False colors

by Powell, Richard, 1908-1999

  bronze gate at the end of the hall was open and I went quickly upstairs.

  When I reached the second floor I realized that I was slowly suffocating. The breath I had taken just before entering the house seemed to be a little second-hand, so I turned it in for a new one. Nobody but Meadows could walk into a nest of stranglers and almost commit suicide by holding his breath.

  Nancy had said she was in the second room from the front on the second floor. I moved down the dimly lighted hallway and opened the door of the second room and stepped in and closed the door behind me. It was very dark. I whispered Nancy's name. The sound scurried around the walls without getting an answer.

  "It's Pete," I said. "Where are you, Nancy?"

  Something reached out of the dark and grabbed me and said, "Here." It was Nancy, of course. But the grab came a second before she spoke, and if her grip hadn't been strong she would have been left talking to herself. As I recovered from the grab, she began dusting my face with quick little kisses. It was harder to recover from that. It made my heart act like corn in a popcorn machine.

  She gasped, "I was never so glad to see anyone."

  "Are you sure you have the right guy?" I said weakly. "Maybe you didn't catch the name. This is Pete. Is this really for me?"

  "Oh, Pete, it's so wonderful that you got in, and I'm so grateful."

  "Save some of that gratitude. We aren't out yet."

  "How did you get in?"

  "They have an alarm system on the windows. I managed to set it off from outside, and Lassiter's bodyguard ran out to see who was monkeying around. He left the front door open and I sneaked in."

  "That was very clever of you."

  "I'm beginning to wonder. It's bad enough to stir up a hornet's nest without climbing into the nest afterward. We'll have to hide here until things quiet down."

  She patted my shirt as if she hoped to find a manly chest un-

  der it. "I know you think this was horribly reckless and stupid of me," she said. "But I really did find out something. It's up on the third floor. Do we dare go up so you can see?"

  "Why don't you just tell me about it?"

  "You have to see it, Pete. I want to find out if you get the same idea from it that I did."

  I went to the door and opened it and peered down the shadowy hall. There wasn't a sign of anybody moving around. Probably Lassiter and Joe Molo were still downstairs. "Well," I muttered, "we can't get in any more trouble on the third floor than we're in here. So let's go."

  We padded down the hall and up the stairs to the third floor. Nancy led me through an open doorway. Not much light oozed in from the hall but the place seemed to be a living room or study.

  "Watch this," Nancy said, switching on her tiny flashlight.

  The flat disk of light slid over a wall and crawled around a corner and suddenly a nightmare face leered back at us. The eyes were a black gash under hooded lids. The lips had never smiled. A couple of horns curled forward from the back of the head. It might have scared me except for the horns. That carried things too far. I stayed calm and identified it as a bronze mask.

  "And look there," Nancy whispered.

  Her light picked up a crudely carved wooden bowl, supported on each side by the kneeling figure of a Negress. The bowl sat on a table covered with a yellow cloth. The light twitched around the room and showed me black modernistic furniture and plants with shiny leaves and rugs and drapes in different shades of yellow.

  "Does it give you any ideas?" Nancy asked.

  "You can't miss it," I muttered. "Kay Raymond decorated this room."

  "I knew it! Those African masks and carvings are her trademark. She's been working with him, hasn't she?"

  I stared at a closed door across the room. It didn't look like a

  closet door. "I think we can go even further than that," I said. "Lend me the flashlight."

  I took the light and crept toward the closed door and reached for the knob and started to turn it. I didn't complete that action. The knob twisted out of my grip and the door jerked open and the beam of my flashlight glinted on a revolver.

  "I thought you'd never come," Kay Raymond said, and started to squeeze the trigger.

  16.

  When you plan to shoot a guy it is not a good idea to give him a hint what's going to happen. Nor is it desirable to hold the gun out as if offering him a box of candy. And especially is it a mistake to point the gun into a flashlight beam that keeps you from seeing what your target is doing.

