Silent Scream df-6

by Michael Collins

  We went out, and a dump-truck driver took us to the nearest garage. The garageman towed in Albano’s car. It would take two hours to fix, so I talked the garageman into renting us a car, and we drove into New York. Hal and John Albano reported to Captain Gazzo with me. He listened to our story.

  “You didn’t see them, got no license numbers, but maybe there is a gang fight building,” Gazzo said. “I’ll check into Ramapo Construction. Not a damn thing new, and Bagnio’s still loose. In the same area, we think. Watch yourselves.”

  Hal had to go to Diana’s funeral. They wouldn’t let him go to Emily Green’s burial. John Albano dropped me at my apartment. I shaved, took a shower, and was planning some sleep when the telephone rang. It was John Albano again.

  “I went to Mia’s. She’s out in Jersey. They’re burying Andy today. Charley’ll be there, everyone. Want to go?”

  I wanted to go.

  CHAPTER 20

  Andy Pappas had lived farther out near Somerville. We stopped to pick up John Albano’s car, and drove west and south into the open countryside. A sunny day and warm near noon for February, but I wasn’t thinking about the beauty of the weather.

  “Will they like my being there?” I said. “The funeral?”

  “They’ll have buried Andy by now, all back at the house crying with the widow, telling each other how together they are, carving up Andy’s power and take,” John Albano said. “It’s a nervous time, Dan, and they won’t like you there, but they’ll take it. A friend of the father-in-law. They won’t like me there, won’t expect me. Maybe I’ll worry them. Someone’s worried already.”

  “You think it was Charley last night?”

  “Charley, or Max Bagnio, or even someone higher.” Albano watched the road. “An important event, Dan. Max Bagnio should be there, unless he’s afraid to be.”

  “Or unless someone else is afraid to have him there.”

  I saw the house a half mile away. It was white and Colonial, as big as the Dunlap house, and richer. Cars were massed around it like a great swarm of bees. The private cars and the rows of limousines just starting to leave. The brotherhood buried its dead according to the book. Formal clothes, a limousine for all. The soldiers packed in six-in-one, the generals and statesmen riding in secluded splendor with, perhaps, a single peer.

  John Albano parked. We got out. Two guards hurried toward us. John Albano waited, the picture of a Sicilian patriarch. One of the guards recognized him, stopped, wary.

  “Excuse, padrone. I wasn’t told you’d be here.”

  “You see me.”

  “The Mass is over. Funeral, too.”

  “Is my daughter also buried?” Albano demanded.

  The guard nodded, stepped back, and we went on into the big white house. Crowds of men in formal dress, and women all in black, filled a giant living room, a banquet-sized dining room, and smaller rooms. They saw me, and froze; saw John Albano, and fell silent.

  Stella Pappas sat at the rear of the living room, women and older men hovering over her. One of the women was Mia Morgan. John Albano strode straight toward his daughter. I felt like one of those African movies where the white hunter and the nervous redhead walk down massed rows of silent warriors with sharp spears and nasty faces. Stella Pappas hadn’t seen us, her head down. Charley Albano had. The little under-boss stepped into our path, jerked his head at me.

  “You bring him here?”

  “I bring who I want to my daughter’s house.”

  “Why even come yourself?”

  “Get out of the way, boy,” John Albano said.

  Charley paled again. The rules of patriarchy were rigidly honored in his world, at least in custom if not always in fact. But he couldn’t back down too far here. Not before his rivals and the old men who made the decisions, handed out the power.

  “You got no place here, old man,” Charley said. “You got no daughter here. Mr. Pappas’s house. I’m the head of this family in this house.”

  “A dead man hasn’t got a house,” John Albano said. “Or a business, eh? You head of the business now, too, Charley?”

  “You ain’t wanted here, old man.”

  John Albano shook his head. “I’m tired, Charley. You know why? Because I was hiding all night in a garbage dump. I’m too old to get chased by punks. Maybe you, Charley? You have something worrying you, boy? You know, you start ambushing me and my friends, people are going to look at you, maybe wonder what you’re so worried about. Bad business to get noticed, Charley.”

