Silent Scream df-6

by Michael Collins

  “I thought you hated them-Andy, Charley, Don Vicente? I thought you wanted to know the truth? Are you afraid I’ll get too close to your family, Albano? You’re honest, and tough, but you’re a Sicilian, too, right? What would you do to stop me?”

  He watched the road. “How close do you think it’s going to get to my family, Dan?”

  “Close enough to know the truth.”

  “We know the truth,” Albano said. “Enough of it.”

  “Maybe, but I’m going to be sure,” I said. The stink of the Jersey Flats came to meet us, the city in the distance. “Everyone wants it closed. Andy’s dead, Max Bagnio’s dead, and all for the best. Forget it. A favor to the world.”

  “No loss, Dan,” Albano said.

  “None, and maybe there isn’t any more,” I said. “But Diana Wood is dead, too, and Emily Green. I care about them. I won’t let them vanish like flies swatted on a wall.”

  John Albano watched the road the rest of the way into the city. We stopped, looked up Caxton Industries in the phone book. They were on Madison. We drove there. Mr. Martin Winthrop wasn’t listed on the lobby directory. Up in the Caxton offices they told us that Winthrop was only the assistant manager of the Accounting Department. I felt a sharp letdown.

  “Yes?” Martin Winthrop said in his small office, nervous.

  He was a tall, spare man with watery blue eyes and the look of an unimportant clerk. When I asked him about Irving Kezar, he was dismayed, even scared.

  “Mr. Kezar simply made some investments for me. Personal,” Winthrop stammered. “I… I was aware that he wasn’t, well, exactly reputable, and his fee was high. But he made some very good investments. I hope there’s nothing illegal-?”

  “You work for Ultra-Violet Controls?” I said. “Ever do anything with Ramapo Construction Company?”

  “Oh, no. I work on some of the subsidiaries accounting, of course, but nothing direct. I’ve never heard of Ramapo.”

  I was stumped, he sounded honest. “Who does work directly with Ultra-Violet Controls?”

  “Well, that would be our home office. In Los Angeles.” He looked away, hesitant. “Mr. Kincaid is in charge. Peter Kincaid.”

  I caught the hesitation, the reluctance. What did it mean? That he didn’t like Mr. Peter Kincaid? Or that…?

  “How did you learn about Kezar?” I asked. “Meet him?”

  “Yes,” Winthrop said, uneasy. “He was recommended to me, a man who could make me money. When I was in Los Angeles some months ago. Mr. Kincaid told me, said Kezar could fix me up.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Down on Madison Avenue I looked at my watch. Mr. Peter Kincaid was in charge of Ultra-Violet Controls, and Kincaid knew Irving Kezar. I just had time to catch the noon jet to L.A.

  John Albano drove me out to Kennedy. He didn’t say much all the way, and as the jet taxied away, I saw Albano up on the observation deck watching me go.

  CHAPTER 25

  The magic of jet travel, and time zones, landed me at Los Angeles International before two-thirty, Pacific Time, and by three I was at the mammoth Caxton Industries main offices in Santa Monica. Mr. Peter Kincaid was a vice-president of Caxton, executive-vice-president of Ultra-Violet Controls, and sat in a giant office behind rows of secretaries.

  My name didn’t get me past the first secretary. Mr. Kincaid is terribly busy, Mr. Fortune. If you’d care to leave your name, a telephone number, perhaps tomorrow or the next day?

  “Tell him I’m here about Irving Kezar,” I said.

  Mr. Peter Kincaid soon came out to greet me himself, usher me into the beautiful office with its dazzling view of the Santa Monica Mountains-through the smog; pale hills, almost invisible. Mr. Kincaid sat me down in an armchair that had cost more than my whole five rooms of secondhand furniture, sat himself at a desk that would have paid my rent for a year, maybe longer.

  “You come from Kezar? About what?”

  Smooth and pleasant enough, but blunt and direct. As neat and turned-out as Lawrence Dunlap, but on a higher level. He hadn’t shaken hands, no motion wasted. I wasn’t important to his work. In command, sure of both his ability and purpose. A lot of brains here, top of all his classes. One of those who really ran the country.

  “No,” I said. “I came to ask about Kezar.”

