“You want protection? I can assign one man.”
“I can’t hide. If he wanted me dead, he could have done it.”
I said, “He’s just after something he thinks Hal has.”
“Or thinks someone has,” Gazzo said. “Maybe Max doesn’t know who has whatever it is. Trying everyone.”
It was a possible new angle, and while his men searched the debris of the apartment, Gazzo asked Hal all the same questions I had. He got the same result, nothing, except that he thought maybe Bagnio was trying to learn if Hal knew something.
“Why tail Wood otherwise?” Gazzo said.
After an hour, his two men found nothing connected to Pappas.
“We’ll keep looking for Bagnio,” Gazzo said. “Mr. Albano, I’d like to talk to you downtown, get a statement.”
Albano left with Gazzo and his men. I sat down, lit a cigarette. Emily Green sat close to Hal. He watched me.
“Why, Dan?” he said. “Because they have to kill each other?”
I smoked. “Gang war or purge. Probably. But the police don’t seem to think so this time.”
“What do they think? What do you think?”
“I don’t know what the police think,” I said. “If it’s not the gang, it’s one of three things. Private murder for hate, or ambition, or maybe fear. Family honor, the divorce an insult. Or some big business scheme, the thieves fell out. Maybe a deal Sid Meyer was involved in.”
“Nothing to do with Diana? Killed for nothing?”
“She was the cause of what Andy did, or maybe she was mixed in the deal,” I said. “Or she just picked the wrong man.”
“Great,” Hal said. “That’s just great!”
Emily Green said, “She didn’t care what she did to you. It’s awful, and I’m sorry, but she did it to herself!”
On the cot she held his arm, possessive. An awful thing, but her eyes shined. Diana’s tragedy, and her chance.
I got up, walked to the studio window. The back yards below were dark and still in the cold February night. Over a month since Mia Morgan had hired me, and I felt forces down there in the shadows. Forces that had killed Diana Wood.
“I’m going to find out, Dan,” Hal said behind me. “After this tonight I want to know what killed her and who.”
“Don’t be stupid,” I said. I turned. “What the hell could you do? Stumble around, not even know where to start.”
“I want to know, Dan. I want to hurt the bastard!”
I turned back to the window. “I’ll find him.”
“With me along. I’ve got time coming to me.”
“Maybe, we’ll see,” I said. He could be useful. Bait.
I left them together in the studio. Emily Green touched his face, not sorry to see me go.
CHAPTER 14
On the cold street I stood for a time just breathing the sharp air. Fresh air to clear the stifling weight of Hal’s thick wallowing in an unfair universe. He was playing it for high tragedy, the star-crossed lovers. He’d been a soldier, in combat, he’d seen death before. But, then, maybe not this close. That’s one of the few gains we’ve made-today most people can reach forty without ever seeing anyone close to them die. Maybe it helped him to forget that he’d already lost Diana.
I turned toward First Avenue and a taxi, and stopped. The gun was in my back. I never saw him, didn’t hear him. He was just there, behind me, so small I couldn’t see even a vague shape over my shoulder. Only the hard muzzle of the gun at my spine.
“Turn around, walk easy down to Avenue A,” Max Bagnio said.
I walked to Avenue A. Hunched against the cold, no one looked at us. He must have had the gun in his pocket. I didn’t try to find out. If I’d had my old cannon, I might have tried to use it. I’d lose. Which is why I don’t carry it much.
“The park,” Bagnio said.
We walked along the deserted paths of Tompkins Square Park. Max Bagnio wasn’t afraid of muggers. A building in the center contained the maintenance storage and the rest rooms. We stopped at the Men’s Room. At this hour it was locked. Little Max had a key. He closed the door behind us.
It was dank and dim with a twenty-five watt bulb, stank of urine and disinfectant, and water trickled in the urinals like the sound of some small, subterranean stream. There were no doors on the johns. Bagnio produced a low bench and a battered chair from the rear. He pointed to a john.
“Sit,” he said.
I sat on the john. Little Max sat on the chair with the low bench between us. He took a plastic glass from his pocket, and a small bottle of colorless liquid-gin. He filled the glass from the bottle, sat back with his big automatic in his lap.
“We’re gonna talk, Fortune,” he said. “You’re gonna tell me things. If you don’t want to talk, maybe it’s because you’re thirsty, you need a drink. If I figure you’re lying, liars get dry throats, you’ll need a drink. Now that’s gin in the glass, maybe. Gin and maybe something else, you never know, right?”
I began to sweat in the cold stink of the lavatory. I looked at that glass. A trick, of course. War of nerves. But…?
“Wood saw me?” Bagnio said.
“Yes.”
“He told Gazzo?”
“Yes.”
“What’s Gazzo think about it? About me?”
“I don’t know.”
Little Max reached toward the glass. My mouth was thick.
“He wonders why you vanished, what you wanted from Hal Wood,” I said. “He thinks it’s funny how Andy’s killer got past you, got close to the guard in the corridor without the guard taking his gun out of its holster.”
“Yeh,” Bagnio nodded, “it’s funny. What’s Gazzo figure?”
“Hidden in an empty apartment, the guard knew him.”
Little Max thought. It was an effort, his flat nose and small eyes sunk in the scar tissue twisted by concentration. His brown suit was wrinkled and dirty, as if he’d been sleeping in cellars. He shook his small head, doubtful.
“Doors they makes noise, guys say hello when they knows someone. I should of heard something. The kid soldier up there should of been careful even if he saw Don Vicente himself.”
I took a chance, “What are you looking for, Max?”
A useless try, he wouldn’t answer. He didn’t.
“Gazzo got another idea?” he said.
“No.”
Bagnio touched the glass, watched my face.
“You,” I said. “You could have gotten past that guard.”
“Yeh,” he agreed. “I could of done it. Easy. Andy he got no gun, the girl she don’t like guns.” He rubbed his flat nose with his gun. “That Wood, his alibi checks out all the way?”
“Sixty miles away, a witness, and he wanted Diana back.”
“You workin’ for him?”
“Yes.”
“Someone else, maybe?”
I looked at the glass of gin-and what else mixed with the gin? A drug? Poison? Of course not. He wanted information. Only if I started lying, what use was I to him? A delicate balance. And no way of knowing what he already knew and what he didn’t.
“John Albano,” I said.
His battered face never showed surprise, or anything else.
“What’s the old man care about Andy?”
“He cares about Mia.” I took a chance. “And about Charley.”
He watched me. “What about Charley?”
“Do you know yet who killed Sid Meyer?”
“You know?”
“No, but maybe Andy did.”
I was wet under my clothes, sweating even in the dank lavatory, but I tried a push:
“Was Andy in some big deal with Meyer and Irving Kezar? Charley Albano got greedy, ambitious, crossed Andy?”
“Charley don’t figure,” Bagnio said.
But he wasn’t sure. I let him think about that, changed direction, added a complication:
“Charley is Stella Pappas’s brother, right?” I said. “A divorce, Max? Bad for Stella, you know?”
I wanted his mind busy on anything except me.
“Yeh,” he said. “I told Andy.”
“Andy must have gone crazy,” I said. “Hard to trust him.”
A mistake. He hit me across the face with his automatic.
“Shut up!”
I wiped blood from my mouth, but made no sound. Drawn tight from hiding, balanced on nerves, a sound could push him into violence before he thought of consequences.