Act of Fear df-1 Read online

  She stood up and looked at her watch. ‘I have work, I’m sorry.’

  I left. I had learned nothing that harmed Jo-Jo Olsen, and nothing that helped him, unless you counted the fact that it did not sound like there was a motive for Jo-Jo. The girl had been after him. Gazzo had not indicated that the girl had been pregnant. It was the kind of killing where the motive and the killer would be discovered at the same time. Sooner or later, one of the men Nancy Driscoll had known would be found without an alibi, with motive and opportunity, and he would be the man. It would take only time. Such cases were the commonplace of police work. Somewhere in the city, or in some other city by this time, a man sweated in a bar and tried to think he would not be caught and tried to remember why he had lost his head and killed a woman he thought he was in love with. He had not been caught yet only because it was amazing how little any of us really know of the lives of our friends when they are not with us. Time, that was all, and the slow routine of the police.

  Unless this was one of those one-in-a-thousand killings that was not simple, that tied in with more and bigger crime.

  On the chance, I would try Walsh again.

  I walked from Park Avenue west to the office of the Trafalgar Travel Bureau. Walsh was not glad to see me. He could tell by my face that I knew more than when I had been in his office this morning. He was nervous. He hurried me into his office as if he felt that all the women in his office were watching him. They were. I guessed that he had had a shot at most of them who he thought would look good in a nightgown and that he knew they all knew about Nancy Driscoll. He was a confused man. He was proud of his conquest of Nancy Driscoll, but terrified of discovery by the wrong people. A nervous lover can be dangerous.

  ‘I’m sorry about calling the police, Mr Fortune, but…’ Walsh began. He was rubbing his bicep.

  ‘You thought I was a killer,’ I said. ‘Yes, you did I What happened, Walsh, was she going to blow the whistle?’

  Under his tan Walsh was ashen. ‘No! She… she loved me.’

  ‘You don’t believe that,’ I said. ‘She was bored, she wanted a sugar-baby. How much did she cost you a month?’

  Walsh smirked at me. He rubbed at his bald spot. ‘You’re way off, Fortune.’

  I noted the disappearance of the ‘mister’. Walsh was being man-to-man, virile.

  ‘All she wanted was me. I’m pretty good, if you want to know.’

  ‘I’ll dream about you,’ I said.

  He flushed under that fine tan, but his eyes snapped as if in memory of his own prowess. That was what pleased him, his own prowess, not the pleasure of a woman. He was probably pretty good, ego-maniacs often are.

  ‘I gave her what she wanted, and it wasn’t money.’

  ‘You gave her what she wanted plus money, if I know women and your kind, Walsh,’ I said.

  He flexed his muscles. ‘I gave her some stuff. Why not?’

  ‘Ask your wife.’

  Walsh leaned forward. ‘Leave her out.’

  ‘What happened? Did Nancy tell you she was running off with Joe?’

  ‘Joe?’

  ‘The guy she wanted to marry.’

  ‘Him? Not unless he changed his mind. Him and his racing cars. Jesus! Can you imagine a guy who’d prefer a motor to the action Nancy could give? These kids, Jesus! She told me once that all they talked about when they came up to her place was racing.’ He smirked again. ‘I didn’t talk about racing.’

  ‘You knew Jo-Jo?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Joseph, her boyfriend.’

  ‘I knew of him, Fortune, no more. Do you think he killed her? Maybe he found out about me and couldn’t take it after all.’

  It was a good shot. The thought had occurred to me more than once by now. It had, of course, also occurred to Gazzo. It happened; men are like that. It’s called dog in the manger, and it’s as good a reason for a beating as any; and maybe Walsh was so good in bed the Driscoll girl had been hooked on him. And maybe Jo-Jo had been on the run already and, with his dreams shattered, had changed his mind and tried to take Nancy with him. A sudden shift of power can destroy a man. But I did not want Walsh to get the impression that he had shaken my ideas.

  ‘I think you killed her,’ I said.

  I thought he was going to come over the desk. I braced and looked for a weapon. But he changed his mind and sat back and just watched me.

