Michael Collins - The brass rainbow

We entered Westchester, and the houses were fewer. Only the traffic never lessened. The lights came on at me in a mass. I felt as if I were plunging through a dark tunnel with a million eyes watching me, alone with nothing but enemies. I was sure, now, that I knew what had happened on Monday morning, but I could never prove it unless I made someone panic. Panic can be dangerous, two-edged, but I had no other weapon.

By now Gazzo would be looking for me. Witnesses would have described the one-armed man who had been with Leo Zar when he died. Leo, and the death of Carla Devine, would give Gazzo some doubts about Weiss. He would want to talk to me. I didn’t have a lot of time. Weiss had less time if I didn’t produce a killer, with evidence, soon.

The D.A. would not have doubts. To the D.A., or some tenth assistant D.A. for Weiss, Carla Devine would have died by accident or suicide from depression over Baron’s death, and Leo Zar would be the victim of a gang rumble. Sure, both deaths might be a result of Baron’s death, but that didn’t change Weiss’s obvious guilt. Not a bit. The tenth assistant D.A. would get a good night’s sleep. Chief McGuire would think about it longer, he would even instruct his men to keep their eyes open, but he had a whole giant city to police. McGuire’s detectives wouldn’t try too hard. Weiss probably belonged in jail anyway, and even Gazzo had too much work to do.

We passed through North Chester just after midnight. Five minutes later Ames turned the car into the long drive up to the fine old house with its two cottages behind. There were lights in the downstairs windows. Ames parked at the front door.

The butler, MacLeod, let us in. Mrs. Radford was in the library. Ames walked behind me as if his legs were heavy and his feet were mired in mud, his flamboyance noticeably missing. Gertrude Radford was alone. She closed her book, put it carefully aside, and acknowledged us:

“You came, George. I’m pleased. Mr. Fortune. Sit down.”

I sat. Ames went to stand in a corner near an obvious liquor cabinet. Mrs. Radford’s pale eyes watched Ames. She wore a gray lounging robe, and her white hair was immaculate. Her rings were on her fingers. A coffee cup stood on a crystal coaster on the table beside her. The library was neat, solid, orderly, with everything in its proper place. The ashtrays looked as if they had not been moved, or used, for a century.

“Could Walter and Miss Fallon join us?” I asked.

Her frail hands made a gesture, but her youthful face was smooth, and her fragile body was relaxed. I could have been a cousin she saw every week. There was a crease between her eyes that might have been worry, but didn’t have to be.

“Forgive me, Mr. Fortune,” she said, smiled. “I’m sure you want to get to your mission, whatever it is, but we always talk over a cup of coffee in the family. I find it a civilized custom, and feel lost without it. You prefer percolator, don’t you?”

“That’s fine,” I said.

She nodded. “Three percolator, please, MacLeod.”

“Two, Gertrude,” Ames said. He opened the liquor cabinet and found the whisky.

Mrs. Radford said, “I think coffee would be better, George.”

Ames poured a drink without answering her. She sighed, as if she would never understand men who needed the crutch of liquor.

“Two cups then, MacLeod,” she said.

She folded her thin hands in her lap and sat smiling at me politely. She ignored Ames now. He stood in the corner, drinking. It was clear we were not going to discuss anything until the coffee came. We would not have discussed an imminent invasion before the coffee came. She held to her routines, to all the external realities of her life, no matter what. Her rock in an unpredictable sea.

MacLeod returned, and I accepted my cup. The coffee was still good. She sipped twice, and then set her cup down.

“Now, you wanted to see Walter and Deirdre?” she said.

“All of you,” I said.

Her voice was neither warm nor cold, ordinary. “Deirdre has been out for some hours. She went alone, I don’t know where. Walter should be in the house. MacLeod, find Mr. Walter and bring him here, would you, please?”

MacLeod left. Mrs. Radford sipped some more of the coffee, and her pale eyes studied me over the cup.

“You want to talk about Jonathan’s murder again, of course,” she said. “Have you learned something important?”

The tone of her quiet voice was normal, conversational, politely interested. So normal it was abnormal. We were not about to discuss some charity bazaar.

“Two more people have been murdered, Mrs. Radford. One was just a girl, a child who’d done nothing to anyone.”

“That’s awful, Mr. Fortune. Did I know her?”

“She was one of the girls your son worked with.”

“It’s a violent world,” she said. “I am sorry.”

“Sammy Weiss was in jail, Mrs. Radford.”

“As he should be.”

“Weiss couldn’t have killed the girl and the other man.”

“Obviously, of course,” she said, and smiled. It was a gentle, pleasant smile. “What has all this to do with any of us here?”

“They were killed because of Paul Baron. And Baron was killed, at least in part, because he knew who really murdered Jonathan.”

“Are you here to accuse someone?”

Her frail face still smiled politely, and her voice was matter-of-fact. She really wanted to know if I was there to make an accusation.

“I think you know damn well why I’m here,” I said. “Your trip to New York on Monday says you know.”

“Oh, get to the point. You’ve come to say you’ve found out that my son killed his uncle? You’ve come to accuse Walter?”

“I figured you knew,” I said. “Yes, Walter killed Jonathan.”

Ames put his glass down with a bang that echoed in the small library. “Damn it, Fortune, how can you be sure of such a thing? Walter had no motive. You agreed anyone could have been there!”

“What happened after Monday tells me, Ames,” I said.

“After Monday?” Ames looked at me, and then at Mrs. Radford. He picked up his glass, drank.

“Mrs. Radford made a deal, Ames,” I said. “A payoff to protect the killer. She wouldn’t have done that for anyone but Walter. Only Walter makes sense out of the rest of it.”

Ames squeezed his glass, said, “Gertrude?”

“Be quiet, George, for goodness’ sake,” Mrs. Radford said, and said to me, “What do you intend doing, Mr. Fortune?”

“My God, Gertrude!” Ames’s theatrical face was ten years older. “You really knew, and…” He drank. Whisky dribbled down his shirt front. “Do you know what they did? Walter and this Baron? Tell her, Fortune! The whole fantastic story!”

“Please, George,” she said. “I’m not the least interested.”

I watched her smooth and youthful face that had never asked herself a question she could not answer, and I believed her. She didn’t know how Weiss had been framed, and she didn’t care. How Weiss took the fall for Walter didn’t concern her, only that he did take it. Weiss was nothing, a zero, a convenience to be used for Radford-Ames survival. She did not care how Jonathan had died, or even that he was dead once it had happened. Jonathan, dead, did not matter. The family went on: a unit, a whole more than any single member.

She folded her frail hands. “Walter had a tragic accident. He acted foolishly afterward, yes, but he was frightened, and he knew that the authorities would not consider it the simple mistake it was. They would have persecuted him. He made a stupid arrangement, it seems, but I managed to correct that. Now, is this what you came to tell me, Mr. Fortune?”

“Among other things,” I said.

“Then you’ve told me. I see no reason to bother anyone else. Walter has been disturbed quite enough.”