“How do you know Diana wasn’t wearing the ring?” Albano said.
“It was in those pics the police showed me of the death room. Diana had been in Miami, she was heavily tanned. There was a clear pale ring mark on her right hand, but none on her left. She hadn’t worn that ring in weeks. So how had it gotten in that bedroom? Who would she have given it to except her ex-husband? She was a nice girl, she gave Hal the ring to show that they were all through.”
I looked at Hal, who was still silent. “Then there was the robe. I mean, why was Diana wearing a robe when Andy was naked? She was naked under it, why cover herself? Facing a killer with an automatic rifle, would she have thought about being naked? No. Then it must have been the killer who made her cover her body. Who would do that except a husband who-?”
The sound was low and animal. At least, low and something else than human. Or human enough, but back somewhere in the shadows before history, before time. From Hal’s open mouth, and he had the small 7.65-mm. pistol in his hand. Even as I saw his finger whiten on the trigger, I thought, rational and detached, that this was the final proof-the gun he’d shot me with. I thought that, nice and rational. Too rational to move. Rooted.
John Albano moved.
He jumped, had Hal’s arm. The gun fired. The bullet went somewhere over my shoulder. Like a bird, singing.
They grappled. They breathed hard. The tough old man was stronger. Hal was younger, in condition. The gun went off. Neither of them fell. Struggled locked together. The gun went off again. Then John Albano had the gun.
The old man stepped back, panting and sweating.
Hal fell to the floor. Shot twice. He lay there with his blood spreading around him.
CHAPTER 30
He was still alive when Captain Gazzo and his men got there. I gave Gazzo the 7.65-mm. pistol that would match the slugs taken out of me. I told it all: how he’d done it; how Emily Green had lied for him, then died for her lie; how Bagnio had found the wedding ring and tried to get the final proof; how Charley Albano had tried to close the case by giving us a killer all framed, but we’d never prove that.
The Medical Examiner arrived, worked over Hal. The doctor shook his head. Hal lay very still, afraid to move and lose his faint hold on life, that last vital ounce of blood.
“I… maybe… maybe I wouldn’t have shot. Even… then after I planned… He had to try, that guard from the hall. Had to try for… his gun. I shot them.”
He closed his eyes. “I showed her the… ring. What it meant. The perfect… circle. No end. She was… never supposed to… end. To love… me… Failed, imperfect. I… made her… put it on… the robe… Then that guard he had to… try… for his… gun…”
His eyes opened wide as if in alarm, his voice manic. “He had the ring! That Bagnio! I knew he had it, you see? He was looking for the rifle. He searched, shot at me. Dan, he’d help me find Bagnio, get the ring! I searched that Mia’s place so no one would know it was only me Bagnio was after. Emily thought I was out for a walk! She knew, though. He told her. I had to kill her!”
The M.E. stood up, shrugged. John Albano leaned against a wall. He seemed almost sad, a good old man. Gazzo looked around at all the new paintings with their powerful forms and oozing shapes and faceless kings on their thrones.
“He painted it out,” Gazzo said. “Kings like Pappas.”
“Pappas,” Hal said. His eyes stared straight up, the manic strength of a moment ago gone from his voice. “Big man, the ruler, important. A destroyer. I saw them… in Korea. The… generals… politicians… walking over us… Scum! The… profiteers and dealers while I lay… under a… pillbox… dying… dead… Not dead!.. No! Not dead… be great… do what I… wanted… My woman, my work… the best… best world… I… I-”
All the color was gone now from his face. The boyish face on the floor surrounded by his last dark work. From horror, the work-his own horror. The silent screams his own.
“So easy to… kill… them. Killers, all of them. Murder already, Dan told me… someone murdered… already. Always they… kill… gangsters… so easy… everyone will blame them… Mafia… safe… safe-”
His blood spread-suddenly. A gush of blood. His breath labored irregular. The M.E. bent down over him. Hal slapped the M.E. in the face. The M.E. jumped back, pale. Hal’s arm raised up, pushing. Pushing at something only he could see.
“… safe… if only the… guard… not try for… his gun… maybe… maybe… if only… love-”
He died.
***
The police found the automatic rifle and the rope buried in the cellar of 145 St. Marks Place-an available apartment now.
Irving Kezar found out that we didn’t have his gun. He had a talk with the D.A. Jenny Kezar would plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter-a slap on the wrist.
