Halo in Brass

by Howard Browne

  “Maybe both,” I said. “Maybe neither. Maybe because under the right conditions a man acts like a man. The hell with it. You’re a woman in love with your husband. Or did you forget?”

  “Not even for a second,” she said with deadly calm. “No matter what I do, I keep what I value.”

  “Uh-hunh. And damn the cost. If it means paying blackmail, you’ll pay it. If it means knocking off a few dames, off they go. No price too high; no method too low."

  She had turned to stone. I lighted a cigarette and got off the window seat to stretch my legs. I stood there and looked down at her and felt the muscles of my face begin to ache from the twisting of my lips.

  “The whole stinking picture is unrolling,” I said. “You’re through, baby. Only one dark corner left and we’ll let the boys in blue throw the light on that.

  “Your real name is what I’m talking about. Not that it really matters; they can fry you just as crisp under any name. You’re either Gracie Rehak, the former can-house cutie; or you’re Laura Fremont, killer of Ellen Purcell. But for my money you’re still Lizzie Borden.”

  I poured some liquor in my glass and drank it down and put the glass back on the bar. “The cops will get what’s lacking, Mrs. Griswold. They’ll shake the facts out of Stuart Whitney, the guy who stumbled onto your little secret and made the most of it. They can always check your bank account for withdrawals and his bank account for deposits. If they jibe pretty well on dates and amounts, that will help. There’ll be other ways, and by the time the law has what they need, Whitney will sing it in three sharps. You should have let him have a bullet or two while you were at it.”

  All she did was look at me. I knew I would see those eyes as they were then in my sleep for months afterward.

  I turned and left the room.

  CHAPTER 22

  I WAS almost to the bend in the corridor when one of the doors along it opened a crack and a tanned hand beckoned. The party behind the door and the hand was Susan Griswold. She was slim and smart in brown silk shantung and open-toed brown pumps. She looked cool and intense about something.

  She took hold of my sleeve and pulled me through and shut the door softly. Her blue-gray eyes flashed. “I saw you come in. What did you think of her?”

  “She’d make a wearing week end,” I said. “But it would probably be worth it.”

  She colored. “That’s a nice uninhibited way of looking at it, I suppose. What did you find out?”

  “Everything. Everything, that is, that she wanted me to find out. Plus the fact that she could drink me under the bench any Friday in the week.”

  A small cold smile touched her lips. “I told you she was clever. Now you can see how hard it will be for me to get her out of here before she does any real damage.”

  I looked past her at the room. A bedroom—but only for those born to the purple. Anybody else would hang their clothes out the window and sleep in one corner of its rug.

  She jabbed me in the chest with a short blunt-nailed forefinger. “What’s the next step? You’re not going to quit, are you? I thought you strong silent detectives were half bulldog and half bloodhound.”

  “I did what I could, Miss Griswold. I threw my best bluff in her teeth and stalked out. It was a good strong bluff, a lot of meat on it in the shape of some facts not to be explained away as coincidences, and it may jolt her into doing the wrong thing. Not that she has to—and not that she will if she holds still long enough to count up to ten. There’s too little actual proof against her and far too much money behind her for the cops to make an attempt to pin even one murder rap on her. Everything’s in her favor, including the fact that none of the three corpses is headline material.”

  She gaped at me, the freckles showing again. “Three? What three? Are you saying she killed three different people?”

  “She could have. That’s as far as I can take it. All we can do—all I can do—is hope for her to crack up in time to save me from rotting in jail while waiting for my trial to come up.”

  Nothing could be blanker than her expression. “Why you? You’re not involved; you told me so on the phone early last night.”

  “Uh-hunh. I forgot to touch wood when I said it. I think I’ll be running along. Nice place you have here, Miss Griswold. The memory of it during the long nights behind bars will cheer me up.”

  Her lip curled. “So you’re quitting. Down comes the flag and you hand over your sword with a small bow and a wisecrack. You certainly fooled me, little man.”

