“Except maybe the girl.”
“We’re bringing her in now. I hope she can clear Weiss.”
“What about the shots? Anyone hear them?”
“It was the Village, Dan. Ten people heard something like shots, ranging between nine and four A.M. Who knows?”
“What about the knife and the gun?”
“Don’t fence with me, Dan. Those weapons are in the river, or in Jamacia Bay. We’ll never find them unless Weiss tells us where he threw them.”
“I don’t like a frame that turns into a real murder.”
“If the first killing is a frame,” Gazzo said. “Let’s say it is. Okay, that’s just what I do like. It gives Weiss a double motive to kill Baron.” He leaned across the desk. “Look, Dan, if Weiss didn’t kill Baron, you’re stuck with only two other explanations, both beauties. Maybe it was two frame-ups of the same man by two different parties, which is some coincidence to hand the D.A. Or maybe Baron worked out a double frame-up that hinged on himself getting killed! Now there’s a theory.”
I said nothing. What could I say? I was sure Baron had been trying to frame Weiss for Radford’s murder. Only now Weiss was on the hook for Baron’s killing, and it didn’t figure that a man would frame someone for his own murder! The D.A. would have a field day with that. The way it was now, the more I proved that Baron had been framing Weiss for Radford, the worse it was going to look for Weiss as Baron’s killer.
Gazzo was watching me squirm mentally, when his pretty sergeant came in to announce that Carla Devine was outside.
“Send her in,” Gazzo said.
She came in slow, taking a little two-step as if pushed. She was a lovely little creature: small, dark, with ivory skin, a madonna face, and eyes as big as a dark satin bed. The eyes were frightened. She held her handbag in both hands like a child holding a schoolbag.
“Sit down, Miss Devine,” Gazzo said.
She perched. Her mini-skirt left little unseen. She had young, hard, fresh legs. I looked. Gazzo didn’t. That seemed to scare her more. Men usually stared at her legs.
“Tell me where you were Wednesday night, Miss Devine?”
“Wednesday?” She watched Gazzo’s face. “Gee, I think I was with Paul.”
“Paul Baron?” Dark lines grooved between Gazzo’s eyes. He was surprised. So was I. I was also hopeful.
“We went to dinner. Sure, that was Wednesday,” she said.
“And after dinner?” Gazzo said.
“He took me home. He had to go somewhere.”
“Where is home?”
“University Place. Number 47, apartment 12-C.”
“What time did he take you home?”
“Maybe ten-thirty. He had to go somewhere by eleven.”
“He went to see me,” Gazzo said. “He left here about one A.M. Where did he pick you up after that?”
She fluttered her lashes. “You mean that same night? He didn’t pick me up again. He hasn’t been around since he took me home Wednesday. Paul’s like that. He comes, he goes.”
“You didn’t see Baron after ten-thirty Wednesday night?” Gazzo said. “You’re sure? We’ll find out, Miss Devine.”
“I didn’t, honest. Has… has Paul done something?”
I leaned toward her. “You were with Baron in his Fifth Street apartment at one-thirty Wednesday night. You saw Baron pay off a man named Weiss for a bet.”
She gave me her big brown eyes. “You mean Sammy Weiss? Gee, that wasn’t Wednesday night. That was maybe a week ago. I don’t go to that Fifth Street place much. Misty lives there. I saw Sammy Weiss there a week ago, maybe; only there wasn’t no bet.”
It was hard to believe that she was lying. Gazzo wouldn’t believe it. He would believe that Weiss was lying.
Carla Devine said, “Is Paul is trouble?”
I said, “Baron said he was with you Monday afternoon. Was he?”
“Sure, he came…”
“Baron’s dead,” I said. “He doesn’t need an alibi now.”
“Dead?”
Gazzo snapped, “Was he with you Monday afternoon?”
She nodded. “Yes, but… not when I said. He came about two-thirty, not one-thirty. He told me to say one-thirty. Dead? He’s dead?”
Her knuckles whitened on her bag, and she slipped off the chair in a dead faint. Gazzo jumped as if bitten. If it was an act, it was good. Gazzo bawled for his female sergeant.
“Take care of her. When she comes around, get a statement.”
The sergeant got some help, and they carried Carla Devine out. I watched her go. She was taking Weiss’s chances with her.
“He’s lying all the way, Dan,” Gazzo said.
“The girl lied before.”
“For Baron. Maybe Baron did kill Radford after all, but he’s dead. Why would she lie now?”
Gazzo said it almost bitterly. A good detective like Gazzo works close to danger. He works even closer to something else-the edge of sanity that yawns like an abyss for men who must decide, in essence, who lives and who dies. Gazzo is not a pitiless man, and that makes it hard for him to have to decide what a piece of human debris like Weiss is, or is not, guilty of doing. That gives a man scars inside, makes him bitter.
We both sat silent for a time. Then I said:
“How did Radford happen to have a list of the bills?”
“Who knows? Maybe he always did it when he had a lot of cash around, or maybe it was a trap for Baron. You tell me it was a blackmail con, not a bet. Maybe Radford was being cute.”
We sat in another silence. I couldn’t think of anything else to ask, or to object to. After a while I got up and put on my duffle coat. Gazzo watched me.
“Weiss is guilty, Dan. Let it go.”
“Maybe,” I said. “I’d like to find those weapons, you know? Stir the water. That’s detective work, right?”
“Damn you,” Gazzo said.
He would work on it, as I would, but maybe he’d never know for sure. Only the D.A. would be sure. The D.A. had to be elected, and he would tell himself that he was sure.
I went down to the street and got into my car. It was bitter cold. I sat and watched the Annex entrance. I smoked too many cigarettes.
It was nearly dawn before Carla Devine came out. Gazzo was an honest cop; he had sweated her hard. She had not changed her story. If she had, she would not have been coming out.
She hurried along the iron-cold street away from me. I got out and followed. She was huddled in a fur coat like something that had forgotten to hibernate. The door of a battered gray coupe swung open in front of her. I ran. She saw me, and jumped into the car. I got my hand on the door handle. The coupe ground gears and pulled away, dragging me. Her great brown eyes stared up into my face from inside. A thin, pale, wild-haired young boy was behind the wheel, his lips skinned back from his teeth.
One thing a one-armed man can’t do is get the door of a moving car open, or hang on when the car gets above 20 m.p.h. The speed turned me around backwards. I had to let go, and landed hard on my back in the street. I didn’t bother to see where the car had gone. I wasn’t going to get the number in the dark.
After a time I got up. I drove the rental car home. I went to bed. What could I have gotten from Carla Devine anyway?
15
Someone was crying. I stumbled naked through the snow and saw that it was my arm huddled behind a garbage can. Then it wasn’t my arm crying, it was Sammy Weiss. Three big men appeared and began to pound the lids of the garbage cans into Sammy’s face. I began to moan. Then my father was clutching at my empty sleeve, and I was telling him to get lost, get lost, get lost…
I woke with sun in my eyes, and knew that it was Weiss who I wanted to get lost, go away, vanish.
I lighted a cigarette. I lay in bed feeling empty. I was at a dead end, literally. I had worked hard on the vague hunch that Weiss had not killed Jonathan Radford. I had just about been sure that Paul Baron had killed the man. Now Baron was dead, and the case against Weiss was stronger than ever.
Was he lying? I didn’t know. All I knew was that if I had killed two men, I’d lie all the way.