“No gun, no case,” Gazzo said to me in his office the next afternoon. “We won’t get Charley Albano for Bagnio, either.”
“Maybe the Mafia will,” I said. “Depends how fast Charley can talk. Bagnio failed in his job, anyway.”
“Funny,” the Captain said. “No connection between Sid Meyer’s killing and the rest of it.”
“There was a connection, Captain,” I said. “Cause and effect. Meyer’s murder, and Andy’s business, that’s what gave Hal the idea, flipped him out, made him sure he could get away with it. Connected, cause and effect.”
“A phony with big illusions? Crazy?”
“Those hours under the pillbox in Korea affected him, made him a kind of fanatic. A dreamer. He hadn’t died, so he had to become perfect. Make a perfect life in a perfect world with a perfect woman. Under it all he was scared of women, afraid of the world. So he built his own world where he never had to face what he was in the real one. Then Diana failed him, Pappas threatened the illusion.”
“He had to punish them,” Gazzo said, nodded.
“The real world was against him, evil,” I said. “And in the end he was really good only at one thing. What he learned in Korea-killing. It made him feel whole again, gave him back his dream world.”
“He damn near did it, too,” Gazzo said. “If he’d killed you, he’d still be painting.”
“Maybe,” I said.
I think Gazzo would have gotten him eventually, or Hal would have cracked. Those last paintings showed that he was close to the edge. Only half out of his mind, still human.
I left Gazzo to his work and went uptown to my office. John Albano was waiting. This time I didn’t jump. He was there to pay me some money. I was glad to get it. The massive old man stood and looked out the one window at my dirty air shaft.
“Summer, soon,” he said. “I’ve had enough of this city. Mia’s made up her mind. She’ll go to Israel with Stern. That’s all Stern wanted all along, to get Mia away from them all. Take her to a decent place where they’re trying to build.”
He turned, smiled at me. “I’ll go with them. Some work left in me yet. You know, Dan, the world usually gets left just the way we found it. A few leave it worse. I’d like to leave it a little better. Add one small thing, eh?”
He’d do it, too. A builder, that tough old man.
I saw him off on the jet with Mia and Stern a week later. The rest of them went their ways unchanged, like most of us. Charley Albano must have talked well. He was still alive six months later when the last little piece got explained-who had taken Irving Kezar’s gun from me, and why.
November, winter again in New York, and Gazzo called me down to his office. The F.B.I. had arrested Lawrence Dunlap, Charley Albano, Mr. Kincaid of Caxton Industries, and a host of smaller fry-bribery, extortion, fraud, and selling the favors of office. Irving Kezar wasn’t arrested-he was the one who turned all the others in. The star witness, telling all.
“The F.B.I. was onto the Wyandotte affair almost a year,” Gazzo said. “They never told the Wyandotte officials or the New Jersey police. They let it go on.”
“To make their own case. Kezar wouldn’t talk until he’d taken
his cut, and disposed of it,” I said. “Now I know who took that gun from me-the F.B.I. To protect Kezar. They’ll let him go free on the murder charge, because without Kezar they have no case.”
“You’re not sure of that, Dan.”
“I’m sure,” I said. “That gun was what killed Meyer, and it’s got Kezar’s prints on it.”
“Jenny could have done it,” Gazzo said.
“Yeh,” I said. “Who’s worse, Captain? Charley Albano for being ready to corrupt, or Dunlap for being ready to be corrupted? Or Kincaid, the clean businesssman who’s ready to pay anyone to get the job done fast and smooth? Kezar, screwing everyone for his cut of anything he can get his hands on? Or maybe the F.B.I., paying a man to inform on everyone he works his dirty deals with-after he’s got his share-and then protecting him so they can make a case in court?”
“I’ll think about it,” Gazzo said.
I went out to find my usual haven. I had a double Irish. In a way, the Wyandotte deal had killed them all-the need for a few dirty bucks on the side. If Dunlap hadn’t wanted his share of the action, Diana Wood might never have met Andy Pappas. Hal Wood might never have had to kill anyone.
I said it at the start-we all tend to dream of perfection, and our reality falls a lot short of coming close. We have to live in the pit between. The dark pit where the Pappases and Kezars profit, where most of us try to survive in peace and a little honor, and where a Hal Wood breaks apart and kills for his dreams.
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Silent Scream df-6 Page 18
