He wouldn’t name Diana Wood, so I knew he didn’t want his daughter to know. I knew that the language I’d heard spoken in Le Cerf Agile’s bar had been Sicilian-dialect Italian, and I also knew that my slip about Mia Morgan had been even worse. Andy had heard I’d been asking about Mia-and I’d told him I didn’t know her. I had to keep him busy talking.
He made a gesture toward yellow-gloves. “Charley there warned you, only I didn’t know then you were tailing me.”
“So Irving Kezar works for you?”
“No, but he passes information, right?”
“Sid Meyer, too?”
The tension in the alcove was like an electric shock. Max Bagnio and the two soldiers in front stared at me. Mia Morgan was pale. Yellow-gloves Charley stopped eating his dessert. Levi Stern watched. Andy’s voice was low, rigid:
“You wouldn’t mix in my business, Dan, would you?”
“What was Sid Meyer?”
“No one I knew, Dan.”
“Someone knew him,” I said. “Two of them, pros. Kicked in the door, shot him nice and careful. No one saw them in or out. They dropped one gun, but it couldn’t be traced. Efficient.”
Charley yellow-gloves looked at Pappas. “Andy-?”
“You’re sure it happened like that, Dan?” Andy said.
“You’re telling me you didn’t know?”
Andy thought for perhaps a minute while everyone waited. Then he nodded to Charley. The short man got his hat, coat and woman, and went out. The two soldiers went with him. Maybe Andy hadn’t known about Sid Meyer. Some other professionals?
He’s an executive, Pappas. The problem of Sid Meyer was being handled. He forgot it, returned to his other problem.
“Who hired you to tail me, Dan?”
“I wasn’t tailing you,” I said. “I was tailing the girl.”
He stared at me. Little Max laughed, derisive. Mia Morgan didn’t laugh. Her face was blank, but I knew she was scared. Was I about to tell Pappas that she’d hired me to stumble around in his business? She wasn’t going to find out.
“Mia, call me later,” Andy said. “Go get a drink, Max.”
They left. Alone now, Andy leaned forward.
“Diana?” he said. “You think I’ll-?”
“Think about who Kezar said I asked for, what I did.”
Andy thought. Then he nodded, and I watched a strange reaction. Strange for Pappas. His face was serious, almost sad.
“The husband, Dan?”
“Did you expect him to cheer, do nothing?”
His face was that of a man, not a hood. Even sympathetic.
“Yeh, I guess not. She’s some kind of woman, Dan. Real, solid, soft, the best. I wouldn’t give her up, I guess no guy would. Not easy. She’s what you wait for, do things for.”
“You’re not doing her any favor,” I said. “You hurt them, every girl you touch.”
“Back off!” Then, “Okay, I’ve played around, but this is different. I never met a woman like her. I’m lucky. She wants what I’ve got, and I want her. I’m marrying Diana, Dan.”
“Divorce? A Catholic? With your family, your friends? They won’t like it, not your associates.”
“They’ll have to. Change is coming all over. New ways.”
“Will she marry you?”
“I asked her today. I figure she will.”
“If she says no? Stays with Wood? You going to persuade him to disappear? He has an accident, maybe?”
His hands gripped the table. “You think I have to use muscle to get a woman? Buy my women with a gun? I can’t get her unless I steal her?”
“I didn’t ask what you can do, I asked what you would do.”
“She wants him, she stays with him.” He sat back. “I couldn’t get her with muscle anyway. Not Diana. Lose her.”
“It’s up to her?”
“All the way,” Andy said. “But she’ll take me. Too much for Wood, too big. I’ve seen him. He damn near pushes her on other guys, sets her up. Won’t stand in her way; the best for her; that crap. Weak, a do-nothing dreamer. All he wants to do is paint his pictures. Maybe I’ll help him, buy some.”
“Does she love you, Andy, or your money?”
“Both, Dan.”
“I hope so,” I said. I meant it. I’d like to see Andy destroyed, but not that way. “Marriage, right? You wouldn’t use her for anything else, would you? Business?”
“Okay, Dan,” he said. “I feel for Wood, but the tail ends. No stumbling around in my business. You could both get hurt.”
