Halo in Brass

by Howard Browne

  One of her hands moved and the rays of a pencil flash shone on my face through the glass. The light winked out and she leaned over and released the catch.

  “You’re late,” she said throatily, as I slid in beside her and closed the door. “I was about ready to give up on you.”

  It was like the voice on the phone and yet not like it. Disguised voices are never quite the same twice in a row. She was wearing a black cloth coat with dolman sleeves. Its bulk kept me from making out her size but even so she wasn’t a large woman. A checkered scarf puffed out between the lapels of her coat, muffling her neck and chin. Her cigarette glowed softly between the gloved fingers of her left hand where it rested against the wheel.

  I drew up one knee and turned on the seat toward her. The interior of the car reeked of smoke. The veil made her face no more than a black blob.

  “I’m Grace Rehak,” she murmured. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “Okay,” I said cheerfully. “Take off the veil and we’ll get down to business.”

  She shrank back in sudden alarm. “No! I told you this was the way it would have to be. Who hired you to find me?"

  I got out a cigarette, patted my pockets for a match, then reached for the stub she was holding. She started to hold it out but my hand swerved sharply, grasped her hat and yanked. It and the veil came away. She cried out and covered her face with her gloves.

  “Too late, Mrs. O’Flynn,” I said mildly.

  The hands came down slowly. Her face was white and strained and angry. “So now you know,” she said flatly.

  “I had an idea to begin with,” I said. “So Grace Rehak is Steven O’Flynn’s wife. Why all the secrecy about it?”

  “You don’t think I could let him know, do you?” she said sullenly. “That I was . . . well, that I worked for Bertha Lund?”

  “Oh, hell,” I said. “Who do you think hired me?”

  She straightened as though I’d struck her. “What! You mean Steve—? That’s a lie!”

  “What makes you so sure, Mrs. O’Flynn?”

  “Why, he knows I —” She stopped abruptly and her eyes slid away from mine.

  “Go on,” I said softly. “Finish it. He knows you couldn’t be Grace Rehak, is that it?”

  She moistened her lips. “Why would I say I was her if I wasn’t?”

  “Why make me point out the obvious?” I said. “You’re saying it because the real Grace Rehak hired you to say it. She hired you to make this date before I ever showed up at the Tropicabana tonight. You answered the description Bertha Lund gave me while I was in Lincoln—a description she passed on to Grace Rehak when she called to warn her about me.

  “Bertha lied about everything else, so why not this? For all I know Grace could be' any size, any shape, any complexion, even a redhead—not like you at all.”

  She ground her teeth together, saying nothing.

  “Let me dress it up a little more for you,” I went on. “Yesterday afternoon your Mr. Smith, or Stuart Whitney, tried to buy the name of my client from me. He’s tied up with Gracie some way. Just tonight I saw him at the Tropicabana with two dames, a blonde and a redhead. Either one might have been her.

  “When I told him I’d do my talking only to Grace Rehak, and in person, let’s just for the hell of it say he passed the word on to her and between them they cooked up this idea of you subbing for her long enough to find out what I want. It makes sense too, for if Gracie is that afraid of being found out, she wouldn’t come within a mile of me for any reason.”

  “If you knew that,” she sneered, “why bother to show up here tonight at all?”

  “To learn who the real Grace Rehak is these days.”

  She dropped the remains of her cigarette to the floor boards and set a foot on it. “I told you I’m Grace Rehak. If you don’t want to believe it then take the air. I’m not going to sit here all night and chin with you.”

  “You’re going to tell me how to go about finding her, Mrs. O’Flynn.”

  Silence while the wind tried to kick in the windshield. She was staring at me blankly.

  “You’re going to tell me,” I went on, “or you’re going to find yourself up to your permanent wave in a murder rap. Mary Conrad was killed because she knew the name Gracie is using. You know it too—otherwise Grace Rehak wouldn’t have given you enough information to make your impersonation of her stand up with me. A woman 'killed Mary Conrad. I don’t think Grace Rehak did the job as long as she could hire somebody else to do it, and since she hired you to meet me she could have hired you to do the job on Mary. At least that’s the story I give to the cops unless you see things my way.”

