Silent Scream df-6

by Michael Collins

  Silent Scream

  ( Dan Fortune - 6 )

  Michael Collins

  Michael Collins

  Silent Scream

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  We tend to dream of perfection. The perfect job, the perfect life, the perfect woman.

  A cold January day on the East Side as I came out of the subway and walked north on Lexington Avenue, and six months since Marty had married her director. Martine Adair, my woman, but not any more. Martine Reston now, and a one-armed man dreams more than most, makes perfect what never was or should have been.

  She had replaced my missing arm for so long, and now in my morning mirror there was only one arm and no woman. Six months of booze, and of watching her new apartment from a solitary doorway across the street. Finally, a morning of daylight, and the call of a client with a job. Reality.

  Perfection doesn’t exist. In the reality of daylight and action most of us accept that, but alone in the long nights we dream fantasies of perfection as unreal as the dream world of any psychotic. The only difference between most of us and the psychotic is that the psychotic lets the dream world win. Maybe they are braver, more honest. They take the plunge, escape. Only that is no escape, either, no answer.

  Work, that’s the answer. A job can be completed, wrapped up. The only perfection we know. Finished, paid for, and on to the next job. A fresh start, the possible. So I walked north on Lexington in the cold morning, a Wednesday, to Morgan Crafts.

  It was a small store between Fifty-fifth and Fifty-sixth Streets, two steps down, with only three items displayed in its window: a bright Turkish jug, a Cambodian green Buddha, and a wooden Amazonian mask. Classy. No bell tinkled as I went in. The atmosphere was like thin glass and hushed. More items of far-flung native crafts were displayed on shelves and in showcases. A single female clerk talked in the rear to a small, thin, pasty-faced man in a rich, blue cashmere overcoat too wide and too long, as if he hoped to grow bigger.

  “I’m sorry,” the clerk was saying. “Mrs. Morgan is busy.”

  “I got to see her,” the little man said, tried to push past the woman toward a doorway behind a desk curtained by hanging beads. The woman was bigger than he was, blocked him.

  “If you’d like to wait, or give your name,” the clerk said.

  “Okay, I’ll wait a while. Only-” The small man’s body seemed to move inside his voluminous overcoat as he glanced around the shop. He saw me. Small, black eyes jumped in his narrow, bony face, and a livid scar twitched at the base of his long nose. He looked sharply all around me, and beyond me out the window to the street.

  “I’ll come back sometime,” he said.

  “If you’ll tell me-” the clerk began.

  But the little man went past me almost running. He veered around me as if I were dangerous to touch, left the door open behind him, and vanished hurrying to the left down Lexington. I closed the door, walked back to the clerk.

  “Your customers leave in a hurry,” I said.

  “He wasn’t a customer,” she said, annoyed. “Not a normal one, anyway. He wanted to see Mrs. Morgan.”

  “So do I, but I have a name: Dan Fortune. Mrs. Morgan called me. Ten o’clock appointment.”

  She looked at a wall clock. It was five of ten.

  “Well,” she hesitated. “I’ll see.”

  She went back through the beaded curtain uneasily. I guessed that Mrs. Morgan ran a tight ship, strict rules and orders. But the clerk returned almost at once and smiling. This time she had done right, Mrs. Morgan would see me.

  “Through the curtain, first door on the left,” the clerk said.

  I knocked on the door, a woman’s voice told me to come in. A young voice, and inside the neat, precise office the woman behind an ornate, antique desk was young. Very young. Maybe twenty-two-or-three, with big, dark eyes, a full mouth in a pale-olive face, and long, straight black hair. A cool face.

  “You’re Mr. Fortune?” She looked me over, her face neutral but the question in her voice-a one-armed detective? It’s always there.

  “Private investigator,” I said. “License and all.”

  She stood up, nodded to a man who sat so quietly in a corner I hadn’t seen him. An old man. Or just older? His hair was white, but thick, and his swarthy, square face had a firm glow. Short and stocky, he wore a white turtle-neck and a well-cut dark blue suit that hung without a wrinkle on wide shoulders and a body without fat. When he stood, too, it was an easy, fluid motion, muscular. His voice was soft, relaxed.

  “Later, Mia? About four?”

  “All right,” Mia Morgan said.

  The old man nodded to me, smiled, and left the office. Mia Morgan waited for a moment, then motioned me to follow her. She went out through the store, stopped to say something short and low to the clerk, then went on out of the store in brisk strides and turned right without looking back to be sure I was behind her.

  She turned into a door next to the shop, and led me up to the second floor into a large, sunny apartment directly over her shop. A bohemian apartment, all bright plastic and native crafts.

  “Wait here,” she said.

