Silent Scream

by Michael Collins

  There was a short, dark hallway, with an empty bedroom off to the right, and the living room straight ahead. The living room was dim and bare, a table and a few chairs, but it wasn’t empty. Little Max Bagnio hadn’t moved far from the room on Sixth Street where Emily Green had died, but he’d gone as far as he would ever go.

  Bagnio sat in a chair at the bare table.

  He’d been shot in the chest, more than once from the mass of still-wet blood that hid his shirt front. His suit coat had been buttoned, the collar pulled down over the back of the chair to hold him upright—his flat nose and battered face looking straight at me from the dead eyes sunk in their scar tissue. A piece of paper was pinned to Bagnio’s bloody chest with a single word in it: Cane.

  “Italian,” I said. “Cane—dog.”

  “Look, on the table,” Hal said.

  They were laid out like evidence on a policeman’s desk. It was just what they were—evidence. A series of items to form a mute testimony someone wanted everyone to read. Hal picked up one of them, a gold wedding band.

  “It’s Diana’s wedding ring,” Hal said, his voice cracking a little. “We didn’t have much money when we got married. I had to buy a cheap band in a Village store.”

  I took the ring from him. It was engraved inside: H.W. to D.W., all my love. I put it into my pocket. The other items were Max Bagnio’s .45 automatic, a gold money clip with the initials A.P., and a partly torn sheet of memo pad paper. The automatic was still warm. Max had fought. Maybe shot first.

  “No one heard the shooting?” Hal said.

  “He could have been brought here. Or it could have happened here. In a place like this, witnesses are blind and deaf.”

  “He did kill them, Pappas and … Diana,” Hal said. “He must have grabbed Pappas’s money from the bed table, got Diana’s ring, too. The gang found out, came for him.”

  “Andy usually carried a lot of cash,” I said slowly, “but why would Max keep the ring and money clip?”

  “Afraid to have them found, maybe,” Hal said. “Robbery, Dan? Murder for a few hundred dollars? A few thousand?”

  “No, the money was a bonus. Read this.”

  I handed him the sheet of memo paper. It was typed, signed with a scrawled Andy P. It told the story: Charley, We got a problem with Max. Diana says he hates her, watches her, she don’t want him around. He’s getting old, can’t change. I want you to give him a spot in your Jersey operation, then put him on the shelf. I’ve told Diana it’s taken care of.

  “Somehow,” I said, “Little Max got that memo. Maybe it never reached Charley Albano. Andy had turned against Max because of Diana. So he killed them. No one shelves Max Bagnio.”

  “He must have been crazy.”

  “No, just a peasant. Vendetta. Andy had injured him. And scared, too. Maybe Andy wouldn’t stop with just putting him on a shelf,” I said. “Go call Gazzo. You know the number.”

  Hal went down to call. I lit a cigarette, searched the bare and silent room. I searched the bedroom. There was no automatic rifle. Gingerly, I searched Bagnio’s pockets. His dead eyes stared ahead. In his right jacket pocket I found the rifle cartridges—five steel-jacketed shells that would fit an M-16 automatic rifle. That was all I found. Little Max had brought nothing to the last room he’d lived in. A few cans of food, a bottle of whisky, and the clothes on his back. Like most gangsters, he’d gone out of the world almost as naked as he’d come into it.

  I sat on one of the wooden chairs. Andy’s memo told it all. Andy had written that he’d told Diana that Max was being taken care of. So Diana had known the motive, maybe Andy had even put it in writing in some note to her, and maybe she had told Hal. Hal might have had a written note that proved Bagnio’s motive for murder. Hal might have told Emily Green. If Charley Albano had never gotten Andy’s memo, then Hal and Emily Green could have been the only ones who knew Bagnio’s motive.

  It all fitted, even the gangland revenge, and the epithet—dog! A man who murders his own boss is a dog to the brothers. All there, except—Sid Meyer? Then, Meyer could have been only a side effect, not really connected to …

  The noise in the outside corridor was soft, faint. I sat alert. A light footstep? I had my gun out. Would anyone …?

  I saw the movement in the dim light at the far end of the short hall into the living room. I was up.

  The shots exploded.

