“Detective-Inspector Price,” he said. “What is this?”
Mustache, a hand on Milano’s shoulder to mark the informant told it fast, and Price looked over Milano. “I.D.?” he said. Milano fumbled for his wallet, extracted the driver’s license, held it up for inspection. Price barely glanced at it. “Dynamite?” he said. “That your story?”
Jesus, though Milano, here we go again. The more desperately you want to be a trumpet sounding a clarion call, the surer it is you’ll be read for a freaked-out harmonica player. “Man,” he said to Price, “if it’s a stiff, you can always hang me for it later, can’t you?”
“And will,” Price assured him. He turned to Mustache and pointed at Milano. “Keep him close until I say otherwise.” Then he aimed the finger at an aide and said in a flat voice – no one, Milano thought, was ever going to say no to that voice—“You clear away this traffic. I don’t care how, just get it clear of these premises in five minutes.” The finger swiveled to the next case: “And you close up the block, outgoing only, no incoming except for official or press. Five minutes, that’s it.” Next case: “And you evacuate the building, hear? Clean. Get some of those uniforms on it. And bullhorn the place front and back.” Final case: “And you – I want a street detail getting this stupid fucking crowd away from here.” Price surveyed the face of the building. “If anything really comes off, it could turn those wall trimmings into shrapnel.”
He never raised his voice over the deafening racket of car horns along the block, the mounting voices of the crowd, the incessant mechanical squawking of dispatchers’ messages coming over the patrol car radios, but somehow there was no missing a word of his instructions, and the troop responded fast. Milano started on his way toward the Baileys, and was pulled up short by Mustache. “You heard the man,” said Mustache. “Across the street and stay close to me.” He started Milano off with a shove, and Milano, observing that the Bailey contingent was, along with all those in front of 409, being herded in the same general direction, yielded to this muscular persuasion.
Not that Mustache, despite a valiant effort, could win a place for them on the sidewalk across the street; the packed crowd there made an impregnable barrier. So he settled for a place between a couple of parked cars, a tight fit but offering a good view.
From there, Milano saw that Price’s orders were, miraculously, having an effect. The motor traffic was thinning fast, the crowd before 409 was being driven into a wide semicircle clear of it, a few stragglers were hustled from the building, a bullhorn was bellowing warnings to anyone yet inside to clear out right now, and official-looking cars kept pulling up to the perimeter of the crowd disgorging official-looking characters who gathered around a gesticulating Price in conference.
Then the first TV mobile unit arrived, closely followed by another and another, all of them at least as much a feature of the crowd’s boisterous interest as that abandoned building which, thought Milano, suggested an abandoned ocean liner, its bottom snatched out by an iceberg or whatever, waiting to go down.
And certifiable case Captain Charles Witter Kirwan down there in the engine room, match in hand close to the fuse.
He had to be. All logic said so.
It turned out that Detective-Inspector Price had his doubts about it. He broke free of the big brass, looking around until he spotted Milano and his escort, and walked across the street to join them. He said coldly to Milano, “You told me dynamite. Everybody else seems to be talking gas leak. What the hell is that about?”
“A way to get them out of the building fast. But it’s still dynamite.”
“Maybe,” Price said. “Just remember, one way or the other you and me got a lot to clear up afterward.” He looked at his watch. “Seven o’clock. You might as well know,” he told Milano, “there was no way of getting anybody out of that cellar on deadline. Or what you claim is deadline. Are you sure the super is in there?”
“Not the super. The owner. He lives over there in that next house.”
“The owner?” It was obvious that Price had more to say on this, but he wasn’t given the chance. Christine Bailey, moving lightfooted past parked cars, fending off a cop, wedged herself into the narrow area occupied by the trio and confronted Milano. Price got as far as an outraged, “Hey, lady—!”but she disregarded him.
She said breathlessly to Milano, “The boys are taking care of Lorena,” giving him the pleasant feeling that in this case she was here to take care of him. “Johnny, you think it’ll really happen?”
