Act of Fear df-1

by Michael Collins

  Fight had not helped. He was dead.

  I went into the office and called Gazzo. I smoked while I waited. I had the feeling that eyes were watching me. That was probably only nerves, but the blood was still wet out there in the garage, so I was wary. A man came in to ask if I had a cigarette machine. I told him no, but I tried to keep him there. He had a girl out in a car and he left. I smoked and listened to every sound until the sirens growled into the street and I was surrounded by blue uniforms. Gazzo sat at Schmidt’s desk. I told him my story of this killing.

  ‘You better take a vacation,’ the captain said. ‘I can’t handle many more bodies.’

  ‘Bodies are your business,’ I said. ‘You live on dead bodies, Captain.’

  I suppose I felt bad. And nervous. Schmidt had been a good, tough, honest man. None of it had helped him.

  ‘I don’t want the next to be yours,’ Gazzo said.

  He had seen my face. I did not want the next to be me either.

  ‘You’re getting close,’ Gazzo said. ‘Schmidt is still warm. You’re maybe too close. You’ve maybe got someone worried. You want to tell me why?’

  ‘I don’t know why,’ I said. ‘I don’t know anything.’

  ‘Sure,’ Gazzo said. ‘Someone worked you over for fun.’

  ‘They think I know, Captain, but I don’t.’

  He looked at me. ‘That’s bad.’

  ‘I know how bad it is,’ I said. And I did. It is bad enough to know something dangerous enough to be beaten for; it is much worse to not know what they think you know.

  I went out into the dark of Water Street. Squad cars blocked the street. Their red revolving lights played across all the parked cars. I thought about Schmidt. The killers were still looking for answers. I did not think they had found any here. I took deep breaths in the hot night. I almost wished they had found their answers, ended it all. I lighted another cigarette. At a time like this the dangers of cigarettes don’t seem so bad. You have to live a while for them to kill you, and I’m not sure many of us are going to make it. The men who control the bombs wear better clothes and speak better in more languages than Pappas or Jake Roth or the ones who killed Schmidt, but they are the same men.

  I smoked and watched a solitary patrolman walk along the dark street. He was not one of the squad-car boys; he was a beat cop. Stettin’s replacement. I watched him and smiled. He had come round the corner, and caught my eye, at a slow amble. He had probably been snoozing somewhere or cadging a quick free drink and had not heard the squad cars arrive. In the instant he saw the squad cars he assumed a purposeful efficient air. He came down the block batting car tyres with his billy, trying to appear tall and alert. He peered closely at the cars parked near the driveways and fire hydrants. He stopped at the cars parked in front of the loading docks. That was legal at night and on Sundays. He seemed annoyed that no one had parked illegally. I watched his slow progress down the block towards the river. I saw him pass the mouth of the alley where Stettin had been mugged. He looked into that alley.

  There was a click inside my head.

  That’s the closest word I can think of. A click. A sudden sensation of something being released, of clicking into place. Where there had been all jagged pieces there was a click and a sudden smooth surface.

  I knew where Officer Stettin fitted into this. I knew why he had been mugged. Suddenly, like that.

  Not chapter and verse, not the full implications, but the connection. I was suddenly as sure as a man can ever be sure of anything. I did not know why I had not seen it before. It was so clear. So obvious. I knew what the mugger had wanted. I knew why Stettin had been attacked. The mugger had wanted the only thing taken from Stettin that could possibly have been a danger to anyone. The only thing taken that could have involved anyone else.

  The summons book.

  A guess? Yes. A hunch. But it had to be. Have you ever had a thought that you suddenly just know is true? Nothing else, you just know. That is sometimes all that detective work is — a flash of hunch that must be true. Sometimes, did I say? Most of the time. Ask any cop. All else aside, most of the crimes of the kind the police get — small, violent, messy crimes — are solved by informers or a hunch. Not clues, not a neat trail, but the experienced hunch.

  I had the hunch I had been looking for. Stettin did not know why he had been mugged. There had to be a reason. And the only thing stolen that could have involved someone else was the summons book. End of hunch. Next question: How did a summons book become so dangerous?

