Silent Scream

CHAPTER 24

Without all the cars around it, the big white house near Somerville seemed abandoned. An aura of neglect already. The grass too long, weeds ragged in the spring flower beds, as if its pride had been buried with Andy Pappas. Or its discipline-no one to give orders in a world where only orders counted.

An old man with a stiff leg answered the door. He wasn’t hospitable, but he recognized John Albano and grudgingly led us to the same side room where Don Vicente Campagna had held court over two months ago. Stella Pappas stood at the garden windows. She still wore the simple black that suited her motherly manner. Mia was with her. The girl wasn’t in black, a sleek red dress that wasn’t much like a new bride, either.

“What does he want now, Grandpa?” the girl said, irritable and surly. “Wasn’t he told it’s over?”

“Where’s your husband, Mia?” I said. “Mrs. Stern, right?”

“Up in his big bird, or with the prophets. Where else?”

“But you’re still here. Something special keeping you in New York?”

“I like New York,” Mia snapped.

She was back to her cool, overly mature control, but oddly tense, even petulant. Defiant, but defying what and who? Not me. Under the cool shell she was nervous and edgy-more like a bridegroom who’d had the wedding night postponed too long. Was that all it was, the separation from Levi Stern, wanting him but wanting her own way, too? A girl who got what she wanted.

Stella Pappas spoke from the windows. “Mia has to learn about marriage.” She looked at me. “What do you want here, Mr. Fortune?”

The conflict I had seen in her at the funeral-Italian wife versus American woman-seemed to have been resolved. She still looked like Momma in Palermo, but she acted all American now. Andy was dead, no more kitchen and pasta?

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Some questions.”

“You don’t think Max Bagnio killed my husband? You don’t believe the police?”

“Do you?” I said. “Max Bagnio alone? Personal anger?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care very much. He’s dead, so is Max. It doesn’t matter. The Dons say it was Max, so it was Max.”

Mia said, “Always the Dons. The old man, my father, Charley. Whatever the men say, Mama? The patriarchs!”

Stella Pappas smiled. “You’ll be different, Mia. A new world for women, yes. But you still have to decide how to live with a man. Be yourself, but where and how? Levi is a man who knows where he belongs. He belongs in Israel. If you have to belong here, you have no marriage.”

“Mia doesn’t belong here,” John Albano said.

“I won’t be the harem slave you were, Mama,” Mia said.

“Slave?” Stella Pappas watched something outside the windows. “You’re a baby, Mia. You think I didn’t know your father and his life? Marry a sailor, you expect separation. Marry a politician, you expect neglect. I knew the man I married, and I lived with it. At home a husband and father, no more. But I knew what he did. I knew about the women.”

She looked down at her pudgy hands. Suddenly alone. I sensed it-deep inside her own mind. “All the women, the show girls, the secretaries. Always a new girl. I hated it. But he always came home to me, to us.” She clenched her hands at the windows, talking to herself now as if no one was there. “This time he… he… Divorce! No, not right. This time… dead. With her. In bed with her. That… whore!”

I couldn’t see her eyes, but I sensed their flashing, and it wasn’t May sunlight she saw outside but a darkness. She had accepted all the years of Andy Pappas, but this time…? John Albano didn’t like it.

“That’s enough, Stel,” the old man said. “Andy’s dead. Max Bagnio killed him, and it’s over. It doesn’t matter now.”

“No?” She turned sharply. Stopped. “No, it doesn’t matter. I have the house, the money. No more worry, no more girls.”

I said, “Max Bagnio ended it.”

“Yes,” Stella Pappas said.

John Albano touched my arm, we should leave. I shook him off.

“Was Andy involved in some big business deal, Stella?”

“He never talked business with me.”

“I’m not so sure Max Bagnio was in it alone,” I said. “You understand? Max killed him, but maybe for a different reason. Paid to do it. Then Max was killed to shut him up.”

Her eyes flickered away. She was silent.

“Did Andy mention Caxton Industries, or Ultra-Violet Controls, or Ramapo Construction Company?”

“Ramapo?” Stella said. “Charley’s company?”

“Did Charley have a big deal? Andy said something?”