  I made a quick grab with my left hand, clamped it over the hammer of the revolver. That kept it from cocking. I dropped the flashlight and brought up my right hand and twisted the revolver away from her. All this happened about as fast and with as little conscious thought as catching a cup falling from a table. Then I dropped the gun and grabbed Kay and jammed my right hand over her mouth. Keeping her quiet wasn't as simple as freezing the hammer of the revolver. She started to eat her way out of my grasp.

  "What's the matter?" I said, shaking her. "Don't they feed you around here? Quit that. This is Pete Meadows."

  The spring-steel tension went out of her body, and she made a mumbling noise against my hand.

  I looked down at the floor, where the flashlight was making a small pool of light. "Get the flashlight and gun," I told Nancy. "Then follow me into the next room and close the door."

  "Gun?" Nancy said. "What are you talking about? All I know

  is that Kay opened the door and said something and you grabbed her, as usual, and now you start talking about guns."

  "Nobody's ever watching when I do something brilliant," I said. "I'll spell it out for you. She had a gun. I took it away from her. I dropped it on the floor so I could put a hand over her mouth and stop any screams."

  Nancy let out a satisfactory gasp. "A gun! Oh Pete, you might have been shot."

  "I thought of that. It's why I took it away from her. Now will you collect the hardware?"

  She picked up the flashlight and located the revolver. I marched Kay into the next room. Nancy came in, closed the door and flashed the light on Kay's face.

  "Her face is bleeding," Nancy whispered. "What did you do to her?"

  The light showed a tiny smear of blood on Kay's chin, under the edge of my hand. "I'm giving her a transfusion," I said. "That's from my hand. She bit it."

  "What are we going to do with her?"

  The light glittered on Kay's black eyes. I wish I could read what went on behind them. I knew part of it, though. "I'm going to let her go," I said.

  "Pete, she'll scream!"

  "Oh no," I said. "As a matter of fact, we're a pleasant surprise. Watch and see." I let Kay go, and dug a handkerchief from my pocket. I tore it in half, wrapped one piece around my hand and gave the other to Kay. "Wipe your face," I said.

  She took the cloth and dabbed at the red splotch on her mouth and chin. "I'm sorry I bit your hand," she said.

  "That's all right."

  "The reason I'm sorry is that it didn't taste very good. Why on earth do you think you might be a pleasant surprise to me?"

  I said mildly, "Don't people in jail like visitors?"

  "You must be nuts. What makes you think this is a jail?"

  "I can't imagine, unless maybe it's the gates and steel shutters and locks and the guard named Joe Molo."

  "I'm here because I want to be here," she said defiantly. "I've

  even got a private phone over there on my dresser. Try it if you don't believe me. I can call outside any time I want. Does that sound like a jail?"

  "Of course she's here by choice," Nancy said. "Look at that room out there. She decorated it. Anybody can see that Mr. Lassiter has been keeping her."

  Kay said, "How did you like that horned mask on the wall? That's a Baluba funeral mask. The way you two babes in the wood get in trouble, maybe you need it as a reminder."

  "You're pretty deep in the woods yourself," I said. "You figured it was Lassiter sneaking up to your bedroom door. You were going to shoot hi
m."

  "Ridiculous. I thought you were a burglar."

  "Do you always say, T thought you'd never come,' just before you shoot burglars?"

  "What are you doing here, anyway?" Kay said. "What do you think you're going to get out of me?"

  "I have a few questions to ask. I want a few of your best lies in answer to them. As a starter—"

  She grabbed my arm suddenly. "He's coming," she said. "Be quiet, both of you. Turn off that flashlight."

  "She's planning a trick," Nancy gasped. "Watch her, Pete!"

  I took the revolver and flashlight from Nancy, switched off the light, and whispered, "She isn't worrying about us."

  We waited a few moments in the breathless dark. I couldn't hear anything but the velvet murmur of blood in my head. Then somebody knocked on a door. Not on the bedroom door, but on the open door of the living room thirty feet away from us. There was a flutter of sound as Kay moved to the bedroom door and opened it.

  "Yes?" she said.

  "Sorry to disturb you, my dear," Lassiter said. "Would you mind shutting and locking this door into the hall?"