  She reached for the black-leather bag in her lap but my hand was there first. I couldn’t feel the outlines of a gun. She said, “I want a cigarette.”

  “Go ahead.” I handed the bag to her and she got out a case and took out one of its cork-tipped contents. I struck a match for her and she straightened up and pushed the bag down between her and the door and brought up a pearl-handled belly gun and pointed it at me.

  “Move back,” she said between her teeth. “And keep your hands on your knees.”

  This was something I hadn’t expected. This made no sense at all. I inched away from her, as ordered, and kept on looking at the gun. I said, “This is crazy. What’re you trying to buy with that?”

  “Maybe I’m going to kill you,” she said sardonically. “If I could have killed Mary Conrad why couldn’t I give you the same?”

  “As stupid as you are,” I said around my thick tongue, “you’re not that stupid. Killing me will only force my client to put a new man on Gracie’s trail. You can’t expect to go on doing it. Even Gracie knows that.”

  She said nothing. She reached out and fumbled at the dashboard. The headlights blinked on and off, once. “All right,” she said coldly. “You’ll talk to her. But keep your eyes straight ahead. Try turning your head an inch either way and I’ll shoot your leg of!”

  I heard the rear door of the Buick open slowly behind me. The hair crawled along my scalp. The door clicked shut and there was the rustle of a movement at my back. A hand rested lightly on my right shoulder and slid carefully down under the lapels of my coat. Fingers closed about the butt of my gun, freed it from the holster and came out with it. I looked down my nose. It was a woman’s hand, strong and capable, light glinting on the painted nails. The gun disappeared behind me.

  I waited, having trouble with my breathing. The sound of a sharply indrawn breath was my only warning. I jerked my head aside just as a truck rolled across one side of it with a clashing of gears. Agony poured in, blinding me. My reflexes twisted me up and around and I lunged at her. One of my hands struck against a firm breast, closed there and tried to tear it out by the roots.

  I never had a chance. A second blow knocked me away. It wasn’t a glancing blow this time and it finished the job. The world jarred and turned into darkness filled with silent explosions of light that fell in a long slow curve into a shoreless sea.

  And, as slowly, I fell with them.

  CHAPTER19

  SOMEBODY had shoved a pillow under my face. Not the most comfortable pillow you could find; it was too firm and there was a long narrow hollow running the length of it. There was a very faint odor of what seemed to be bath salts, if that was possible.

  My head buzzed like a bee hive. Pain was everywhere; the universe was filled with pain and my head was the center of the universe. I lay very still and waited for the coroner to arrive. I thought about finding a phone and calling him myself, only that’s no job for a corpse. Let somebody else do it, like always.

  Slowly it all came back to me. I didn’t move. Good old Pine. One of the smart movie-type private boys. Tough as a millionaire’s surtax and always smart. Smart enough to make a date with a killer and expect to keep out of trouble doing it.

  I pushed myself up off the car seat and lay back panting, not opening my eyes. The smell of bath salts was gone now, and in its place was an acrid, b
iting odor. I knew that smell and my teeth clicked shut and my eyes opened.

  She was still there, sitting behind the wheel, her head leaning against the window, a hand resting on either side of her against the seat. She did not move. She would never move again. She was dead.

  A thin dark line along the side of her neck was a tracing of blood. I gritted my teeth and leaned sideways and parted the hair around her ear. The bullet had made a nice clean hole in the bulge of occipital bone there. She had died instantly, without pain and without fear.

  I slid away from her and started to reach for the door handle on my side of the Buick. My foot struck against something on the floor boards and I glanced down. It was a gun. My gun. A lot of good it had done me tonight. I might as well have brought along one that fired caps.

  I bent and picked it up, getting a sharp shooting pain across the back of my head as a reward. I placed the muzzle to my nose and sniffed. It reeked of freshly burned powder fumes.

