Silent Scream

CHAPTER 14

On the cold street I stood for a time just breathing the sharp air. Fresh air to clear the stifling weight of Hal’s thick wallowing in an unfair universe. He was playing it for high tragedy, the star-crossed lovers. He’d been a soldier, in combat, he’d seen death before. But, then, maybe not this close. That’s one of the few gains we’ve made-today most people can reach forty without ever seeing anyone close to them die. Maybe it helped him to forget that he’d already lost Diana.

I turned toward First Avenue and a taxi, and stopped. The gun was in my back. I never saw him, didn’t hear him. He was just there, behind me, so small I couldn’t see even a vague shape over my shoulder. Only the hard muzzle of the gun at my spine.

“Turn around, walk easy down to Avenue A,” Max Bagnio said.

I walked to Avenue A. Hunched against the cold, no one looked at us. He must have had the gun in his pocket. I didn’t try to find out. If I’d had my old cannon, I might have tried to use it. I’d lose. Which is why I don’t carry it much.

“The park,” Bagnio said.

We walked along the deserted paths of Tompkins Square Park. Max Bagnio wasn’t afraid of muggers. A building in the center contained the maintenance storage and the rest rooms. We stopped at the Men’s Room. At this hour it was locked. Little Max had a key. He closed the door behind us.

It was dank and dim with a twenty-five watt bulb, stank of urine and disinfectant, and water trickled in the urinals like the sound of some small, subterranean stream. There were no doors on the johns. Bagnio produced a low bench and a battered chair from the rear. He pointed to a john.

“Sit,” he said.

I sat on the john. Little Max sat on the chair with the low bench between us. He took a plastic glass from his pocket, and a small bottle of colorless liquid-gin. He filled the glass from the bottle, sat back with his big automatic in his lap.

“We’re gonna talk, Fortune,” he said. “You’re gonna tell me things. If you don’t want to talk, maybe it’s because you’re thirsty, you need a drink. If I figure you’re lying, liars get dry throats, you’ll need a drink. Now that’s gin in the glass, maybe. Gin and maybe something else, you never know, right?”

I began to sweat in the cold stink of the lavatory. I looked at that glass. A trick, of course. War of nerves. But…?

“Wood saw me?” Bagnio said.

“Yes.”

“He told Gazzo?”

“Yes.”

“What’s Gazzo think about it? About me?”

“I don’t know.”

Little Max reached toward the glass. My mouth was thick.

“He wonders why you vanished, what you wanted from Hal Wood,” I said. “He thinks it’s funny how Andy’s killer got past you, got close to the guard in the corridor without the guard taking his gun out of its holster.”

“Yeh,” Bagnio nodded, “it’s funny. What’s Gazzo figure?”

“Hidden in an empty apartment, the guard knew him.”

Little Max thought. It was an effort, his flat nose and small eyes sunk in the scar tissue twisted by concentration. His brown suit was wrinkled and dirty, as if he’d been sleeping in cellars. He shook his small head, doubtful.

“Doors they makes noise, guys say hello when they knows someone. I should of heard something. The kid soldier up there should of been careful even if he saw Don Vicente himself.”

I took a chance, “What are you looking for, Max?”

A useless try, he wouldn’t answer. He didn’t.

“Gazzo got another idea?” he said.

“No.”

Bagnio touched the glass, watched my face.

“You,” I said. “You could have gotten past that guard.”

“Yeh,” he agreed. “I could of done it. Easy. Andy he got no gun, the girl she don’t like guns.” He rubbed his flat nose with his gun. “That Wood, his alibi checks out all the way?”

“Sixty miles away, a witness, and he wanted Diana back.”

“You workin’ for him?”

“Yes.”

“Someone else, maybe?”

I looked at the glass of gin-and what else mixed with the gin? A drug? Poison? Of course not. He wanted information. Only if I started lying, what use was I to him? A delicate balance. And no way of knowing what he already knew and what he didn’t.

“John Albano,” I said.

His battered face never showed surprise, or anything else.

“What’s the old man care about Andy?”

“He cares about Mia.” I took a chance. “And about Charley.”

He watched me. “What about Charley?”

“Do you know yet who killed Sid Meyer?”

“You know?”

“No, but maybe Andy did.”

