Michael Collins - Silent Scream

As we left, Harriet Dunlap reached out to comfort Dunlap.

Outside, we got into John Albano’s car. The sun was almost all the way out now, low and about to set into twilight. The rain stopped, it was already growing colder.

“Well?” John Albano said. “Do we visit Charley next?”

“We can try it,” I said.

Hal Wood looked back at the big, ugly brick mansion as Albano drove away. Not in envy, but more as if he hated the rich house and maybe Dunlap, too. They were both the kind of thing Diana had wanted so much, the need that had killed her. Hal stared back until the house was out of sight, almost hypnotized.

On the road toward North Caldwell, we passed heavy construction going on in a large field. I saw the sign.

“Slow down,” I said to John Albano.

I read the construction sign: Site of Electronics Laboratory, Ultra-Violet Controls, Inc. General Contractor: Ramapo Construction Company. It was going to be a big job.

“Go on,” I said.

North Caldwell was a more recent town, closer to Elizabeth. A garish tentacle of megalopolis, with its neon used-car lots and mammoth bowling alley complexes. Charley Albano lived in a secluded area with a name-Riviera Ridge-and a private patrol. (Private police to protect Charley Albano from being annoyed by riffraff. Sometimes you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.)

John Albano was known, the gate guard passed us through, but in the dusk Charley’s split-level house was dark. There were no cars. John Albano tried the bell, got no answer, and we turned back toward New York. John Albano would try to find Charley there, and I wanted to talk to Captain Gazzo. The visit to Lawrence Dunlap seemed to have made Hal Wood moody. He stared out in silence. We passed Garden State Parkway, headed for the New Jersey Turnpike on the far side of Elizabeth.

“Look!” John Albano nodded up at the rear-view mirror.

A car was pulling up on us fast on the secondary road as we neared Elizabeth. A big, black car. Albano speeded up. We were in a dark industrial area of factory yards and dumps. Albano couldn’t shake the big car. It came on as if we weren’t moving.

“Dan!” Albano said.

I saw the car parked across the road up ahead. John Albano didn’t hesitate. A narrow side road led off to the right through the factories and dumps. Albano turned into it at full speed, the car skidding and careening. I braced to go over. But the old man had an iron grip and a delicate touch. We made it, bounced violently along the rutted dirt road-and skidded into a dead end.

Headlights turned into the side road behind us.

The big car came on fast. Beyond the dead-end barrier a vast dump stretched in the darkness, an automobile graveyard piled with rusted old cars. Albano’s car steamed from a cracked radiator. No time to reach the ghostly factory buildings.

“You’ve got your gun,” Hal cried. “When the car stops we can-”

“No chance, even if I could shoot. Three to one at least.”

“Then let me have the gun! I’ll handle them, all of them,” Hal raged. “Ten bums like them!”

John Albano didn’t waste time or words. “The dump!”

The old man plunged down a short slope into the dump, trotted ahead picking his way smoothly. An old man who knew what he was doing. We weaved among the junk and garbage and old cars, the smell rising like steam in the night. There were shots behind us. I couldn’t hear where the shots went. We ran on.

We could hear cars on the parkways, but the dump seemed endless, and around it nothing moved. A kind of jungle, with tigers stalking, and which way was safety? How many of them were there? Who were they?

“Charley?” I said.

“Maybe,” John Albano said. “He could have spotted us at his house.”

“He’d hurt you?”

“Not in the open, bad for his reputation. But if no one knew, could prove it.”

Hal said, “What about that Max Bagnio? With friends.”

“Or the others, the Anglo types in the brown suits,” I said.

We went on straight ahead. As long as we didn’t circle or go back, we should be ahead of them. We came to a deep, dark canal, its edges frozen in the February night. We could swim it, but then we’d have to get warm somewhere quickly or freeze, and on the far side was a high fence-too high.

Hal held up his hand, listened.

We could hear them somewhere behind us, stumbling through the junk and garbage. Not hurrying, not shooting at shadows, but moving toward us carefully, inexorably.

“Maybe we can swim the canal, climb that fence,” John Albano said.

If anyone could, he could. In his condition, even at his age, he could probably even survive the night soaking wet. I wasn’t so sure about myself. Hal studied the distant fence.

“If we took too long, they’d corner us,” Hal decided. “It’s better we dig in, take cover, make them find us.”

John Albano agreed. “They like the advantage, Dan. Out here they’ll stay together, not get caught alone.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said.

We moved cautiously back through the junk and old cars. Hal stopped every few feet to listen. We heard them around us, all close together. In the dark I saw Hal’s teeth. He was smiling. He was better at this than they were. They had the guns-the hunters, and we were the rabbits, but old John Albano was a tough rabbit, and Hal had the skill.

They went past us, making too much noise and not seeing us where we crouched silent. But they would reach the canal and know that we were still in the dump. Hal searched the night.

“There,” he said.

It was an old panel truck wreck, sunk to its fenders in the dirt, but solid and with only the one opening through its rusted rear doors. Its front was buried in a mass of other junk, and from the doors we could see in all directions. We slipped inside. It was warmer, and there was no thought of trying to escape back to the road. They would have left men to watch. In the dark dump, stumbling around, we could run into them. In the hidden old truck they would have to find us. We would wait them out.

I sat near the rear doors with my old gun. Hal and John Albano sat against opposite sides of the wrecked truck, facing each other. Hal’s eyes gleamed in the dark, in action, no longer moody. John Albano’s eyes were closed. We waited.

At eight o’clock, Hal took my place at the doors with the pistol. He crouched very alert. John Albano still sat with his eyes closed, breathing quietly. I listened.

Twice they came close. Once two shadows passed across the open space in front of the doors, and went on. Once someone climbed the mound of junk behind us, but didn’t come down. John Albano took the gun at ten o’clock.

There were long silences, and then we’d hear them again. Coming closer, and moving away. Circling the mounds of junk.

We waited.

It was my turn at the door again at midnight, and after that we didn’t hear them again. We waited.

At 1 A.M., Hal lit a cigarette back in the truck, cupped it carefully.

“You think they’ve gone?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” John Albano said. “They stayed looking longer than I’d have expected. They want one of us a lot.”

“Which one?” I said, watched the dark night.

“We better wait,” Hal decided. He leaned back against the rusted truck, smoked. “Your son is one of them, Albano? A hoodlum, gangster?”

“Yes,” the old man said. “My son and my daughter, but not my granddaughter. She escapes.”

Hal laughed. Sudden, almost nasty. All our nerves raw in the rusted old wreck, the stink of the dump all around, the night beginning to freeze.

“So damned powerful,” Hal said, “and they can’t catch an old man, a cripple, and a two-bit painter with one gun between us! They wouldn’t last an hour in a real battle. Straw men.”