Silent Scream df-6

by Michael Collins

  “You’re crazy, Fortune! A nut!”

  “It all works out,” I said. “You knew Max Bagnio, you were close to Charley Albano. Who else could get that memo about Max Bagnio and show it to him, give it to him?”

  “Jesus Christ, stop it!” His acne scars were like livid holes in his pasty face. “Please, Fortune. Lay off, you hear?”

  “No,” I said. “You’ll let Jenny take the punishment for Sid Meyer, but no one’s going to let you rest. Never. You got that memo from Andy to Charley, gave it to Bagnio, so Bagnio would kill Andy for you!”

  “You bastard! Leave me alone!”

  “I’ll hound you forever, Kezar. Until you tell the truth. That you tricked Bagnio with that memo into killing Pappas and Diana Wood.”

  He was pouring sweat in the dim room, cornered. Off balance from all that had happened, or maybe feeling a little dirty about Jenny. Maybe afraid people might believe me, especially the Mafia. Whatever, he broke the primary rule-he talked:

  “Jesus, how dumb can you be? Don’t you know a fix?”

  “Fix? What was fixed?”

  Once he’d taken that first step, broken the silence barrier, he couldn’t stop. As if he wanted to get it all out, be left alone to go back to his smooth hustler’s life.

  “Bagnio, stupid!” He laughed now. “There never was any memo. Charley Albano faked it. He faked the memo, the money clip, the rifle bullets. He gave you Bagnio-dead.”

  My voice sounded odd even to me. “Bagnio didn’t kill Andy and Diana Wood? Charley framed all the evidence?”

  “I guess Max killed them all right, Charley and Don Vicente figured so anyway. Charley didn’t care much. He thought maybe Mia paid Max to do the job, and that was okay by him. He wasn’t about to tell Don Vicente and the Council. They didn’t know why Max did it, wanted to question Max. I guess that’s why Max hid out. Don Vicente and the Council don’t question so nice. Maybe Max didn’t have good answers.”

  “Charley didn’t bother to find out?”

  “Hell, he didn’t like Max anyway, too close to Andy.” He lit a cigarette. “Anyway, you started getting too close to the Wyandotte deal, making waves. Charley tried to get you on the road. When that missed, and you and his old man showed up at the funeral asking about Ramapo, he decided the best way to get you out of our hair was to solve the case, hand you the killer. Don Vicente said okay, Max hadn’t come in to explain.”

  “All packaged. Only maybe Bagnio didn’t do it.”

  “Max had that wedding ring, so I guess he killed them. Charley was sure, anyway.”

  “Charley didn’t care,” I said. “Bagnio had the ring? That wasn’t a plant?”

  “Charley found it on Bagnio. What we couldn’t figure was the motive. Maybe someone hired Max. Charley didn’t want to dig too deep on that. So he rigged the fake motive with that memo, added the rifle shells and the money clip. We wanted the case closed, no loose ends. Stop all the snooping around.”

  “Yeh,” I said. “Motive.”

  “Hell,” Kezar said, “who knows why Max did it? Who cares?”

  I walked out. As I closed the door, I heard Kezar start to dial the phone again. A hustler never quits, never stops. He was safe for now. He’d help Jenny all he could, do everything within reason. But if he couldn’t do much for her, well, that’s the way the flag flies.

  I stopped in a bar on the avenue. I had my Irish. Someone had Kezar’s gun that had killed Sid Meyer. That wasn’t what I thought about. I thought about Diana Wood’s wedding ring, and why Max Bagnio had had it. I thought about small things: Diana Wood going to Miami after leaving Hal; the police photos of Diana and Pappas dead in that bedroom; the long night in the dump, and how we had all acted, talked; the murder of Emily Green. I thought about how I’d been shot, and about a small slip that rang now in my mind from no earlier than today.

  I had two more Irish, and went out to my rented car.

  John Albano wasn’t at his own apartment. I walked around the block to Morgan Crafts and Mia’s apartment. There was light in the apartment. I went up.

  Levi Stern opened the door. He was in civilian clothes. Had he been here all night?

  “Mr. Fortune?” Stern said. A question. Why was I there?

