Michael Collins - Silent Scream

“Okay, Dan,” he said. “I feel for Wood, but the tail ends. No stumbling around in my business. You could both get hurt.”

“Like Sid Meyer?”

“Get out, Dan.”

I got up. He waited until I was almost out of the alcove.

“Dan? You were just tailing Diana? That’s all?”

“Just her.”

“And Wood is your only client?”

“Yes.” What else was Andy worried about?

“Okay.”

This time I waited. “Does Diana know what you do, Andy?”

“What do I do, Dan?”

I heard the edge in his voice. The edge of my privileged status. To say what we both knew he did would be to push too much. Maybe he was afraid to say it, afraid he’d lose Diana.

I went out to the street. The driver held the car door for me, but I walked away. Had Andy heard my slip about Mia, and was he worried? Over an outraged daughter? Or was there more? I thought about those medieval dynasties where princes killed their king-fathers to take over. In his dark world Andy was king, and Mia was a princess old for her years, tough and maybe ambitious, with a man who wouldn’t be afraid of Pappas’s troops.

But I didn’t care about Mia Morgan now. I cared about Hal Wood. Talk is cheap, and Andy lived by violence, by fear. It was one thing to say it was Diana’s decision when he was sure she’d make the right one, and maybe something else if she made the wrong one.

It was a hundred to one Andy had a man watching Diana Wood-protective custody-and I’d been told to stop, so I used a telephone in a drugstore. No answer at the Woods’. It was 6 P.M., Diana should have been home-if she was going home.

I picked up a cheeseburger and coffee on the way to my office. The phone was ringing as I walked in. It was Captain Gazzo.

“Mia Morgan,” Gazzo said, “she’s-”

“Andy Pappas’s daughter,” I said. “I know. You want it all?”

“I want it,” Gazzo said.

I gave it to him, the whole story as far as I knew it. He took the parts he wanted. Romance didn’t interest Gazzo.

“You think the daughter just wanted to expose Andy’s cheating? Andy? He’s been cheating for twenty years.”

“Mia’s twenty-two, maybe she didn’t know.”

“This Diana Wood was with Andy the last three days? Since Monday night? Andy was with her in the area where Sid Meyer was shot, and right at the time?”

“He knows Irving Kezar, too, and he owns the restaurant I tailed Meyer and Kezar from Monday night.”

“Give me the Wood girl’s address,” Gazzo said.

I gave it. “I’ll meet you there.”

I got a taxi and was waiting in front of the Ukrainian bar when Gazzo’s unmarked car pulled up. I didn’t see any of Andy’s men, but, then, I wouldn’t expect to. There was light up in 4-B. We went up.

Harold Wood opened the door. He looked like one of those survivors of some bloody battle you see in war photos-eyes glazed, face exhausted. He only glanced at Gazzo as we went in, his mind too busy on other things, his private anguish.

Diana sat in the living room. It had seemed like a nice, cozy room to me before, but now it looked poor and bare. Now I knew who her man was, and what living rooms he could give her. Gazzo stared at her, as if nothing I had told him had made him realize how beautiful she really was. She’d been crying. It only made her look better. Rosy, and sad, and vulnerable.

She saw me. “I know you! You tried to pick me up in-”

“I was tailing you, Mrs. Wood. Dan Fortune.”

“Following you,” Hal Wood explained. “He’s a detective.”

“For Pappas’s daughter,” I said. “She doesn’t like you.”

She shrank back. “He told me about her. Mia. I… I don’t want to hurt her, or his wife, or… anyone. But-”

She was in a battle inside. Not easy for a girl like her. A face in the crowd. She hadn’t planned it this way, but…?

Gazzo took over. “You were with Pappas Monday evening? Who else was with him? Did he talk about a Sid Meyer? Do you maybe know Sid Meyer? When you left Le Cerf Agile that evening with Pappas, where’d you go? Did he maybe stop near Seventieth Street, pick up two men?”

She seemed dazed. Gazzo’s words hammered at her. His trademark-Captain Mouth. He never uses one word when ten will do. People say that when Gazzo starts talking at you you’re through. You tell more than a week of rubber-hoses would have gotten.

“I… I won’t talk about it,” Diana said. “It’s private.”

“Nothing’s private with Pappas,” Gazzo said.

She flinched. “Who are you?”

“Captain Gazzo, police. You’ll be seeing a lot of police, Mrs. Wood. You better get used to it, or drop Pappas.”

She resisted. “He told me about that. I don’t have to tell you anything. I don’t know anything. You badger him!”

“You know who he is, Diana?” I said. “What he does?”

Her voice was low, small. “Yes.”

“Dope, loan sharking, terror, extortion, murder?” I said.

“No!” she cried. “No! He said you’d all say those things. They’re lies! You can’t prove them! Why don’t you put him in jail if it’s true? Perhaps some-” She stopped. She was an ordinary girl, but she lived in today’s world, and she wasn’t blind or stupid. Her voice was fierce. “Lies! I don’t care!”

It hung out of her, naked and restless, the need I had seen in her. Like a child suddenly dazzled by life, by possibilities she had never known. She wanted more, the world here and now. She wanted “bigness.” And she could have it, that was the key. Suddenly, it was there to take.

“You hate him because he does things,” she said. “He’s strong. Strong men aren’t always nice. I don’t care, he’s nice to me. You have to do things in life, not just dream and whine. Sometimes people are hurt. The losers.”

That was Andy Pappas talking. She’d listened the last months, and heard. Because she wanted to hear it. She wanted her share. Like a pit in her. And she had discovered her power-the power of a woman to have what she wanted with nothing more than what she had to give to the right man.

“I don’t care about your damned love life,” Gazzo said. “I’ve got a murder, and I want to know what happened when you were with Pappas Monday evening.”

She winced at the word murder, but she’d made her decision already. It wasn’t true. An ancient female decision, necessary to survive in bloodier days, and maybe still.

“Nothing happened,” she said. “We… we drove to New Jersey, the shore. He has… a house there.” She didn’t look at Hal. “He was with me the whole time. All… the time.”

“You learn fast, Mrs. Wood,” Gazzo said. He turned to Hal. “Fortune says you tailed her, too. Did you tail her on Monday?”

“No,” Hal said. He watched only Diana.

“I didn’t see him, Captain,” I said.

Gazzo nodded. “Okay. I’ll see you, Dan.”

He left, and I sat down. Hal Wood sat close to Diana. I lit a cigarette, tried to pretend I wasn’t there. For Hal I wasn’t there, only Diana was. Small and blonde, nervous, on the edge of crying again. They had been married six years, and she had thought she loved Hal. Things go wrong, happen.

“I don’t feel much like living,” Hal said, hit out.

“Don’t,” she said. “There really are a lot of things worth living for, Hal.”

“Without me around. I know.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to,” Hal said.

He reached out to touch her hand. She let him. Six years is a long time. She still wore her wedding ring, a cheap band, but there was a large diamond on her right hand. Hal touched the diamond, stroked it.

“Did you buy that for yourself?” Hal said.