The Brass Rainbow

24

A guard took me to the detention cell, and stood off. The guard was annoyed. My visit was irregular.

I stood at the bars. Weiss was lying on the lower bunk: a small, shapeless shadow; almost nonexistent. The dim shadow of a man who had never really lived, and who would leave no trace behind. When he saw me, he sat up, and his dark-circled eyes came into the light.

“How is it, Sammy?” I said.

“Not so bad,” he said. “Not so bad.”

I watched him. His voice was quiet, and he was not sweating. They say that adversity can make a man stronger, but I’ve seen trouble strengthen few men and ruin most. Yet Weiss sat there in the cell he had feared all his life without a twitch or a shiver. His deep, Levantine eyes looked straight at me, and his pale moon face was dry.

“I want you to think hard, Sammy,” I said. “You said that Paul Baron got in touch with you about noon on Monday. You’re sure it was noon? Not earlier?”

“Maybe after. Like I said, I was at the steam room like always. I had to take the call wearin’ a towel in the hall.”

“He knew you go to the Turkish bath every day at noon?”

“Everyone knows. Sammy Weiss, steamin’ off the fat every day. Sammy the Slob. You got one crummy room, no family, no friends ’ceptin’ bums like yourself, and nothin’ to do except wait for the night action if you got a buck, so you pick up the routine so you got somewhere to go. Every day, and the steam don’t do nothing at all.”

“What did Baron say?”

He didn’t hear me, or he heard something else inside him first. He stared at a dark corner of the cell. “I bought myself a corset one time. A man’s corset, you know? Up in that lousy room squeezin’ myself into that corset to make me a sharp-looking character. The easy way, the big fake. All a guy got to do he wants to look sharp is take care of himself and stop feeding his fat face. You looks in a mirror all your life, and you never sees.”

Who can say for sure what goes on inside the mind of a man, any man? Or what can happen inside a man? Sometime during the long day and night Weiss had stopped sweating his eternal fear.

“Tell me exactly what Baron said on the phone, Sammy.”

“He said I should go collect $25,000 from this Jonathan Radford around one-fifteen, not before that. It was worth $1000 for me. So I went. I was to take the money to his Sixteenth Street pad. Only this Radford started a brawl, and I never got the money. That’s the truth.”

“I believe you, Sammy. How long were you with Radford?”

“Maybe five minutes, a little more.”

Five minutes. The mistakes we can make by assuming what we don’t know but that seems logical.

“How did you feel when you walked into that study, Sammy?”

“Sweatin’. You know me. I been sweatin’ all my life.”

“Radford was at a window?”

“Like a big shot. In a bathrobe, giving me his back, you know? It was cold in there, but I’m sweatin’!”

“Now tell me exactly what happened. Details.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, it happened so fast, you know? He stands there makin’ me cool my heels a long time. I talk, he don’t answer. I got hot and laid the muscle words on him. So he turns and jumps at me. We brawl, he goes down. I don’t hardly touch him, but he goes down, and I run.”

“Okay, Sammy. Was there a rug on the floor? Think.”

“I don’t know, Dan. Maybe there was a rug, maybe not.”

“Did you see Baron again that day?”

“I didn’t see him no time that day.”

“All right, Sammy,” I said. “Just sit tight.”

He nodded slowly. “You know, since they locked me in here I been thinking. I mean, I know I didn’t kill no one. Maybe they don’t believe me, and maybe they never find out. Maybe I’m going up for it. But I know I didn’t do nothing. I mean, I don’t want to go away for the long fall, but maybe I can take it if I got to. I mean, I know I’m clean.”

“You’ll get out of here, Sammy,” I said.

“Sure, Dan,” he said, and he grinned. “I’ll be here when you come for me.”

The guard walked behind me as if he thought I still might try to break the archcriminal out to destroy society. He locked the corridor bars after I went through. The sound of steel against steel, like the clang of doom, seemed to give him pleasure. Prison guards are like that. I could never decide if they became guards because they were like that, or if being guards made them like it.

On the street I caught a taxi and went up to my apartment. I put my old pistol into my duffle coat pocket. I went back down to the rental car and started uptown.

George Ames answered the door of the East Sixty-third Street apartment. His theatrical face looked tired.

“You again?” Ames said. “I’ve talked to the police. The District Attorney is completely convinced of Weiss’s guilt.”

