Act of Fear Read online

  Despite the morning hour and the heat, Gazzo’s office was dim behind drawn shades. Gazzo says that the sun does not fit with his work. I could tell by the size of his grey eyes that he had not slept well again. There are those who say that the captain never sleeps at all, that he has no bed, that he does not even really have a home. These people say that Gazzo files himself in his own office when other people sleep. But I know that Gazzo has insomnia. He does not hide this. He says that insomnia is the wound-stripe of the cop, the price you pay. He says it just proves that he is human after all.

  This morning he waved me to a seat at once. It was an order, not an offer. He wasted no time on preliminaries.

  ‘Before you go into the act about your rights, protecting your client, and all that, I’ll give it to you. I know you’re looking for a Jo-Jo Olsen. You think he’s missing. He works around Water Street. My birds sang that much. Now you’ll tell me who, what, when, where, why, and how. Okay?’

  That is Gazzo’s trademark: he never uses one word when ten will do. He’s been called Captain Mouth and Preacher Gazzo, and the word is that when Gazzo starts talking you’re dead. They say that Gazzo makes men talk who would have held out under a week of rubber hoses.

  ‘Joseph “Jo-Jo” Olsen,’ I said. I never hold out unless I have to protect myself. I never know when I might need the cops.

  ‘Olsen works on Water Street at Schmidt’s Garage,’ I said. ‘He seems to be missing since last Friday morning. I’m trying to find out why and where. A kid friend of his hired me. One Pete Vitanza. So far I haven’t found a hair of Olsen.’

  ‘Joseph Olsen,’ Gazzo said. He was hearing the name. I could see him run it through the thirty years of police work that was all that his brain contained now. The computer of his mind checked the name against the parade of hoods, con men, hustlers, killers, wife-beaters, muggers, and practitioners of every other crime in the book he had come to know in the thirty years. A card clicked out. ‘Any part of Swede Olsen?’

  ‘Son,’ I said. ‘Swede is hiding him.’

  I told him about Olsen’s inefficient attempt to beat my brains out last night and a certain amount of my interview with the Olsens. I did not tell him about the gun I had used, and I did not mention my impression that the Olsens had trouble of their own. I also left out the two shadows under Marty’s window. Gazzo seemed interested in what I told him, but with the captain you can never tell. I’ve known him for twenty-five years, and I don’t know if he likes me or hates me. With Gazzo it does not matter. He does his job, friend or foe.

  Gazzo rubbed the grey stubble of his chin. ‘And the kid works at Schmidt’s Garage?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘He was there last Thursday, but gone on Friday?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Gazzo said. ‘You have nothing yet on why he ran or where?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Now tell me what you’ve got, Captain. You didn’t drag me down about some unknown kid. What don’t I know? I know about Patrolman Stettin. Is there more?’

  Gazzo smiled. ‘I thought you gave up on the world, Dan.’

  ‘I try, but it hangs around,’ I said. ‘What’s up, Captain?’

  Gazzo pressed a button. A policewoman came in. Gazzo seemed surprised to see her. I know that she has been in Gazzo’s office for years. He still looks at her face to see if she needs a shave. He stares at her blue skirt as if sure that something is wrong. Change comes slow in the dim world of Homicide.

  ‘Jones file, er, Sergeant,’ the captain said.

  Gazzo is resigned to knowing and meeting every perversion and horror man can do to man, but he can’t get used to a female sergeant. When she returned he took the file without a smile.

  ‘Tani Jones, not her right name,’ Gazzo read from the file. ‘Real name: Grace Ann Mertz. Born: Green River, Wyoming. Parents still there. Caucasian; twenty-two years old; blonde; five-foot-eight; 132 pounds. Model and chorus girl. Worked at The Blue Cellar. A tourist club on Third Street.’

  Gazzo looked up at me. ‘Your sparrow works in one of the tourist clubs, right?’

  ‘Monte’s Kat Klub.’

  ‘She know a Tani Jones?’

  ‘Not that I know. When Marty puts her clothes back on she forgets the clubs. When we talk shop, it’s acting. Real acting.’

  ‘Maybe this time?’ Gazzo said. ‘There must have been talk.’

  ‘She doesn’t socialize with the club girls, Captain. She spends her time, all she can, with the off-Broadway people,’ I explained. ‘What is it? Dead? Killed? Some time last Thursday or Friday?’

  It was a simple guess. Gazzo is Homicide. He was interested in a boy who was on Water Street on Thursday and gone on Friday.

