Brass Rainbow

by Michael Collins

  “You’re high, Marno. Is that the way you get out of it?”

  He did another quick run on the drum. “Just a little high, dads; not flying. Not enough. I didn’t have enough, no. Ben Marno didn’t have enough. Down to the last drop. So now I used it, the last drop, and no little bird to get more.”

  He was telling me something. I heard it. “She was out trying to get more for you? She took a big chance for you?”

  “For me, for Ben Marno who had to have some more happy dust. So out she went to find a contact. She made it, dads.” He threw the drum away. He looked at me from those constricted eyes. “Who, dads? You tell me. You’re the detective.”

  “If you know that, you know more,” I said.

  “I know, dads, and I know nothing, right? She knew, and she knew nothing. Just enough to kill her. Very careful these men of action. My nice little friendly bird, but Paul Baron’s chick because Paul Baron had what it took. So she was there, see? She didn’t know anything, not really, but she knew that Baron was alive and kicking after this Weiss character walked out.”

  “She told you Paul Baron was okay after Weiss left Wednesday night?”

  His eyes were dead. “She was scared, mister. Oh, God, was she one scared little bird. But for me she went out for a score, and I let her go! She’d been warned: clam up, keep out of sight. But she had a feeling the warning wasn’t the end of it.” He looked straight at me. “Not with you around. It was you, dads. She was sure the fuzz believed her, but she was scared that with you nosing around they wouldn’t trust her. You and me, dads!”

  What could I say? It was almost certainly the truth. So I said, “Tell me what she told you, Marno. All of it!”

  On the studio couch he blinked at me. He drew his knees up to his chin, clasped his ankles. “What’s to tell? She didn’t know anything, but they killed her anyway! All she knew was that Baron had a squeeze on a kid named Walter Radford. She was part of the squeeze, a witness. Baron lowered the boom on the kid on Sunday. Only on Monday it all changed. Baron was all excited, and told her to cover for him for an hour. The deal was bigger, he didn’t need her in it anymore. Wednesday they had dinner. Baron was happy as a kid, it was going like silk. Later she met him at his Fifth Street pad. Weiss showed up and got paid for some stupid bet and left. Baron was laughing, she says, after Weiss walked out. He sent her home right after. She figured he was expecting someone. She saw a guy watching downstairs, but she didn’t think anything of it then. Next day this woman told her to clam up—tight. Not a word to the cops. She didn’t know why. She didn’t know that until the fuzz rousted her Thursday night when you were there.”

  “Woman?” I said. “What woman warned her?”

  “She never told me.”

  “Think!”

  He shook his head. “No luck, dads; she didn’t want me to know. Too dangerous for little Ben to know. I figure it had to be someone tight with Paul Baron. Maybe it was that Misty Dawn. She was Baron’s steady before Carla. It was the Dawn chick who started the whole play, Carla said. Seems Misty was close to some guy who knew Walter Radford, and she told Baron about the setup.”

  The room was so quiet I could hear voices far off on Seventh Avenue. Someone laughed somewhere out in the snow.

  “Baron made his move on Sunday?” I said. “You’re sure?”

  “That’s what Carla said.”

  I started for the door. “When you call the police, don’t mention me.”

  “Police? Hell, dad, I’m fading away. Erase the name on the mailbox and fly. We’re all islands.”

  He’d bleed a long time. Maybe even longer than Gerald Devine and his silent wife up there in their paid-off house.

  I went down to the snow-covered courtyard and through the archway to Grove Street. I turned left for Seventh Avenue to find a telephone booth. I saw the car across the street and behind me as I turned toward the avenue.

  A green car, its engine muffled by the snow, that eased away from the curb and started after me.

  22

  I WALKED a little faster.

  The green car moved a little faster.

  In the center of the block a tall apartment building stood dark with a shadowed alley beside it. The street was deserted. Beyond the tall building there was light at the corner of Bedford, and a block farther the traffic and people of Seventh Avenue.

