Silent Scream df-6

by Michael Collins

  It was the little, pasty-faced man in the oversized coat who had run out of Mia Morgan’s shop the first day.

  So Kezar and Mia Morgan connected, and I wouldn’t question the maitre yet. The little man whispered fiercely to Kezar. They stood up. Kezar got his coat, an elegant herringbone Chesterfield, its velvet collar incongruous against his acne scars.

  They walked south to Seventieth Street and went into a large brick apartment house once the best on the shabby block. It even had a service alley at the side, but was dingy now. I staked out across the street as a light snow began to fall. Cold. After fifteen minutes, I went into the lobby. Half the mailboxes had no names on them. A janitor mopped at the floor. He told me, yes, Mr. and Mrs. Kezar had apartment 6-C. Kezar, like most of his kind, spent his money to keep up a front.

  I went back across the street. In ten minutes Kezar came out alone, wearing a raincoat now in the snow. The janitor held the lobby door for him. Kezar walked east. I let him reach the corner. I’d taken some ten steps after him when I heard the shots.

  Unmistakable-three shots, spaced, a crash of glass, and something heavy hitting the ground in the service alley.

  I ran to the alley. The janitor was already there, bent over a crumpled body. I recognized the oversized coat. The body was the bony-faced little man who’d been with Kezar.

  The janitor looked up. “It’s Mr. Meyer!”

  I ran to the lobby and into a waiting elevator. The door of 6-C was open, the chain broken from the wall. It was a large, seedy apartment of many rooms. I saw blood on a rug, the broken window. It had been open, heavy drapes pushed aside, and only the bottom panes of the raised lower half were smashed.

  “What are you doing?” A woman stood in the doorway behind me. She stared around. “Irving?”

  A heavy woman, maybe sixty. Gray, with watery eyes and an ugly, worn face. She wore a cheap blue coat.

  “Mrs. Kezar?” I said, stepped toward her.

  The janitor appeared with two uniformed policemen.

  “That’s him! He wanted to know if Mr. Kezar lived here! I told him Six-C!”

  Both patrolmen had their guns out, advanced slowly. It was no time to argue.

  CHAPTER 4

  I sat in the precinct cell telling myself I’d been in jail before. Nothing to worry about, don’t panic. It didn’t help. I paced the cell, every minute like an hour. I sat down again on the iron cot. Pacing is the worst thing you can do.

  There are men who love prison, commit crimes for no other real reason than to be sent back to prison. Mostly homosexuals, but that’s not the only reason. Prison is a simple world, its dangers known, its limits narrow-a haven from the vast, indifferent world that frightens them. Sometimes the world frightens me, too, but I’ll take my chances. Walls are no answer.

  The row of holding cells was silent, no one inside now but me. I thought about the little man in the too-big overcoat he’d never grow to fill now. Meyer, the janitor had called him. So the little man was known where Irving Kezar lived. Kezar knew Meyer, Meyer knew Mia Morgan, and Mia Morgan and Kezar both knew Diana Wood. Where did that put Diana Wood? In the middle?

  I got up to pace. I sat down. Even a few hours in jail and you begin to feel guilty. Of something. I didn’t even have Marty to think about. I thought about Diana Wood. If anyone could make me forget… It was going to be a long night. I was wrong.

  Captain Gazzo carried a chair along the corridor, set it outside my cell, sat down, and watched me.

  “You know as much as I do,” I said.

  Gazzo’s been on the force a long time. He was nice to my mother once, and she was nice to him, so we’re friends. But he’s Homicide, and a good cop, and he knows that anyone can do anything.

  “The janitor thinks you went in the side entrance to the stairs, or the back entrance to the cellar. You shot Meyer, came out to be sure, went back to Six-C to look innocent.”

  “I didn’t even have a gun,” I said.

  “Guns can be ditched.”

  “How about a motive?”

  “You were tailing Kezar and Meyer for some reason.”

  So Irving Kezar had spotted me. I relaxed.

  “You had me worried,” I said, “but it’s okay now. Even I’m not dumb enough to kill one of two men I’m tailing.”

  “Who knows?” Gazzo said. “Three ways in and out of that building. Maybe you saw something? Clear yourself now.”

  “All I saw was Kezar come out before the shots, and Mrs. Kezar come to Six-C after I got up there.”

