City of Brass

by Edward D. Hoch

  Simon shrugged, and we turned to look out at the water, its little wind-driven waves beating at the stony shore. There were men along this shore now, shadow men, standing every twenty or thirty feet, waiting at their posts like soldiers guarding against invasion. They would be watching the glowing dials of their watches now, waiting for the midnight stroke that would signal the start of the fireworks. The lake soon would seem a sea of fire, and somehow I supposed it would reflect the passing of another year of independence.

  A tall, not unhandsome man in a summer jacket stepped onto the porch, closely followed by the guard who’d greeted us. Apparently Foster Baine didn’t interview strangers alone. “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said, his voice surprisingly mild. “May I be of assistance?”

  “Foster Baine?” Simon asked, and when the tall man nodded slightly he went on. “I am Simon Ark. You do not know me, but I have come some little distance to speak with you.”

  The man waved his hand with irritation. “You see I’m entertaining. Can’t it wait till Wednesday? I’ll be back at the office then.”

  “It can’t wait,” Simon said quietly. “It concerns the murder of Cathy Clark.”

  If Simon’s statement surprised him he didn’t show it. Rather he seemed just the least bit annoyed, chewing nervously on his lower lip. “The girl who was murdered? What has she to do with me?”

  “She was a recent graduate of Baine University.”

  Foster Baine snorted. “Am I now to be held responsible for every person who passes through the portals of that place? I never met the girl, or heard her name, before this weekend when she was killed … Just who are you gentlemen, anyway?”

  He looked down on me with a decidedly superior attitude as he spoke, but Simon was his equal in height and more than his equal in staring people down. “Mr. Baine,” he said, bringing into play the full range of his startlingly powerful voice, “we have reason to believe that the death of Miss Clark may be in some manner linked with a series of experiments being currently carried on at Baine University by a Professor Kane Wilber.”

  “Am I supposed to know about those, too?”

  “We thought you might, since you support the various research programs of the University.”

  His eyes broke with Simon’s gaze and he turned away, toward the water. “I know Professor Wilber. I’ve known him for a good many years. He is without doubt one of the finest brains in the country in the field of heredity.”

  Simon moved a step closer to the man. “And what is the nature of the experiments being currently carried on?”

  At that moment a flare fizzled into life across the lake, then another, and another, until the entire lake seemed ablaze in a matter of seconds. Rockets screeched through the black and blue night, bursting above us to litter the area with the sudden, already dying, brightness of a thousand suns. Almost at once we found ourselves surrounded by the rest of Baine’s party, and for the moment further talk was impossible. We were all simply an audience now, held captive by the spectacle of color that bathed so briefly the lake before us.

  What was the last question Simon had asked? The nature of the experiments being carried on? I thought about it as I watched the constantly changing brightnesses reflecting off the face of Foster Baine. No, he was not a man to make monsters—he was an empire builder, a pioneer for all of his inherited riches. He was Baine Brass, as surely as his father and grandfather had been.

  Another rocket burst far overhead, sprinkling colors like lights on some animated Christmas tree. Christmas in July. From inside the occasional music of a stereo phonograph drifted through to us over the sound of the bursting fireworks. It wasn’t Christmas music—maybe rather July music, music for a summer night. Something from the twenties, dreamy.

  The lights flickered and changed again, and I was looking at a face somehow familiar. A blonde girl, standing next to, and a little behind, Foster Baine. A girl who for one crazy instant could have been Cathy Clark in Grand Central Station, over a cold cup of coffee. I knew her, I knew this girl, from somewhere far in the past. Further back than Cathy Clark …

  It had been a summer, like this one, at a lake like this one, perhaps only because as one approaches forty all summers and all lakes seem much the same. I had forgotten everything about her—even her name—many years ago, because after all it had been summer at a lake. I remembered only that in those days, she’d looked well in a bathing suit, that she could do a Charleston like some imagined image of Clara Bow, and that she kissed me one night on the sandy beach, with little pebbles pressing into my back.

