Brass Rainbow Page 8

  When we reached Fifth Street, the club was doing business. The apartment entrance next to it was dark. Sammy pointed to a bell with no identification. I did not want to give Paul Baron that much warning. The inner door was old and had play on the buzzer-lock. I leaned on the door and gave a sharp kick. The lock sprung. I sent Weiss up ahead of me. He stepped as lightly as a cloud. Clear and present danger takes precedence over unfocused fear.

  On the third floor I listened at the rear apartment door. I heard nothing. The lock was a common spring type, but picking is slow work. The door and frame were old and warped. I drew my cannon, motioned Weiss back against the corridor wall, and aimed my left foot for a hard kick just below the lock.

  The door crashed open, and I jumped inside with my gun ready. You can feel emptiness. There was no one home. I put on the overhead light and called Weiss in. He came with those big eyes rolling in his sweating face. He stood in the exact center of the room as if he were afraid to be touched by anything.

  “You’re sure this is the place?” I asked him. Because the room was a surprise—it was a warm, comfortable room. The furniture was old, but it had been carefully cared-for as if by a woman.

  “Sure I’m sure, Danny. We had a drink at that table.”

  “Did Baron live here with a woman?”

  “There was a girl here when he paid me.”

  “Misty Dawn?”

  “Nah, a young kid. Carla he called her.”

  Carla Devine, Paul Baron’s other alibi witness. I felt even better. Then I went into the bedroom and switched on the light and didn’t feel good anymore.

  Paul Baron was on his back on the floor. The blood around him was brown and dry. There were two holes in his shirt. He seemed flat, and his flesh had shrunk into a leering grimace and a quarter-inch growth of beard. His left arm was flung out, and his right arm was twisted under his back in a position that would have been agony if he had been alive. I rolled him over gingerly. He was stiff as steel and moved all in a piece. The hand under his back held a wicked five-inch switchblade. He had not gone gentle, but he had gone. I let the body fall back and looked under the bed.

  In the living room there was a strangled groan, and feet running, stumbling away.

  I ran out into the living room. Weiss was clawing at the broken door. I reached him just as he got it open. I got a neckhold on him and dragged him back. We went down, and I lost my grip. I cursed my missing arm. Sammy crawled to his feet. I made it up and jumped to block the door. I’ve never seen a cornered animal, but now I know what one looks like. He came at me like a man turned into a rhinoceros. I hauled out my heavy revolver.

  “Stop it, Sammy!”

  Weiss couldn’t hear, or didn’t want to, and deep down in his cunning little brain he knew I wouldn’t shoot. He came at me with both hands flailing. I swung the gun and got him on the shoulder. He grunted. I slashed at him again and got his left hand. It must have jammed his thumb. He howled and sat down on the floor and sucked at his thumb like a giant baby. The deep Levantine eyes looked up at me with unbelieving sorrow: I was ruining him, killing him.

  “You wouldn’t last two hours, Sammy,” I said as gently as I could. “I’m the only friend you’ve got now.”

  “Some friend! Some friend!” His voice was like a hurt child.

  I squatted and looked into his face. “Listen to me, Sammy. Baron is dead. He set you up for a frame on the Radford murder, and now he can’t be made to admit it and clear you. I think he killed Radford himself, but maybe I’ll never prove it now.”

  He listened, but I’m not sure he heard. His face was that of an animal caught in a forest fire, and there was only one thing on his mind: escape. Run, run, even if it was into a river or over a cliff. But I had to reach him.

  “Tell me exactly what happened here last night, Sammy.”

  He blinked, thought, and the effort seemed to bring him out of his trance a little. “I told you, Danny. I came up, we had a drink, he gave me my money, and I went out to that hideout.”

  “Who drove you out? Leo Zar?”

  “Leo wasn’t here; he never come up. I grabbed a cab out front. There’s a stand outside the club.”

  “You took a taxi all the way out to Jamaica Bay?”

  “Sure, why not? I had the dough.”

  I sighed. “Anyone else see you go in or come out?”

  “A drunk was giving one of the tenants a hard time in the front hall when I come out.”

  I just looked at him. He was all the way out of his panic now. In a way I wished he wasn’t. It would hurt more.

