Brass Rainbow

by Michael Collins

  I stood up. “Thanks, Cellars.”

  Cellars nodded, but he was thinking. I waited. He seemed to be making some decision.

  “Weiss ain’t such a bad guy,” Cellars said again.

  I still waited. I knew that Cellars was deciding to tell me something. It was a hard decision for him.

  “There was a game, about two months ago,” Cellars said. “I played. Baron was there. He brought a kid. Walter Radford IV. I remember that number part, you know?”

  “Thanks again,” I said.

  “Sure,” Cellars said. “Come back for the action.”

  The snow had stopped, and the Fifth Street Club was open. I went down into the dim light of the deserted bar and ordered an Irish. It was just too early for the cocktail hour. In the main room one drunken group was trying to eat what had to be a very late lunch. The bartender had cunning eyes and a loose mouth.

  “I’d like to buy Misty Dawn a drink,” I said.

  “So would a lot of guys.”

  I laid a five-dollar bill beside my whisky. In a club Like that one, the girls usually had orders to drink with any customer, but it was early. The five was to make the bartender eager to help me. He took the bill and vanished toward the small stage. In the main room the waiters leaned on the walls and yawned.

  The bartender returned. He nodded. A minute or so later I sensed someone come out of the curtained doorway at stage left. She slid onto the stool beside me in a dead heat with a whisky sour from the bartender.

  “Hello,” she said.

  Her voice was deep and rough from shouting songs into noisy rooms. She wore her full work make-up, with mounds of orange-red hair piled on her head. Her body was trim and inviting in a black velvet leotard and net tights.

  She smiled at me. “I’m Misty Dawn, Mr.…?”

  “Fortune,” I said. “I’m looking for Sammy Weiss.”

  She stood up. “Get lost.”

  “I want to help Sammy.”

  Her eyes were black in the dim light. They might have been brown, or green, or gray if I could have seen them.

  “I don’t know Sammy Weiss,” she said.

  “How about a Radford? Jonathan or Walter.”

  “How about the Mayor?” she said. “What are you, mister?”

  “A friend of Sammy Weiss,” I said. “How about Paul Baron? He wants Weiss, too.”

  “Okay, I know Paul Baron. That’s one out of four.”

  “Do you know what Baron wants with Weiss?”

  “I don’t even know if Paul knows the guy.”

  “Yes you do,” I said. “I saw you with Weiss on Eighth Avenue last night.”

  “No you didn’t,” she said, and walked away.

  I watched her go. She walked nicely in that leotard. I watched until she went through the door backstage. Then I paid and left.

  5

  THERE WERE PLENTY of Radfords in the telephone book, and enough Walter Radfords, but only one Walter Radford IV. Those numerals seemed to mean a lot to the Radfords. The address was Gramercy Park.

  I was in Mary’s Italian Restaurant just off Seventh Avenue when I looked up Walter Radford, and I stopped for some shrimp marinara. When I went out into the street again to find a taxi, it was dark and quiet and ten degrees colder since the snow had stopped.

  The taxi dropped me in front of a new and shiny building, all glass and red brick, that was not exactly on Gramercy Park although it had the address. The lobby was elegant but small, and there was no doorman. Walter Radford IV had apartment 12. I rode the stainless steel elevator to the third floor.

  There was no answer to my ringing. I looked up and down the empty corridor. The door had an ordinary spring lock, with enough gap between door and frame. I took out the stiff plastic rectangle I carry, slipped it between door and frame and against the lock, and pressed hard. I worked the rectangle. The lock gave with a click and I skinned a knuckle.

  Inside I switched on the light. The risk was worth not being taken for a burglar. It was a gaudy apartment of chrome, plastic and bad modern—designed without art and selected without taste. The main room was a mess, as if it was lived in by someone who was rebelling against his mother who had made him pick up his toys and dirty clothes when he was a boy. A poker table was strewn with cards, and a toy roulette wheel on the couch was surrounded by loose chips.

