The Brass Rainbow

8

Costa’s office was modest and had no windows. Air-conditioning hummed, the safe was a vault only an army could crack, the chairs were leather, and the desk was steel and small.

“Sit down,” Costa said.

I started for a chair. Strega’s hands frisked me from behind with a delicate touch and no wasted motion. Costa sat behind his desk and waited.

“Okay,” Strega said.

I sat. The bodyguard walked away to a corner. He made no noise as he walked. Strega was the new-style bodyguard, what they call now a “show-guard.” He could go anywhere and blend in-a society party, a political dinner, a ladies’ tea.

“No iron?” Costa said. “That’s smart. Guns win battles, brains win wars, right?”

“Lawyers win wars,” I said. “Our kind of wars.”

“You got a point. Who are you?”

“Dan Fortune. A private detective.”

Costa closed his eyes, leaned back. “Fortune? Yeh, wait now… wait

… Danny the Pirate, sure. Chelsea. I was East New York.” He opened his eyes. “You’re small beans, baby.”

“Real small,” I agreed. “You’re East New York? Profaci’s family, or the Gallo boys?”

“To hell with that. I do business, sure, but that’s all.”

Profaci was the former Mafia leader of Brooklyn. He had been a tough leader-so tough he had died of natural causes. The Gallos were Profaci’s enemies. What Costa was saying was that he was an independent, not Mafia. He looked as if it meant something to him. His dark eyes considered my missing arm.

“The war?” he asked.

“I never made it.”

“Too bad. I was master sergeant. In the Big Red One. We made the landings, baby. We pushed the Krauts back on their cans. Real war, real soldiers. When you got that behind you, you don’t cozy up to punks like the Mafia. There ain’t one of them wouldn’t have fainted in a real war, and that goes for Charley Lucky, too. Without guns they couldn’t handle an old ladies’ bridge club, and with the guns they can’t hit the Queen Mary at fifty feet. They got to use choppers to hit a parked car. They shoot guys in the head ’cause they got to get that close or miss. The bosses can’t walk into a bar without six punks casing it first.”

“You don’t need a bodyguard?”

“Strega? He’s my friend, baby. He was infantry, too, in Korea. We’re a team, only I can handle myself. I hit the bull six out of seven with an automatic at fifty yards. I can take any man with my hands, short of a bigger professional and Strega. With me and Strega it’s a draw. Right, Strega?”

Strega leaned in the corner, his eyes blank. “I’ll take you sixty-forty, Sarge. With an automatic, you got the edge.”

Costa laughed. Strega was serious. The quick brains were probably with Costa, he was the boss, but I’d rather have met him in an alley than Strega. Beyond that they were two of a kind: self-contained and self-sufficient. Proud. They bowed to no man. It was almost refreshing in our organization world.

Costa said, “What do you want to know about Radford?”

“What can you tell me?”

“You want to know if I knocked him off? Because he closed me down over in North Chester?”

“It’s a reason,” I said.

“No it isn’t, baby. It’s all in the game. I shut the nephew off cold and opened here. No sweat.” He leaned back again, fixed those dark eyes on me. “We don’t kill people anymore, not outside the club. Sure, inside the boys still hit each other sometimes, but not outside. Too much pressure now. Anastasia gets it, the cops cheer. Knock off a citizen, and you got trouble. If the citizen was a big wheel, the trouble is so bad no fix works, and that’s bad for business.”

“And Radford was important?”

“You know it. Talk about Mafia, but, baby, they’re nothing compared to a guy like Jonathan Radford. He was real power. The connections, the influence, the real muscle. If he looks sideways at the cops, no fix could stick. He calls the Governor, he gets troopers and maybe the national guard. Congress listens to him. The President talks to him. He was a corporation, baby, with a reach went everywhere. I did what he didn’t like. He made a phone call and I was out of business. No threats, no guns, no muscle. That’s power, baby. He closed me to show he wanted the kid shut off. I shut the kid off. He let me open here.”

“Sometimes a man gets squeezed so hard he just has to stand up and fight no matter how bad the odds,” I said.

Costa scowled now. “Listen, baby. He wanted me out of North Chester, and I got out. He didn’t even talk to me. Guys like him think guys like me and you ain’t even human. If they need us, they use us like they’d use a dog. If they don’t need us, they don’t even see us as long as we keep out of their way. I stay open, baby, only because guys like Radford are too busy to worry about me, and the good citizens don’t care.”

“Probably true and logical,” I said, “but you don’t strike me as a man who’s always logical.”

He grinned. “Anyway, baby, I’ve got me an alibi. Soon as I heard, I knew the cops’d be around. They came. I told them what I’m telling you: me and Strega was in the city early Monday, sure, but we was back here by one o’clock. We got proof. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “Did you hear about Jonathan being mixed up in anything?”

“No, but what would I hear about what he did?”

“Do you know a man named Paul Baron?”

“I heard of him, but I never met the man. We work different streets. He’s a con artist, a sharpie. I’m a businessman. Him and his women work badger games; play the ships, the resorts. His kind’ll try to take a casino as fast as any private mark. I’d throw him out.”

“Walter Radford lost $25,000 to Baron at poker.”

Costa whistled. “Walter can’t play, but Baron probably cold-decked him, too. Only $25,000 is damned high for a loner like Baron to let the tab go.”

“I was thinking that myself,” I agreed. “Maybe Baron sort of knew Walter was going to be rich soon. I notice Walter isn’t shut off here anymore.”

“The old man’s dead. No worries now,” Costa said. “Walter’s loaded, if the Fallon doesn’t queer the deal when she marries him. Except I don’t give that two years before she wants out, or maybe he does. She’s got too much class for him.”

“You like her?”

“There’s something in her, baby. Only you saw she won’t give me the time of day. Not now. Maybe later.”

“Keep hoping,” I said, and stood up.

“I will, baby.”

I left Costa with a faraway look in his black eyes. Strega still leaned in his corner, a statue. But just as I reached the door, the blond man’s gray eyes turned to look at me. Intense gray eyes, as if Strega wanted to be sure to remember my face.

Outside the casino in the cold I lighted a cigarette. The stars were clear and hard. It had been a day of the wild goose, and no help to Sammy Weiss. I decided to have one more go at finding Weiss, and maybe Paul Baron. The cops should have given up on Weiss’s room by now. Maybe I could find some lead they had missed.