Brass Rainbow

by Michael Collins

  I gripped an iron brace and hauled up to the middle window frame; caught hold of a deep crevice and hoisted to the slab ledge at the top of the window. From there I hooked my chin over another protruding iron brace and groped for the edge of the roof above. I got a good grip on a piece of gingerbread decoration, and pulled myself up until I could kneel on the iron brace. I wrapped my arm over the roof parapet, hauled, and flopped over the parapet into the snow of the roof.

  Below, my office door crashed in. He would spot the open window. I ran for the next roof. I skipped the first three ways down from the roofs because the exits from those buildings were near the door of my building, and my visitor might not have come alone. I made the fourth roof before I heard him behind me. I went down through the fourth building and did not stop until I reached the bottom. I listened. He was still behind me up above. I went out into Eighth Avenue.

  I had planned to blend into the crowd. There was no crowd. The wind had risen, the snow had thinned out, and it blew down the avenue that stretched empty like a deserted tundra. I ran right, dove down some steps into a narrow passage beneath the buildings, and ran through and up to the backyards behind my building. I looked for a weapon. All I could find was a pile of loose bricks. I grabbed one, flattened against the dark wall to the right of where the steps came up from the passage, and waited.

  A minute passed. Then three. Slower than the slowest rocket countdown. Five minutes. Nothing moved anywhere. He was not coming. Ten minutes. I dropped the brick, climbed some fences, and went out through another cellar passage into Twenty-seventh Street. I flagged a cruising taxi.

  20

  AFTER A TIME, the taxi driver looked back at me.

  “Where to, buddy, or did you just come in to get warm?”

  It was a good question. Where to? Misty Dawn? Garla Devine? It was well known by now that I was interested in both of those ladies.

  “Grand Central,” I said.

  The driver made a vicious turn uptown, and I sat back to think. Leo Zar? That was guess number one. Leo was looking for Carla Devine, and so was I. I knew he was, so he probably knew I was. It was not a pleasant guess, but the others were worse. If it had not been Leo chasing me, then I had no real idea who it had been. Ignorance is the big danger. It could have been anyone: Costa; one of the Radfords or a hired hand; maybe that unknown third man asking around about Carla Devine; or even one of Carla’s friends, maybe Ben Marno. It had to be about the Radford affair. I wasn’t worth killing, or at least maiming, for any other reason. I had no illusions about what my pursuer had had in mind. He had come softly, kicked in my door, and chased in silence.

  At Grand Central I paid the driver and went to work. I had no picture, but Gertrude Radford was easy to describe: if she had taken a taxi, and if anyone remembered. My main hope was the fact that taxi drivers are a breed who work on habit, and the same cabs work Grand Central day in and day out. It took me the better part of two hours to talk to a lot of drivers with bad memories. I jumped at shadows the whole time. There is no future to working scared. In my work you have to assume that you are smarter than the enemy, and two jumps ahead at all times, or take up selling shoes. Careful but not nervous. It’s easy to say.

  By the end of the second hour I had my nerves more or less under control, and I got lucky. The twenty-second driver I braced leaned back in his cab and said:

  “I remember. You a cop?”

  “Private. You’re sure you remember?”

  “I said so, mister. Let’s see the license.”

  I’ve said it before—don’t sneer at luck. Chance, fortune, accident, it does exist. While it’s true, in a sense, that men make their own luck, by things like having the gall to question twenty-two cab drivers about something that happened for a few minutes five days ago, there is still, and forever, an area of pure chance. Sometimes I think that’s all there is.

  The driver gave me my license back. “She was dressed funny. In some long red thing with a mink over it. She didn’t have no bag. She paid me out of her pocket with a twenty. Grand Central’s an interesting stand, I watch, you know? She was my only real nut of the night. If she’d been a chick, I’d of figured she ran out on some guy, or got tossed out. But she was an old bag. White hair and no hat. Skinny. Nerved up. I was thinking about the cops. I mean, maybe she’d run out of some nuthouse.”

  “Where’d you take her?”