  The car squealed tires in snow and came up on me. As I began to run, I was sure I saw a figure in a doorway across the street. I had no time to take a second look. The green car was almost up to me, timing its move to the exact moment when I would be in the shadow of the single tall building.

  I dropped flat in the snow.

  Something seemed to spit in the silent air. A sharp, brief, almost contemptuous spitting sound. Brick chips cracked out of the wall of the tall building. Something whined echoing down the alley.

  The car was past me. It braked, skidded in the snow, stopped and was already turning.

  I was up.

  The street was too narrow for a U-turn. The car climbed the sidewalk. It spat at me again. A window broke somewhere—as if distant, tinkling in the cold night air. The car engine raced, its wheels spinning in snow as it reversed.

  I ran.

  Back the way I had come, with no time to look again, or think, to see if there had been someone in that doorway across the street.

  I ran and felt unreal, my feet silent in the new snow like the feet of a ghost. Only my breathing was real—loud breathing like a panting rabbit with the dogs closing in.

  I passed the archway into the Mews and reached the next corner. The car roared up behind, no longer careful. I made the corner, went around, skidded, and sprawled flat on my back. My legs kicked for a hold to get up.

  The car failed to make the turn any better, slewed sideways, and slammed up over the far curb and into an iron railing. I slid and scrambled up. The car raced its engine. Its bumper was locked into the railing. Its wheels screamed in the night, digging deep into the snow, turning uselessly.

  I banged my face into a wall, bounced off, ran, and ahead saw the lights of a restaurant and bar. The Golden Donkey. I knew the Golden Donkey. I reached the door. Two men came out of the stalled car across the street. One fell into the snow, staggered up, fell again. I got the door of the restaurant open.

  I ran through the dining room. Faces turned, gaped. A waiter raised his hands. I was by him. Behind me dishes fell, smashed. I was in the kitchen, and out into the night of the back alley. There were doors. I tried them. One after the other; running from one to the other. They were all locked. I turned the corner of the L-shaped alley. Ahead the next street parallel to Grove Street was quiet in the lighted rectangle where the alley ended.

  I came out of the alley.

  They were there.

  Spread out in the street, black figures against the snow, they trotted toward the alley. They, too, had known the Golden Donkey. They came on, men with something in their right hands.

  The taller was in the lead, running at me. A face I could not see. Teeth that caught the stray light of a street lamp. A heavy, dark overcoat, its skirts flapping. A hat. A gun held forward.

  I turned for the alley.

  Shots hammered the night. Suddenly and heavy, like a blow against my ears in the narrow street and thin, cold air. Two shots. There was a scream. High and terrible like the scream of a wounded mountain lion. I went down in the snow, rolled, but it was not me who had screamed.

  I rolled, unhit, and came half up, crouched in the snow with my lips back and my teeth bared in an animal snarl. As I came back up, I thought I heard another heavy shot, and two short, slapping sounds. The silenced gun that had shot at me. I was never sure.

  Then it was over.

  People were gathering from the dark air. There was a police whistle somewhere close. The smaller of the two who had been hunting me lay in the street. Another man lay beyond him against a building. Far off, a block away, a man was running hard. As I stood, he vanished.

 
; I stumbled to the first body. He lay on his back. The front of his overcoat was torn out over bloody holes I could have put both fists in. He was a small, thin man. His hat lay in the snow. He had sandy hair. He was dead.

  I pushed past people who gave me room. I had never seen the thin, sandy-haired man before, but I knew he had been the man who had gone before me to City Island to look for Carla Devine. I shouldered through the crowd around the second man who lay close to a dark building. I had seen him before. Leo Zar.

  There were two small, neat holes close together in his chest. The overcoat was hardly torn. He breathed; slow and hard; uneven and rattling deep in his punctured chest. I bent down close to his broad, ugly face.

  “Zar? Who were they? Zar!”

  He breathed, rasping. His small eyes were shut. He was busy, concentrating, trying to live. His fists were clenched, the massive hands holding hard with all his strength to the air. A .45 automatic lay in the snow.

  “Leo,” I said. “Who were they? You were after them.”

