Act of Fear

by Michael Collins

  I put on my suit coat and went to the door. My hand was sweating. But I opened the door. I went down the back stairs, out the back way, and across back yards and through alleys for two blocks before I risked hailing a cruising cab. I told the cabbie to take me to Newark Airport. At Newark I got a seat on the first jet out – a non-scheduled carrier I knew that had a flight going out at 6 a.m. for Miami that would get me a good connection to Spanish Beach. It was really a cargo line, but I knew the boys. At least it would be a safe flight.

  I had a long wait, and the airport was as safe as anywhere. I used the telephone in the non-scheduled office to call Captain Gazzo. For once the captain was out of his office. I left an anonymous tip that Jo-Jo Olsen might be in Spanish Beach, Florida. That was all. The captain would figure it out, and until I was under police protection I was not about to spill my guts in the open and tip Jake Roth. Jake had ways of finding out what the police knew. (I don’t think there has ever been a police force without someone who could be bought at a price, and I don’t expect that there ever will be.)

  I waited for the dawn in a dark corner of the non – scheduled hangar. I smoked and watched the men at work loading the freight. I felt pretty set up with myself. I was being brave as hell. An honest detective and a good citizen.

  Chapter 16

  Spanish Beach was hot. A loud town, crowded now because the cars were racing. My connection had been good at Miami, and we came into Spanish Beach on time. I took a taxi straight to the speedway.

  I remember when Spanish Beach was a sleepy town where they spoke more Portuguese than English and everyone fished for sponges from boats with eyes painted on their bows. Now it was too big and loud and fast. It was all speedway and fast cars, like Riverside, California, and Daytona Beach.

  At the speedway the cars were practising out on the brick track, and the administration offices were open. From the letter Anna had received I was sure Jo-Jo was around the track in some small job. He was smart enough to stay away from the cars themselves. At least I hoped he was.

  I found the personnel office and went inside. A man bent over papers behind a counter. There were tables. The busy man did not look up when he heard me.

  ‘Nothing but selling programmes,’ the man said. ‘If that suits you, take a form and fill it out all the way.’

  He was a small man with greying hair and a bald spot he carefully covered by brushing the hair sideways on – top of his skull. Ink stained his hands. He wore no coat, and his shirt was plastered to his back already.

  ‘I’m looking for a man,’ I said.

  He looked up at that. He did not move, he just looked.

  ‘A young guy,’ I said. ‘Blond, tall, about nineteen.’

  He put down his pen. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  I showed him my credentials. He stood up then and came to look at them. He was only mildly impressed. He sniffed. He looked at my missing arm and at my face.

  ‘I lost it on Iwo Jima,’ I told him. ‘Knocked out three Jap machine-gun nests. I’m a real detective.’

  ‘Private,’ he said. ‘I don’t have to tell you anything. Private cop and New York at that. Three Jap nests? All alone?’

  ‘I had help,’ I said. ‘How about my friend? You probably took him on for some job last Saturday or Monday.’

  ‘All I took on all week was programme kids.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘You want to save the life of a programme boy?’

  He laughed. ‘Them? Between you and me, mister, they ain’t worth saving. Punks, all of them. They take the job so they can watch the races. Race bums. Half the time they look at the races ‘n don’t sell a programme. The customers got to beg.’

  The man was small and red and he had a pet peeve. So many people have a pet peeve. Something or someone or some group they have to hate. It gives them something to do in the world. It gives a shape to their lives.

  ‘Talk to me and I’ll take one off your hands,’ I said. ‘The name is Olsen, but he’s probably not using his right name. Tall, blond, not bad-looking. No marks. He likes motors. You would probably have hired him around last Monday, like I said.’

  The man shrugged. ‘You just described maybe half of them. They come, they go. If they work a week they’re veterans. You got a picture?’

  I produced the picture Pete had given me. It hadn’t improved any as a likeness of Jo-Jo. Besides, he would have done something to change his appearance a little. The man confirmed my opinion.

  ‘Some picture,’ the man said. ‘It looks like most of them.’ And the man looked hard at me. ‘What’s so important about this Olsen anyway?’