  My face got as stiff as an ice floe. What had started out as a vague suspicion was now cold realization. Bonnie O’Flynn had died from a bullet fired from my gun.

  I sat there while my stomach turned into a hard core of fear. Susan Griswold was right after all. I was in over my head now. It was a case of unraveling the knot or being hanged with it.

  I had to know something first. I took hold of Bonnie O’Flynn’s head and turned it. It turned easily; the flesh was still warm and rigor mortis not yet moving in. I carefully examined every inch of her head, running my fingers lightly over her scalp.

  No exit wound anywhere. That meant the bullet from my .38 Colt Detective Special was still in there. It might be too badly flattened for ballistics purposes, but I couldn’t count on it.

  Her purse was still shoved down next to her on the seat. I took out my handkerchief, covered my fingers with it and snaked the purse out into the open. Nothing in it that wasn’t in half the purses in town. But no papers, no clues, nothing I could use to erase the spot I was in.

  The bag went back where I found it. Very carefully I wiped every surface I might have touched, awake or unconscious. That might remove the killer’s prints as well as my own but that wasn’t important now.

  I struck a match and looked at my wrist watch. One-forty. I had been sleeping in Bonnie O’Flynn’s lap something like twenty-five or thirty minutes. A killer could get far in that much time. Maybe even as far as Lake Ridge, the swank North Shore suburb, if she hurried. Or was I kidding myself?

  The street was still deserted, the wind still howled, shadows continued to weave and shiver along walks and 'parkways. Hardly any lighted windows now. Bonnie O’Flynn sat stiff and still, as quiet as the death that filled her, her white face glistening, her hat with its veil on the floor between her feet. I looked at the keys in the ignition and thought of driving the Buick and its cargo to some quiet street far from my hotel. It wouldn’t do anything for me and it might snap back in my face. If the bullet in Bonnie O’Flynn could be made to match my gun, I was caught by the short hairs; if not, they could find the car parked in my hotel lobby and I could still thumb my nose at them.

  The car door opened easily under my hand. I backed out unsteadily, my right hand around the gun butt in the pocket of my topcoat. Not that I would shoot anybody; it gave me a comfortable feeling to hold onto something stronger than I was right then.

  I walked slowly west along Farwell, reeling slightly like a delegate to the wine-tasters’ convention. The wind felt wonderful against my head but there was a dull ache across the top of it that a bucket of aspirins would never dent.

  As I turned into Wayne-Avenue a car hit me with its headlights. I lowered my head and plodded on and the car went on by, trailing swing-band music from its radio.

  I continued on past the entrance to the Dinsmore Arms, trying not to think of the empty bed in 307. I fished out my keys and unlocked the Plymouth and managed to crawl in. My fingers were shaking when I switched on the ignition. I leaned down across the wheel, feeling the sweat stand out on my forehead and cheeks.

  It passed. By the time I was turning south into Sheridan Road I was ready for anything less strenuous than brushing my teeth.

  The Barryshire was twelve floors of granite and glass a hundred feet west of Sheridan Road, on Barry Avenue. It had a leaded-glass canopy, a double line of toy hedges on either side of the entrance walk, and the elegant air of a dowager lifting a teacup. The rest of the street was on much the same scale, lined with apartment buildings that were large and modern and high in the rents. Four blocks to a yacht harbor, in case you had a yacht. Plenty of street lamps to discourage purse-snatchers and footpads. Even the wind seemed to walk softly along it.

  Only a few blocks from where Mary Conrad had died, yet worlds apart otherwise. I wondered if being that close meant anything.

  Halfway down the block I found a parking place. While I was getting out, a couple crossed the walk from one of the entrances and got into a car big enough to hold the Jukes family. It pulled away from the curb and rolled past me toward Broadway, its motor as quiet as butterflies wrestling.

