Brass Rainbow (22 page)
She raised herself on her elbow, and both blue eyes were straight toward me. “I killed no one. Remember that. There's nothing you can do to me.”
She didn't blink, or look grim, or do anything but let her words sink in. Then she lay back again. “Strega was in love with me. He had wanted me ever since Walter first took me to Costa's place. I don't think it would have lasted long, though. Once I was married, he wouldn't be hard to ease away from, and after all, he had killed Paul, hadn't he?”
“Strega was a rough man.”
“Rough men can be handled,” she said, “only ⦔
“Only?” I said.
She sat up, and I had a flash of long, pale leg. She looked toward the record player. “We don't make the same mistake twice, we make it a hundred times. Rough men, strong men, that's my weakness. I can handle them, but I can't stay away from them. Walter was a boy. Tonight I went to tell Strega we'd have to stay apart for a time, to start the brushoff. But he wanted me. So, first him, and
then
the brushoff. Once more, you see?”
She drew on her cigarette, but it had gone out. She dropped it into an ashtray. “Walter was at the window. He shot Strega. Then he stood out there in the snow crying. He stood, and Strega shot him. I brought him home. I had it, the big rainbow, but it all turned to brass.”
She stood up and went to put a record on the player. It was Brahms, his Fourth Symphony. I could hear Morgana Radford crying in the bedroom. There was no sound from Mrs. Radford. She was probably planning the funeral.
“What happened to the man who posed as Jonathan for you?”
“He ran with his money. Does it matter?”
“Who was the sandy-haired man looking for Carla?”
“No one. A gun Strega hired.”
“Where's Walter's gun?”
“In the Jaguar.” She began to nod her beautiful head in time to the powerful music. “There's nothing you can do, you know. Not a thing.”
I walked out. I went through the snow back to the Jaguar and got Walter Radford's gun. It was a simple hunter's side-arm. Then I got into my car and started back for New York. I would tell Gazzo the story. He could handle the local police.
28
I
T WAS MORNING
out in the city. In Captain Gazzo's shade-drawn office it was still night. The dim light etched sharp shadows across Gazzo's gray hair and tired eyes. I had told my story some two hours earlier, and Gazzo had set the full machinery of his department in motion, and now he sat behind his old desk and brooded in his perpetual midnight.
“We can't touch her,” Gazzo said at last.
“No. They're all dead.”
Deirdre Fallon would not even be charged. There was nothing to charge her with. Everyone who could have testified to what she had done was dead. Mrs. Radford could tell nothing without admitting that she had concealed murder, and she was not going to do that. Mrs. Radford would not help the police. She had no first-hand proof anyway, George Ames had no proof, and all my evidence was against the dead.
I had given Gazzo the Malay kris, with Walter Radford's fingerprints still on it, for Jonathan's murder, and Walter's pistol for Strega's killing. Ballistics would do the rest. They had Strega's .45 automatic to prove who had killed Paul Baron, and Strega's .38 pistol for Leo Zar and Walter Radford. Costa had been contacted and had confirmed where I had found the weapons. Gazzo had taken my word that Strega, or his sandy-haired hired hand, had killed Carla Devine. We would never know which one had actually done it, or exactly how. Police work is rarely neat.
“I'll send Walter Radford's gun, and Strega's .38, up to North Chester. They'll handle those killings,” Gazzo said. The Captain sighed a long, weary sigh that had thirty hard years of frustrating police work behind it. “They'll talk politely to the Fallon woman, and to Mrs. Radford, and then they'll turn them loose with an apology and their sympathies. A tragic love triangle. They can't prove anything else. We can work out the whole affair in detail, but there's nothing a ten-cent judge would let the D.A. get to a jury. She walks out like a bird.”
“The mother, too,” I said. “Women live longer.”
Gazzo didn't laugh. “I'll put the word in for you with the North Chester police. You might want to work up there again. You stayed away from them to keep down the publicity on the Radfords. They might even thank you.”
“What about the other favor? Freedman.”
His gray eyes moved to consider me without friendliness, but without rancor either. The stubble on his tender face stood out like dirt on the face of a gravedigger. He toyed with Strega's .38 on the desk before him.
