Michael Collins - The brass rainbow

Down on Fifth Street the Friday night crowds pushed around me. I went into a bar and found the telephone booth. I called Captain Gazzo. He was not glad to hear from me. I told him I wanted to talk to Sammy Weiss. He didn’t like it, but after a short argument he agreed to let me. He was on his way out on a call, but he would leave instructions.

A guard took me to the detention cell, and stood off. The guard was annoyed. My visit was irregular.

I stood at the bars. Weiss was lying on the lower bunk: a small, shapeless shadow; almost nonexistent. The dim shadow of a man who had never really lived, and who would leave no trace behind. When he saw me, he sat up, and his dark-circled eyes came into the light.

“How is it, Sammy?” I said.

“Not so bad,” he said. “Not so bad.”

I watched him. His voice was quiet, and he was not sweating. They say that adversity can make a man stronger, but I’ve seen trouble strengthen few men and ruin most. Yet Weiss sat there in the cell he had feared all his life without a twitch or a shiver. His deep, Levantine eyes looked straight at me, and his pale moon face was dry.

“I want you to think hard, Sammy,” I said. “You said that Paul Baron got in touch with you about noon on Monday. You’re sure it was noon? Not earlier?”

“Maybe after. Like I said, I was at the steam room like always. I had to take the call wearin’ a towel in the hall.”

“He knew you go to the Turkish bath every day at noon?”

“Everyone knows. Sammy Weiss, steamin’ off the fat every day. Sammy the Slob. You got one crummy room, no family, no friends ’ceptin’ bums like yourself, and nothin’ to do except wait for the night action if you got a buck, so you pick up the routine so you got somewhere to go. Every day, and the steam don’t do nothing at all.”

“What did Baron say?”

He didn’t hear me, or he heard something else inside him first. He stared at a dark corner of the cell. “I bought myself a corset one time. A man’s corset, you know? Up in that lousy room squeezin’ myself into that corset to make me a sharp-looking character. The easy way, the big fake. All a guy got to do he wants to look sharp is take care of himself and stop feeding his fat face. You looks in a mirror all your life, and you never sees.”

Who can say for sure what goes on inside the mind of a man, any man? Or what can happen inside a man? Sometime during the long day and night Weiss had stopped sweating his eternal fear.

“Tell me exactly what Baron said on the phone, Sammy.”

“He said I should go collect $25,000 from this Jonathan Radford around one-fifteen, not before that. It was worth $1000 for me. So I went. I was to take the money to his Sixteenth Street pad. Only this Radford started a brawl, and I never got the money. That’s the truth.”

“I believe you, Sammy. How long were you with Radford?”

“Maybe five minutes, a little more.”

Five minutes. The mistakes we can make by assuming what we don’t know but that seems logical.

“How did you feel when you walked into that study, Sammy?”

“Sweatin’. You know me. I been sweatin’ all my life.”

“Radford was at a window?”

“Like a big shot. In a bathrobe, giving me his back, you know? It was cold in there, but I’m sweatin’!”

“Now tell me exactly what happened. Details.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, it happened so fast, you know? He stands there makin’ me cool my heels a long time. I talk, he don’t answer. I got hot and laid the muscle words on him. So he turns and jumps at me. We brawl, he goes down. I don’t hardly touch him, but he goes down, and I run.”

“Okay, Sammy. Was there a rug on the floor? Think.”

“I don’t know, Dan. Maybe there was a rug, maybe not.”

“Did you see Baron again that day?”

“I didn’t see him no time that day.”

“All right, Sammy,” I said. “Just sit tight.”

He nodded slowly. “You know, since they locked me in here I been thinking. I mean, I know I didn’t kill no one. Maybe they don’t believe me, and maybe they never find out. Maybe I’m going up for it. But I know I didn’t do nothing. I mean, I don’t want to go away for the long fall, but maybe I can take it if I got to. I mean, I know I’m clean.”

“You’ll get out of here, Sammy,” I said.

“Sure, Dan,” he said, and he grinned. “I’ll be here when you come for me.”

The guard walked behind me as if he thought I still might try to break the archcriminal out to destroy society. He locked the corridor bars after I went through. The sound of steel against steel, like the clang of doom, seemed to give him pleasure. Prison guards are like that. I could never decide if they became guards because they were like that, or if being guards made them like it.

On the street I caught a taxi and went up to my apartment. I put my old pistol into my duffle coat pocket. I went back down to the rental car and started uptown.

George Ames answered the door of the East Sixty-third Street apartment. His theatrical face looked tired.

“You again?” Ames said. “I’ve talked to the police. The District Attorney is completely convinced of Weiss’s guilt.”

“District Attorneys are paid to be convinced.”

“Are you determined to destroy our family?”

“I hope not the whole family.”

I saw something in his eyes. Call it knowledge. Ames knew something, but I could not be sure what that was.

“Come in, then,” he said.

I went in. There had been more changes. In another six months there would be no trace at all of Jonathan Radford.

“You’re alone?” I asked Ames.

“Yes.”

“Where is everyone?”

“North Chester. They plan to announce the engagement this weekend. I… I decided not to go,” Ames said. “Would you care for a drink? I intend to have one.”

“Irish, if you have it.”

“Scotch, I’m afraid.”

“It’ll do.” I sat down and watched him make the drinks. He gave me mine and sat facing me.

“Proceed, my dear Holmes,” he said, and smiled. It was a try; a small attempt to lift the weight that hung on the room. It failed even for him.

“How much do you know about Paul Baron now?” I asked.

“I know the money wasn’t a gambling debt, that this Baron was blackmailing Walter, or, rather, Jonathan.”

“Did it occur to you that sending Weiss here was all wrong? For a debt, maybe. But not for blackmail. Why involve an outsider in a blackmail scheme?”

“I don’t know. For safety, perhaps?”

“No, in blackmail, safety and success lie in how few people know about it. It would have been stupid to send Weiss here just for the money, and unnecessary.” I took a drink. “Why did Paul Baron send Weiss? It’s such an obvious question no one thought of asking it. Baron sent Weiss because he did, period. A self-evident fact. Baron did it. Only it isn’t self-evident when you look at it. Baron had no real reason to send anyone for the money.”

“How can you be sure of that? As you say, Baron did it.”

“Baron made his move on Sunday. On Monday he was waiting for a telephone call. A call, not a messenger. He got the call at about eleven-thirty. It wasn’t what he had expected to hear. He went off at a run. Only after that did he contact Weiss.”

Ames watched his drink. “Where are you leading?”

“Tell me about Monday again. The morning.”

He swirled the ice in his glass. “I had breakfast with Jonathan. I went to my rooms. At about eleven-thirty, a few minutes after, Walter came back. He said that Jonathan had gone out with Deirdre, and suggested we share a taxi as far as Grand Central. He took the train for North Chester. I went to my club.”