Brass Rainbow

by Michael Collins

  “Strega!” Costa said. The fingers went away, but Strega’s breath was still on my neck. Costa’s was on my face. His voice strained through teeth that almost ground in rage.

  “Never! You got me? Never say that. Not you, not anybody! I’ll tear a man apart with my bare hands, but never call me no blackmailer!”

  I got it. Extortion is the blood of the Mafia. Every man has his estimate of himself. For Costa the black beast in his brain was the Mafia of his countrymen, and the Mafia was what he would deny to the grave. It reminded me of a time when I sat in a bar in Little Italy and listened to a minor hood deny for three hours that Lucky Luciano had ever been in white slavery. Everything else, okay—drugs, extortion, murder—but not white slavery.

  “I got you,” I said. I was gritting my own teeth, and not from the garlic on Costa’s breath. Strega’s fingers had gone, but my shoulder wouldn’t be alive again for an hour.

  “Okay,” Costa breathed, and breathed hard. “Okay.”

  I saw Deirdre Fallon watching Costa. Her face was blank, but there was a flare to her nostrils; She was breathing fast, too, and her eyes were those foggy tunnels. I didn’t blame her. Costa looked pretty good mad. She shifted her eyes, and for a moment I thought she was looking at me. But she was looking past me. I guess I didn’t look a match for Costa. I’m not.

  “Okay,” Costa said, breathed easier, got his smile back. But it still wasn’t quite okay in his mind. He wasn’t sure I believed him. So in a way I won. Brains over brawn. He had to explain. “If you got to know, baby, I got a land deal in mind. A man gets closed once, that’s chance. He gets closed twice, that’s stupid. They don’t close down a solid citizen.”

  He stopped. The driving snow had begun to make us all look like snowmen. I knew why I stood there, and why Costa and Strega did, but I wondered why Deirdre Fallon and Walter Radford were still there. Maybe they just had to watch Costa work. I watched him realize that he was telling me what was none of my business. He shifted smoothly, turned to Walter.

  “You’ve got a lot of land up in North Chester now. I’ll buy a piece, build a solid club, you name the price. Or maybe we could go partners. Who closes Walter Radford up there?”

  Walter opened his mouth and closed it slowly. I saw his hand twitch. Deirdre Fallon considered Costa, and a shrewd gleam came into her eyes. Walter’s eyes just began to shine.

  “Partners?” Walter said.

  “All legal, and no risk. I’m the gambler. You make an investment. Officially you’re clean, but the important people know.”

  Walter licked his lip. “Well, I …”

  Deirdre Fallon said, “Why not come to the house, Mr. Costa? Walter’s office. That’s where he does business.”

  Costa touched his hat. “Monday?”

  “Monday,” Walter said. “At my office.”

  “We’ll be there,” Costa said. “About two-thirty?”

  Deirdre Fallon glanced at the silent Strega. “Two-thirty will be fine, Mr. Costa. We’ll expect both of you.” She touched Walter Radford’s arm. “We’ll be late, Walter.”

  He nodded, and they started off. Deirdre Fallon looked back at me. “I hope you find Carla Devine, Mr. Fortune, and before Leo Zar does.”

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  We watched them get into the Jaguar. Three snowmen. No one spoke, and no one was watching Walter Radford. Costa breathed:

  “That’s some woman, babies.”

  “You said it yourself, Costa,” I said. “To her we’re a lower breed of animal.”

  “I know, baby; only there’s something about that one. I can smell it. The Radford stud don’t measure up. Right, Strega?”

  The blond man watched the Jaguar skid away. “He’s not much.”

  “He’s nothing,” Costa said, and to me, “A lift somewhere, baby?”

  “Downtown?” I said.

  “Why not?”

  Strega said, “We’ll be late, Sarge.”

  “We got time,” Costa said.