  “East Sixteenth Street. You want me to take you?”

  “Take me.”

  The driver made good time. I suppose I was his nut for that night. He probably had a lot of fun imagining the crazy lives of his passengers. As far as I could tell, no one followed us, and we soon pulled up in front of a tall apartment house near Third Avenue. I gave the driver an extra five. He drove off without looking back. Later, he’d build it all up for friends.

  I found the name I expected on the bank of mailboxes in the lobby: Baron Paul Ragotzy. The name was engraved in script on an elegant calling card in the European style. This, then, had been Paul Baron’s main residence. The space was a penthouse. That could mean more good luck for me. Staff members notice the action around penthouses, and this building was an older one with an operator-controlled elevator. (Self-service elevators have played hell with a good source of information.)

  This operator was a young fellow with clear, alert eyes and an intelligent face. He saw I had more on my mind than a quick trip upward. His slender brown hands held the door open.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  “If you can give me some information.”

  “If I have it, and it’s ethical,” he said. He hooked back the doors and sat down on his stool. I stepped into the car. He let the doors remain open. He had nothing to hide.

  “Were you on duty last Monday night about nine-thirty?”

  “Yes.”

  “There was a woman, about sixty but white-haired. She was wearing a mink and a red housedress and no hat.”

  “I remember her,” he said, “a lady. She had good manners. We don’t get many like her. You want to know where she went?”

  “That’s the question.”

  “Police?”

  He eyed my missing arm. I showed him my credentials. He read them carefully, with interest. He gave them back.

  “The police were here. They didn’t ask about Monday. They asked about Tuesday and Wednesday.”

  “About Paul Baron? I mean, Baron Ragotzy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then this woman went to the Baron’s penthouse?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she come here often?”

  “I never saw her before.”

  “How long did she stay?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Did she come down alone, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see her with the Baron?”

  “No.”

  I thought it over. At about 8:00 P.M. on Monday, Gertrude Radford had gotten a telephone call. She had come to see Paul Baron. That was hours after she knew that Jonathan had been murdered, and at a time when no one in the Radford family was supposed to have known that Paul Baron was involved except Walter Radford and Deirdre Fallon. And she denied knowing Paul Baron.

  “How long had the Baron lived here?”

  “A year or so. He was away a lot.”

  “He lived here alone?”

  “Yes. He had a lot of guests. They sometimes stayed a time.”

  “Women?”

  “Those who stayed were usually women.”

  “Anyone special? Regular?”

  “Quite a few were regular. I couldn’t say how special they were.”

  I described every woman I could think of in the case: Misty Dawn, Carla Devine, Deirdre Fallon, Morgana Radford and Agnes Moore—clients have lied to me before.

  “All of them could have been among the women,” he said. “I remember a couple of redheads as being pretty regular, and that small, dark, yo
ung one you mentioned was regular. She was sort of new, the dark kid. I can’t do any better, it’s a big building. The elevators keep pretty busy.”

  “How about men?” I asked. I described Costa and Strega, and saw no recognition. I pictured Walter Radford and George Ames for him, and then tried the unknown sandy-haired man looking for Carla Devine, and the thin, pale boy in the gray coupe. For good measure I threw in MacLeod the butler.

  He shook his head. “He didn’t usually have men up alone. They came in groups. Poker games, I think.” He smiled again. “I guess I don’t notice the men as much.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “When did the Baron come in that night? I mean on Monday.”

  “I don’t come on until nine. I never saw him.”

  “Then you don’t know who else was up there?”

  “I didn’t see anyone.”

  “Who was on earlier?”

  “The afternoon men. I doubt if they’d know much, though. They’re both old guys, and they don’t pay much attention to the tenants. Between five and eight is our busiest time, both cars run then.”

  “I’ll try them tomorrow anyway,” I said, and I reached into my pocket.

  “I get paid,” he said.

