Michael Collins - Silent Scream

He pressed an ounce harder, forcing me to walk. I walked. Up on my toes, like a man stepping on eggshells, beads of sweat on my brow. He walked me in a circle around my small office, faster and slower, my every nerve alert to the slightest pressure on my elbow. He never smiled.

“I wish all to be clear to you, Mr. Fortune,” he said. “All understood.”

I saw the number tattooed on his wrist. I thought about it. To think of something. Israel must be full of men with tattooed wrists. Violence-trained men. German, then, his accent. Not much German, he would have been a child when he became Israeli. Forty, born in, say, 1933. A special year for Jews in Germany, 1933. A child in the camps, a soldier in Israel.

“You will work for Mia, nothing more,” he said. “You will have no thoughts of her beyond that.”

“I never-!”

He pressed my elbow. I made a sound.

“Be sure, Mr. Fortune. Mia is mine.”

He dropped my arm, walked out of the office without looking back. I sat down. On the floor. He had carefully closed my door, and I sat on the floor and looked at the closed door.

Then I began to shiver.

Shiver and sweat. I cradled my solitary arm against my chest, rocked. The elbow hurt. More than fear, terror. Was it damaged? Broken? I wanted to lick it like an animal, hugged it to me like a broken wing.

Time stood still in the office. Then, slowly, I moved it, my arm. I flexed the elbow. It was sore. I took out a cigarette, snapped my lighter. My fingers all worked. I smoked. A doctor? An X-ray? I clenched a fist. The pain was easing. I stood up. First, a drink.

I went down to Packy’s Pub. My friend, Joe Harris, wasn’t on duty. After my first Irish I decided I didn’t need an X-ray or a doctor. I had another Irish.

Le Cerf Agile opened at five. I rented a Leica and borrowed a tweed overcoat to wear instead of my old duffel in case I wanted to go in. I didn’t go in. I staked out in a doorway, held the snapshot, and waited.

The restaurant was elegant, with a canopy and doorman. It was in an old Czech, Polish, Hungarian tenement neighborhood. I could smell the paprika in the night, and the old men who stood on the street stared at the sleek men and glittering women who went into Le Cerf Agile. The blonde wasn’t among the women.

By ten o’clock she hadn’t appeared, and I was freezing in my doorway. The wind blew paper along the dark gutters. There was a Czech-American Club in a store front up the street. Only old men went in. By midnight the old men were still inside their club, and the blonde had not appeared.

I stamped my feet in the doorway, blew on my numb hand. A few old men in shabby middle-European overcoats came out of the Czech club. On the street they waved their arms and argued. No-debated. The old-world politics of ancient convictions and utopian theories, the dream of power to the people in a new world. The faith and hope of an older, simpler generation.

Le Cerf Agile closed at 2 A.M. The blonde never came.

Next morning my arm hurt, so I stayed in bed and thought about Marty. That helped nothing. At noon I got up and went down to St. Vincent’s for an X-ray. It was negative, I had an early dinner, and was in my doorway again at five.

The old men gathered at their club to go on arguing the old politics that was their haven in a world that had failed them. A second-floor Polish dance hall hammered polkas into the dark. I watched and waited. At midnight the blonde still hadn’t shown. I couldn’t waste another day. I went into Le Cerf Agile.

The foyer was bright, rich, and warm. To the left the dining room was dim and plush with maroon velvet. At the candle-lit tables the men reeked of money and confidence, the women of care and confidence. The men were older, the women young. A small bar and cocktail lounge was to the right. The checkroom woman was gray-haired and dressed in black, and the maitre wore an old-fashioned tail suit at his lighted stand. He looked at me, but didn’t approach me. I wasn’t dinner. I went into the bar.

A bottle of beer was two dollars. The only other people at the bar were a group of five men and five women. They stopped talking, and the men all stared at me. They didn’t seem to like me being there. Neither did the bartender. When I showed him the snapshot-with a ten-dollar bill-he said that maybe the blonde came in sometimes, and maybe not. He didn’t know her name, and he didn’t take the ten. There was an aura to the bar I didn’t like, like a private club.

“Mister!” A man waved to me from a table. “Join me.”

He indicated a chair. I took my beer and sat down.

“I heard you asking for a lady,” the man said. “I’m a regular in here. Maybe I can help. Can I see the pic?”

He was short and paunchy in an expensive gray suit, beard shadow and acne scars on his round face. His pudgy hands were soft and manicured, with three diamond rings. He had friendly eyes that blinked as he looked at the snapshot.

“Sure,” he said. “She comes here. Nice-looking woman.”

He smiled. It was an ingratiating smile without humor, and his teeth were bad. Teeth that had had no care when he was young, and the kind of smile used to cover hard thinking. The tone of his voice asked what the blonde was to me.

“You know her name?” I said.

He continued to smile. “I’m Irving Kezar, Mr.-?” When I didn’t give my name, he went right on smiling, but stopped being subtle. “What’s your interest in the lady?”

“None. It’s her car. I’m a repo man.”

“So? Well, that’s hard work. I like to help a man who works hard.” He took a small, monogrammed notebook from his pocket, wrote in it with a gold pencil, tore out the page. He held the page. “You have a license?”

I showed him. He nodded, gave me the page. I read: Diana Wood. Brown and Dunlap. His smile was real now. He had my name.

“Brown and Dunlap, that’s where she works. Heard her say it once. I like to help, Dan.” He emphasized my name as if to make sure I knew he had it. “But I like to get help, too. No favors, worth your while. Say, five hundred?”

“For what?”

“Who you’re working for.”

“That’s a lot of money for just a repossession agency.”

He leaned across the small table. “Look, I know how to use information, no names. A bonus for you, no danger, no one knows.”

“What’s important about this Diana Wood?”

He took out his wallet. “Just name your client.”

“Acme Collection Agency.”

It was a company I really did repo work for. Maybe I could make five hundred dollars. I couldn’t. He put his wallet away.

“I’m here most every night sometime,” he said.

I left him lighting a cigar and studying my face as if to remember it. I felt a chill. He already had my name. On the avenue I hailed a taxi. It was safer.

In my five cold rooms I got the coffee ready for morning, and went to bed. I lay awake. Irving Kezar hadn’t believed I was a repo man for a second. Somehow, Kezar knew no repo man would be after Diana Wood’s car. He was sure. How?

Brown and Dunlap, Investments, had offices on lower Madison Avenue. Their sixth-floor suite was impressive but reserved, as befitted a financial adviser. The Personnel Department was a one-man cubicle with files and a desk. The one man at the desk was a woman in her fifties. I showed my license, asked to see Diana Wood’s file. The woman was alarmed.

“Mrs. Wood? Is something wrong?”

So Diana Wood was married. Or had been.

“She’s been given as a reference,” I explained. “A man up for a position in a defense company. Government contracts, so we make a security investigation, cross-check references. Routine, ma’am, but confidential, you understand.”