Silent Scream

CHAPTER 13

Albano drove us to St. Marks Place. I saw no one suspicious on the winter night street. We went up. The apartment was a wreck. Even the kitchen had been searched, the rugs pulled up and piled in corners, the closets turned out, the furniture knocked over.

Hal Wood sat on a cot among the paints and mess of his studio. He held his left arm, the shirt torn but little blood. His ruddy face was drawn, and his eyes were tired. Wary eyes, the liveliness gone behind a brittle surface as if he didn’t want anyone to see the shock in them but couldn’t hide it because he couldn’t forget. He almost looked his near-forty years, the gray in his hair no longer a contrast to his young face. I took his arm.

“A scratch,” he said. “I’ve been shot before. It’s okay.”

He was right, a graze. I dropped his arm. He looked up at me, his eyes like cloudy plastic.

“She’s dead, Dan. He killed her. He got her killed.”

“She wanted him,” I said. The hard detective. We all hide ourselves one way or another.

“But-” he said. “I mean… Just because she was there? No real… I mean, just-”

His mouth went on moving for a moment without sound. Almost four days. Talking to himself, thinking, and he was thought out, numb. Emily Green went to stand over him, her hand on his shoulder. He covered her hand with his. She smiled. Not at him, at me. He was hers now. John Albano stood near a wall, silent.

“Maybe not for no reason,” I said. “What happened here?”

Emily Green said, “We came home about a half hour ago. When we opened the door, we saw the mess, and Hal heard a noise in the bedroom. Hal ran into the bedroom, and the man shot him!”

“I just got to the doorway,” Hal said. “He was at the front window with a gun. I did a dive backwards, he only nicked me. I hustled Emily out, but when he didn’t come after us, I went back slow and he was gone. Out the fire escape. He must have come in that way, too. The window was open.”

“You saw him?” John Albano said from the wall.

“I saw him,” Hal said. “A runt, but stocky, like a featherweight. Broken nose, puffed up around the eyes. He could shoot.”

“Bagnio,” Albano said.

“Yeh,” I said. “Little Max, all right. You called the cops?”

Hal shook his head. “I wanted to see you first.”

“Call Captain Gazzo,” I said to Albano. “Centre Street.”

Albano went to the phone out in the living room. Hal sat and held his arm, but it wasn’t the arm that hurt. Emily Green’s eyes were big, soft, happy. The same way Diana had looked at Andy Pappas. The turn of the wheel. Good and bad in everything. The girl looked up, saw me watching, and flushed. But she didn’t flinch. A proper girl, even prim, she couldn’t have had a lot of men, and she wanted this one.

“What was he after, Hal?” I said.

He shook his head. “Not a damned idea. Who is he?”

“Pappas’s top gunman, or was,” I said. “You went on vacation two days before Diana and Pappas were killed?”

“To Woodstock. A painter I know has a cabin up there, he let me and Emily use it. We read the… story in the paper, I called the police right away, we came home. I had to identify her, Dan. They made me… look.”

He was building it, flogging himself, suffering. Maybe because he’d turned to Emily Green so fast. He would settle for what he could have. Most of us do. But we don’t like to face that.

“Who saw you up there?” I said.

Emily Green said, “A lot of people did! In the village!”

“At two A.M.?”

“We were in bed then! Both of us!” the girl said, blushed.

Hal smiled at her. “He has to ask, Em.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Green,” I said. It couldn’t have been easy for her, in Hal’s bed. “All right, what were you doing the last four weeks, Hal?”

He leaned forward, intense. Wallowing in it, the tragic love. Well, why not, if it helped in the end? Purge it, get it out.

“She moved out two days after you saw us last. Pappas could do anything, I guess-get an apartment, furnish it, in two days. He got her a lawyer, too. She filed for the divorce. Mental cruelty, or whatever. I wouldn’t fight her, you know? I took your advice, started seeing Emily. It helped.”

Emily Green touched him, mothering. Albano came back.

“Pappas filed for divorce, too?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t know,” Hal said, hard against Pappas.

Albano said, “In Nevada. He’s got residence there, power. Stella didn’t fight him, either.”

“Not that way anyway,” I said. “What else, Hal?”

“That’s all,” he said. “Worked, saw Emily, drank a little.”

I knew he was lying, had to be. Not because it showed, but because I’d been down the same road more than once.

“Damn it, Hal, tell it! You followed her again, watched her, couldn’t keep away. Doorways across the street from that apartment, in the shadows when they went out, phone calls at midnight. Tell me, Hal, I’ve got to know what Max Bagnio thinks he wants!”

