Brass Rainbow

by Michael Collins

  “Mr. Ames?” I guessed.

  “Yes, I … What do you want? I’m very busy.”

  He passed his hand over his face. He seemed nervous, out of focus. His suit had wide lapels and an old-fashioned cut, but looked custom-made within the year. The cuffs of his shirt came four inches out of his sleeves and were linked with rubies. The cuffs, and his high collar, were starched stiff.

  “I’m a detective, Mr. Ames,” I said, not mentioning that I was private, or giving my name. Why ask for trouble from the police? “I’d like to ask some questions about the murder.”

  He nodded vaguely. “The murder, yes. I … I really can’t believe he’s gone. Jonathan. Dead! That stupid animal!”

  “Can I come in?” I said.

  “What? Oh, yes, of course. I don’t see what …”

  He trailed off. I walked into a living room as large as four of my rooms—an elegant, high-ceilinged room that had been lived in for a long and comfortable time. The furniture glowed. Most of it was from one of the French periods, but there were enough odd pieces to show that no hired decorator had laid it out.

  “Now, if you’ll …”I began, trying to sound official.

  Ames was staring at me. He was looking at my empty sleeve. Suspicion flickered in his eyes.

  “I was under the impression that the murderer of my cousin was being pursued. The Weiss person. A matter of time.”

  “The police say Weiss killed him?”

  “Of course! Who else … You did say you were a detective?”

  “Private,” I admitted.

  “Private? You mean for hire?” He was all alert now. “Is there some factor involved that I am not aware of?”

  “I’m not allowed to discuss my client, Mr. Ames,” I said, which was more or less true—if I had had a client. “Perhaps you could tell me about yesterday?”

  It is amazing how much the rich, the secure, accept without bothering to question. They’re not used to being deceived, and they aren’t afraid of much. What can hurt them? Ames didn’t even ask for my credentials. All he did was show annoyance. He seemed confused by the whole affair, and I was a flea under his collar.

  “What? Oh, yes, yes. What do you want?”

  “Was your cousin expecting any visitors besides Weiss?”

  “He wasn’t expecting anyone. He had a slight cold or he would have been at his office as usual.”

  “So he made the appointment with Weiss yesterday morning?”

  “I don’t know when he made it. I didn’t see him after breakfast. When Walter and I left, Jonathan was out.”

  “Walter Radford lives here?”

  “No, no,” Ames said testily. “Walter has his own apartment. I presume he came to talk to Jonathan. After Jonathan went out, Walter came back to my rooms and suggested we share a taxi as far as my club. He knows I always lunch at the club if I’m not working in a show.”

  Then I knew where I had seen him before. “I’ve seen you on television, haven’t I? Broadway, too. I saw you play a high commissioner of a British colony. You were good.”

  “Why, thank you.” He beamed now. “It’s gratifying to be recognized, although it says more for your sharp eyes than my fame. I’m not exactly in demand. TV bits, mostly. An actor has to work.”

  “Rich men don’t often go in for acting.”

  “The one thing in my life I am really proud of, Mr.… What did you say your name was?”

  He had me. If you want to stay anonymous, don’t praise a man. People always want to know who is flattering them.

  “Fortune,” I said. “Dan Fortune.”

  “My pride, Mr. Fortune, is that I tried to carve my own place in a hard arena. Most of our family tend to regal indolence. Not that I’m rich. Through devious twists of family history, Jonathan and his brother, Walter Senior, were the rich ones. The rest of us are not impoverished, but we are not rich. I shared this apartment with Jonathan for twenty-five years, but he owned it.”

  I took the opportunity of his better humor. “Can you tell me anything more, Mr. Ames? For instance, what led the police to Weiss?”

  “I found his name on Jonathan’s desk calendar.”

  “Careless of him to leave his name.”

  “I presume he isn’t a mental giant. Besides, it seems clear that he struck, probably, in anger. I suppose he panicked.”

  It was a pretty good description of Weiss, and of the only way he might have killed a man.

  “You didn’t see Jonathan again after the morning?”

