Brass Go-Between (21 page)

Mbwato rose and began to pace the floor in long strides. “You’re being most infuriating with your hints and allusions, Mr. St. Ives. You know that, I suppose.”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

He stopped his pacing and stood before me, bending forward slightly, a huge, very black man whose broad, curiously gentle face was a battleground for hope and despair. Despair seemed to be winning. “I do not mind the personal disgrace that will accompany my failure,” he said. “I hope you understand that; I hope you believe it.”

“I believe it,” I said.

“You realize the importance of the shield—not to me personally, but to my country.”

“You’ve told me about it. Twice, in fact. Maybe three times.”

“Then I need not repeat it.”

“No.”

“Now you say you intend to get the shield back.”

“That’s right.”

“How?”

“Don’t you mean where?” I said.

“All right. Where?”

“I don’t know. I’m still just guessing. All I really know is that I’ll need some help.”

“Is that a request?” Mbwato said softly.

I nodded. I was tired. I wanted to go to bed. My head had started to throb again, worse than before. “You can call it that,” I said.

“When will you need it?”

“Tomorrow at the latest.”

“What do you intend to do with the shield, Mr. St. Ives, return it to the museum?”

“I don’t have it yet. I might not ever have it. As I said, I’m only guessing. The only thing that I really know is I’ve been suckered and I’m not quite sure by whom. Maybe by you. Maybe by the museum or my lawyer or even Lieutenant Demeter and his faithful Sergeant Fastnaught. Maybe it’s all been some kind of gigantic conspiracy that everybody’s been in on except me. Or maybe it’s just that I have a slight concussion and it’s done something to my brain. Turned me a little paranoic.” My head was no longer throbbing; it was pounding and the pain hit at the back of my head where it hadn’t been before.

“No more questions, Mr. Mbwato,” I said. “No more questions because I haven’t got the answers. Right now the only thing I want to do is go home and go to bed. But I can’t even do that because I have to call the cops and hand over your two friends upstairs.” I slumped back on the couch, but it only made my head hurt more. “Can you clear out of here?”

“Yes, of course,” Mbwato said.

“Where can I reach you tomorrow?” I wasn’t looking at him; I had my eyes closed, but that didn’t ease the pain either.

“Here,” he said, “at this number.” He produced one of his ivory-colored cards and scribbled a telephone number on it. He handed it to me and I shoved it into my coat pocket.

“What time do you think you may—”

“I don’t know. I told you I don’t know anything. I’m just guessing. Maybe I won’t call at all. Maybe it’ll all blow up in my face. Bang, like that. Or Boom. Or even bang-boom.”

“Are you feeling all right, Mr. St. Ives?” Mbwato said, and there seemed to be genuine solicitation in his voice, or it could have been that he was just worried about the shield and that I might die on him.

“No,” I said. “I’m not feeling all right. Where’s the phone?”

“At your elbow.”

“So it is,” I said, and because it seemed to sound nice, I said it again. “So it is. Another drink might help, Mr. Mbwato. Another touch of your landlord’s excellent Scotch. And as soon as that is done, I suggest that you gather up Mr. Ulado and flee into the night. Just make sure that our two young friends upstairs are securely bound.”

“Yes,” he said, handing me another drink. “I’ll see to it. Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. St. Ives? You don’t seem at all well. I might even say that you look pale, but then I’m no great judge.”

“I’m tiptop,” I said. “Both the tip and the top of my head are about to sail off.”

“I’ll get Mr. Ulado,” he said, and headed for the stairs.

I picked up the phone and dialed Lieutenant Demeter’s number. He answered with his usual “Robbery Squad, Lieutenant Demeter,” but most of the bark and bite were missing.

“How goes the report, Lieutenant?”

“What do you want, St. Ives?”

“A word or two with you. Only a word or two.”

“You drunk?”

“Possibly, possibly. My head is coming off and seems to be sailing around the room.”

“You’re drunk,” he said.

“The two thieves, Lieutenant. I have them bound and gagged. Well, not gagged really, but bound. Yes, bound with strong cord. And the money too. A quarter of a million dollars. I have recovered it. Do you find that interesting?”

There was a silence for a moment and then Demeter said, “Is this a joke, St. Ives?”

“If it were, it wouldn’t be a very good one, would it? No joke. Thieves and money. They’re both here. I thought I’d call before you got too far into your report.”