He nodded, miserable. “You know how it is, Dan.”

I knew. “You hung around, watched. What did you see?”

“Nothing, Dan, I swear. I didn’t even know she’d gone to Miami until three days after she went!”

“There has to be something. Bagnio is looking for something, Hal. What he thinks you have or thinks you know.”

John Albano said, “Maybe the girl knew something, Dan. Diana. Maybe Max thinks she told Wood, talked too much.”

“She never talked about Pappas,” Hal said. “Not even his name until after that night Dan was here.”

“There has to be something,” I said. “Think, Hal.”

He shook his head. His mind would have been on Diana.

“There was this older woman at her office,” Hal said. “They had lunch. Diana didn’t talk much. Small woman, dressed up, fat.”

“Stella?” I said to Albano. “She met Diana, went to her?”

Albano said, “She’d try. Andy had girl friends before.”

“Did this woman go to Diana’s new apartment, Hal?” I said.

“No. Some men did, when… Pappas was there. A short, paunchy guy with bad skin and a lot of rings. I remember the rings. Dunlap, too. I guess Dunlap’s her friend, he lied for her.”

Irving Kezar, but I knew he knew Pappas, and Lawrence Dunlap was her friend and boss. I was pretty sure Dunlap had known Andy was her man. They’d probably met at one of his business parties.

“There was a tall guy,” Hal said. “Real tall, and skinny, and ugly. He was hanging around outside a few times.”

John Albano said, “Mia probably visited Andy there. Stern might have waited outside for her.”

“Yeh,” I said. “You didn’t see Max Bagnio with Andy, Hal?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t notice the guys with him much.”

“Something,” I said. I paced. “Small, insignificant. Did you find anything, Hal? Maybe Diana left something.”

“No,” he said, and bitter, “nothing except me.”

Captain Gazzo steps lightly. He was in the apartment before I heard him. Two of his men were behind him. He looked at the wreck, and at all of us. I told him what had happened.

“You all right?” he said to Hal.

“I’m all right. I just wish I knew what Bagnio wanted.”

Gazzo nodded to his men. They began to search the rooms.

“You think Bagnio’s been following you?” Gazzo said.

“I think someone has. I’m not sure it was him.”

“You want protection? I can assign one man.”

“I can’t hide. If he wanted me dead, he could have done it.”

I said, “He’s just after something he thinks Hal has.”

“Or thinks someone has,” Gazzo said. “Maybe Max doesn’t know who has whatever it is. Trying everyone.”

It was a possible new angle, and while his men searched the debris of the apartment, Gazzo asked Hal all the same questions I had. He got the same result, nothing, except that he thought maybe Bagnio was trying to learn if Hal knew something.

“Why tail Wood otherwise?” Gazzo said.

After an hour, his two men found nothing connected to Pappas.

“We’ll keep looking for Bagnio,” Gazzo said. “Mr. Albano, I’d like to talk to you downtown, get a statement.”

Albano left with Gazzo and his men. I sat down, lit a cigarette. Emily Green sat close to Hal. He watched me.

“Why, Dan?” he said. “Because they have to kill each other?”

I smoked. “Gang war or purge. Probably. But the police don’t seem to think so this time.”

“What do they think? What do you think?”

“I don’t know what the police think,” I said. “If it’s not the gang, it’s one of three things. Private murder for hate, or ambition, or maybe fear. Family honor, the divorce an insult. Or some big business scheme, the thieves fell out. Maybe a deal Sid Meyer was involved in.”

“Nothing to do with Diana? Killed for nothing?”

“She was the cause of what Andy did, or maybe she was mixed in the deal,” I said. “Or she just picked the wrong man.”

“Great,” Hal said. “That’s just great!”

Emily Green said, “She didn’t care what she did to you. It’s awful, and I’m sorry, but she did it to herself!”

On the cot she held his arm, possessive. An awful thing, but her eyes shined. Diana’s tragedy, and her chance.

I got up, walked to the studio window. The back yards below were dark and still in the cold February night. Over a month since Mia Morgan had hired me, and I felt forces down there in the shadows. Forces that had killed Diana Wood.

“I’m going to find out, Dan,” Hal said behind me. “After this tonight I want to know what killed her and who.”

“Don’t be stupid,” I said. I turned. “What the hell could you do? Stumble around, not even know where to start.”

“I want to know, Dan. I want to hurt the bastard!”

I turned back to the window. “I’ll find him.”

“With me along. I’ve got time coming to me.”

“Maybe, we’ll see,” I said. He could be useful. Bait.

I left them together in the studio. Emily Green touched his face, not sorry to see me go.