  ‘Did your wife worry you?’ I said. ‘Did Nancy get ideas?’

  ‘The police don’t think I killed her.’

  ‘They can change their mind.’

  ‘Not with my alibi.’

  ‘You’ve got no alibi. Anyone can turn a boat in the other direction.’

  ‘You have to prove it.’

  ‘I may try,’ I said. ‘I may do a little snooping around. I may even do a lot of snooping.’

  Now he was scared, really scared, but it was not of what I might find.

  He leaned at me. ‘You stay away from me! You hear? I don’t want you around my life! I don’t want…’

  ‘I don’t care what you want, Walsh,’ I said.

  He sweated in that good cool office with its big desk and four windows. He changed his tactics from bluster to man-to-man comradeship. ‘Come on, Fortune, give me a break. If my wife… my kids

  …’

  What he was afraid of was his wife finding out — now. I mean, after all, why get caught now that he couldn’t get any use out of Nancy Driscoll?

  ‘I don’t care about you, Walsh,’ I said. ‘How about Nancy?’

  He wiped at his face with a Kleenex from a monogrammed leather box. I don’t know anything. I called her on the Saturday. All right, I didn’t tell the police that. Why should I? I’m not involved really, and if my wife…’

  ‘You called her,’ I said.

  ‘She had this man with her. She was mad, said he was drunk, a rotten drunk kid. She said all men were cheats. This guy was there, you know? I mean, listen, Fortune, give me a break. Lay off my wife, my home. I mean… please?’

  I got out of there. Maybe he killed her, and maybe not. (I was sure he had not killed her. His story checked the Brandt girl’s story.) But if he had done it, Gazzo would nail him. It looked like Gazzo was playing it soft, maybe to lull Walsh, or maybe to spare three kids who had hurt no one yet. But if Jo-Jo did not pay off, Walsh was in for a bad time. Walsh did not have a rosy future. That did not make me sad.

  I needed something clean. There was only Marty. I called her from the lobby of the building. She was at home. When I heard her voice I had to see her. I had to. I had not seen my shadows all day. Maybe I could chance it. I had to see her if I died for it.

  Which is an easy thing to say.

  Chapter 12

  ‘You can’t catch what you can’t see,’ I said. ‘That’s called philosophy. I got that from the manager of some baseball team. His centrefielder had just dropped two fly balls.’

  Marty was in her street clothes now. The apartment was cool with her air-conditioning. The bedroom was dark, the shades drawn over the closed windows and the night outside. I had drawn the shades partly out of propriety and partly in case my two shadows made a return appearance. So far they had not. The last time I had looked, the street had held no menace. I had not looked for some time, and I had finished my third beer while Marty dressed. She does not hide when she dresses or undresses. She knows that there is beauty in the simple fact of a proud and matter-of-course nakedness. She understands that it is important that there be as few hidden and private corners between a man and a woman as possible. It must be as complete and simple as possible, and after the love it is important to lie side by side and smoke, to talk easily, to finally get up and dress quietly together.

  Now I had my fourth beer and lay dressed on the bed while she sat in the bedroom chair. It was almost time for her to leave for work.

  ‘It’s easier to face something when you know what it is,’ Marty said.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘its not easier at all, but it’s bett
er. If I knew what it was I’d probably be more scared than I am, but I’d feel better about it.’

  ‘It’s a mess, baby,’ she agreed. She twirled her martini on the rocks with her finger. She licked the finger thoughtfully. ‘All you really know is that a lot of people have been knocked around, Jo-Jo Olsen has vanished, and someone is looking for him besides you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I know a lot.’

  She was right, of course. That was all I really knew. I had a lot of guesses and a lot of possible connections, but what she had summed up was all that I really knew. Except that my client was in hospital and that for fifty bucks I had a good chance of joining him and that I could not get out of it now with any self-respect. Not with my client almost beaten to death. I could not even get out of it without self-respect. I thought of nicer things.

  Marty was wearing a slim grey jersey skirt that curved well and had those folds across the belly that a woman with hips but no belly always has in her skirt. She wore a black turtleneck silk jersey top without jewellery and a grey jersey jacket like the coat of a man’s suit but tailored for a woman. On the jacket she wore a silver, star-shaped abstract pin I had given her. Her long suede coat was over the chair. Most of her clothes are tailored and stylish.

