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I kicked the door and cursed and went to the middle of the street and was about to yell at every door when the Gypsy girl came quietly to touch my arm.
“I can go now,” she said.
“Califia?”
“Said okay.”
“Where to?” Crumley nodded at his car.
She could not stop staring at Califia’s home, the center of all California.
“I have friends near the Red Rooster Plaza. Could you—”
“I could,” said Crumley.
The Gypsy looked back at the vanishing palace of a queen.
“I will be back tomorrow,” she called.
“She knows you will,” I said.
We passed Callahan and Ortega, but this time Crumley ignored it.
We were quiet on the way to the plaza named for a rooster of a certain color.
We dropped the Gypsy.
“My God,” I said on the way back, “it’s like a friend, years ago, died, and the immigrants from Cuernavaca poured in, grabbed his collection of old 1900 phonographs, Caruso records, Mexican masks. Left his place like the Egyptian tombs, empty.”
“That’s what it’s like to be poor,” said Crumley.
“I grew up poor. I never stole.”
“Maybe you never had a real chance.”
We passed Queen Califia’s place a final time.
“She’s in there, all right. The Gypsy was right.”
“She was right. But you’re nuts.”
“All this,” I said. “It’s too much. Too much. Constance hands me two wrong-number phone books and flees. We almost drown in twenty thousand leagues of old newspapers. Now, a dead queen. Makes me wonder, is Father Rattigan okay?”
Crumley swerved the car to the curb near a phone booth.
“Here’s a dime!”
In the phone booth I dialed the cathedral.
“Is Mister …” I blushed. “Father Rattigan … is he all right?”
“All right? He’s at confession!”
“Good,” I said foolishly, “as long as the one he’s confessing is okay.”
“Nobody,” said the voice, “is ever okay!”
I heard a click. I dragged myself back to the car. Crumley eyed me like a dog’s dinner. “Well?”