  Mia Morgan-Mia Stern now-was making drinks at a garish chrome-and-polished-wood liquor cabinet. She looked very young, looked toward Levi Stern with a kind of doubt, even wonder. John Albano sat in a red womb chair, old and massive and watching me.

  “I’ll have a Scotch,” I said.

  Mia made me the drink, gave it to me. The other two waited. A team? I drank my Scotch, wiped my mouth.

  “What I wonder,” I said, “is what Max Bagnio was really looking for so hard?”

  “Not evidence that would show his reason to hate Andy?” John Albano said. “What was in that memo?”

  “The memo was a fake,” I said.

  I drank, and told them about Charley Albano’s frame-up, about Kezar, Sid Meyer, and the Wyandotte deal.

  “He is an F.B.I. informer?” Levi Stern said. “Such a man would be very afraid of Pappas.”

  “Sure, but how would he have gotten so close to that guard in the corridor? No, murder by himself isn’t Kezar’s style.”

  John Albano said, “When you really think about it, no one but Max Bagnio could have done it.”

  “The way it looks,” I said. “Only Don Vicente didn’t like the way it looked to us, to the police. Don Vicente is smart, experienced in these matters.”

  “How else could it have happened, Dan?” John Albano asked.

  “Yeh,” I said, emptied my glass. “Try this: the killer wasn’t hidden in an empty apartment, didn’t come up those stairs. He was on the roof, came down outside on a rope. A special rope, one of those rigs Commandos use to come down a cliff in combat, with a harness that leaves both hands free. Say the bedroom window was open. Andy and Diana Wood were asleep, or busy. The killer covered them with his automatic rifle from outside the window. A skilled man, a lot better with guns than Pappas.”

  I set my empty glass down in the now quiet room. “He’s got Andy cold. Andy didn’t even have his gun, not that it would have mattered. The killer lines up Andy and Diana, makes Andy call in the guard from the corridor. Remember, the front door of that apartment is in a straight line with the bedroom door. The killer had the guard covered the moment he stepped inside. He makes the guard break the door lock, or does it himself with the three of them covered.”

  I paced a little. “He lines them up in the bedroom, shoots them all down, drags the guard out to the corridor fast, and goes back out the window on his rope. He closes the window behind him. By now Max Bagnio is up in the apartment, but the killer is gone. He’s outside. A matter of seconds to slide down, disengage his pully mechanism from the roof. Down, not up, because Bagnio might go to the roof at once, and because it was too dark to see him below if Max happened to look out the window. Max didn’t look out, why should he? The window was closed, no fire escape. Max even wasted time making sure Andy wasn’t alive, not that the killer needed that. No, there was risk, sure, but the killer had it pretty well planned.”

  I studied their faces. “Only Bagnio found something, a real clue. Later, after he talked to Gazzo, it made him guess what had really happened. The trouble was that what he found in the bedroom wasn’t enough to prove it by itself. So he started to look for the more he needed on his own. That, and the way the killings looked, made the Mafia suspicious of him-who gets past Max Bagnio and the guard upstairs? He realized the real story sounded bad if he told it without full proof, and that the Mafia don’t ask a lot of questions before acting. So he kept trying for more proof, but Charley Albano’s men got to him first.”

  Mia drank, John Albano sat without a change, and Levi Stern stood silent and seemed to be considering my story.

  “Stern?” I said. “Could you have done it that way?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “No sweat?”

  “Not much. You don’t for
get if you keep in condition.”

  I nodded. “That’s what I figured. You know, I think that the search here at Mia’s was a trick. A ruse to hide the fact what Max Bagnio wanted only Hal Wood could have.”

  John Albano said, “What would that be, Dan?”

  “I think I’ll go and ask Hal. Maybe he’ll remember with all I know now,” I said. “You stay here. I’ll be back.”

  I left them all watching the door, not each other. Down in my car I lit a cigarette, then drove south. Another car pulled out behind me. I thought it did. I didn’t drive too fast. At St. Marks Place I parked near the corner of Avenue A, walked back to number 145. I went up to 4-B when Hal Wood answered my ring from the vestibule.

  Hal stood in the open doorway. He was serious.

  “Something new, Dan?” he asked.

  “A lot,” I said. “Inside, okay?”