“Like Sid Meyer?”
“Get out, Dan.”
I got up. He waited until I was almost out of the alcove.
“Dan? You were just tailing Diana? That’s all?”
“Just her.”
“And Wood is your only client?”
“Yes.” What else was Andy worried about?
“Okay.”
This time I waited. “Does Diana know what you do, Andy?”
“What do I do, Dan?”
I heard the edge in his voice. The edge of my privileged status. To say what we both knew he did would be to push too much. Maybe he was afraid to say it, afraid he’d lose Diana.
I went out to the street. The driver held the car door for me, but I walked away. Had Andy heard my slip about Mia, and was he worried? Over an outraged daughter? Or was there more? I thought about those medieval dynasties where princes killed their king-fathers to take over. In his dark world Andy was king, and Mia was a princess old for her years, tough and maybe ambitious, with a man who wouldn’t be afraid of Pappas’s troops.
But I didn’t care about Mia Morgan now. I cared about Hal Wood. Talk is cheap, and Andy lived by violence, by fear. It was one thing to say it was Diana’s decision when he was sure she’d make the right one, and maybe something else if she made the wrong one.
CHAPTER 9
It was a hundred to one Andy had a man watching Diana Wood-protective custody-and I’d been told to stop, so I used a telephone in a drugstore. No answer at the Woods’. It was 6 P.M., Diana should have been home-if she was going home.
I picked up a cheeseburger and coffee on the way to my office. The phone was ringing as I walked in. It was Captain Gazzo.
“Mia Morgan,” Gazzo said, “she’s-”
“Andy Pappas’s daughter,” I said. “I know. You want it all?”
“I want it,” Gazzo said.
I gave it to him, the whole story as far as I knew it. He took the parts he wanted. Romance didn’t interest Gazzo.
“You think the daughter just wanted to expose Andy’s cheating? Andy? He’s been cheating for twenty years.”
“Mia’s twenty-two, maybe she didn’t know.”
“This Diana Wood was with Andy the last three days? Since Monday night? Andy was with her in the area where Sid Meyer was shot, and right at the time?”
“He knows Irving Kezar, too, and he owns the restaurant I tailed Meyer and Kezar from Monday night.”
“Give me the Wood girl’s address,” Gazzo said.
I gave it. “I’ll meet you there.”
I got a taxi and was waiting in front of the Ukrainian bar when Gazzo’s unmarked car pulled up. I didn’t see any of Andy’s men, but, then, I wouldn’t expect to. There was light up in 4-B. We went up.
Harold Wood opened the door. He looked like one of those survivors of some bloody battle you see in war photos-eyes glazed, face exhausted. He only glanced at Gazzo as we went in, his mind too busy on other things, his private anguish.
Diana sat in the living room. It had seemed like a nice, cozy room to me before, but now it looked poor and bare. Now I knew who her man was, and what living rooms he could give her. Gazzo stared at her, as if nothing I had told him had made him realize how beautiful she really was. She’d been crying. It only made her look better. Rosy, and sad, and vulnerable.
She saw me. “I know you! You tried to pick me up in-”
“I was tailing you, Mrs. Wood. Dan Fortune.”
“Follo
wing you,” Hal Wood explained. “He’s a detective.”
“For Pappas’s daughter,” I said. “She doesn’t like you.”
She shrank back. “He told me about her. Mia. I… I don’t want to hurt her, or his wife, or… anyone. But-”
She was in a battle inside. Not easy for a girl like her. A face in the crowd. She hadn’t planned it this way, but…?
Gazzo took over. “You were with Pappas Monday evening? Who else was with him? Did he talk about a Sid Meyer? Do you maybe know Sid Meyer? When you left Le Cerf Agile that evening with Pappas, where’d you go? Did he maybe stop near Seventieth Street, pick up two men?”
She seemed dazed. Gazzo’s words hammered at her. His trademark-Captain Mouth. He never uses one word when ten will do. People say that when Gazzo starts talking at you you’re through. You tell more than a week of rubber-hoses would have gotten.
“I… I won’t talk about it,” Diana said. “It’s private.”