  I thanked him and went out into Sixteenth Street. The snow had stopped completely again, and the temperature was going down fast. I walked down to Stuyvesant Park at the end of the block. I sat on a bench in the cold and lighted a cigarette. The park was deserted except for a lone man walking his dog. The man had a bushy mustache, and the dog, a golden retriever, pulled him along. The man looked frozen, but the dog was eager. A good man, who walked his dog no matter how cold it was.

  I had my first clear lie. Gertrude Radford had gone to see Baron on Monday night, suddenly and in a hurry. Why? My theory said that Baron might have tried to go on with the blackmail after killing Jonathan. But Monday was too soon. He would have been lying low while he worked at framing Weiss. So Mrs. Radford had gone to Baron for another reason, or Baron had not killed Jonathan. The telephone call that had sent her to Baron made it sound as if Baron had not been afraid to contact Gertrude Radford.

  Then why had he worked to frame Weiss? For someone else: the missing partner who had sent Weiss the message to contact me? Baron covered for his partner, but the partner couldn’t take the risk so killed Baron who knew too much? Except I did not see a man like Baron trusting a killer, even a partner, so much that he sent away Leo Zar at a vital moment. Baron would not have been easily tricked by someone he knew had killed, and he had been tricked badly.

  When two don’t work, try three. A third person killed Jonathan. Baron knew it. The trusted partner killed Baron. Why and who? I had a feeling that they went together, the why and the who. If I knew who I’d know why, and if I could find out why I’d know who.

  If Baron hadn’t killed Jonathan after all, someone else had despite the facts and alibis, as Morgana Radford had said. The facts were wrong, and Baron had been covering for someone else. Then Baron had been tricked. That was the key: Baron’s murder.

  I stamped out my cigarette and went up to Third Avenue to find a taxi.

  21

  THE TAXI DROPPED me in Sheridan Square. I walked with the Friday-night crowd. They were all bundled up and eager, the girls like bright teddy bears in the cold and the neon lights. Here and there a determined maverick walked bold in a thin jacket and scarf, defying the elements and the world.

  I left the Square and walked down the dark side streets. I was alone in a different world. The windows of the buildings were lighted, but they were a universe away to me where I walked. Grove Street was empty, and Grove Mews was a dark tunnel. Through its archway the Mews looked like a deserted medieval courtyard.

  The snow lay white and thick and almost untouched in the Mews. I climbed the stairs to the stone corridor of the fifth floor of building number Two. An icy blast of wind greeted me. I had not closed the corridor window the first time, and no one had closed it since.

  A sound came to me on the wind.

  A light, flat, slapping sound in a slow, steady rhythm. Flat yet resonant. The funereal beat of a distant drum. Soft, like the muffled drums behind the gun carriage at a hero’s lament. But not a normal drum: the tone was too flat, the beat too light. A weak and infinitely solitary sound on the wind.

  I stepped to the door of 5-B. The door was half open, and the slow drumming came from inside. I pushed the door all the way open. The thin, pale boy whom I had last seen driving the gray coupe with Carla Devine in it sat on one of the studio couches. He didn’t seem to notice me. There was no one else in the room. I closed the door behind me.

  Ben Marno, if that was who the boy was, sat with his back against the wall, his legs straight out in front of him, and the small drum between his thighs. He wore dirty chino pants much too thin for a New York winter, and an old army field jacket as thin as the pants. His shoulders were hunched as if he had been cold all his life. His wild hair hung down over his face so that all I could see was his nose, his taut mouth, and his sharp chin. He was softly beating out the slow rhythm of the drum as if he hardly knew that his hands were moving.

  The explanation of the strangeness of the light, flat sound of the drum became clear to me. It was an Israeli drum, or an Arab drum—they are much the same, Israeli and Arab drums, which proves that custom and culture rise from time and place and are harder to control than politics. It was about the size of a small bongo, made of earthenware like a jar, one end covered with a laced skin, the other end smaller and open.

  “Marno?” I said.

  He looked up at me, without surprise or curiosity. He looked, but I was not sure he could see or cared if he saw me or not. Indifferent eyes, and his hands never stopped their slow beating of the drum.

  “Where’s Carla?” I said.

