Michael Collins - Silent Scream

“I know how it is, Carlo,” John Albano said curtly. “I say what’s my business. My family is my business, always.”

“That depends on the business,” Charley said. “Right, Mia?”

He watched the girl. She looked away from him, her big eyes nervous. She was scared again, a tone of warning in his voice. He nodded to the wreck of the apartment.

“Somebody’s looking for something. Maybe Bagnio?”

I said, “What makes you think that?”

He ignored me. I was a bug he could step on, prove his power, and he went on studying the searched apartment.

“Wood’s place, too, I heard. Some cover-up, maybe.” Charley shrugged, smiled his cruel smile. “It don’t matter, a dead man.”

John Albano said, “You think Bagnio killed Andy, Carlo?”

“A dead man. Who else gets past Bagnio and the kid upstairs?” Charley said. He pulled at his yellow gloves again, studied the elegant stitching. “But not Bagnio alone, you know? I figure someone got to Max, bought him. Fooled him, could be. Could be that’s what he’s after, proof to nail who bought him. That party’s dead, too, if he ain’t real careful.”

“Avenge Andy, Carlo?” John Albano said. “You care so much about Andy?”

“The family, right? Mi compare.”

“Compare? You and Andy?” John Albano said. He laughed. “An errand boy, that’s what you were to Pappas. Stupid!”

Charley’s cat face paled, the dark skin yellow. His eyes said-anyone else, I’d… Anyone else! But his father? What would they think, his men, his bosses?

“Look at you, all broken up,” John Albano said. “You don’t give a damn about Andy. You’re so hungry I can smell it. You think you’ll take Andy’s place? You?”

I said, “How much did you want to be boss, Charley? You were playing cards that night, right? With two witnesses. Them over there?” I nodded to his two gunmen. “Nice witnesses.”

He was smaller than I, younger, and he moved quickly. Close, looking up at me, his breath on my face, his hands clenched into fists inside the yellow gloves. Breathing hard and close.

“Never, cripple! Never say it, not to no one!”

Charley was young, and John Albano was old, but the old man had twice the strength still, and the same speed. He came out of his chair, swung his heavy fist against Charley’s head in the same motion. Not a punch, a clout. A blow swung like a hammer on his son’s ear, disdainful. Some old man.

Charley staggered, fell over a chair, came up with his pistol in his hand. John Albano took the gun away from him, flung it across the room.

“Out!” the old man said. “Stay away from Fortune, and stay away from Mia. Far away! Now get out.”

Charley’s two men watched. One of them picked up the gun, gave it to Charley. The dapper sub-boss tried to save some small face:

“Okay, I’m through here anyway, right, Mia?” he said to the girl, and to John Albano, “Be careful, old man. No more.”

His two men followed him out.

In the apartment, Levi Stern smiled at the old man. I mopped sweat from my face. I wasn’t so happy. Charley Albano had been humiliated, and I’d seen it. Mia wasn’t happy either. She sat down, and her hands shook. John Albano stood over her.

“What did he want, Mia?” the old man said. “He scares you. Why? Is Fortune right? You do know something?”

Her defiance was gone now, she almost looked her age. A scared girl.

“Charley says Bagnio killed Andy and Diana Wood,” I said. “But not alone. He hinted he knew who else. The party better be careful, he said. A hint to you, Mia? Did he see you with Max Bagnio?”

“What would that prove, Dan?” John Albano said. “Bagnio was close to Andy. He’d have been with Mia more than once.”

“He spoke to us for Mr. Pappas,” Stern said.

“All right,” I agreed, “but Charley was here for a reason, a warning. Were you around that apartment that night, Mia? You saw something? Found something?”

She shook her head. “Not that night.”

“But sometime?” I said. “When? What?”

She looked up at us. “It was nothing, Mr. Fortune. I mean, what could it…?” She took a breath. “The day before. I saw that Irving Kezar come out of the building. Charley was waiting in his car. He made Kezar get into the car with him. They drove off. I mean that was all.”

“Then why does it scare you?”

“Charley saw me on the street. Later he found me, told me to forget what I’d seen. I was to tell no one. No one at all.”

The wrecked room was quiet. I could hear the rain.

“No one?” John Albano said. “Not even Andy?”

“No one,” Mia said, watched the floor.

I said, “You better stay here, Albano. I’ll call you.”

I left John Albano talking low to Mia. Levi Stern watched them both silently.

The rain was heavier now, and the big brick apartment building on East Seventieth Street seemed dingier than it had on the night Sid Meyer was blasted out the window. The bare lobby was cold and damp, and no one had bothered to mop up a puddle in the elevator. It was still a shabby place for Irving Kezar to live.

Jenny Kezar answered my ring at 6-C. She wasn’t wearing her old blue coat this time, but the difference was barely noticeable. She wore an old green-print housedress with two buttons open to show her ample breasts in a stained bra. Her gray hair hung in strands, and her eyes were still dull. One of the eyes was also black-yellow, her mouth was split and puffed, and the stains on her exposed bra were blood.

“What do you want?” she said, her voice sullen.

“Just some talk, Mrs. Kezar,” I said. “Dan Fortune. We-”

“I remember you.”

“Fine,” I said, “let’s talk inside.”

She let me push in, walked away into the dumpy living room where Sid Meyer had died, while I closed the door. It was still a shock to see that she was only in her late forties, had very nice legs. Take off twenty-five pounds, add some decent clothes, fix her face and hair, and put some light in her eyes, and she wouldn’t be pretty, but she’d look good enough. A different person. Most women would at least try.

“Who beat you up, Jenny?” I said. “Kezar?”

She lit a cigarette. She didn’t offer me one. “If you want Irving, he’s not here.”

“When will he be?”

“When he is. I told you already he stays other places.”

She had, I remembered, and maybe it explained the shabby building. Kezar didn’t really live here. Jenny did. Good enough for her. An early marriage, a place to hang his hat when he needed it, but it was onward and upward for Kezar, the old wife left behind.

“Why’d he hit you, Jenny?”

“Why does the sun rise?” she said, then softened it. “We had a fight, who doesn’t? What do you want, Fortune?”

“Did you know Andy Pappas?”

“I heard of him, didn’t everyone?”

“Maybe Sid Meyer knew him, Jenny? Some business?”

“Not that I know. Sid didn’t swing that high.”

“But Kezar knew Andy Pappas, swings that high.”

“Irving knows a lot of people.”

“Was he in some deal with Pappas?”

“You think Irving talks business with me?”

A rhetorical question-wasn’t it obvious that Kezar would never talk business with the likes of her? But it wasn’t an answer, and she could be just the person Kezar would talk business with. The sounding board, a comfortable haven for blowing off steam, talking out frustrations. We all need some release. But it was a denial, too, and she wasn’t about to tell me anything about Irving Kezar’s business.

“It’s three murders now, Jenny. Irving could be in danger.”

She smoked, blew smoke. “How?”