  “You’re sure Kezar came out before the shots?”

  I nodded. Gazzo sat back, lit two cigarettes, held one for me to reach out and take. Reflex. He wasn’t afraid of me, but you don’t put your hands into a cell for anything.

  “Looks like two killers,” Gazzo said. “Sid Meyer was shot three times. Once up close with a small seven-sixty-five millimeter, twice with a big forty-five-automatic. Slugs still in him, and we found the forty-five on the stairs one floor below. No prints.”

  “Dropped in an escape, and no prints? Gloves?”

  “Like pros,” Gazzo agreed. “Meyer opened the door, so he knew them. The chain was on, so he was nervous. They kicked in the door, maybe grappled. We found a black thread under one of Meyer’s fingernails. Nothing else. They shot him out that window, probably heard you coming. Ran down the stairs and out.”

  “Who was Sid Meyer?”

  “A hustler who ran a small trucking company in New Jersey. One fraud conviction, no recent trouble. Irving Kezar’s brother-in-law. Kezar is a lawyer in Manhattan. Not much criminal work. The D.A. doesn’t know him. Do you, Dan?”

  I shook my head. “He just turned up in a case.”

  “What case?”

  There it was. It had to come, and I never lie to the police. I need them too much. But there are exceptions to every rule. I liked Diana Wood. Call me a fool.

  “Just a wife tail,” I said.

  “Some names, Dan.”

  “Captain,” I said. “Look. I’ve got some clean, ordinary people on this case. No real connection to Meyer at all.”

  “No, Dan,” Gazzo said. “I judge the connection, not you.”

  “I have to judge, too. My license means something.”

  “Not much,” Gazzo said.

  We faced each other through the bars. There was no way I could win the round unless he let me. He nodded to the turnkey to unlock my cell. He knows his power, he can wait.

  He took me to an interrogation room. Irving Kezar and his wife were there. Kezar jumped up, his paunch quivering.

  “He told who hired him to kill Sid?”

  “Fortune didn’t kill Meyer,” Gazzo said. He sat on a table. “Maybe pros. What was Meyer doing to make enemies, get shot?”

  Kezar shook his head. “Who knows? A lot of deals.”

  “You were his brother-in-law.”

  “Not his partner. We didn’t do business.”

  “You’ve both made your statements about tonight?”

  Kezar shrugged. “Sid met me at Le Cerf Agile, we came home. Family talk. I had business, Sid waited for Jenny.”

  Gazzo turned to the wife. “Mrs. Kezar?”

  “Sid never told her anything, Captain,” Kezar said.

  Jenny Kezar sat on the edge of a chair like some old refugee waiting rigid for a visa. Her pale eyes were dull, and her face had never been pretty, but close now I saw that she wasn’t as old as I’d thought in the apartment. Nowhere near sixty. Taller than Kezar, her heavy body was shapeless in the cheap blue coat, but her legs were still good, and her hands were clear and smooth. Maybe in her late forties, the hands her last vanity.

  “I was at a movie,” she said as if Sid Meyer’s death was somehow her fault. “I met Irving on the avenue, he told me Sid was waitin’. I went up and found him.” She looked at us. “My only brother. Four girls and Sid. He was the baby.”

  “Any guesses who killed him, Mrs. Kezar?” Gazzo asked.

  “Always in trouble,” Jen
ny Kezar said. “I told him. I said, your big schemes’ll ruin you. Spoiled, the only boy. My old man was a fur cutter, but Sid was gonna be a scholar. Rabbi, even.”

  Her tears began in midsentence. Slow tears on her worn face. She didn’t sob or wring her hands, just let the tears roll in sorrow. And more than sorrow, a misery, as if she cried for more than a dead brother.

  “The cow,” Irving Kezar said in disgust. “She’s no use now, Captain. I guess someone Sid screwed just caught up to him.”

  “Your apartment,” Gazzo said. “Maybe they thought he was you.”

  “Me? I don’t have an enemy in the world, Captain. Do I look scared?” Kezar didn’t look scared. “You say Fortune didn’t kill Sid. But maybe he fingered him. The name of his client might tell you something.”

  “It doesn’t,” Gazzo said, covered for me.

  Kezar didn’t give up easily. “It might mean more to me.”