  Even as I thought I had begun to walk fast in the night. Towards St Vincent’s Hospital. Because if my hunch were right, and I knew it was, then Pete Vitanza should be my confirmation even if he did not know it. If my hunch were right, then I had a whole new picture of the murder of Tani Jones. A picture I liked better. The picture I had sensed from the start. Burglars rarely kill, and Tani Jones had put up no fight. The shooting had been quick, close, sudden. The killer had not run. He was out looking for Jo-Jo. Looking hard to the point of two more murders. Why? Because there had been no burglar. There had been no robbery. That was all a cover-up.

  Tani Jones had known her killer.

  She had known her killer, and the killer had known her. He had known that she was Andy Pappas’ girl friend.

  The killer was a man who had called on Tani Jones. A man who went to see her while Pappas was safely out of town. A man who was cheating Andy Pappas with Tani Jones, the dumb little girl who liked men too much. Then what had happened in Tani Jones’s apartment that day? I did not know that, a hunch can only go so far, but for some reason the man had killed her. When I knew who, I would probably know why, but one thing I was sure of — the man had not planned to kill Tani. The whole faked robbery had an impromptu ring about it, an aura of improvisation, a spur-of-the-moment desperate cover-up. Something had happened in Tani Jones’s apartment that day that made a secret lover into a sudden killer.

  What that was my hunch could not tell me, but my hunch told me one more big fact. After the killer had killed, faked his robbery, and got clean away unseen, something more had happened down on Water Street. Something had suddenly gone very wrong for the killer, and it had involved Patrolman Stettin and his summons book.

  By this time I was at St Vincent’s. The doctor did not want to let me talk to Pete Vitanza. I argued. I told the doctor that it was urgent police business. He had seen me there with Lieutenant Marx earlier. It finally worked. I went into Pete’s room.

  Pete was propped up in bed, his splinted arms thrust straight out. He looked better. He was young and resilient, and the young recover quickly. But his eyes were still bandaged, and when I entered his whole head turned towards the sound I made as I came in.

  ‘Mr Fortune?’

  He had had some visitors, there was mail on his bedtray and books on the bed he could not read yet. Apparently the nurse had been reading to him. But he was really waiting for me. Some of his visitors had been police, and he wanted to talk about Nancy Driscoll.

  ‘It don’t sound right, Mr Fortune,’ Pete said. ‘Jo-Jo ain’t the type. The broad was chasin’ him, you know?’

  ‘Maybe he decided he wanted her after all,’ I said. ‘The police have a good-luck piece. Did Jo-Jo have one like it?’

  ‘That little Ferrari?’ Pete said. ‘Hell.’

  His hands rummaged among the opened letters on his bedtray. He came up with a key ring. On the ring, as he held it up, was another shiny red miniature Ferrari racing car.

  ‘See?’ Pete said.

  ‘Jo-Jo had one just like it?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure, we got ‘em together. I mean, here’s another one, right?’

  ‘You’ve got yours,’ I said. ‘Does Jo-Jo have his?’

  ‘There got to be a thousand around the city,’ Pete said.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘When we find Jo-Jo, and he has his, then the police will start looking for the other nine-hundred-and-ninety-eight.’

  ‘He never killed her,’ Pete said, but I he
ard the wavering in his voice. There was doubt in his voice.

  ‘Who then?’ I said. ‘Maybe the two who worked on you?’

  ‘It fits, don’t it? I mean, she knew Jo-Jo, too.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but now I want something else. I want to know everything that happened on Water Street a week ago Thursday. The day Stettin was hit. Everything, Pete.’

  Petey shrugged again. ‘We worked on the bike, drove around.’

  ‘They killed Schmidt,’ I said.

  I saw the shudder go through him. Part of it was for Schmidt, I know that. Most of it was for himself. I know that, too. We think about ourselves. That’s the way it is. Ourselves here and now, that’s how we think. Most of the time most of us don’t even care that the ship is sinking as long as we can make a good buck selling life preservers before it goes down and be rich for a little while. Ask any soldier who ever prayed that his buddy would be killed instead of him. That same soldier might toss himself on a grenade and save ten men and die doing it, but that is a different thing. That’s not thinking about it. And that’s not most of us.