  I looked over the apartment. She had gone into a large bedroom with a king-sized bed under an African throw I could see through the open door. There was a second bedroom that had been turned into a craft workshop, and a good kitchen. All the furniture was bold and individual, almost defiant.

  Mia Morgan returned. She held a snapshot.

  “I want to know who the woman in this picture is, where she lives, what she does. I want pics of the men she dates-together with her. All I know is that she frequents an East Side restaurant: Le Cerf Agile. I’ll give you a week.”

  In the snapshot a man of average height stood with his back to the camera facing a blonde woman in front of an apartment building. He wore a dark homburg, dark overcoat, and silk scarf. The blonde was maybe thirty-and a beauty. A real beauty-a cover-girl face, or a movie-star face in the days when the movies featured beauty. Not tall, she had perfect curves only partly hidden by a cloth coat of wide stripes, and her blonde hair curled on her shoulders from under one of those mannish felt hats Greta Garbo used to wear.

  “Not much to go on,” I said. “What’s your interest in her?”

  “You know all you need to,” Mia Morgan said. “Yes or no? I can get someone else.”

  A detective who expected his clients to tell all wouldn’t work much. A hazard of the trade. Half the time you never do learn the whole story, and Mia Morgan was right-she could get fifty other investigators who wouldn’t ask questions. I needed the money, and wanted the work. I wanted to be busy. It was as good an excuse as any.

  “All right,” I said, looked at the apartment. “A hundred a day plus expenses. Extra for the camera work.”

  “Five hundred now, the rest on final bill.”

  I nodded. She went to a lacquered blue desk to write the check. I watched her. People who hire detectives are usually scared, angry, emotional or nervous. She wasn’t emotional, and didn’t sound scared. Cold, maybe, a little tight, but not nervous. A poised, controlled girl of twenty-two who sounded and acted a lot older. No surprises left, as if she had been through all the youthful troubles there were and more.

  She stood up with the check. “One week. Tops.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said.

  “Everything about her, and don’t be spotted.”

  A girl who knew what she wanted, whatever it was. Mr. Morgan cheating on her? Her age was against that. Young girls, even older-acting ones, usually take more direct routes with their men than hiring detectives. Some older man on her hook, and she had competition? Or not that kind of problem at all? I looked at the snapshot. Was there something familiar ab
out the back of the man in the picture?

  “How did you happen to call me, Mrs. Morgan?” I asked.

  “A pin in the phone book. You’re lucky.”

  “The man in this snap,” I said. “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know. I-”

  I heard the outer door open. A tall, slender man stood in the doorway with a key in his hand. He had blue eyes set very deep under heavy brows in a gaunt, Lincoln-ugly face, wore an airline uniform, and looked at Mrs. Morgan and at me.

  “You weren’t in the shop,” the airline man said to Mia Morgan. “Midmorning. Who is he?”

  “Business, Levi,” the girl said. I heard a faint nervousness now in her voice. “I didn’t expect you yet.”

  “We got in early. Business? In your apartment?”

  There was more than anger in the airline man, a violent fury. If he expected to intimidate Mrs. Morgan, he failed. I could almost see the girl’s back go up.

  “Private business,” she snapped. “Get a drink, Levi. Mr. Fortune is just leaving.”

  She walked me to the door. The gaunt airline man didn’t try to stop me. She held the door as I went out.

  “Call me,” she said, and closed the door.

  I went down to the street and walked into the store again. The woman clerk came forward.

  “Does Mrs. Morgan manage this store for someone?” I asked.

  “No, sir, she owns it. Can I help-?”

  “She’s pretty young,” I said.

  “Yes.” Her voice was bitter. She wasn’t young, and she didn’t own a store.

  I looked at all the far-flung crafts. “Who supplies her?”

  “She buys directly, travels a lot. I really can’t-”

  “The tall airline man,” I said. “Who is he?”

  “Captain Stern? A pilot for El Al, I believe.” She reddened, annoyed. “I really can’t talk about Mrs. Morgan. You’ll-”

  “Sure,” I said. “Sorry.”

  On the avenue in the cold sun I lit a cigarette. One of the bad effects of being a hard boss was that your employees thought about you too much. The clerk who couldn’t talk about Mia Morgan had talked enough. My new client owned an expensive shop, traveled to remote places, and had an airline pilot for a boy friend-at least, for one boy friend.

  A hand touched my shoulder. “Mr. Fortune?”

  It was the old man in the white turtle-neck and dark blue suit who had been in Mrs. Morgan’s office. He wore a light, raglan topcoat now, a thin coat for the winter cold, and smiled under his white hair.

  “I’ll buy you a drink,” he said.

  It was much too early for the restaurant-Le Cerf Agile-to be open, and the old man interested me. He wasn’t the man in the snapshot, too short and thick, but he knew Mia Morgan.

  “I never say no,” I said.