  They walked me to the Bentley. The silver-gray car said a lot about Carmine Costa. In his own way he was a maverick—the ex-soldier and man first, the gambler and petty hood second. It made him dangerous because unpredictable. My neck crawled a little as I got into the back seat with him. Strega took the wheel. The car purred away from the curb. Strega drove carefully, almost cautiously. The bodyguard didn’t have to prove anything.

  Costa eyed me. “What’s on your mind, baby?”

  “How come you just happened by the apartment tonight?”

  Costa smiled. “I ever need a shamus, I’ll call you. Okay, we come in every Friday. I got old buddies, a club like. Traffic is light because of the snow starting, and Strega makes good time. We’re early, so why not talk business? I got the idea today, and when I get an idea, I move. Time’s all we got in this world.”

  It could be true, or it could be a fast story to cover what he would have talked about if I hadn’t been there.

  “You said you didn’t know Paul Baron?”

  “Only his name and rep.” “You’re covered for Wednesday night, of course.”

  “At my place past five A.M. Solid citizens saw me.”

  “That’s not much alibi, with back doors and all.”

  “Do I need an alibi, baby?”

  “That depends on what else is dug up on Baron’s killing.”

  Costa smiled. “You let me know when I need more.”

  “I will,” I said. “How well did you know Carla Devine?” “Never heard of her. But I heard of Leo Zar.”

  Strega spoke from the front seat, “Leo’s bad, real bad.”

  It was the first time I had heard the silent blond man speak without being asked. Costa agreed with his bodyguard:

  “You know anything Leo wants to know, baby, you be real careful. I wouldn’t tangle with Leo myself. I’d shoot him in the belly before he got five feet from me.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I said. We were passing the main library with its silent lions on guard. Even they looked cold in the driving snow. “I get out here.”

  “Okay, baby, let me know how you make out.”

  I stood in the snow and watched the Bentley drive off. The people pushed all around me. They were aliens in a different world from Costa, Strega, the Radfords and Leo Zar.

  I walked to the subway and rode back up to get my car.

  19

  THE WIND had died, the snow was falling straight and thick now, and the Fifth Street Club had just opened. It was as deserted as a losing team’s locker room. The same bartender was shining glasses. He ignored me.

  “I want to see Misty again,” I said.

  He polished. “Christ, you got nerve. Get lost.”

  “She was mad?”

  “You should of said you was a snooper.”

  “Does Misty live in that apartment upstairs?”

  The bartender polished glasses.

  “Did she make all her shows late Wednesday?”

  The bartender sighed. “Cops. What’s with them? They think all barkeeps got nothin’ to do ’ceptin snoop around?”

  He had a point. “The real police asked the same questions?”

  “What else? I told them, ‘n’ I’m telling you: I don’t know nothing about Misty. And she ain’t in yet tonight.”

  “Which cops talked to you?”

  He arranged glasses. “You won’t believe this, but some bartenders are hired to tend bar. I live in Bay Ridge. I got a wife and four kids. I don’t know every cop in New York.”

  I left him talking to himself. It had to be Gazzo who was still asking questions. The Captain was a good cop.

  I drove into the twisting streets of the old Village. Grove Street was dark and quiet with falling snow. Grove Mews was an alley through an archway. There was a six-story side wall of a building on one side, and a bank of buildings with recessed doors on the other. Number 2 was the second recessed doorway. I used my lighter in the dark entrance. Ben Marno’s name was scrawled on the broken mailbox for 5-B.<
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  I went up the narrow stairs and found 5-B at the end of a dirty stone hallway at the top. There was no sound inside. I knocked. No one came. No one came from anywhere. It was so quiet in the corridor I could hear my heart. I tried the door; it was locked. The window at the end of the corridor was almost beside me. I looked out.

  The fire escape reached to a window inside 5-B. I climbed out into the snow and got my knees wet. The window of 5-B was closed but not locked. The apartment inside was dark. I pushed the window up and dropped inside.

