Silent Scream

CHAPTER 29

I told him about the Wyandotte deal, and about Kezar’s story of Charley Albano faking the evidence against Max Bagnio. Hal shook his head, unbelieving.

“Dunlap? A big company like Caxton? Is everyone corrupt today, nobody real?”

“Not everyone,” I said.

“Just those who run the country,” Hal said bitterly. “Those with the chance, right? From expense-account cheaters to the top. A percentage of the take. I’ve been thinking a lot about that since-” He seemed to lose his train of thought. “It seems so long since Diana… died. I guess I don’t care what Bagnio’s real motive was. It can’t help now. I… I’ve been working. Real well. Come on, take a look.”

We went into his studio. The kitchen was a mess of dirty dishes, opened cans, rancid cartons. A man living alone now with his vision. The living room was dusty and unused. Hal living only in his studio now, like an improvised garret.

“Look!” He swept his arm toward his new paintings.

They were lined up against all the walls. The difference from his earlier design-like abstracts hit me like a slap. Powerful, bold, in swirling shapes like vortexes. Thick and oozing masses, as if the corruption he’d been talking about was deep in his mind. Giant figures like kings and bishops in red and purple robes sat on massive thrones, their hazy faces like melting wax. Faceless, decaying rulers with black holes for mouths. Gaping mouths open in silent screams.

“Well?” Hal said, nervous.

“Powerful,” I said. “I can see the last months in them. All of it inside you.”

He looked at his new work, nodded. “I guess so. Funny, you know, Dan? I mean, to get my best work out of horror. Like Faust. A price for greatness. They are great, Dan. I know it. I can see it, feel it.”

His eyes glowed as he studied his new work.

“Yeh,” I said. “Great.”

He grinned, lit a cigarette. “Well, they’re good, anyway. But never mind about me. I’ve got all the time now. You do have it almost solved, Dan? I mean, you know Bagnio’s real motive?”

“I think so,” I said. “What I can’t quite figure is Diana’s wedding ring. Why did Max Bagnio keep it, and what was he really looking for? Any ideas, Hal? Remember anything yet?”

“Nothing. I was sure it was some evidence about that memo. Doesn’t Mia Morgan know anything? He searched her pad, too.”

“I think that search was another fake. To fool us.”

I heard the noise out in the corridor. A light noise, as if someone was out there stepping very quietly. Hal didn’t seem to hear it. He wasn’t listening for it the way I was.

“I guess only Bagnio could have done it, though,” Hal said.

“No,” I said, “I don’t think so now. I don’t think Little Max killed them at all. It happened a different way.”

I told him the story I’d figured out of how it had been done. I pictured the killer coming down on his rope, calling the guard in, lining up Diana and Andy Pappas, shooting them all, and escaping out the window.

Hal frowned. “You really think it could have been like that?”

“A few things I don’t know, but that’s the outline.”

“It would have taken a pretty good man,” Hal said.

“A soldier. You remember the night in the Jersey dump? The way you and John Albano handled those hoods? Trained.”

“Me?” Hal said.

“You and John Albano,” I said.

I put my finger to my lips, stepped softly out of the studio and across the kitchen to the outside door. I opened the door. John Albano stood there. He looked at me. The lines in his face were etched deeper, his white hair strange in the glare of the corridor. He came in, closed the door.

“You’ve got it figured, Dan?” Albano said.

“I think so,” I said.

He went into the studio with me behind him. He looked at the new paintings, and looked at me. I nodded to Hal.

“Hal, you remember telling us about Korea that night in the dump? About being pinned under that pillbox for so many hours, thinking all the time you were dead? How you swore that night you’d never again do anything you didn’t want to? How you’d do something great with your life?”

“Sure I remember. It changed me, that pillbox. I saw life clear then.”

“A pillbox behind enemy lines. Behind the lines, Hal. You said that more than once, I remember now. What were you in Korea? A Ranger? A specially trained shock trooper?”

“Yes, a Ranger. The best.”

“Best,” I said. “Yes. Is that why you killed Diana? You were the best, and she failed you, took a lesser man?”

“I didn’t kill her, Dan,” Hal said.

“Yes you did,” I said. “Pappas, too. It was good to kill Pappas, wasn’t it? The big, powerful man. You said that in the dump, too-such powerful gangsters, yet you were better. You could kill Pappas. Easily. No match for you man to man. Not in a war, behind enemy lines, stalking the enemy.”

“Why would I kill her? I let her go. Didn’t try to stop her.”

“You almost sent her away, Hal. Like at those parties of Dunlap’s. Pappas said it, I just didn’t hear-‘almost pushing Diana away, forcing her on other men.’ A test, right? If she was your perfect woman, she wouldn’t want to be with other men for a second, even just to laugh a little. She wouldn’t want anything but you. But she wasn’t perfect, she failed you. Not good enough for a man like you, the best.”