  I went to work looking through the chests, bookcases, table drawers, and the one desk. For what? Something to connect Walter Radford to Paul Baron or anyone else except Weiss. I didn’t find much: books about gambling; decks of cards; Playbills; dirty paper napkins with figures scrawled on them; letters that proved that the Radford-Ames family was large and that Walter had a lot of friends. From the way the letters read, the friends were from prep school and college and hadn’t changed much.

  There was a small, 7-mm. Belgian automatic in a drawer. It was loaded. There was a large address book filled, mostly, with the names of men and gilt-edged business outfits. Paul Baron’s name did not appear in the address book or anywhere else. I became hypnotized by the slow reading. The sound of the elevator jerked me out of it.

  I jumped to the light switch. Maybe it was someone for another apartment. It wasn’t. The footsteps stopped outside the door. I slid into the bedroom, behind the door.

  The outside door opened. The lights went on. A long pause.

  “Walter? Are you here, Walter?”

  A woman’s voice, low. I waited. She moved and a drawer opened. I heard her pick up the telephone. I pressed against the door to try to hear. I didn’t have to try. She spoke loud and clear:

  “I have a pistol. I am calling the police. You left marks on the rug. If you have no reason to be here, come out with both hands in front of you. If I don’t see your hands, I shoot.”

  Her voice was quiet, cultured and steady—a finishing-school voice. She didn’t sound scared. I was. There are a lot of dangers for a one-armed man. This was one of them.

  I said, loud, “I have only one hand. I’ll come out of the bedroom with my right hand out, my left shoulder forward.”

  I stepped out—nervous. I showed my left side.

  “Sit down,” she said, looking at my stump. “On the couch.”

  I sat.

  “Who are you? Who let you in? Walter?”

  She had the Belgian automatic in her right hand, the telephone in her left. A young woman with a fine, classic oval face and no make-up. Chestnut hair hung long on her shoulders. Tallish, she had good legs. She probably had good hips and breasts, but the severe blue suit she wore did not display her hips, and in the suit she had nothing as obvious as breasts; she had a bosom.

  The way she used Walter Radford’s first name, the fact that she had a key, and the way she looked at my empty sleeve told me who she had to be. George Ames must have described my arm.

  “No, Miss Fallon,” I said. “I’m afraid I came snooping.”

  “You’re the private detective Uncle George reported?”

  “Dan Fortune,” I acknowledged.

  “Show me,” she said, “and open your coat.”

  “I don’t carry a gun,” I said, but I carefully opened both sides of my coat. Then I fished out my wallet and tossed my license to her.

  She picked it up and looked at it. She did not put down the automatic, but she had put down the telephone. I felt a little better. I hadn’t wanted to face Gazzo again.

  “Uncle George said the police were going to stop you.”

  “I guess I talk faster than Ames,” I said. “The police can make mistakes, Miss Fallon, and they really want the truth.”

  “They aren’t convinced that this Weiss creature killed Uncle Jonathan?”

  “They’re convinced, but they’re willing to let me waste my time—grudgingly.”

  She nodded slowly, thinking. She put the gun down on the telephone table, sat down, and lighted a cigarette.

  “So you came here to investigate Walter?”

  The word for Deirdre Fallon was “poised.” That was s
omething of a surprise, since she didn’t look a day over twenty. The second word was “class.” Neat, graceful class. The third word I had in mind was “virginal,” but there was something about the way she handled her body that held me back on that word.

  “I came to talk to Walter,” I said. “He wasn’t here. I decided to nose around. I’d still like to talk to Walter.”

  “Walter is in North Chester at his mother’s. At least I supposed he was. When I saw those marks on the rug …”

  “It was possible he was here,” I said. “He could have let me in. That was lucky for me. Now maybe I could talk to you?”

  “To me?”

  “You had lunch with Jonathan Radford. Where?”

  “The Charles XII on Lexington Avenue.”

  “How was he? His mood?”

  “Normal, I’d say. Perhaps a little testy.”

  “As if he had something on his mind?”

  “I suppose so. I didn’t notice at the time. We talked about Walter and myself.”