  “What about him?”

  “Ultra-Violet has a deal going with him?”

  “He works for us sometimes. Not with me. I can send you-”

  “Then why did his name open your door?” I said.

  My round, but his executive face didn’t change, and he didn’t answer. He would make me come to him.

  “You, Kezar and Ramapo Construction in Wyandotte, New Jersey.”

  “Come to the point, Mr. Fortune.”

  “Okay. Ultra-Violet needs a laboratory in Wyandotte, a tract to house its workers. There was some problem. You got to Kezar, he got to Charley Albano at Ramapo Construction, and no more problem. Kezar and Charley Albano know how to handle these things, right? Money is spread around, Kezar gets his cut, and Ramapo gets the construction contract.”

  “You came here to sell me something?”

  “No. Nothing I want to sell.”

  Kincaid stood. “Is that all, then?”

  “I’m a private detective, Mr. Kincaid.” I held up my license. He barely glanced at it, but I don’t think he missed a comma. He remained standing. I said, “I’m not here about your business. I’m here about four murders, maybe five, and your Wyandotte operation could be indirectly involved. I won’t cause you trouble.”

  “I know that. There’s no way you could.”

  “Okay, you’re covered. But murder is investigated hard, and you never know what might come out accidentally. A risk.”

  I watched his mind working like a computer without a trace of concern showing on his face. He wasn’t considering the horror of murder, or his duty, morals or ethics. He was analyzing how I could be best handled in his company’s interest. He sat down.

  “Wyandotte is the optimum location for our new lab, housing, and an eventual production plant and tank farm. We needed the usual zoning variances, permits, easements across public land, new roads, preferential rates for water and waste. The town is conservative, anti-industry and development, likes to hold public hearings which we preferred to avoid at this time.”

  “Especially since you probably didn’t want to mention the future production plant and tank farm at this time,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Kincaid said, missing my sarcasm. “Kezar was furnished the funds to get what we needed from the proper officials without public fuss. He contacted Ramapo Construction, all permissions were secured, the work is on schedule.”

  “Some bought officials, a little Mafia know-how. All in a day’s work, everyone happy. Except the people of Wyandotte.”

  “My company tells me what it wants done, I get it done. How Kezar accomplished it, I don’t want to know. The money we gave Kezar is legally accounted for. What Ramapo did, I don’t know.”

  “Pretty,” I said.

  “Naturally, I never talked to you. Now, is that all?”

  “Would you have had people keeping an eye on Kezar? Men with guns?”

  “I never found that necessary.”

  He had the humor of an unimaginative commissar, and about the same code. No right or wrong, just necessary and unnecessary. But I was getting a hunch about those men in brown suits hovering around Irving Kezar. Kincaid could be closer to trouble than he or his company guessed.

  “Did a Sid Meyer ever contact you?”

  “You said no names, Mr. Fortune.”

  “Meyer isn’t exactly involved in your business.”

  He flicked his intercom. “Check the telephone and correspondence record for a Sid Meyer.” He read a few papers while we waited. The intercom buzzed, he listened, sat back. “A Sid Meyer did call from New York six months ago. He wanted me, wouldn’t say why, so I never spoke to him.”

  “Thanks.” I got up, loo
ked out his windows. “I’ll bet this town was as pretty as Wyandotte, New Jersey, once.”

  Kincaid didn’t even blink. I don’t suppose he got my meaning at all. Why should he? He had a business to make bigger.

  I called a taxi from the Caxton offices, and made the last jet to New York. I got home to my five cold rooms late and tired, and went to bed.

  I slept almost beyond noon, and took a cab to Hal Wood’s office. He was having lunch at his drawing board, had his ruddy color back, and was happy to see me. He got me a cup of coffee.

  “It’s good to see you okay again,” he said. “I really thought I’d jinxed you, too, when we heard that shooting from the street.”

  “The troops arrived in the nick of time,” I said. “They keeping you good and busy? You coming out of it?”

  “We’ve expanded, and I guess I’m beginning to forget. Trying to, anyway. I guess you have to, Dan, like you said.” But he stared into his coffee as if my coming there hadn’t helped him much. “I wouldn’t like your work, you have to forget too much.”