  “No. I came home at half-past five. When he did not appear for our cocktails at six, I went to his study. I found him on the floor in a pool of dried blood. I’m afraid I was sick. I had a drink. Then I called the police.”

  “Where did he go that morning? When did he get back?”

  “We learned later that he had been to lunch with Deirdre. She says they returned here at about one o’clock.”

  “Who’s Deirdre?”

  “Deirdre Fallon, young Walter’s lady friend. She actually let Weiss into the apartment before she left.”

  “What time was that?”

  “She says about one-fifteen. When Gertrude, Walter’s mother, came to call at about two o’clock, she got no answer.”

  I made a mental timetable. Radford had been alive at one-fifteen when Weiss came. Say fifteen minutes or so for Sammy in the study: one-thirty. At two o’clock no one answered the door. I wasn’t sure I wanted to find Weiss. Not if they were all telling the truth.

  “What about enemies? Business troubles? Who gets rich now?”

  But I had lost him. He might have been shaken by the murder, and I had flattered him for a moment, but he was not a fool. His eyes had hardened while I was thinking over the timetable.

  “Are you working for this Weiss, Mr. Fortune?”

  “In a way,” I admitted.

  His voice was flint. “I see. You believe him innocent?”

  “I want to hear a real motive.”

  “Isn’t $25,000 enough for a man like that?”

  “You mean the money Walter owed him? Why would he …?”

  “I mean the $25,000 he stole, Mr. Fortune.”

  So there it was. If I were the police, I would be after Weiss.

  “The money was taken from the apartment?” I said.

  “From a drawer in the study,” Ames said. “Weiss was here to collect the money, Mr. Fortune. He was here at the time of the murder. The weapon was at hand. The money is gone.”

  I said nothing. What could I say?

  “Now you come to ask questions while Weiss is apparently still at large,” Ames said. “When a rich man is murdered, only a fool fails to consider anyone who might gain by his murder. I’ve thought about it all night. There is no one. You can believe me when I tell you there was no one with a good enough reason to murder Jonathan. There is only your Weiss.”

  I nodded. “Can I look at the study?”

  “I believe I …” he began angrily, and stopped. He hesitated. “Very well. I don’t see why not.”

  The study was down a small corridor. It was book-lined and leather-furnished. A stain on a large rug showed that the body had been partly behind the desk. There were four windows. They were all closed and inaccessible from outside except to a bird. The room had one door, and it had been thoroughly searched.

  I went out and stood in the small corridor. To the right it led into the kitchen. There was a back door to the kitchen. It was locked inside by a spring lock. Through it was the usual back staircase for garbage, deliveries and fire. The lock did not seem to have been tampered with.

  I returned to the living room and thanked Ames. He nodded. His well-tended face was frosty. I was nosing, unasked, into his affairs. There’s nothing like self-interest to bring a man out of shock or sorrow.

  In the lobby I braced the doorman. “What time did Radford come home yesterday afternoon?”

  “Around one o’clock, with the Fallon girl. I already told the Captain. I seen the fat guy go up mayb
e one-fifteen. Miss Fallon come down right after that, like I said.”

  He was eying my missing arm. He assumed I was a cop, and the arm probably made me look like a tough cop.

  “When did the fat guy come down?”

  “I didn’t see. I had to help old lady Gadsden with her groceries. Two million bucks, and she carries her own stuff.”

  “Where do the back stairs open out?”

  “Alley in the rear. It locks inside, only you know.”

  I knew. Half the time it would be open. I went out into the snow. It was still coming down, but not as heavy. I started up to the corner, thinking about what I could do next. George Ames had sounded pretty certain about no one else killing Radford. He could be right—as far as he knew. But there was another side to the coin, a side Ames might not know.

  Maybe Sammy Weiss had killed and stolen $25,000, but he hadn’t acted last night like a man with $25,000. He had been really scared, I knew that much, and it wasn’t like him not to flash that money at me if he wanted help. On top of that, how did Weiss get owed $25,000 in the first place?

