Michael Collins - Silent Scream

He floundered inside, groped irrationally for straws.

“I was in Woodstock when Diana was shot!”

“No, Emily Green lied for you. She knew you were in New York, but believed whatever story you told her. She didn’t think you killed them, didn’t want to think it. But she wasn’t stupid, she had doubts, so when Bagnio called her and said he had proof you killed Diana and Pappas, she went to meet him. You tailed her, and when she came out, Bagnio had showed her the wedding ring. She knew the truth. But she still hoped, wanted to believe you.

“So you told her it was a lie. You’d seen Bagnio leave the rooming-house building. You told her you’d take her back to Bagnio, and prove he was a liar. Once you got her back up in Bagnio’s room, you killed her and made it look like Bagnio had.”

He looked like one of his own faceless kings in his new paintings, his whole face melting like wax as he tried to think of some way out, some answer. He couldn’t, stood there silent, searching desperately inside his own half-insane mind.

John Albano said, “What’s so vital about that ring, Dan?”

“Diana didn’t have it,” I said. “She’d given it back to Hal. He must have had it with him when he killed them, maybe showed it to her-the symbol of her failing him. He dropped it, Max Bagnio found it. Max knew Diana hadn’t been wearing the ring for weeks, but Max wasn’t sure it would be enough proof. With Hal’s alibi, it was only Bagnio’s word against Hal’s. So Max looked for more proof-mostly to convince his Mafia people.”

“How do you know Diana wasn’t wearing the ring?” Albano said.

“It was in those pics the police showed me of the death room. Diana had been in Miami, she was heavily tanned. There was a clear pale ring mark on her right hand, but none on her left. She hadn’t worn that ring in weeks. So how had it gotten in that bedroom? Who would she have given it to except her ex-husband? She was a nice girl, she gave Hal the ring to show that they were all through.”

I looked at Hal, who was still silent. “Then there was the robe. I mean, why was Diana wearing a robe when Andy was naked? She was naked under it, why cover herself? Facing a killer with an automatic rifle, would she have thought about being naked? No. Then it must have been the killer who made her cover her body. Who would do that except a husband who-?”

The sound was low and animal. At least, low and something else than human. Or human enough, but back somewhere in the shadows before history, before time. From Hal’s open mouth, and he had the small 7.65-mm. pistol in his hand. Even as I saw his finger whiten on the trigger, I thought, rational and detached, that this was the final proof-the gun he’d shot me with. I thought that, nice and rational. Too rational to move. Rooted.

John Albano moved.

He jumped, had Hal’s arm. The gun fired. The bullet went somewhere over my shoulder. Like a bird, singing.

They grappled. They breathed hard. The tough old man was stronger. Hal was younger, in condition. The gun went off. Neither of them fell. Struggled locked together. The gun went off again. Then John Albano had the gun.

The old man stepped back, panting and sweating.

Hal fell to the floor. Shot twice. He lay there with his blood spreading around him.

He was still alive when Captain Gazzo and his men got there. I gave Gazzo the 7.65-mm. pistol that would match the slugs taken out of me. I told it all: how he’d done it; how Emily Green had lied for him, then died for her lie; how Bagnio had found the wedding ring and tried to get the final proof; how Charley Albano had tried to close the case by giving us a killer all framed, but we’d never prove that.

The Medical Examiner arrived, worked over Hal. The doctor shook his head. Hal lay very still, afraid to move and lose his faint hold on life, that last vital ounce of blood.

“I… maybe… maybe I wouldn’t have shot. Even… then after I planned… He had to try, that guard from the hall. Had to try for… his gun. I shot them.”

He closed his eyes. “I showed her the… ring. What it meant. The perfect… circle. No end. She was… never supposed to… end. To love… me… Failed, imperfect. I… made her… put it on… the robe… Then that guard he had to… try… for his… gun…”

His eyes opened wide as if in alarm, his voice manic. “He had the ring! That Bagnio! I knew he had it, you see? He was looking for the rifle. He searched, shot at me. Dan, he’d help me find Bagnio, get the ring! I searched that Mia’s place so no one would know it was only me Bagnio was after. Emily thought I was out for a walk! She knew, though. He told her. I had to kill her!”

The M.E. stood up, shrugged. John Albano leaned against a wall. He seemed almost sad, a good old man. Gazzo looked around at all the new paintings with their powerful forms and oozing shapes and faceless kings on their thrones.

“He painted it out,” Gazzo said. “Kings like Pappas.”

“Pappas,” Hal said. His eyes stared straight up, the manic strength of a moment ago gone from his voice. “Big man, the ruler, important. A destroyer. I saw them… in Korea. The… generals… politicians… walking over us… Scum! The… profiteers and dealers while I lay… under a… pillbox… dying… dead… Not dead!.. No! Not dead… be great… do what I… wanted… My woman, my work… the best… best world… I… I-”

All the color was gone now from his face. The boyish face on the floor surrounded by his last dark work. From horror, the work-his own horror. The silent screams his own.

“So easy to… kill… them. Killers, all of them. Murder already, Dan told me… someone murdered… already. Always they… kill… gangsters… so easy… everyone will blame them… Mafia… safe… safe-”

His blood spread-suddenly. A gush of blood. His breath labored irregular. The M.E. bent down over him. Hal slapped the M.E. in the face. The M.E. jumped back, pale. Hal’s arm raised up, pushing. Pushing at something only he could see.

“… safe… if only the… guard… not try for… his gun… maybe… maybe… if only… love-”

He died.

The police found the automatic rifle and the rope buried in the cellar of 145 St. Marks Place-an available apartment now.

Irving Kezar found out that we didn’t have his gun. He had a talk with the D.A. Jenny Kezar would plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter-a slap on the wrist.

“No gun, no case,” Gazzo said to me in his office the next afternoon. “We won’t get Charley Albano for Bagnio, either.”

“Maybe the Mafia will,” I said. “Depends how fast Charley can talk. Bagnio failed in his job, anyway.”

“Funny,” the Captain said. “No connection between Sid Meyer’s killing and the rest of it.”

“There was a connection, Captain,” I said. “Cause and effect. Meyer’s murder, and Andy’s business, that’s what gave Hal the idea, flipped him out, made him sure he could get away with it. Connected, cause and effect.”

“A phony with big illusions? Crazy?”

“Those hours under the pillbox in Korea affected him, made him a kind of fanatic. A dreamer. He hadn’t died, so he had to become perfect. Make a perfect life in a perfect world with a perfect woman. Under it all he was scared of women, afraid of the world. So he built his own world where he never had to face what he was in the real one. Then Diana failed him, Pappas threatened the illusion.”

“He had to punish them,” Gazzo said, nodded.

“The real world was against him, evil,” I said. “And in the end he was really good only at one thing. What he learned in Korea-killing. It made him feel whole again, gave him back his dream world.”