  My chest exploded in agony. Jesus … agony …

  On the floor, the searing pain, my chest, God Al …

  Rolled on the floor, fired at the shadowy hallway. The distant movement in the corridor fired again. Missed.

  I was up. Staggered to the cover of the wall where the hall entered the living room. Shots! Two? Three? My belly seemed to burst. I was down again. Blood all over. I fired.

  I was behind the wall, braced against the wall.

  I fired. Along the dim hall. Sirens far off. Police. Hal had gotten them, they were coming, I had to hold on … hold on … keep the man out there away … hold on … fired.

  Four shots.

  I had two left. My chest was dead, my belly flames. On my knees, braced against the wall, my pistol aimed down the hallway at the entrance … just a little while … hold on …

  I fired.

  One shot left … bit through my lip in pain … one more shot to keep him away from coming and … sirens down in the street … the room thick liquid and swimming dark … dark … darker …

  Silence.

  I pressed my shoulder against the wall … fought to hold on one more second … two seconds … running feet and voices and faces and Hal was there and police and … I let go … collapsed … pain … nothing …

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 23

  One bullet through my right lung, one in my belly. Another small gun, 7.65-mm. Lucky. I was in the hospital five weeks.

  Two weeks in Intensive Care, one of them critical. Another week with a nurse around the clock. Two more when the room began to look normal, faces smiled, and I noticed the daylight outside. Even Marty came to visit. Without her husband, but she looked happy. I hated her. Yet glad for her, too. I was feeling mortal, and I hoped everyone was happy as long as I was still alive.

  Captain Gazzo came. “Damn lucky I had the brains to call the precinct. Their sirens must have scared your man off, all over when they got there. Hal Wood met them, told them about the shooting, and they reached you in time.”

  “I always said you were a good cop,” I said.

  “Charley Albano came around off the record. Admitted two of his men got Bagnio. Claims self-defense, and the boys are long gone. We could try to find them, but we’ve got no names, no evidence. Unless someone tells us, we’ll never know who they were. I suspected Bagnio all along, it all fits. Even what Max was looking for—evidence that would show Andy was dumping him. He was a killer, Dan, case closed, the taxpayers save money.”

  Hal Wood came many times. He was happy he’d gotten to Gazzo in time to save me.

  “When we heard the shooting, I thought I’d gotten someone else killed,” he said, shook his head. “Shooting stopped before we reached the building. We didn’t see anyone, damn it.”

  “You saw me,” I said. “Alive. You did just fine.”

  He looked better now. His magazine was expanding, he had an assistant, was keeping busy. But no new girl. Not this time.

  “I’m even painting,” Hal said. “A new style. It’s good.”

  John Albano visited. Mia and Levi Stern had gotten married. Stern wanted them to live in Israel, but Mia was still running her business in New York for now. John Albano didn’t like that.

  “Mia’s got a lot to learn still,” he said.

  Even Lawrence Dunlap sent flowers. He was big with flowers, the proper aristocrat. Or maybe that was the wife.

  I went to a convalescent hospital, and April turned into May. Spring came, and after a while there were fewer visitors. Gazzo still came sometimes, and my buddy Joe Harris, and John Albano. I wondered about
John Albano. Did he have some doubts about the case, too?

  When I walked around the convalescent hospital, sat out in the sun on good days, I thought about Max Bagnio and the murders. I thought about who had shot me, and why?

  “You’re sure Bagnio was alone in it?” I asked Gazzo on a sunny day in mid-May. “Just mad at Andy and Diana, no one hired him?”

  “No evidence of it, Dan. We’ve turned that Ninth Street place and the room on Sixth Street upside-down. We’ve combed his regular apartment, his room at Andy’s house. Nothing.”

  “You haven’t found the automatic rifle?”

  Gazzo sighed. “What do you want, Dan? That M-sixteen’s probably in the river. We’ll never find it with Max dead. Diana Wood’s wedding ring, Andy’s money clip, the rifle cartridges in his pocket, that memo Charley Albano never got. Open and shut, everything explained.”

  “Sid Meyer isn’t explained.”

  “That kind of killing happens every day, half of them never get explained. Not officially.”