  At the corner I decided to look closer into what Sammy had been doing lately. I started crosstown for the subway. I got two steps.

  A car pulled up beside me and two men got out—one from each side of the car.

  4

  I DIDN’T TRY to run. There was no point. They had me boxed, and I waited in the snow for them to come up to me. They came on both sides, wary.

  Then I saw the buggy-whip aerial on the car, and I saw the way they walked. Not exactly with arrogance, but with the cool assurance that comes from the massive power of law, right, and privilege that rests on them—cops.

  “Fortune?” one of them said when he reached me.

  “Would it help to say no?”

  “Are you Daniel Fortune?” the second one asked without a smile.

  “I’m Daniel Fortune,” I said. “Who are you?”

  “Come on,” the first one said.

  They conducted me to the car. I didn’t know either of them, which probably meant they were from the local precinct. The man in the back of the car wasn’t from the local precinct, and I knew him: Captain Gazzo from Homicide down at Centre Street.

  “Hello, Dan,” Gazzo said.

  “Captain,” I said.

  I’ve known Gazzo all my life, since the days when he was a young cop and a friend of my mother’s after my father faded out, but he’s “Captain” when there are other cops around. It’s a big city, New York, and Gazzo is the law. He was the law now. He didn’t ask me to get in the car with him. I leaned in at the rear window, snow melting on my neck. That seemed to be where he wanted me. Interrogation is an art.

  “Where’s Sammy Weiss, Dan?”

  “I don’t know. I saw him early last night, not since.”

  “He hired you to work for him?”

  “No.”

  “What did he tell you last night?”

  “That he hit a man named Jonathan Radford. That Freedman was after him, and that he’s scared of Freedman.”

  “Hit?” Gazzo said.

  “That’s what he told me.”

  Gazzo seemed to be trying to decide just how stupid I was this time. While I waited for him to decide, I thought about George Ames. It was obvious now that Ames had let me look at the study so he could make a call to the police and report me.

  Gazzo decided. “George Ames called Chief of Detectives McGuire, Dan. He doesn’t like you around. McGuire called me. I was up here on the case, so I came around to give you the word.”

  “Ames goes high,” I said.

  “Men like George Ames call a chief of detectives the way you and I call a messenger. He wouldn’t even think about anyone lower. He knows McGuire personally, Dan. You have any real reason for thinking Weiss isn’t guilty? Any facts?”

  “No,” I admitted. My neck was getting very wet.

  Gazzo didn’t care about my neck. “Radford was an important man. There’s a stink already—hoodlums running loose; crime in the streets; no one safe in his home: the usual. We want Weiss.”

  “It wasn’t a random crime, Captain. Weiss was invited in.”

  Gazzo ignored me. “Facts, and experience, tell us that Weiss made the mistake he’s been ready to make all his life. Everything points to it, nothing points away from it. You have nothing, Dan. You don’t even have a legitimate client. Up top they don’t want you muddying the waters and maybe helping Weiss without meaning to.”

  “Maybe the waters need muddying.”

  “You want me to tell the Chief that?”

  I leaned in the window. “Look, Captain, I haven’t been nosing around long enough to even have a hunch. Weiss came to me, and I’ve been sort of automatically following up. Maybe it’s reflex, or maybe it’s a subconscious feeling that Sammy needs help from someone, but I want to find out more.”

  “You’re saying we won’t find out all there is to know?”

  I took a deep breath. “I’m not sure you’ll try. When you have a prime suspect, you don’t go around fishing for new suspects in the shadows. No police force could, Gazzo. Until you rule out Weiss, you won’t look for anyone else.”

  “You’re saying we won’t find out if he’s innocent?”

  “I’m saying you won’t think about anyone else while you have Weiss. You’ve got too much crime and too few men. You can miss things. Remember that kid in Brooklyn who sat in jail for ten months with everything pointing to him until one of your men, on a hunch and his own time, proved the kid was innocent? Maybe no one will get a hunch about Weiss. Maybe you’ll take too long, and facts will disappear. Maybe Weiss is so scared he’ll panic and get gunned down. Even if he’s guilty, Captain, I might turn up some mitigating circumstances.”

