Silent Scream

by Michael Collins

  By ten o’clock she hadn’t appeared, and I was freezing in my doorway. The wind blew paper along the dark gutters. There was a Czech-American Club in a store front up the street. Only old men went in. By midnight the old men were still inside their club, and the blonde had not appeared.

  I stamped my feet in the doorway, blew on my numb hand. A few old men in shabby middle-European overcoats came out of the Czech club. On the street they waved their arms and argued. No—debated. The old-world politics of ancient convictions and utopian theories, the dream of power to the people in a new world. The faith and hope of an older, simpler generation.

  Le Cerf Agile closed at 2 A.M. The blonde never came.

  Next morning my arm hurt, so I stayed in bed and thought about Marty. That helped nothing. At noon I got up and went down to St. Vincent’s for an X-ray. It was negative, I had an early dinner, and was in my doorway again at five.

  The old men gathered at their club to go on arguing the old politics that was their haven in a world that had failed them. A second-floor Polish dance hall hammered polkas into the dark. I watched and waited. At midnight the blonde still hadn’t shown. I couldn’t waste another day. I went into Le Cerf Agile.

  The foyer was bright, rich, and warm. To the left the dining room was dim and plush with maroon velvet. At the candle-lit tables the men reeked of money and confidence, the women of care and confidence. The men were older, the women young. A small bar and cocktail lounge was to the right. The checkroom woman was gray-haired and dressed in black, and the maître wore an old-fashioned tail suit at his lighted stand. He looked at me, but didn’t approach me. I wasn’t dinner. I went into the bar.

  A bottle of beer was two dollars. The only other people at the bar were a group of five men and five women. They stopped talking, and the men all stared at me. They didn’t seem to like me being there. Neither did the bartender. When I showed him the snapshot—with a ten-dollar bill—he said that maybe the blonde came in sometimes, and maybe not. He didn’t know her name, and he didn’t take the ten. There was an aura to the bar I didn’t like, like a private club.

  “Mister!” A man waved to me from a table. “Join me.”

  He indicated a chair. I took my beer and sat down.

  “I heard you asking for a lady,” the man said. “I’m a regular in here. Maybe I can help. Can I see the pic?”

  He was short and paunchy in an expensive gray suit, beard shadow and acne scars on his round face. His pudgy hands were soft and manicured, with three diamond rings. He had friendly eyes that blinked as he looked at the snapshot.

  “Sure,” he said. “She comes here. Nice-looking woman.”

  He smiled. It was an ingratiating smile without humor, and his teeth were bad. Teeth that had had no care when he was young, and the kind of smile used to cover hard thinking. The tone of his voice asked what the blonde was to me.

  “You know her name?” I said.

  He continued to smile. “I’m Irving Kezar, Mr.—?” When I didn’t give my name, he went right on smiling, but stopped being subtle. “What’s your interest in the lady?”

  “None. It’s her car. I’m a repo man.”

  “So? Well, that’s hard work. I like to help a man who works hard.” He took a small, monogrammed notebook from his pocket, wrote in it with a gold pencil, tore out the page. He held the page. “You have a license?”

  I showed him. He nodded, gave me the page. I read: Diana Wood. Brown and Dunlap. His smile was real now. He had my name.

  “Brown and Dunlap, that’s where she works. Heard her say it once. I like to help, Dan.” He emphasized my name as if to make sure I knew he had it. “But I like to get help, too. No favors, worth your while. Say, five hundred?”

  “For what?”

  “Who you’re working for.”

  “That’s a lot of money for just a repossession agency.”

  He leaned across the small table. “Look, I know how to use information, no names. A bonus for you, no danger, no one knows.”

  “What’s important about this Diana Wood?”

  He took out his wallet. “Just name your client.”

  “Acme Collection Agency.”

  It was a company I really did repo work for. Maybe I could make five hundred dollars. I couldn’t. He put his wallet away.

  “I’m here most every night sometime,” he said.

  I left him lighting a cigar and studying my face as if to remember it. I felt a chill. He already had my name. On the avenue I hailed a taxi. It was safer.

