“So tell me. Maybe I should try it.”
“A world without you, Vinnie. Everyone does a job, no one grabs. Not much to steal, no one to scare. How would you live?”
They reminded me of myself and Andy Pappas, an echo. But Don Vicente wasn’t Andy, and John Albano wasn’t his charity.
“I don’t like that talk, Johnny,” he said. “Why’d you come here, bring a snooper? What’s on your mind, what’re you after?”
“Who killed Andy?” Albano said. “And maybe two women?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don Vicente doesn’t know? You must be worried, Vinnie.”
Don Vicente said nothing. He was worried, I saw it.
I said, “Who takes Andy’s place?”
Don Vicente ignored me.
“Charley, maybe?” John Albano said.
“No,” Don Vicente said. “Not yet. One of the older men. We ain’t decided yet.”
“Was Andy mixed up with Ramapo Construction Company, or Ultra-Violet Controls?” I asked.
“Ramapo? That’s Charley’s company. The other I don’t know.”
Albano said, “Fortune asked if Andy was mixed with Ramapo.”
“How should I know? You want to ask Charley?” Don Vicente pointed to the man at the door. “Go tell Charley Albano his old man and Dan Fortune want to ask him about Ramapo Construction.”
The bodyguard left. Don Vicente reached for a cigar from an ornate box, then dropped the cigar back into the box as if he’d remembered he wasn’t supposed to smoke.
“Charley runs his own companies. All the guys do. We got a free-enterprise country,” Don Vicente said, irritable.
“Which country?” John Albano said.
“So? The same old crap, Johnny? Both countries, okay?”
“Everyone for himself, no interference from Council?”
“Not unless we got a battle in the family,” Don Vicente said. He scowled, reached for the cigar again, lit it this time. “You don’t give a damn about Andy Pappas, Johnny. But you come around here with a detective. Why? What do you want to find out? You’re worried who maybe killed Andy, right? You wouldn’t care if it was Charley, or even Stella. No, not you.”
He inhaled the cigar slowly, almost sighing with the pleasure. “It’s Mia, right, Johnny? That’s what’s worrying you. She hated Andy, maybe she killed him. That Stern did it for her. A real killer, moves real fast.”
“No,” John Albano said.
“No? You so sure?” Don Vicente said. “What kind of girl hates her old man? What kind of daughter? Bad, Andy brought her up all wrong. Let her out too much, let her move around, get bad ideas. Like the church, you got to get a kid early, teach her to be loyal, honor her father. Colleges, outsiders, new ideas, they ruined her. They turned her against her own people, the old ways.”
“She learned the right ways,” John Albano said.
“Could be,” Don Vicente said. “Or maybe she just learned her own bad ways, eh? Marry to spite your old man, then run out on the kid husband. Listen to no one except herself. Run her own business, be tough, independent. No one tells her, not even Andy, eh? She’ll show Andy. All the way.”
“No,” John Albano said.
Don Vicente shrugged. He didn’t really care, as long as it didn’t mean trouble in the organization. The bodyguard came back. Charley Albano wasn’t in the house, had gone. Don Vicente stood.
“You find Charley later,” he said. “Stay a while, Johnny. Fortune, too. Have some drinks, enjoy. Okay?”
He walked out into the big room with us. The funeral was turning into a party, a clan gathering. I had no reason to stay, neither did Albano. I waited near the door while the old man went to say good-by to Stella. She was his daughter, a widow.
Don Vicente stood beside me. “You know Johnny long?”
“Not long.”
He smoked his cigar. “Mia, she means a lot to him. Andy didn’t like she hired you to spy. Maybe he was gonna teach her a lesson, hurt her. Johnny’d do anything to help Mia. No one hurts his Mia. Think about it.”
John Albano returned, and we went out to his car. We were quiet all the way back to New York, the afternoon turning into evening. It was dusk when John Albano dropped me at my office. He didn’t say where he was going, but I could guess-to find Mia and Stern. I went up to my office.
Hal Wood was there again, waiting in the hall. He was getting to be trouble, a target I didn’t want around me. We went inside. I sat behind my desk, Hal sat facing me.
“We buried her,” he said. “Me, her folks, and one cop. Her office sent flowers. Six years. Her body… she was beautiful. Dirt on her now. For Emily, I can’t even be there.”
What did I say? Nothing. I lit a cigarette. My telephone rang. A voice I didn’t know, low and hoarse.
“You want to be a big man, Fortune? Solve the killings? Go to three hundred twelve East Ninth Street, apartment Two-A.” He hung up.
I had my gun, and Hal saw my face. I had to tell him.
“I’m going, too,” he said. “I’ll follow you if I have to.”
I nodded. It could be a trap, and he might be a help. We went out to find a taxi in the now dark night.
CHAPTER 22
The building was another shabby tenement on the block of Ninth Street directly behind Hal’s apartment on St. Marks Place. We left the taxi on First Avenue, walked toward the tenement in the dark. It was into the dinner hour, the slum block almost empty. A few people walked, but no one looked suspicious, and I saw no cars that seemed out of place.
There was no name on the mailbox for 2-A, and the vestibule door was propped open. I didn’t like that, too easy. Still, in these tenements the super often propped the door open so he didn’t have to answer the rings of drunks who had forgotten their keys. We went up.
There was no one on the second-floor landing, and 2-A was at the front. I got out my gun, motioned Hal to stand back, and rang the bell with the gun barrel. Nothing happened. The landing was quiet, and the door of 2-A was locked. I used my keys, stepped carefully inside.
There was a short, dark hallway, with an empty bedroom off to the right, and the living room straight ahead. The living room was dim and bare, a table and a few chairs, but it wasn’t empty. Little Max Bagnio hadn’t moved far from the room on Sixth Street where Emily Green had died, but he’d gone as far as he would ever go.
Bagnio sat in a chair at the bare table.
He’d been shot in the chest, more than once from the mass of still-wet blood that hid his shirt front. His suit coat had been buttoned, the collar pulled down over the back of the chair to hold him upright-his flat nose and battered face looking straight at me from the dead eyes sunk in their scar tissue. A piece of paper was pinned to Bagnio’s bloody chest with a single word in it: Cane.
“Italian,” I said. “Cane-dog.”
“Look, on the table,” Hal said.
They were laid out like evidence on a policeman’s desk. It was just what they were-evidence. A series of items to form a mute testimony someone wanted everyone to read. Hal picked up one of them, a gold wedding band.
“It’s Diana’s wedding ring,” Hal said, his voice cracking a little. “We didn’t have much money when we got married. I had to buy a cheap band in a Village store.”
I took the ring from him. It was engraved inside: H.W. to D.W., all my love. I put it into my pocket. The other items were Max Bagnio’s. 45 automatic, a gold money clip with the initials A.P., and a partly torn sheet of memo pad paper. The automatic was still warm. Max had fought. Maybe shot first.
