Michael Collins - Silent Scream

The office was all dark now. A darkness that seemed to rest on the whole world, to be everywhere as I listened to John Albano. The distant street sounds of the city weren’t real, a tape recording from some other time, some other place.

“You mean Max Bagnio lost faith in Andy because of Diana Wood, the divorce?” I said. “Maybe someone else lost faith, and Little Max changed sides, followed a new leader?”

“Divorce is against the religion, and the religion is part of the code. Andy broke the code.”

“You think Max Bagnio is religious? Any of them? Today?”

“Not religion in the spiritual sense, no. But a kind of magic, a totem, the rules. Peasants don’t care about substance, what a religion means, but only about form. To a peasant the golden rule makes no sense, except in reverse-do to him before he can do to you. Yet he goes to church every Sunday, is a fierce Catholic. The code, Dan, rigid custom. A sign of being normal.

“And a leader has to act normally, keep the code, or how can he be considered reliable? To a peasant mind a leader who breaks custom loses reliability. How can he be trusted? What custom will he break next, what will he try to change next? Who will be hurt by some change? Peasants hate change, Dan, it scares them.”

The passion in his voice was almost too strong, maybe because he saw part of himself in them and hated that, but he was right about peasants, and roots go back far and deep. In the darkness I could feel the thick tentacles reaching out from the medieval dark of Sicily, the blood codes, the violence.

“Family honor, too,” I said. “That’s part of the medieval peasant code. Sicily, Corsica-the vendetta, honor avenged. A divorce could be dishonor, injury. To Stella Pappas, to your son Charley, to Mia. Maybe to others, their friends.”

“Not to Mia, no!”

It came out sharp. I waited, but that was all he said.

“But ‘yes’ for Stella, Charley, and their friends?”

“Maybe.” His voice was stone. His children, Stella and Charley, but they had broken his code. He cared only about Mia now.

“Max Bagnio and all of them?” I said. “Or one of them?”

“I don’t know. They talk to me, but they say nothing. The old men I grew up with are polite, but tell me nothing. They’re worried, all of them. I can smell it. Mia could be hurt.”

“Worried? About what?”

His cigar glowed in the dark. “People wonder why judges, mayors, officials betray their duty for the Mafia. Money, sure, for outsiders. But for officials who’re members, brothers, the answer is simpler-they’re not betraying their duties to America because they don’t serve America. They serve another country.

“The Mafia is a country, a nation, and that’s where their first loyalty is. The way Robert E. Lee gave his first loyalty to Virginia, not to the U.S. When Luciano worked for the U.S. Army in Sicily it wasn’t patriotism to America, it was an alliance between two countries with the same enemy at the time. They’ll fight for America-second. First they’re Mafia soldiers.”

He was silent for a time. “They came to a big, alien world that had rules and methods they didn’t understand, couldn’t succeed with, were lost in. So they stayed with the country they knew, the brotherhood, and they still serve it. Their private nation that gives them security and success. Now I smell worry here, they’re looking over their shoulders. Something’s wrong, unknown. Maybe an enemy among them, hidden? They’re as afraid of an unknown danger around them as anyone.”

“You can’t be sure of that,” I said. “They don’t trust you. It could be an act for you, a cover-up.”

“It could be.”

“Then it’s too big, Mr. Albano. Let the police-”

“Make it John, okay?”

I didn’t want to make it John. “I’m sorry. I can’t help-”

Someone ran out in the corridor, up the stairs and stopped at my door. From the silhouette against the half glass, a woman. She hesitated, the office dark. John Albano stood up. Was it Mia? I switched on the light, opened the door. A young woman, tall, with a round face, short brown hair, and a plain black coat.

The girl from Hal Wood’s office-Emily Green.

“Mr. Fortune? Hal’s been shot! He wants you to come. He’s being followed, his apartment’s been searched, and he’s just been wounded! He was afraid the telephone might be tapped, so he sent me to get you!”

I got my duffel coat from the chair. John Albano went out with us.

Albano drove us to St. Marks Place. I saw no one suspicious on the winter night street. We went up. The apartment was a wreck. Even the kitchen had been searched, the rugs pulled up and piled in corners, the closets turned out, the furniture knocked over.

Hal Wood sat on a cot among the paints and mess of his studio. He held his left arm, the shirt torn but little blood. His ruddy face was drawn, and his eyes were tired. Wary eyes, the liveliness gone behind a brittle surface as if he didn’t want anyone to see the shock in them but couldn’t hide it because he couldn’t forget. He almost looked his near-forty years, the gray in his hair no longer a contrast to his young face. I took his arm.

“A scratch,” he said. “I’ve been shot before. It’s okay.”

He was right, a graze. I dropped his arm. He looked up at me, his eyes like cloudy plastic.

“She’s dead, Dan. He killed her. He got her killed.”

“She wanted him,” I said. The hard detective. We all hide ourselves one way or another.

“But-” he said. “I mean… Just because she was there? No real… I mean, just-”

His mouth went on moving for a moment without sound. Almost four days. Talking to himself, thinking, and he was thought out, numb. Emily Green went to stand over him, her hand on his shoulder. He covered her hand with his. She smiled. Not at him, at me. He was hers now. John Albano stood near a wall, silent.

“Maybe not for no reason,” I said. “What happened here?”

Emily Green said, “We came home about a half hour ago. When we opened the door, we saw the mess, and Hal heard a noise in the bedroom. Hal ran into the bedroom, and the man shot him!”

“I just got to the doorway,” Hal said. “He was at the front window with a gun. I did a dive backwards, he only nicked me. I hustled Emily out, but when he didn’t come after us, I went back slow and he was gone. Out the fire escape. He must have come in that way, too. The window was open.”

“You saw him?” John Albano said from the wall.

“I saw him,” Hal said. “A runt, but stocky, like a featherweight. Broken nose, puffed up around the eyes. He could shoot.”

“Bagnio,” Albano said.

“Yeh,” I said. “Little Max, all right. You called the cops?”

Hal shook his head. “I wanted to see you first.”

“Call Captain Gazzo,” I said to Albano. “Centre Street.”

Albano went to the phone out in the living room. Hal sat and held his arm, but it wasn’t the arm that hurt. Emily Green’s eyes were big, soft, happy. The same way Diana had looked at Andy Pappas. The turn of the wheel. Good and bad in everything. The girl looked up, saw me watching, and flushed. But she didn’t flinch. A proper girl, even prim, she couldn’t have had a lot of men, and she wanted this one.

“What was he after, Hal?” I said.

He shook his head. “Not a damned idea. Who is he?”

“Pappas’s top gunman, or was,” I said. “You went on vacation two days before Diana and Pappas were killed?”

“To Woodstock. A painter I know has a cabin up there, he let me and Emily use it. We read the… story in the paper, I called the police right away, we came home. I had to identify her, Dan. They made me… look.”