“Who, Constance? That knee-high wonder?”
“All right, the old man’s alive. But that doesn’t mean Califia hasn’t already been wiped out. Old Rattigan didn’t give us much. Maybe she can give us more. All we need is an address.”
“That’s all? Hey.” Crumley suddenly swerved to the curb and got out. “Most people never think, Constance didn’t think, we didn’t think. One place we never looked. The Yellow Pages! What a goof ! The Yellow Pages!”
He was across the sidewalk and into a public phone booth to scrabble through some beat-up Yellow Pages, tear out a page, and tote it back. “Old phone number, useless. But maybe a half-ass address.”
He shoved the page in my face. I read: QUEEN CALIFIA. Palmistry. Phrenology. Astrology. Egyptian Necrology. Your life is mine. Welcome.
And the damned zodiac street locale.
“So!” said Crumley, as close to hyperventilation as he ever got. “Constance tipped us to the Egyptian relic and the relic names Califia who said marry the beast!”
“We don’t know that!”
“Like hell we don’t. Let’s see.”
He put the car in gear and we went fast, to see.
Chapter Twelve
We drove up near Queen Califia’s Psychic Research Lodge, dead center of Bunker Hill. Crumley gave it a sour eye. Then I nodded to one side and he saw what to him was a lovely sight: CALLAHAN AND ORTEGA FUNERAL PARLOR.
That raised his spirits. “It’s like a homecoming,” he admitted.
Our jalopy stopped. I got out.
“You coming in?” I said.
Crumley sat staring out the windshield, hands on the steering wheel, as if we were still moving. “How come,” he said, “everything seems downhill with us?”
“You coming in? I need you.”
“Outta the way.”
He was halfway up the steep concrete steps and then the cracked cement walk before he stopped, surveyed the big white dilapidated bird cage of a house, and said, “Looks like the half bakery where they bake yo
ur misfortune cookies.”
We continued up the walk. On the way we met a cat, a white goat, and a peacock. The peacock flirted its thousand eyes, watching us pass. We made it to the front door. When I knocked, an unseasonable blizzard of paint snowflakes rained on my shoes.
“If that’s what holds this joint up, it won’t be long,” observed Crumley.
I rapped on the door with my knuckles. Inside I heard what sounded like a massive portable safe being trundled across a hardwood floor. Something heavy was shoved up against the other side of the door.
I raised my hand again, but a high sparrow voice inside cried, “Go away!”
“I just want—”
“Go away!”
“Five minutes,” I said. “Four, two, one, for God’s sake. I need your help.”
“No,” the voice shrilled, “I need yours.”
My mind spun like a Rolodex. I heard the mummy. I echoed him.
“You ever wonder where the name California came from?” I said.