  “Baron’s been dead around twenty-four hours, Sammy. Since just about when you were here last night. Did you kill him, Sammy? Did you spot the frame? Did he try to hold you to turn you in? Did you know he killed Radford, so he tried to kill you to shut you up before he called the cops and handed them a dead fugitive?”

  He scrambled up. “I didn’t kill no one! I never had no gun my whole life. I can’t hardly shoot a gun.”

  It was impossible to tell if he was lying or not. Fear was deep in Weiss, but so was cunning. If he had killed both Radford and Baron, he would have talked and acted the same way.

  “No one will believe the bet, Sammy,” I said. “No one could, and there was no bet. They’ll believe you got the money from Radford or from Baron, they won’t care which. You killed Radford for the money, or Baron killed him for the money. They won’t care about that, either. They’ll be sure one of you killed Radford, and they’ll close the books, because Baron’s dead and they’ll nail you for his killing.”

  He shrank away. “No, I swear!”

  “You were seen leaving here just about when Baron died. A cab driver gets one call a year that takes him to a place like Jamaica Bay, so he’ll remember you good. Everyone knows Baron was looking for you. You have the money. I’ll give you odds no one saw Baron alive after you left, if he was.”

  Sammy stared at me, and suddenly there were tears in his cow eyes. Big, hopeless tears like a crying hippo, only it wasn’t funny. I was thinking of what I could say to help him, when a great, wide smile spread over his face among the tears as suddenly as the tears themselves had started.

  “The girl! Carla! She was here when I left! It’s okay, it’s okay, Danny. Find that girl. Carla. She’ll tell you.”

  I watched him. He had mentioned the girl earlier, so maybe it was true. Maybe the sun was going to shine on Sammy at last.

  “All right. We’ll find the girl. I think I know where to find her. You can describe her first to Gazzo to show him you really saw her.”

  “Gazzo?” His smile faded. “You got to hide me!”

  “No, Sammy.” I held the gun. “No more running. If you’re not lying in your teeth, there’s a killer around who’s framing you six ways from Sunday. Baron figures as Radford’s killer, but someone killed Baron. If you were found good and dead, maybe a suicide, that would tie it all up neat and end the case for the cops. On the loose you’re a clay pigeon.”

  “I don’t care! I’m not …”

  “Yes you are. For both of us. Just by being here I’m harboring a fugitive, concealing a felony, and obstructing the law. If you’re innocent, I hope I can prove it for you. If you’re guilty, I’m not taking the fall with you.”

  “Some pal! You don’t believe me. I’m going!”

  He moved. I let off the safety. He stopped.

  “I’ll shoot, Sammy. You’re a fugitive, and you’ve been a liar all your life. I’ll put you in the hospital if I have to.”

  He looked at the gun. His face was like raw putty. I put the gun down where I could reach it fast, and called Gazzo.

  Weiss shivered alone in the center of the room.

  14

  IT WAS PAST 3:00 A.M. when I followed Gazzo into his office. He was just barely talking to me. He did not like the way I had taken Weiss to find Baron, and he did not like it that I had gone to find Weiss on my own in the first place.

  “You going to bust that hideout?” I asked.<
br />
  “Afraid for your skin?”

  “You bet I am.”

  “For now we’ll just keep an eye on the place.”

  He sat behind his desk and stared at me. I sat and stared back. Weiss had stuck to his story through two shifts of questions. I did not know how long he could go on, even if it were all true. Weiss still insisted he had only scuffled with Radford even when they showed him the pictures of the body. He had tried to look away. Death scared him. They made him look, but all he did was stare and say that the guy had been okay when he had run.

  I said, “I figure Baron went in the back way after Sammy ran. He got rough, or Radford did, and Radford got killed. Baron grabbed the money. Then he got scared. Sammy was the perfect pigeon. Baron laid the frame on him, or tried to. That’s all that explains Baron’s actions.”

  “Maybe,” Gazzo said, “if you believe Weiss. If you believe Baron, it plays different. Weiss killed Radford, took the money, and ran. Baron went looking for him. Baron found him. Baron got tough, and Weiss killed him.”

  “Sammy killed a man like Baron? With Leo Zar around?”