  She said in a mocking tone, "What's the matter, Ludwig? Don't you trust yourself tonight?"

  "Please," he said stiffly. "You have me well trained. It's something quite different. The alarm system went off a few minutes

  ago. Someone was trying to break into my office. Joe ran out into the alley, but he was too late. However, the front door was open and unguarded for at least a minute. So there's a chance the burglar might have crept in. We're checking every room."

  "Do you want to search these rooms?"

  I eased back the hammer of the revolver. Beside me, Nancy grabbed a quick sharp breath. It turned out we needn't have worried. Kay knew what she was doing.

  Lassiter made a laughing noise that sounded like two boards slapping together. "I know you better than that," he said. "You would hear a prowler before he got up the stairs. So just lock up, if you will."

  "All right, Ludwig. How was your show tonight?"

  "I'm not sure," he said. "Either a great success or a terrible flop. Good night, my dear."

  "Good night," she said.

  I listened carefully. Both doors were open but I could only hear the faintest creak as Lassiter moved away. There was a rustle as Kay walked across the living room and the click of a lock going into its keeper. Then there was another rustle and she was back with us. I let the hammer of the revolver down gently, flicked on the light and fanned it over her face. She might have posed for that Baluba funeral mask, with its black gashes for eyes and its mouth that had never smiled. It was easy to see why Lassiter handled her so cautiously. A snake charmer might feel the same way with a new cobra.

  "That's quite a sense of hearing you have," I said.

  "I know the sound of every floor board in this house," she said tonelessly. "I heard him coming when he was three steps from the top of the landing."

  "A normal person couldn't hear that well. Your nerves are pretty raw, aren't they? How long did it take to sandpaper them down so they can pick up tiny sounds?"

  "What do you know about raw nerves?"

  "I'm making a study of yours. It's quite instructive."

  "Your imagination is running a fever. You thought I was a prisoner. Did that talk sound like it?"

  "It sounded like an armed truce."

  "Ridiculous. It's just that he knows better than to bother me without being invited. Well, go ahead and ask your questions. You'll have to stay here anyway until things quiet down. But don't expect any answers."

  Nancy let out a quivering breath, and said, "It's such a nightmare. I can't make sense of it. Let's just wait here without talking, Pete."

  "Don't give up so easily," I said. "Kay's almost ready to talk."

  "Rave on," Kay said, and threw herself face down on the bed. Her black hair spread out like a dark shiny pool in which her face had drowned.

  I pulled up a couple of chairs for us, and sat down and turned off the flashlight. "Now," I said, "we'll wait quietly for a while and see what happens."

  Nancy's hand came groping through the dark and crept down my arm and burrowed among my fingers. Nobody spoke. Time pulsed slowly by. I was sure Kay was going to crack. She had been playing a deadly game for a long time. Only a tough person can do that, and then only if there's a chance of winning. It didn't look now as if Kay could win. I listened to her breathing. It sounded like a knife being sharpened on a stone. Maybe half an hour went by. I had no way of judging time, except that Nancy kept tightening her grip on my hand, and now and then her nails started digging in and I had to loosen her grip. Then the slow tightening of her grip would start all over again.

  Kay said finally in a harsh whisper, "Why don't you say something?"

  "Sure," I said. "Any preferences?"

  "I don't care. Whatever you say will be all wrong, anyway."

  "I might surprise you. When you get enough facts together about any problem, there's only one way they'll fit. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. If you don't have enough pieces, you can't make much out of them. If you do have enough pieces, they only

  make one picture. I found a lot of pieces today. You being here was one of them. The way you talked to Lassiter was the last one I needed."

  "You're so clever," Kay said. "You ought to charge for your lectures."

  "We start with a young fellow named Mason Dawes," I said. Then I paused. There wasn't any sound from the bed. "He was an artist," I said. "He had a studio in Shakespeare Village off Twenty-first Street. He also had a girl. She was a nice kid who thought the world of him. She worked in a department store. Do I have to tell you her name?"

  "You're a dirty lousy snooper," Kay said.