  My stomach went down on an elevator about a hundred feet.

  ‘Someone else was here?’ I said.

  ‘It’s my day,’ he said.

  ‘When? How many of them? What did they look like? What did you tell them?’

  ‘You got a lot of questions, mister.’

  I laid a twenty on the counter. It hurt. The small man scooped it up. My war record and the twenty made him my friend.

  ‘There were two of them. They left maybe an hour ago, no more than that,’ and he went on to give me a pretty fair description of my two shadows. The same two who had certainly beaten Petey and probably killed Schmidt.

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘What I’m telling you. I got no Olsen. The description fits about ten of the punks. Your picture don’t change much. I can give you a list. The rest is up to you.’

  ‘Did you give them a list?’

  ‘Sure, they paid too,’ he said, and then he seemed to stop and think. ‘For the war record I’ll do you a favour. I figure you ain’t so far back of them.’

  ‘How so?’ I said.

  ‘Well, I heard one of them telling the other that they should have come to the speedway first instead of wasting time asking people all over town and out in Flamingo.’

  ‘Flamingo?’

  ‘It’s a small town just outside city limits. They got a dirt motorcycle track gives us some competition.’

  ‘How do you figure that gives me some time?’ I asked.

  ‘Hold your horses,’ the small man said. ‘When the first one said that about wasting time, the second one said they was just following the “Big Man’s” orders. Then the other one said they better get to a phone and get the Big Man in from Flamingo quick. And the second one said they oughta start down the list right off, but the first one said no they better wait.’

  I did not have to guess who the Big Man was. But it gave me a hope.

  ‘Give me the list,’ I said.

  I did not know if Jo-Jo was even one of the programme boys at all, but it was all I had to go on. At least, it seemed to be all Roth’s boys had to go on, too. They had done me one favour anyway – they had covered the motorcycle track out in Flamingo and had probably checked out all the hotels and flops in town, with negative results. From what the small man said, it seemed like the two hoods had been in Spanish Beach before me. How? Maybe they had got Anna’s letter, too, but I did not think so. They had not come to the speedway first. I remembered that Magda Olsen had not been able to get in touch with Roth, and that my two shadows had not tailed me last night. It looked very much like they had learned about Spanish Beach last night before I did. Only they had learned less than I had from Anna’s letter, and something had sent them out to Flamingo. Whatever had done that I didn’t know, but it gave me a chance.

  ‘Here you go,’ the small man said.

  The list he gave me contained only eight names.

  ‘I gave the other guys ten, only the picture you got rules out two of them,’ the man said.

  It gave me another edge. Yes it did!

  They had almost an hour’s start. It wouldn’t do Jo-Jo much good if I got to him second. It wouldn’t do me any good if it was a dead heat. If they got there first there would be some hope, because Jo-Jo would probably be on the alert. Maybe he could hold out or get away. But
it was not something I could count on. No matter how I sliced it, I had to reach Jo-Jo before the two hoods. From the rest of what the small man had told me about the conversation of the two hoods, I might have a chance if they waited too long. If one of the names was really Jo-Jo at all.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said to the small man.

  The man only shrugged again. He went back to his work and I went out into the Florida sun. I found a shady place, sat down, lighted a cigarette, and began to study that list of names. It wasn’t going to do me any good to just start running. If the first name the two hoods checked was Jo-Jo, he was probably dead already. Or he had run again, and I’d have to go back and start over. If the two hoods were working from the wrong end of the list, that wouldn’t do me any good either unless I knew which end they had started from, and that I couldn’t know. No, if I just started out from one end of the list or the other, it was pure chance who found him first. What I needed was a short cut. I needed a good, gold-plated hunch that would take me right to Jo-Jo the first time.

  I read the list aloud: Diego Juarez, George Hanner, Max Jones, Ted John, Andy Di Sica, Dan Black, Mario Tucci, Tom Addams. It was a nice list. It touched almost all bases. It could have been the United Nations or an East New York street gang. I smoked and laid the list in my lap and stared out into the blue space of Florida.