  The cords in his bull neck, and in his wrists, stood out. His eyelids fluttered, but his eyes did not open.

  “… wife … Paul’s … she …”

  His barrel chest heaved, rested, then heaved once more in a deep, long breath. His eyes opened. He looked up into my face. His voice was deep and thick with the rasp of gravel.

  “Get the damned bitch.”

  His breathing stopped. His cold eyes seemed to watch me, puzzled. He took one more ragged breath. His eyes glared up at me with pure hate. Hate that was not for me, but only for the life still in me. I was alive. Then he died, the last hate fading out of his bitter eyes.

  Behind me someone giggled. Someone moaned, afraid. I stood up. A policeman was running up. I walked away and ducked into the alley behind the Golden Donkey. No one stopped me. I found a doorway and sat in its shelter inside the alley. I lighted a cigarette. I was not shaking; I was thinking, clearly, that I had finally heard Leo Zar speak.

  I smoked. Paul Baron’s wife. Leo had said that Baron had had a wife. He had said, it seemed, that the wife had somehow killed Baron. Yet Leo had been chasing two men. A dying man says what is important. Or does he? A dying man says only what his dying mind thinks. What is important, and what is true, when a man is dying?

  When my cigarette was smoked out, I stood up and went back to the rear door of the Golden Donkey. In the restaurant they were all excited. They stared at me. I was a sodden mess. No one spoke to me, and no one stopped me going through.

  I walked to Seventh Avenue this time without trouble.

  The show was on at the Fifth Street Club. I had two quick shots of Irish and watched it from the bar. My nerves were jumping now at the sound of a glass hitting the bar. Someone who had little left to lose didn’t want me around. One more murder was not going to make a hell of a lot of difference. I drowned my nerves in the whisky, thought that at least the someone was running scared, and concentrated on the show.

  The line was six girls wearing just about what girls wear on any beach these days, but there was a big difference in the effect to watch them prancing in a room filled with fully dressed people eating. They did a vigorous bump-and-grind routine, and then went into the lead-in for the star. Misty Dawn was the star.

  She appeared at center stage with a flourish. She was worth looking at. She wore more than the girls of the line, but all that did was focus attention to the right places. She bounced where she should bounce, and was hard where she should be hard. Her belly looked like ribbed steel, and moved like a powerful spring. Her face was all pancake, rouge, eye shadow, false lashes, eye liner and lipstick. The face was a mask: a ritual mask passed down through generations of girl-shows.

  She was not a bad dancer, and her voice was deep, loud, only a little hoarse when she sang, and as boldly suggestive as it was supposed to be. But, watching closely now, I saw something else. I heard a nuance. She was deftly burlesquing her own act. She was putting them on, the drooling audience. Just enough to amuse herself and those in the know, but not enough to offend the true droolers. She was acting, playing a part and a private game.

  When she finished, she ran off in a neat parody of every stripper who ever pranced into the wings like a mare in heat. The stage lights dimmed, and the interim show came on: an overage boy who played gaudy piano and sang in a whisky baritone. I paid and went through the curtain at the side. At the end of a long corridor an old man sat on a chair guarding the portals. I told him I wanted to see Misty, and he shuffled off with the message. He came back at the same shuffle.

  “She’s gone out.”

  That ended it for him. He sat down again and picked up his copy of Playboy. Girls trotted around the passage with less on them than they wore onstage. The world of night clubs does not breed modesty. For all I embarrassed them, I might have been a water cooler. Maybe that is true modesty.

  “Out where?” I said to the old man. “Doesn’t she have a couple of more shows?”

  “Next in half an hour,” the old man said, uninterested.

  I left him reading, or staring at the pictures of naked girls. The pictures seemed to excite him more than all the real flesh and blood around him. It’s easier to dream from a distance, and paper girls don’t laugh at an old man.

