“Charley,” Andy said, “put it away. Let Max go, Stern.”
The underboss lowered his gun. Stern waited, tall and skinny, but holding Max Bagnio like a toy.
“Levi, let him go,” Mia Morgan said. She sounded annoyed, but almost pleased, too. Even as surprised as Andy.
“Put the gun away, damn it!” Andy said to Charley.
Charley holstered the gun. Levi Stern released Little Max, but still held Max’s automatic. Little Max walked to stand behind Pappas, rubbing his throat. He said nothing, looked at Stern as if to remember him, but with respect.
“You’ve had your family discussion, Mr. Pappas,” Stern said. “You can leave now.”
“Yeh,” Andy said, and to Mia, “Don’t forget it, kid.”
Levi Stern held Max’s gun out to him. Stern didn’t think anyone was going to shoot now, and he wasn’t worried about anything else they could do. We left him alone with Mia.
On the dark street, Stella Pappas and Charley got into the black car. Little Max stood apart, still rubbing his throat, while Andy smiled at me on the sidewalk, looked up toward the lighted windows of his daughter’s apartment.
“That’s some Jew she’s got,” Andy said.
“Commando type,” I said. “Maybe you could use him.”
“Maybe, except Mia wouldn’t like that,” he said. “All closed up now, Dan? You got nothing more to work on for Mia or Wood? All in the open, right? No secrets, no clients.”
“What did you find out about Sid Meyer?”
“Not a thing. They weren’t my boys, no trace of imported talent we can find.”
“They came from somewhere.”
His eyes glinted in the dark. “Let the cops handle it, Dan. It’s not a job for you. No client, no reason, no stake in it. I’ll drive you home, then it’s over. I don’t see you again.”
“I’ll walk,” I said.
When the black car had driven away, I started to walk south in the cold night. I walked a long way. Captain Gazzo would say the same as Pappas-it wasn’t a job for me, Sid Meyer’s murder. They were right. A private detective has no business messing in gang killings, or crimes by pros, or any kind of “public” crime. No business investigating without a client. I didn’t want to anyway. Sid Meyer was nothing to me, he was public property. If there was anything still hidden around Mia Morgan or Hal Wood, I didn’t want to know about it. I had no concern in it.
As Pappas said, it was over. We were both wrong.
PART TWO
CHAPTER 11
A few days later I got a job from an old man who ran a delicatessen on Third Avenue. His grandson, who worked in the store and went to college nights, had left his apron and classes and disappeared. The old man wanted the boy to come home.
It took me a week to trace the grandson to a communal farm outside Los Angeles. He had a girl with him. He was a nice kid, she was a nice girl, and they wanted to work on the farm. I told the old man. The boy was his only relative, he had big hopes for him, and he was heartbroken. What could you do? The old man paid me, I had most of Mia Morgan’s thousand, and I wanted some peace and clean air. I went north to the snow.
With one arm I don’t ski or skate well, and my money was limited, so I picked Great Barrington, Mass. The food was good in a boarding house, it was quiet, and I liked to walk in the snow woods. I stayed two weeks, eating, sleeping, and walking in the woods. I tried to forget the city, clear the grime and the crime from my brain. Why did I stay in New York anyway, with Marty gone? Maybe I should find a ship, ship out, try being a sailor again.
I was thinking about where I could ship to, maybe on a South American voyage, and walking in the woods, when I saw him coming across the snow toward me. It was three weeks since Andy Pappas had kissed me off, and I wasn’t happy when I recognized who it was walking up to me. John Albano.
“How’d you find me?” I said. “Mia fired me.”
“I asked around,” Albano said. “Your friend Joe Harris.”
“He’s not supposed to tell.”
“He thought it was important enough, Mr. Fortune.”
His turtle-neck was black, he wore the same light topcoat even here, and his hair was whiter than the snow. It was still hard to believe he was seventy, solid in the snow like a short, wide tree. He watched some skiers in the far distance across the snow, didn’t even blink in the wind.
“You knew Mia was Andy Pappas’s daughter all along,” I said. “That’s why you advised me. Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“I don’t interfere, not directly. Not when I didn’t know why she hired you. Maybe it had nothing to do with Andy.”
“Just indirectly? General advice, keep watch on her?”
“Mia is my granddaughter, Mr. Fortune.”
“Granddaughter? Then… You mean Andy Pappas is-?”
“Stella Pappas is my daughter. Andy was my son-in-law.”
“Was?” I said. “He got the divorce already?”
“Andy’s dead, Mr. Fortune. Shot down three days ago.”
All right, no big surprise. Not for the shooting of Andy Pappas. A little, Andy had been boss a long time. I’m not a hypocrite, the world would be better off, but I’d been mixed with Andy too recently to ignore it. And I’d known him a long time. When someone you know dies, even Andy Pappas, a small part of you goes with him.
“Two men?” I said. “Professionals?”
“Professional enough,” Albano said. “I want to hire you.”
“For a gang killing? What do I care?”
“Maybe not a gang killing,” John Albano said. “The girl was murdered, too. Diana Wood. They were shot together.”
I walked back to the boarding house for my things. John Albano drove me toward New York in his car.
“The police are asking questions about Mia, about Stella,” John Albano said. “A Captain Gazzo took Mia downtown for questioning because she hired you.”
“Hate and anger are good motives. Jealousy.”
“Hate and jealousy would fit the husband, too.”
I’d thought of that. I also thought of Sid Meyer and maybe some big deal. Greed, revenge, and fear are good motives.
“Max Bagnio was on guard in the apartment vestibule,” John Albano said. “Now he’s missing.”
Little Max? A new loyalty? “There’s an underboss. Close to Andy. Charley something, wears yellow gloves.”
“Charley Albano,” the old man said, watched the highway.
“Your son?”
“He means no more to me than any of them.”
“Them? What are you, Albano?”
“An engineer, Mr. Fortune. Honest, I hope, and on my own. A normal man. It’s too late for my son and daughter, but I’ve got a granddaughter who’s going to be normal. I want you to help Mia, find the truth.”
I said nothing more, and the snow on the ground got dirtier as we neared New York.
When I walked into Centre Street, Gazzo was on his way out. He scowled at me. It must have been a bad three days.
“Come on,” he said. “I’m going up there.”
We rode in the back of his car. He carried a large, flat envelope, stared out at the city as if it had failed him.
“He’d filed for the divorce, set Diana Wood up in this apartment,” he said. “About two A.M. Andy and the girl were alone in the apartment. Guard in the corridor, Bagnio downstairs. Someone shot the guard in the corridor, shot up Andy and the girl. With an automatic rifle.”
“Gang war? Sid Meyer, now Pappas?”
“The Diana Wood girl just caught in the cross fire? Maybe. I’ve been waiting for the next killing. But there hasn’t been one. Nothing except Max Bagnio’s vanishing act. Quiet.”
If he had a reason to doubt a gang war beyond the absence of a second killing, he’d tell me in his own time.
We turned into a quiet block of Twelfth Street off Fifth Avenue, and stopped in front of a four-story brownstone in a row of brownstones. On the sidewalk I looked up at the building.
“Hard to guard,” I said. “Open and ordinary.”
“I guess the girl wanted a quiet place,” Gazzo said. “No guard in the apartment with them. Trying to please the girl, his vigilance down. Someone took advantage.”