Silent Scream df-6

by Michael Collins

  Stern said, “You still think of drugs, smuggling? I warned you more than once, Fortune.”

  “The two of you have the contacts, the opportunity, and Mia’s her father’s daughter,” I said.

  “No,” Stern snapped, “she is not! Not that way.”

  Stern was angry. John Albano was worried, silent in his chair. Mia shook her head violently.

  “I hired you to make my mother see the truth, stand up for herself! He made her no better than a slave!”

  “Then was divorcing her,” I said. “Abandon her, dirty the family honor. How much Sicily is in you, Mia? Or plain America-the family money? Was it too much, the divorce? Avenge your mother, the family name? Stern there would do a lot for you, I think, and he could have handled it if I know training.”

  Stern almost smiled. “It would not have been difficult. But I did not kill them. You are mistaken.”

  Before I could answer, the doorbell rang. Mia answered it. Two men stepped inside, one on either side of the door. The same two who’d “talked” to me in the alley. Charley Albano, small and dapper and lazily important, came in behind them. He pulled at his yellow gloves, smiled. He saw me and stopped smiling.

  “You don’t listen so good, Fortune?” he said.

  The new authority was clear in his voice-very clear, as if informing the world, insisting. An authority he wasn’t really sure of yet. Pushing it.

  “Andy’s dead, Charley,” I said. “I’ve got clients who-”

  “Mr. Albano! I’m not dead. Beat it.”

  Old John Albano was half-hidden in his chair behind Levi Stern. Charley, arrogant, had looked at no one yet but Mia and me. He had not seen his father. The old man’s swarthy face was bland, but his dark eyes seemed to lock on his son.

  “Fortune’s working for me, Charley,” John Albano said.

  Charley stiffened. His cat face turned toward the sound of his father’s voice. Levi Stern moved out of the way. In his chair, the massive old man’s calm was suddenly patriarchal, as if, facing his son, the old Sicilian taproot held him, too. (We forget how close we all are to our tribal pasts. A thousand years to the fur-wrapped Saxons, less to the horned Vikings and my own savage Poles in the swamps beyond the Elbe. Stare alone into a fire some night, and if you don’t feel the dark, wild forest all around you, it’s because you hide from it.) Charley Albano felt it, the grip of time, and I saw some of the starch go out of the dapper underboss.

  “Hey, Papa,” he said, “come sta? Nice to see you.”

  “You’ve got some business with Mia, Carlo?” the old man said.

  “Private, okay, padrone?” The title of respect was for his two men, to save his own face. “The way it is, you know?”

  “I know how it is, Carlo,” John Albano said curtly. “I say what’s my business. My family is my business, always.”

  “That depends on the business,” Charley said. “Right, Mia?”

  He watched the girl. She looked away from him, her big eyes nervous. She was scared again, a tone of warning in his voice. He nodded to the wreck of the apartment.

  “Somebody’s looking for something. Maybe Bagnio?”

  I said, “What makes you think that?”

  He ignored me. I was a bug he could step on, prove his power, and he went on studying the searched apartment.

  “Wood’s place, too, I heard. Some cover-up, maybe.” Charley shrugged, smiled his cruel smile. “It don’t matter, a dead man.”

  John Albano said, “You think Bagnio killed Andy, Carlo?”

  “A dead man. Who else gets past Bagnio and the kid upstairs?” Charley said. He pulled at his yellow gloves again, studied the elegant stitching. “But not Bagnio alone, you know? I figure someone got to Max, bought him. Fooled him, could be. Could be that’s what he’s after, proof to nail who bought him. That party’s dead, too, if he ain’t real careful.”

  “Avenge Andy, Carlo?” John Albano said. “You care so much about Andy?”

  “The family, right? Mi compare.”

  “Compare? You and Andy?” John Albano said. He laughed. “An errand boy, that’s what you were to Pappas. Stupid!”

  Charley’s cat face paled, the dark skin yellow. His eyes said-anyone else, I’d… Anyone else! But his father? What would they think, his men, his bosses?

  “Look at you, all broken up,” John Albano said. “You don’t give a damn about Andy. You’re so hungry I can smell it. You think you’ll take Andy’s place? You?”

