Michael Collins - Silent Scream

“He damn near did it, too,” Gazzo said. “If he’d killed you, he’d still be painting.”

“Maybe,” I said.

I think Gazzo would have gotten him eventually, or Hal would have cracked. Those last paintings showed that he was close to the edge. Only half out of his mind, still human.

I left Gazzo to his work and went uptown to my office. John Albano was waiting. This time I didn’t jump. He was there to pay me some money. I was glad to get it. The massive old man stood and looked out the one window at my dirty air shaft.

“Summer, soon,” he said. “I’ve had enough of this city. Mia’s made up her mind. She’ll go to Israel with Stern. That’s all Stern wanted all along, to get Mia away from them all. Take her to a decent place where they’re trying to build.”

He turned, smiled at me. “I’ll go with them. Some work left in me yet. You know, Dan, the world usually gets left just the way we found it. A few leave it worse. I’d like to leave it a little better. Add one small thing, eh?”

He’d do it, too. A builder, that tough old man.

I saw him off on the jet with Mia and Stern a week later. The rest of them went their ways unchanged, like most of us. Charley Albano must have talked well. He was still alive six months later when the last little piece got explained-who had taken Irving Kezar’s gun from me, and why.

November, winter again in New York, and Gazzo called me down to his office. The F.B.I. had arrested Lawrence Dunlap, Charley Albano, Mr. Kincaid of Caxton Industries, and a host of smaller fry-bribery, extortion, fraud, and selling the favors of office. Irving Kezar wasn’t arrested-he was the one who turned all the others in. The star witness, telling all.

“The F.B.I. was onto the Wyandotte affair almost a year,” Gazzo said. “They never told the Wyandotte officials or the New Jersey police. They let it go on.”

“To make their own case. Kezar wouldn’t talk until he’d taken his cut, and disposed of it,” I said. “Now I know who took that gun from me-the F.B.I. To protect Kezar. They’ll let him go free on the murder charge, because without Kezar they have no case.”

“You’re not sure of that, Dan.”

“I’m sure,” I said. “That gun was what killed Meyer, and it’s got Kezar’s prints on it.”

“Jenny could have done it,” Gazzo said.

“Yeh,” I said. “Who’s worse, Captain? Charley Albano for being ready to corrupt, or Dunlap for being ready to be corrupted? Or Kincaid, the clean businesssman who’s ready to pay anyone to get the job done fast and smooth? Kezar, screwing everyone for his cut of anything he can get his hands on? Or maybe the F.B.I., paying a man to inform on everyone he works his dirty deals with-after he’s got his share-and then protecting him so they can make a case in court?”

“I’ll think about it,” Gazzo said.

I went out to find my usual haven. I had a double Irish. In a way, the Wyandotte deal had killed them all-the need for a few dirty bucks on the side. If Dunlap hadn’t wanted his share of the action, Diana Wood might never have met Andy Pappas. Hal Wood might never have had to kill anyone.

I said it at the start-we all tend to dream of perfection, and our reality falls a lot short of coming close. We have to live in the pit between. The dark pit where the Pappases and Kezars profit, where most of us try to survive in peace and a little honor, and where a Hal Wood breaks apart and kills for his dreams.