  "Dawes got himself in a jam. Maybe he began by restoring fine paintings. But he went beyond that. He began faking stuff."

  "That's a lie!"

  "You don't have to protect him now, Kay."

  "You can't prove he faked anything."

  "I don't have to. When there's only one piece missing in a jigsaw puzzle, you can see the outlines it must have had. Dawes turned into an art forger. He wanted to break away and couldn't. Like a lot of guys who get backed into a corner, he tried to drink his way out of it. And one morning about two years ago they found him swinging from a rafter."

  "Ancient history," Kay said. "Just another suicide."

  "That's what the police said. But you said it was murder."

  Beside me, Nancy shuddered. Kay didn't speak.

  "You knew things the police didn't," I went on. "Maybe Dawes had been trying to go straight. Maybe he had threatened to spill the whole mess in public. The man he was working for couldn't let that happen. So he went to the studio one night and got Dawes drunk and strung him up. That's the way you figured it. But you didn't have any proof. Nothing but suspicion. Nothing that would interest the cops. Did you even go to them, Kay?"

  "Why would I go to them? It was a suicide!"

  "All right. You didn't go to them. But you knew your boy

  friend had been working for Lassiter. And you started out to get the goods on Lassiter."

  "What if I did happen to meet him? What if he did like me and offer to set me up in business? I didn't have the man I wanted any more. So I took a career, and a man I didn't want. That's all it was."

  "Lassiter is a smart guy," I said. "You couldn't trick any confession out of him. You never got a break until this past week. Then another kid got in a jam. A kid named Nick Accardi. But Nick's a tough baby. He started busting out before he got in too deep. He threw paint over the picture he had faked, and handed it over to his landlady. We happened to buy it right out from under Lassiter's nose. Lassiter didn't want anybody else to have that painting. Especially not me. He was afraid I'd find out what was under the paint Nick threw on. But he didn't dare try to buy it from me for fear that would make me curious. So he told you to buy it. Nancy wouldn't sell it. You came to our show that night and stole the thing. But we managed to get it back from y
ou."

  "Congratulations," Kay said. "You just got a fact right."

  "Here are a couple more facts that are right," I said. "Lassiter didn't know you had stolen the painting. You held out on him. You were going to study it and see if this was another Mason Dawes case. But Lassiter read about the theft in the morning paper, and figured that either Nick had taken it, or that you had done the job and were double-crossing him. He could easily find out that you were at the show. So what does he do?"

  "Are you asking me?" Kay said. "This is your brain storm. I don't know how it ends."

  "I don't really have to ask you. I know what happened next. Lassiter had two suspects. He couldn't take chances with either of them. So he set up another murder. He was going to strangle one suspect and pin it on the other. He slipped into your apartment and caught you with your back turned. You never even got a look at him before you blacked out. Neat, huh? But Lassiter's timing was off. He didn't know that Nick does his road-

  work for his fights on city streets. Nick ran to your place. He got there too soon for Lassiter."

  Kay said in a tight voice, "I told you it was a burglar."

  "Yeah, but nothing you've ever told me has been true. Well, I blundered into the mess. That gave you a chance to blackmail us and get the painting again. You called Lassiter and told him what had happened. Probably you said you'd been ashamed to tell him earlier how you had lost the painting. Y T ou pretended to believe that Nick had been the strangler. Lassiter said you were a wonderful girl and please move in here until Nick got caught. Any comments?"

  There weren't any, unless you counted the way she was breathing quick little snatches of air.

  "That boxed you in," I said. "At best, Lassiter would never trust you again. He'd tried to strangle you with the same kind of blue-green silk that he used to hang Mason Dawes. He'd be sure you would connect those two things. But there was a worse possibility. Lassiter might be waiting for the right moment to finish the job on you. Moving in here might be like standing on a rickety box and putting your head in a hangman's noose to test it. But you didn't dare refuse. Lassiter might take that as a signal he had to get rid of you fast. So you packed your little revolver and trotted over here. Why didn't you shoot him, Kay? Still got some doubts? Lost your nerve?"