  The old man had raised his voice, loud enough for the whole, silent room to hear him. Chalk-white, Charley Albano spoke so low to his father that I could barely hear him:

  “Shut up, old man. Shut up.”

  Mafia justice is fast and capricious. A doubt can be enough, not bothered by rules of evidence. They were listening, the swarthy men in their almost ludicrous formal suits, and Charley was losing more than face. The situation was slipping away from him, he had to act. Do something. What? He was saved from the decision by Stella Pappas.

  “Papa?” Stella said. “You came?”

  The plump widow’s voice was tremulous, grieving, yet there was a flash in her eyes as she looked at her father, an anger a lot like Charley’s. Her delicate face was swollen with crying, the bereaved “Mama” of the dead Papa, but there was something of the self-possession of the independent American woman, too. In black she seemed somehow younger, at home in the simple black of an Italian matron, less awkward. As if she had adopted, even wanted, the old-world wife role. But she was an American girl, and less subdued in her own home.

  A perpetual conflict inside her, the American woman versus the Mafia wife? Or an act? The old-world wife only a facade for the world, for Andy? Not really subdued at all? The way her eyes flashed at John Albano as Charley stepped aside and let Albano go to her. Charley saved, for now, because the widow was paramount at such a time. Funerals belonged to the women.

  “You could have come to the Mass, Papa. A prayer for him.”

  “Are you all right?” John Albano said.

  “Not even to his grave? You hated him that much?”

  “I came for you, Stella, nothing else.”

  “But no tears even for me, Papa?”

  “I told you how it would end twenty-five years ago,” John Albano said. “And I told you what you’d live with.”

  “They were good years!” Stella Pappas cried.

  A rumble of anger in the big room, a stirring. John Albano didn’t appear to notice. There wasn’t anyone in the room worth his notice. Except one person. Mia Morgan stepped closer to her mother, her dark eyes reflecting the black of her dress.

  “Were they, Mother? With him? The things he did to people? Fear and extortion? A man who died in bed with-”

  Stella Pappas jumped up, her hand raised to slap Mia the way she had earlier. Her arm never moved forward. A hand caught her wrist, slowly sat her down again. I hadn’t seen Levi Stern. Tall as he was, the gaunt-ugly face, he had a way of melting into the background.

  “I have asked you not to slap Mia,” he said.

  Stella Pappas shook off his hand, but didn’t try to get up again. “Her own father! She hated him. Hired men to spy. For me? Who knows for what? Who else did she hire?”

  “Mama!” Mia said. “I never-”

  Charley Albano took Mia’s arm. “Get out. Take your friend, and the old man, and-”

  Levi Stern pushed Charley away. They stood facing each other. Stern, tall and whiplike, towering over the short, dapper Charley. Almost touching, like two elk with locked horns, Charley’s cat face tilted up in pinch-nosed fury. What happened next only I saw.

  Levi Stern stood with his back to the rear wall, no one behind him. Charley had his back to the room. I stood alone to one side. The Mafia men waited for the fight.

  It didn’t come.

  Charley Albano stood with his hands at his sides. Levi Stern spoke in a quiet voice that carried through the room.

  “I do not want Mia
touched by anyone here, given orders, or accused. You won’t bother her, Mr. Albano.”

  “No,” Charley said, his voice oddly thin.

  “Mia does not belong here. We will go. Mia?”

  A short old man in formal clothes came out of a side room. About the same age as John Albano, he looked older, and the Mafia people parted before him like water rolling back. He came to where Levi Stern and Charley Albano were still standing face to face. He glanced at John Albano.

  “What goes on here?” the old man asked.

  “Mia and I are leaving now,” Levi Stern said.

  “Then leave,” the old man said.

  He moved his hand, palm flat down. An order to everyone in the room to do nothing. Stern took Mia’s arm, and they walked through the crowd and out. The room began to buzz, half in anger and half in contempt for Charley Albano, who had been faced down.

  Only I had seen the knife.

  A thin knife that had appeared like magic in Levi Stern’s bony hand. From his sleeve. One moment they had been chest to chest, the next moment the knife had been under Charley’s chin, hidden from everyone but me. The knife against Charley’s jugular all the while Stern talked, then vanishing as it had appeared.

