Michael Collins - Silent Scream

“They know how to get what they want,” John Albano said.

“We let them,” Hal said. He smoked, a shadow in the cold dark of the truck body. “How’d you escape it, Albano? You handled the car getting off the highway like some old getaway driver.”

“I almost was one,” the old man said. “You don’t always get a choice in this world, circumstances force you one way. But I got a choice. To the brotherhood the world is like a card game. Only so much in the game, and you pass it around, fight for your share. You add nothing. Money, status, momentary advantage, and afraid of losing it any minute because it’s all you’ve got. Not so different from any businessmen. Except the Mafia is in a war, them against everyone else. Parasites on the world.”

The old man found one of his long cigars in his pocket, lit it, the quick glare lighting his face. “I’ve built all over the world. I’ve taught college, consulted for struggling governments, worked for the U.N. in a lot of places. I’m not important, no one is afraid of me. But I’ve added something, done a job. Damn, I’ve enjoyed life-and I could have been like Charley.”

His eyes were cold in the glow of the cigar. “The only bad mistake I made. Away too much, let other people teach my kids. You two are still young enough, stay close to your kids.”

“Kids don’t always listen,” I said.

“We never had kids,” Hal said. “Diana and me. Good, maybe.”

I watched the night, my old gun cold in my hand. It was black and still, only the sound of the rats in the dump, and that sense of forces in the night. Indifferent forces, blind.

“You did some soldiering, too,” Hal said to John Albano.

“Yes, some. More than one place. I try to forget it.”

“I could tell out there tonight,” Hal said. He shifted unseen in the dark. “Over in Korea we dropped behind their lines this night. Knock out some pillboxes were pinning our guys down. We split up, my squad got one pillbox. They counterattacked, blew up the pillbox with us in it. I thought I was dead, but I wasn’t. When I came to, I was pinned under rubble. Me and an old sergeant. It was fourteen hours before they came and got me out, our people. The old sergeant died somewhere in there, and I thought I was dead again fifty times.

“All the while I lay there, I thought about after the war, about a woman, about my life. I swore that if I lived I’d do something. Something big, something for myself. I swore I’d never do anything I didn’t want, never let anyone tell me what to do, never get pushed around. I saw faces, all the destroyers who ran the world, put me under that pillbox. I’d never again just exist, let things happen! So I came home, became a painter, met Diana, and now-?”

He stopped talking, but he wasn’t silent. I could hear him moving in the dark against the rusted truck wall. Thrashing, the hidden car another pillbox and he was pinned under it again, Diana and Emily Green dead around him like that old sergeant.

“Easy, son,” John Albano said. “You sound like a man blaming himself. You can’t control everything that happens, shape it all your way. Save it for what you can control, or try to.”

Crouched at the truck doors my hand was frozen and my legs stiff. I could hear the traffic on the parkways, light now in the distance near 2 A.M., see the outline of the mounds of rotting and rusted junk. In the hidden truck I couldn’t see either of them, but I sensed them there, huddled in the cold, and I wanted to laugh. The losers! Frozen and hiding from men who knew how to win in this world. The three losers, nursing our impotent dreams of being better men, the proud solitaries who wanted the world to be better than it was. Perfect.

At 2 A.M., Hal took the gun and the post at the doors.

We waited.

There were no more sounds, and at some time John Albano took the gun, and once I became aware of even the distant traffic on the parkways becoming a single car that passed from time to time in some direction.

Then there was light. Gray at first, growing brighter. I sat up where I had slept against the truck wall. John Albano was slumped asleep at the door, my old gun large in his hand. Hal lay curled in a corner, stirring and moaning in his sleep. I woke Albano first. He came alert at once, his old eyes fully awake. He looked out into the dump.

“Wake up, Hal,” he said. “I’ll take a look.”

I shook Hal. He jerked awake, his eyes almost manic. He saw the light, scrambled to his feet. Outside I heard trucks and men working. John Albano came back.

“They’re gone. My car’s the only one back on the road.”

“People around,” I said. “The one thing they don’t like.”

We went out, and a dump-truck driver took us to the nearest garage. The garageman towed in Albano’s car. It would take two hours to fix, so I talked the garageman into renting us a car, and we drove into New York. Hal and John Albano reported to Captain Gazzo with me. He listened to our story.

“You didn’t see them, got no license numbers, but maybe there is a gang fight building,” Gazzo said. “I’ll check into Ramapo Construction. Not a damn thing new, and Bagnio’s still loose. In the same area, we think. Watch yourselves.”

Hal had to go to Diana’s funeral. They wouldn’t let him go to Emily Green’s burial. John Albano dropped me at my apartment. I shaved, took a shower, and was planning some sleep when the telephone rang. It was John Albano again.

“I went to Mia’s. She’s out in Jersey. They’re burying Andy today. Charley’ll be there, everyone. Want to go?”

I wanted to go.

Andy Pappas had lived farther out near Somerville. We stopped to pick up John Albano’s car, and drove west and south into the open countryside. A sunny day and warm near noon for February, but I wasn’t thinking about the beauty of the weather.

“Will they like my being there?” I said. “The funeral?”

“They’ll have buried Andy by now, all back at the house crying with the widow, telling each other how together they are, carving up Andy’s power and take,” John Albano said. “It’s a nervous time, Dan, and they won’t like you there, but they’ll take it. A friend of the father-in-law. They won’t like me there, won’t expect me. Maybe I’ll worry them. Someone’s worried already.”

“You think it was Charley last night?”

“Charley, or Max Bagnio, or even someone higher.” Albano watched the road. “An important event, Dan. Max Bagnio should be there, unless he’s afraid to be.”

“Or unless someone else is afraid to have him there.”

I saw the house a half mile away. It was white and Colonial, as big as the Dunlap house, and richer. Cars were massed around it like a great swarm of bees. The private cars and the rows of limousines just starting to leave. The brotherhood buried its dead according to the book. Formal clothes, a limousine for all. The soldiers packed in six-in-one, the generals and statesmen riding in secluded splendor with, perhaps, a single peer.

John Albano parked. We got out. Two guards hurried toward us. John Albano waited, the picture of a Sicilian patriarch. One of the guards recognized him, stopped, wary.

“Excuse, padrone. I wasn’t told you’d be here.”

“You see me.”

“The Mass is over. Funeral, too.”

“Is my daughter also buried?” Albano demanded.

The guard nodded, stepped back, and we went on into the big white house. Crowds of men in formal dress, and women all in black, filled a giant living room, a banquet-sized dining room, and smaller rooms. They saw me, and froze; saw John Albano, and fell silent.

Stella Pappas sat at the rear of the living room, women and older men hovering over her. One of the women was Mia Morgan. John Albano strode straight toward his daughter. I felt like one of those African movies where the white hunter and the nervous redhead walk down massed rows of silent warriors with sharp spears and nasty faces. Stella Pappas hadn’t seen us, her head down. Charley Albano had. The little under-boss stepped into our path, jerked his head at me.