  I stood in a room with four studio beds covered with wild-colored throws and piled with psychedelic cushions. There were painted orange crates for chairs and tables. A spider web made of thick rope hung from the ceiling, with a giant yellow fake spider in it. The sweet, heavy odor of marijuana hung in the air—not recent, just there.

  There were two other rooms.

  The second was like the main room with the addition of a bookcase and an expensive Scott stereo system. I had seen that before—Village pads where $27.50 had gone into all the furniture, but $1500 had been spent for music, photographic equipment, books or painting supplies. Maybe that was the right way.

  The third room was wall-to-wall mattresses. A room for wanderers to spend the nights out of the wind.

  There was no one around, and no bodies.

  I let myself out the front door and went back down to my car. It was still too early for Misty Dawn to be onstage. I stopped for a couple of hamburgers, and drove to my office. The snow was beginning to pile up again. Another ten hours of it, and the city would be in for a bad few days.

  My office was warmer than usual. Snow had piled on the window ledge and partly sealed the gaps. I sat down and looked at the telephone. I wanted to call Marty, but that was still no good for either of us. I wanted to call Captain Gazzo, but if Gazzo had anything to tell, he would call me. So I called Agnes Moore. After all, she had paid me to work. I got no answer. The day was running down like a tired hour glass.

  I was on my third cigarette, waiting until I was sure Misty Dawn would be at the club, when I heard the woman in the corridor outside. The hurrying click of a woman’s heels.

  My fellow tenants on the floor were two old gentlemen who sold special books; an agency for cooks and waiters; and an astrologist. The woman could be going to any of them, but at this hour I doubted it. I was right again.

  Morgana Radford opened my door and stopped. I think her trouble was that she had never seen an office without a reception room. It was a shock to her to walk in on me. She wore a heavy brown cape that made her look like Florence Nightingale.

  “Come in, Miss Radford,” I said.

  She recovered. She was used to working with the poor. When she sat down facing me, her face was as precise as it had been in her cell in North Chester, but her eyes were animated.

  “Deirdre Fallon murdered my uncle, and Mother and Walter know it,” she announced. She said it with finality, as if she had told me before and I had doubted it.

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Ever since you came up, I’ve been watching and listening. My own investigation, you might say.”

  “That was you on the extension up there when I called?”

  “Yes, but listen to me. I’ve watched them talking a lot, Mother and Walter. Always in secret when they didn’t know I could see them. Yesterday afternoon I saw them arguing violently just before Deirdre left the house to come to New York. Walter went and got his Jaguar and followed her. He’s watching her!”

  “Yesterday? Thursday?”

  “Yes, a few hours after the funeral. She drove off in that red Fiat, and Walter followed her. I think he lost her, because he came back in less than an hour.”

  I thought about Walter Radford’s mood today. “What makes you think that means Miss Fallon killed your uncle? Why do they have to be arguing about her at all?”

  “What else would they argue about now? Mother is probably defending Deirdre! Do you know about her?”

  “Do I know what?”

  Her righteous eyes gleamed nastily. “Mother told me all about it today. To keep me from learning about Deirdre in the wrong way, Mother said. I knew Deirdre was corrupt!”

  She was a woman with a mission, and she used words like “corrupt” and “evil” too much. There is a sickness about people who love those words. Somewhere inside they love corruption and evil, love to think about corruption and evil.

  “If you mean her past,” I said, “I know about it. So does Walter. She doesn’t seem to be hiding it.”

  “She’s clever. She took them all in with her supposed candor. They think it makes her honest, but I see the darkness in her. I can see her holding herself in. There’s something in her that she can’t control, something animal.”

  “You think that whatever that is, it led her to kill your uncle? Why? He liked her, you said so yourself.”

  She brushed at the air, brushing away logic and answers. “I don’t know, perhaps he learned something about her. I know that Mother and Walter are worried, tense. I think Deirdre has some hold on Mother.”

  She was a busybody, a meddler with a hobbyhorse. She was protecting her Walter, and she had more of her ruthless ancestors in her than she knew. It had simply been channeled in her into redemption instead of exploitation. That was not new, and a fanatic redeemer could be as deadly as any exploiter.