  ‘Thursday afternoon,’ Gazzo said. He went on reading his file. ‘Lived alone in a four-room luxury apartment in a non-doorman building on Doyle Street. Self-service elevator. Body found Friday morning by maid who comes in twice a week. Death from single gunshot wound in the head, close range. Gun was a .38 calibre, probably a small belt gun according to ballistics. The place had been cleaned out. A lot of jewellery was gone. Worth maybe fifteen thousand dollars appraised value. There was an insurance list of the jewellery. Her boyfriend also confirmed what was gone and that nothing else had been touched.’

  The captain watched me the whole time he read. I could not figure why. Unless he thought I knew more than I did. What could I know? All right, I got the picture now: Doyle Street was the next block to Water Street. But, as I said before, we get fifty violent crimes a day on the West Side, and a robbery killing doesn’t rate more than a couple of inches in most papers except the Daily News. I don’t read the News. I read the crime news in the better papers, sure, but I’ve got my own interests, and if I’m not hired for a job, why would I connect a two-bit killing on Doyle Street with a cop mugging on Water Street? I mean, Doyle is a long street.

  ‘I suppose the building on Doyle backs towards Water Street?’ I said. ‘Same crosstown block as Schmidt’s Garage on Water?’

  ‘With an alley on the side that opens into both streets,’ Gazzo said.

  I thought about the city. Most cities have slums and middle-class areas all properly separated. The rivers make Manhattan special. Manhattan is an island, and there is little space to move in. The result is that the city moves in circles from good to bad and back to good again. You end up with a city in constant flux; with tenements, businesses, private houses, small factories, and luxury buildings all mixed together. And new buildings on polyglot streets are prime targets for burglars.

  ‘She caught a burglar in the act?’ I said.

  ‘That’s the way it reads,’ Gazzo said. ‘Door was locked and on the chain. The maid had to go to the back entrance. The back door was open, the lock cracked. The back door opens into a service stairway that goes down to the alley and a basement garage. The alley opens into Doyle Street at one end and Water Street at the other. No one saw the thief. At least, no one who’s talking.’

  ‘Broad daylight?’ I said. ‘With the woman at home?’

  ‘Her man says Tani was almost always out in the afternoon on her modelling work. Thursday she called in sick and cancelled a date with the photographer. The photographer says she missed a lot of appointments. She wasn’t too reliable. The bed had been slept in. She was in her slip, pants, and bra.’

  ‘Has the loot shown up?’

  ‘No,’ Gazzo said, and brushed me off. ‘Tell me more about this Olsen kid.’

  I sensed the change of subject, the brush-off. The captain did not want to talk about the loot. It should have appeared by now. Burglars unload fast. I did not push it. If Gazzo held back, he had his reasons. He would tell me when he wanted to.

  ‘I told you all of it,’ I said. ‘He’s gone, period. A lot of people on Doyle and Water Streets probably went on trips.’

  ‘You think this Jo-Jo saw something?’

  Gazzo did not believe that a lot of people from Doyle and Water had gone on trips. Neither
did I.

  ‘Jewels don’t show, I said. ‘Even if the burglar came out on Water Street, all Jo-Jo would see is a man walking around.’

  ‘Maybe he saw the guy in the alley,’ Gazzo said.

  ‘Just walking? How would he know?’

  ‘Maybe he saw and recognized the guy. Later he hears about the burglary and killing and puts two and two together. Maybe he knows the guy saw him and knows him.’

  It was a good theory. I could believe it. But I fought it for a time.

  ‘So he hangs around from Thursday evening to Friday morning?’ I said. ‘I mean, if the killer knew him, what held the killer up so long. My client says he talked to Jo-Jo Friday morning. I mean, Jo-Jo was nervous but not hiding yet.’

  It stopped Gazzo for the moment. It stood to reason that if Jo-Jo and the killer knew, each other, and the killer knew he had been seen, and Jo-Jo thought there was danger enough to run, then the killer would have tried for Jo-Jo right away Thursday night. The time lag was all wrong – unless? I thought about Swede Olsen.

  There aren’t many men you would see walking on the street and pay enough attention to, to wonder what they were doing. Especially if you were busy testing a new motorcyle and especially if the man did not want to be seen. But if you saw your father, even a quick glimpse, you’d notice and wonder. For some reason this did not seem to have occurred to Gazzo. And I still did not feel that the Olsens were worried that way, the police-trouble way. Anyway, why would Jo-Jo run if it had been Swede he saw? Not many boys rat on their father. Not every day anyway.