  I said, “How much did you want to be boss, Charley? You were playing cards that night, right? With two witnesses. Them over there?” I nodded to his two gunmen. “Nice witnesses.”

  He was smaller than I, younger, and he moved quickly. Close, looking up at me, his breath on my face, his hands clenched into fists inside the yellow gloves. Breathing hard and close.

  “Never, cripple! Never say it, not to no one!”

  Charley was young, and John Albano was old, but the old man had twice the strength still, and the same speed. He came out of his chair, swung his heavy fist against Charley’s head in the same motion. Not a punch, a clout. A blow swung like a hammer on his son’s ear, disdainful. Some old man.

  Charley staggered, fell over a chair, came up with his pistol in his hand. John Albano took the gun away from him, flung it across the room.

  “Out!” the old man said. “Stay away from Fortune, and stay away from Mia. Far away! Now get out.”

  Charley’s two men watched. One of them picked up the gun, gave it to Charley. The dapper sub-boss tried to save some small face:

  “Okay, I’m through here anyway, right, Mia?” he said to the girl, and to John Albano, “Be careful, old man. No more.”

  His two men followed him out.

  In the apartment, Levi Stern smiled at the old man. I mopped sweat from my face. I wasn’t so happy. Charley Albano had been humiliated, and I’d seen it. Mia wasn’t happy either. She sat down, and her hands shook. John Albano stood over her.

  “What did he want, Mia?” the old man said. “He scares you. Why? Is Fortune right? You do know something?”

  Her defiance was gone now, she almost looked her age. A scared girl.

  “Charley says Bagnio killed Andy and Diana Wood,” I said. “But not alone. He hinted he knew who else. The party better be careful, he said. A hint to you, Mia? Did he see you with Max Bagnio?”

  “What would that prove, Dan?” John Albano said. “Bagnio was close to Andy. He’d have been with Mia more than once.”

  “He spoke to us for Mr. Pappas,” Stern said.

  “All right,” I agreed, “but Charley was here for a reason, a warning. Were you around that apartment that night, Mia? You saw something? Found something?”

  She shook her head. “Not that night.”

  “But sometime?” I said. “When? What?”

  She looked up at us. “It was nothing, Mr. Fortune. I mean, what could it…?” She took a breath. “The day before. I saw that Irving Kezar come out of the building. Charley was waiting in his car. He made Kezar get into the car with him. They drove off. I mean that was all.”

  “Then why does it scare you?”

  “Charley saw me on the street. Later he found me, told me to forget what I’d seen. I was to tell no one. No one at all.”

  The wrecked room was quiet. I could hear the rain.

  “No one?” John Albano said. “Not even Andy?”

  “No one,” Mia said, watched the floor.

  I said, “You better stay here, Albano. I’ll call you.”

  I left John Albano talking low to Mia. Levi Stern watched them both silently.

  CHAPTER 16

  The rain was heavier now, and the big brick apartment building on East Seventieth Street seemed dingier than it had on the night Sid Meyer was blasted out the window. The bare lobby was cold and damp, and no one had bothered to mop up a puddle in the elevator. It was still a shabby place for Irving Kezar to live.

  Jenny Kezar answered my ring at 6-C. She wasn’t wearing her old
blue coat this time, but the difference was barely noticeable. She wore an old green-print housedress with two buttons open to show her ample breasts in a stained bra. Her gray hair hung in strands, and her eyes were still dull. One of the eyes was also black-yellow, her mouth was split and puffed, and the stains on her exposed bra were blood.

  “What do you want?” she said, her voice sullen.

  “Just some talk, Mrs. Kezar,” I said. “Dan Fortune. We-”

  “I remember you.”

  “Fine,” I said, “let’s talk inside.”

  She let me push in, walked away into the dumpy living room where Sid Meyer had died, while I closed the door. It was still a shock to see that she was only in her late forties, had very nice legs. Take off twenty-five pounds, add some decent clothes, fix her face and hair, and put some light in her eyes, and she wouldn’t be pretty, but she’d look good enough. A different person. Most women would at least try.

  “Who beat you up, Jenny?” I said. “Kezar?”

  She lit a cigarette. She didn’t offer me one. “If you want Irving, he’s not here.”

  “When will he be?”

  “When he is. I told you already he stays other places.”