  I sighed. “Mind your tongue. I’m not quitting, although I’d like to. The time has come for me to sit down with a bottle and a hypodermic and think. Mixed in somewhere with all the information I’ve picked up in the past twenty-four hours is the key to this puzzle. I’m going someplace and mull. I’ve always been good at mulling; this time I’ll have to be perfect.”

  I tipped a hand at her and walked out. The elevator was waiting. I rode down to the first floor and looked around for the guy who had my hat. I didn’t see him but I saw something else. I saw two people standing in the open double doorway to what looked like the north wing of the public library. They stood there, not talking, not moving, frozen like flies in amber.

  They were Stuart Whitney and Ruth Abbott.

  Sudden anger turned over in me. I walked over to them. “The vultures gather,” I said. “She’s upstairs, Whitney, getting out the checkbook and shaking the pen. But get enough this time for a get-away stake. Blackmail is still a felony in this state.”

  Neither of them said anything. They waited with faces filled with hate, waited for me to pick up and go. I looked at their hatred, enjoying it, wishing there was even more of it for me to enjoy.

  I tried again. “It’s only right to tell you, she may be a little difficult today. I happened to let slip how nice a black net nightgown and red hair can fit in with that color scheme at the Barryshire.”

  All it did was make Ruth Abbott breathe through her mouth. I could see a tiny smear of lipstick on one of her teeth, like a ferret that had been at the chickens.

  This was childish. No other word for it. Formless anger can do that to the best of us. And I was not the best; I had never realized it as clearly as I was realizing it now.

  I hitched up my diaper and left them. I went on and on until I came out into the huge circular hall. The man in livery was coming down a different corridor toward me. I reached out and patted the shoulder of one of the suits of armor. “Done any Holy Grailing lately?” I said aloud.

  And that was childish too.

  The man with the Indian face located my hat and handed it to me. He said “Good afternoon, sir,” very politely and opened the door. The sun shone and the green lawns beckoned and the air was exactly the right density and odor for breathing.

  And between me and all that were three men coming up under the porte-cochere. Lawrence Griswold, followed by Captain Blauvelt and the sergeant.

  CHAPTER 23

  No GUNS jumped out to cover me. Lawrence Griswold gave me a long level stare that had no warmth in it and said, “I met these officers at the gate. They insisted you were here. I want to know why you are here.”

  I said, “No use standing here with the door open. We’re letting in the flies.”

  Nobody moved. There weren’t any flies anyway. Griswold’s jaw set. “You’re a private detective named Pine. What business do you have forcing your way into my home?”

  I shook my head. “If I’m going to answer any questions it’ll be while I’m sitting down. And not on the front stoop either.”

  Blauvelt’s square heavy face was without expression, his yellow eyes half closed. “We’ll take him along, Mr. Griswold,” he rumbled. “Whatever reason he was here we’ll get it out of him and let you know.”

  If Lawrence Griswold heard him he gave no sign of it. To me, he said, “I want one answer now, please. Who did you come here to see?”

  “Your wife, Mr. Griswold.”

  The hollows under his cheekbones deepened mic
roscopically. “Very well, Mr. Pine. I’ll talk this over with you in my office.” He glanced around at Captain Blauvelt. “I’ll try to make it brief, sir. You and your man can wait in the library.”

  “Well now,” Blauvelt began in an injured tone.

  But I beat him to it. “No more private talks, Mr. Griswold. You’ve got a right to be in on this, since it does concern your wife. But I’m through trying to bank my shots into the corner pocket. Any questions will be answered where the captain can listen in.”

  He wasted no time arguing about it. “As you wish,” he said formally and the three of them pushed past me and we were standing in the big circular hall with the door closed.

  The captain avoided my eyes. He said, “Les,” and the sergeant put his hat between his knees to hold it and used both hands to pat me under the arms and around the waist. He stepped back and moved the hat up under one arm and said, “He’s clean, Chief.”