  “Not as close, you shut it out,” I said. “No girl yet?”

  “My fatal charm? No, the fatal part is too literal just now,” he said, his free hand jerking. “Is there something new?”

  “Maybe. When you were tailing Diana and Pappas, did you ever see Dunlap with Charley Albano? Or spot some men hanging around and watching? Strangers? Maybe in brown suits?”

  He pondered. “No, I only saw Dunlap that once, and alone. I’m not sure if Albano or Pappas could have been up in that apartment with Diana at the time, or not. But,” he looked up, “maybe I saw those strangers once or so. Just sort of standing outside.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  “You’re not sure that Bagnio killed them, Dan?”

  “Maybe not alone. Some things still bother me.”

  The strain was back in his face. “How can I forget if it goes on and on?” He looked at me, the intensity in his eyes again. “I’ve been painting, Dan. Real good work, I think. A whole new style. Powerful, really. Sometimes-” he trailed off, then smiled, eager, “sometimes I don’t understand it myself, my work, but it’s good. Very good. All of

  … this in it maybe. Diana. Me… I know it’s good. Some good out of… this.”

  “Keep at it,” I said.

  A lame exit line, but what else was there? Some good out of it all for Hal. I hoped so. I’d shaken him once more, couldn’t let him alone. The bulldog detective. Damn!

  I rented a car from my friend who winked at a one-arm driver, and drove out to Wyandotte, New Jersey. Lawrence Dunlap wasn’t at his office once again-busy with his official duties on the Wyandotte Council, no doubt.

  Dunlap’s big brick mansion was as ugly in the spring sun as it had been in the February rain. The blue Cadillac was in the garage, with the red Mercedes. I parked under the porte-cochere, the same elderly housekeeper let me in. The Dunlaps were at lunch this time, on the broad brick terrace with the sweeping view of river and hills. Green and lush and natural, the view. For how long after the laboratories and tank farms came?

  “Mr. Fortune,” Dunlap came forward, hand out. “I’m glad to see you recovered.”

  “We both are,” Harriet Dunlap said, smiled.

  “Maybe you won’t be,” I said.

  Dunlap stopped moving toward me. The wife looked confused, as much from my bad manners in not taking Dunlap’s proffered hand as from my antagonism. Dunlap let his hand drop. It twitched. The strain around his handsome eyes deepened in alarm.

  “Mrs. Dunlap,” I said, “when we first met, I asked your husband about a man-Sid Meyer. He denied knowing the name, but I got the feeling it meant something to you. Sid Meyer?”

  “No!” Dunlap snapped, but his voice was high, panicky.

  Harriet Dunlap was mainline, sheltered, but she was no fool. Those shrewd ancestors were in her, and she knew panic when she heard it, trouble when she saw it. She also knew when something was going on she didn’t know about. Or she knew how to act as if she didn’t know about it.

  “Meyer I don’t know,” she said. “What is this about?”

  “Fortune, you-” Dunlap began.

  I said, “It’s about Ultra-Violet Controls and Ramapo Construction; about a big laboratory, a housing tract, and soon a production plant and tank farm in a town that doesn’t want any of it. About Irving Kezar, Charley Albano, and your husband. A big company, the Mafia, wily operators, and a small city. Zoning laws that got changed, permits given, arrangements made under the table, public hearings never held, because your husband got paid.”

  “Get out of here, Fortune!” Dunlap said, white-faced.

  “I’ll make it simpler,” I said. “Caxton Industries wanted to move into Wyandotte. Irving Kezar was given money to find a way without public trouble. Kezar found your husband, Council Chairman Lawrence Dunlap of the Yale Club. Together, they fixed everything for Caxton to move in, legally but very quietly, no public hearings. I expect they ran into some opposition, so Kezar brought Ramapo and Charley Albano in to add muscle. What Kezar couldn’t buy, and your husband couldn’t persuade or influence, Charley Albano could terrorize. A smooth team, job done, and everyone got paid.”

  By now, Lawrence Dunlap wasn’t listening to me any more. He knew it all anyway. He was watching his wife.

  “Harriet,” he began.

  “Here?” she said. “How? What have you gotten into, Lawrence? People like that? Corruption? Us? Why, Lawrence?”

