“Stop it, Sammy!”
Weiss couldn’t hear, or didn’t want to, and deep down in his cunning little brain he knew I wouldn’t shoot. He came at me with both hands flailing. I swung the gun and got him on the shoulder. He grunted. I slashed at him again and got his left hand. It must have jammed his thumb. He howled and sat down on the floor and sucked at his thumb like a giant baby. The deep Levantine eyes looked up at me with unbelieving sorrow: I was ruining him, killing him.
“You wouldn’t last two hours, Sammy,” I said as gently as I could. “I’m the only friend you’ve got now.”
“Some friend! Some friend!” His voice was like a hurt child.
I squatted and looked into his face. “Listen to me, Sammy. Baron is dead. He set you up for a frame on the Radford murder, and now he can’t be made to admit it and clear you. I think he killed Radford himself, but maybe I’ll never prove it now.”
He listened, but I’m not sure he heard. His face was that of an animal caught in a forest fire, and there was only one thing on his mind: escape. Run, run, even if it was into a river or over a cliff. But I had to reach him.
“Tell me exactly what happened here last night, Sammy.”
He blinked, thought, and the effort seemed to bring him out of his trance a little. “I told you, Danny. I came up, we had a drink, he gave me my money, and I went out to that hideout.”
“Who drove you out? Leo Zar?”
“Leo wasn’t here; he never come up. I grabbed a cab out front. There’s a stand outside the club.”
“You took a taxi all the way out to Jamaica Bay?”
“Sure, why not? I had the dough.”
I sighed. “Anyone else see you go in or come out?”
“A drunk was giving one of the tenants a hard time in the front hall when I come out.”
I just looked at him. He was all the way out of his panic now. In a way I wished he wasn’t. It would hurt more.
“Baron’s been dead around twenty-four hours, Sammy. Since just about when you were here last night. Did you kill him, Sammy? Did you spot the frame? Did he try to hold you to turn you in? Did you know he killed Radford, so he tried to kill you to shut you up before he called the cops and handed them a dead fugitive?”
He scrambled up. “I didn’t kill no one! I never had no gun my whole life. I can’t hardly shoot a gun.”
It was impossible to tell if he was lying or not. Fear was deep in Weiss, but so was cunning. If he had killed both Radford and Baron, he would have talked and acted the same way.
“No one will believe the bet, Sammy,” I said. “No one could, and there was no bet. They’ll believe you got the money from Radford or from Baron, they won’t care which. You killed Radford for the money, or Baron killed him for the money. They won’t care about that, either. They’ll be sure one of you killed Radford, and they’ll close the books, because Baron’s dead and they’ll nail you for his killing.”
He shrank away. “No, I swear!”
“You were seen leaving here just about when Baron died. A cab driver gets one call a year that takes him to a place like Jamaica Bay, so he’ll remember you good. Everyone knows Baron was looking for you. You have the money. I’ll give you odds no one saw Baron alive after you left, if he was.”
Sammy stared at me, and suddenly there were tears in his cow eyes. Big, hopeless tears like a crying hippo, only it wasn’t funny. I was thinking of what I could say to help him, when a great, wide smile spread over his face among the tears as suddenly as the tears themselves had started.
“The girl! Carla! She was here when I left! It’s okay, it’s okay, Danny. Find that girl. Carla. She’ll tell you.”
I watched him. He had mentioned the girl earlier, so maybe it was true. Maybe the sun was going to shine on Sammy at last.
“All right. We’ll find the girl. I think I know where to find her. You can describe her first to Gazzo to show him you really saw her.”
“Gazzo?” His smile faded. “You got to hide me!”
“No, Sammy.” I held the gun. “No more running. If you’re not lying in your teeth, there’s a killer around who’s framing you six ways from Sunday. Baron figures as Radford’s killer, but someone killed Baron. If you were found good and dead, maybe a suicide, that would tie it all up neat and end the case for the cops. On the loose you’re a clay pigeon.”
“I don’t care! I’m not…”
“Yes you are. For both of us. Just by being here I’m harboring a fugitive, concealing a felony, and obstructing the law. If you’re innocent, I hope I can prove it for you. If you’re guilty, I’m not taking the fall with you.”
“Some pal! You don’t believe me. I’m going!”
He moved. I let off the safety. He stopped.
“I’ll shoot, Sammy. You’re a fugitive, and you’ve been a liar all your life. I’ll put you in the hospital if I have to.”
He looked at the gun. His face was like raw putty. I put the gun down where I could reach it fast, and called Gazzo.
Weiss shivered alone in the center of the room.
14
It was past 3:00 A.M. when I followed Gazzo into his office. He was just barely talking to me. He did not like the way I had taken Weiss to find Baron, and he did not like it that I had gone to find Weiss on my own in the first place.
“You going to bust that hideout?” I asked.
“Afraid for your skin?”
“You bet I am.”
“For now we’ll just keep an eye on the place.”
He sat behind his desk and stared at me. I sat and stared back. Weiss had stuck to his story through two shifts of questions. I did not know how long he could go on, even if it were all true. Weiss still insisted he had only scuffled with Radford even when they showed him the pictures of the body. He had tried to look away. Death scared him. They made him look, but all he did was stare and say that the guy had been okay when he had run.
I said, “I figure Baron went in the back way after Sammy ran. He got rough, or Radford did, and Radford got killed. Baron grabbed the money. Then he got scared. Sammy was the perfect pigeon. Baron laid the frame on him, or tried to. That’s all that explains Baron’s actions.”
“Maybe,” Gazzo said, “if you believe Weiss. If you believe Baron, it plays different. Weiss killed Radford, took the money, and ran. Baron went looking for him. Baron found him. Baron got tough, and Weiss killed him.”
“Sammy killed a man like Baron? With Leo Zar around?”
“A cornered rat,” Gazzo said. “Anyway, Weiss has the money now. It doesn’t matter if Weiss had the money all along, or if Baron did. Baron didn’t give the money to Weiss, not Paul Baron. That bet story is really great.”
There it was. Either Weiss killed both of them, or only Paul Baron. The police could see it no other way, and they’d settle for charging Weiss with Baron’s murder alone. They could be right. Weiss was a born liar. Only the bet story was so bad I believed it.
“How do you know the money was Radford’s money?”
“He had a list of the serial numbers in his desk.”
“So that’s why you wanted to know if Weiss had paid me?” “That’s right.”
Gazzo studied his ceiling. “Baron was shot from close with a. 45 caliber automatic. The first shot knocked him flat. The second hit him when he was down. The first was still in him. The M.E. can’t place the time any better than between eleven P.M. and five A.M. Wednesday night. But Baron was talking to me until one A.M. that night, so it was after that.”
“He was giving you his story about looking for Weiss.”
“I don’t know that he wasn’t,” Gazzo said. “Weiss admits he got to Baron around one-thirty A.M. He says he left around two-thirty. The taxi driver remembers the long haul out to Jamaica Bay, and the super at the place remembers Weiss because of the drunk he was battling when Weiss passed him going out. No one saw Baron alive again.”