She thought. “Yes. He laughed about Ramapo once. He was pleased. Charley had a sweet deal, he said, a real pigeon for plucking. Over in Wyandotte. A bonanza.”

“For Andy, or for Charley?”

Stella looked at John Albano. “Mostly for Charley, I think.”

“Any names? Irving Kezar? Lawrence Dunlap? Sid Meyer?”

“No, no names. The men don’t tell women details.”

“But Charley had a scheme, a bonanza?”

John Albano said, “Charley always has a scheme, a big deal.”

“Yeh,” I said. I turned to Mia. “Sid Meyer tried to talk to you. You said he never did. But what did he want, Mia?”

She hesitated. “He wanted me to take him to my father. I never did talk to him.”

“He wanted to meet Andy? Why?”

She shook her head.

“She doesn’t know, Dan,” John Albano said.

Stella Pappas laughed. “Maybe he had a new girl for Andy.”

“Stop it, Stel!” John Albano said.

“No more girls,” Stella Pappas said. Her eyes glittered. “Don’t worry about me, Papa. I’m good now. I’m fine.”

There was a certain triumph in her voice. John Albano wanted me out of the house. This time I went. In Albano’s car we drove back to New York. The late morning sun was almost hot.

John Albano said nothing for more than a mile. “Max Bagnio killed them, it doesn’t matter why. Leave it closed, Dan.”

“I thought you hated them-Andy, Charley, Don Vicente? I thought you wanted to know the truth? Are you afraid I’ll get too close to your family, Albano? You’re honest, and tough, but you’re a Sicilian, too, right? What would you do to stop me?”

He watched the road. “How close do you think it’s going to get to my family, Dan?”

“Close enough to know the truth.”

“We know the truth,” Albano said. “Enough of it.”

“Maybe, but I’m going to be sure,” I said. The stink of the Jersey Flats came to meet us, the city in the distance. “Everyone wants it closed. Andy’s dead, Max Bagnio’s dead, and all for the best. Forget it. A favor to the world.”

“No loss, Dan,” Albano said.

“None, and maybe there isn’t any more,” I said. “But Diana Wood is dead, too, and Emily Green. I care about them. I won’t let them vanish like flies swatted on a wall.”

John Albano watched the road the rest of the way into the city. We stopped, looked up Caxton Industries in the phone book. They were on Madison. We drove there. Mr. Martin Winthrop wasn’t listed on the lobby directory. Up in the Caxton offices they told us that Winthrop was only the assistant manager of the Accounting Department. I felt a sharp letdown.

“Yes?” Martin Winthrop said in his small office, nervous.

He was a tall, spare man with watery blue eyes and the look of an unimportant clerk. When I asked him about Irving Kezar, he was dismayed, even scared.

“Mr. Kezar simply made some investments for me. Personal,” Winthrop stammered. “I… I was aware that he wasn’t, well, exactly reputable, and his fee was high. But he made some very good investments. I hope there’s nothing illegal-?”

“You work for Ultra-Violet Controls?” I said. “Ever do anything with Ramapo Construction Company?”

“Oh, no. I work on some of the subsidiaries accounting, of course, but nothing direct. I’ve never heard of Ramapo.”

I was stumped, he sounded honest. “Who does work directly with Ultra-Violet Controls?”

“Well, that would be our home office. In Los Angeles.” He looked away, hesitant. “Mr. Kincaid is in charge. Peter Kincaid.”

I caught the hesitation, the reluctance. What did it mean? That he didn’t like Mr. Peter Kincaid? Or that…?

“How did you learn about Kezar?” I asked. “Meet him?”

“Yes,” Winthrop said, uneasy. “He was recommended to me, a man who could make me money. When I was in Los Angeles some months ago. Mr. Kincaid told me, said Kezar could fix me up.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Down on Madison Avenue I looked at my watch. Mr. Peter Kincaid was in charge of Ultra-Violet Controls, and Kincaid knew Irving Kezar. I just had time to catch the noon jet to L.A.

John Albano drove me out to Kennedy. He didn’t say much all the way, and as the jet taxied away, I saw Albano up on the observation deck watching me go.