  “Sure,” he said, let me in and closed the door. “You’ve got it solved all the way?”

  “Not long now,” I said.

  CHAPTER 29

  I told him about the Wyandotte deal, and about Kezar’s story of Charley Albano faking the evidence against Max Bagnio. Hal shook his head, unbelieving.

  “Dunlap? A big company like Caxton? Is everyone corrupt today, nobody real?”

  “Not everyone,” I said.

  “Just those who run the country,” Hal said bitterly. “Those with the chance, right? From expense-account cheaters to the top. A percentage of the take. I’ve been thinking a lot about that since-” He seemed to lose his train of thought. “It seems so long since Diana… died. I guess I don’t care what Bagnio’s real motive was. It can’t help now. I… I’ve been working. Real well. Come on, take a look.”

  We went into his studio. The kitchen was a mess of dirty dishes, opened cans, rancid cartons. A man living alone now with his vision. The living room was dusty and unused. Hal living only in his studio now, like an improvised garret.

  “Look!” He swept his arm toward his new paintings.

  They were lined up against all the walls. The difference from his earlier design-like abstracts hit me like a slap. Powerful, bold, in swirling shapes like vortexes. Thick and oozing masses, as if the corruption he’d been talking about was deep in his mind. Giant figures like kings and bishops in red and purple robes sat on massive thrones, their hazy faces like melting wax. Faceless, decaying rulers with black holes for mouths. Gaping mouths open in silent screams.

  “Well?” Hal said, nervous.

  “Powerful,” I said. “I can see the last months in them. All of it inside you.”

  He looked at his new work, nodded. “I guess so. Funny, you know, Dan? I mean, to get my best work out of horror. Like Faust. A price for greatness. They are great, Dan. I know it. I can see it, feel it.”

  His eyes glowed as he studied his new work.

  “Yeh,” I said. “Great.”

  He grinned, lit a cigarette. “Well, they’re good, anyway. But never mind about me. I’ve got all the time now. You do have it almost solved, Dan? I mean, you know Bagnio’s real motive?”

  “I think so,” I said. “What I can’t quite figure is Diana’s wedding ring. Why did Max Bagnio keep it, and what was he really looking for? Any ideas, Hal? Remember anything yet?”

  “Nothing. I was sure it was some evidence about that memo. Doesn’t Mia Morgan know anything? He searched her pad, too.”

  “I think that search was another fake. To fool us.”

  I heard the noise out in the corridor. A light noise, as if someone was out there stepping very quietly. Hal didn’t seem to hear it. He wasn’t listening for it the way I was.

  “I guess only Bagnio could have done it, though,” Hal said.

  “No,” I said, “I don’t think so now. I don’t think Little Max killed them at all. It happened a different way.”

  I told him the story I’d figured out of how it had been done. I pictured the killer coming down on his rope, calling the guard in, lining up Diana and Andy Pappas, shooting them all, and escaping out the window.

  Hal frowned. “You really think it could have been like that?”

  “A few things I don’t know, but that’s the outline.”

  “It would have taken a pretty good man,” Hal said.

  “A soldier. You remember the night in the Jersey dump? The way you and John Albano handled those hoods? Trained.”

  “Me?” Hal said.

  “You and John Albano,” I said.

  I put my finger to my lips, stepped softly out of the studio and across the kitchen to the outside door. I opened the door. John Albano stood there. He looked at me. The lines in his face were etched deeper, his white hair strange in the glare of the corridor. He came in, closed the door.

  “You’ve got it figured, Dan?” Albano said.

  “I think so,” I said.

  He went into the studio with me behind him. He looked at the new paintings, and looked at me. I nodded to Hal.

  “Hal, you remember telling us about Korea that night in the dump? About being pinned under that pillbox for so many hours, thinking all the time you were dead? How you swore that night you’d never again do anything you didn’t want to? How you’d do something great with your life?”

  “Sure I remember. It changed me, that pillbox. I saw life clear then.”

  “A pillbox behind enemy lines. Behind the lines, Hal. You said that more than once, I remember now. What were you in Korea? A Ranger? A specially trained shock trooper?”

  “Yes, a Ranger. The best.”

  “Best,” I said. “Yes. Is that why you killed Diana? You were the best, and she failed you, took a lesser man?”