  “A cornered rat,” Gazzo said. “Anyway, Weiss has the money now. It doesn’t matter if Weiss had the money all along, or if Baron did. Baron didn’t give the money to Weiss, not Paul Baron. That bet story is really great.”

  There it was. Either Weiss killed both of them, or only Paul Baron. The police could see it no other way, and they’d settle for charging Weiss with Baron’s murder alone. They could be right. Weiss was a born liar. Only the bet story was so bad I believed it.

  “How do you know the money was Radford’s money?”

  “He had a list of the serial numbers in his desk.”

  “So that’s why you wanted to know if Weiss had paid me?” “That’s right.”

  Gazzo studied his ceiling. “Baron was shot from close with a .45 caliber automatic. The first shot knocked him flat. The second hit him when he was down. The first was still in him. The M.E. can’t place the time any better than between eleven P.M. and five A.M. Wednesday night. But Baron was talking to me until one A.M. that night, so it was after that.”

  “He was giving you his story about looking for Weiss.”

  “I don’t know that he wasn’t,” Gazzo said. “Weiss admits he got to Baron around one-thirty A.M. He says he left around two-thirty. The taxi driver remembers the long haul out to Jamaica Bay, and the super at the place remembers Weiss because of the drunk he was battling when Weiss passed him going out. No one saw Baron alive again.”

  “Except maybe the girl.”

  “We’re bringing her in now. I hope she can clear Weiss.”

  “What about the shots? Anyone hear them?”

  “It was the Village, Dan. Ten people heard something like shots, ranging between nine and four A.M. Who knows?”

  “What about the knife and the gun?”

  “Don’t fence with me, Dan. Those weapons are in the river, or in Jamacia Bay. We’ll never find them unless Weiss tells us where he threw them.”

  “I don’t like a frame that turns into a real murder.”

  “If the first killing is a frame,” Gazzo said. “Let’s say it is. Okay, that’s just what I do like. It gives Weiss a double motive to kill Baron.” He leaned across the desk. “Look, Dan, if Weiss didn’t kill Baron, you’re stuck with only two other explanations, both beauties. Maybe it was two frame-ups of the same man by two different parties, which is some coincidence to hand the D.A. Or maybe Baron worked out a double frame-up that hinged on himself getting killed! Now there’s a theory.”

  I said nothing. What could I say? I was sure Baron had been trying to frame Weiss for Radford’s murder. Only now Weiss was on the hook for Baron’s killing, and it didn’t figure that a man would frame someone for his own murder! The D.A. would have a field day with that. The way it was now, the more I proved that Baron had been framing Weiss for Radford, the worse it was going to look for Weiss as Baron’s killer.

  Gazzo was watching me squirm mentally, when his pretty sergeant came in to announce that Carla Devine was outside.

  “Send her in,” Gazzo said.

  She came in slow, taking a little two-step as if pushed. She was a lovely little creature: small, dark, with ivory skin, a madonna face, and eyes as big as a dark satin bed. The eyes were frightened. She held her handbag in both hands like a child holding a schoolbag.

  “Sit down, Miss Devine,” Gazzo said.

  She perched. Her mini-skirt left little unseen. She had young, hard, fresh legs. I looked. Gazzo didn’t. That seemed to scare her more. Men usually stared at her legs.

  “Tell me where you were Wednesday night, Miss Devine?”

  “Wednesday?” She watched Gazzo’s face. “Gee, I think I was with Paul.”

  “Paul Baron?” Dark lines grooved between Gazzo’s eyes. He was surprised. So was I. I was also hopeful.

  “We went to dinner. Sure, that was Wednesday,” she said.

  “And after dinner?” Gazzo said.

  “He took me home. He had to go somewhere.”

  “Where is home?”

  “University Place. Number 47, apartment 12-C.”

  “What time did he take you home?”

  “Maybe ten-thirty. He had to go somewhere by eleven.”

  “He went to see me,” Gazzo said. “He left here about one A.M. Where did he pick you up after that?”

  She fluttered her lashes. “You mean that same night? He didn’t pick me up again. He hasn’t been around since he took me home Wednesday. Paul’s like that. He comes, he goes.”

  “You didn’t see Baron after ten-thirty Wednesday night?” Gazzo said. “You’re sure? We’ll find out, Miss Devine.”

