“I wasn’t important enough to you, Hal, and too important. Both. You clung to me as if I was your only contact with the world. But that was all I was, a rope to hang onto. If the rope didn’t support you enough, wasn’t perfect, throw it away!”
Hal said, “Don’t go to him, Diana. Stay. I’ll-”
“I have to live for myself, Hal.”
“With a gangster? A cheat and conniver? A dirty-”
Her face was white. Her coat lay on a chair. She got it, walked through the kitchen and out. I heard her footsteps going fast down the stairs. Hal Wood seemed to listen to them.
“Will he marry her, Dan?”
“He says he will,” I said.
“You know him? Personally? What’s he like? I mean-”
“He’s all she says he is, and everything Gazzo and I say he is, too. Racketeer, terrorist and killer. But not with his own hands anymore. He’s not crazy. He won’t hurt her.”
“He just buys murders, orders them? Like a general?”
“Hal,” I said, “don’t fight him. I mean it. If Diana wants what Pappas can give her, you’ve lost her already.”
I wanted to say-forget her, she’s not worth it, she’s not for you. But love doesn’t depend on the nature of the person loved, it depends on the nature of the one who loves. He wanted her because of what he was, it didn’t matter what she was.
“Just let him ride roughshod?”
“That’s the way it is.”
“Are you afraid of him, Dan? Is everyone?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I’d fight him if it’d help. It won’t. It’s not Andy, it’s her. Let her go.”
He nodded. “If it’s what she wants. For her.”
“Good,” I said. “Hal, take a vacation. Go somewhere.”
“You think I’m in danger, Dan?”
“No, I don’t, but you never know. Take the vacation, find an interest. There’s a girl in your office, Emily Green, she likes you. Give her a break. A woman who wants you is better than one who doesn’t. It’s not easy, but try.”
Hal grinned, at least his mouth did. “Maybe I will.”
I left.
CHAPTER 10
Gazzo was waiting for me in his car. He leaned out.
“You get anything?”
“No,” I said. “You going to talk to Mia Morgan?”
“You mean because Sid Meyer wanted to talk to her? She’d only deny meeting him, and for Pappas’s kid I’d need a court paper I can’t get on what I have. You want a ride?”
I got in, and Gazzo told his driver to go to my address. As we drove, I watched the cold city in the night, the snow all but gone now. Gazzo watched me.
“You think Mia Morgan is more than a crazy daughter, Dan?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you look into that?”
“I think I will,” Gazzo said.
He dropped me at my tenement, drove off. I heard the car door open, and saw the short man. Yellow-gloves Charley this time. I saw now that his face was swarthy, with small, neat features like a cat-cruel and arrogant. A strutter, without Pappas’s finesse. Or maybe he was just unsure of his status.
“Come on,” he said.
The black car drove to the East Side and stopped in front of Morgan Crafts. We went up to Mia Morgan’s apartment. The girl stood in the center of all her sleek, bright plastic, her pale-olive face looking younger than usual. The big, dark eyes and full mouth were a study in mixed emotions-uneasiness, an impotent rage, and defiance.
The cause of it was Andy Pappas seated in a red plastic chair. He waved me in.
“Take a seat, Dan.”
Little Max Bagnio was against his usual wall, and Levi Stern sat near Bagnio, watching them all as if in some zoo. My escort, Charley, crossed to the only other person in the room. She was a delicate-boned woman in her late forties, dressed in expensive ladies-luncheon clothes that didn’t suit her. Plump and awkward, she looked like she’d be happier in a kitchen cooking pasta.
“Maybe you never met my wife, too, Dan?” Andy said.
It was an introduction, statement, and slap. He knew Mia had hired me, I should have told him, and his wife was here.
“Mrs. Pappas,” I said.
My voice seemed to startle her. In all the years I’d never met her, and if she had a name, it wasn’t important. Andy’s wife, period. Her colorless face must have been pretty once, like a doll, but it was permanently subdued by some force around her-Andy. He smiled at her, and at me.
“Mia paid you, Dan?”
“She paid me.”
“Smart girl, my Mia. Only twenty-two, runs her own business. The job she hired is over, Dan?”
“Yes,” I said. “She fired me.”
“She got her money’s worth? You did the job she wanted?”
“She fired me before I finished.”
Andy shook his head. “That’s bad business, right? What do you figure she was going to do with what you dug up?”
“I wouldn’t know, Andy.”
“Sure you do. She was going to fix my wagon, right? I think she ought to get her money’s worth. Only save time, Dan, tell what you’ve got to report to my wife straight out.”
The older woman looked confused and stricken at the same time. As if she wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere out of the light. I said nothing.
“Okay,” Andy said, “I’ll tell her. Mia paid for it.” He turned to his wife. She looked afraid, but didn’t know of what, and didn’t want to know. Andy said, “Mia hired him to take pics of me, Stella. With a girl. She was going to show you the pics, tell you all about the girl and me, open your eyes, make me stop. How about that, Stel?”
Stella Pappas went pale, then red. She stared at Mia. She walked to the girl and slapped her across the face. Mia fell back a step from her mother. Levi Stern moved. Little Max put a hand on him, held him down. Stella Pappas slapped Mia again.
“You spy on your father?” the mother said. Her voice was a surprise. Clear and American, no accent. “Who said you had the right? You thought I’d like that? I’d thank you?”
“Ma!” Mia cried. “He-!”
“Don’t you judge your father! You’re a child!”
Andy watched the two women. He made a sound, motioned his wife away, pointed at Mia as if pinning her to the wall.
“What I do is between your mother and me, no one else. You don’t even think about what I do. Whatever, you hear? Your Ma and me. You got that now, kid?”
Mia nodded, but her big eyes were almost black with anger. Her father’s daughter. Andy seemed to consider her. In a way, I knew, he would admire her defiance, but he had to deal with it, too. He stood up, walked to her, and slapped her. Hard.
“That’s for hiring a snooper to do anything,” Andy said, cold and sharp. “You never do that again. Never!”
I was watching them, Andy and Mia, and didn’t see anything until I heard the noise behind me. I turned. So did Andy. Charley yellow-gloves had his gun out. The women shrank back.
Levi Stern was up on his feet. Little Max Bagnio was up, too, but not on his feet. Stern had Bagnio around the throat with his left arm. Little Max was off the floor, gagging and kicking air like a hung chicken, helpless in Stern’s grip. Stern had Little Max’s. 45 automatic in his right hand.
“You!” Andy snapped. “Drop him!”
I guessed what had happened. When Andy slapped Mia, Stern had jumped up again, and Little Max had put a hand on him to hold him down again. This time Stern had used his judo, his training, and Little Max never knew what hit him. Snared like a rabbit, his gun taken like candy. Pappas’s number-one gun, but no match for Stern.
“I do not like to be interfered with,” Stern said, his gaunt face neither smiling nor snarling, expressionless. “Instruct your hoodlums, Mr. Pappas, and do not slap Mia again.”
Andy isn’t used to being put down, even opposed, but he’s not so blinded by power that he’ll attack when he can’t win. He saw that Little Max, with all his deadly experience, was no match for Stern. He didn’t believe it, but he saw it. He saw that Charley and his gun couldn’t stop Stern without Max getting hurt, or maybe everyone. A stand-off, or worse.