Halo in Brass

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Halo in Brass Page 3

by Howard Browne


  “I asked you,” I said, “and you told me. Thirtieth and Merrill. Is that right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “A tavern, you said?”

  "Yes, sir. Sign says ‘Marty’s’.”

  “How do I get there?”

  He thought. “Well, you go out O Street east to Twenty-seventh, then north to Merrill. About the twenty-two hundred block that way. Thirtieth would be another three blocks east.” He shook his head almost regretfully, like the local chamber of commerce getting ready to make an admission. “You won’t like it out there, mister. A bad district after dark. But then night’s the only time you’ll find anybody around.”

  I took the glass away from him and got rid of it. He smiled shyly and smoothed the two bills he was still holding and put them deep in a pocket and waited for me to tell him he could run along.

  I said, “If I need you again, who do I ask for?”

  “Chester, sir. Chester Weedlow.”

  “It goes down in my book.”

  “Uh—thanks for the drink, mister.”

  “You hardly touched it.”

  “And the two dollars.”

  “Just saying hello to you was worth that much.”

  He had no idea what I was talking about. I hardly knew myself. He said something polite, sidled to the door and out, closing the door like it might blow up in his face. A town with even one bellhop like Chester had to be all anybody could ask for.

  I leaned against the window frame and looked out and thought my thoughts. I lighted a cigarette and bounced the folder of matches on my palm. The cover had a cut of the hotel on it, looking as tall as Rockefeller Center and twice as imposing. I put them in my pocket, went over and mixed another drink and carried it back to the window.

  I stood there a long, long time. Dusk slowly filled the street below and began to crawl in at the window. The sky lost its hot look and became a soft faraway gray. A red neon sign in a haberdashery across the way came on and threw a harsh pattern of color across the walk.

  Finally I looked at my strap watch. Still several hours before I could put Plan X into operation. I moved my coat off the bed, pushed up the pillows and stretched out with my glass and a cigarette and a mind filled with drifting thoughts. . . .

  CHAPTER 4

  MERRILL STREET. Old bricks down the center, with holes to knock your wheels out of line or snap a spring. Big naked electric globes on top of iron poles, with flat tin reflectors above them to push the light down against cracked, uneven sidewalks.

  Weathered frame houses in need of paint they would never get crouched in narrow plots of hard naked earth or among dried-out patches of brown grass littered with paper and empty cans and the broken remains of toys. Once in a while a withered tree, black branches thrust starkly skyward as though praying for the rain they could no longer use.

  The neighborhood youth moved aimlessly through the shadows of the hot airless streets or stood in loose groups at intersections, twirling key chains and talking in short sentences that came out wrapped in smoke from their cigarettes. Men in undershirts sat drinking beer on top steps of sagging porches, and the voices of slatternly women were shrill against the night.

  At the corner of Thirtieth a vertical electric sign that read MARTY’S stuck out over the walk from the second floor of a two-story building of time-corroded red brick. Faded green blinds were drawn in the upstairs windows. Downstairs was a double store-front window with the word BEER in green neon script against a backdrop of white cheesecloth.

  At a few minutes past ten I parked across the street from the tavern, rolled up the windows and got out. I was thorough about locking doors. Cars were strung along both curbs, not all of them in the low-price field.

  The entrance to Marty’s was set in a shallow recess and stood open to the night’s dry heat. Juke-box jive rolled out through it carrying the reek of fermented hops. Four men near the window were suddenly silent as I came toward them. It was the silence of a prison yard as the head screw walks by.

  I moved past them and their brand of silence and on into the half-light found in barrooms everywhere. A single room, long and narrow and low-ceilinged. No plush, no chrome, and the only mirror a smeared length behind unimaginative displays of whisky and gin bottles in back of a darkwood bar. The opposite wall held a line of booths in the same wood, and all the way back were two closed doors flanking a juke box bright with swirling colors.

