The Brass Rainbow

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.

“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?