“Nothing’s private with Pappas,” Gazzo said.
She flinched. “Who are you?”
“Captain Gazzo, police. You’ll be seeing a lot of police, Mrs. Wood. You better get used to it, or drop Pappas.”
She resisted. “He told me about that. I don’t have to tell you anything. I don’t know anything. You badger him!”
“You know who he is, Diana?” I said. “What he does?”
Her voice was low, small. “Yes.”
“Dope, loan sharking, terror, extortion, murder?” I said.
“No!” she cried. “No! He said you’d all say those things. They’re lies! You can’t prove them! Why don’t you put him in jail if it’s true? Perhaps some-” She stopped. She was an ordinary girl, but she lived in today’s world, and she wasn’t blind or stupid. Her voice was fierce. “Lies! I don’t care!”
It hung out of her, naked and restless, the need I had seen in her. Like a child suddenly dazzled by life, by possibilities she had never known. She wanted more, the world here and now. She wanted “bigness.” And she could have it, that was the key. Suddenly, it was there to take.
“You hate him because he does things,” she said. “He’s strong. Strong men aren’t always nice. I don’t care, he’s nice to me. You have to do things in life, not just dream and whine. Sometimes people are hurt. The losers.”
That was Andy Pappas talking. She’d listened the last months, and heard. Because she wanted to hear it. She wanted her share. Like a pit in her. And she had discovered her power-the power of a woman to have what she wanted with nothing more than what she had to give to the right man.
“I don’t care about your damned love life,” Gazzo said. “I’ve got a murder, and I want to know what happened when you were with Pappas Monday evening.”
She winced at the word murder, but she’d made her decision already. It wasn’t true. An ancient female decision, necessary to survive in bloodier days, and maybe still.
“Nothing happened,” she said. “We… we drove to New Jersey, the shore. He has… a house there.” She didn’t look at Hal. “He was with me the whole time. All… the time.”
“You learn fast, Mrs. Wood,” Gazzo said. He turned to Hal. “Fortune says you tailed her, too. Did you tail her on Monday?”
“No,” Hal said. He watched only Diana.
“I didn’t see him, Captain,” I said.
Gazzo nodded. “Okay. I’ll see you, Dan.”
He left, and I sat down. Hal Wood sat close to Diana. I lit a cigarette, tried to pretend I wasn’t there. For Hal I wasn’t there, only Diana was. Small and blonde, nervous, on the edge of crying again. They had been married six years, and she had thought she loved Hal. Things go wrong, happen.
“I don’t feel much like living,” Hal said, hit out.
“Don’t,” she said. “There really are a lot of things worth living for, Hal.”
“Without me around. I know.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to,” Hal said.
He reached out to touch her hand. She let him. Six years is a long time. She still wore her wedding ring, a cheap band, but there was a large diamond on her right hand. Hal touched the diamond, stroked it.
“Did you buy that for yourself?” Hal said.
She looked away. “No.”
They sat silent. Hal looked around as if he hoped a waiter would appear with a drink. I thought of all the couples I’d seen sitting silent in restaurants, saying nothing, or only a few commonplace words without meaning. Silent because everything had been said long ago, or because they didn’t have the words to say what hadn’t yet been said.
“You could have told me first, said what you wanted,” Hal said.
Her blue eyes were wet. “It wouldn’t have helped.”
“I suppose not,” Hal said.
“I’m thirty, Hal. I have to try to-” She brushed at her eyes. “Something just went wrong. At first… I don’t know, I want things, Hal. You don’t. It all changed.”
“Just like that?”
“No, not just like that.”
He still held her hand, stroked it.
“You stopped biting your nails,” he said.
She took her hand away.
“I didn’t notice,” he said.
“You have your painting, you don’t want much else,” Diana said. “You make a woman feel you wish you didn’t need her.”
“Do I?” he said.
“Wrapped in yourself. You won’t try. When I had doubts, tried to talk about us, you pushed me away as if I had to love our life a hundred percent or I was zero.”
“I’m not rich, successful. He is.”
“You won’t try! Not for me, and not for success! The world isn’t perfect, so you won’t try in it!”
“Are you going to marry him, Diana?”