  Not at all what I expected. No grog-mill cuties with peekaboo blouses and boudoir keys ready in sweating palms. No slim-waisted junker with a snap-brim hat and a deck of nose candy for sale to the right guy. Not even one B-girl behind her shot glass of cold tea.

  Just men in shirt sleeves drinking beer out of the standard kind of glassware, and in the booths matronly housewives doing the same thing and maybe talking about eggs and flour and the iceman taking an hour to drop off fifty pounds at Mrs. Ramsey’s.

  I found a place at the bar and one of the aprons came along and asked my pleasure. He was a middle—aged giant with a face like a peat bog and the same amount of wavy black hair you find on a lightning rod.

  “Whisky sour,” I said. '

  He blinked lashless eyes. “Sorry, Spike. Not that I wouldn’t want to, y’understand. But we got a law says no. Somebody should of told ya.”

  I pointed at the bottle goods. “What about them? Or are you waiting for repeal?”

  He didn’t bother to turn his head. “Don’t mean a thing, Spike. Empties, see. You gotta put something behind a bar else it don’t look like no bar. Catch on?”

  “A beer, then,” I said. “And a word with Bertha Lund.”

  He frowned ponderously. “This is Marty’s, Spike. Like the sign says. You want beer, huh?”

  “When I want beer, I’ll ask for beer. Get word to Bertha she’s got company. And how about that beer I ordered?”

  He took hold of his side of the bar with both hands. I could hear the wood creak. “One beer,” he said in a strangled way. He turned and went along the bar and pressed a button below one of the cash registers. When he came back there was a glass of beer in one of his paws. He put it in front of me and took my dime and rang it up. He almost snapped the key on the register ringing it up.

  I lighted a cigarette and drank some of the foam in my glass and listened to the juke box yell about love. One of the matrons upset her beer and caught most of it in her ample lap. She said a few choice words that crackled like the weighted tip of a mule whip and came over to the bar for a towel.

  A hand touched my elbow gently. It was a soft meaty hand, like a lily pad, and was attached to a small pale man in a dark suit, white shirt and figured blue necktie. He looked like a Lithuanian janitor on his Sunday off, until you saw his eyes and smelled the acrid smoke of marijuana on his breath.

  “I’m Marty,” he murmured. “You wanted something?”

  ”Not from you,” I said. “It was a lady I had in mind.”

  “No girlies here.” He smiled dreamily up at me. But he was really thousands of miles away. Away on a tropical isle below the equator, with dancing girls and fat eunuchs and long-handled peacock fans waved by ebon slaves. “Just a quiet place to have a beer and listen to the pretty music.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said. I made a sniffing sound. “Nice grade of tea you’re wearing there, Marty.”

  His distant dark eyes were suddenly sharp and direct. His voice cut through the clink of glassware, the clang of cash registers, the vibrating notes of the record player. “What’s your business, mister? I don’t have all day.”

  “I want a few words with Bertha,” I said, “about a small matter that won’t do anything to her one way or the other. If that won’t unlock her door, say it’s about a girl she used to know.”

  He didn’t nod, but he didn’t shake his head either. He said, “Stick around,” and floated on down the room, all the way down and through one of the doors next to the juke box. He used a key to get the door open. It didn’t have to mean anything that he used a key.<
br />
  Some time went by. I finished my beer. I would have ordered another if the apron had suggested it. But he never came near me.

  Presently the rear door opened and Marty looked into the bar. He caught my eye and motioned with his head. I went back there and followed him through, along a short hall with naked plaster walls and up a steep flight of steps with rubber treads.

  We came into a narrow corridor with the same bare plaster walls. Paneled doors on either side were painted a hideous brown. Most of the doors Were closed. A young colored girl, carrying a stack of towels, squeezed past us, giving me a secret smile. She wore a white wrap-around apron and had legs like toothpicks. In the air was an odor of strong soap and disinfectant. Not a nice odor at all.

  It was none of my business what the place smelled like. I trailed the little man to a white door at the corridor’s far end. He knocked twice and a baritone voice said, “All right,” and we went through.