  “Did anything happen? Anything unusual?”

  “No. We talked, ate, and went home. Walter wasn’t at the apartment, so I left. As I was leaving, this fat man in an awful old overcoat rang the bell and asked for Jonathan. I sent him into the study and left.”

  “Did you know Walter owed $25,000?”

  “Yes. Walter gambles and usually loses. It’s happened before.” There was a kind of weariness in her voice.

  “You don’t gamble with him?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you apparently didn’t know Weiss. Or did you?”

  “No, I didn’t know him. I don’t know him.”

  “So if Walter owed the $25,000 to Weiss, he must have lost the money without you around.”

  She stabbed her cigarette out in an ashtray, stood, and walked to the picture window of the room. The window gave a fine view of shadowy tenements. I had a better view—her lean, but curved figure against the night sky. She stood there, lighted another cigarette, then turned and went back to her chair.

  “Weiss was only a messenger. Sent to try to collect,” she said. “Walter owed the money to a man named Paul Baron. It happened over a period of time.”

  “You know Paul Baron?”

  “I know Mr. Baron. A smooth animal. Walter told him that Jonathan wouldn’t pay this time. He told Baron that he would pay the debt off in installments. It seems that Baron had other ideas.”

  “Do the police know that the money was owed to Baron?”

  “No. Walter is afraid of Baron. He sees no reason to involve Baron. Weiss came to Jonathan, not Baron.”

  “It was Baron’s $25,000,” I said.

  “You think we should tell the police?”

  “I know you should.”

  “Yes, all right, but I’d rather Walter told them.”

  “As long as someone does,” I said. “Where did you go after you left Jonathan with Weiss?”

  “To my hairdresser. I had a one-thirty appointment. I was there until three-thirty. Is that what you want to know?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Where was Walter all this time? He and Ames say they left the apartment before noon, right?”

  “He took the twelve-ten train from Grand Central for North Chester. He was there all afternoon. He was there when Jonathan was … found.” Her voice rose in pitch, the words coming out faster. “Uncle George was at his club. Mrs. Radford was there, but could not get in. I don’t know where three hundred cousins were! The butler was in North Chester!”

  She stopped on a high, rising note; breathless. Her chaste bosom heaved. She drew deeply on her cigarette. “Leave us alone, Mr. Fortune. This has been a horrible shock to the family. Such a stupid death for a man like Jonathan. Go away with your dirty questions. Can’t you understand how terrible it is for the family?”

  “It’s pretty terrible for Sammy Weiss.”

  “He killed a man! For money!”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “No one else was there! Don’t you think the police have checked?”

  “How about Paul Baron?”

  “Then talk to Baron!”

  “Do you know where I could find him?”

  “No! I mean, I’ve met him at quite a few places. At this hour …” She chewed at her lip. “There’s an apartment on University Place where I’ve met him about this time.” She gave me the address.

  I stood up. “I’d still like to talk to Walter.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  She had recovered her cool exterior. On my way out I picked her blue cloth coat from the floor inside the door. I handed it to her. When she took it, our hands touched. I felt the touch low in my back where you feel a woman who has something you suddenly know you could want very much. I sensed that she felt it, too. She stiffened, and her nostrils flared quickly. I smiled. She backed off, her eyes dark and hostile. I left.

  University Place wasn’t far, so I walked. It was cold, and still, and the crust of frozen snow crunched under my feet on the dark streets. I thought about Sammy Weiss who just automatically played the big man, who had to say it had been his own $25,000 he had gone to collect. I had a sinking feeling that Weiss was not only running from a murder charge, he was running with $25,000 Paul Baron considered belonged to him.

  The University Place building was big and bright with lights. I went up to the apartment Deirdre Fallon had named. I got no answer to my ringing. This lock was a deadfall, police-type. I couldn’t open it if I had wanted to. I rang some more. When there was still no answer, I went back down and across to the I.R.T.