  An alias is an interesting thing. The experts will tell you that a man can’t think up an alias that won’t give him away if you know enough about him. A man, they say, can’t have something inside his head that did not start somewhere in his life. The alias will point to some part of his life if you just know enough about his life. Sometimes you have to know a lot about him, and sometimes very little. That depends on how smart he is, or how worried. Most small-time crooks will take aliases that are so simple anyone can spot them – usually just another variation of the real name, or one with at least the same initials. Nick-names are the same. If your name happens to be Bonnaro and you work around the docks or have maybe a big nose, you become ‘Bananas’. Or if your name is Tucci, and you’re dark and maybe have a black moustache, you become The Turk. Those are easy, but the experts say that if you know enough you can spot an alias every time. No man can invent an alias that is not connected to his life at some point.

  I believed this. I just hoped the experts were right, and that I knew enough about Jo-Jo. I went down that list one name at a time.

  Diego Juarez. It rang no bell, and it was too unusual. The small man had given me a list of tall, Nordic boys. If a boy had the name of Diego Juarez and he was tall and Nordic, it had to be his real name, or it was his appearance that had been changed, not his name.

  Max Jones and Ted John were out. They did not connect in my mind, and they were too common, they sounded phony. Jo-Jo was a bright boy.

  Andy Di Sica and Mario Tucci were both possibilities. There are a lot of Italians in Chelsea, and in the rackets where Jo-Jo had grown up. And Jo-Jo dreamed of the name Ferrari. Jo-Jo thought a lot of Italy. They were possibles.

  Tom Addams? I didn’t believe it. I heard no connection.

  George Hanner. It was a good chance. It had the ring of a nice ordinary name, but one that no one had ever had. It sounded like some writer had made it up. And Hanner had a vague sound like Honda – the name of a motorcycle! I looked for quite a time at George Hanner. Then I looked at Dan Black. The bell rang. The bell clanged like an alarm. Dan Black. Nice, common, and simple, and it rang the big bell. I remembered about the Vikings. Jenny Rukowski had told me about Jo-Jo and the Vikings. Cecil Rhys-Smith had talked about Jo-Jo and the Vikings. Jo-Jo was obsessed by the Vikings. Jo-Jo knew all about them. He knew about their famous kings. I heard the list of names that Rhys-Smith had rolled off his tongue for me. The great Vikings. And one had been Halfdan the Black! You see? Halfdan the Black? Dan Black?

  Was I right? How could I know until I tried? I had to make a start somewhere. I needed some luck. Don’t smile. No. Luck; I don’t care what you call it, how you explain it, how you think it operates psychologically. It is part of life. So many cases I’ve had, so many things in life, turn on luck, fortune, chance, accident, circumstances beyond your control. Unless you believe in some force that watches over us all and determines what will happen to us. An unseen force that can, after all, be called luck as well as anything else. I needed luck that my hunch was right about Dan Black. I needed luck that the others had not reached Dan Black yet. I would need luck to go against the two shadows, amateurs or not; aware that I was around or not. I needed luck that I would find Dan Black, alias, hopefully, Jo-Jo Olsen, at home when I got there.

  I had been in a taxi all the time I was thinking about the luck I needed. I got some luck right away – the driver took me only about five blocks to a shabby motel. It was the address of Dan Black. A very cheap motel, and that was promising. An obscure transient motel, where the cabins were really shacks and the john was outside in a big central building with the showers. The driveway and courtyard were dirt. It was set back off the road, and it did not look like many cars stopped there.

  I had my next luck – Dan Black was at home. The manager, a fat man uninterested in Dan Black or me or anything but the heat and his beer, said that Black was in Cabin Three. I went to Cabin Three. I was wary. It was the next to the last cabin in the row away from the road. The luck continued. There was no cover in front of the cabin and no one in sight. I circled and found no cover behind the cabin until some thick bushes about thirty feet back. Everything seemed normal. I had made it first.