  “What hold, Miss Radford?” I said. “If she killed Jonathan, I’d figure the hold to be the other way around.”

  “Then why is Mother worried? Why would she protect Deirdre?”

  The words hung there in the office, accusing her. She had trapped herself. She had started by insisting that Gertrude Radford’s actions proved that Deirdre Fallon had killed Jonathan, and now she was saying that Mrs. Radford’s actions were all wrong if Deirdre had killed Jonathan. She had accused her mother of defending a murderer, now she asked why her mother would defend a murderer.

  “Yeh,” I said, “why? I don’t think she’d protect Miss Fallon if she thought Miss Fallon had killed anyone.”

  I expected her to fold, but she didn’t. There was a great deal of the Radford steel in her. She sat and looked at me.

  “Very well, perhaps Mother doesn’t know about Deirdre, but she knows something,” she said grimly. “Mother came to New York on Monday night, quite late and alone. Mother never goes into the city alone at night.”

  “Monday? After the murder was discovered?”

  “Yes. That night, of all nights, she would never have left the house without some urgent reason. She was waiting to hear again from Walter and George with the police.”

  “How’d you find out? You didn’t mention it before.”

  “I didn’t know until today. I told you I was watching Mother. I knew she had gone out that night, but I had assumed it was to visit some local friend. She hadn’t even dressed, just put her coat on over her housedress. But today I remembered that she had had a phone call just before she went out. I questioned MacLeod, the butler. He likes me; we think a lot alike. He said he had driven Mother to the eight-twenty train that night. He said she came home late by taxi.”

  “Have you asked her about it?”

  “No. She never mentioned going anywhere. She would only lie.”

  “What kind of coat was she wearing?”

  “Her mink. A red housedress.”

  “All right,” I said, “anything else you’ve dug up?”

  She shook her head. She stood up. But she didn’t move to go. “They’ll destroy him, Mr. Fortune. Deirdre will destroy Walter. I know it. I know that, somehow, she killed Jonathan, and she’ll destroy Walter.”

  “She couldn’t have killed your uncle,” I said. “She had no reason, and she has an alibi. It’s impossible.”

  “I don’t care about that. Somehow, she did it. I don’t know how. I don’t care about the facts. The facts are wrong.”

  “Maybe they are,” I said. “Do you know a Carmine Costa? Misty Dawn? Maybe Paul Baron?�
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  “No.”

  “All right. Keep in touch, okay?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  I watched her go out, and let out a slow breath. Somewhere inside Morgana Radford was on the edge. Maybe it was only that she knew she would lose her last hope of having her Walter back once he married Deirdre Fallon. She was right about that. Deirdre Fallon would make Walter dance her tune, and Walter would love every minute of it. I didn’t think she was right about much else.

  No, her conclusions from her watching didn’t hold water, but that did not mean that her observations were necessarily wrong. She had seen what she had seen, and I wanted to know where Gertrude Radford had gone on Monday night.

  Then I heard the footsteps in the corridor. They were not Morgana Radford coming back. They were one man moving softly. I made it to the door on my toes and turned the lock. I listened. He was still at the far end of the corridor. (There is one big advantage to a creaky old building like mine—it creaks.) He could be stalking someone else, some other office, but “could” is not something to stake your health on.

  I went to my file for my ancient cannon. It wasn’t there. I had left it in my apartment. I headed for the window. People who want to talk don’t creep up. At least, that’s a good rule to go by. I went out the window. If I was wrong, all I would do is look foolish later. Looking foolish is never fatal.

  On the window ledge I did not look down. I knew what was down there—a narrow black shaft with no visible bottom. I knew what was above, too. When your work is digging into other men’s affairs, it pays to know how to get out by the window. Another advantage of an ancient building is that all kinds of braces, gingerbread, and ledges stick out of the outside walls.