It was a hundred to one Andy had a man watching Diana Wood-protective custody-and I’d been told to stop, so I used a telephone in a drugstore. No answer at the Woods’. It was 6 P.M., Diana should have been home-if she was going home.
I picked up a cheeseburger and coffee on the way to my office. The phone was ringing as I walked in. It was Captain Gazzo.
“Mia Morgan,” Gazzo said, “she’s-”
“Andy Pappas’s daughter,” I said. “I know. You want it all?”
“I want it,” Gazzo said.
I gave it to him, the whole story as far as I knew it. He took the parts he wanted. Romance didn’t interest Gazzo.
“You think the daughter just wanted to expose Andy’s cheating? Andy? He’s been cheating for twenty years.”
“Mia’s twenty-two, maybe she didn’t know.”
“This Diana Wood was with Andy the last three days? Since Monday night? Andy was with her in the area where Sid Meyer was shot, and right at the time?”
“He knows Irving Kezar, too, and he owns the restaurant I tailed Meyer and Kezar from Monday night.”
“Give me the Wood girl’s address,” Gazzo said.
I gave it. “I’ll meet you there.”
I got a taxi and was waiting in front of the Ukrainian bar when Gazzo’s unmarked car pulled up. I didn’t see any of Andy’s men, but, then, I wouldn’t expect to. There was light up in 4-B. We went up.
Harold Wood opened the door. He looked like one of those survivors of some bloody battle you see in war photos-eyes glazed, face exhausted. He only glanced at Gazzo as we went in, his mind too busy on other things, his private anguish.
Diana sat in the living room. It had seemed like a nice, cozy room to me before, but now it looked poor and bare. Now I knew who her man was, and what living rooms he could give her. Gazzo stared at her, as if nothing I had told him had made him realize how beautiful she really was. She’d been crying. It only made her look better. Rosy, and sad, and vulnerable.
She saw me. “I know you! You tried to pick me up in-”
“I was tailing you, Mrs. Wood. Dan Fortune.”
“Following you,” Hal Wood explained. “He’s a detective.”
“For Pappas’s daughter,” I said. “She doesn’t like you.”
She shrank back. “He told me about her. Mia. I… I don’t want to hurt her, or his wife, or… anyone. But-”
She was in a battle inside. Not easy for a girl like her. A face in the crowd. She hadn’t planned it this way, but…?
Gazzo took over. “You were with Pappas Monday evening? Who else was with him? Did he talk about a Sid Meyer? Do you maybe know Sid Meyer? When you left Le Cerf Agile that evening with Pappas, where’d you go? Did he maybe stop near Seventieth Street, pick up two men?”
She seemed dazed. Gazzo’s words hammered at her. His trademark-Captain Mouth. He never uses one word when ten will do. People say that when Gazzo starts talking at you you’re through. You tell more than a week of rubber-hoses would have gotten.
“I… I won’t talk about it,” Diana said. “It’s private.”
“Nothing’s private with Pappas,” Gazzo said.
She flinched. “Who are you?”
“Captain Gazzo, police. You’ll be seeing a lot of police, Mrs. Wood. You better get used to it, or drop Pappas.”
She resisted. “He told me about that. I don’t have to tell you anything. I don’t know anything. You badger him!”
“You know who he is, Diana?” I said. “What he does?”
Her voice was low, small. “Yes.”
“Dope, loan sharking, terror, extortion, murder?” I said.
“No!” she cried. “No! He said you’d all say those things. They’re lies! You can’t prove them! Why don’t you put him in jail if it’s true? Perhaps some-” She stopped. She was an ordinary girl, but she lived in today’s world, and she wasn’t blind or stupid. Her voice was fierce. “Lies! I don’t care!”
It hung out of her, naked and restless, the need I had seen in her. Like a child suddenly dazzled by life, by possibilities she had never known. She wanted more, the world here and now. She wanted “bigness.” And she could have it, that was the key. Suddenly, it was there to take.
“You hate him because he does things,” she said. “He’s strong. Strong men aren’t always nice. I don’t care, he’s nice to me. You have to do things in life, not just dream and whine. Sometimes people are hurt. The losers.”
That was Andy Pappas talking. She’d listened the last months, and heard. Because she wanted to hear it. She wanted her share. Like a pit in her. And she had discovered her power-the power of a woman to have what she wanted with nothing more than what she had to give to the right man.
“I don’t care about your damned love life,” Gazzo said. “I’ve got a murder, and I want to know what happened when you were with Pappas Monday evening.”
She winced at the word murder, but she’d made her decision already. It wasn’t true. An ancient female decision, necessary to survive in bloodier days, and maybe still.
“Nothing happened,” she said. “We… we drove to New Jersey, the shore. He has… a house there.” She didn’t look at Hal. “He was with me the whole time. All… the time.”
“You learn fast, Mrs. Wood,” Gazzo said. He turned to Hal. “Fortune says you tailed her, too. Did you tail her on Monday?”
“No,” Hal said. He watched only Diana.
“I didn’t see him, Captain,” I said.
Gazzo nodded. “Okay. I’ll see you, Dan.”
He left, and I sat down. Hal Wood sat close to Diana. I lit a cigarette, tried to pretend I wasn’t there. For Hal I wasn’t there, only Diana was. Small and blonde, nervous, on the edge of crying again. They had been married six years, and she had thought she loved Hal. Things go wrong, happen.
“I don’t feel much like living,” Hal said, hit out.
“Don’t,” she said. “There really are a lot of things worth living for, Hal.”
“Without me around. I know.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to,” Hal said.
He reached out to touch her hand. She let him. Six years is a long time. She still wore her wedding ring, a cheap band, but there was a large diamond on her right hand. Hal touched the diamond, stroked it.
“Did you buy that for yourself?” Hal said.
She looked away. “No.”
They sat silent. Hal looked around as if he hoped a waiter would appear with a drink. I thought of all the couples I’d seen sitting silent in restaurants, saying nothing, or only a few commonplace words without meaning. Silent because everything had been said long ago, or because they didn’t have the words to say what hadn’t yet been said.
“You could have told me first, said what you wanted,” Hal said.
Her blue eyes were wet. “It wouldn’t have helped.”
“I suppose not,” Hal said.
“I’m thirty, Hal. I have to try to-” She brushed at her eyes. “Something just went wrong. At first… I don’t know, I want things, Hal. You don’t. It all changed.”
“Just like that?”
“No, not just like that.”
He still held her hand, stroked it.
“You stopped biting your nails,” he said.
