Read Online Brass Rainbow by Michael Collins - Free Book Online Page A

With its nameless furniture, greasy stove, and sagging bed, it looked like it had always been empty. The single closet held one suit, one pair of slacks, and one worn pair of shoes. In the bureau there was underwear, socks, and a strange article that seemed to be an old male corset. There were two clean shirts with turned collars.
    All men, petty gambler or king, are much the same day to day. I could picture Weiss, of the fur collar and big bluff, alone in this room turning his shirt collars and hoping that a corset would make him slim and young again before he gave up and let his pot sag.
    I found nothing. Only the evidence of a small and empty life. There were only some twenty-seven miles between this room and North Chester, but it was hard to believe that the two places held members of the same species.
    I heard the door open. I looked up to see a man come in and lean against the door. A gray man, tall and slender.
    â€œHello, Fortune.”
    He wore a gray cashmere overcoat, pale gray gloves, and his gray trousers draped perfectly to shined black shoes. He wore his gray Homburg at too much angle, and his handsome face had an edge of anxiety he would never completely hide. It added up to only one conclusion—a man who lived by wits and guile, and for whom clothes, pleasures and the best places were not by-products of life but ends in themselves. A con man.
    â€œWhat do you want to make waves for, Fortune?”
    â€œLooking for Weiss is making waves?” I said.
    â€œBig waves,” he said.
    â€œYou’re Paul Baron?”
    He had an odd way of looking at some point on a far wall. He looked at a wall and nodded. “I’m Paul Baron. You’re getting in my way, Fortune.”
    â€œEnough to be pushed under a train?”
    Baron considered the ceiling. “That was a bad play. Spur-of-the-moment, you know how it is. It seemed like an idea at the time.”
    â€œWhat is it?” I said, and stepped toward Baron. “You want to silence Sammy before he can finger you for killing Radford?”
    I suppose I stepped toward him to show him that I wasn’t afraid of him. If I did, it worked fine, but not with exactly the result I had had in mind.
    Baron said, “Leo.”
    A second man appeared in the open doorway. A short, broad man with enormous, dangling hands, and massive shoulders like the hump of a bull buffalo. He shambled into the room on short, stiff legs that seemed to have no knees, and watched me with blank-faced concentration.
    Baron studied a stain on the far wall. “Now listen good, Danny boy, and then forget what you heard. A man owed me money. I’m an easy-going man, but I like to be paid. This man couldn’t pay me, but he had an uncle who could. I sent Sammy Weiss to collect my money. Weiss got my money, but I didn’t get it. I still don’t have my money. I want it.”
    Baron let a silence hover in the room as if to give his point time to sink in. I could hear the rasping breathing of Leo the buffalo.
    I said, “You know, it’s strange, but I’m having trouble seeing Sammy Weiss with the nerve to cross you.”
    Baron sighed. “Let’s try it once more, okay? I sent Weiss for my money. Something went wrong, I guess, and Sammy panicked. He killed Radford. I don’t care about that. But it seems like Sammy figured if he had to run he could use $25,000 to pay his way. That I care about. Now you go ahead and help Weiss on the murder rap, but after I get my money. Right now I don’t need you nosing around. Check?”
    â€œThe money is evidence in a murder, Baron.”
    â€œSure. That’s why I need it before anyone finds Weiss. I’m doing Sammy a favor. They won’t find the money on him.”
    â€œYou’re sure they’d find it on him now?”
    He looked straight at me for the first time. His eyes were pale gray like the rest of him. Barbarian eyes under the veneer.
    â€œYou’re a bug,