I was wet under my clothes, sweating even in the dank lavatory, but I tried a push:

“Was Andy in some big deal with Meyer and Irving Kezar? Charley Albano got greedy, ambitious, crossed Andy?”

“Charley don’t figure,” Bagnio said.

But he wasn’t sure. I let him think about that, changed direction, added a complication:

“Charley is Stella Pappas’s brother, right?” I said. “A divorce, Max? Bad for Stella, you know?”

I wanted his mind busy on anything except me.

“Yeh,” he said. “I told Andy.”

“Andy must have gone crazy,” I said. “Hard to trust him.”

A mistake. He hit me across the face with his automatic.

“Shut up!”

I wiped blood from my mouth, but made no sound. Drawn tight from hiding, balanced on nerves, a sound could push him into violence before he thought of consequences.

“Andy was tops!” he said. “Tops, you hear?”

Sorrow in his voice, and furious defense of his dead boss. But maybe guilt, too? What kind of guilt? Because he had failed in his job of protecting his boss, or was it much more than that? Was he trying to learn something from me, or was he trying to find out how much the police and I knew?

“Tops,” I said. “Why did they turn against him? Mia hiring me to chase down his girl friend. Unless she had another reason.”

“Mia don’t get past the guard upstairs,” Bagnio said. “Andy he tossed her out of the pad before, told her keep the hell out of his business.”

“Mia went to that apartment? Where Diana Wood was?”

Little Max wiped his pistol on his pants, wiped my blood off it. “That Stern guy, he’s some kind of special soldier?”

“Commando-trained, I figure,” I said. “Israeli. Tough.”

“Yeh,” Bagnio said.

His battered face thought-and all at once I saw it! Max knew something. He wasn’t running aimless, he was following some fact he had. Or thought he had. Was it something dangerous to him he wanted to suppress, or something he wanted to prove that would change the murders? How the hell could I find out? Like a shark, he had a slow mind but knew his own waters. I sweated.

“Max? Maybe you saw Stern-?”

Heavy steps stumbled up to the outside door, and it flew open with a crash. A glassy-eyed drunk staggered straight to a urinal. Little Max whirled, gun up. I jumped.

Bagnio had failed to lock the door! One of those small mistakes life can depend on in my trade. My chance. I took it.

I knocked over the bench and its glass, hit Bagnio with my shoulder. He sprawled down, the gun clattering across the dank stone floor. I ran over him and out.

I ran across the dark square with its bare, scrawny trees, and into St. Marks Place. I cursed Hal Wood for refusing police protection. There would have been a cop to run to. Without a cop there, I couldn’t risk finding Hal’s vestibule locked. Bagnio might have more than talk for me now. All I could do was run.

Through crowds of faces. Curious, angry-what jerk ran on their streets? — or laughing. A funny game, two grown men running in the city. Go get him! Tally-ho! Very funny.

Across the avenues to the dark, open space of Cooper Square. Fewer people in the windy space, and, running, I looked back for the first time. Bagnio wasn’t there. I’d been running alone.

It didn’t make me feel foolish. I ran some more. Through alleys and back yards, just to be sure. Then I found a tavern on Eighth Avenue near my apartment. A bar I never went to. I had an Irish, called Captain Gazzo. He was out, so I had another Irish and called John Albano. No answer. I called Hal Wood. No answer. That made me swear-and worry. Where were they, Hal and Emily Green?

Max Bagnio knew where I lived and worked. I drank alone for two hours. Then I went home-I had to sooner or later.

I went the back way through the alley and over a fence. Max didn’t know who I might contact, he wouldn’t be there. I might bring the police. Max wouldn’t want to be cornered in my upstairs corridor. I went up slowly. I hoped I was right. I was. The corridor was empty, silent. I went inside.

Inside, I listened. Nothing. I went to the front windows. I didn’t turn on the lights. I saw nothing on the street below. It would be risky for Little Max to chase me here, and he was after more than me. But I didn’t turn on my lights.

I got a beer and sat in the dark. I called Albano and Hal again. No answers. I hoped they were at a movie, visiting friends. Anywhere except stumbling around the city after a killer. Or maybe trying to hide a killer? I was too tired to think about that.

The day had begun in snow and trees and clear air. Now I lay in bed in the dark afraid to put on my lights. My world. Welcome home, Danny boy!