“Unless Bagnio did it himself,” I said.
“Yes, Max would be an answer. Charley says Max was angry. Still-?” He waved his hand. “But this is not talk for now. So, Giovanni, you come to visit? Good.”
“My family, Vicente,” John Albano said.
“Sure, sure. But old friends can talk, eh? Come.”
He took John Albano’s arm, guided him to the side room. I followed. The contrast between the old men was sharp. Only gray-haired, Vicente had a slow step, the sagging face of age.
“Sit, sit,” he said in the small side room.
John Albano sat. I stood. A guard closed the door, stood against it. Another guard stood silent in front of the windows.
CHAPTER 21
Vicente sat behind the desk in the small room. Not his desk, and not his house, and yet both his. Any house in the brotherhood was his. I hadn’t had to be introduced, I knew who he was-Don Vicente Campagna. Andy Pappas had been a boss, Don Vicente was higher. How much higher no one knew for sure, not even inside the brotherhood itself.
One of the Council, as Andy Pappas had been, but a senior member. At the Council level, as in any government, it was a matter of checks and balances, of sometimes hidden power, unofficial. The prime minister isn’t always the most powerful minister. A matter of arrangements and alliances, skills and reputation, influence and loyalties. Officially, Don Vicente was retired, but in the shadowy nation of the Mafia a prince remains a prince, and his rank is determined by how many will listen and act when he speaks.
Don Vicente spoke. “Fortune got to be with you, Giovanni? Old-time talk, it’ll bore him, eh?”
“Your guards have to be with you?” John Albano said.
Don Vicente spread his hands again. “What does an old man do, Giovanni? They say I must be protected. Who listens to me?”
“Still the smooth talk, the Italian-English, Vinnie?” John Albano said. “We were Mulberry Street, not Palermo.”
Don Vicente shrugged. “Okay, Johnny.. So, you look good. Seventy, like me. How the hell you do it?”
“I sleep nights.”
“So? Got what you want?” Almost a sneer.
“Not yet, still working. What I want is hard, Vinnie. It doesn’t come easy, keeps a man young trying.”
“So tell me. Maybe I should try it.”
“A world without you, Vinnie. Everyone does a job, no one grabs. Not much to steal, no one to scare. How would you live?”
They reminded me of myself and Andy Pappas, an echo. But Don Vicente wasn’t Andy, and John Albano wasn’t his charity.
“I don’t like that talk, Johnny,” he said. “Why’d you come here, bring a snooper? What’s on your mind, what’re you after?”
“Who killed Andy?” Albano said. “And maybe two women?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don Vicente doesn’t know? You must be worried, Vinnie.”
Don Vicente said nothing. He was worried, I saw it.
I said, “Who takes Andy’s place?”
Don Vicente ignored me.
“Charley, maybe?” John Albano said.
“No,” Don Vicente said. “Not yet. One of the older men. We ain’t decided yet.”
“Was Andy mixed up with Ramapo Construction Company, or Ultra-Violet Controls?” I asked.
“Ramapo? That’s Charley’s company. The other I don’t know.”
Albano said, “Fortune asked if Andy was mixed with Ramapo.”
“How should I know? You want to ask Charley?” Don Vicente pointed to the man at the door. “Go tell Charley Albano his old man and Dan Fortune want to ask him about Ramapo Construction.”
The bodyguard left. Don Vicente reached for a cigar from an ornate box, then dropped the cigar back into the box as if he’d remembered he wasn’t supposed to smoke.
“Charley runs his own companies. All the guys do. We got a free-enterprise country,” Don Vicente said, irritable.
“Which country?” John Albano said.
“So? The same old crap, Johnny? Both countries, okay?”
“Everyone for himself, no interference from Council?”
“Not unless we got a battle in the family,” Don Vicente said. He scowled, reached for the cigar again, lit it this time. “You don’t give a damn about Andy Pappas, Johnny. But you come around here with a detective. Why? What do you want to find out? You’re worried who maybe killed Andy, right? You wouldn’t care if it was Charley, or even Stella. No, not you.”
He inhaled the cigar slowly, almost sighing with the pleasure. “It’s Mia, right, Johnny? That’s what’s worrying you. She hated Andy, maybe she killed him. That Stern did it for her. A real killer, moves real fast.”
“No,” John Albano said.
“No? You so sure?” Don Vicente said. “What kind of girl hates her old man? What kind of daughter? Bad, Andy brought her up all wrong. Let her out too much, let her move around, get bad ideas. Like the church, you got to get a kid early, teach her to be loyal, honor her father. Colleges, outsiders, new ideas, they ruined her. They turned her against her own people, the old ways.”
“She learned the right ways,” John Albano said.
“Could be,” Don Vicente said. “Or maybe she just learned her own bad ways, eh? Marry to spite your old man, then run out on the kid husband. Listen to no one except herself. Run her own business, be tough, independent. No one tells her, not even Andy, eh? She’ll show Andy. All the way.”
“No,” John Albano said.
Don Vicente shrugged. He didn’t really care, as long as it didn’t mean trouble in the organization. The bodyguard came back. Charley Albano wasn’t in the house, had gone. Don Vicente stood.
“You find Charley later,” he said. “Stay a while, Johnny. Fortune, too. Have some drinks, enjoy. Okay?”
He walked out into the big room with us. The funeral was turning into a party, a clan gathering. I had no reason to stay, neither did Albano. I waited near the door while the old man went to say good-by to Stella. She was his daughter, a widow.
Don Vicente stood beside me. “You know Johnny long?”
“Not long.”
He smoked his cigar. “Mia, she means a lot to him. Andy didn’t like she hired you to spy. Maybe he was gonna teach her a lesson, hurt her. Johnny’d do anything to help Mia. No one hurts his Mia. Think about it.”
John Albano returned, and we went out to his car. We were quiet all the way back to New York, the afternoon turning into evening. It was dusk when John Albano dropped me at my office. He didn’t say where he was going, but I could guess-to find Mia and Stern. I went up to my office.
Hal Wood was there again, waiting in the hall. He was getting to be trouble, a target I didn’t want around me. We went inside. I sat behind my desk, Hal sat facing me.
“We buried her,” he said. “Me, her folks, and one cop. Her office sent flowers. Six years. Her body… she was beautiful. Dirt on her now. For Emily, I can’t even be there.”
What did I say? Nothing. I lit a cigarette. My telephone rang. A voice I didn’t know, low and hoarse.
“You want to be a big man, Fortune? Solve the killings? Go to three hundred twelve East Ninth Street, apartment Two-A.” He hung up.
I had my gun, and Hal saw my face. I had to tell him.
“I’m going, too,” he said. “I’ll follow you if I have to.”
I nodded. It could be a trap, and he might be a help. We went out to find a taxi in the now dark night.
CHAPTER 22
The building was another shabby tenement on the block of Ninth Street directly behind Hal’s apartment on St. Marks Place. We left the taxi on First Avenue, walked toward the tenement in the dark. It was into the dinner hour, the slum block almost empty. A few people walked, but no one looked suspicious, and I saw no cars that seemed out of place.
There was no name on the mailbox for 2-A, and the vestibule door was propped open. I didn’t like that, too easy. Still, in these tenements the super often propped the door open so he didn’t have to answer the rings of drunks who had forgotten their keys. We went up.