  When she had first come to New York to be an actress she had dressed casually; she really cared little for clothes. But casual clothes got more stares these days, and she lived all night with stares since taking the job in the girl-show at Monte’s Kat Klub. (She had had to face the truth that it was not going to be easy to become an actress.) Most of her clothes covered her from knee to throat for the same reason. She favoured high turtle-necks. She said that she could not stand to be exposed even an inch below her throat when she came off the stage, where her working clothes might have had trouble covering a three-year-old midget.

  ‘You can’t forget it? Walk away?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘The boy?’

  ‘Partly,’ I said. ‘I can’t leave a client who’s got more bandages than hair. It isn’t done.’

  ‘Do you think Jo-Jo killed this Driscoll girl?’

  ‘No, but Gazzo does,’ I said. ‘No, Gazzo doesn’t think that either. Gazzo doesn’t think, he learns. He’s a good cop. He’ll find Jo-Jo before he thinks about guilt.’

  ‘If anyone finds Jo-Jo,’ Marty said.

  ‘They’re still looking,’ I said. I drank my beer. ‘What I don’t figure is Stettin. How does he fit in? They took it all, but what did they want? The gun? The billy? The wallet? What?’

  ‘Maybe just time,’ Marty said. ‘Maybe whoever did it is just cautious and wanted Stettin out of the way for a time.’

  ‘She’s young, Marty, but she thinks. She is too young for me, really, and I often ask myself why. I mean, why do I want a woman so young? All right, there is a normal reason — she’s nubile as hell. But there is more. We worship the young in this country, and a lot of the world has begun to follow us. But what we worship isn’t really the young, or even being young. It’s youth — the hope and innocence and immortality of youth. We want to be young not because it is physically good to be young and virile, but because to be young is to not yet know that the world is transient, incomplete, and not often what we want it to be. You cease to be young that first instant when you know that nothing is complete and that nothing can last forever ‘ not even your own dreams and desires. To be young is to see the world through eyes that think that all is possible. And one way to feel young is to have a woman twenty years younger, more or less. Marty is my illusion of youth, and she’s a smart girl.

  ‘All right, someone wanted Stettin out of the way,’ I said. ‘For what? Just to knock over one apartment? To make a getaway? In the first place the burglary took place before the mugging. The getaway theory is out, Stettin saw nothing. He doesn’t know why he was hit.’

  ‘Baby, it could all be coincidence,’ Marty said. ‘All coincidence, or part coincidence. Maybe Stettin is the piece that doesn’t fit. The patrolman isn’t involved. Your Jo-Jo just saw the burglar and can place him on the scene of Tani’s murder. Or maybe all Jo-Jo saw was who mugged the policeman, and the murder isn’t part of it. Either murder.’ She chewed her fingernail. ‘What I don’t understand, Dan, is something else. Those two men who are following you. I mean, are they Pappas’ men, and if they are, why does he warn you and have you chased? They’re not just tailing you, honey, they’re after you, and Pappas could talk to you any time.’

  I let her analyse. ‘So?’

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘who are the two men? Who would send men out against Pappas? I mean, if they aren’t Pappas’ men and they are after this Jo-Jo, then they must be out to cover up for the killer of Tani, and that means they are against Pappas. Who works against Pappas?’

  As I said, Marty could think. Who, in our local underworld, worked against Andy Pappas? It was one of my very best unanswered questions.

  ‘Maybe Olsen hired them without Andy knowing it just to make sure I laid off,’ I said. ‘Maybe they don’t know they’re bucking Pappas.’

  Marty sighed, finished her martini. ‘Maybe, maybe, and maybe. Honey, you know less than the CIA knew about Cuba before the Bay of Pigs. Maybe you’re in the wrong business. They solve a case a lot faster on television.’

  ‘In one hour flat, less time for the commercials,’ I said. ‘They’re smart, and the criminals are co-operative. I’ve got no sponsor buying prime time. Maybe I’ll never solve it.’

