“He spoke to us for Mr. Pappas,” Stern said.
“All right,” I agreed, “but Charley was here for a reason, a warning. Were you around that apartment that night, Mia? You saw something? Found something?”
She shook her head. “Not that night.”
“But sometime?” I said. “When? What?”
She looked up at us. “It was nothing, Mr. Fortune. I mean, what could it…?” She took a breath. “The day before. I saw that Irving Kezar come out of the building. Charley was waiting in his car. He made Kezar get into the car with him. They drove off. I mean that was all.”
“Then why does it scare you?”
“Charley saw me on the street. Later he found me, told me to forget what I’d seen. I was to tell no one. No one at all.”
The wrecked room was quiet. I could hear the rain.
“No one?” John Albano said. “Not even Andy?”
“No one,” Mia said, watched the floor.
I said, “You better stay here, Albano. I’ll call you.”
I left John Albano talking low to Mia. Levi Stern watched them both silently.
CHAPTER 16
The rain was heavier now, and the big brick apartment building on East Seventieth Street seemed dingier than it had on the night Sid Meyer was blasted out the window. The bare lobby was cold and damp, and no one had bothered to mop up a puddle in the elevator. It was still a shabby place for Irving Kezar to live.
Jenny Kezar answered my ring at 6-C. She wasn’t wearing her old blue coat this time, but the difference was barely noticeable. She wore an old green-print housedress with two buttons open to show her ample breasts in a stained bra. Her gray hair hung in strands, and her eyes were still dull. One of the eyes was also black-yellow, her mouth was split and puffed, and the stains on her exposed bra were blood.
“What do you want?” she said, her voice sullen.
“Just some talk, Mrs. Kezar,” I said. “Dan Fortune. We-”
“I remember you.”
“Fine,” I said, “let’s talk inside.”
She let me push in, walked away into the dumpy living room where Sid Meyer had died, while I closed the door. It was still a shock to see that she was only in her late forties, had very nice legs. Take off twenty-five pounds, add some decent clothes, fix her face and hair, and put some light in her eyes, and she wouldn’t be pretty, but she’d look good enough. A different person. Most women would at least try.
“Who beat you up, Jenny?” I said. “Kezar?”
She lit a cigarette. She didn’t offer me one. “If you want Irving, he’s not here.”
“When will he be?”
“When he is. I told you already he stays other places.”
She had, I remembered, and maybe it explained the shabby building. Kezar didn’t really live here. Jenny did. Good enough for her. An early marriage, a place to hang his hat when he needed it, but it was onward and upward for Kezar, the old wife left behind.
“Why’d he hit you, Jenny?”
“Why does the sun rise?” she said, then softened it. “We had a fight, who doesn’t? What do you want, Fortune?”
“Did you know Andy Pappas?”
“I heard of him, didn’t everyone?”
“Maybe Sid Meyer knew him, Jenny? Some business?”
“Not that I know. Sid didn’t swing that high.”
“But Kezar knew Andy Pappas, swings that high.”
“Irving knows a lot of people.”
“Was he in some deal with Pappas?”
“You think Irving talks business with me?”
A rhetorical question-wasn’t it obvious that Kezar would never talk business with the likes of her? But it wasn’t an answer, and she could be just the person Kezar would talk business with. The sounding board, a comfortable haven for blowing off steam, talking out frustrations. We all need some release. But it was a denial, too, and she wasn’t about to tell me anything about Irving Kezar’s business.
“It’s three murders now, Jenny. Irving could be in danger.”
She smoked, blew smoke. “How?”
“Does he know Charley Albano? Had business with Albano?”
“No!”
A flat denial. And a contradiction. Kezar didn’t talk business to her, but she knew he had no business with Charley Albano. She wasn’t dumb, she heard it herself. A mistake.
“I don’t know nothing,” she said. “Leave me alone.”
“Kezar does have business with Charley Albano, doesn’t he?”
She shook her head, not denying but resisting. Her bruised face seemed to wilt, collapse.
“I can’t talk about Irving,” she said, almost pleading now. “Do me a favor, Fortune. Go away, let me alone.”
“A deal with Charley Albano, Jenny, that Pappas didn’t know about? Sid Meyer mixed in it? Behind Pappas’s back?”
“No.” She shook her head violently. “No!”
She was afraid. But was it for herself, or for Kezar? Afraid of him, or for him?
“You’re afraid of him? Kezar? Or is it Charley Albano?”
“I won’t talk to you! I don’t have to!” she said. “You get away from me! Go on!”
I went. She would tell me nothing now. Maybe later, when I knew more. But there was something, I was sure. Was it something Hal Wood knew, too? Not aware he knew?
There was no answer when I rang the vestibule bell of Hal’s St. Marks Place apartment. A small gnawing began in my stomach. Had he been gone all night? Emily Green, too? The vestibule door was unlocked. I went up.
A note was taped to the door of 4-B: See Super, 1-B.
I went down. It was the rear apartment off the vestibule. A big man with a red face and a can of beer opened the door.
“I’m looking for Hal Wood,” I said.
“A terrible thing,” the super said, sad. “You’re Mr.-?”
“Dan Fortune.”
He smiled, looked me up and down as if I’d been described to him. I’m not hard to describe.
“He called me, Wood, gave me a message for you, said it was important. He said you’d have identification.”
I showed him my license.
“Private eye, eh? Must be interesting work. Now me, I-”
“The message,” I said. “It’s important?”
It was a dismal day, no baseball on TV in February, and he wanted someone to talk to. He nodded. “He said meet him down on Sixth Street between First and Second. A candy store.”
I thanked him, walked south in the rain. A steady downpour now, washing away the last of the grimy snow. On the block of Sixth Street there was only one candy store.
“Dan!”
A loud whisper, urgent through the rain. Hal stood back in a doorway next to the candy store. Only partly sheltered from the driving rain, his duffel coat was soaked. Small things tie people together. We had our old duffel