  In my five cold rooms I got the coffee ready for morning, and went to bed. I lay awake. Irving Kezar hadn’t believed I was a repo man for a second. Somehow, Kezar knew no repo man would be after Diana Wood’s car. He was sure. How?

  CHAPTER 3

  Brown and Dunlap, Investments, had offices on lower Madison Avenue. Their sixth-floor suite was impressive but reserved, as befitted a financial adviser. The Personnel Department was a one-man cubicle with files and a desk. The one man at the desk was a woman in her fifties. I showed my license, asked to see Diana Wood’s file. The woman was alarmed.

  “Mrs. Wood? Is something wrong?”

  So Diana Wood was married. Or had been.

  “She’s been given as a reference,” I explained. “A man up for a position in a defense company. Government contracts, so we make a security investigation, cross-check references. Routine, ma’am, but confidential, you understand.”

  She nodded, both impressed and relieved. It usually works. Alarm them first with a detective’s license and the hint of trouble, ease off and reassure them by saying it’s routine, then add a pinch of national security. Most people are still honest and unsuspicious. Once they see no harm for a friend, they’ll be helpful. It gets harder every year, people more and more suspicious, but it still works. The woman got the file, went out to give me privacy.

  The file was brief: Diana Tucker Wood. Address: 145 St. Marks Place, Manhattan. Born: Jan. 22, 1943, Jackson Heights, Queens, N.Y. Married. Husband: Harold Walter Wood, commercial artist. Education: Bryant High School—1960; Hofstra University—B.A., 1964. Employment: Four secretarial jobs, 1964–69, all with national firms; public relations asst., Hardware Institute, 1969; Brown and Dunlap as public relations asst., 1971. Salary: $9,500/yr.

  I lit a cigarette. The typical record of a young, educated New York girl. Routine. Lower- or middle-middle-class New York high school, local university, medium-rent East Village apartment, married, both working at small careers. One vague question: thirty, no children. But a lot of career girls didn’t even marry until twenty-eight-or-nine.

  “You’re a detective?”

  The man came into the cubicle, stared at me. His voice was sharp and stiff with an edge of annoyed authority.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “I’m a partner in this firm, Lawrence Dunlap. Exactly what do you want with Mrs. Wood?”

  Dunlap was the very model of a modern financial adviser. (Gilbert and Sullivan—knowing quotes like that is what makes me not quite regular in Chelsea.) About forty-five, Dunlap was trim, handsome, an inch under six feet, his gray-brown hair medium short and barbered at least weekly. Anglo-Saxon handsome, youthful, except for a pair of black-rimmed glasses. The kind of man who plays handball every afternoon at The Yale Club.

  “Reference check,” I said, repeated what I’d told the personnel woman. I hadn’t lulled her completely. She’d gone to him.

  “Private detective?” Dunlap said. I could see his shoulders relax, his breath let out. “I see. A job security check.”

  He tried to cover his worry and relief, but he was a lousy actor. He wanted to believe me, didn’t even ask for my license. He looked at my duffel coat, at my missing arm, and smiled. I couldn’t be anyone to worry about. But Dunlap had been worried about someone. Police? The SEC? Someone else? Or was it only the normal concern of an investment firm that had to be above reproach, would worry about the hint of an employee in trouble?

  “Confidential,�
�� I said. I didn’t want Diana Wood alerted.

  “Of course,” he nodded.

  I thanked him and left. I was pretty sure he’d be discreet, that was habit in his business, unless he had more than an employer’s interest in Diana Wood. If he told her about me, that might tell me a lot. I wondered if Lawrence Dunlap wore a homburg, the man in the snapshot? It would explain his alarm. But so would a lot of other things.

  I rode the elevator down, settled in a corner of the lobby. I held the snapshot to be sure I’d know Diana Wood, but I needn’t have bothered. She wasn’t easy to miss. About twelve-fifteen she came out of the elevator with two other pretty-enough girls, and stood out like Cinderella among her sisters.

  Hatless, her thick blonde hair shone on her shoulders. She wore the same coat—bold black and green stripes. An expensive coat, too dressy for the office. As most young-married career girls, she probably had one good winter coat she wore everywhere. As she passed, I saw her soft, cover-girl skin and perfect face. Her large blue eyes looked happy as she chattered to the girls.

