potatoes—a little man. But he’s smart and reliable and resourceful and he earns his pay. Got many friends like that?”

      She got up from the sofa and ground out her cigarette. “I have a splitting headache. So if you’ll allow me, I’ll retire. If you learn anything or if you require more money, I suppose you’ll let me know.”

      “That’s the usual arrangement.”

      Her velvet slippers moved soundlessly across the thick carpeting. The brocade slacks rustled expensively and the bedroom door closed.

      At the other end of the wire the phone was ringing. After a while a voice answered. “Artie,” I said, “are you sober enough to do an hour’s work?”

      “If money’s involved.”

      I gave him Silvio’s description, including everything Iris had told me. It seemed like a lot to go on. I said so and Artie agreed with me. He would check hotels, motels, and rooming houses. National Airport, Union Station, bus terminals, and U-Drive-Its. For twenty-five dollars it seemed like very little work. Artie disagreed with me. On principal. When he had anything to report he would call my apartment.

      I replaced the phone, glanced at Ava drowsing on her matching hassock, and began walking toward the front door.

      Just then the hi-fi next door began blasting like a calliope. Tracy Farnham up to his little pranks. Maybe he was signaling to his playmate, the lady Iris.

      As I closed the door behind me I heard Iris hammering on the wall. Lovely. A lovely relationship indeed. Waiting on the curb for a taxi, I thought about Silvio Contreras and the missing emerald: A million dollars was a lot of coin to be kicking around town in such a small package, and a thousand dollars didn’t seem like much to pay for getting it back where it belonged. Slave labor.

      It looked like Silvio, all right. Open and shut. As definite as Magnetic North. But the very obviousness troubled me. I could imagine Silvio opening the safe, taking out the Madagascar Green. But for whom? Himself? Iris? Sister Sara?

      A taxi stopped and took me back to Hogan’s for my car.

      At eight o’clock I was in my apartment reading a book on gems. The telephone rang and it was Artie. He had located the taxi driver who took a man generally answering Silvio’s description from the Mayflower to a dump on the east side, Chinatown. The Hotel Flora. There the desk clerk said the man spoke English with an accent and had signed the register as Samuel Cooper. He had not left his room all day.

      I dropped the book and ran for the elevator. My Olds was parked in the basement garage, and besides, a cabbie would know the shortcuts to Chinatown. I made it to the Hotel Flora in under ten minutes and Artie was outside, lounging under a street lamp trying to look casual. We walked up to the desk together. The Flora was a three-story fleabag with worn wooden stairs.

      For one dollar the snaggle-toothed clerk lent us the master key so that we could surprise an old friend. Artie and I went up the steps to the second floor, turned down a corridor lighted by a single bulb and smelling of wood alcohol, sweat, and decay. I fitted the key quietly into the lock and turned it but the door was already unlocked. The door opened inward on darkness.

      Artie’s pencil light flashed around the room, found the switch, and I turned on the overhead light.

      The room looked like a shipwreck. Bureau drawers were pulled out, one was overturned on the floor. Stuffing and feathers had been torn out of pillows and chair cushions. The tan leather bag was empty; clothes littered the room.

      The bed was an old brass four-poster with a sagging mattress. What made the mattress sag was a man lying on it. His tie knot had been loosened and the shirt collar was open. He lay on his back staring up at the ceiling and his eyes were as cold as stones.

      Above his forehead the short wiry hair curled like black caracul. The mustache was missing but the scar was there. It angled down under his left eye, nearly an inch long and almost the same color as the rest of his skin. And that was deathly white.

      Behind me Artie said, “Is that the guy you wanted?”

      I picked up the limp cold hand and said, “It was.”

      chapter 3

      ARTIE SAID, “My God, a stiff! You didn’t tell me I was heading for anything like this.”

      “Think I was keeping it a big quiet secret just for private shudders?”

      “Well, no. So what happens now?”

      “It was a fast trip around the track, Artie,” I said, and fished my money clip from my pocket. I pulled out five tens and handed them to him. “The race is over. Go buy yourself some hay.”

      “Half of that’s okay.”

      “Never argue with a man in a generous mood. Anyhow, the other twenty-five’s for walking out of here and forgetting you ever came.”

      His eyes stared at the dead body of Silvio Contreras. Wetting his lips, he said, “If the cops found out it’d be my license. Not to mention the bond. That desk clerk could have made me on the way up.”

      “He stank like a wine cask, Artie. When we leave we’ll go down together. If he says anything, the guest was asleep. Or passed out.”

      Artie’s fingers scratched the side of his chin. “Okay, if you say so. What’s here for you?”

      “Nothing, probably.” I looked around the littered room. Silvio hadn’t torn it apart, someone else had. Bending over the body, I pulled it over on one side looking for a bullet hole or a knife gash, but there was nothing. I let the body roll back. It settled like a sack of wet sand.

      Artie said, “Maybe he died in his sleep, a heart attack. It happens all the time.”

      “Not to guys his age.” I moved away from the bed, stepped over the tan leather suitcase that Silvio Contreras had carried for the last time, and walked to the wash basin. It had a single water faucet and a small eroded bar of soap, now dry. On the shelf below the cracked mirror lay a safety razor and a blue leatherette box with rounded corners. Beside it stood a small bottle with an etched glass top. The colorless liquid smelled like grain alcohol. I replaced the stopper and opened

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