Jenny Kezar answered my ring at 6-C. She wasn’t wearing her old blue coat this time, but the difference was barely noticeable. She wore an old green-print housedress with two buttons open to show her ample breasts in a stained bra. Her gray hair hung in strands, and her eyes were still dull. One of the eyes was also black-yellow, her mouth was split and puffed, and the stains on her exposed bra were blood.
“What do you want?” she said, her voice sullen.
“Just some talk, Mrs. Kezar,” I said. “Dan Fortune. We-”
“I remember you.”
“Fine,” I said, “let’s talk inside.”
She let me push in, walked away into the dumpy living room where Sid Meyer had died, while I closed the door. It was still a shock to see that she was only in her late forties, had very nice legs. Take off twenty-five pounds, add some decent clothes, fix her face and hair, and put some light in her eyes, and she wouldn’t be pretty, but she’d look good enough. A different person. Most women would at least try.
“Who beat you up, Jenny?” I said. “Kezar?”
She lit a cigarette. She didn’t offer me one. “If you want Irving, he’s not here.”
“When will he be?”
“When he is. I told you already he stays other places.”
She had, I remembered, and maybe it explained the shabby building. Kezar didn’t really live here. Jenny did. Good enough for her. An early marriage, a place to hang his hat when he needed it, but it was onward and upward for Kezar, the old wife left behind.
“Why’d he hit you, Jenny?”
“Why does the sun rise?” she said, then softened it. “We had a fight, who doesn’t? What do you want, Fortune?”
“Did you know Andy Pappas?”
“I heard of him, didn’t everyone?”
“Maybe Sid Meyer knew him, Jenny? Some business?”
“Not that I know. Sid didn’t swing that high.”
“But Kezar knew Andy Pappas, swings that high.”
“Irving knows a lot of people.”
“Was he in some deal with Pappas?”
“You think Irving talks business with me?”
A rhetorical question-wasn’t it obvious that Kezar would never talk business with the likes of her? But it wasn’t an answer, and she could be just the person Kezar would talk business with. The sounding board, a comfortable haven for blowing off steam, talking out frustrations. We all need some release. But it was a denial, too, and she wasn’t about to tell me anything about Irving Kezar’s business.
“It’s three murders now, Jenny. Irving could be in danger.”
She smoked, blew smoke. “How?”
“Does he know Charley Albano? Had business with Albano?”
“No!”
A flat denial. And a contradiction. Kezar didn’t talk business to her, but she knew he had no business with Charley Albano. She wasn’t dumb, she heard it herself. A mistake.
“I don’t know nothing,” she said. “Leave me alone.”
“Kezar does have business with Charley Albano, doesn’t he?”
She shook her head, not denying but resisting. Her bruised face seemed to wilt, collapse.
“I can’t talk about Irving,” she said, almost pleading now. “Do me a favor, Fortune. Go away, let me alone.”
“A deal with Charley Albano, Jenny, that Pappas didn’t know about? Sid Meyer mixed in it? Behind Pappas’s back?”
“No.” She shook her head violently. “No!”
She was afraid. But was it for herself, or for Kezar? Afraid of him, or for him?
“You’re afraid of him? Kezar? Or is it Charley Albano?”
“I won’t talk to you! I don’t have to!” she said. “You get away from me! Go on!”
I went. She would tell me nothing now. Maybe later, when I knew more. But there was something, I was sure. Was it something Hal Wood knew, too? Not aware he knew?
There was no answer when I rang the vestibule bell of Hal’s St. Marks Place apartment. A small gnawing began in my stomach. Had he been gone all night? Emily Green, too? The vestibule door was unlocked. I went up.
A note was taped to the door of 4-B: See Super, 1-B.
I went down. It was the rear apartment off the vestibule. A big man with a red face and a can of beer opened the door.
“I’m looking for Hal Wood,” I said.
“A terrible thing,” the super said, sad. “You’re Mr.-?”
“Dan Fortune.”
He smiled, looked me up and down as if I’d been described to him. I’m not hard to describe.
“He called me, Wood, gave me a message for you, said it was important. He said you’d have identification.”
I showed him my license.
“Private eye, eh? Must be interesting work. Now me, I-”
“The message,” I said. “It’s important?”
It was a dismal day, no baseball on TV in February, and he wanted someone to talk to. He nodded. “He said meet him down on Sixth Street between First and Second. A candy store.”
I thanked him, walked south in the rain. A steady downpour now, washing away the last of the grimy snow. On the block of Sixth Street there was only one candy store.
“Dan!”
A loud whisper, urgent through the rain. Hal stood back in a doorway next to the candy store. Only partly sheltered from the driving rain, his duffel coat was soaked. Small things tie people together. We had our old duffel coats in common. I joined him in the doorway. He was watching a building across the street.
“It’s Emily,” Hal said. “She got a phone call at my place about three hours ago. A girl friend, she said, but she looked scared to me, so when she went out right after, I followed her. She went into that tenement over there, the one with the Polish butcher shop. She’s been there ever since. I called you at your office, but got no answer, so left the message with my super.”
The building was a flophouse, with blank shades at the windows instead of curtains, and raw meat hanging in the butcher shop.
“It was a woman who called?”
“I don’t know, Dan. Emily was taking all calls. Protect me in case someone wanted to find out if I was home.”
“You weren’t home last night.”
“We went to Emily’s folks in Queens. Got back late.”
“She’s been in there three hours? What apartment?”
“I don’t know. No mailboxes. Cut up in rooms, I guess.”
“You saw no one else you know go in or out?”
His intense eyes were uneasy. “I’m not sure. I thought maybe I did, but it’s crazy. What would Emily-?”
“Who?”
“That little guy who shot at me, but I didn’t get a good-”
“Max Bagnio? He went in there?”
“Came out. He walked off toward Second Avenue.”
I was out of the doorway while he still talked. He caught up. Me, Mia Morgan, now Emily Green. And Emily had gone on her own. There were no mailboxes in the decrepit entrance, but the door was open, and a bell was marked: Manager. I rang. A door opened far back, and a woman leaned in the opening.
I held up a five. “A small man, flat nose, scarred eyes. Probably took the room about four days ago. He owes money.”
“Second floor, room fourteen.” She took the five, closed her door.
We went up. Two skinny cats scurried away down the feebly lit corridor, all the room doors had so many layers of paint they looked diseased, and the toilets were in the hall. Room 14 was at the rear. This time I wished I had my old gun. Bagnio could have returned unseen in the rain, or by another way.
“If he’s in there, has a gun,” I said, “I’ll try to grab the gun, you grab him. Got it? Don’t wait.”
Hal nodded. At the door, he stood to the left out of sight. I knocked. Nothing happened. I listened. There was no sound. The lock was an ordinary room-key lock, not even a Yale. I backed, lowered my shoulder, nodded to Hal, and hit the door. It burst open with a crash against a bureau. I caught it on the rebound, and Hal was in the room with me.