coats in common. I joined him in the doorway. He was watching a building across the street.
“It’s Emily,” Hal said. “She got a phone call at my place about three hours ago. A girl friend, she said, but she looked scared to me, so when she went out right after, I followed her. She went into that tenement over there, the one with the Polish butcher shop. She’s been there ever since. I called you at your office, but got no answer, so left the message with my super.”
The building was a flophouse, with blank shades at the windows instead of curtains, and raw meat hanging in the butcher shop.
“It was a woman who called?”
“I don’t know, Dan. Emily was taking all calls. Protect me in case someone wanted to find out if I was home.”
“You weren’t home last night.”
“We went to Emily’s folks in Queens. Got back late.”
“She’s been in there three hours? What apartment?”
“I don’t know. No mailboxes. Cut up in rooms, I guess.”
“You saw no one else you know go in or out?”
His intense eyes were uneasy. “I’m not sure. I thought maybe I did, but it’s crazy. What would Emily-?”
“Who?”
“That little guy who shot at me, but I didn’t get a good-”
“Max Bagnio? He went in there?”
“Came out. He walked off toward Second Avenue.”
I was out of the doorway while he still talked. He caught up. Me, Mia Morgan, now Emily Green. And Emily had gone on her own. There were no mailboxes in the decrepit entrance, but the door was open, and a bell was marked: Manager. I rang. A door opened far back, and a woman leaned in the opening.
I held up a five. “A small man, flat nose, scarred eyes. Probably took the room about four days ago. He owes money.”
“Second floor, room fourteen.” She took the five, closed her door.
We went up. Two skinny cats scurried away down the feebly lit corridor, all the room doors had so many layers of paint they looked diseased, and the toilets were in the hall. Room 14 was at the rear. This time I wished I had my old gun. Bagnio could have returned unseen in the rain, or by another way.
“If he’s in there, has a gun,” I said, “I’ll try to grab the gun, you grab him. Got it? Don’t wait.”
Hal nodded. At the door, he stood to the left out of sight. I knocked. Nothing happened. I listened. There was no sound. The lock was an ordinary room-key lock, not even a Yale. I backed, lowered my shoulder, nodded to Hal, and hit the door. It burst open with a crash against a bureau. I caught it on the rebound, and Hal was in the room with me.
A single room with a narrow bed, a table and some wooden chairs, and a hot plate. Max Bagnio wasn’t there. Emily Green was. I let the door go. Hal sat down on a bare chair.
“Oh, Jesus,” Hal said. “Oh, Christ!”
Emily Green lay on the cot, her hands folded, blood all over the hands and her plain gray dress, and her head smashed in. I bent down. She had been hit on the head with something heavy, more than once. Hard blows, angry or determined. One or two would have knocked her out, probably killed her. The others had been insurance-make sure she was dead.
“Me!” Hal said, held his face. “Touch Hal Wood and die!”
“Shut up!” I snapped. I was edgy, too. What’s wrong with us? A mistake of nature? Two young girls. Diana Wood had wanted the wrong man. What mistake had Emily Green made? The same one?
“It’s me, isn’t it?” Hal said. “You want to commit suicide, just get close to Hal Wood. What’s so important about me?”
I touched her. The arms were limp, and the body. A faint stiffness to her jaw. Two hours, maybe a little more. Not much more, she’d only been here three hours.
“What the hell does he want?” Hal said. “Bagnio?”
There was no telephone. “Go down and call Captain Gazzo.”
I gave him the number. He was glad to go. He hadn’t looked at Emily Green after the first moment. Who could blame him? Me, I’m experienced with death, sure I am. Play detective, Dan boy, find a perfect clue like a Scotland Yard hotshot. Was it even Max Bagnio’s room? Hal hadn’t been sure.
Hal could have been sure. There wasn’t much in the room, but what there was belonged to Bagnio. A small suitcase under the cot with two extra guns, ammo, two pairs of black cotton gloves, one clean shirt, a silver- mounted hairbrush set-initialed: M.B.-and one of those cheap arcade snapshots of Bagnio with a girl who looked fifteen. Some bread, canned meat, and two quarts of Seagram’s V.O., one half empty.
I guess they were clues. Anyway, they were all there was. No weapon. Not a surprise, Bagnio had probably used his big. 45. Hal returned.
“Captain Gazzo said to wait.”
I said, “It’s Bagnio’s room all right.”
Hal sat down again as if his legs couldn’t be trusted to keep him up. “We… haven’t even buried Diana yet. The cops only let her folks take her yesterday. Bury her tomorrow, in Queens. She hated Queens. Both of them from Queens. I guess I better stay away from girls from Queens.”
I sat. “Hal, have you remembered anything? Something you picked up near Diana’s new apartment? Someone who acted funny?”
“Nothing, Dan. Nothing!” He looked now toward where Emily Green lay so silent. “Doorways, that’s my speed. I’m good at watching from doorways. Right outside when it happened!”
“What the hell should you have done? Dashed in to do battle? A paintbrush against Bagnio’s forty-five?”
We waited in silence after that, the odor of death growing thick in the sleazy room.
Captain Gazzo straddled a chair, faced us both. The M.E. was still working over Emily Green. Gazzo’s men had been combing the bare room for an hour, not looking hopeful. Gazzo added it up.
“She got a call from Bagnio. Said nothing, and came here. Why did Max kill her? She wouldn’t talk, and he hit too hard persuading her? Then had to finish the job? Or did he let her know something dangerous to him and have to kill her?”
“A forty-five automatic is heavy enough to do it,” I said.
The M.E. looked up. “Possible, but not likely. Something thicker, a bottle or club. Nothing in this room looks right. About three hours ago now, I’d estimate. First or second blow did the job, the rest were fun or panic.”
The morgue men packed Emily Green up, took her out. Gazzo’s men had all quit, stood around. Except the fingerprint man.
“Ten different sets already,” he said. “A transient flop. Why don’t I ever get a neat, high-class murder?”
Gazzo ignored the fingerprint man, scowled. “Why did she come here at all? How did Bagnio make her come? A threat? Told her he had something important that would help Hal, or hurt him?”
I told him what Charley Albano and Mia had said uptown.
“Irving Kezar ties to Charley, if Pappas’s kid is telling it true, and Sid Meyer ties to Kezar,” Gazzo mused. “Charley Albano would lie about anything, but if he says Max Bagnio killed Andy, and not alone, he could know, too.” Gazzo looked at Hal. “Any chance your wife could change her mind, decide to come back?”
“How would I know? She’d started the divorce, moved in with Pappas.” His voice was stiff, as if it hurt even now to mention Diana and Pappas together.
“You think Emily could have hired Bagnio?” I said. “To kill Diana? Pappas was the extra murder?”
“Maybe Max had two partners,” Gazzo said. “One for each.”
“Captain!”
A call from down in the back yard. Gazzo and I went and looked down. One of Gazzo’s men held a sawed-off baseball bat. I saw the blood on it. Gazzo looked around the barren room. He opened both windows. One of them wouldn’t stay open.
“Windows never work in a dump like this,” Gazzo said. “The bat was a brace to hold the window up. Lying around handy.”
Gazzo went out to go down to the back yard. I turned to Hal. I described Charley Albano and his yellow gloves.