  Now, as she turned, aware somehow of my questioning gaze, the same sort of half-remembering expression passed over her face—passed and was gone, all in an instant. “Pardon me,” I said. “Don’t I know you?”

  A bit of a smile played about her lips as she answered. “Do you? I am Mrs. Foster Baine.”

  Yes, his wife now. A rich man’s wife. “It was a long time ago,” I began.

  The smile stayed on her lips, but not in her eyes. “I think you must be mistaken.”

  “Perhaps,” I replied, because there was nothing else to say just then.

  We watched the fireworks for another ten minutes, until finally the bursts grew a little less frequent, the flares a little less bright. And the music from the stereo swelled up around us again, with a dreamy instrumental of an old song called Dancing On The Ceiling. The party was breaking up now, with guests and their ladies saying courteous good-nights to Mr. and Mrs. Foster Baine. It was not the kind of gathering where half-drunk friends lingered till daybreak, dancing sensuously to unheard music. These were the proper people of Baine City—they had seen their spectacle and now it was time to go home.

  And even as I watched them go I wondered at that strange quirk of modern society. Sometimes the rich and powerful were also the lawless and sinful, but there was a certain point of wealth and power that precluded all this—as if when a man reached a certain goal he ended his public sinning and started practicing it in private.

  Then we were alone, Foster Baine and his wife and Simon and I, and we went back to the living room of the beach house. It was a room to be appreciated, a room to be studied and savored like a fine painting. There were trimmings of brass, of course, everywhere you looked. Brass fireplace screen, a huge brass clock on the mantel, even brass legs on all the furniture.

  “Well,” Foster Baine said, taking up a position on one side of the great open fireplace. “Where were we?”

  I tried to catch Mrs. Baine’s eye, but she wasn’t having any. Like her husband, she was concentrating on the tall, commanding figure of Simon Ark. “We were discussing the current experiments of Professor Wilber,” Simon said. “And the murder of Cathy Clark.”

  Her eyelids may have flickered at that. I couldn’t be sure. But her husband might have been a block of brass. “Well, as I said, he has one of the finest brains in the entire country. As to his present work, I’m afraid I can’t enlighten you there.”

  “Can’t? Or won’t?”

  He gave us a hard smile. “What you will. The experiments are of a confidential nature. At the proper time full data will be released.”

  “I have been told that these experiments are of a somewhat startling nature,” Simon said.

  Baine shrugged his shoulders. “These days life is startling. Rockets circle the moon, planes fly the ocean in a few hours. Professor Wilber and others like him are only working for an even better tomorrow.”

  Simon Ark frowned. “Tomorrow seems only better because it is not here. Today’s evil will never bring tomorrow’s good.”

  “The experiments are not evil,” Baine retorted.

  “You know their exact nature?”

  Baine hesitated a moment and then nodded.

  “But you refuse to reveal them?”

  “What good would be served by it? They are in no way connected with the death of Miss Clark. Why should I speak of such matters with two perfect strangers?”

  He was beginn
ing to get annoyed at Simon’s persistence, and I noticed that the little guard had returned, standing casually just inside the door. It was time to go.

  Simon apparently realized this too, for he rose and said, “We must be going. I am sorry to have kept you up like this after midnight, but we felt it was important.”

  Baine gave a wave of his hand. “Perfectly all right.”

  When we were outside in the dark I led the way back to the car. “What do you make of it, Simon?”

  He looked up at the stars for a moment before replying. “I don’t really know, my friend. A man like Baine is always difficult to figure out. He is a ruler here, like some feudal prince. The problem is whether his goals are the good of the people or merely his own selfish fame.”

  “I think I used to know his wife,” I remarked, starting the car and heading back toward Baine City.

  “Oh?”

  “She wouldn’t admit it, but I think I knew her one summer down on Long Island. It was a long time ago.”

  “A girl friend?”