“District Attorneys are paid to be convinced.”

“Are you determined to destroy our family?”

“I hope not the whole family.”

I saw something in his eyes. Call it knowledge. Ames knew something, but I could not be sure what that was.

“Come in, then,” he said.

I went in. There had been more changes. In another six months there would be no trace at all of Jonathan Radford.

“You’re alone?” I asked Ames.

“Yes.”

“Where is everyone?”

“North Chester. They plan to announce the engagement this weekend. I… I decided not to go,” Ames said. “Would you care for a drink? I intend to have one.”

“Irish, if you have it.”

“Scotch, I’m afraid.”

“It’ll do.” I sat down and watched him make the drinks. He gave me mine and sat facing me.

“Proceed, my dear Holmes,” he said, and smiled. It was a try; a small attempt to lift the weight that hung on the room. It failed even for him.

“How much do you know about Paul Baron now?” I asked.

“I know the money wasn’t a gambling debt, that this Baron was blackmailing Walter, or, rather, Jonathan.”

“Did it occur to you that sending Weiss here was all wrong? For a debt, maybe. But not for blackmail. Why involve an outsider in a blackmail scheme?”

“I don’t know. For safety, perhaps?”

“No, in blackmail, safety and success lie in how few people know about it. It would have been stupid to send Weiss here just for the money, and unnecessary.” I took a drink. “Why did Paul Baron send Weiss? It’s such an obvious question no one thought of asking it. Baron sent Weiss because he did, period. A self-evident fact. Baron did it. Only it isn’t self-evident when you look at it. Baron had no real reason to send anyone for the money.”

“How can you be sure of that? As you say, Baron did it.”

“Baron made his move on Sunday. On Monday he was waiting for a telephone call. A call, not a messenger. He got the call at about eleven-thirty. It wasn’t what he had expected to hear. He went off at a run. Only after that did he contact Weiss.”

Ames watched his drink. “Where are you leading?”

“Tell me about Monday again. The morning.”

He swirled the ice in his glass. “I had breakfast with Jonathan. I went to my rooms. At about eleven-thirty, a few minutes after, Walter came back. He said that Jonathan had gone out with Deirdre, and suggested we share a taxi as far as Grand Central. He took the train for North Chester. I went to my club.”

“Where are your rooms?”

“In the rear. Of course, I have the whole place now.”

“Your rooms are so separate that you didn’t see or hear Walter or Miss Fallon, and you didn’t see Jonathan go out?”

“The apartment is solidly built.”

“So it comes down to the fact that after breakfast you saw and heard nothing. You didn’t see Jonathan again.”

He looked at me. “I’m tempted to say ‘so what?’ You knew that. Why bring it up?”

“Because no one who really knew Jonathan saw him after breakfast, except Walter and Deirdre Fallon.”

If I expected a reaction, I didn’t get it. His theatrical face was immobile. His eyes seemed to retreat into a distance inside his head. He waited, sipped at his drink.

I drank. “Weiss didn’t know Jonathan. He was nervous, it all happened fast. He saw a man of the right build, in a bathrobe, and with a beard. Later he saw photographs of a body on the floor, and a dead man on an autopsy table.

“The doorman saw a man with a beard in Jonathan’s clothes with Miss Fallon. It was cold. Jonathan would have been wearing an overcoat, a hat, maybe a scarf, the works. I’d bet my life that Jonathan walked past the doorman without speaking. Miss Fallon probably greeted the doorman, and maybe spoke to Jonathan as they passed. Illusion.

“At the restaurant it’s Miss Fallon who’s well-known. She probably introduced Jonathan. It’s odds-on that the people at the Charles XII had never seen Jonathan before. Was he ever in that restaurant, Ames?”

“Not that I know. I’d say not.”

I waited. He said nothing more. He sat and looked at his now empty whisky glass as if he wondered where the whisky had gone; as if he wished that more would somehow appear without the effort of moving, of getting up and pouring more.

“Do I have to say it?” I said. “Jonathan was dead before you left this apartment that morning.”

“And the medical report?”

“A hundred variables could throw the M.E. off by an hour either way with Jonathan not found for so long. Cold, for instance. Weiss said the study was cold.”

Ames stood and went to the whisky. “All the windows were open. I closed them.”