  She had, I remembered, and maybe it explained the shabby building. Kezar didn’t really live here. Jenny did. Good enough for her. An early marriage, a place to hang his hat when he needed it, but it was onward and upward for Kezar, the old wife left behind.

  “Why’d he hit you, Jenny?”

  “Why does the sun rise?” she said, then softened it. “We had a fight, who doesn’t? What do you want, Fortune?”

  “Did you know Andy Pappas?”

  “I heard of him, didn’t everyone?”

  “Maybe Sid Meyer knew him, Jenny? Some business?”

  “Not that I know. Sid didn’t swing that high.”

  “But Kezar knew Andy Pappas, swings that high.”

  “Irving knows a lot of people.”

  “Was he in some deal with Pappas?”

  “You think Irving talks business with me?”

  A rhetorical question-wasn’t it obvious that Kezar would never talk business with the likes of her? But it wasn’t an answer, and she could be just the person Kezar would talk business with. The sounding board, a comfortable haven for blowing off steam, talking out frustrations. We all need some release. But it was a denial, too, and she wasn’t about to tell me anything about Irving Kezar’s business.

  “It’s three murders now, Jenny. Irving could be in danger.”

  She smoked, blew smoke. “How?”

  “Does he know Charley Albano? Had business with Albano?”

  “No!”

  A flat denial. And a contradiction. Kezar didn’t talk business to her, but she knew he had no business with Charley Albano. She wasn’t dumb, she heard it herself. A mistake.

  “I don’t know nothing,” she said. “Leave me alone.”

  “Kezar does have business with Charley Albano, doesn’t he?”

  She shook her head, not denying but resisting. Her bruised face seemed to wilt, collapse.

  “I can’t talk about Irving,” she said, almost pleading now. “Do me a favor, Fortune. Go away, let me alone.”

  “A deal with Charley Albano, Jenny, that Pappas didn’t know about? Sid Meyer mixed in it? Behind Pappas’s back?”

  “No.” She shook her head violently. “No!”

  She was afraid. But was it for herself, or for Kezar? Afraid of him, or for him?

  “You’re afraid of him? Kezar? Or is it Charley Albano?”

  “I won’t talk to you! I don’t have to!” she said. “You get away from me! Go on!”

  I went. She would tell me nothing now. Maybe later, when I knew more. But there was something, I was sure. Was it something Hal Wood knew, too? Not aware he knew?

  There was no answer when I rang the vestibule bell of Hal’s St. Marks Place apartment. A small gnawing began in my stomach. Had he been gone all night? Emily Green, too? The vestibule door was unlocked. I went up.

  A note was taped to the door of 4-B: See Super, 1-B.

  I went down. It was the rear apartment off the vestibule. A big man with a red face and a can of beer opened the door.

  “I’m looking for Hal Wood,” I said.

  “A terrible thing,” the super said, sad. “You’re Mr.-?”

  “Dan Fortune.”

  He smiled, looked me up and down as if I’d been described to him. I’m not hard to describe.

  “He called me, Wood, gave me a message for you, said it was important. He said you’d have identification.”

  I showed him my license.

  “Private eye, eh? Must be interesting work. Now me, I-”

  “The message,” I said. “It’s important?”

  It was a dismal day, no baseball on TV in February, and he wanted someone to talk to. He nodded. “He said meet him down on Sixth Street between First and Second. A candy store.”

  I thanked him, walked south in the rain. A steady downpour now, washing away the last of the grimy snow. On the block of Sixth Street there was only one candy store.

  “Dan!”

  A loud whisper, urgent through the rain. Hal stood back in a doorway next to the candy store. Only partly sheltered from the driving rain, his duffel coat was soaked. Small things tie people together. We had our old duffel coats in common. I joined him in the doorway. He was watching a building across the street.

  “It’s Emily,” Hal said. “She got a phone call at my place about three hours ago. A girl friend, she said, but she looked scared to me, so when she went out right after, I followed her. She went into that tenement over there, the one with the Polish butcher shop. She’s been there ever since. I called you at your office, but got no answer, so left the message with my super.”

  The building was a flophouse, with blank shades at the windows instead of curtains, and raw meat hanging in the butcher shop.

  “It was a woman who called?”