  “Why?” he said, reddened. “You just said it, Harriet. Us! The family, the big house. Money, that’s why.”

  “Money?” She said the word as if she didn’t quite know what it meant. I guessed that there was a lot of the reason. “But, we have money. All we need. My family-”

  “Your family has money, I don’t! Not the kind we need to live. You need,” Dunlap said. He sat down suddenly. “We needed more, Harriet. I had a tip on a stock, a bonanza. I invested all I had, a lot I didn’t have, and the stock went down. I had to do something. I knew Irving Kezar from the office, the business parties. I went to him. He helped some, for a time, but not enough. Then he came to me about Ultra-Violet.”

  “Oh, Lawrence!” Harriet Dunlap said.

  “Big money,” Dunlap said, “but I never saw much. Peanuts. They got most of it-Kezar, Albano, others.”

  The well-brought-up boy with more surface than money who had fallen into the hands of thieves. Not only unable to say “No,” eager to say “Yes,” but didn’t know what to do. The handsome front with the big smile, but neither real ability nor substance. Kezar was the slum-boy who knew how to hustle, and who had hustled Dunlap in the end. You almost wanted to cry, but you knew that if it hadn’t been Kezar, Dunlap would have found another crook.

  “What will we do?” Harriet Dunlap said. Stronger than Dunlap, faced the issue, and I heard something go out of their marriage.

  Dunlap heard it too, tried to fight. “He can’t prove any of it. We’re all covered. If he causes trouble, Albano will-”

  Harriet Dunlap said, “My God, Lawrence.”

  “You whistled up Albano against me once, you don’t have to do it again,” I said. “I can’t prove it, and I don’t want to. I want to solve some murders. I want help from you.”

  “Help?” Dunlap said, perked up. He’d learned about deals.

  “Something went wrong, didn’t it? There was trouble.”

  Dunlap shook his head. “No, nothing I know of.”

  “Some men are working with Kezar. Men with guns.”

  “Guns? No, only Albano’s… people. Nothing went wrong.”

  He sounded like a man telling the truth, but maybe he’d learned about that, too. What he said fitted my hunch about the men around Kezar, only he could be hiding something else.

  “Was Andy Pappas part of the deal?”

  “He never appeared, but I suppose he was.”

  “All right, now what about Sid Meyer?”

  Harriet Dunl
ap said, “He did come here once. Said he was a business reporter, asked questions about Lawrence and his position in town. I told him what I knew. He didn’t go to Lawrence.”

  “You told him enough,” I said. I walked to the house. “I can’t prove the deal, won’t try. On that you’re safe from me.”

  It was an attempt to reassure him, keep Charley Albano away. But as I went out the front door, I heard one of them pick up the telephone. I still worried one of them.

  I approached my office cautiously. There had been plenty of time for the Dunlaps to summon troops while I drove up to New York. A voice stopped me at the corner. John Albano.

  “I was coming to see what you’d learned in L.A.,” the old man said. “Someone’s watching your office, Dan. Showed up about a half hour ago, two of them. Shoulder holsters, I think.”

  “Youngish? Clean-cut? Like lawyers, or accountants?”

  “That’s one of them. You know who they are?”

  “I think I do now,” I said. “Look, I don’t have time to talk. Where’ll you be later?”

  “Home or at Mia’s. Stern’s back in town.”

  I left him at the corner, got my rented car, drove uptown.

  CHAPTER 26

  Irving Kezar’s run-down apartment building on East Seventieth Street looked better in the late-afternoon May sun, a little the way it must have been when it was new a long time ago. I rang Kezar’s bell. I didn’t expect him to be home at this hour, but Jenny might be. If she was, I’d have to try to trick her out by calling and saying Kezar wanted to meet her. But I was in luck, there was no answer to my ring.

  I rode the elevator to the sixth floor, went along the quiet corridor to 6-C. I rang again to be sure, then used my keys. Inside, I closed the door behind me, and stood studying the old apartment. It hadn’t improved since February. The seedy old furniture was still dull and dusty, the heavy drapes covered the windows, making it like some gloomy room in a museum. There was no point in searching, the police had done a thorough job back in January.