“Yeah,” Price chimed in, choosing to overlook the almost indecently tight fit the four of them made. “That’s a good question, Johnny.” He held up his wristwatch on display. “It’s after seven, Johnny. Or did you mean seven o’clock next year?”
It was after seven all right, Milano saw, time for a world-class false alarm. No dynamite. There never had been. Kirwan was acting out a role from his bad dreams, and somehow he had hooked John Milano into them. If the old man was in that cellar right now, all he was doing—
The thunderbolt slammed deafeningly against Milano’s ears. The impact of the bolt thrust him back against the radiator of the car he was leaning against. Chris screamed as she was driven up against him, face in his chest, arms going convulsively tight around his waist. Price and Mustache clutched each other in an off-balance embrace. High overhead, Milano saw with astonishment, a million diamond chips sparkled in a wide, descending arc before they abruptly blinked out. Glass, he suddenly realized, as a particle stung his cheek.
All in one thin fraction of an instant. The next fraction, a black tidal wave, a curling blackness along that sidewalk across the street from one end of 409 to the other, surged out over the roadway. A warm, stinking comber of dust rolling out and carpeting the world.
And in that final fraction of the same instant, Milano saw the building’s outline seem to waver. Then it clearly wavered. TV aerials just behind the false front of the roof leaned toward each other. The fire-escapes on each side of the entrance shifted to a weird angle.
The crowd yelled. One wild yell and that was it as the brick walls tilted inward toward each other. There was a rending and grinding – monstrous jaws chewing chunks of brickwork, masonry, metal pipe – as the roof caved in bringing down the floors beneath, one into the other. Then the walls themselves disintegrated in slow motion, the whole building dissolved in on itself, and with its collapse the air was again foul with that stink of warm dust. The street light was dimmed by it, but through the dimness Milano saw – trying to believe what he saw – that 409 Witter Street was now a vast pile of debris.
That’s all there was of it. A great big pile of debris.
And incredibly, nothing – nothing at all of it except a few bricks and the twisted segment of a TV aerial – now littered the dust-covered roadway in front of it. Nothing. The building could have been mashed flat by a gigantic hand careful not to let anything slip between its fingers.
Chris, with that deathly grip on Milano, still wouldn’t or couldn’t, look. Price and his aide and Mustache could. They regarded the scene open-mouthed, and it was Price who found his voice first. “Son of a bitch,” he said with awe. “Whoever he was, he sure as hell knew what he was doing.”
And that, thought Milano, was as sweet a tribute as Captain Kirwan, demolitions expert, was ever likely to get. Especially, once the cost of his expertise was toted up.
Knew what he was doing.
And had left that pile of cassette tapes to tell about it.
The crowd had been stunned into silence until the last shifting and scraping of debris. Then someone on the sidewalk behind Milano cut loose with a loud “Whoo-ee,” and that was the signal. Like an orchestra tuning up, voices rose here and there, mounted to a whole symphony fortissimo, ranging from the bassoon tragic to the piccolo comic. In the roadway, making its own internal combustion racket, a whole circus parade on wheels tried to jockey into position close to the debris: fire engines, an ambulance, a Brooklyn Union Gas Company van, a
n Emergency Squad truck. Everybody, it seemed, had to be in on the biggest show in town.
And, thought Milano, the way its scenario read, he could wind up with his face all over newspapers and TV screens. Where it would be spotted by such interested parties as Wim Rammaert and Willie Watrous who knew how to add one and one together. Rammaert especially, if he spotted the name Milano and the name Bailey in the same column of type.
Jesus.
Mister Hairpiece crooking a finger at his lady of all work. Miss Bailey, I must see you in the office at once.
Milano detached himself from Chris’s deathlike grip. She looked across the street and shook her head wonderingly at the sight there. Milano said into here ear, “Where’s the car?”
“The car?” She strained to remember. “Near Nostrand. It was the closest I could park.”