  CHAPTER 5

  THIS was a room to remember, to hurt your eyes, to make you open your veins for the sake of a little color. The all-over rug was a shaggy twist in pure white, the walls a pale cream, the windows hidden behind eggshell draperies and Venetian blinds in glistening white. One wall held a pair of snowscapes in frames of white pebbled leather that matched three pull-up chairs in the general vicinity of an executive-sized desk painted a warm ivory. Everything on the desk, from the blotter to the telephone, was a neutral shade.

  It was like stepping into a bottle of milk.

  Sitting behind the desk and looking at me without much interest was a woman in a dark-green blouse and a severe gray suit with white pinstripes. She was a big woman, shoulders broad and square and a lot of bosom that seemed to be in one piece. Her black hair was straight and coarse and out like that of the third cellist in the London Philharmonic. Just by sitting there she gave the impression of being able to break the javelin-throw record any afternoon of the week.

  She waved a large ringless hand at the chair nearest my side of the desk. “Be seated, sir. I won’t need you, Marty.”

  The door closed without a sound, leaving me alone with Bertha Lund. I sat down and crossed my legs and stared frankly at her. She was the kind of woman you had to throw your weight at right away or get no place with. She was smoking a cigarette in a short ivory holder and staring back at me. Her eyes were hard and brown under bushy black brows. Her face was full and handsome in the way a man’s face is handsome and was completely free of make-up. It was a face that would let you know its secrets—if you used scopolamine and three sticks of dynamite.

  She said, “Marty didn’t catch your name.”

  “Marty,” I said, “couldn’t catch a ping-pong ball with a wash tub.”

  She hadn’t expected that kind of approach. Her mouth hardened. “If you’ve got a chip on your shoulder just walk right on out. I didn’t send for you.”

  “I worked too hard getting in,” I said, grinning. “The name is Pine.”

  She brushed a few crumbs of tobacco from the white blotter with the side of her hand and looked thoughtfully at the points of my display handkerchief. Smoke from her cigarette climbed straight up in the room’s still air. Slowly her first rush of anger faded, leaving the face smooth once more.

  “Stranger in town, Mr. Pine?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How do you like our little city?”

  “I like it fine.”

  She nodded as though I’d said the only thing to be said. “A town of retired farmers, largely. A university town, pretty much on the quiet side. I wouldn’t trade it for a hundred New Yorks.”

  “Even if they threw in Cleveland?” I said.

  Her thick brows joined to make a puzzled scowl. “What’s Cleveland got to do with it?”

  “No more than New York,” I said.

  She twitched one shoulder and put the ivory holder in a groove of a white plastic ash tray. She bent sideways over the white leather arm of her chair and tugged open a bottom drawer and brought out two shot glasses and a bottle of Black Label. It seemed the wrong brand of Scotch for this room.

  She filled both glasses to the brim with practiced ease and pushed one over to me. Evidently I impressed her as a man who would want his liquor straight. We drank and she smacked her lips louder than I did. She returned the bottle to the drawer, kicked it shut with a hard motion of her foot, leaned back in the chair and swung one leg over the other. Her smile was as guarded as her eyes and her eyes were as guarded as the Philadelphia Mint.

  She said, “I’m Bertha Lund. What was it you wanted? Something about a girl, Marty said.”

  “A girl you used to know,” I said. “I hear she’s in Chicago these days. I want to find her.”

  “Why?” Straight out. Direct. The way a man would have said it.

  “I need a piece of information. I think she can furnish it.”

  “Is this a personal matter? Or what?”

  “Nothing personal. A job of work to me. I have a client.”

  Her brown eyes were very still, very careful. Her bosom rose and fell under slow breathing. “A client,” she repeated softly. “What are you—a lawyer?”

  I got out my wallet and slid a business card across the white blotter. She used a thumb and forefinger to pick it up by the edges. She read the words without moving her lips, no expression marring the strong lines of her face.