  I went back through the club and out into the cold night. I watched even old ladies warily. With a show in half an hour, Misty would not have gone far. She could have eaten or had a drink in the club. I went into the vestibule of the apartment above the club. Everyone agreed that it was where Misty lived. I used the pressure-and-push trick on the downstairs door. When I had it open, I pressed the bell for the apartment where Paul Baron had died, and went fast to the basement door, down, and through to the steps up to the backyard.

  The fire escape of the old building was above me. I climbed it to the landing outside the window of the apartment. She was there, seated in a flowered armchair facing the door, her back to me. The room was dim, but I could see her fine legs in the black mesh tights. I could also see the gun in her hand aimed at the closed outside door. It was a tiny, chromium-plated automatic.

  The window was not locked, but I could never open it, climb in, and get to her in time. My nerves were still raw, and I didn’t like it, but there are some chances I have to take once in a while. I got my fingers under the upper edge of the lower window frame and shoved as hard as I could.

  The window flew up as I said, “Drop it, Misty! I’ll shoot if you turn a hair!”

  Reflex was the danger. Her shoulders hunched.

  “Drop it!”

  The moment passed. She dropped the tiny pistol. It bounced away from her feet. I scrambled in through the window. She turned. Even in the dim light she saw my lone hand as empty as the day I was born. She swooped at the pistol. I made a wild dive. It was almost a dead heat, but I hit her in the dive, knocked her away, and fell on the gun.

  I came up with it in my hand. (For some reason women will rarely dive to get something. They will bend, stoop. Maybe it is only the deeply ingrained consciousness of skirts, and the reflex response of not wanting to end up with their bellies exposed.) She went back to the chair and sat down. A cool woman. I waved the gun.

  “What were you going to do with this?” I asked.

  “Wait for someone to come to the door. Tell him to get lost. If he broke in, kill him. It’s my place, I’ve got a permit, and a woman has a right to protect herself.”

  I listened to her hoarse voice. It was good. And she was good. She was also right. If she shot a man as she had said, she wouldn’t even have gone to trial.

  “Did you kill Baron to take over the blackmail?” I said. “Or was there another reason?”

  “You figure it all out.”

  “The first thing I’m trying to figure is why you hired me, Agnes,” I said. “That’s your real name, right? Agnes Moore?”

  Her masklike face was immobile. Then she reached for a package of cigarettes on the table beside the chair.

  “Tha
t’s right,” she said. “Agnes Moore is my right name.”

  23

  SHE SMOKED. I sat down.

  “You want to start telling me?” I said.

  She reached up and pulled off her red wig. Even with the short, dark hair of Agnes Moore in front of me, I would not have recognized her behind the mask of make-up. The Agnes Moore I had met had a round, scrubbed, almost mannish face. The main change was her voice. It was still low and strong, but all the hard hoarseness was gone.

  “You’re a pretty fair detective,” she said. “I figure I give a good Misty Dawn act. No one except Paul really knew Misty and Agnes were the same, and he didn’t tell you.”

  “You keep them separate all the time?”

  She shrugged. “I’m an actress, a good one, but I have to eat. Misty is for groceries. I don’t broadcast it.”

  “You said Jonathan told you about the blackmail,” I said, “but Jonathan didn’t know about the blackmail until Sunday, and you hadn’t seen him since before Sunday. Only Baron, or someone working with him, could have told you. Then, tonight, a man told me that Misty Dawn was close to a man who knew Walter Radford very well. I put it together.”

  She nodded. “I had to be sure you connected Paul and Jonathan. I wanted the killer nailed.”

  “Did you?” I said. I handled the tiny pistol lightly, making sure she was aware of it. “Weiss contacted me right after I saw you. Someone had sent Weiss a message to contact me. He thought the message was from Baron, but Baron was already dead. Whoever sent that message knew that Baron was dead. I think you knew that Baron was dead when you hired me. I think you hired me to try to make sure Weiss was framed for all of it.”

  “Why the hell would I do that?”

  “Where were you on Monday, Agnes? Between noon and three P.M.?”

  “Where …?” The mask of her face told me nothing. Her long leg began to swing. “Right here, buster. Right here.”

  “Alone?”

  “After Paul left, yes.”