  I followed them to a side-street luncheonette, had a burger at the counter while they ate cottage-cheese salads at a table and went on talking. They laughed a lot. There was something diffident about Diana Wood’s laugh, almost embarrassed, as if she didn’t like to draw attention to herself.

  After lunch I tailed them window shopping, in and out of a bookstore and three dress shops, and back to their building. They went up, and I took my place in the corner of the lobby. Except for her face and body, Diana Wood seemed like any girl of her type in New York. A little shyer and reserved, maybe.

  On the dot of five the elevators began emptying in hordes. Diana Wood appeared. Lawrence Dunlap was with her. Camera in hand, I tailed them out in the crowd. They stopped at the first corner, stood talking. I didn’t think they were discussing me, they smiled too much. I snapped my picture.

  A blue Cadillac with New Jersey plates drove up. A garage man slid to the passenger side. Lawrence Dunlap took the wheel of the Cadillac, drove off west. Diana Wood walked on south. By the time I’d tailed her to Fourteenth Street and First Avenue, I realized she was going to walk home. She did—with stops at a butcher and an Italian grocery.

  Number 145 St. Marks Place was a renovated tenement—two, three and four room apartments—on a low-income street, fire escapes in front. Mr. and Mrs. Harold W. Wood lived in apartment 4-B. There was a Ukrainian bar across the street, two steps down with a store window. I ordered a bottle of beer—fifty cents here—and watched number 145 through the store window.

  At seven o’clock I had a ham sandwich, and at eight-ten Diana Wood came out of 145 with a man in bell-bottom corduroys and a duffel coat like mine. Under the street light at First Avenue, I saw the man clearly. About my height, five-ten, he had a lean body with good shoulders like a welterweight, an ordinary young-looking face, but gray in his long brown hair. Maybe thirty-five or so. His face was intense as he talked to the girl, ruddy and lively. Diana Wood wore slim hip-hugger pants and a jacket, both in black velvet, as if they were going to a party.

  Before I could set my Leica for the light, they hailed a taxi, and I lost them. There was nothing to do but go back to the bar and wait. A long wait, and the Poles and Ukrainians in the bar were friendly. By midnight I was Fortunowski again, back with my Polish ancestors, singing songs from Krakow and Kiev. Diana Wood and the man returned at 1 A.M.

  At 2 A.M. the lights went out in 4-B. I went home. I watched a TV movie for a time, and thought about Diana Wood.

  Except for her looks she seemed an ordinary girl. Her job was no more than a glorified secretary, par for women. The intense welterweight had to be Harold Wood, seemed just as ordinary. Two faces in the crowd. Yet people were concerned about her, even alarmed—Mia Morgan, Captain Levi Stern, John Albano, Irving Kezar, and maybe Lawrence Dunlap.

  She’d moved around, but six jobs in eight years wasn’t unusual for New York, and nothing connected her to imports, airlines, or Mia Morgan. Nothing connected her to an operator like Kezar. Something was wrong—a mistake, or something hidden, lurking unseen like the bottom of an iceberg.

  The next day was Saturday, but I was in the Ukrainian bar by 8 A.M. The Woods came out at noon. I tailed them in a round of grocery shopping for what looked like a party. It was.

  Starting at 8 P.M., some fifteen people went up to 4-B. They were casual and shaggy young men and women, all carrying something—bottles, paintings, small sculptures. Music drifted down from 4-B until after 2 A.M. Then the last guests swayed away in the cold night, and 4-B was dark again before three.

  I had recognized none of the guests.

  The Ukrainian bar didn’t open Sunday morning. I had to watch from a doorway. They came down at one o’clock.

  It was sunny but cold. He wore his duffel, she wore an old coat, and they wandered west to Washington Square and went into a coffee shop. I took a distant table, had a capuccino, and saw the first odd actions. He stirred his coffee too much, talked without looking at her. She bit her nails and watched him. Her face was soft, even tender. Once she reached out to hold his arm—gentle, comforting. Then he seemed to revive, grinned, and they finished their coffee and left.

  On the street he strode out, pulled her along in the bright cold. They looked in shops, and I got my picture outside a store-front art gallery. Not once did they glance around like people with anything to hide. After some more window shopping, they walked home in the thin late afternoon sun.