  “Sign your statements,” Gazzo said. “Then you can go.”

  Alone with me, Gazzo’s face said that he hoped the name of my client wouldn’t tell anything about Meyer’s murder. I hoped so, too. His eyes were moody.

  “No way Kezar could have doubled back and killed Meyer,” Gazzo said. “No time, and across town when we called him.”

  “What about Mrs. Kezar? Anyone see her in the lobby?”

  “No, and no one saw her at the movie she was at, or on the avenue, except Kezar. But we tore up the apartment, and there’s no second gun in it. No other gun around the building.”

  “Any trace on the gun you found?”

  “Not yet.”

  I got up. “Can I go home?”

  He nodded. I went to the door. Gazzo spoke behind me:

  “Dan? Maybe you fingered Meyer without knowing it. Clean, ordinary people don’t hire detectives much. Think about it.”

  I nodded as I left. I’d already thought about it.

  The light snow still fell as the taxi dropped me at Morgan Crafts. The shop was dark in the night, but there was light above in Mia Morgan’s apartment. As I looked up, I became aware of someone in the shadows of a shop two doors down. Someone hiding.

  Or was he? When I looked closer, he was walking toward me. A rolling walk, and a topcoat much too light for snow.

  “Still working, Mr. Fortune?” John Albano said.

  His dark, vigorous face under the white hair seemed to enjoy the snow. He wore an open shirt this time, and no gloves.

  “Calling on Mrs. Morgan?” I asked.

  He was a smiling man, sardonic, as if the world amused him.

  “A walk,” he said. “I live around the corner. I like the cold. I’ve worked in too many hot places. Jungles and swamps.”

  “Africa?” I said. “South America? Southeast Asia?”

  “All of those,” Albano said. “You didn’t take my advice.”

  “Sorry. You know a Sid Meyer, Mr. Albano?”

  “Meyer, more than one. But no Sid.” He looked up at Mia Morgan’s windows. “You’re bringing Mia news?”

  “Some,” I said.

  His smile was thinner, speculative, as if he expected to see something in my face. Something specific. A definite sign.

  “Well,” he said, “be careful, Mr. Fortune.”

  He walked away, an old man without fat. I went up to Mia Morgan’s apartment. She was alone. I sat in my coat. She smoked. Her purple lounging pajamas were sleek and thirty, her delicate olive face and long black hair still twenty-two.

  “Well,” she said, “you have a report for me?”

  “Captain Stern’s pretty violent about you.”

  She scowled, petulant. “He doesn’t own me.”

  “Who does? Not Mr. Morgan.”

  “No one owns me. Did you find the woman?”

  “Diana Wood,” I said, and gave my report-what there was. Mia Morgan was listening for more when I’d finished. She wasn’t interested in Harold Wood, Lawrence Dunlap, or Kezar. I hadn’t mentioned Sid Meyer or the black car. I wanted her to ask, reveal herself. She didn’t.

  “Go on another week.” She got up, dismissing me.

  I got up. “Sid Meyer was murdered tonight.”

  She stared. “Someone connected to Diana Wood?”

  “Someone who tried to see you the day you hired me.”

  She lit another cigarette. “I never heard of any Sid Meyer. If he came to me, I don’t know why, and I never met him.”

  I went to her front window, looked down at the avenue. “How about John Albano?” I looked back at her.

  “I don’t like that, Mr. Fortune,” she said. “I hired you-”

  “Come here.” I turned back to the window.

  She looked down, saw what I had-a shadow across the street in the thickening snow. A shadow that smoked. She swore.

  She took a breath. “Never mind him. An old woman, he doesn’t matter. Keep after Diana Wood, you understand?”

  I got another five hundred, and left. On the avenue the snow was heavy now, and the shadow that smoked was gone.

  Jenny Kezar opened the door of 6-C. Her watery eyes were puffed with crying. Irving Kezar wasn’t there. The apartment was a wreck from the police search for the second gun.

  “The city’ll pay us,” Jenny Kezar said. “Sure they will.”

  “When will your husband be back?”

  “Who knows? Maybe a week. He lives other places, too.”

  Her voice was bitter, yet almost glad that Kezar lived other places. The world was full of bad marriages.

