Michael Collins - Silent Scream

“You think it was someone the guard knew?”

“And trusted. No rival mob,” Gazzo said. “I think he knew the killer, thought Max Bagnio had already passed him in.”

“Or maybe someone was with the killer,” I said. “Stella Pappas, or Mia, or Charley Albano.”

“Andy was getting a divorce,” Gazzo said. “This John Albano you talked about, any relation to Charley?”

“Father. An old man, not Mafia, he says. I believe him.”

Gazzo thought. “None of them have decent alibis. Mrs. Pappas was in town visiting an old friend, but the friend wasn’t home that night. Mia and Stern were together, out on the town, but they can’t prove where they were.”

“Stern’s a trained soldier. What kind of rifle was it?”

“The M.E. thinks an Army M-16. Not Israeli, but M-16s aren’t so hard to get. Charley Albano was playing cards-with two hoods.”

I finally asked the question. “What about Hal Wood?”

“Would the guard have let him close? Didn’t he want her back?”

Hal Wood had wanted Diana back, it had sounded like that anyway. But if she wouldn’t come back? His perfect woman?

“Anyway,” Gazzo said, “I thought of him first, right? He’s got the only real alibi. Had been out of town for two days, on vacation up near Woodstock. Not alone. A girl named Emily Green was with him. They had a cabin.”

I felt a weight lift off me. The husband is always the first suspect. Now I could stay out of it. Or could I?

“You thought about Irving Kezar and his wife?” I said.

“Sure. No alibis, but no visible motives yet. Nothing new on Sid Meyer. If he was in some deal, it doesn’t show.”

I started for the stairs down. “If you need me, call.”

“We’ll badger them all, look for the rifle, wait for one of our informers to tell us who did it,” Gazzo said. “Like always.”

I stopped. “You know, one person could have gotten past Bagnio and walked right up to the guard here with a smile.”

“Who?”

“Little Max himself.”

“We’re looking for him,” Gazzo said.

I went down and caught a taxi. Little Max Bagnio had been with Andy Pappas most of his adult life. A loyal retainer, without ambition. Only maybe Max had found ambition, or maybe he’d found a new loyalty. In the taxi going to my office, the winter light fading thin and cold into night, I wanted no more part of the mess, but I went on thinking about it. Curiosity? Habit? Call it anything, damn!

John Albano was waiting in my office. I thought about John Albano. He wanted to hire me-but where had he been when Andy was shot down? What if Andy had been some danger to Mia Morgan?

I swore at myself. What did I care? A police job. They get paid for it. But I went on thinking.

The broad old man sat in the gloom of my office. He hadn’t put on the light, as if darkness felt better to him. His white hair stood out above his swarthy face lost in shadow.

“So?” he said.

I sat down, lit a cigarette. “The police don’t think it was a gang killing, either. At least, Captain Gazzo doesn’t.”

“What does he think it was?”

“He’s working on it.”

“Mia?”

“She’s on his list. No one has an alibi except Hal Wood.”

“You like that, right? The underdog.” His snapping eyes watched me in the twilight office. “You’re something of a sentimentalist, Dan.”

“The last refuge of the liberal.”

Only Albano’s eyes smiled. He took a long, thin cigar from his pocket, lit it. A special cigar, expensive. I knew the aroma and the look, and all at once it filled in my picture of John Albano. An engineer in remote places because that way he could work alone without the complications of other people, of values he had no use for. A man who had rejected the needs and paths of those he’d grown up with, as remote inside as the places he went. A solitary, with a special cigar for company instead of family or community.

“So Wood’s okay,” he said. “You can work for me.”

“You wouldn’t want me to. I can’t help.”

“You can help find the truth, clear Mia clean.”

“I’d ask the wrong questions,” I said. “Like where were you when Pappas was killed?”

“Home in bed. I usually am at two A.M. Not very good, but the best I can do. Ask your questions, find out.”

I couldn’t see his face well, but I knew it wouldn’t tell me anything anyway. I wanted the gloom in the office, it separated us. It made me feel detached. Somehow, if I put on the light, that would be taking the case, joining Albano.

“Did Mia want more than proof Andy was cheating on her mother, something else?” I said. “Maybe doing something Andy wouldn’t have liked, tried to stop? Mia and Captain Stern?”

“Like what?”

“She has wide contacts abroad. So does Stern. She’s Andy’s daughter, would know contacts here. An ex-con and hustler named Sid Meyer was murdered. I asked you about Meyer before, because he’d tried to see Mia just before he got killed.”

Albano smoked his cigar. “Dope, you mean. One of Andy’s enterprises, but not Mia’s. She hated Andy for that filth.”

“People can change fast when opportunity knocks,” I said. “Did she know Sid Meyer? Did you? Or Irving Kezar?”

“I told you I didn’t know any Sid Meyer.” He shifted in his chair, uncomfortable. “Kezar I’ve met. I’ve met men like Kezar all over the world-Saigon, Africa, every South American capital. Playing all sides for themselves. Parasites, leeches on every good work. You can’t build a dam or dig a well without paying them a share. Mia wouldn’t have a damned thing to do with a man like that. She’s defiant and conceited, thinks too much of herself sometimes, but she’s a builder, not a destroyer.”

Anger in his voice, a judgment of iron. I sensed that he thought a lot of himself, too, he’d gone his own way a long time, but I liked him. Only he was an old man now, no matter how young he acted, and Mia Morgan was his whole hope for tomorrow.

“It looks like the guard in the corridor knew the killer,” I said. “Have you heard anything about Max Bagnio? What the brotherhood thinks? Have you talked to your daughter?”

“We’ve talked,” Albano said. “I haven’t heard much. They’re being very quiet. Some think Bagnio is underground after the killer, others think maybe he did it himself.”

“Why? Little Max’s been close to Andy for years?”

“Who knows, Dan?” Albano said.

In my dark office his cigar glowed. I could barely see him now, his shoulders only a wide shape against my air-shaft window, the white hair seeming to float by itself. His voice was hard:

“You have to understand them, Dan-the Mafia brotherhood. They’re basically peasants, with all that means in the ancient European sense. No matter how modern they look now, they still have the minds of medieval European peasants. Even the third-generation sons, because it’s an ingrown, closed community. It’s one key to who they are and what they do.

“You know what a peasant mind is, Dan? A medieval peasant mind from a poor, harsh land? It’s a cunning mind, shrewd, but very narrow, very basic, very practical. Money, women, religion, the seasons, the family, the village. Period. The people in a village a mile away are outsiders, and any outsider is less important than your own pig!”

Passion in his voice, and violence. He’d thought a lot about them, his countrymen, and he hated them.

“To kill outside your own family isn’t murder to a peasant. A fact of life, even a tool. A French peasant kills the English family camped on his land just for their clothes, a few dollars, and sees nothing wrong. An opportunity, what practical man wouldn’t take it? It’s proper to kill an enemy, an outsider who has something you want, a friend who insults your family. And it’s more than proper to eliminate a leader you’ve lost faith in. It’s a necessity.”