“It didn’t really matter that much, not with the body undiscovered until six o’clock. It was sure to remain hidden at least that long. Only you and Jonathan had keys, and you’re a man of routine.”

“So I am. No, Jonathan couldn’t be found until I came home.”

“Extra insurance,” I said. “What counted was that witnesses, including Weiss, would say that Jonathan was alive as late as one-fifteen or even one-thirty if anyone believed Weiss.” I finished my drink, set the glass away from me. “Weiss served two purposes, and maybe the frame-up wasn’t even the first idea. First there was Weiss as a witness to prove Jonathan was alive at one-fifteen. That way everyone in the family was ruled out. The frame was another, better idea.”

Ames carried his drink to his chair, and lighted a cigarette. “You’re saying Jonathan was killed at eleven-thirty or so. Walter and I left. Paul Baron was called, and came here unseen. He then contacted Weiss, and also supplied an impostor to act as Jonathan. The impostor went to lunch with Deirdre, showed himself to the doorman, and was here to meet Weiss?”

“The impostor wore a bathrobe because Jonathan’s right clothes were bloody. Baron had the impostor pick a brawl with Weiss. Weiss ran, Baron replaced the body and went out the back way with his faker. He got rid of the faker one way or another.”

“One way or another? Yes, I see.”

“Baron had removed the bloody rug and cleaned the floor.”

Ames stared at me. “It strikes me as an involved scheme.” “No,”

I said. “Under the circumstances it was simple, almost foolproof. Baron knew a hundred drifters he could get in minutes, and who’d do almost anything for a thousand dollars. He knew Jonathan. All he needed was a man the right age and size. A beard can be supplied in ten minutes in midtown Manhattan. Once you were gone, he had no one to worry about who really knew Jonathan.”

“But on the spur of the moment?”

“That’s what makes me so sure. No one could have planned it in advance that well. He’d wait a year for just the right circumstances. It had to be spur of the moment; it grew out of the circumstances. He had a murder to cover fast. He had a body with a beard but otherwise ordinary enough, an empty apartment, and $25,000 on hand. It was just about all he could have done to fit the needs, and he found an impostor as easily as he found Weiss to play the patsy.”

“How did he know he could get Weiss so quickly?”

“He didn’t. Any messenger would have done. Pure chance.”

“Why would Paul Baron do all that? Take such a risk?” “Money, the big chance. He had a petty blackmail going, but once he had a murderer who let him cover and frame Weiss, he had a lifetime deal in his pocket. And he had the knife to back his play. That missing knife never sounded right. Now I know why it was missing. It had the killer’s prints on it, and Baron took it.”

“You mentioned a telephone call that, presumably, told Baron of the murder. As far as I can see, everyone here was his enemy, his victim. Why call him for help, and then help him?”

“Someone here was in with him. His partner all the way.”

“Partner? Then you rule out Walter?”

“No. He could have let himself be squeezed to bleed Jonathan.”

He moved and set his glass down carefully on the table. I watched him. I had no way of knowing how he was taking it all.

“You’re toying with me, Fortune. You’ve talked in generalities, no names. You’ve mentioned Walter and Deirdre, but we all know they were here, they admit it. If what you think is true, then they must be involved in it, but not necessarily as murderers, correct?” He waited, but I said nothing. He stood up abruptly and went to the liquor bar. He poured a straight shot and drank it. His back to me, he leaned with both hands on the bar. “The way you describe it, someone else could have been here with Walter and Deirdre. Anyone. Unseen and unknown.”

“A third person would have to have gotten past the doorman earlier, but it could have happened, yes.”

He faced me. “Then there’s me. I was here. It would all shield me, too.”

“You were here,” I said.

He continued to stare at me. Then he turned again, poured another shot, and downed it. He was holding himself rigid now. “What do you want me to do, Fortune?”

“Take a drive with me,” I said. “It isn’t just Jonathan anymore, Ames. Not even Jonathan and Baron. Two more bodies are on the list. One of them doesn’t matter much, but the other was a stupid, scared little girl who never really started living. Now she’s dead because she was just a possible threat to someone, and that someone is still running loose.”

His back was a ramrod. “North Chester?”

“Yes. I have a car.”

He turned. “All right.”

He got his coat and hat and we went down to my car. I told him to drive. Even a man with two arms is pretty helpless when driving. I didn’t think he had killed anyone, but that was theory and guesswork. I could be all wrong.