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

Fortune. A hard-head bug. Leo!”
    The buffalo-man was on me before I could even start to think of moving. He was behind me with my arm in one hand and the back of my neck in the other. My neck isn’t thin, but Leo’s hand held it like a clamp on a pipe. Baron stepped to me.
    He took a hypodermic syringe from his pocket. Leo held me as immobile as a strait jacket. And Leo had more than muscle; he knew what he was doing. He held me so that if I moved hard my arm would break, and maybe my neck.
    I looked at the syringe and wondered if this was my last day. I didn’t want it to be my last day. Not now, not ever. But there was nothing I could do. I had no chance at all to fight. None. Like a Jew going to the gas chamber. That is a terrible moment.
    â€œJust relax, Danny boy,” Baron said.
    He rolled up my sleeve and shot me in the vein. He grinned into my face and massaged my arm. I waited. Leo’s grip did not relax. After a time I felt the sleep coming. I hoped it was sleep.
    When my knees sagged, Leo picked me up and laid me on the bed. I raised up and swung at a shadow. I hit empty air. Something pushed me back flat on the bed. I breathed.
    Leo leaned close. A hand slapped my face, hard. Leo went away. He had not spoken once. Maybe he didn’t know how.
    I hoped it was sleep.

    I lay in dim light on something flat. I saw a window high in a gray wall. There was darkness beyond the window. A barred window. I saw a washbasin and a toilet. Only three walls. The fourth wall was vertical bars.
    I sat up. I stood up. My legs were shaky. I wondered what Baron had fed me. It had the feel of morphine. I didn’t want to think about why it had been morphine. I sat down again to let my legs steady and my head clear. The cell looked like a precinct cell. I reached for a cigarette. I had none. The men in the other cells heard me moving.
    â€œHey, junkie, you gonna get hung.”
    I had the urge to get up and pace. I resisted. The one thing you never do in a cell is pace. Every minute would become an hour. What you do is lie flat and think about something with many, many small parts—like a walking trip across the city, step by step.
    â€œSweat, junkie!”
    Everyone has to hate something. But the shouts told me that I had been found on Weiss’s bed with the syringe and makings. In another cell a man began to whistle flat and off key. Voices echoed:
    â€œShut up! … For Chrissake shut it off! …”
    Somewhere someone began to cry. I wondered how good a fix Baron had hung on me. I guessed that he had not wanted to kill me because of the risk. A push under a train is one thing, a killing in a room where Baron could be placed is another. The whistler down the corridor didn’t stop. Detective Freedman was at my cell door before I heard him.
    â€œYou got real trouble now, Fortune.”
    â€œI’m no junkie. You know it’s a frame.”
    â€œWe found you with all the equipment and knocked out on M. It’s good enough. Where’s Sammy Weiss?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œHiding a fugitive is a bad charge.”
    â€œTrying to find one isn’t.”
    â€œDon’t try to be a hard guy. Tell me about Weiss.”
    â€œI haven’t seen him since Monday night. I turned him away, told him to give himself up. I guess he had his own ideas.”
    â€œYou turned down his money?”
    â€œHe didn’t have money. He was broke.”
    â€œHe told you that?”
    â€œYes. Weiss is always broke.”
    â€œYou believe he’s broke now?”
    What did I say? I didn’t know if I believed Weiss was broke or not. It looked like he was far from broke.
    â€œWhere is he, Fortune?”
    â€œI still don’t know. And in here I’m not going to find out.”
    Freedman watched me for a time before he turned and vanished. He hadn’t used his fists. That made me wonder. I could think of only two reasons why Bert Freedman