  “I don’t know, Dan. Emily was taking all calls. Protect me in case someone wanted to find out if I was home.”

  “You weren’t home last night.”

  “We went to Emily’s folks in Queens. Got back late.”

  “She’s been in there three hours? What apartment?”

  “I don’t know. No mailboxes. Cut up in rooms, I guess.”

  “You saw no one else you know go in or out?”

  His intense eyes were uneasy. “I’m not sure. I thought maybe I did, but it’s crazy. What would Emily-?”

  “Who?”

  “That little guy who shot at me, but I didn’t get a good-”

  “Max Bagnio? He went in there?”

  “Came out. He walked off toward Second Avenue.”

  I was out of the doorway while he still talked. He caught up. Me, Mia Morgan, now Emily Green. And Emily had gone on her own. There were no mailboxes in the decrepit entrance, but the door was open, and a bell was marked: Manager. I rang. A door opened far back, and a woman leaned in the opening.

  I held up a five. “A small man, flat nose, scarred eyes. Probably took the room about four days ago. He owes money.”

  “Second floor, room fourteen.” She took the five, closed her door.

  We went up. Two skinny cats scurried away down the feebly lit corridor, all the room doors had so many layers of paint they looked diseased, and the toilets were in the hall. Room 14 was at the rear. This time I wished I had my old gun. Bagnio could have returned unseen in the rain, or by another way.

  “If he’s in there, has a gun,” I said, “I’ll try to grab the gun, you grab him. Got it? Don’t wait.”

  Hal nodded. At the door, he stood to the left out of sight. I knocked. Nothing happened. I listened. There was no sound. The lock was an ordinary room-key lock, not even a Yale. I backed, lowered my shoulder, nodded to Hal, and hit the door. It burst open with a crash against a bureau. I caught it on the rebound, and Hal was in the room with me.

  A single room with a narrow b
ed, a table and some wooden chairs, and a hot plate. Max Bagnio wasn’t there. Emily Green was. I let the door go. Hal sat down on a bare chair.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Hal said. “Oh, Christ!”

  Emily Green lay on the cot, her hands folded, blood all over the hands and her plain gray dress, and her head smashed in. I bent down. She had been hit on the head with something heavy, more than once. Hard blows, angry or determined. One or two would have knocked her out, probably killed her. The others had been insurance-make sure she was dead.

  “Me!” Hal said, held his face. “Touch Hal Wood and die!”

  “Shut up!” I snapped. I was edgy, too. What’s wrong with us? A mistake of nature? Two young girls. Diana Wood had wanted the wrong man. What mistake had Emily Green made? The same one?

  “It’s me, isn’t it?” Hal said. “You want to commit suicide, just get close to Hal Wood. What’s so important about me?”

  I touched her. The arms were limp, and the body. A faint stiffness to her jaw. Two hours, maybe a little more. Not much more, she’d only been here three hours.

  “What the hell does he want?” Hal said. “Bagnio?”

  There was no telephone. “Go down and call Captain Gazzo.”

  I gave him the number. He was glad to go. He hadn’t looked at Emily Green after the first moment. Who could blame him? Me, I’m experienced with death, sure I am. Play detective, Dan boy, find a perfect clue like a Scotland Yard hotshot. Was it even Max Bagnio’s room? Hal hadn’t been sure.

  Hal could have been sure. There wasn’t much in the room, but what there was belonged to Bagnio. A small suitcase under the cot with two extra guns, ammo, two pairs of black cotton gloves, one clean shirt, a silver-mounted hairbrush set-initialed: M.B.-and one of those cheap arcade snapshots of Bagnio with a girl who looked fifteen. Some bread, canned meat, and two quarts of Seagram’s V.O., one half empty.

  I guess they were clues. Anyway, they were all there was. No weapon. Not a surprise, Bagnio had probably used his big. 45. Hal returned.

  “Captain Gazzo said to wait.”

  I said, “It’s Bagnio’s room all right.”

  Hal sat down again as if his legs couldn’t be trusted to keep him up. “We… haven’t even buried Diana yet. The cops only let her folks take her yesterday. Bury her tomorrow, in Queens. She hated Queens. Both of them from Queens. I guess I better stay away from girls from Queens.”