“Yes you did. Andy threw you out, told you to stay away. Maybe you didn’t stay away.”
John Albano said, “Who told you that, Dan?”
“Max Bagnio,” I said. “We had an unscheduled talk last night. Little Max seems to be looking for something. He was interested in Captain Stern’s military career.”
Stern snorted, his deep eyes contemptuous.
“We don’t have anything to hide!” Mia insisted.
“Someone thinks you do. Max Bagnio, or someone else. He doesn’t have to be working alone.”
Mia stopped working over the mess. She bit a fingernail, chewed it off. A suddenly juvenile reaction, the cool maturity cracking. It scared her-the suggestion that someone besides Max Bagnio might be searching, watching. Levi Stern folded his skinny arms, impassive. John Albano fidgeted in his chair, seemed worried.
“If you know anything, Mia,” I said, “don’t be stupid. You’re not one of them. Don’t play the code.”
Omerta, the code of silence. Never talk.
“She knows nothing, Fortune,” Levi Stern said.
John Albano said, “Mia? You hate them. Tell him.”
“Or,” I said, “were you after something besides catching your father with Diana Wood when you hired me?”
“I wanted to stop him! Protect my mother!”
Stern said, “You still think of drugs, smuggling? I warned you more than once, Fortune.”
“The two of you have the contacts, the opportunity, and Mia’s her father’s daughter,” I said.
“No,” Stern snapped, “she is not! Not that way.”
Stern was angry. John Albano was worried, silent in his chair. Mia shook her head violently.
“I hired you to make my mother see the truth, stand up for herself! He made her no better than a slave!”
“Then was divorcing her,” I said. “Abandon her, dirty the family honor. How much Sicily is in you, Mia? Or plain America-the family money? Was it too much, the divorce? Avenge your mother, the family name? Stern there would do a lot for you, I think, and he could have handled it if I know training.”
Stern almost smiled. “It would not have been difficult. But I did not kill them. You are mistaken.”
Before I could answer, the doorbell rang. Mia answered it. Two men stepped inside, one on either side of the door. The same two who’d “talked” to me in the alley. Charley Albano, small and dapper and lazily important, came in behind them. He pulled at his yellow gloves, smiled. He saw me and stopped smiling.
“You don’t listen so good, Fortune?” he said.
The new authority was clear in his voice-very clear, as if informing the world, insisting. An authority he wasn’t really sure of yet. Pushing it.
“Andy’s dead, Charley,” I said. “I’ve got clients who-”
“Mr. Albano! I’m not dead. Beat it.”
Old John Albano was half-hidden in his chair behind Levi Stern. Charley, arrogant, had looked at no one yet but Mia and me. He had not seen his father. The old man’s swarthy face was bland, but his dark eyes seemed to lock on his son.
“Fortune’s working for me, Charley,” John Albano said.
Charley stiffened. His cat face turned toward the sound of his father’s voice. Levi Stern moved out of the way. In his chair, the massive old man’s calm was suddenly patriarchal, as if, facing his son, the old Sicilian taproot held him, too. (We forget how close we all are to our tribal pasts. A thousand years to the fur-wrapped Saxons, less to the horned Vikings and my own savage Poles in the swamps beyond the Elbe. Stare alone into a fire some night, and if you don’t feel the dark, wild forest all around you, it’s because you hide from it.) Charley Albano felt it, the grip of time, and I saw some of the starch go out of the dapper underboss.
“Hey, Papa,” he said, “come sta? Nice to see you.”
“You’ve got some business with Mia, Carlo?” the old man said.
“Private, okay, padrone?” The title of respect was for his two men, to save his own face. “The way it is, you know?”
“I know how it is, Carlo,” John Albano said curtly. “I say what’s my business. My family is my business, always.”
“That depends on the business,” Charley said. “Right, Mia?”
He watched the girl. She looked away from him, her big eyes nervous. She was scared again, a tone of warning in his voice. He nodded to the wreck of the apartment.
“Somebody’s looking for something. Maybe Bagnio?”
I said, “What makes you think that?”
He ignored me. I was a bug he could step on, prove his power, and he went on studying the searched apartment.
“Wood’s place, too, I heard. Some cover-up, maybe.” Charley shrugged, smiled his cruel smile. “It don’t matter, a dead man.”
John Albano said, “You think Bagnio killed Andy, Carlo?”
“A dead man. Who else gets past Bagnio and the kid upstairs?” Charley said. He pulled at his yellow gloves again, studied the elegant stitching. “But not Bagnio alone, you know? I figure someone got to Max, bought him. Fooled him, could be. Could be that’s what he’s after, proof to nail who bought him. That party’s dead, too, if he ain’t real careful.”
“Avenge Andy, Carlo?” John Albano said. “You care so much about Andy?”
“The family, right? Mi compare.”
“Compare? You and Andy?” John Albano said. He laughed. “An errand boy, that’s what you were to Pappas. Stupid!”
Charley’s cat face paled, the dark skin yellow. His eyes said-anyone else, I’d… Anyone else! But his father? What would they think, his men, his bosses?
“Look at you, all broken up,” John Albano said. “You don’t give a damn about Andy. You’re so hungry I can smell it. You think you’ll take Andy’s place? You?”
I said, “How much did you want to be boss, Charley? You were playing cards that night, right? With two witnesses. Them over there?” I nodded to his two gunmen. “Nice witnesses.”
He was smaller than I, younger, and he moved quickly. Close, looking up at me, his breath on my face, his hands clenched into fists inside the yellow gloves. Breathing hard and close.
“Never, cripple! Never say it, not to no one!”
Charley was young, and John Albano was old, but the old man had twice the strength still, and the same speed. He came out of his chair, swung his heavy fist against Charley’s head in the same motion. Not a punch, a clout. A blow swung like a hammer on his son’s ear, disdainful. Some old man.
Charley staggered, fell over a chair, came up with his pistol in his hand. John Albano took the gun away from him, flung it across the room.
“Out!” the old man said. “Stay away from Fortune, and stay away from Mia. Far away! Now get out.”
Charley’s two men watched. One of them picked up the gun, gave it to Charley. The dapper sub-boss tried to save some small face:
“Okay, I’m through here anyway, right, Mia?” he said to the girl, and to John Albano, “Be careful, old man. No more.”
His two men followed him out.
In the apartment, Levi Stern smiled at the old man. I mopped sweat from my face. I wasn’t so happy. Charley Albano had been humiliated, and I’d seen it. Mia wasn’t happy either. She sat down, and her hands shook. John Albano stood over her.
“What did he want, Mia?” the old man said. “He scares you. Why? Is Fortune right? You do know something?”
Her defiance was gone now, she almost looked her age. A scared girl.
“Charley says Bagnio killed Andy and Diana Wood,” I said. “But not alone. He hinted he knew who else. The party better be careful, he said. A hint to you, Mia? Did he see you with Max Bagnio?”
“What would that prove, Dan?” John Albano said. “Bagnio was close to Andy. He’d have been with Mia more than once.”