Price prodded Milano’s arm. “You. Romano.”
“Milano.”
“Yeah. Stay with me, you hear?”
“I’m with you,” said Milano. He hastily thrust his keys into Chris’s limp hand. “These are for the apartment. Get the family there fast. None of you say anything to anybody about me. Keep me out of it. I’m stuck here for awhile, so you all just hole up until I get clear. Do you understand about keeping me out of it?”
“Yes. But everything’s gone,” Chris said dazedly. “All their clothes—”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“And the woman from social services. She was supposed to—”
“Oh, Jesus,” Milano said. “Wake up, baby, will you? Just get going. And remember what I told you.”
He pushed her on her way as Price, that forefinger jabbing, was laying down the law to his aide: “Emergency can move in right now along with the fucking Fire Department. Get uniforms to back ’em up, but it’s all handwork first. And ears. They’re to climb around that shitpile slow and easy and keep ears open for anything that sounds alive under it. Move, move, move.” Price looked at Mustache as if seeing him for the first time. “You too.”
Mustache took off, shaking his head at the ways of the brass, and Price focused on Milano. “All right, let’s have it. How come you were in a spot to get the score before the game even started? What’s your line anyhow?”
“Private investigator. Watrous Associates. You know Willie Watrous?”
Price raised an eyebrow. “I think I heard some stories about him. If he’s the one.”
“If you heard some stories about him,” said Milano, “he’s the one. Now I want to talk deal with you. I got the score by way of a case I’m on. A very profitable case. But if there’s any cameras or interviews aimed at me, that blows my cover and the case.”
“Too bad,” Price said coldly.
“It would be. So you keep me out of all this, and I’ll hand you a little present from Willie and me.”
“Will you now?” Price said with contempt. “You private outfit clowns are all the same, aren’t you?”
“I don’t mean that kind of present. I mean that the crackpot who pulled this off left an explanation of it in his house there for the first cop smart enough to find it. Could be somebody who’d like to get down on his record sheet just how smart he is.”
“An explanation?”
“That’s what he told me it was. I don’t know what’s in it, but I know where it is. And I left that front door open when I made my getaway. So if I told you now – strictly for public consumption – that he might still be in there with a loaded shotgun, you could walk in without worrying about a warrant, couldn’t you?”
“I might,” Price said. “With you along.”
“That’s the deal,” said Milano. “I hand you that explanation or confession or whatever, and then I just bow out. You want me for a private talk afterward, you know where to find me. The name’s Milano, by the way, not Romano. Just so you won’t think I’m trying to pull anything on you.”
“Milano. Mind telling me, Milano, if your case has something to do with that tall, dark lady who dropped in on us?”
Milano smiled. “Perish the thought, Inspector. How about the deal?”
It seemed that Price could almost smile too. He almost did. “For what it’s worth, Milano,” he said, “you got it.”
So, thought Milano, as they moved across the carpet of dirt past the batteries of cameras toward the still unsullied Victorian grandeur beyond, his private business would continue to remain strictly private. For that matter, so would Lorena’s – catering through an unshaded window to a crazy, murderous old voyeur plus a touch of blackmail to sweeten the kitty – and so would the family’s private business be kept private. Johnny Milano and his woman and her family – John Anthony Milano, age forty, paterfamilias – were all well out of it.
Clear and free.
There was a strange new view through the window of the tower room. A gigantic heap of wreckage. Beyond the wreckage, the street light down the block shone on the newly exposed side wall of a brownstone.
Price wasn’t interested in the view. He examined each cassette, studied its named and numbered and dated label, arranged the collection into two neat stacks. “Unlucky thirteen,” he remarked. He looked around. “He had to have a machine for these things.”
“Right in back of you,” Milano said. “In that safe. And since you don’t need me any more—”
“Take it easy,” Price said. “First I want to know what I’m buying.”
He locked the number one cassette into the machine, pressed the switch. The tape hissed. A violent coughing erupted from the machine, and Milano said, “That’s him.”
