Michael Collins - Silent Scream

Kezar chewed his cigar, watched me.

“Maybe a smuggling setup?” I said. “Mia Morgan deals in Turkey, Asia. Drugs? Heroin?”

Kezar smoked. “Mia Morgan, you say? Heroin? Well, maybe there’s a connection.” He laughed. “Get it? A connection?”

He laughed harder. With the ping-pong games going on behind him, he laughed at me. A real laugh, tears in his eyes. Something very funny. A joke at my expense.

“Should I tell Captain Gazzo to check Sid Meyer out for a drug angle?” I said.

He went on laughing for a time, shook his head. His eyes no longer laughed with his mouth. Contemptuous eyes.

“You and Gazzo,” he said. “I saw. Looks to me like you’re the Captain’s pet. That’s good to know, I’ll file that. But don’t count on Gazzo, Fortune.”

Another warning?

“Why?” I said.

“You don’t know nothing.”

Shaking his head, he got up and walked out. I started after him, and stopped. In the lobby someone else got up and seemed to follow Kezar out of the club. A medium-sized young man in a neat brown suit and hat. I could be wrong, and the man looked like any young lawyer or accountant. But was there a faint bulge under his left arm?

After lunch, Diana Wood’s desk was still untouched. I complained that I’d had an appointment. The receptionist was sorry, Mrs. Wood had called in sick, and, no, Mr. Dunlap never came in on Tuesdays. On my way out I bumped a man coming in. He grabbed for my left arm, nearly fell when there wasn’t any left arm to grab. I caught him. It was Harold Wood, duffel coat and all.

“Sorry,” he said. He blinked at my empty sleeve, went on in.

I went down to the lobby. My watch read only 2 P.M. Too early for Wood to be off work. A late lunch hour? I got my answer soon. Harold Wood came down, looked around, then went out and across the street. He stood there among the passing people in the snow and cold for the next three hours.

Diana Wood didn’t show. At five-fifteen, Harold Wood walked south. I wasn’t far behind. The traffic was back to normal, the clean snow already slush out in the streets, but we walked the same route down to St. Marks Place. He went up, I went to the Ukrainian bar. I had a beer. The lights in 4-B didn’t go on. I drank, watched and waited. The apartment in 145 remained dark. A back way out? Spotted my tailing, and slipped away?

I crossed the street. The inside vestibule door was open. I stepped lightly up the bare tile stairs to 4-B. There was no sound inside the apartment, but there was behind me. Harold Wood had spotted me tailing all right, but he hadn’t slipped away. He stood and stared at my missing arm. It made me easy to remember.

“Who are you?” His voice was soft, but not weak. A direct voice not used to suspicion. More puzzled than wary. I was caught. It was as good a time as any to talk to him.

“Why don’t we talk inside?” I said.

He had serious eyes without much humor. The kind of eyes you see on kids who are going to write the great American novel not for fame or reward but for truth, for us all. Intense.

“Okay,” he said, unlocked his door.

We went into a kitchen. A cheap apartment, but not bohemian. Middle-class-a box partitioned into four boxes: kitchen, living room, two bedrooms. The living room and one bedroom were in front over the street, the second bedroom was an artist’s studio. In the studio he dropped his duffel coat on a cot. There were two easels, racks of canvases, and two battered tables piled with tubes of paint, rags, palettes, knives and cans.

“A commercial artist who paints,” I said. “The old story.”

“A painter who does commercial art,” he said. “An older story. Who the hell are you, mister?”

“Dan Fortune. You know where your wife is, Mr. Wood?”

“Fortune?” His voice and eyes were a question, as if he’d expected someone, but I wasn’t what he had expected. He lit a cigarette. “I know where my wife is. Why?”

“You’re sure?”

“You’re some kind of pervert? Following me? My wife-”

“I’m a private detective.” I showed him my license.

“Detective?” Alarmed or confused, which? “What for?”

“I was hired to investigate your wife.”

“Diana? You’re crazy! Who hired you to investigate Diana?”

“A girl named Mia Morgan.”

His blank stare was real. “I never heard of any Mia Morgan!”

“Levi Stern? An El Al pilot?”

“No!”

“Sid Meyer?” I slipped Meyer in with the same tone of voice.

“No!”

“Irving Kezar?”

His denials had been quick, sure. Now he hesitated. It made his denials seem more honest. He frowned.

“Kezar? I don’t know, maybe. Just a name I’ve maybe heard.”

“Lawrence Dunlap?”

“Sure, he’s Diana’s boss. She’s at a meeting in Philly with him now. Business.”

It was possible. The big, black car had had New Jersey plates the same as Dunlap’s Cadillac. But pick-up at Le Cerf Agile?

“You’re sure of where she is, Wood?”

“Of course I’m sure!”

“Then why were you watching her office building?”

“I wasn’t watching, just waiting in case she got back today.”

“At two P.M.? And why not wait upstairs?”

“I don’t like to hang around,” he said, but he wasn’t used to evading. I saw it on his face. He put out his cigarette. “Look, Diana’s pretty, Dunlap uses her for decoration at his meetings. It happens. Diana’s not tough, men make passes. So I meet her.”

“You trust her, but-?”

He lit another cigarette, picked up a paintbrush, stepped to an unfinished painting on one easel. It was an abstract with a lot of black like Kline or De Kooning. Strong, yet without a center as if he were still working for individuality.

“You’ve been a painter long?” I asked.

“Since Korea.” He went on studying his canvas. “It takes time. I’ve had a lot of jobs.”

“Korea?” Older than he looked, forty. “There long?”

“A year at the end. The hard part.”

“All your jobs in commercial art?”

“Only the last. It’s not good for a painter.”

“Where did you work? Importing? Airlines?”

For the first time he became really wary. He put down his brush. “Odd jobs, mostly. Small-time.”

“Is your wife involved in anything illegal, Wood? If she is, you better tell me. She could be mixed up in a murder.”

He stared at me. “You get out of here!”

He picked up a palette knife. Not much of a weapon, but he had two arms and a wild look, and he wasn’t going to tell me any more tonight. I got out of there.

Did Wood know something, or suspect something? Or just afraid of something? I’d only met each of the Woods once, but as I walked out into the dark street where the slush had begun to freeze, I recognized the seeds of conflict. A not-so-young man trying to be a pure artist, and a woman-turned-thirty who wanted what the world had to offer. The marriage could be a heavy load on both of them, each might grab at any short cut to what they needed-separately or together. With her looks…

There were people on the early night street, but that didn’t bother the two men who stepped from the narrow alley between two tenements. One took my arm, the other had a long gun. They walked me back to a fence in the dark alley. People passed out on the street, but the two men acted as if we were alone, remote. We were. The two men looked behind them.

A third man stood near the mouth of the alley. Short, he was dapper in a tight black overcoat, pale gray hat, and yellow gloves. I didn’t recognize him, it was too far to see his face, but I saw the gloves. He moved his right hand, a flick, like a man bidding at an auction. The one without the gun hit me in the stomach. I sat down. A silent yellow glove pointed at me from the distance. The one with the gun aimed it at my head. Yellow-gloves flicked another finger.