Silent Scream

CHAPTER 15

The grotesque midget rang a gong, carried a silver ax, and I knew I was dreaming. Half awake, I let the dream go on. I had two arms! My missing arm was home-welcome home. Then it ran off my shoulder, turned into Marty and Diana Wood-both. They were sad, so sorry they couldn’t put my arm back, but they had more important things to do, and…

My apartment was gray. No Little Max, and no arm. The telephone was ringing. I shook my head to clear it, and picked up the receiver. It was Captain Gazzo.

“You got something for me, Dan?”

I told him all about Max Bagnio. That Bagnio knew something, but I didn’t know what. I didn’t know if Max wanted to expose what he thought he knew, or hide it.

“A witness against Bagnio who doesn’t know he’s a witness?” Gazzo said. “Max trying to get to him before the witness realizes what he knows?”

“Or Bagnio is the witness, and is trying to nail the killer before you do,” I said. “It could be that what Max knows isn’t enough to convict, and he wants more. Or maybe Max isn’t sure.”

“We’ll get to Bagnio,” Gazzo said.

“He knows what he’s doing, Captain. His game.”

“Our game, too,” Gazzo said.

He hung up, and I lay in bed and looked at my gray room. It was raining outside, a steady drizzle. I lit a cigarette. I had to go to work, but where did I start? Mia Morgan, Stern, Kezar? Ask a lot of random questions, and hope someone gave an answer that suddenly meant something? Detective work. Charley Albano or Stella Pappas? Ask them questions? That one made me shiver under my warm covers, and want to burrow deeper and wish I was a fat bear and could hibernate the rest of the winter without feeling guilty. We pay for being human, the proud kings.

The telephone rang. I came out of hiding. John Albano.

“Dan? Mia’s apartment’s been searched! This morning.”

They come to you. Detective work.

“Max Bagnio?” I said.

“She doesn’t know,” Albano said. “I’m there now. The same kind of wreck as Wood’s place. Mia was with Stern all night.”

“I’m on my way,” I said.

I dressed and had my coffee at a diner on Eighth Avenue. No one seemed to be watching my apartment. In the diner I sat where I could see the street. No one appeared interested in me. I caught a taxi, the midmorning lull in the cab business, and rode up to Morgan Crafts through the gray drizzle.

In the apartment upstairs, Mia Morgan, Albano and Levi Stern were straightening up the mess. The same kind of search-rugs all rolled up, closets turned out, furniture overturned. Stern stopped working to watch me, Mia Morgan didn’t. She went on picking up the pieces as if I wasn’t there. John Albano sat down.

“He jimmied the door this time,” Albano said. “Mia can’t find anything missing. She and Stern were at his hotel.”

“On the town?” I said. “But no one saw you, right? Like the night Mia’s father and Diana Wood were killed?”

Stern stepped over a fallen chair. “You’re accusing us, Mr. Fortune? Say what you mean.”

“I’ll let the police accuse, Captain,” I said. I waved at the wrecked apartment. “I want to know about this. Were you near that apartment when Pappas and the girl were killed? Found something, or saw something?”

Mia Morgan looked up. “I never went near that apartment!”

“Yes you did. Andy threw you out, told you to stay away. Maybe you didn’t stay away.”

John Albano said, “Who told you that, Dan?”

“Max Bagnio,” I said. “We had an unscheduled talk last night. Little Max seems to be looking for something. He was interested in Captain Stern’s military career.”

Stern snorted, his deep eyes contemptuous.

“We don’t have anything to hide!” Mia insisted.

“Someone thinks you do. Max Bagnio, or someone else. He doesn’t have to be working alone.”

Mia stopped working over the mess. She bit a fingernail, chewed it off. A suddenly juvenile reaction, the cool maturity cracking. It scared her-the suggestion that someone besides Max Bagnio might be searching, watching. Levi Stern folded his skinny arms, impassive. John Albano fidgeted in his chair, seemed worried.

“If you know anything, Mia,” I said, “don’t be stupid. You’re not one of them. Don’t play the code.”

Omerta, the code of silence. Never talk.

“She knows nothing, Fortune,” Levi Stern said.

John Albano said, “Mia? You hate them. Tell him.”

“Or,” I said, “were you after something besides catching your father with Diana Wood when you hired me?”

“I wanted to stop him! Protect my mother!”

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.