Silent Scream

CHAPTER 22

The building was another shabby tenement on the block of Ninth Street directly behind Hal’s apartment on St. Marks Place. We left the taxi on First Avenue, walked toward the tenement in the dark. It was into the dinner hour, the slum block almost empty. A few people walked, but no one looked suspicious, and I saw no cars that seemed out of place.

There was no name on the mailbox for 2-A, and the vestibule door was propped open. I didn’t like that, too easy. Still, in these tenements the super often propped the door open so he didn’t have to answer the rings of drunks who had forgotten their keys. We went up.

There was no one on the second-floor landing, and 2-A was at the front. I got out my gun, motioned Hal to stand back, and rang the bell with the gun barrel. Nothing happened. The landing was quiet, and the door of 2-A was locked. I used my keys, stepped carefully inside.

There was a short, dark hallway, with an empty bedroom off to the right, and the living room straight ahead. The living room was dim and bare, a table and a few chairs, but it wasn’t empty. Little Max Bagnio hadn’t moved far from the room on Sixth Street where Emily Green had died, but he’d gone as far as he would ever go.

Bagnio sat in a chair at the bare table.

He’d been shot in the chest, more than once from the mass of still-wet blood that hid his shirt front. His suit coat had been buttoned, the collar pulled down over the back of the chair to hold him upright-his flat nose and battered face looking straight at me from the dead eyes sunk in their scar tissue. A piece of paper was pinned to Bagnio’s bloody chest with a single word in it: Cane.

“Italian,” I said. “Cane-dog.”

“Look, on the table,” Hal said.

They were laid out like evidence on a policeman’s desk. It was just what they were-evidence. A series of items to form a mute testimony someone wanted everyone to read. Hal picked up one of them, a gold wedding band.

“It’s Diana’s wedding ring,” Hal said, his voice cracking a little. “We didn’t have much money when we got married. I had to buy a cheap band in a Village store.”

I took the ring from him. It was engraved inside: H.W. to D.W., all my love. I put it into my pocket. The other items were Max Bagnio’s. 45 automatic, a gold money clip with the initials A.P., and a partly torn sheet of memo pad paper. The automatic was still warm. Max had fought. Maybe shot first.

“No one heard the shooting?” Hal said.

“He could have been brought here. Or it could have happened here. In a place like this, witnesses are blind and deaf.”

“He did kill them, Pappas and… Diana,” Hal said. “He must have grabbed Pappas’s money from the bed table, got Diana’s ring, too. The gang found out, came for him.”

“Andy usually carried a lot of cash,” I said slowly, “but why would Max keep the ring and money clip?”

“Afraid to have them found, maybe,” Hal said. “Robbery, Dan? Murder for a few hundred dollars? A few thousand?”

“No, the money was a bonus. Read this.”

I handed him the sheet of memo paper. It was typed, signed with a scrawled Andy P. It told the story: Charley, We got a problem with Max. Diana says he hates her, watches her, she don’t want him around. He’s getting old, can’t change. I want you to give him a spot in your Jersey operation, then put him on the shelf. I’ve told Diana it’s taken care of.

“Somehow,” I said, “Little Max got that memo. Maybe it never reached Charley Albano. Andy had turned against Max because of Diana. So he killed them. No one shelves Max Bagnio.”

“He must have been crazy.”

“No, just a peasant. Vendetta. Andy had injured him. And scared, too. Maybe Andy wouldn’t stop with just putting him on a shelf,” I said. “Go call Gazzo. You know the number.”

Hal went down to call. I lit a cigarette, searched the bare and silent room. I searched the bedroom. There was no automatic rifle. Gingerly, I searched Bagnio’s pockets. His dead eyes stared ahead. In his right jacket pocket I found the rifle cartridges-five steel-jacketed shells that would fit an M-16 automatic rifle. That was all I found. Little Max had brought nothing to the last room he’d lived in. A few cans of food, a bottle of whisky, and the clothes on his back. Like most gangsters, he’d gone out of the world almost as naked as he’d come into it.

I sat on one of the wooden chairs. Andy’s memo told it all. Andy had written that he’d told Diana that Max was being taken care of. So Diana had known the motive, maybe Andy had even put it in writing in some note to her, and maybe she had told Hal. Hal might have had a written note that proved Bagnio’s motive for murder. Hal might have told Emily Green. If Charley Albano had never gotten Andy’s memo, then Hal and Emily Green could have been the only ones who knew Bagnio’s motive.

It all fitted, even the gangland revenge, and the epithet-dog! A man who murders his own boss is a dog to the brothers. All there, except-Sid Meyer? Then, Meyer could have been only a side effect, not really connected to…

The noise in the outside corridor was soft, faint. I sat alert. A light footstep? I had my gun out. Would anyone…?

I saw the movement in the dim light at the far end of the short hall into the living room. I was up.

The shots exploded.

My chest exploded in agony. Jesus… agony…

On the floor, the searing pain, my chest, God Al…

Rolled on the floor, fired at the shadowy hallway. The distant movement in the corridor fired again. Missed.

I was up. Staggered to the cover of the wall where the hall entered the living room. Shots! Two? Three? My belly seemed to burst. I was down again. Blood all over. I fired.

I was behind the wall, braced against the wall.

I fired. Along the dim hall. Sirens far off. Police. Hal had gotten them, they were coming, I had to hold on… hold on… keep the man out there away… hold on… fired.

Four shots.

I had two left. My chest was dead, my belly flames. On my knees, braced against the wall, my pistol aimed down the hallway at the entrance… just a little while… hold on…

I fired.

One shot left… bit through my lip in pain… one more shot to keep him away from coming and… sirens down in the street… the room thick liquid and swimming dark… dark… darker…

Silence.

I pressed my shoulder against the wall… fought to hold on one more second… two seconds… running feet and voices and faces and Hal was there and police and… I let go… collapsed… pain… nothing…

Michael Collins

Silent Scream