  The silence got a little heavy before I noticed it. The three of them were looking strangely at me. I didn’t blame them. I got my jaw up off my collarbone and said, in a voice I hardly recognized, “Change of plans. There’s been a small miracle. This is going to be open house. Get them all into the library, Mr. Griswold.”

  He swallowed. “I don’t believe I—”

  “Everybody,” I said. “Mrs. Griswold, Stuart Whitney, Susan Griswold and Ruth Abbott.”

  Griswold tried to keep his temper but it wasn’t easy. “I see no reason—”

  I interrupted him. “This is going to end up in the State’s Attorney’s office eventually. It’s got to. Maybe we can strain out some of the details beforehand—details that will do no good by being aired. Humor me a little, Mr. Griswold; I’ve earned it.”

  Griswold’s handsome face had taken on a grayish cast at mention of the State’s Attorney. Blauvelt was petting the brim of his hat with the first two fingers of his left hand and making up his mind. He said, “I kinda figured you’d turn out to be one of the smart alecks.” He sighed like a blacksmith’s bellows. “Guess we’ll have to put this off, Mr. Griswold. These things get handled in a routine way and this ain’t it. I’m taking Pine in and I’m taking him now.”

  “I’m not interested in routine or the lack of it,” Griswold said acidly. “I want to hear this man’s explanation of whatever seems to need explaining. I don’t propose to get it secondhand.”

  The captain put on his dignified expression. “You’re talking to an officer of the law,” he rumbled. “I can’t see you obstructing justice—not a prominent man like you, Mr. Griswold. I’m charging Pine with suspicion of murder and I’m taking him outa here. Right now!”

  Indecision seeped into Griswold’s expression. I said, “Don’t be silly, Blauvelt. Right now you’re in no position to hand out even a parking ticket. You’re not only out of your district, brother; you’re not even in Cook County.”

  He moved his eyes to look at the sergeant. The sergeant’s face was as blank as a hermit’s appointment book. The captain’s eyes shifted again, this time to one of the suits of armor. And there they stuck.

  I said, “Let’s try the library, Mr. Griswold.”

  The chairs and couch were green leather; three of the walls were solid books, the fourth nothing but French windows. There were eight of us, all down at the far end of the room and looking lost in all the immensity. There was liquor and the trimmings on a table in front of one of the room’s two fireplaces, cigars in a humidor on a two-acre teakwood table and an undercurrent of emotion made up of many emotions.

  Everybody was seated because there was no sense in standing.Some were in chairs and Susan Griswold was on the couch next to Blauvelt. Les was tilted back in a straight chair at one end of what could loosely be called a semicircle, with the other end terminating at the huge desk. In between were Eve Griswold, her husband, Ruth Abbott and Stuart Whitney. In that order and not for any reason, not because anybody had planned it that way. They had straggled in, their faces almost painfully expressionless, and dropped into whatever chair was handy and unfilled.

  I leaned my hips and the palms of my hands against the rounded edge of the desk and looked them over, aware of an almost tangible wave of resentment building up against me from nearly everyone in the room.

  I said, “A little while ago Mr. Griswold asked me a question. It was a question he had the right to ask and to expect as true an answer as I could give him. In one way or another the answer affects everyone here, which is why we are here.”

  Nobody said anything. Neither had I, actually; I was just warming up the vocal cords.

  I said, “A small-town girl came to Chicago a couple of years ago and disappeared a year later. Her name was Laura Fremont and I was hired to find her. Before I left that small town I asked around for a girl who had known Laura Fremont while they both were in high school and who was also in Chicago. Her name was Grace Rehak.

  “It didn’t take long for me to learn that one of them didn’t want to be found. Not only that but other people didn't want her found either. When I got back to Chicago around noon yesterday I hadn’t warmed the seat of my office chair before Mr. Whitney, here, breezed in and offered to make me rich if I’d tell him who was interested in Grace Rehak and why.”

  Every eye in the room slid over to Whitney. He looked as flurried as a ton of coal. He gave me a bored glance and shot one of his spotless cuffs.

