Silent Scream

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 bed, 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.”

I sat. “Hal, have you remembered anything? Something you picked up near Diana’s new apartment? Someone who acted funny?”

“Nothing, Dan. Nothing!” He looked now toward where Emily Green lay so silent. “Doorways, that’s my speed. I’m good at watching from doorways. Right outside when it happened!”

“What the hell should you have done? Dashed in to do battle? A paintbrush against Bagnio’s forty-five?”

We waited in silence after that, the odor of death growing thick in the sleazy room.

Captain Gazzo straddled a chair, faced us both. The M.E. was still working over Emily Green. Gazzo’s men had been combing the bare room for an hour, not looking hopeful. Gazzo added it up.

“She got a call from Bagnio. Said nothing, and came here. Why did Max kill her? She wouldn’t talk, and he hit too hard persuading her? Then had to finish the job? Or did he let her know something dangerous to him and have to kill her?”

“A forty-five automatic is heavy enough to do it,” I said.

The M.E. looked up. “Possible, but not likely. Something thicker, a bottle or club. Nothing in this room looks right. About three hours ago now, I’d estimate. First or second blow did the job, the rest were fun or panic.”

The morgue men packed Emily Green up, took her out. Gazzo’s men had all quit, stood around. Except the fingerprint man.

“Ten different sets already,” he said. “A transient flop. Why don’t I ever get a neat, high-class murder?”

Gazzo ignored the fingerprint man, scowled. “Why did she come here at all? How did Bagnio make her come? A threat? Told her he had something important that would help Hal, or hurt him?”

I told him what Charley Albano and Mia had said uptown.

“Irving Kezar ties to Charley, if Pappas’s kid is telling it true, and Sid Meyer ties to Kezar,” Gazzo mused. “Charley Albano would lie about anything, but if he says Max Bagnio killed Andy, and not alone, he could know, too.” Gazzo looked at Hal. “Any chance your wife could change her mind, decide to come back?”

“How would I know? She’d started the divorce, moved in with Pappas.” His voice was stiff, as if it hurt even now to mention Diana and Pappas together.

“You think Emily could have hired Bagnio?” I said. “To kill Diana? Pappas was the extra murder?”

“Maybe Max had two partners,” Gazzo said. “One for each.”

“Captain!”

A call from down in the back yard. Gazzo and I went and looked down. One of Gazzo’s men held a sawed-off baseball bat. I saw the blood on it. Gazzo looked around the barren room. He opened both windows. One of them wouldn’t stay open.

“Windows never work in a dump like this,” Gazzo said. “The bat was a brace to hold the window up. Lying around handy.”

Gazzo went out to go down to the back yard. I turned to Hal. I described Charley Albano and his yellow gloves.

“When you were watching Diana’s new place, did you see a man like that? See him do anything strange? Did he see you?”

“Well,” he thought, then nodded, eager. “I think maybe I did. With that paunchy guy, what was his name-Kezar? And, Dan, I might have seen the small guy with the gloves around St. Marks Place, too. After the murders. Sort of watching.”

I said, “Tell Gazzo I had to go. And stay hidden, you hear?”