  “I didn’t kill her, Dan,” Hal said.

  “Yes you did,” I said. “Pappas, too. It was good to kill Pappas, wasn’t it? The big, powerful man. You said that in the dump, too-such powerful gangsters, yet you were better. You could kill Pappas. Easily. No match for you man to man. Not in a war, behind enemy lines, stalking the enemy.”

  “Why would I kill her? I let her go. Didn’t try to stop her.”

  “You almost sent her away, Hal. Like at those parties of Dunlap’s. Pappas said it, I just didn’t hear-‘almost pushing Diana away, forcing her on other men.’ A test, right? If she was your perfect woman, she wouldn’t want to be with other men for a second, even just to laugh a little. She wouldn’t want anything but you. But she wasn’t perfect, she failed you. Not good enough for a man like you, the best.”

  “I am the best!”

  I nodded. “Diana even told me. The way she said you were a failure who wouldn’t even try to succeed, and at the same time had such a big ego it didn’t need bolstering. It sounded like a contradiction, but it isn’t. You have such a big ego you won’t work to prove how good you are. You know how good you are, and everyone ought to know it without having to be shown.”

  “Flawed,” Hal said. “All women.” He blinked at me with those intense eyes. “You’re wrong, Dan. Really.”

  “Flawed,” I said. “Diana said that, too. You don’t need a woman, don’t really want one. Symbols of the imperfect world. Women and the world, both flawed, both rejecting you.”

  He looked at his paintings, the new ones. “All just bellies and thighs, the garbage glitter of now. They live for now, women. What do they know of visions? Men like Pappas, that’s what women want. Destroyers, cheats, greedy pimps.”

  “Diana failed you,” I said. “Maybe that wasn’t quite enough. But then the man was Andy Pappas. That sent you over the edge. Pappas the evil parasite, the symbol of the rotten world that wouldn’t recognize you. Destroy the destroyers, the imperfect woman and the bad world.”

  “Dan?” Hal said, smiled. “Stop it now, okay?”

  “Where’s the rifle, Hal? The rope and pulley? Those were what Bagnio was looking for. He found Diana’s wedding ring in that apartment, was after you for more proof. But you were after him, too-to get the ring back. That’s why you shot me, to get the ring before the police found it.”


  “I called the police! Saved you!”

  “I sent you to call, and you had to call. If you missed me, and Gazzo didn’t come, I’d have known the truth then. You were sure you had time to kill me, get the ring, before Gazzo got there. But I was lucky, Gazzo sent the precinct cops first. They were close, reached us in time.”

  “No! I didn’t shoot you!”

  “You made a slip, Hal. Twice. You said you and the police heard the shooting from the street that night. But Gazzo said the shooting had stopped by the time the precinct police get there and met you on the street.”

  He floundered inside, groped irrationally for straws.

  “I was in Woodstock when Diana was shot!”

  “No, Emily Green lied for you. She knew you were in New York, but believed whatever story you told her. She didn’t think you killed them, didn’t want to think it. But she wasn’t stupid, she had doubts, so when Bagnio called her and said he had proof you killed Diana and Pappas, she went to meet him. You tailed her, and when she came out, Bagnio had showed her the wedding ring. She knew the truth. But she still hoped, wanted to believe you.

  “So you told her it was a lie. You’d seen Bagnio leave the rooming-house building. You told her you’d take her back to Bagnio, and prove he was a liar. Once you got her back up in Bagnio’s room, you killed her and made it look like Bagnio had.”

  He looked like one of his own faceless kings in his new paintings, his whole face melting like wax as he tried to think of some way out, some answer. He couldn’t, stood there silent, searching desperately inside his own half-insane mind.

  John Albano said, “What’s so vital about that ring, Dan?”

  “Diana didn’t have it,” I said. “She’d given it back to Hal. He must have had it with him when he killed them, maybe showed it to her-the symbol of her failing him. He dropped it, Max Bagnio found it. Max knew Diana hadn’t been wearing the ring for weeks, but Max wasn’t sure it would be enough proof. With Hal’s alibi, it was only Bagnio’s word against Hal’s. So Max looked for more proof-mostly to convince his Mafia people.”