  His inanimate eyes, lumps of dark brown dirt, turned up to the grotesque false spider web on the ceiling, infinitely bored. Not with me alone, with it all. Flat, dead, unconcerned. Yet his hands went on and on in their soft, mourning rhythm, and there was something else in the dead eyes—shock, maybe? His hands here and alive, but all the rest of him withdrawn, gone somewhere else deep inside him.

  “Where is she, Marno?”

  His eyes stared at me. Then flickered, faintly, somewhere to his left. A small movement of the dark eyes. Toward the door to the next room. A reflex, involuntary, as if my voice had finally penetrated deep into wherever he was, and something had stirred momentarily.

  I went into the next room. She was there.

  She lay grotesquely with one thin arm and one perfect slim leg off a studio couch. She wore only a thin blue nylon robe, her child’s hard and perfect little body still beautiful in death. Her eyes were open and wide without pupils, and a thin trickle of blood from her mouth had dried on her chin. She had bitten her tongue at the instant of death, as if death had come in some great shock wave. It had. There was no pain on her madonna face, only the contortion of some powerful blow from inside her frail body. I had seen the results of a massive overdose of heroin before.

  I checked her arm, but I did not have to see the tiny, bruised puncture at the vein to know. There were other puncture marks, not too many. She had not been on the junk long or too steadily. Just long enough. It could be an accident, junkies died every day from overdoses. Or it could be suicide. But I knew it was neither of these; it was murder. Only there was no way I would ever prove that.

  I lifted her from the grotesque position, laid her on the couch, and covered her with the blue robe. I went back out to Ben Marno. He sat where I had left him, staring at nothing, beating out the funeral dirge on his slow drum.

  “How long?” I said.

  His fingers stroked the drum. He looked at me. He was back in the present, in the spider-web room, perhaps because now I also knew what only he had known a few minutes earlier.

  “Who knows?” he said. His voice was hoarse and thin. “Who cares? How long, he says. Forever, mister.”

&nb
sp; “I was here about four hours ago.”

  “I wasn’t. I come back maybe an hour ago. She was here. Like you see.”

  “And you just left her there?”

  “Stupid. Stupid kid.”

  “Like that you left her lying? A piece of meat?”

  His fingers never stopped tapping their dirge. He bent his head, listened to the intricate beat, concentrated on his work.

  “Lay her out, dad? Fold her hands, close her eyes, dress her in her best rags? Propaganda. She’s dead, dad, the propaganda don’t make no never mind to her no more.”

  His fingers did a slow, difficult run on the drum. He nodded to himself, pleased. “Who knows, maybe she can hear? Valhalla. You think there’s a Valhalla for little tramps? Everything she wanted, and no payoff time?”

  “All right,” I said. “Mourn your own way, but …”

  He silenced the drum with the flat of his hand. “Sympathy, dad? Lay it on me. I got a bad break. She was a nice little bird. Now I got to find me a new one. How’s that for a rotten break for old Ben Marno?”

  He had been hurt a lot more than anyone would ever know. He had been cut open, and he was bleeding alone. And he was not bleeding for himself, but for the dead girl-child in the next room.

  “Who supports me now? Man, that bird did me one big bad turn. How about that? Who buys the groceries for Ben Marno?”

  He was bleeding in buckets. Maybe if he kept it up long enough, he might even begin to forget in a week or so.

  I said, “Who killed her, Marno?”

  “Killed? A mistake. Too much H for one small bird.”

  “Killed,” I said, “and no mistake. Who?”

  His fingers began the erratic lament again. “Who, who! The big owl. Yeh. We all die, dads; we all get killed. It’s a big burlesque, dads. Swatting flies.”

  “You said it,” I said. “She was swatted like a fly.”

  “We’re all flies, dads; we all get swatted sooner or later. So fly high, fly high!”

  His voice and the beat of the drum rose, and I saw his eyes clearly for the first time. The pupils were small and tight, and the hysteria in him was not all grief. He was high on drugs, and there was something even more than drugs.