  “Why’d Bagnio keep the ring and money clip?”

  “Mistake. Maybe thought it was safer than dumping them, risking them showing up to point to a private murder not gang.”

  “Why did Bagnio search Mia Morgan’s apartment?”

  “Andy’s daughter. Maybe he mentioned something to her about dumping Bagnio. In writing. Bagnio just being very careful. If you’d killed Andy Pappas, you’d be careful, too.”

  “Did you check on Ramapo Construction and Ultra-Violet Controls?” I asked.

  “Ramapo is best equipped to handle that laboratory and housing project in Wyandotte, even if Charley Albano does own it. Ultra-Violet Controls is a solid company, no Mafia connections. A subsidiary of Caxton Industries, a big conglomerate.”

  That made me uneasy. Caxton Industries, and a Martin Winthrop, had been represented by Irving Kezar in stock dealings. So? Kezar was a businessman. He probably got a lot of companies together—even Charley Albano’s legitimate companies.

  “Why was I shot, Captain? Was it the same gun that killed Max Bagnio?”

  “No, not the same,” Gazzo said. He looked uncomfortable. “I can’t explain why you were shot, Dan. Maybe you stumbled over something. Maybe the gunmen just didn’t want you around.”

  “Then why get me down there at all? A setup? Then what did I do to be set up? Two open questions—me and Sid Meyer.”

  “You could have been a mistake. Got there too soon, the killers needed more time. Or maybe they left some evidence we can’t spot, came back to get it.”

  It was a reasonable explanation.

  “Dan, the gang’s satisfied,” Gazzo said. “And they wouldn’t be if they had any doubts about Bagnio. Not the Mafia.”

  That was reasonable, too. But …?

  I thought more about it for a week. The Mafia were happy, and they wouldn’t be if they had doubts that Max Bagnio had killed alone—unless they had some more important problem.

  It was over, closed, everyone satisfied. Too damned satisfied. Mia Morgan married to Stern, but still in New York while Stern was in Israel. Just a willful girl, or some other reason? Hal Wood looking better, able to work again. Charley Albano, who seemed to have forgotten his suspicions that Bagnio might have been hired by someone to kill Andy. John Albano being nice to me, visiting a lot. And where were those neat-looking men interested in Irving Kezar? Were they glad the case was closed?

  I was released on a hot day for May, summer in the air. John Albano had offered to drive me home. I told him to drive me somewere else.

  “To Stella?” he said. “You’re not convinced, Dan?”

  “I just want to look around. It’d help to have you along, but I can get out there by myself.”

  “All right, we’ll go to Stella,” the old man said. “But leave it closed, Dan. It worked out okay.”

  “Mia’s safe?”

  “I’m thinking of you. The brotherhood won’t like any more snooping.”

  It was true. Too damned true. But I don’t like being shot, especially if the one who shot me was still loose.

  CHAPTER 24

  Without all the cars around it, the big white house near Somerville seemed abandoned. An aura of neglect already. The grass too long, weeds ragged in the spring flower beds, as if its pride had been buried with Andy Pappas. Or its discipline—no one to give orders in a world where only orders counted.

  An old man with a stiff leg answered the door. He wasn’t hospitable, but he recognized John Albano and grudgingly led us to the same side room where Don Vicente Campagna had held court over two months ago. Stella Pappas stood at the garden windows. She still wore the simple black that suited her motherly manner. Mia was with her. The girl wasn’t in black, a sleek red dress that wasn’t much like a new bride, either.

  “What does he want now, Grandpa?” the girl said, irritable and surly. “Wasn’t he told it’s over?”

  “Where’s your husband, Mia?” I said. “Mrs. Stern, right?”

  “Up in his big bird, or with the prophets. Where else?”

  “But you’re still here. Something special keeping you in New York?”

  “I like New York,” Mia snapped.

  She was back to her cool, overly mature control, but oddly tense, even petulant. Defiant, but defying what and who? Not me. Under the cool shell she was nervous and edgy—more like a bridegroom who’d had the wedding night postponed too long. Was that all it was, the separation from Levi Stern, wanting him but wanting her own way, too? A girl who got what she wanted.