  Gazzo just sat there. “The Chief doesn’t want you in this, Dan. I told him you’ve got a good record, so he won’t make it official, but stay out of our way, and co-operate. Plain enough?”

  “I’ll do the best I can.”

  He didn’t push the message any farther. He signaled the driver, and the car pulled away, leaving me alone in the snow. I felt very alone. The power of the police over me, like most power in our society, was mainly economic. But I have an edge. I don’t have to be a detective or work in New York. No one depends on my success. I have no status to keep and no investment to tie me down. I had to give up a lot of comforts and trinkets to get that edge. In a money society you can be independent with money, or independent of money. Anywhere in between you’re under the thumb.

  That is true enough, but I didn’t kid myself. The police have other powers not so legitimate. A private detective can bend a lot of laws, and a chief of detectives can turn a bend into a break. That power is harder to use in a city the size of New York, but it was there. I would have to be careful.

  I would have liked to ask Gazzo about what he knew, about why the police were so sure Weiss was their man, about the circumstances and the alibis of others, but you don’t ask those things when you’re being told that the higher powers don’t want you around. I would have to dig myself—especially into that $25,000 Weiss said he had won from Walter Radford.

  Cellars Johnson sat alone at the green table in the cellar on Houston Street where he holds his steady game. He was dealing poker hands to himself.

  “Take a hand,” Cellars said.

  Cellars squeezed his cards as if it were 4:00 A.M. in his regular game and all the night’s winnings were in the pot. His black face sweated, but his eyes were a blank wall. In a real game even his sweat glands would have been under control, and there is nothing that happens around the Village that Cellars doesn’t know.

  “Have you seen Sammy Weiss?” I asked.

  Cellars studied his cards. I had jacks over fives.

  “Bet fifty,” Cellars said. “I saw him maybe two A.M. last night.”

  “Raise fifty,” I said. It’s easy to gamble big in the mind, for fun. “Did he play last night?”

  “He couldn’t show the
cash.”

  “How much cash do you ask now?”

  “A hundred to sit down,” Cellars said. “Gimme two cards.”

  I took one card myself. I still had jacks and fives.

  “Bet the pot,” Cellars said.

  “Raise the pot,” I said. The big plunger. “I heard Weiss won $25,000 from a kid named Walter Radford.”

  Cellars didn’t seem to hear me. He tossed in his cards. “Let’s see what you raised a pot bet on.”

  I showed him my two pair. It was just a game for laughs. Cellars didn’t laugh.

  “You don’t even see a pot bet by a two-card draw with a lousy two pair,” Cellars instructed. “I folded three queens.”

  He was telling me that in a real game I might get away with that kind of playing once, maybe twice, but in the end I’d be begging cab fare. Cellars can’t play bad poker even for fun.

  I said, “You know anything about this Walter Radford?”

  Cellars gathered the cards. “You for or against Weiss?”

  “For, I think.”

  He began to shuffle. He needs the cards in his hands. “A party named Radford had Costa’s place up in North Chester closed down ten months ago.”

  “Who’s Costa?”

  “Carmine Costa. Independent operator. No book or numbers. A casino operation with some private games.”

  “Why was he closed?”

  “Who knows? You know Westchester, Dan. Costa opened up in the next town.” Cellars began to deal solitaire. “Weiss ain’t such a bad guy. I hear the heat’s on him big. Freedman been around twice.” He looked up at me. “Paul Baron, too.”

  “Paul Baron?” I said. The name rang a faint bell, but I couldn’t place it.

  “Alias The Baron, Baron Paul Ragotzy, some other names,” Cellars said. “A con artist; the badger games. He handles the cards, too.”

  “He was looking for Weiss?”

  “Once last night, and once today.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Just Weiss.”

  “How about a woman? A redhead, tall, probably a showgirl or stripper in some club.”

  Cellars shook his head. “No, just Freedman and Baron. Only one of Baron’s women is a tall redhead. Misty Dawn. She works the Fifth Street Club.”