“There’s got to be more than that,” said Price.
There was.
“Sit back, light up, the text is yet to come,” wheezed the voice oratorically.
“A comic act?” said Price.
The voice again. Price stood frowning as he took it in. Then he drew the swivel chair up to the desk and seated himself, an ear slanted toward the voice. It went on and on, punctuated by that cough. When it finally went dead Price switched off the machine and looked up at Milano whose mind was uneasily on the narrator’s wheezing reference to a sexual adventure.
A perverse sexual adventure.
Lorena?
No, Milano decided. Kirwan came off scholarly precise in his language. Pedantically precise. Peeking through the kid’s window would never fit his definition of a sexual adventure. No way.
“Well?” said Price.
“It’s Kirwan all right,” Milano said. “No question.”
“Windy bastard too,” Price said irritably. “And he still don’t make all that much sense.”
“It’s only one down, twelve to go,” Milano pointed out. He didn’t know why he felt defensive about it.
“Maybe.” Price nodded at the cassettes. “That could be the longest suicide note in the Guinness book. And no matter how long they are, the bottom line is always the same. Nobody loves me so I’ll kill myself and then you’ll be sorry.”
“They don’t all try to take along a building full of people though.”
“No, they don’t. But this could put that idea into a lot of fucked-up brains. A lot of them. Because what we’ve got here, friend, is a great big media event. Happy days for the newspapers and TV from here to Hong Kong. And these fucking tapes will be the cherry on top of the sundae.” Price shook his head. “Crazy people. Crazy world.”
“Fact,” said Milano. He picked up the pieces of strap and the necktie from the floor and displayed them. “This is what he tied me up with. Mind if I mess up the evidence a little?”
“Don’t be stupid. I can’t mind what I don’t know about, can I?”
Milano stuffed strap and tie into his pockets and finished off messing up the evidence by screwing the radiator valve back into place. “So—” he said.
“Yeah,” said Price, “you can take off now. One thing. There’s that pair of cops near the gate outside. Tell them I want them up here fast.”
Milano attended to the request, strug
gled through the solidly compacted mob beyond, and made it to Flatbush Avenue where there might be a cab heading Manhattan-way. He learned after awhile that if you wanted a cab to anywhere, the corner of Flatbush Avenue and Witter Street was not the place to find one. In the end he settled for the D train at the Church Avenue station – a lucky train that suffered no breakdown along the way – and so made it to Columbus Circle and to co-op in fair time.
No keys. He rang the apartment doorbell, picturing the disposition of the Baileys within. Lorena usurping the bed – what the hell, you had to make allowances for the kid right now – Mania probably holding her hand, the boys at the TV set getting a view through news specials of what had been their home. Christine? Sitting on the edge of a chair waiting for his arrival.
No one answered the doorbell. No one answered the heavy pounding at the door. The picture of the Baileys abruptly changed. It was that goddam lightweight tin can of a car. His last closeup of Chris should have warned him she wasn’t in shape to drive. Five of them packed into a peewee Toyota, including Lorena in a wild mood. They probably took the expressway too, to keep clear of the midtown evening traffic. There they were now, what was left of them in what was left of the car.
Still no answer.
Milano went down to the manager’s office, borrowed the extra set of keys and let himself into the apartment. No one was playing possum there, no one had been there and left. He phoned the Village apartment, no answer there either. Naturally. Pearl and Lenardo had been notified of the car crash, had gone to identify the remains.
Which, Milano told himself as he put down the phone, was all a crock, of course. That morbid streak inherited from his mother who always had funerals on the brain.
The remainder of the pack of cigarettes was still in his pocket. He lit up, drew in deeply, never mind the lesson of that cancerous, wheezing voice on the tape. Crazy people, crazy world. The one sure thing in it was that anyone crazy enough to develop a meaningful relationship with Christine Bailey was going to wind up on four packs a day.
The Dark Fantastic Page 32