  I watched Charley sit down. His hands shook. The old man in formal clothes watched Charley, too, turned to John Albano.

  “Charley took it, the insult? Why?”

  I told him. His thick gray eyebrows went up, and he looked toward the door where Stern and Mia had gone out.

  “A dangerous man, the Jew,” he said. “I have thought about Andy, how the police say it happened. To come up the stairs, shoot the boy in the hall with an automatic rifle, break in the door, line up Andy and the woman, shoot many times very loud, and escape unseen? Max Bagnio must have been very slow.”

  “Unless Bagnio did it himself,” I said.

  “Yes, Max would be an answer. Charley says Max was angry. Still-?” He waved his hand. “But this is not talk for now. So, Giovanni, you come to visit? Good.”

  “My family, Vicente,” John Albano said.

  “Sure, sure. But old friends can talk, eh? Come.”

  He took John Albano’s arm, guided him to the side room. I followed. The contrast between the old men was sharp. Only gray-haired, Vicente had a slow step, the sagging face of age.

  “Sit, sit,” he said in the small side room.

  John Albano sat. I stood. A guard closed the door, stood against it. Another guard stood silent in front of the windows.

  CHAPTER 21

  Vicente sat behind the desk in the small room. Not his desk, and not his house, and yet both his. Any house in the brotherhood was his. I hadn’t had to be introduced, I knew who he was-Don Vicente Campagna. Andy Pappas had been a boss, Don Vicente was higher. How much higher no one knew for sure, not even inside the brotherhood itself.

  One of the Council, as Andy Pappas had been, but a senior member. At the Council level, as in any government, it was a matter of checks and balances, of sometimes hidden power, unofficial. The prime minister isn’t always the most powerful minister. A matter of arrangements and alliances, skills and reputation, influence and loyalties. Officially, Don Vicente was retired, but in the shadowy nation of the Mafia a prince remains a prince, and his rank is determined by how many will listen and act when he speaks.

  Don Vicente spoke. “Fortune got to be with you, Giovanni? Old-time talk, it’ll bore him, eh?”

  “Your guards have to be with you?” John Albano said.

  Don Vicente spread his hands again. “What does an old man do, Giovanni? They say I must be protected. Who listens to me?”

  “Still the smooth talk, the Italian-English, Vinnie?” John Albano said. “We were Mulberry Street, not Palermo.”

  Don Vicente shrugged. “Okay, Johnny.. So, you look good. Seventy, like me. How the hell you do it?”

  “I sleep nights.”

  “So? Got what you want?” Almost a sneer.

  “Not yet, still working. What I want is hard, Vinnie. It doesn’t come easy, keeps a man young trying.”

  “So tell me. Maybe I should try it.”

  “A world without you, Vinnie. Everyone does a job, no one grabs. Not much to steal, no one to scare. How would you live?”

  They reminded me of myself and Andy Pappas, an echo. But Don Vicente wasn’t Andy, and John Albano wasn’t his charity.

  “I don’t like that talk, Johnny,” he said. “Why’d you come here, bring a snooper? What’s on your mind, what’re you after?”

  “Who killed Andy?” Albano said. “And maybe two women?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don Vicente doesn’t know? You must be worried, Vinnie.”

  Don Vicente said nothing. He was worried, I saw it.

  I said, “Who takes Andy’s place?”

  Don Vicente ignored me.

  “Charley, maybe?” John Albano said.

  “No,” Don Vicente said. “Not yet. One of the older men. We ain’t decided yet.”

  “Was Andy mixed up with Ramapo Construction Company, or Ultra-Violet Controls?” I asked.

  “Ramapo? That’s Charley’s company. The other I don’t know.”

  Albano said, “Fortune asked if Andy was mixed with Ramapo.”

  “How should I know? You want to ask Charley?” Don Vicente pointed to the man at the door. “Go tell Charley Albano his old man and Dan Fortune want to ask him about Ramapo Construction.”

  The bodyguard left. Don Vicente reached for a cigar from an ornate box, then dropped the cigar back into the box as if he’d remembered he wasn’t supposed to smoke.

  “Charley runs his own companies. All the guys do. We got a free-enterprise country,” Don Vicente said, irritable.