“Where are you?”

I took another swallow of my drink, a large one. The pain in my head now seemed focused behind my eyes, threatening to push them out of their sockets. I closed them. “In a charming town house on Corcoran Place.”

“The address, goddamnit.”

“Oh, yes.” I gave him the address.

“If this is some kind of a joke—”

“No joke,” I said. “No joke at all.” I hung up.

Mbwato and Ulado came down the stairs and entered the living room. Both now wore coats and ties. Ulado crossed over to me and put some items on the coffee table. “We relieved them of these,” he said. “I thought that they might be evidence—or something like that.” On the coffee table were two switchblade knives, a .38-caliber revolver, and blackjack with a spring handle.

“We’re leaving now, Mr. St. Ives,” Mbwato said. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

I waved my empty glass at him. “Another drink to cut the phlegm.”

Ulado hurried forward and took my glass, looking at Mbwato, who nodded. “You need to sleep, Mr. St. Ives,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “For a couple of years.”

“I’ll be anticipating your call tomorrow,” he said as Ulado handed me the fresh drink.

“Man your phone,” I said. “I shall be calling.”

Mr. Mbwato stood by the door to the hall and stared at me. “I hope, Mr. St. Ives, that you know what you’re doing.”

“I hope so, too, Mr. Mbwato,” I said. “I hope so very much.”

T
HE PAIN HAD EASED
a little by the time that Demeter and Fastnaught arrived. Perhaps the Scotch had helped after all, or it may have been because I had stopped thinking about what I had to do the next day. The thoughts had been more than unpleasant; they had been nasty ones born of apprehension and dread and they had burrowed into my mind like a small, wet furry animal with stainless-steel teeth and claws that scratched and chomped around in my head. The giddiness had gone, too, and when I answered the policelike banging on the door I was as sober and composed as one could hope to be on four very large drinks.

“There’s a bell,” I said when I opened the door, “or don’t you believe in them?”

“He’s drunk,” Demeter said. “You can smell it.”

“Come in, gentlemen. All by yourselves, I see.”

“If this is a joke, St. Ives, we want to enjoy it in private,” Demeter said, and pushed himself past me into the hall. Fastnaught followed, chewing on a stick of gum. His eyes looked more bloodshot than usual.

“You look like hell,” Fastnaught said.

“I’ve got a headache, but it’s better now.”

“All right,” Demeter said. “What’s the story?”

“Jack and Jill are upstairs on the third floor,” I said. “Jack and Jill are the thieves. They’re also the murderers, as nasty a young couple as our stricken society has yet produced.”

Demeter stared at me suspiciously. “Just sitting there waiting for us, huh?”

“They’re all tied up,” I said. “Securely.”

“Okay, let’s check it out, Fastnaught,” Demeter said. He produced a revolver from a shoulder holster and waved it vaguely toward the stairs. Fastnaught also drew his revolver and started up the stairs, still chewing his gum. “You coming, St. Ives?” Demeter said.

“Too far,” I said. “Far too far. And I’ve got a headache.”

I watched them slowly mount the stairs until they were out of sight on the second-floor landing. Then I went back into the living room and poured myself another drink, mentally assigning it curative powers that would have done credit to a dozen or so of the more progressive wonder drugs. I sat on the couch and waited. A few moments later there was a sharp sound as if someone had kicked in a door. Or maybe they had just banged it open against the wall. I took a sip of my drink and waited some more. In a few minutes I could hear them descending the stairs. Fastnaught came in first, his gun still drawn. He was followed by the girl with her hands handcuffed behind her. Then came the man, also handcuffed, and Demeter, still with his revolver in his hand.

“Ah, you caught them, Lieutenant,” I said. “Good work.”

“Shut up,” Demeter said.

Fastnaught turned and waved his gun at two chairs. “Sit down over there,” he said to the girl and the man. They moved over to the two chairs and sat down.

“The suitcase with the money is by that chair,” I said.

“I saw it,” Demeter said, reholstering his gun. “You count it?”

“No. Should I’ve?”

“Didn’t you even look?”

“No.”

“Take a look, Fastnaught.”

Fastnaught bent over the suitcase, turned it on its side, and opened it. The tens and twenties were still there, wrapped in neat brown paper bands.