  I went home through the thick, falling snow. Maybe Marty’s marriage would turn bad. Soon. There was always hope.

  CHAPTER 5

  Something was wrong. A gray dawn. I lay in bed, and my rooms were cold and too silent. The whole city was too silent.

  I went to my front windows. The snow had stopped, but cars at the curb were half buried, and up on the avenue there was no traffic. People walked below, thigh-deep in the snow, laughing. All muffled and distant. Heavy snow was the only thing that could silence the city. Clean snow, but it wouldn’t last long.

  Over coffee I looked up Irving Kezar in the telephone book. There was an Irving Kezar, Attorney, at an address near City Hall. I wrote it down for later, got into my duffel coat, and went out into the deep snow. It was only seven-thirty, but I knew I would have to walk to St. Marks Place.

  People walked out in the middle of the streets as if enjoying a holiday in some friendly village. But by the time I reached the bar across from 145 St. Marks, a hazy sun broke through. I didn’t enter the bar. Harold Wood, wearing his duffel coat, came out of 145 alone. I slipped into the vestibule, rang the Woods’ bell. No answer. I hurried after the husband, caught up to him at the subway.

  We rode up to Forty-second Street, went west on Forty-fifth to a building between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. He rode to the fourth floor, I went to five. I walked down. The Engineering Institute, their magazine, Engineering Age, occupied the floor.

  The reception desk was empty. I dropped my coat on a chair, walked in as if I belonged. A New York office, no one questioned me. Harold Wood sat in a cubicle marked: Art Director. He was alone-an art director who directed only himself. Small-time.

  In the cubicle, he hunched at a drawing table. I watched him make three telephone calls. Before each call he checked to be sure he was alone, then spoke quickly. He sat back, brooding.

  A tall, brown-haired girl went into his cubicle. Her thick hair was short and waved, almost matronly, and she wore a demure gray wool dress. She had a round face that was pretty only because she was young-the face of most of us. She carried a container of coffee, gave it to Harold Wood. He smiled at her. His smile was neutral, distracted. Her smile wasn’t neutral.

  She went back to a desk with a nameplate on it: Emily Green. She sat watching the art cubicle. What chance did she have against Diana Wood? Yet her interest in Wood was obvious, and she didn’t look like a girl who would let it show without some response. Beauty like Diana Wood’s isn’t always easy to live w
ith.

  Harold Wood went to work, and I retrieved my coat. Was Wood just a man brooding over his wife, or was there more on his mind?

  At Brown and Dunlap, the desk where Diana Wood worked was clean. She hadn’t come to work. Neither had Lawrence Dunlap, his private door open, his mail untouched on his desk.

  The snow clouds were blowing away against the tower of the gray building near City Hall. An old building, full of lawyers. On the tenth floor, Irving Kezar’s office was businesslike, with a businesslike secretary. Mr. Kezar was at his athletic club.

  A block away, the club had pool, steam, sauna and massage in the basement; gym, handball, and squash on the second floor. The first floor had a restaurant, bar and lobby where I waited while they paged Irving Kezar-and a series of small card-and-conference rooms, the important rooms.

  It was no university club, the men in it weren’t Ivy League. They weren’t executives or blue-chip stockholders. Middlemen. The lawyers, jobbers, sidewalk brokers and hustlers. Always in a hurry-the deal could slip away in an hour-they hustled in and out of the small rooms, dealing. Two poker games were going on, grim and not polite. A club where the sweat wasn’t all in the gym or sauna.

  A page took me to the game room. Irving Kezar played ping-pong. He played very well, moving to the flashing ball despite his short legs and paunch. He won, collected the stakes.

  “We had a Y club over in Brooklyn,” Kezar said as he sat down, mopped his acned face. “Keep the slum kids out of trouble. I got really good, hustled all my pocket money from suckers before I was fourteen.” He lit a cigar. “Ready to sell your client?”

  “You don’t seem broken up about Sid Meyer,” I said.

  “I should sit in temple, beat my prayer shawl?” But his beard-shadowed face wasn’t as hard as his words. “Sid was okay, we got along. Sometimes we were family, but he was a loser.”

  Sad and uneasy under his shell. Maybe it was death. In the end, we were all losers. Even him.

  “There was some reason, Kezar. What?”

  He chewed his cigar. “If I knew who your client was?”