  Stella Pappas spoke from the windows. “Mia has to learn about marriage.” She looked at me. “What do you want here, Mr. Fortune?”

  The conflict I had seen in her at the funeral—Italian wife versus American woman—seemed to have been resolved. She still looked like Momma in Palermo, but she acted all American now. Andy was dead, no more kitchen and pasta?

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Some questions.”

  “You don’t think Max Bagnio killed my husband? You don’t believe the police?”

  “Do you?” I said. “Max Bagnio alone? Personal anger?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t care very much. He’s dead, so is Max. It doesn’t matter. The Dons say it was Max, so it was Max.”

  Mia said, “Always the Dons. The old man, my father, Charley. Whatever the men say, Mama? The patriarchs!”

  Stella Pappas smiled. “You’ll be different, Mia. A new world for women, yes. But you still have to decide how to live with a man. Be yourself, but where and how? Levi is a man who knows where he belongs. He belongs in Israel. If you have to belong here, you have no marriage.”

  “Mia doesn’t belong here,” John Albano said.

  “I won’t be the harem slave you were, Mama,” Mia said.

  “Slave?” Stella Pappas watched something outside the windows. “You’re a baby, Mia. You think I didn’t know your father and his life? Marry a sailor, you expect separation. Marry a politician, you expect neglect. I knew the man I married, and I lived with it. At home a husband and father, no more. But I knew what he did. I knew about the women.”

  She looked down at her pudgy hands. Suddenly alone. I sensed it—deep inside her own mind. “All the women, the show girls, the secretaries. Always a new girl. I hated it. But he always came home to me, to us.” She clenched her hands at the windows, talking to herself now as if no one was there. “This time he … he … Divorce! No, not right. This time … dead. With her. In bed with her. That … whore!”

  I couldn’t see her eyes, but I sensed their flashing, and it wasn’t May sunlight she saw outside but a darkness. She had accepted all the years of Andy Pappas, but this time …? John Albano didn’t like it.

  “That’s enough, Stel,” the old man said. “Andy’s dead. Max Bagnio killed him, and it’s over. It doesn’t matter now.”

  “No?” She turned sharply. Stopped. “No, it doesn’t matter. I have the house, the money. No more worry, no more girls.”

  I said, “Max Bagnio
ended it.”

  “Yes,” Stella Pappas said.

  John Albano touched my arm, we should leave. I shook him off.

  “Was Andy involved in some big business deal, Stella?”

  “He never talked business with me.”

  “I’m not so sure Max Bagnio was in it alone,” I said. “You understand? Max killed him, but maybe for a different reason. Paid to do it. Then Max was killed to shut him up.”

  Her eyes flickered away. She was silent.

  “Did Andy mention Caxton Industries, or Ultra-Violet Controls, or Ramapo Construction Company?”

  “Ramapo?” Stella said. “Charley’s company?”

  “Did Charley have a big deal? Andy said something?”

  She thought. “Yes. He laughed about Ramapo once. He was pleased. Charley had a sweet deal, he said, a real pigeon for plucking. Over in Wyandotte. A bonanza.”

  “For Andy, or for Charley?”

  Stella looked at John Albano. “Mostly for Charley, I think.”

  “Any names? Irving Kezar? Lawrence Dunlap? Sid Meyer?”

  “No, no names. The men don’t tell women details.”

  “But Charley had a scheme, a bonanza?”

  John Albano said, “Charley always has a scheme, a big deal.”

  “Yeh,” I said. I turned to Mia. “Sid Meyer tried to talk to you. You said he never did. But what did he want, Mia?”

  She hesitated. “He wanted me to take him to my father. I never did talk to him.”

  “He wanted to meet Andy? Why?”

  She shook her head.

  “She doesn’t know, Dan,” John Albano said.

  Stella Pappas laughed. “Maybe he had a new girl for Andy.”

  “Stop it, Stel!” John Albano said.

  “No more girls,” Stella Pappas said. Her eyes glittered. “Don’t worry about me, Papa. I’m good now. I’m fine.”

  There was a certain triumph in her voice. John Albano wanted me out of the house. This time I went. In Albano’s car we drove back to New York. The late morning sun was almost hot.