  “I didn’t, honest. Has … has Paul done something?”

  I leaned toward her. “You were with Baron in his Fifth Street apartment at one-thirty Wednesday night. You saw Baron pay off a man named Weiss for a bet.”

  She gave me her big brown eyes. “You mean Sammy Weiss? Gee, that wasn’t Wednesday night. That was maybe a week ago. I don’t go to that Fifth Street place much. Misty lives there. I saw Sammy Weiss there a week ago, maybe; only there wasn’t no bet.”

  It was hard to believe that she was lying. Gazzo wouldn’t believe it. He would believe that Weiss was lying.

  Carla Devine said, “Is Paul is trouble?”

  I said, “Baron said he was with you Monday afternoon. Was he?”

  “Sure, he came …”

  “Baron’s dead,” I said. “He doesn’t need an alibi now.”

  “Dead?”

  Gazzo snapped, “Was he with you Monday afternoon?”

  She nodded. “Yes, but … not when I said. He came about two-thirty, not one-thirty. He told me to say one-thirty. Dead? He’s dead?”

  Her knuckles whitened on her bag, and she slipped off the chair in a dead faint. Gazzo jumped as if bitten. If it was an act, it was good. Gazzo bawled for his female sergeant.

  “Take care of her. When she comes around, get a statement.”

  The sergeant got some help, and they carried Carla Devine out. I watched her go. She was taking Weiss’s chances with her.

  “He’s lying all the way, Dan,” Gazzo said.

  “The girl lied before.”

  “For Baron. Maybe Baron did kill Radford after all, but he’s dead. Why would she lie now?”

  Gazzo said it almost bitterly. A good detective like Gazzo works close to danger. He works even closer to something else—the edge of sanity that yawns like an abyss for men who must decide, in essence, who lives and who dies. Gazzo is not a pitiless man, and that makes it hard for him to have to decide what a piece of human debris like Weiss is, or is not, guilty of doing. That gives a man scars inside, makes him bitter.

  We both sat silent for a time. Then I said:

  “How did Radford happen to have a list of the bills?”

  “Who knows? Maybe he always did it when he had a lot of cash around, or maybe it was a trap for Baron. You tell me
it was a blackmail con, not a bet. Maybe Radford was being cute.”

  We sat in another silence. I couldn’t think of anything else to ask, or to object to. After a while I got up and put on my duffle coat. Gazzo watched me.

  “Weiss is guilty, Dan. Let it go.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I’d like to find those weapons, you know? Stir the water. That’s detective work, right?”

  “Damn you,” Gazzo said.

  He would work on it, as I would, but maybe he’d never know for sure. Only the D.A. would be sure. The D.A. had to be elected, and he would tell himself that he was sure.

  I went down to the street and got into my car. It was bitter cold. I sat and watched the Annex entrance. I smoked too many cigarettes.

  It was nearly dawn before Carla Devine came out. Gazzo was an honest cop; he had sweated her hard. She had not changed her story. If she had, she would not have been coming out.

  She hurried along the iron-cold street away from me. I got out and followed. She was huddled in a fur coat like something that had forgotten to hibernate. The door of a battered gray coupe swung open in front of her. I ran. She saw me, and jumped into the car. I got my hand on the door handle. The coupe ground gears and pulled away, dragging me. Her great brown eyes stared up into my face from inside. A thin, pale, wild-haired young boy was behind the wheel, his lips skinned back from his teeth.

  One thing a one-armed man can’t do is get the door of a moving car open, or hang on when the car gets above 20 m.p.h. The speed turned me around backwards. I had to let go, and landed hard on my back in the street. I didn’t bother to see where the car had gone. I wasn’t going to get the number in the dark.

  After a time I got up. I drove the rental car home. I went to bed. What could I have gotten from Carla Devine anyway?

  15

  SOMEONE WAS CRYING. I stumbled naked through the snow and saw that it was my arm huddled behind a garbage can. Then it wasn’t my arm crying, it was Sammy Weiss. Three big men appeared and began to pound the lids of the garbage cans into Sammy’s face. I began to moan. Then my father was clutching at my empty sleeve, and I was telling him to get lost, get lost, get lost.…