Michael Collins - Silent Scream

“Mr. Pappas wants to buy you some dinner,” Max said.

I said that sounded nice. Little Max grinned, but stayed behind me all the way down to the black car. We rode downtown. I wasn’t too scared. Andy wouldn’t have sent his top soldier in the open unless he wanted to ask some questions-first, anyway. I hoped I could figure out the right answers. Okay, I was scared.

The restaurant was near Washington Square: The Lido. Bagnio walked me in. It was quiet, with small tables and dim light. Bagnio took me to an open alcove at the rear. There were four tables in the alcove. In the main room the patrons ignored us.

Andy was alone at the rear table in the alcove. Two men sat alert at the table near the entrance-soldiers. A short man and a woman ate at the table to Pappas’s right. The man didn’t look up from his dinner. A pair of yellow gloves lay on his table.

“Hello, Danny,” Andy said. “Fetuccini to start, okay?”

I sat down, watched only Andy.

Because Mia Morgan and Captain Levi Stern were at the table to Andy’s left! Max Bagnio joined the girl and Stern.

“I don’t eat with you, Andy,” I said.

The sacred madman, privileged. An old story with Andy and me. He smiled, his eyes cold. They were dead eyes, and it wasn’t brave to defy Andy, but I always had to. I was as afraid of him as anyone else, and any second I might push him too far, but I couldn’t back off. Maybe because he called me his friend, and I had to prove to the world that I wasn’t his friend. (In Chelsea no one will ever understand that. A man who Andy calls his friend should be on top of the world. No one believes my denials, so I get status.)

“Still no old times’ sake, Danny?” Andy said.

Andy had a warm voice, low and even, and he spoke well for a boy who barely got out of a poor high school. I knew that he always had that voice, it fools people. What I didn’t know for sure is why he let me talk to him as I did. Maybe he had to prove that I was his friend-not based on power or fear.

“Still in the same work, Andy?” I said.

He sighed, he didn’t really care about me. He nodded toward Mia Morgan. I’d tried not to look at her since I came in.

“You ever meet my daughter Mia, Dan?” Andy said.

Sometimes an answer is so unexpected, so impossibly simple, that you feel you’ve fallen on your face. The whole dark, devious, complicated maze faded into no more than a private squabble, family! Daddy was cheating. Get a picture and details, accuse him, make him be a good boy! Only Daddy was Andy Pappas, motives could be mistaken even from a daughter, so I fought to show no reaction, to not laugh. And I made a mistake.

“No,” I said. “Dan Fortune, Mrs. Morgan.”

The moment I said it, I heard what I’d done. If I didn’t know her, how did I know her married name? I tried to cover.

“What do you want, Andy?” I said harshly. “I’m busy.”

I watched him. His face hardened. Who told Andy Pappas that he was busy? A flash of his terror. Maybe he hadn’t heard my slip. I hoped Little Max Bagnio hadn’t heard it, either. It was hard to tell, and now Andy got to the point.

“Why are you tailing me, Dan? Who for?”

“I’m not tailing you,” I said. The longer I could make him question me, the less chance he’d think about my slip and guess that Mia Morgan had hired me.

Andy shook his head, irritated. He’d seen me in that lobby, and he knew more than that.

“Le Cerf Agile is one of my places. I got word you were asking about… a friend of mine, and about Mia, too.”

He wouldn’t name Diana Wood, so I knew he didn’t want his daughter to know. I knew that the language I’d heard spoken in Le Cerf Agile’s bar had been Sicilian-dialect Italian, and I also knew that my slip about Mia Morgan had been even worse. Andy had heard I’d been asking about Mia-and I’d told him I didn’t know her. I had to keep him busy talking.

He made a gesture toward yellow-gloves. “Charley there warned you, only I didn’t know then you were tailing me.”

“So Irving Kezar works for you?”

“No, but he passes information, right?”

“Sid Meyer, too?”

The tension in the alcove was like an electric shock. Max Bagnio and the two soldiers in front stared at me. Mia Morgan was pale. Yellow-gloves Charley stopped eating his dessert. Levi Stern watched. Andy’s voice was low, rigid:

“You wouldn’t mix in my business, Dan, would you?”

“What was Sid Meyer?”

“No one I knew, Dan.”

“Someone knew him,” I said. “Two of them, pros. Kicked in the door, shot him nice and careful. No one saw them in or out. They dropped one gun, but it couldn’t be traced. Efficient.”

Charley yellow-gloves looked at Pappas. “Andy-?”

“You’re sure it happened like that, Dan?” Andy said.

“You’re telling me you didn’t know?”

Andy thought for perhaps a minute while everyone waited. Then he nodded to Charley. The short man got his hat, coat and woman, and went out. The two soldiers went with him. Maybe Andy hadn’t known about Sid Meyer. Some other professionals?

He’s an executive, Pappas. The problem of Sid Meyer was being handled. He forgot it, returned to his other problem.

“Who hired you to tail me, Dan?”

“I wasn’t tailing you,” I said. “I was tailing the girl.”

He stared at me. Little Max laughed, derisive. Mia Morgan didn’t laugh. Her face was blank, but I knew she was scared. Was I about to tell Pappas that she’d hired me to stumble around in his business? She wasn’t going to find out.

“Mia, call me later,” Andy said. “Go get a drink, Max.”

They left. Alone now, Andy leaned forward.

“Diana?” he said. “You think I’ll-?”

“Think about who Kezar said I asked for, what I did.”

Andy thought. Then he nodded, and I watched a strange reaction. Strange for Pappas. His face was serious, almost sad.

“The husband, Dan?”

“Did you expect him to cheer, do nothing?”

His face was that of a man, not a hood. Even sympathetic.

“Yeh, I guess not. She’s some kind of woman, Dan. Real, solid, soft, the best. I wouldn’t give her up, I guess no guy would. Not easy. She’s what you wait for, do things for.”

“You’re not doing her any favor,” I said. “You hurt them, every girl you touch.”

“Back off!” Then, “Okay, I’ve played around, but this is different. I never met a woman like her. I’m lucky. She wants what I’ve got, and I want her. I’m marrying Diana, Dan.”

“Divorce? A Catholic? With your family, your friends? They won’t like it, not your associates.”

“They’ll have to. Change is coming all over. New ways.”

“Will she marry you?”

“I asked her today. I figure she will.”

“If she says no? Stays with Wood? You going to persuade him to disappear? He has an accident, maybe?”

His hands gripped the table. “You think I have to use muscle to get a woman? Buy my women with a gun? I can’t get her unless I steal her?”

“I didn’t ask what you can do, I asked what you would do.”

“She wants him, she stays with him.” He sat back. “I couldn’t get her with muscle anyway. Not Diana. Lose her.”

“It’s up to her?”

“All the way,” Andy said. “But she’ll take me. Too much for Wood, too big. I’ve seen him. He damn near pushes her on other guys, sets her up. Won’t stand in her way; the best for her; that crap. Weak, a do-nothing dreamer. All he wants to do is paint his pictures. Maybe I’ll help him, buy some.”

“Does she love you, Andy, or your money?”

“Both, Dan.”

“I hope so,” I said. I meant it. I’d like to see Andy destroyed, but not that way. “Marriage, right? You wouldn’t use her for anything else, would you? Business?”