“I am the best!”

I nodded. “Diana even told me. The way she said you were a failure who wouldn’t even try to succeed, and at the same time had such a big ego it didn’t need bolstering. It sounded like a contradiction, but it isn’t. You have such a big ego you won’t work to prove how good you are. You know how good you are, and everyone ought to know it without having to be shown.”

“Flawed,” Hal said. “All women.” He blinked at me with those intense eyes. “You’re wrong, Dan. Really.”

“Flawed,” I said. “Diana said that, too. You don’t need a woman, don’t really want one. Symbols of the imperfect world. Women and the world, both flawed, both rejecting you.”

He looked at his paintings, the new ones. “All just bellies and thighs, the garbage glitter of now. They live for now, women. What do they know of visions? Men like Pappas, that’s what women want. Destroyers, cheats, greedy pimps.”

“Diana failed you,” I said. “Maybe that wasn’t quite enough. But then the man was Andy Pappas. That sent you over the edge. Pappas the evil parasite, the symbol of the rotten world that wouldn’t recognize you. Destroy the destroyers, the imperfect woman and the bad world.”

“Dan?” Hal said, smiled. “Stop it now, okay?”

“Where’s the rifle, Hal? The rope and pulley? Those were what Bagnio was looking for. He found Diana’s wedding ring in that apartment, was after you for more proof. But you were after him, too-to get the ring back. That’s why you shot me, to get the ring before the police found it.”

“I called the police! Saved you!”

“I sent you to call, and you had to call. If you missed me, and Gazzo didn’t come, I’d have known the truth then. You were sure you had time to kill me, get the ring, before Gazzo got there. But I was lucky, Gazzo sent the precinct cops first. They were close, reached us in time.”

“No! I didn’t shoot you!”

“You made a slip, Hal. Twice. You said you and the police heard the shooting from the street that night. But Gazzo said the shooting had stopped by the time the precinct police get there and met you on the street.”

He floundered inside, groped irrationally for straws.

“I was in Woodstock when Diana was shot!”

“No, Emily Green lied for you. She knew you were in New York, but believed whatever story you told her. She didn’t think you killed them, didn’t want to think it. But she wasn’t stupid, she had doubts, so when Bagnio called her and said he had proof you killed Diana and Pappas, she went to meet him. You tailed her, and when she came out, Bagnio had showed her the wedding ring. She knew the truth. But she still hoped, wanted to believe you.

“So you told her it was a lie. You’d seen Bagnio leave the rooming-house building. You told her you’d take her back to Bagnio, and prove he was a liar. Once you got her back up in Bagnio’s room, you killed her and made it look like Bagnio had.”

He looked like one of his own faceless kings in his new paintings, his whole face melting like wax as he tried to think of some way out, some answer. He couldn’t, stood there silent, searching desperately inside his own half-insane mind.

John Albano said, “What’s so vital about that ring, Dan?”

“Diana didn’t have it,” I said. “She’d given it back to Hal. He must have had it with him when he killed them, maybe showed it to her-the symbol of her failing him. He dropped it, Max Bagnio found it. Max knew Diana hadn’t been wearing the ring for weeks, but Max wasn’t sure it would be enough proof. With Hal’s alibi, it was only Bagnio’s word against Hal’s. So Max looked for more proof-mostly to convince his Mafia people.”

“How do you know Diana wasn’t wearing the ring?” Albano said.

“It was in those pics the police showed me of the death room. Diana had been in Miami, she was heavily tanned. There was a clear pale ring mark on her right hand, but none on her left. She hadn’t worn that ring in weeks. So how had it gotten in that bedroom? Who would she have given it to except her ex-husband? She was a nice girl, she gave Hal the ring to show that they were all through.”

I looked at Hal, who was still silent. “Then there was the robe. I mean, why was Diana wearing a robe when Andy was naked? She was naked under it, why cover herself? Facing a killer with an automatic rifle, would she have thought about being naked? No. Then it must have been the killer who made her cover her body. Who would do that except a husband who-?”

The sound was low and animal. At least, low and something else than human. Or human enough, but back somewhere in the shadows before history, before time. From Hal’s open mouth, and he had the small 7.65-mm. pistol in his hand. Even as I saw his finger whiten on the trigger, I thought, rational and detached, that this was the final proof-the gun he’d shot me with. I thought that, nice and rational. Too rational to move. Rooted.

John Albano moved.

He jumped, had Hal’s arm. The gun fired. The bullet went somewhere over my shoulder. Like a bird, singing.

They grappled. They breathed hard. The tough old man was stronger. Hal was younger, in condition. The gun went off. Neither of them fell. Struggled locked together. The gun went off again. Then John Albano had the gun.

The old man stepped back, panting and sweating.

Hal fell to the floor. Shot twice. He lay there with his blood spreading around him.