  “Not really. Not at all, in fact. That’s why I can’t quite figure out the cold shoulder I got. I never saw her or heard about her again, after that summer. She meant nothing to me.”

  “Perhaps that’s why, my friend. Women like to mean something to a man.”

  “Well, she found her man, anyway. She found Baine Brass.”

  Simon cleared his throat. “Were you aware that a car was following us, my friend?”

  “What?” My eyes shot to the rear-view mirror, picking out the twin headlights cutting through the night behind us. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” he said quietly. And even as he spoke the car picked up speed and began jockeying to pass us. “Be careful.”

  “Damn!” I twisted the wheel as the lights moved along side. “If I had my own car I’d run him off the road.” He was next to us now, edging us over, crowding us toward a blackness that could only be a ditch. I took my eyes off the road an instant to concentrate on the shadowed figure bent over the steering wheel. I wanted to see what death looked like when he came for me.

  But it was not the bone-smooth face I’d half expected to see. It was the face of the youth named Zenny. There was someone beside him, a girl whose face I couldn’t see. Just as I looked he swerved the wheel of his car, crowding me and bumping my fender. I slammed on the brakes and stopped with my right front wheel already on the edge of the ditch. Zenny brought his car to a halt some dozen yards ahead.

  “This looks like trouble,” I said. “That’s Zenny, the Clark girl’s boy friend.”

  “Would you prefer that I …?”

  “No, I’ll handle it.” I slid out from behind the wheel and stood there waiting for him. “Hello, Zenny. You wanted me for something?”

  He halted a dozen feet away, sizing me up like a fighter about to move in for the knock-down. “What you want, anyhow, mister? You’re workin’ for Baine, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “I see you leavin’ his place just now. Baine and I aren’t exactly friends.” He moved a step closer.

  “That’s too bad. Did you and the girl friend follow me all the way out here just to tell me that?”

  “We weren’t following you. We just seen you.” Behind him the girl had gotten out of the car. I thought it was the same girl who’d been waiting for him that afternoon at the funeral parlor. She wore the same tight sweater and jeans, but now her lipstick was smeared. He glanced at her and spat, “Get back in the car, Bun.”

  “God, Zenny, don’t try nothing! There’s another one in the car watching you. If they are cops they probably got guns.”

  He thought about this, sizing me up all the while. “I’m not going to hurt him, not yet. This was just a warning. Hear that, mister?”

  “What kind of warning? I don’t think I understand.”

  He stepped in closer, only an arm’s length away. “This kind of warning. You tell Baine he’s not framing me for Cathy’s killing. You can tell him he’d better lay off or his wife will wish he had.”

  My left arm shot out and I felt my fingers catch his shirt collar. “What do you mean by that?” I asked angrily, yanking him off balance. I thought I had him, but he was too experienced at that type of fighting. Before I knew what was happening his right hand was coming up under my arm, a sudden switch-blade catching the gleam from my headlights. It was only the girl’s scream of fright that warned me in time.

  We broke, and then the girl was on him, pulling the knife arm back. “No, Zenny, you damn fool! Let’s get out of here.”

  Apparently he was convinced, because he started backing away, letting himself be dragged back to the waiting car by the girl in the tight jeans. He flung back only one shout. “Remember it, mister. You and Baine both remember it.”

  Then they were in the car, and it was jumping to life with the familiar cough of a souped-up engine. I watched until the red tail lights vanished around the curve and then went back to Simon.

  “Tough guy,” I said.

  “My friend, Shelly would not like the thought of mixing with knife-wielding thugs. You’re much too old for it.”

  I started the car, carefully backing away from the ditch. “I was never the right age, believe me. I think I’ll head back to New York, where there’s nothing to kill you but the traffic.”

  “We must stay another day, now. Things are moving to a head.”

  “Sure they are. I’ll get knifed by Zenny tomorrow sure.”

  “Perhaps not, my friend. Perhaps not. We will wait to see what tomorrow brings.”

  And he would say no more. We drove slowly back to town, in silence. Behind us the night was dark …

  Fourth of July.