  They didn’t come out again that night.

  On Monday they walked to the subway together. She got off at Twenty-third Street, he stayed on. I followed her to Brown and Dunlap, settled in the lobby.

  When she came down for lunch, she was alone. It was my sixth day. I decided to plunge, meet her—the “man on the make” approach. With her face it would have happened before, and it would cover me. Nice girls never suspect a man of more than one role at a time—a wolf couldn’t be a detective, too. When she took her salad to an empty table in the luncheonette, I joined her.

  “Can I sit down, Diana?” I sat, smiled. “Dan Connors, I got your name at your office. Look, I don’t usually do this, but I had to meet you. I’ve watched you around here. Mad?”

  She was startled, but only for an instant—it had happened before. Annoyed, but she smiled, too. A nervous smile. She was a nice person, soft, and she didn’t want to hurt me.

  “I’m sorry, Mr.… Connors, but—”

  “Make it Dan,” I plunged ahead. “You’re in PR. I admire a career girl. I’m in import, get to travel a lot. The Far East, Africa, South America. Native crafts and stuff.”

  I watched for some reaction, a tie-in to Mia Morgan. I got a reaction, but not what I had hoped for. Her eyes glistened, went distant. As if seeing Africa, the Far East.

  “I haven’t traveled much, Mr. Connors. Now I really—”

  “A girl like you?” I implied she could get a lot with what she had. “I go everywhere, never even time to get married.”

  She looked around as if wondering how to get rid of me, but I’d hit a nerve in her, too. I saw it in her large eyes, in the way she shifted her body. A restlessness, a hunger. The way a small-town child used to look at the trains passing. A hunger for what the world had to offer, a restless sense of self.

  She ate some lettuce. “We plan to travel soon.”

  Maybe because I was a one-dimensional stranger, a man on the make, she showed it now without the complex conflicts we all have. She wanted. With her face, that opened a lot of possibilities. It was there, and then gone, and whatever she wanted wasn’t me.

  “I’m married, Mr. Connors,” she said gently. “So I—”

  “Sure,” I said. “But that boss of yours, Dunlap, he’s a handsome guy. I’ve seen the way he looks at you, right?”

  The shot missed. Worse, it was a mistake. She got up.

  “Please stay away from me,” she said, and walked out.

  Walking away, she made me feel hollow. I liked
her. It made me want to leave her alone. It made me want to know her better, too, maybe help. Besides, I’d been paid for a job.

  So after a while I went back to her lobby. Who knew, maybe if I helped her …? I tried to stop thinking.

  When I saw her again at five, I sensed a change. There was a look in her eyes, she turned north not south, and stopped in a cleaner’s. She came out with a flat box, walked straight to the subway on Park as if the idea of being followed had never occurred to her. A good sign. We rode uptown to Seventy-seventh Street, and I guessed where she was going. I was right—Le Cerf Agile. I had to be careful now, and got lucky. In the lounge she sat with her back to the bar. I slipped onto a corner stool.

  For an hour I nursed my two-dollar beer, and no one came near her. I wondered—a woman with her face alone in a cocktail lounge? Then someone did. I shrank into my collar. It was Irving Kezar. She wasn’t happy to see the short, paunchy man. That didn’t bother Kezar. He touched her arm with his pudgy hand, talked for some twenty minutes, fawning. She said little.

  Then the maître came to her table. She took her box and hurried out without even a nod to Kezar—and without paying her check. Kezar went to the men’s room. I went out to the empty foyer, held the door open a few inches. She was getting into the back seat of a long, black car. I had a glimpse of New Jersey plates as the car drove off.

  I went back to my dark corner of the bar, ordered a second two-dollar beer. I felt rotten.

  I had seen Diana Wood’s eyes as she got into the car. Excited eyes that had to mean a man, and, from the car, a rich man. A man who paid her checks in Le Cerf Agile. Probably a secret evening dress in the box. Or maybe it wasn’t what it seemed.

  Irving Kezar came back to his table, got a telephone, and made a series of calls while I decided whether to question the maître about the black car or lie low and watch Kezar. The choice was made for me—a small, thin man now joined Irving Kezar.