“Not much. You don’t forget if you keep in condition.”
I nodded. “That’s what I figured. You know, I think that the search here at Mia’s was a trick. A ruse to hide the fact what Max Bagnio wanted only Hal Wood could have.”
John Albano said, “What would that be, Dan?”
“I think I’ll go and ask Hal. Maybe he’ll remember with all I know now,” I said. “You stay here. I’ll be back.”
I left them all watching the door, not each other. Down in my car I lit a cigarette, then drove south. Another car pulled out behind me. I thought it did. I didn’t drive too fast. At St. Marks Place I parked near the corner of Avenue A, walked back to number 145. I went up to 4-B when Hal Wood answered my ring from the vestibule.
Hal stood in the open doorway. He was serious.
“Something new, Dan?” he asked.
“A lot,” I said. “Inside, okay?”
“Sure,” he said, let me in and closed the door. “You’ve got it solved all the way?”
“Not long now,” I said.
CHAPTER 29
I told him about the Wyandotte deal, and about Kezar’s story of Charley Albano faking the evidence against Max Bagnio. Hal shook his head, unbelieving.
“Dunlap? A big company like Caxton? Is everyone corrupt today, nobody real?”
“Not everyone,” I said.
“Just those who run the country,” Hal said bitterly. “Those with the chance, right? From expense-account cheaters to the top. A percentage of the take. I’ve been thinking a lot about that since-” He seemed to lose his train of thought. “It seems so long since Diana… died. I guess I don’t care what Bagnio’s real motive was. It can’t help now. I… I’ve been working. Real well. Come on, take a look.”
We went into his studio. The kitchen was a mess of dirty dishes, opened cans, rancid cartons. A man living alone now with his vision. The living room was dusty and unused. Hal living only in his studio now, like an improvised garret.
“Look!” He swept his arm toward his new paintings.
They were lined up against all the walls. The difference from his earlier design-like abstracts hit me like a slap. Powerful, bold, in swirling shapes like vortexes. Thick and oozing masses, as if the corruption he’d been talking about was deep in his mind. Giant figures like kings and bishops in red and purple robes sat on massive thrones, their hazy faces like melting wax. Faceless, decaying rulers with black holes for mouths. Gaping mouths open in silent screams.
“Well?” Hal said, nervous.
“Powerful,” I said. “I can see the last months in them. All of it inside you.”
He looked at his new work, nodded. “I guess so. Funny, you know, Dan? I mean, to get my best work out of horror. Like Faust. A price for greatness. They are great, Dan. I know it. I can see it, feel it.”
His eyes glowed as he studied his new work.
“Yeh,” I said. “Great.”
He grinned, lit a cigarette. “Well, they’re good, anyway. But never mind about me. I’ve got all the time now. You do have it almost solved, Dan? I mean, you know Bagnio’s real motive?”
“I think so,” I said. “What I can’t quite figure is Diana’s wedding ring. Why did Max Bagnio keep it, and what was he really looking for? Any ideas, Hal? Remember anything yet?”
“Nothing. I was sure it was some evidence about that memo. Doesn’t Mia Morgan know anything? He searched her pad, too.”
“I think that search was another fake. To fool us.”
I heard the noise out in the corridor. A light noise, as if someone was out there stepping very quietly. Hal didn’t seem to hear it. He wasn’t listening for it the way I was.
“I guess only Bagnio could have done it, though,” Hal said.
“No,” I said, “I don’t think so now. I don’t think Little Max killed them at all. It happened a different way.”
I told him the story I’d figured out of how it had been done. I pictured the killer coming down on his rope, calling the guard in, lining up Diana and Andy Pappas, shooting them all, and escaping out the window.
Hal frowned. “You really think it could have been like that?”
“A few things I don’t know, but that’s the outline.”
“It would have taken a pretty good man,” Hal said.
“A soldier. You remember the night in the Jersey dump? The way you and John Albano handled those hoods? Trained.”
“Me?” Hal said.
“You and John Albano,” I said.
I put my finger to my lips, stepped softly out of the studio and across the kitchen to the outside door. I opened the door. John Albano stood there. He looked at me. The lines in his face were etched deeper, his white hair strange in the glare of the corridor. He came in, closed the door.
“You’ve got it figured, Dan?” Albano said.
“I think so,” I said.
He went into the studio with me behind him. He looked at the new paintings, and looked at me. I nodded to Hal.
“Hal, you remember telling us about Korea that night in the dump? About being pinned under that pillbox for so many hours, thinking all the time you were dead? How you swore that night you’d never again do anything you didn’t want to? How you’d do something great with your life?”
“Sure I remember. It changed me, that pillbox. I saw life clear then.”
“A pillbox behind enemy lines. Behind the lines, Hal. You said that more than once, I remember now. What were you in Korea? A Ranger? A specially trained shock trooper?”
“Yes, a Ranger. The best.”
“Best,” I said. “Yes. Is that why you killed Diana? You were the best, and she failed you, took a lesser man?”
“I didn’t kill her, Dan,” Hal said.
“Yes you did,” I said. “Pappas, too. It was good to kill Pappas, wasn’t it? The big, powerful man. You said that in the dump, too-such powerful gangsters, yet you were better. You could kill Pappas. Easily. No match for you man to man. Not in a war, behind enemy lines, stalking the enemy.”
“Why would I kill her? I let her go. Didn’t try to stop her.”
“You almost sent her away, Hal. Like at those parties of Dunlap’s. Pappas said it, I just didn’t hear-‘almost pushing Diana away, forcing her on other men.’ A test, right? If she was your perfect woman, she wouldn’t want to be with other men for a second, even just to laugh a little. She wouldn’t want anything but you. But she wasn’t perfect, she failed you. Not good enough for a man like you, the best.”
“I am the best!”
I nodded. “Diana even told me. The way she said you were a failure who wouldn’t even try to succeed, and at the same time had such a big ego it didn’t need bolstering. It sounded like a contradiction, but it isn’t. You have such a big ego you won’t work to prove how good you are. You know how good you are, and everyone ought to know it without having to be shown.”
“Flawed,” Hal said. “All women.” He blinked at me with those intense eyes. “You’re wrong, Dan. Really.”
“Flawed,” I said. “Diana said that, too. You don’t need a woman, don’t really want one. Symbols of the imperfect world. Women and the world, both flawed, both rejecting you.”
He looked at his paintings, the new ones. “All just bellies and thighs, the garbage glitter of now. They live for now, women. What do they know of visions? Men like Pappas, that’s what women want. Destroyers, cheats, greedy
