“She fired me before I finished.”
Andy shook his head. “That’s bad business, right? What do you figure she was going to do with what you dug up?”
“I wouldn’t know, Andy.”
“Sure you do. She was going to fix my wagon, right? I think she ought to get her money’s worth. Only save time, Dan, tell what you’ve got to report to my wife straight out.”
The older woman looked confused and stricken at the same time. As if she wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere out of the light. I said nothing.
“Okay,” Andy said, “I’ll tell her. Mia paid for it.” He turned to his wife. She looked afraid, but didn’t know of what, and didn’t want to know. Andy said, “Mia hired him to take pics of me, Stella. With a girl. She was going to show you the pics, tell you all about the girl and me, open your eyes, make me stop. How about that, Stel?”
Stella Pappas went pale, then red. She stared at Mia. She walked to the girl and slapped her across the face. Mia fell back a step from her mother. Levi Stern moved. Little Max put a hand on him, held him down. Stella Pappas slapped Mia again.
“You spy on your father?” the mother said. Her voice was a surprise. Clear and American, no accent. “Who said you had the right? You thought I’d like that? I’d thank you?”
“Ma!” Mia cried. “He-!”
“Don’t you judge your father! You’re a child!”
Andy watched the two women. He made a sound, motioned his wife away, pointed at Mia as if pinning her to the wall.
“What I do is between your mother and me, no one else. You don’t even think about what I do. Whatever, you hear? Your Ma and me. You got that now, kid?”
Mia nodded, but her big eyes were almost black with anger. Her father’s daughter. Andy seemed to consider her. In a way, I knew, he would admire her defiance, but he had to deal with it, too. He stood up, walked to her, and slapped her. Hard.
“That’s for hiring a snooper to do anything,” Andy said, cold and sharp. “You never do that again. Never!”
I was watching them, Andy and Mia, and didn’t see anything until I heard the noise behind me. I turned. So did Andy. Charley yellow-gloves had his gun out. The women shrank back.
Levi Stern was up on his feet. Little Max Bagnio was up, too, but not on his feet. Stern had Bagnio around the throat with his left arm. Little Max was off the floor, gagging and kicking air like a hung chicken, helpless in Stern’s grip. Stern had Little Max’s. 45 automatic in his right hand.
“You!” Andy snapped. “Drop him!”
I guessed what had happened. When Andy slapped Mia, Stern had jumped up again, and Little Max had put a hand on him to hold him down again. This time Stern had used his judo, his training, and Little Max never knew what hit him. Snared like a rabbit, his gun taken like candy. Pappas’s number-one gun, but no match for Stern.
“I do not like to be interfered with,” Stern said, his gaunt face neither smiling nor snarling, expressionless. “Instruct your hoodlums, Mr. Pappas, and do not slap Mia again.”
Andy isn’t used to being put down, even opposed, but he’s not so blinded by power that he’ll attack when he can’t win. He saw that Little Max, with all his deadly experience, was no match for Stern. He didn’t believe it, but he saw it. He saw that Charley and his gun couldn’t stop Stern without Max getting hurt, or maybe everyone. A stand- off, or worse.
“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.”