  There was a neighborhood cocktail lounge at the corner. The old man had a solid, rolling walk with no trace of age. He opened the heavy door lightly, motioned me inside.

  CHAPTER 2

  In the dim lounge booth the old man could have been anywhere from sixty to seventy. It was impossible to tell. Up close, there were deep creases in his pale leather-colored face, but the healthy skin had not sagged at all. His motion for the waitress was as firm as his walk.

  “J and B, a little water,” he said, looked at me.

  “Irish with some coffee.”

  It was early in the day, and cold. We were alone in the lounge, the people and sounds of the avenue almost distant. The waitress returned soon. The old man sipped his Scotch. His hair was pure white. His eyes were dark and quick. He leaned back in the booth, watched me.

  “John Albano, Mr. Fortune,” he introduced himself, smiled again. “I’m seventy-one. Everyone has some little vanity. First, luck-my family lives old. You don’t let go, you stay young. It gets harder every year. One day I fall apart.”

  He’d guessed my thoughts, but he wasn’t psychic. It was like my arm. Everyone I met wondered about my arm, how I’d lost it. Everyone he met wondered about his age. I wondered about his voice. I heard a small accent now: Italian. More a vague intonation, and I’m not sure I’d have identified it if he hadn’t told me his name. He continued to watch me.

  “Why does Mia need a detective?” he said.

  I drank my Irish, some coffee. “Confidential, Mr. Albano.”

  “Business trouble?”

  “You better ask her,” I said, drank.

  “Some trouble, to hire a detective.”

  I finished my whisky. “Where’s Mr. Morgan? Around?”

  “Not for a while. A kid marriage, she was sixteen. Married to spite her father. Morgan’s been gone two, three years. A kid.”

  “You’re not a kid,” I said.

  “Man trouble?” Albano said. “That it?”

  I shook my head. “What’s your interest in her?”

  “A friend, okay?”

  “How good a friend?”

  He thought about that in the dim booth. Another customer came into the lounge. The old man’s eyes jumped alert, followed the newcomer all the way to a seat at the bar before they turned back to me again.

  “Okay, you’ve got ethics, you do a job. I’m Mia’s friend, maybe I can be your friend. Walk away from this job. Right now. No threat, just advice.”

  John Albano got up, dropped three dollars on the booth table, and walked out of the lounge. I finished my coffee.

  I had some hot soup at a diner before heading for my office. It’s one room on Twenty-eighth Street off Eighth Avenue-too hot in summer, too cold in winter. Par for the Chelsea area. It’s a walk-up-elevator buildings are status symbols in Chelsea, and mostly for outsiders-and has one window with an air-shaft view.

  I walked up, unlocked my door, and went in to sit down and think about Mia Morgan’s job and John Albano’s “advice” before Le Cerf Agile opened. I didn’t sit down, and I didn’t have a view of my air shaft.

  A man stood behind my desk blocking the window.

  “Your office is not much,” he said.

  The El Al pilot, Captain Levi Stern, still in his uniform and taller than my first impression. Over six-feet-four, skinny at maybe one hundred sixty pounds, his narrow shoulders hunched forward over a thin, hollow chest.

  “How’d you get in here?” I asked.

  “I am expert with locks. With many things.”

  He had an accent, too. Stronger than John Albano’s accent, and harder to place. Maybe Israeli, or maybe German, overlaid with British English diction. I judged his gaunt-ugly face to be about forty, thin-mouthed, the intense blue eyes sunk in their deep sockets. He looked out my window at the grimy brick wall of the air shaft as if he hated brick walls.

  “You do a job for Mia?” he said.

  “Mrs. Morgan sent you?”

  I went around my desk toward him.

  “No,” he said, nodded at my empty sleeve. “The arm, you lost it in the war?”

  “A kind of war,” I said.

  The perpetual war of poor slum kids against the powers that ruled their lives. I lost the arm robbing a Dutchman ship when I was a kid here in Chelsea. I lost that battle, but I never went to jail, so I guess I won the war. At least, I survived to grow up more or less respectable, and come back to Chelsea a lawman of sorts. A detective-for-hire who didn’t ask too many questions, but did try to ask some.

  “If Mrs. Morgan didn’t send you-”

  His right hand moved in a blur, caught my lone wrist. His left had my elbow, forcing it backwards. A judo grip. I knew one more thing he was expert at. One sharp push and he could snap my arm like a straw.

  To prove it, he pressed lightly. His grip was like a clamp, his skinny body all corded muscle. My teeth scraped.

  “You have only the one arm,” he said.

  A trained man, trained in violence, trained to find the weak point and strike at it. Naked fear is a sickening thing. I was sick down in the hollow of my stomach. What could a one-arm man fear more than the loss of his only arm? Sick fear.


  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.