“Jesus,” Fastnaught said, and I felt that there was pure reverence in his tone.

“All right, close it up,” Demeter said. He turned to me. “Now tell us all about it, St. Ives.”

“I got a call at my hotel, an anonymous tip. He said that the thieves and the money were at this address, all safe and sound. So I caught a cab over, found it to be just like the man on the phone said, and then called you.”

“You lying son of a bitch,” said the man who claimed that his name was Jack. “Two big niggers got us. They talked funny, like Englishmen. They were going to shove a curling iron up my ass if I didn’t tell ’em and he was gonna help.”

“Tell what?” Demeter said.

The man called Jack looked away. “Nothing. I don’t have to tell you nothing. But he’s a lying son of a bitch.”

“Strange,” I said. “They were both extremely talkative a few minutes ago. They were telling me how they had managed to steal the shield and do away with four persons—Sackett, Wingo, Spellacy, and your former classmate, Lieutenant Ogden.”

Demeter slipped his revolver back into its holster, looked around the room, picked out a chair, and eased himself into it slowly. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, found a cigar encased in a metal tube, and went through the ritual of lighting it. When it was well lighted he looked at me with black, beany eyes. “Nothing like a good cigar,” he said.

“That suitcase would buy a lot of them,” I said.

“What do you think, Fastnaught?” Demeter said to the sergeant, who had also tucked away his gun and was now leaning against the mantel of the fireplace, which looked as if it really worked.

“About what?” Fastnaught said.

“Do you think the suitcase would buy a lot of cigars?”

“Plenty,” Fastnaught said.

“Cigars for me, little girls for you, and punchboards for St. Ives here.”

“What about our two friends here, Jack and Jill?” I said.

“I don’t think their names are Jack and Jill really. What’d Ogden tell you just before he died? He said something about ‘Freddie and his whore,’ didn’t he?” Demeter turned to look at the man in handcuffs. “Are you Freddie and his whore, son?” he asked mildly.

Freddie, or Jack, told Demeter to go fuck himself. Fastnaught sighed, left his spot at the mantel, crossed over to the man and struck him twice across the face with an open palm. Fastnaught seemed neither to like nor dislike striking the man. He said nothing after he had done it and a moment later he was back leaning against the mantel, rubbing a corner of it into the spot between his shoulder blades where the itch seemed to persist. The man’s face had crumpled again and I saw that he was crying. He didn’t like being hit.

“I asked you a question, son,” Demeter said. “Is your name Freddie?”

The man sat with his head bowed. He was almost through crying. The girl looked at him blankly and then giggled.

“Fred,” he said.

“Fred what?”

“Fred Simpson.”

“All right, Fred Simpson, what about the girl? She your wife?”

“No.”

“He’s my pimp,” the girl said. “He’s my pretty little pimp. Freddie the pimp.” She giggled again.

“What’s your name, lady?” Demeter said.

“Wanda.”

“Wanda what?”

“Wanda Lou Wesoloski.”

“A Polack,” Freddie said. “A dumb Polack.”

“Tell us about it, Freddie,” Demeter said.

“I want a lawyer. I don’t have to say nothing.”

“That’s right, Freddie, you don’t,” Demeter said, and shifted his gaze to me. “You say that Freddie was talkative a little earlier?”

“Extremely,” I said.

“You sort of just breezed over it before, St. Ives. Why don’t you let us have it again with a little more detail?”

“All right,” I said, and I told them what Freddie had said as Mbwato stood there, looking for some place to put the curling iron. I didn’t mention either Mbwato or Mr. Ulado. For some reason I always thought of the slim, dark young man as
Mister
Ulado.

When I was through Demeter grunted, looked for some place to dump his ash, and found a tray on a table next to him. “And Freddie here told you all that, huh? You must have been a hell of a good reporter at one time, St. Ives.”

“Just fair,” I said. “People confide in me.”

“He’s a lying bastard,” Freddie said in a dull tone. “There were two niggers. They had a curling iron. He was gonna help them shove it up—ask her. Ask Wanda.”

“What about it, Wanda?”

The girl looked at him blankly. “What?”

“Was there a curling iron and two spades?”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “Sure. And the shield of Komporeen.” She giggled again.

Demeter sighed. “Like I said, that suitcase would buy a lot of cigars. How much is a third of two hundred and fifty thousand, Fastnaught?”