  I pushed open the heavy door to the Barryshire and went in. The foyer was large and brilliantly lighted. The floor was gray-asphalt tiling, the walls dark blue, the arched ceiling painted white. A line of recessed mailboxes were set in each of the side walls. Farther back, close to an inner door of glass squares, were twin rows of bell buttons next to a house phone in an arched niche.

  Midway down one row I found a neat black name plate with gold letters that read STUART WHITNEY—5B. I stared at it thoughtfully for what seemed a long time. I poised a finger over the button, lowered it before doing anything rash, and went over and tried the inner door. It was locked. I hadn’t expected it not to be. I came back and stared at the name plate some more. It hadn’t changed any. Make up your steel-trap mind, Pine.

  I set the ball of a thumb against the gilt button opposite Stuart Whitney’s name, holding it there longer than good manners would dictate. Then I took it away and picked up the house phone.

  He was already at the other end. “Yes? Who is it?” The words were quick, almost breathless, the voice light and husky.

  “Paul Pine, Mr. Smith. Remember?”

  Silence from the other end. If he had fainted I didn’t hear the body fall. Nothing clicked against my ear, so the connection was still open. I said, “Want to talk to you. Press the buzzer; it’s drafty down here."

  More silence came back to me. I opened my mouth to drive home the idea, but the click that hadn’t come before came now. He had hung up on me. I was reaching out to stab the button a second time when the lock on the inner door began to rattle.

  Beyond it were a flight of gray carpeted steps and the door to an elevator. I brought down the self-service cage and rode up to the fifth floor surrounded by enough chrome and mirrors to outfit a cocktail bar. The corridor was wide, clean and lighted by soft amber bulbs. Doors with gilt numbers mounted on small heraldic shields lined both sides.

  5B was all the way back and around a corner. Just as I reached it, the door opened silently and Stuart Whitney stood looking out at me.

  He was as handsome, as clean-shaved and as supercilious as I remembered. He was wearing a loose-fitting blue brocaded silk robe drawn together almost to his chin, the belt knotted tightly in a double loop. The legs of maroon pajamas were visible below the robe, with bare ankles and brown leather slippers below those.

  If hearing my name over the house phone had upset him, it no longer showed in his expression. He surveyed me coolly past the edge of the door. “I suppose I should have expected something like this. Your profession must call for a certain amount of cunning.”

  My grin was a smirk. “You have no idea how easy it was. Am I coming in?”

  He let me see that he was making up his mind about it. Finally he stepped back and drew open the door wide enough for me to sidle through. I went past him and looked at a long, rather narrow living room worth coming a long way to see. It was alive
with harsh contrasting colors that at first glance clashed like a bucket of bolts through a plate-glass window.

  The all-over carpeting was a deep coral broadloom, three of the walls were a dull deep green and the fourth a very pale gray, the ceiling a paste] blue. The furniture was blond oak and as severe in the lines as a cube of sugar. Against one of the green walls was an oversize sofa covered with a rough material in Chartreuse, and in front of the sofa a coffee table slightly smaller than a skating rink.

  Two doors, white and closed, in the gray wall would lead into a bedroom and a kitchen. I walked down the room to its one window, a huge low-silled affair framed in raw red silk, and dropped my battered hat on a lamp table that came closer to resembling a veneered packing case than anything else. While I was shrugging out of my topcoat, Whitney closed the door and leaned an elbow negligently against the top of a blond spinet piano I hadn’t noticed before.

  “No point in getting too comfortable,” he said disagreeably. “You’re not going to be here that long.”

  I was still holding the cigarette I had lighted on my way up in the elevator. I looked around for an ash tray. There was a triangular-shaped bowl in glazed ebony next to my hat. My head was beginning to reel a little. I put some ash in the bowl and said, “I should have brought along a piece of smoked glass. What do you sleep on—a rainbow?”

  He took his elbow off the piano and let the hand slip into the single pocket of his robe. I didn’t think he had a gun in there. He spoke through his teeth. “It’s two in the morning in case you don’t know it. Say what’s to be said and get out. I’m in no mood for your wit.”