“It's been done. I guess Weiss has that much coming. Let's get down there.”
We went down to the room where they processed prisoners who were being released. Sammy Weiss was already there. He was gathering up a small pile of debris they had taken from his pockets when he had been jailed, and counting the few dollars of his own he had had. The $25,000 was stolen property. Weiss didn't even ask about that money.
“Hey, Danny,” he said to me. He grinned all over his moon face. His eyes were not grinning, not yet. A life sentence was still too close behind him like a dark, perched vulture.
“Good deal, Sammy,” I said.
Gazzo said, “Take a lesson, Weiss.”
“I learned, Captain, yeh.”
He put his possessions and few dollars into his pockets. He stood there. All the police in the room watched him. I smiled. The police didn't smile. They had seen it all before, and they had seen too many like Weiss go out one day and come back the next.
“Well,” Weiss said. He looked around. “That it, Captain?”
“That's it,” Gazzo said. “You get home on your own.”
“Ride in free, eh, only no free ride back?” Weiss joked. Even he didn't laugh. “It's okay, sure. I'm out, right?”
Still he did not move. It was as if the open door was too much. He was afraid to take that first step toward the open door because maybe that door would close in his face just as he got there. Doors always closed for Sammy Weiss.
We were all looking at that door when Detective Bert Freedman walked in through it. Freedman did not notice Weiss. He walked up to Gazzo.
“You wanted to see me, Captain?”
“Weiss is being released,” Gazzo said.
Freedman let his eyes turn until he saw Weiss. His thick body became rigid, and those always-ready fists began to clench. A deep red color spread up his neck to his cold face. He stood that way for almost a full thirty seconds. Then he laughed:
“Maybe next time, bug. I get you next time.”
Inside I was close to praying. I had wanted Weiss to have this moment over Freedman. I had wanted Freedman to be humbled by one of his victims. I had wanted too much. Whatever Weiss had found inside him in prison, he was still Sammy Weiss. He tried to meet Freedman's eyes, and failed. His flabby face began to sweat.
I said, “Someday, Freedman, you'll make a mistake, and hound a man too far, and it'll be your last mistake.”
“You think so, Fortune?” Freedman said. “I think you better stay out of my beat.”
“That's enough, Freedman,” Gazzo said.
“No!” Weiss said, cried, almost shouted.
His voice was too loud, like a great croak. “No! I didn't do nothin', and you pushed me around. You don't push no innocent guys around no more! I got rights. You go make sure I done somethin' first, you hear?”
It wasn't much defiance, but for Weiss it was heroic. Freedman's red face turned scarlet, and his fists clenched tighter, but he said nothing. Weiss stood his ground and tried to square his fat shoulders. He didn't quite make it, but he took that first big step toward the open door. He went out through the door almost walking tall.
I went after him. He didn't wait for me. When I reached the sidewalk, he was a half block away and already starting to run in the cold morning sun. I watched him vanish.
He had had his small moment. I did not fool myself that it would last. Soon he would be the same Sammy Weiss back at the old standârooting for a shaky dollar, running from his shadow, and out to prove every second that next time he would ride the pot all the way. He wouldn't. That much change happens to few men this side of death.
Deirdre Fallon would pay for nothing she had done, and she would not try the same tricks again. Her excursion into violence had risen from a precise combination of circumstances that would not repeat. She was a smart girl; young and beautiful. The men would still fall over themselves to let her use them. She would be fine.
Mrs. Gertrude Radford would go on exactly the same; unhappy, maybe, but comfortable.
George Ames would forget.
There was little justice in it, and less morality, but as I stood in the snow and morning sun of the city I began to feel good. An innocent man was free. Weiss wasn't much, but he had been innocent, and better to let a thousand guilty escape than have one innocent man suffer. At least, that's what we're supposed to believe.
Weiss was free, Agnes Moore owed me some money, and my woman, Marty, would be back from Philadelphia soon. I felt fine.
It's a world of percentage and partial victories, and on the whole I figured that right had limped home a shade ahead this time.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1969 by Gayle H. Lynds 2007 Revokable Trust
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