  “Which country?” John Albano said.

  “So? The same old crap, Johnny? Both countries, okay?”

  “Everyone for himself, no interference from Council?”

  “Not unless we got a battle in the family,” Don Vicente said. He scowled, reached for the cigar again, lit it this time. “You don’t give a damn about Andy Pappas, Johnny. But you come around here with a detective. Why? What do you want to find out? You’re worried who maybe killed Andy, right? You wouldn’t care if it was Charley, or even Stella. No, not you.”

  He inhaled the cigar slowly, almost sighing with the pleasure. “It’s Mia, right, Johnny? That’s what’s worrying you. She hated Andy, maybe she killed him. That Stern did it for her. A real killer, moves real fast.”

  “No,” John Albano said.

  “No? You so sure?” Don Vicente said. “What kind of girl hates her old man? What kind of daughter? Bad, Andy brought her up all wrong. Let her out too much, let her move around, get bad ideas. Like the church, you got to get a kid early, teach her to be loyal, honor her father. Colleges, outsiders, new ideas, they ruined her. They turned her against her own people, the old ways.”

  “She learned the right ways,” John Albano said.

  “Could be,” Don Vicente said. “Or maybe she just learned her own bad ways, eh? Marry to spite your old man, then run out on the kid husband. Listen to no one except herself. Run her own business, be tough, independent. No one tells her, not even Andy, eh? She’ll show Andy. All the way.”

  “No,” John Albano said.

  Don Vicente shrugged. He didn’t really care, as long as it didn’t mean trouble in the organization. The bodyguard came back. Charley Albano wasn’t in the house, had gone. Don Vicente stood.

  “You find Charley later,” he said. “Stay a while, Johnny. Fortune, too. Have some drinks, enjoy. Okay?”

  He walked out into the big room with us. The funeral was turning into a party, a clan gathering. I had no reason to stay, neither did Albano. I waited near the door while the old man went to say good-by to Stella. She was his daughter, a widow.

  Don Vicente stood beside me. “You know Johnny long?”

  “Not long.”

  He smoked his cigar. “Mia, she means a lot to him. Andy didn’t like sh
e hired you to spy. Maybe he was gonna teach her a lesson, hurt her. Johnny’d do anything to help Mia. No one hurts his Mia. Think about it.”

  John Albano returned, and we went out to his car. We were quiet all the way back to New York, the afternoon turning into evening. It was dusk when John Albano dropped me at my office. He didn’t say where he was going, but I could guess-to find Mia and Stern. I went up to my office.

  Hal Wood was there again, waiting in the hall. He was getting to be trouble, a target I didn’t want around me. We went inside. I sat behind my desk, Hal sat facing me.

  “We buried her,” he said. “Me, her folks, and one cop. Her office sent flowers. Six years. Her body… she was beautiful. Dirt on her now. For Emily, I can’t even be there.”

  What did I say? Nothing. I lit a cigarette. My telephone rang. A voice I didn’t know, low and hoarse.

  “You want to be a big man, Fortune? Solve the killings? Go to three hundred twelve East Ninth Street, apartment Two-A.” He hung up.

  I had my gun, and Hal saw my face. I had to tell him.

  “I’m going, too,” he said. “I’ll follow you if I have to.”

  I nodded. It could be a trap, and he might be a help. We went out to find a taxi in the now dark night.

  CHAPTER 22

  The building was another shabby tenement on the block of Ninth Street directly behind Hal’s apartment on St. Marks Place. We left the taxi on First Avenue, walked toward the tenement in the dark. It was into the dinner hour, the slum block almost empty. A few people walked, but no one looked suspicious, and I saw no cars that seemed out of place.

  There was no name on the mailbox for 2-A, and the vestibule door was propped open. I didn’t like that, too easy. Still, in these tenements the super often propped the door open so he didn’t have to answer the rings of drunks who had forgotten their keys. We went up.

  There was no one on the second-floor landing, and 2-A was at the front. I got out my gun, motioned Hal to stand back, and rang the bell with the gun barrel. Nothing happened. The landing was quiet, and the door of 2-A was locked. I used my keys, stepped carefully inside.