“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.”
“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?”
