“You saw him?” John Albano said from the wall.
“I saw him,” Hal said. “A runt, but stocky, like a featherweight. Broken nose, puffed up around the eyes. He could shoot.”
“Bagnio,” Albano said.
“Yeh,” I said. “Little Max, all right. You called the cops?”
Hal shook his head. “I wanted to see you first.”
“Call Captain Gazzo,” I said to Albano. “Centre Street.”
Albano went to the phone out in the living room. Hal sat and held his arm, but it wasn’t the arm that hurt. Emily Green’s eyes were big, soft, happy. The same way Diana had looked at Andy Pappas. The turn of the wheel. Good and bad in everything. The girl looked up, saw me watching, and flushed. But she didn’t flinch. A proper girl, even prim, she couldn’t have had a lot of men, and she wanted this one.
“What was he after, Hal?” I said.
He shook his head. “Not a damned idea. Who is he?”
“Pappas’s top gunman, or was,” I said. “You went on vacation two days before Diana and Pappas were killed?”
“To Woodstock. A painter I know has a cabin up there, he let me and Emily use it. We read the… story in the paper, I called the police right away, we came home. I had to identify her, Dan. They made me… look.”
He was building it, flogging himself, suffering. Maybe because he’d turned to Emily Green so fast. He would settle for what he could have. Most of us do. But we don’t like to face that.
“Who saw you up there?” I said.
Emily Green said, “A lot of people did! In the village!”
“At two A.M.?”
“We were in bed then! Both of us!” the girl said, blushed.
Hal smiled at her. “He has to ask, Em.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Green,” I said. It couldn’t have been easy for her, in Hal’s bed. “All right, what were you doing the last four weeks, Hal?”
He leaned forward, intense. Wallowing in it, the tragic love. Well, why not, if it helped in the end? Purge it, get it out.
“She moved out two days after you saw us last. Pappas could do anything, I guess-get an apartment, furnish it, in two days. He got her a lawyer, too. She filed for the divorce. Mental cruelty, or whatever. I wouldn’t fight her, you know? I took your advice, started seeing Emily. It helped.”
Emily Green touched him, mothering. Albano came back.
“Pappas filed for divorce, too?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t know,” Hal said, hard against Pappas.
Albano said, “In Nevada. He’s got residence there, power. Stella didn’t fight him, either.”
“Not that way anyway,” I said. “What else, Hal?”
“That’s all,” he said. “Worked, saw Emily, drank a little.”
I knew he was lying, had to be. Not because it showed, but because I’d been down the same road more than once.
“Damn it, Hal, tell it! You followed her again, watched her, couldn’t keep away. Doorways across the street from that apartment, in the shadows when they went out, phone calls at midnight. Tell me, Hal, I’ve got to know what Max Bagnio thinks he wants!”
He nodded, miserable. “You know how it is, Dan.”
I knew. “You hung around, watched. What did you see?”
“Nothing, Dan, I swear. I didn’t even know she’d gone to Miami until three days after she went!”
“There has to be something. Bagnio is looking for something, Hal. What he thinks you have or thinks you know.”
John Albano said, “Maybe the girl knew something, Dan. Diana. Maybe Max thinks she told Wood, talked too much.”
“She never talked about Pappas,” Hal said. “Not even his name until after that night Dan was here.”
“There has to be something,” I said. “Think, Hal.”
He shook his head. His mind would have been on Diana.
“There was this older woman at her office,” Hal said. “They had lunch. Diana didn’t talk much. Small woman, dressed up, fat.”
“Stella?” I said to Albano. “She met Diana, went to her?”
Albano said, “She’d try. Andy had girl friends before.”
“Did this woman go to Diana’s new apartment, Hal?” I said.
“No. Some men did, when… Pappas was there. A short, paunchy guy with bad skin and a lot of rings. I remember the rings. Dunlap, too. I guess Dunlap’s her friend, he lied for her.”
Irving Kezar, but I knew he knew Pappas, and Lawrence Dunlap was her friend and boss. I was pretty sure Dunlap had known Andy was her man. They’d probably met at one of his business parties.
“There was a tall guy,” Hal said. “Real tall, and skinny, and ugly. He was hanging around outside a few times.”
John Albano said, “Mia probably visited Andy there. Stern might have waited outside for her.”
“Yeh,” I said. “You didn’t see Max Bagnio with Andy, Hal?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t notice the guys with him much.”
“Something,” I said. I paced. “Small, insignificant. Did you find anything, Hal? Maybe Diana left something.”
“No,” he said, and bitter, “nothing except me.”
Captain Gazzo steps lightly. He was in the apartment before I heard him. Two of his men were behind him. He looked at the wreck, and at all of us. I told him what had happened.
“You all right?” he said to Hal.
“I’m all right. I just wish I knew what Bagnio wanted.”
Gazzo nodded to his men. They began to search the rooms.
“You think Bagnio’s been following you?” Gazzo said.
“I think someone has. I’m not sure it was him.”
“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.”