  On the uptown platform I walked to the rear away from the thickest part of the early night crowd. I figured I’d have a new try at George Ames. He’d called the cops to get me off the case awful fast. If that didn’t work, I could try to find Weiss again. I thought some more about Weiss running with the police after him and with Baron after him. Baron could be the worse danger.

  I was in the air and falling!

  Out over the subway tracks, clawing air.

  I braced to hit the tracks, and heard the train coming.

  Then time seemed to stop, reverse, blend past and present and future all together in the same instant.

  I heard the train and felt the push at the same time.

  I saw, in a brief flash, a slender man in pale gray. A handsome face turned for one intent look at me. A trim gray back walking away. A gray Homburg—jaunty. I thought: He’s killed me.

  I fell, and saw the gray man, and heard the train, and knew I was dead, and saw a train roar past me all in the same moment.

  I hit the tracks and knew with great clarity that I was not dead because Astor Place was a local station. You see, on the I.R.T. the local and express often come almost side by side. I had been pushed by the sound, not the sight, of the train. The express was some six cars ahead of the local. A mistake, you see? He had pushed me six cars too soon.

  I lay in between the tracks, and the local came and stopped above me. I lay in an icy stream of water. Voices: Hey! Hey! You okay? Yes, yes! I’m okay! In time they would move the train. I would get up, wipe myself, go on.

  I rolled from under and walked across the express tracks to the downtown platform. I climbed up. They stared. Subway cops yelled. A train came and I got on. I rode down four stops. I thought. I got off and went up into the night. I found a taxi. I went to Pennsylvania Station. There was a train for Philadelphia. Marty, that was what I wanted.

  I sat and watched the Jersey Flats, the factories, the towns, the pine woods around Princeton. I shook. I saw Marty’s face in the dark window. She would wipe off the dirt and kiss me. I rode all the way to Trenton before I remembered that Marty had her own needs. I got off and waited two hours for the train back.

  When I got home I locked my door and sat at a window and drank Irish whisky. I watched the night sky. When I went to bed, I began to shake again. I shivered without control until I fell asleep.

  6

  LIFE BEGINS in dar
kness and ends in darkness and in between is a nightmare.

  A man in a bar in Algiers told me that. It was in my mind when I woke up to the gray cold of another day.

  All you can do, that man said, is stay out of it. He may be right, but life is short. If you stay out you’ll never know if you could have done something to make it less a nightmare. Like doing something about men who push other men under trains.

  I was angry, and lay in bed enjoying the anger that had replaced the shaking of last night. I also thought about our ability to forget once an immediate threat has passed. It’s our strength, I suppose, but also our weakness, and in the safe light of day I was sure no one could kill me. Stupid, of course, but without that belief, who could go ahead being a detective or anything else?

  After a big breakfast to prove how good my nerves were, I spent the morning looking for Weiss again. I walked with one eye looking behind. I was brave, but not crazy. I didn’t find a smell of Weiss, but I found that Paul Baron was still looking.

  In the afternoon I checked out Deirdre Fallon. She was a regular at the Charles XII, she was well known, and she had been there with Radford. Her hairdresser backed her up, too. George Ames also checked out, but not as definitely. He had arrived at his club around noon all right, and had left around 5:00 P.M., but it was a big club with many doors, and Ames had not been with someone all the time.

  I took the late afternoon train for North Chester. When I got off, there was a clean tang to the cold air: country air. The suburban town had a rural feel, with tree-lined streets, and a single old black limousine at the taxi stand. When we were out of the town and in the country, I asked the driver if he had seen Walter Radford get off the train on Monday.

  “Come in on the one-fourteen. That’s the twelve-ten out of the city. He took my cab. Old lady Radford come in on the three-two; the two-eight out of the city. Cops already asked me that. You a cop?”

  “Private,” I said.

  “You don’t say?”

  The driver glanced at my empty sleeve and looked like he would like to talk some more, but I wasn’t in the mood to tell any of my stories about losing the arm. We finally turned through a high iron gate and went along a curving drive through thick woods deep in snow to a house set in a large, snow-covered lawn.