  Dawning bright, crackling with the odor of burnt powder, singing with the distant sound of a parade. A picnic, a walk in the park, a familiar political speech. Midsummer day—holiday time, vacation time. I rolled out of bed just before ten and stood looking out at the city of brass, watching great white clouds chart a brief path across the sky, past Baine University, past Baine Brass. They were like some unknown islands in the sky, always there, yet changing with every tide of wind that blew across them.

  It was so in Paris and London, Los Angeles and Washington, and here in Baine City. Just another place under the sun, where men lived and died, and life went on because it had to. Even today there’d be shifts at the brass plant, running the great forming and polishing machines. There’d be men standing around, taking a cigarette break, cursing the foreman, reliving the previous night’s date with the well-stacked blonde. It was life.

  And I wondered what life ever was to men like Simon Ark. Did he have a woman somewhere, anywhere, to rest him when the burden got too tough? Even as I thought it, there was a knock on the door and he was standing there, looking the same as yesterday, the same as when I’d first seen him twenty years ago.

  “A pleasant morning,” he said.

  “Pleasant.” I started dressing, turning over the random thoughts that were running through my mind. “Simon?”

  He’d settled into one of the hotel chairs and crossed his hands as if in prayer. “Yes, my friend?”

  “Have you ever had a woman, Simon? I’ve known you for all these years, and yet I really know so little about you.”

  I don’t know what reaction I’d expected, but I was surprised when he dropped” his eyes to the carpeted floor. “A woman? Well, now it has been a long time … I am very old, you know, so very old …” And then his eyes lifted, and he went on. “Did you know, my friend, that in ancient Greece the women of the streets—prostitutes—sometimes carved messages on the soles of their sandals, so when they walked along they imprinted messages in the sand or dirt of the streets?”

  “What kind of messages?”

  “Usually something like follow me or words to that effect.”

  “It’s a queer world.”

  “Yes, and perhaps there is always a woman at its center. Perhaps woman is the real ruler of man. At l
east they need each other, and always will.”

  I nodded and put on my shirt. “Until someone comes up with a foolproof method of artificial insemination.”

  I’d said it mostly as a joke, but Simon didn’t smile. “Most methods of artificial insemination are quite immoral,” he said, and then fell silent a moment, as if deep in thought.

  An idea struck me and I turned away from the window. “Simon, we know that Wilber has been working on experiments concerning birth and the life process. Is it possible that when we saw him bending over the coffin yesterday he was really studying Cathy’s skull? Is it possible he intends to attempt to bring her back to life?”

  Simon smiled a bit at that. “All things are possible in this world, my friend, but I fear you are being overly influenced by the current offerings of movies and television. I doubt very strongly if Professor Wilber is contemplating anything like that.”

  “So, where do we go from here?”

  “It’s a holiday. Why go anywhere?”

  “Seriously, Simon, who do you think killed her?”

  “If I told you, I doubt if you’d believe me. I hardly believe myself.”

  “Then you know!”

  But he shook his head. “I have a suspicion, nothing more. A suspicion that cannot yet be put into words.”

  The phone buzzed and I picked it up, wondering who’d be calling us on this holiday morning. It was Henry Mahon, downstairs in the lobby and waiting to come up. I told him to come ahead.

  “Mahon,” I told Simon.

  “Interesting.”

  “Very.”

  He came, a few moments later, looking somehow worn and red-eyed. I wondered if he’d been drinking the night before. “Good morning,” he mumbled, sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed.

  “Hello, Hank. What brings you down here at this early hour?”

  “I … well, I thought you might have gotten the wrong idea about our conversation yesterday. I do care about my sister-in-law’s death, really! I don’t want to give the impression that I’m more interested in raising money for the University than in tracking down her killer.”

  He was nervous today, even more so than the last time we’d seen him, and all the familiar wildness seemed gone from him. Perhaps Cathy’s death had hit him harder than we’d thought. Perhaps, but I doubted it.