  In the bed Pete Vitanza was remembering the feel of their fists, the kick of their shoes. They could return.

  ‘That’s rough,’ Pete said.

  ‘Anything at all out of the normal,’ I said.

  Pete shook his bandaged head. ‘We worked on the bike. We ate lunch at the bike. I mean, what’s normal? Jo-Jo took the bike out. I took the bike out and around. We practised turns. Jo-Jo made these figures, you know, like figure-eights. He liked to stunt with the bike. So…’

  ‘Stunts? Turns?’ I said. ‘You needed space maybe?’

  I closed my eyes. I saw the parked cars on Water Street. The two driveways out of the garage and the loading docks. There were just two parking spaces between the driveway out of the garage and the first loading dock.

  ‘You needed room for the manoeuvres?’ I said.

  I saw the reaction. Under the bandages he reacted.

  ‘You moved a car?’ I said.

  ‘A black convertible,’ Pete said. ‘Yeh. We shoved this small, black convertible down by the loading dock. We laughed.’

  One of those little things that happen and you never really remember. Like stopping to mail some letters on your way to work, and later you don’t remember it and wonder why you were five minutes late for work. Or the time you find some debris on your lawn and you cross the street to drop it into a waste can. That puts you on the wrong side of the street. When someone says they saw you on that side of the street you tell them they must be wrong because you never walk on that side. Why would you cross the street?

  ‘We needed some more room,’ Pete said. ‘This convertible was blocking the turns. It was unlocked. We just had to push it so Jo-Jo could make the stunts, yeh.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Nothin’. We just shoved it down.’

  ‘You said you were both at Schmidt’s until six o’clock?’

  Pete thought. ‘No, I had to get home, you know? I guess I left first. Jo-Jo he hung around to finish up, cover the bike.’

  ‘Did you talk to Jo-Jo again?’

  ‘Sure, maybe a couple of hours later. And Friday, too. Early like. He said he was busy, couldn’t work on the bike. I told you.’

  ‘Did he say anything else? Maybe about that car?’

  ‘No,’ Petey said.

  I stood up. ‘Okay, you rest. The doc tells me the bandages come off maybe Monday.’

  ‘You got to find him,’ Pete said from behind his bandages. I mean, they already killed Schmidt and the Driscoll broad.’

  ‘I’ll find him,’ I said. But in what order? First or second?

  On the dark — street in front of St Vincent’s my eyes took in everything that moved and all the shadows. I was jumpy. I felt like a spy on his first day in a strange city — all alone and not sure I could pass the first challenge. This was not my city now. It belonged to a killer. A killer who could hire men to look for Jo-Jo, and maybe for me. Two shadows who had no names and no faces, but who killed just for answers. It was their city now, because now I had some answers to give.

  Patrolman Stettin had ticketed that black convertible because Jo-Jo and Pete had shoved it down into a no parking zone. It was all that made sense. The killer had come back to his car and found that it had been tagged. For some reason this was dangerous. Probably because it placed him on the block at that time, and for some reason that was very bad for him. Was it bad because it told the police, or told Pappas, or both? I did not know. But it had to be that he found the tag, hunted Stettin, mugged him, and took the summons book. That was one big answer. It left me with a big question: If the killer had the ticket and the summons book, why was he after Jo-Jo?

  I was no longer in front of St Vincent’s. All this time my feet had been walking. My feet were taking me where I had to go next, where I would get the rest of it. I was not sure I wanted the rest of it. When I pushed this time it would be too late to back off and think. One more push and I could not turn back.

  Chapter 14

  I stood at the head of the block where Swede Olsen and family lived in their gaudy sewer and watched all the shadows around me. This street was dark, but it was not deserted. In the hot summer night the stoops and fire escapes and sidewalks were festooned with men in vests and women in house-dresses. They had carried chairs and boxes out of their stifling rooms and sat in silent apathy. Some rested on the kerb. The women stared into nothing. The men drank from beer cans. From time to time someone moved, talked. It was, after all, Saturday night. The free time. The happy time.

