The Brass Rainbow

12

The house was the last in a row of ten that lined a short dead-end street a mile off the Belt Parkway at the edge of Jamaica Bay. There were no other streets near. The houses, all frame and old, were set like a single island in the bare salt marsh and bulrushes.

Jamaica Bay stretched bleak and frozen in the darkening afternoon as I parked the rental car in front of the isolated house. In the distance there were a few shacks on stilts, and a shiny new tract development that looked like an outpost in the desolate landscape of the moon. I was glad I had come alone, as instructed. No one could have approached the house unseen.

I went up the cleared path to the house and knocked. After a time the door was opened by an old man. He smoked a pipe.

“Can I help you, young man?” he said in a shaky voice.

“I’m looking for Mr. Weiss.”

“Weiss? An old fellow? Tall and thin?”

“Short, fat and forty-odd. He sent for me. I’m alone.”

The old man dropped the act. “Inside.”

I went into a dim hallway, and a young man appeared with a gun. He frisked me. He led me through the house into a kitchen. An old woman sat at the kitchen table. My escort nodded to her that I was okay, and she waved him out. She looked motherly. Her gnarled hand gripped the neck of a bottle of straight rye. She had two cold brown eyes.

“I don’t like visitors. I run a safe place. Seventeen years and no cop knows me.”

“You must come expensive.”

“No drunks, no hopheads, no women. In once and out once. No one comes back for a year if he’s hot.”

“And most of your guests are hot?”

“Flaming. They pay me to be safe. You’re here because Weiss paid high. When you leave, you never heard of the place. I’ve got friends.”

“Where’s Sammy?”

“Second floor rear. You’ll be watched, inside and out.”

As I went up, I thought about the old woman. She probably made a fortune. Every day of the year she sat in this house getting rich and stewed. She wouldn’t dare leave the place unwatched. She risked prison every day and slept with one eye open for money she would never spend because there was nothing she really wanted. Only the money.

Weiss opened the door to my knock. I felt like Stanley meeting Livingstone. He wore the same tie with the same stickpin. He hadn’t been out of his clothes since Monday. He tried to give me a tough sneer-the big man.

“So now you come? You must of heard I got a roll.”

“I’ve got a paying client,” I said.

He smelled of fear. From the look of the room he had been lying on the bed sweating ever since he had arrived here.

“What client?” he croaked.

“Agnes Moore.”

“Never heard of her. She in the Radford thing?”

“She is, and so are you.”

He grabbed my sleeve. “I’m not, Danny! I hit the guy! How could I kill a guy with one punch?”

“He was knifed, Sammy. Stabbed.”

He had my sleeve in both hands. “Knife? What knife? Paul never said nothing about no knife.”

I watched him. “This place comes high, Sammy.”

He sat down on the bed. “Five hundred a day, but it’s safe, and tomorrow I get out, right? You’re gonna help, right?”

“Did Paul Baron give you the money, Sammy?”

He grinned. “Paul don’t give it to me, he made a good bet.” He beamed at me. “It’s a sign, you know? My luck’s changed.”

“A bet? What kind of bet?”

“With Cassel,” he said. Cassel was a big horse-room owner. “The Baron laid the thousand he owed me for going up to Radford. A 25-1 shot at Caliente, and it came in!”

I suppose I stared. “Baron gave you $25,000? Cash?”

His dark eyes looked everywhere except at me. “It’s my break, the sign. I’m okay now.”

He knew it was all wrong, but he didn’t want to know. We all dream of our rainbow. The gambler and petty crook can’t wait for the dream to be real. They want it now, today, without the wait of working. They are hungry, and they are never bright, and they will believe that almost any impossibility will work out fine. They are sure the most stupid robbery will succeed, the slowest horse will win, the most impossible stroke of fortune will happen for them. Weiss had lived his life against the odds, and he had to believe a long-shot had come home for him. If Baron had tried to give him $25,000 he would have been suspicious. A bet that won on an inside tip was about the only way Baron could have gotten him to take the money. But a pretty sure way.

“Tell me the whole story now, Sammy,” I said. “From the start. How did he happen to send you for the money at all?”

“I know The Baron a while, you know? I hang around. So he calls me Monday at the steam baths. Around noon; I always takes the steam before lunch, good for the blood. He says go up to Radford after one o’clock and collect. There’s a grand in it for me. A thousand bucks, you know? So I goes, and then it all busts loose like I told you. That Radford was nuts.”

“All right, now what happened after you left me?”

“I run into Misty at the corner. She told me Baron knew I was in a fix and he’d take care of me. She said to move around, but keep in touch, until Baron had a safe place to hide me.”

“Baron could have contacted you at any time?”

“Sure. I called him every hour that night. He sent Leo Zar to pick me up about three-fifteen A.M. Leo’s Baron’s muscleman.”

“Did you know then that Radford was dead?”

“No, I swear. I’d been ducking Freedman too hard.”

“Okay, go on.”

Sammy wiped his face. “Leo took me to a dump up on 115th Street. I laid low all next day. Leo come up that night with a bottle and told me the guy was dead. He said Baron was short, but he had a hot tip and was gonna bet for me. Wednesday Leo moved me over to Brooklyn. About one A.M. Leo shows up again and tells me the horse come in! We sneaked over to Baron’s pad. Baron paid me $25,000 and told me he’d got me in out here, and with all that dough he could get me out to Mexico. We go out for Mexico tomorrow, right?”

“We?” I said.

“You’re gonna help, right? The Baron told me to get in touch with you.”

“Baron told you to contact me? When? How?”

“A couple of hours ago. He sent a message out here.”

I just watched him for a time. Maybe a minute. A minute of silence is an eternity. Weiss fidgeted, twisted, sweated. I let him sweat. I was going to hit him as hard as I could.

“You know that bet was a lie,” I said. “You know that the money is exactly what Radford was supposed to have, and it’s missing, Sammy. It’s a frame-up! Baron told everyone you got the $25,000 and held out on him. He told the police that. The knife Radford was killed with is missing. You’ve got the money; you’ll get the knife next! You’re not going to Mexico; you’re going to be found with the money and the knife. You’ll probably be found dead.”

“No!” His eyes were glazed with terror.

“Damn it, Baron killed Radford! That’s where he got the $25,000. But you’ll take the fall. Your only chance is to come with me, find Baron, and take him and your story to the police. It wasn’t a gambling debt, Sammy; it was blackmail! They’ll listen.”

His fat quivered. “Get out! Get out!”

I don’t know if I could have talked him out of his hole, out of the hope of all weak men that everything will blow over as long as they do nothing. But I didn’t have to. The old woman and her gunman appeared at the door. The gunman had his gun.

“Out,” the old woman snapped.

I should have known the room would be bugged.

“A frame-up is trouble,” the old witch said. “I got no room for guys who think they’re innocent. Out, both of you, fast!”

I thought for a moment that Weiss was going to faint. He didn’t. I think he was afraid that if he passed out, he might never wake up. He stumbled for the door. I went behind him. We were herded down the stairs. The old man held the front door open. An icy blast greeted us. The woman gave us a parting message:

“One word and you’re both dead! Don’t come back.”

The door closed. It was dark now, and the wind off the bay chewed at our faces. Weiss walked like a drunk. I got him into the car. I remembered the money.

“Where’s the money, Sammy?”

He patted his suit coat. He had it in the lining.

“Okay,” I said, trying to sound confident. “Let’s get Baron.”