  “No reason you shouldn’t know about that now,” he said coolly. “The papers say she was found dead early this morning, so it’s no longer a matter of betraying a confidence.”

  He leaned back to light a cigarette and flip the match into the fireplace. “I knew her as Bonnie Field. We were close friends up until a few months ago when she married Steven O’Flynn. Yesterday she came to me for help. A private detective was hunting her down under her real name—Grace Rehak. It was the first I knew Field wasn’t her right name. She hinted her past was nothing to be proud of and she was in absolute terror that her husband would learn the truth from this detective. I agreed to do what I could and she drove me to his office. I offered him money for the right information but he refused.” His lip curled. “Evidently I didn’t offer him enough.”

  Whitney stopped there to flick ashes from his cigarette and give me his best sneer. I let it bounce off and float away. “Any more to add to that?” I said politely.

  His hard smile said he was now ready to throw the switch. “I’m not sure you’ll want it said in front of these two police officers, Pine.”

  “Spit it out,” I growled. “I wear no man’s collar.”

  It was his moment and he made the most of it. “I talked to Bonnie O’Flynn at the Tropicabana last night. She told me she was meeting you on Farwell Avenue, near Sheridan, at one o’clock this morning. The newspapers say her body was found there a few hours later.”

  It got a stir out of the other guests. They looked at me the way a jury looks at the man they intend sticking in the chair on the first ballot. I could almost see Blauvelt’s ears flap.

  In the silence I walked over to the table and put a drink together. I looked around at all the vacant faces and said, “Can I fix one for anybody else?”

  Nobody accepted, thinking probably that I kept at least one bottle of poison up my sleeve. I went back and pushed myself up on a corner of the desk and crossed my ankles.

  I met Lawrence Griswold’s troubled eyes and said, “The next installment isn’t going to be easy. But it’s got to come out. No more secrets, like I said.”

  He took a deep unsteady breath but his gaze didn’t waver. He said, “Please go on.” There was-nothing unsteady about his voice.

  I nodded. “I managed to pick up a lead on a former roommate of Laura Fremont’s within an hour of my return from her home town. A girl named Mary Conrad. I went out to see her an hour or two later and found her dead on her bed. But that was only half of it. Blacked out on the living-room floor, Mr. Griswold, was your daughter.”

  That rocked them all. Griswold came halfwa
y out of his chair and his face was whiter than the handkerchief in his hand. Eve Griswold said, “Why do we sit here and listen to this son of a bitch?”

  No one answered that one. The restless eyes had moved to where Susan Griswold sat with a faint, almost absent-minded smile on her lips. I drank from my glass and put it on the desk next to me and lighted a cigarette, suddenly aware of being very tired and nothing I could do about it.

  I went on flapping my jaw. “Miss Griswold woke up after a while and we talked things over. She said a woman had socked her and she gave me a torn piece of lace she had managed to rip off the woman before blacking out. By the time we were through talking I knew that Mrs. Griswold had shared a room with Mary Conrad two years before, that she had a nice firm motive for wanting Mary Conrad dead, and that she was getting ready to bump her husband off and take over the family fortune. I also learned that she had picked out the guy she was going to share her money and her widowhood with, but it was some time later before I learned the man was Stuart Whitney.”

  Lawrence Griswold lunged to his feet. “That’s nonsense and you know it! I think this has gone far enough.”

  There was a general shifting in chairs and a murmur of voices. Eve Griswold hid her faCe in her hands.

  “It might have been nonsense, Mr. Griswold, but I didn’t know it,” I said. “Particularly since it turns out Laura Fremont roomed with Mary Conrad two years ago—and so did Grace Rehak, although not at the same time. That could mean your present wife is either of those two and not Eve Shelby at all.”

  Griswold’s face was livid. “This—this Rehak woman is dead. You heard that from the man who knew her. What are you getting at, Pine?”

  “The truth, I hope,” I growled. “Will you for Christ’s sake sit down!”