  I went down the block, and they barely looked at me. They did not care about me. They did not see me. They were too busy trying to see themselves. I passed them and climbed the few steps into the vestibule of the Olsens’ building. The downstairs door was open on the hot night. I blended into the shadows of the dim downstairs hallway. I stood there for some time. There was no one suspicious on the street outside. Had they learned something from old Schmidt after all? If they had, it had probably been too late for Jo-Jo for some hours now. I was sure they had learned nothing from Schmidt, but where were they? I did not like the feel of it. I felt things closing in.

  I climbed the stairs. Doors were open all through the tenement. The rooms inside the open doors were dark, because lights give off heat. Phantom shapes moved inside the dark rooms. The blue-white light of television sets flickered. Electric fans whirred. I went on up, slowly, and no one even turned a head to look at me.

  The Olsens’ door was closed. The Olsens had more on their mind than the heat. I pressed the button and waited. I knew, of course, that I was taking a risk. I had been warned to lay off. This visit to the Olsens would be the final push. There was a big risk, but that is what life is in the end — the risks you take. If you never take a risk you never live. You just exist the way a carrot exists. I did not feel brave, I just had to go on living.

  Swede himself opened the door. ‘You’re crazy, Fortune.’

  His sons sat in chairs behind the big Norwegian. They got up as Swede spoke. The mother, Magda, was in a green dress that made her wrinkled face a nauseating yellow. She seemed, for an instant, unable to believe that I was actually there again. I did not see the daughter. I pushed in past Swede. The two boys came to meet me with their clenched fists. I felt Swede big behind me.

  Before they could gather their wits and swing into action I started to talk. I hit them with every hunch I had and every word I could remember. No names and a lot of guesses. It’s an old police method.

  ‘He came back and found that Stettin had tagged the car, right? After he killed Tani Jones he came back and found that Jo-Jo had moved the car; it was tagged, and he went out and got the summons book from Stettin. Then he came after Jo-Jo. Sure, I can see how scared you’d all be. I would be, with him after me. I’d be terrified. A man like that, big enough to try to buck even Pappas? Caught in the middle…’

  No names, just ‘he’, and it sounds l
ike you know more than you do. If the other man is confused, scared, he will usually slip. The other man knows, he has the secret inside his mind, and all at once under the barrage of words he assumes that you too know. It slips out. He tries to defend himself, and out it comes. I’ve used it a hundred times in divorce cases. A guy thinks his wife knows, and I make him think that; and out it comes.

  ‘… There he was cheating on Pappas, making a big play for Andy’s girl friend. Then, bang-bang, he kills her. Man, I mean, he’s got trouble. But he can get away all right. Then he gets to the car — and it’s been tagged. People know he’s on the block. Jo-Jo knows he’s on the block. He had to try to kill Jo-Jo! Jo-Jo saw him! What else could he do but try to get Jo-Jo?’

  Swede Olsen shook his head at me. The two sons looked like death. I suppose it was death they were thinking about. Even Magda-the-rock blinked those washed-out eyes and seemed hypnotized as I talked. You see, they knew. Like the guilty husband or wife in a divorce mess, they knew and they thought I knew. They thought, I made them think, that I knew more than I did. But I did not have it quite right, you see? They were sure now that I knew too much, but I had it a little wrong. They had to explain to me where I was wrong, why it was not as bad as I made it seem. At least the weakest link did, and that was Swede. Swede and his big boys. Swede was up to his eyes in guilt, and that is the real trap. Swede had been living with it too long. He had to explain how I had it wrong.

  ‘No, he don’t hurt Jo-Jo,’ Swede said, insisted. ‘He won’t never hurt Jo-Jo. Jo-Jo don’t see nothing, and he ain’t gonna say nothing, see? Okay, he got the lousy ticket, only he ain’t gonna talk. Jake he knows it’s okay.’