  ”Private dick,” she said tonelessly. “Well.” She spread her fingers and the card plopped soundlessly against the blotter. “Who gave you my name?”

  “It came up kind of indirectly, Miss Lund.”

  She lifted the ivory holder and pushed it between her lips. A long ’feather of curling smoke floated ceiling-ward as she tilted back her chin to let me see the stocky lines of her muscular neck.

  “You’ve got one hell of a nerve,” she said suddenly. “You practically muscle your way in here and demand information. But I don’t notice you giving out any. Private cops aren’t new to me, Pine. I’ve met them before. A shady, seedy pack, full of wind and backed up by a nickel’s worth of authority.”

  A lot of words but nothing in them for me. I looked back at her and said nothing.

  She said, “All right. Who are you working for?”

  “My client, Miss Lund.”

  “And who might that be?”

  “You wouldn’t know him.”

  The hard brown eyes gleamed like pebbles in a river bed. “How would you know who I wouldn’t know? That will be all, Mr. Pine. I don’t have information for any cop—private or public.”

  She leaned forward to reach a forefinger under the edge of the desk. I said, “Before you ring for the runner, think what turning me out empty-handed can mean.”

  “To me,” she snapped, “not a thing.” She sounded like she meant it. But the finger didn’t go any farther.

  I worked a cigarette from my pack, lighting it with a match from the folder the hotel had furnished. Bertha Lund watched my hands, frowning, thinking behind the frown. I waved out the match and dropped it into the white tray and leaned back again. I said, “From the way you’ve been biting my neck, I’d say you know where Gracie Rehak can be found. You can tell me, and now, or I can ask the local law to put pressure where pressure will count. If they can’t get it out of you, putting some of your two-dollar broads through the wringer might help. I want what I want, Miss Lund, and somebody in this bird cage is going to give it to me.”

  She was staring at me with her mouth open. “Gracie Rehak? Good Christ, is that who you’re talking about?”

  “Who did you have in mind?” I said.

  She wasn’t listening. “Little Gracie. Well, well. What’s that flat-chested kitten been up to?”

  “I wouldn’t know, Miss Lund.”

  She seemed greatly relieved—almost too relieved for me to believe I had removed a weight from her mind. She avoided my eyes while working the butt of her cigarette out of the ivory holder. She used a burned matchstick to press out the coal, wiped her fingers
on a man’s handkerchief from a desk drawer and put it away again.

  The smooth lack of expression was back on her face by the time she was through with all that. She got out of her chair, said, “Excuse me a moment, Mr. Pine. I may be able to help you after all.”

  She moved around the corner of the desk and past me with a long smooth stride, to the door and out, closing it softly at her back.

  It might have been to order up the heavy artillery or to take a cake out of the oven. It might even have been for the reason she gave. Either of the first two seemed more likely.

  I rose and walked around behind the desk and stood there looking at the closed drawers. No point in going through them, even if I had the time, which I doubted. The handsome white leather swivel chair stood on a white rubber mat protecting the white rug. Just the room to have anemia in. I rubbed the sole of my shoe against the mat for no reason, then turned and went back to my chair.

  Bertha Lund came in almost immediately afterward. She crossed to her chair with her free-wheeling stride. She picked up the empty ivory holder and held it lengthwise in front of her and looked over it at me, resting her elbows on the blotter. “Dead end, I’m afraid,” she said casually. “I tried getting Gracie’s address from a girl who knew her well in the old days. Seems she hasn’t heard from Gracie since the day she left town.”

  “And I had such hopes,” I said solemnly. “Does that mean I’m to say thanks and crawl out the door?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You haven’t said anything.”

  Her lips formed a white furious line. “Get out of here, you cheap tin star! Before you get thrown out on your can!”

  We sat and glared at each other across the ivory expanse of desk. But I had more practice at being glared at and finally she looked past me at the layers of smoke hanging in the still air.

  She said stiffly, “Don’t ever think you can’t stretch that tough-guy act too far with me. This is my neck of the woods and I can get away with more than you might imagine.”

 

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