I watched her. She looked down at her hands, twisted the new diamond ring. She shivered. Was it from doubt, uneasiness, ecstasy, excitement, or all of them combined? Her chance.
“He’s exciting, Hal,” she said, soft and aware that she was hurting him, but unable to stop. “All that power. He’s alive, successful. We… can do things. You and I never did anything. I… he scares me sometimes, a little, but maybe a woman should be a little scared of a man. I want to live, Hal.”
I saw the words hit him like blows. His boyish face was calm, intense-almost too calm. But I guess it hurt.
“You must have lived the last three days,” he said.
She was up. Looked down at him. He was being nasty. Women expect too much of men. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
“When we married, you were different,” she said. “You wanted me then, us together. Maybe we weren’t ourselves then.”
“Myself,” Hal said. “The complete failure.”
“You don’t have to be! You’re a good painter!”
“You have to bolster the egos of men you kick?”
“Your ego doesn’t need any bolstering!”
He glared up at her, seemed to understand her better than I did. To me it all sounded like a contradiction, just words.
“I wasn’t important enough to you, Hal, and too important. Both. You clung to me as if I was your only contact with the world. But that was all I was, a rope to hang onto. If the rope didn’t support you enough, wasn’t perfect, throw it away!”
Hal said, “Don’t go to him, Diana. Stay. I’ll-”
“I have to live for myself, Hal.”
“With a gangster? A cheat and conniver? A dirty-”
Her face was white. Her coat lay on a chair. She got it, walked through the kitchen and out. I heard her footsteps going fast down the stairs. Hal Wood seemed to listen to them.
“Will he marry her, Dan?”
“He says he will,” I said.
“You know him? Personally? What’s he like? I mean-”
“He’s all she says he is, and everything Gazzo and I say he is, too. Racketeer, terrorist and killer. But not with his own hands anymore. He’s not crazy. He won’t hurt
her.”
“He just buys murders, orders them? Like a general?”
“Hal,” I said, “don’t fight him. I mean it. If Diana wants what Pappas can give her, you’ve lost her already.”
I wanted to say-forget her, she’s not worth it, she’s not for you. But love doesn’t depend on the nature of the person loved, it depends on the nature of the one who loves. He wanted her because of what he was, it didn’t matter what she was.
“Just let him ride roughshod?”
“That’s the way it is.”
“Are you afraid of him, Dan? Is everyone?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I’d fight him if it’d help. It won’t. It’s not Andy, it’s her. Let her go.”
He nodded. “If it’s what she wants. For her.”
“Good,” I said. “Hal, take a vacation. Go somewhere.”
“You think I’m in danger, Dan?”
“No, I don’t, but you never know. Take the vacation, find an interest. There’s a girl in your office, Emily Green, she likes you. Give her a break. A woman who wants you is better than one who doesn’t. It’s not easy, but try.”
Hal grinned, at least his mouth did. “Maybe I will.”
I left.
CHAPTER 10
Gazzo was waiting for me in his car. He leaned out.
“You get anything?”
“No,” I said. “You going to talk to Mia Morgan?”
“You mean because Sid Meyer wanted to talk to her? She’d only deny meeting him, and for Pappas’s kid I’d need a court paper I can’t get on what I have. You want a ride?”
I got in, and Gazzo told his driver to go to my address. As we drove, I watched the cold city in the night, the snow all but gone now. Gazzo watched me.
“You think Mia Morgan is more than a crazy daughter, Dan?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you look into that?”
“I think I will,” Gazzo said.
He dropped me at my tenement, drove off. I heard the car door open, and saw the short man. Yellow-gloves Charley this time. I saw now that his face was swarthy, with small, neat features like a cat-cruel and arrogant. A strutter, without Pappas’s finesse. Or maybe he was just unsure of his status.
“Come on,” he said.
The black car drove to the East Side and stopped in front of Morgan Crafts. We went up to Mia Morgan’s apartment. The girl stood in the center of all her sleek, bright plastic, her pale-olive face looking younger than usual. The big, dark eyes and full mouth were a study in mixed emotions-uneasiness, an impotent rage, and defiance.
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