  That was all good luck. I got one more stroke of good luck. I knocked, and Dan Black opened the door, and I knew that I had found Jo-Jo Olsen. I felt like Stanley. I felt I had crossed Africa and Asia combined to reach him. He made no attempt to hide the fact that he was Jo-Jo Olsen.

  ‘Hello, Jo-Jo,’ I said. ‘Pete Vitanza sent me. I’m Dan Fortune.’

  ‘Yeh,’ Dan Black, alias Jo-Jo Olsen, said. ‘Inside. Fast!’

  I stepped in. I had to step in. My good luck seemed to have run out. The big bad luck was in Jo-Jo Olsen’s hand. A large .45 calibre automatic. The safety was off. Jo-Jo held it as if he knew how to use it, and it was aimed at my heart.

  It had never occurred to me that Jo-Jo Olsen might not want to be rescued.

  Chapter 17

  He had darkened his hair, cut it short instead of long as it was in the picture, put on dark glasses, and half-grown, half-pasted a dark moustache. But he was Jo-Jo.

  ‘I came down to help,’ I said.

  His clothes were cheap and new, but clean. Work clothes. There was a bright look to his eyes, and his voice was deep and pleasant. His hands did not shake on the automatic. There was a second pistol on his bureau. But his eyes were not hard, they were only determined.

  ‘Who asked you to help, Fortune?’ he asked quietly. ‘Who asked Petey? I told him to forget it.’

  I did not answer because I had no answer. Who had asked me to butt in? Who had ever asked Jo-Jo what he wanted?

  ‘How’d you find me so easy?’ Jo-Jo said.

  ‘Who said it was easy?’ I said.

  He was seated on the single brass bed in that shabby room. I was in a broken-down wicker armchair. There was only the one room with two windows in the front wall and one window in the back wall, a curtained cooking area, and two shallow closets. The walls were paper thin. I could hear every sound in the next cabins and outside. I listened. Roth’s men could not be far behind me. It all depended on which end of the list they had started with.

  ‘My friend Pete,’ Jo-Jo said. ‘That’s how you found me.’

  ‘Your sister told me,’ I said. ‘She cares about you.’

  ‘Who asked her?’

  ‘They beat up Pete and killed old Schmidt,’ I said.

  ‘Pete? Schmidt?’ The automatic wavered. ‘Old Schmidt?’

  ‘They killed him trying to find you.’

  The automatic steadied. ‘How do I know that, Fortune?’

  ‘Schmidt’s dead. Can y
ou think of a reason? Pete’s in the hospital. Look at my face.’

  ‘A lot of guys’re dead. How do I know who killed Schmidt, or beat you and Pete?’

  ‘I know who beat me,’ I said, ‘I know Jake Roth when I see him. I’ve got a hunch we’ll both be seeing him pretty soon.’

  ‘You’re a liar. You’re working for the cops.’

  The way he said, ‘You’re working for the cops.’ It was not the sound of the Jo-Jo Olsen I had come to know. Maybe, under pressure, we all revert to what is easy, to what we have rejected in our lives. The way a gentle man will often become the most violent when violence is forced on him. As if the thing rejected has been lurking all the time and waiting for its chance to burst out when our painfully constructed rational defences are down. Jo-Jo was being a hard boy. Tough and cold and bitter. I didn’t blame him much, but I had to reach him.

  ‘Maybe I’ve got the wrong Jo-Jo Olsen,’ I said. ‘My Olsen had ambitions, plans. Look at you. Hiding out like any punk. Working for Jake Roth. Sure, that’s what it adds up to, kid. Unless you’re trying to save your own skin.’

  ‘You want me to cry now or later?’

  ‘Maybe you killed Nancy Driscoll after all,’ I said, pushed. ‘Was that the first step on the way down? No, the second step. The first step was doing a rabbit to help Jake Roth.’

  ‘Nancy?’

  It had hit him. The automatic wavered again. I pressed him.

  ‘Tell me you didn’t know?’

  He blinked those bright blue eyes. ‘Nancy? Dead?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Maybe they killed her, too. Roth and his boys killed her trying to find you. How many more do you want?’