“No one heard the shooting?” Hal said.
“He could have been brought here. Or it could have happened here. In a place like this, witnesses are blind and deaf.”
“He did kill them, Pappas and… Diana,” Hal said. “He must have grabbed Pappas’s money from the bed table, got Diana’s ring, too. The gang found out, came for him.”
“Andy usually carried a lot of cash,” I said slowly, “but why would Max keep the ring and money clip?”
“Afraid to have them found, maybe,” Hal said. “Robbery, Dan? Murder for a few hundred dollars? A few thousand?”
“No, the money was a bonus. Read this.”
I handed him the sheet of memo paper. It was typed, signed with a scrawled Andy P. It told the story: Charley, We got a problem with Max. Diana says he hates her, watches her, she don’t want him around. He’s getting old, can’t change. I want you to give him a spot in your Jersey operation, then put him on the shelf. I’ve told Diana it’s taken care of.
“Somehow,” I said, “Little Max got that memo. Maybe it never reached Charley Albano. Andy had turned against Max because of Diana. So he killed them. No one shelves Max Bagnio.”
“He must have been crazy.”
“No, just a peasant. Vendetta. Andy had injured him. And scared, too. Maybe Andy wouldn’t stop with just putting him on a shelf,” I said. “Go call Gazzo. You know the number.”
Hal went down to call. I lit a cigarette, searched the bare and silent room. I searched the bedroom. There was no automatic rifle. Gingerly, I searched Bagnio’s pockets. His dead eyes stared ahead. In his right jacket pocket I found the rifle cartridges-five steel-jacketed shells that would fit an M-16 automatic rifle. That was all I found. Little Max had brought nothing to the last room he’d lived in. A few cans of food, a bottle of whisky, and the clothes on his back. Like most gangsters, he’d gone out of the world almost as naked as he’d come into it.
I sat on one of the wooden chairs. Andy’s memo told it all. Andy had written that he’d told Diana that Max was being taken care of. So Diana had known the motive, maybe Andy had even put it in writing in some note to her, and maybe she had told Hal. Hal might have had a written note that proved Bagnio’s motive for murder. Hal might have told Emily Green. If Charley Albano had never gotten Andy’s memo, then Hal and Emily Green could have been the only ones who knew Bagnio’s motive.
It all fitted, even the gangland revenge, and the epithet-dog! A man who murders his own boss is a dog to the brothers. All there, except-Sid Meyer? Then, Meyer could have been only a side effect, not really connected to…
The noise in the outside corridor was soft, faint. I sat alert. A light footstep? I had my gun out. Would anyone…?
I saw the movement in the dim light at the far end of the short hall into the living room. I was up.
The shots exploded.
My chest exploded in agony. Jesus… agony…
On the floor, the searing pain, my chest, God Al…
Rolled on the floor, fired at the shadowy hallway. The distant movement in the corridor fired again. Missed.
I was up. Staggered to the cover of the wall where the hall entered the living room. Shots! Two? Three? My belly seemed to burst. I was down again. Blood all over. I fired.
I was behind the wall, braced against the wall.
I fired. Along the dim hall. Sirens far off. Police. Hal had gotten them, they were coming, I had to hold on… hold on… keep the man out there away… hold on… fired.
Four shots.
I had two left. My chest was dead, my belly flames. On my knees, braced against the wall, my pistol aimed down the hallway at the entrance… just a little while… hold on…
I fired.
One shot left… bit through my lip in pain… one more shot to keep him away from coming and… sirens down in the street… the room thick liquid and swimming dark… dark… darker…
Silence.
I pressed my shoulder against the wall… fought to hold on one more second… two seconds… running feet and voices and faces and Hal was there and police and… I let go… collapsed… pain… nothing…
Michael Collins
Silent Scream
PART THREE
CHAPTER 23
One bullet through my right lung, one in my belly. Another small gun, 7.65-mm. Lucky. I was in the hospital five weeks.
Two weeks in Intensive Care, one of them critical. Another week with a nurse around the clock. Two more when the room began to look normal, faces smiled, and I noticed the daylight outside. Even Marty came to visit. Without her husband, but she looked happy. I hated her. Yet glad for her, too. I was feeling mortal, and I hoped everyone was happy as long as I was still alive.
Captain Gazzo came. “Damn lucky I had the brains to call the precinct. Their sirens must have scared your man off, all over when they got there. Hal Wood met them, told them about the shooting, and they reached you in time.”
“I always said you were a good cop,” I said.
“Charley Albano came around off the record. Admitted two of his men got Bagnio. Claims self-defense, and the boys are long gone. We could try to find them, but we’ve got no names, no evidence. Unless someone tells us, we’ll never know who they were. I suspected Bagnio all along, it all fits. Even what Max was looking for-evidence that would show Andy was dumping him. He was a killer, Dan, case closed, the taxpayers save money.”
Hal Wood came many times. He was happy he’d gotten to Gazzo in time to save me.
“When we heard the shooting, I thought I’d gotten someone else killed,” he said, shook his head. “Shooting stopped before we reached the building. We didn’t see anyone, damn it.”
“You saw me,” I said. “Alive. You did just fine.”
He looked better now. His magazine was expanding, he had an assistant, was keeping busy. But no new girl. Not this time.
“I’m even painting,” Hal said. “A new style. It’s good.”
John Albano visited. Mia and Levi Stern had gotten married. Stern wanted them to live in Israel, but Mia was still running her business in New York for now. John Albano didn’t like that.
“Mia’s got a lot to learn still,” he said.
Even Lawrence Dunlap sent flowers. He was big with flowers, the proper aristocrat. Or maybe that was the wife.
I went to a convalescent hospital, and April turned into May. Spring came, and after a while there were fewer visitors. Gazzo still came sometimes, and my buddy Joe Harris, and John Albano. I wondered about John Albano. Did he have some doubts about the case, too?
When I walked around the convalescent hospital, sat out in the sun on good days, I thought about Max Bagnio and the murders. I thought about who had shot me, and why?
“You’re sure Bagnio was alone in it?” I asked Gazzo on a sunny day in mid-May. “Just mad at Andy and Diana, no one hired him?”
“No evidence of it, Dan. We’ve turned that Ninth Street place and the room on Sixth Street upside-down. We’ve combed his regular apartment, his room at Andy’s house. Nothing.”
“You haven’t found the automatic rifle?”
Gazzo sighed. “What do you want, Dan? That M-sixteen’s probably in the river. We’ll never find it with Max