  ‘If you don’t solve it, baby, you won’t be fit for human company. I know you. Your pride’ll be hurt.’

  ‘Right now I’d settle for hurt pride. They won’t let me.’

  ‘Think well then. I’ve got to go take my clothes off.’

  She put on her suede coat, kissed me, and left. I sat on the bed and watched her go. Then I got up and went to the window. I opened the edge of the shades a crack. My eyes scanned the night street. I saw nothing but the usual crowd of a Friday night. There were no shadows lurking in the doorways. I watched Marty come out of the building below and cross the street.

  She strode out like a racehorse, her suede coat open and swinging in the hot night. People, men and boys, looked at her, but she looked at no one. (In case you are wondering about that suede coat on a hot summer night, it’s not a mistake. The Kat Klub isn’t far from Marty’s place, the girls often run out for a quiet drink, coffee, or hamburger between shows — who can afford Monte’s prices — and like to be covered. Besides, there is always the off-chance of a raid, and the girls have a coat all the time just in case they have to ride the wagon.) I watched her turn the corner and disappear. I felt a sudden sense of loss. I always do. That is what love means; that you feel a loss every time you see her vanish from your sight.

  I went back to the bed but I felt restless. The truth was that I was tired, but that I knew I should be working on something. Or perhaps the real truth was that I was comfortable here, I felt safe here, and I did not want to leave to go out where there was danger and uncertainty. I had that inertia that comes when you can’t think of anything to do that you feel optimistic about. I did not care if I never heard of Jo-Jo Olsen again. I could think of nothing that would be worth doing, that gave me a reason to think that I would learn anything important. Which was also not true.

  I had not really talked it out with old Schmidt before Petey was beaten and I went to the hospital. Schmidt had been on Water Street all the day last Thursday, he might have seen something he didn’t even remember. Then there was Petey. He should be able to talk a little by now. I could ask better questions now, especially about the Driscoll girl.

  There was the Driscoll girl’s building. Someone might have heard something that would mean more to me than to the police. And there were her other men. There was a great deal I could do. Too much. There is a kind of paralysis that comes when there seems to be too much to get done.

  I got up and went out into the kitchen for another beer. Then I turned on the televisi
on and sat in Marty’s best easy chair. I told myself that I would think while I watched TV. By the end of the latest super-spy show I had still not begun to think. I liked the TV show. It was so intricately simple, so complex and yet childish. All fuss and feathers around the most simple of concepts — the chase; the Keystone Kops. A beautiful comic-book world where the utterly impossible has such a real surface and where every possible terror is looked at, but there are no surprises.

  After the show ended I had no chance to think.

  I had left my chair to look again out the window. The street was clear. Nothing but Friday night revellers beginning to build up steam as midnight approached and the shank of the night was at hand. Then I heard the noise in the hallway outside the door.

  Footsteps walked lightly in the corridor, but with no attempt to be silent. Two men from the sound of the steps. Then they stopped — outside the door of Marty’s apartment. I saw the shadows of their feet beneath the door from where I stood silent in the dim apartment. The blue-white light of the TV was behind me. I looked around for a weapon.

  The doorbell buzzed.

  I stood there and looked at the door. The doorbell buzzed again, nice and polite but a little more insistently. Somehow I did not think the two unknown men who had been watching me would have rung the doorbell. But I waited for the third ring, prolonged this time, and then the voice.

  ‘Open it up, Fortune!’

  A voice I knew, but for a moment I did not place it. It was a familiar voice, but not that familiar.

  ‘Come on, buddy boy, we know you’re in there.’

  I got it. Jake Roth. It was the voice of Andy Pappas’ best gun. I went to the door and opened it. Even if I had been worried about Roth, I would have opened the door. Roth would have kicked it in within seconds anyway. I saw that the tall, skinny killer was not alone. He had Max Bagnio with him, a little apart and a step or two behind to Roth’s right with a clear view of the door. Little Max had his hands in his suit coat pockets. Roth eyed me up and down with those snake eyes. His long neck angled forward as he made a quick survey of the room behind me.