  ‘What about Stettin?’ I said. ‘Coincidence? Or maybe he saw the burglar?’

  Gazzo rubbed the grey stubble of his chin. The captain needed a shave. He usually does unless City Hall or the chief wants to see him. Gazzo took some acid in the face twelve years ago and his skin is tender.

  ‘No one ever accused our men of being slow on the trigger,’ the captain said. ‘If Stettin had seen anything, there would have been a rumpus. Anyway, he saw nothing.’

  ‘Maybe the burglar thought Stettin saw him.’

  Gazzo sighed wearily. ‘If the burglar even thought Stettin saw him, would he leave him alive? It was already felony murder.’

  ‘A cop killing? You’d have hounded him past hell.’

  ‘If he thought Stettin had seen him, it was kill or nothing, Dan. Why just tap him and leave him alive to make the ident? It wasn’t as if Stettin was chasing him. That might make some sense. If Stettin was after him, he might have tapped him just to get away. But Stettin saw nothing. Not even who hit him.’ Gazzo suddenly grinned in the dim office. ‘Stettin is embarrassed. It hurt his image of himself to have been slugged and not be able to say who, or even guess why. I think it’s the shoes that make him feel worst. He doesn’t like it that we found him with no shoes. Good thing he didn’t lose his pants.’

  Gazzo was right. Stettin did not seem to tie in. So maybe it was still that Jo-Jo had just seen a mugger, not a killer. Or a killer and not a mugger. Take your choice.

  ‘How about some clues?’ I asked.

  ‘Clues?’ Gazzo looked sour. Clues don’t solve cases. ‘Sure, one on the Jones girl. A losing stub on a slow horse at Monmouth Park the day before. On the floor near the body. It was all that did not belong to Tani or her lover-daddy.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  Monmouth Park is a popular track. I’d hate to be chased down a dark street by half the losers there in a single day. It’s like that with clues. Most of the time they don’t help, because most murders aren’t that logical or planned. Motive, opportunity, and witnesses, that’s what convicts.

  ‘What about the timetable?’ I asked.

  Gazzo checked the file. ‘Woman died between five thirty and six thirty in the afternoon. Stettin was hit about six thirty.’

  The time was just about as bad as it could be. Jo-Jo and Petey Vitanza had been at Schmidt’s until about six o’clock. Time is sometimes a good hammer to hit a killer with, but it’s not perfect. I mean, how many times do you really know exactly what time it is or what time you were at any particular spot a day or a week before? Give or take a half an hour is about the best most people can do without looking at their watch. And in this case a half hour made a world of difference. About six o’clock could mean five thirty and the opportunity to burglarize the apartment of Tani Jones.

  Gazzo was watching me. ‘The Olsen kid play the horses, Dan?’

  I stood up, ‘Cars and motorcycles are his line. Maybe he is just on a trip.’

  I didn’t believe that now, and neither did Gazzo.

  ‘Swede Olsen was just trying to insure his boy’s privacy,’ Gazzo said.

  ‘Maybe he just doesn’t want anyone talking to anyone about his family.’

  ‘That much I can believe,’ Gazzo said.

  I left the captain putting out the call for Jo-Jo Olsen; all points, all cities. Gazzo looked weary behind his desk. His eyes were glazed, turned inwards, as if he was seeing all the nineteen-year-old boys he had had to pick up and lock up in his life. The captain was near retirement, I had heard him talk about it himself. Then he had looked at me and asked what the hell would he do if he retired?

  Out in the street I headed for the subway. What I had heard from Gazzo was about as enlightening as everything else I had learned up until now. The more I thought about it, the less I could see Jo-Jo in the robbery or the killing. I did not think Gazzo could either. The police work on patterns, records, facts. Jo-Jo had no record, the pattern stank. In Chelsea every kid is born knowing better than to pull a job on his own block – and then point the finger at himself by running.

  I thought about Swede Olsen again, but that didn’t play any better. If Swede had killed, he should have run, not Jo-Jo. No, neither of them should have run. The thief and killer had made it clean away; why run at all? Maybe it was Swede, and Jo-Jo was ashamed. Maybe that was the story. Jo-Jo faded to get away from a father who was a thief and killer. It was better than most of the explanations I had had so far. Which shows the quality of my explanations.

  On the subway I decided to head for Schmidt’s Garage. It was about all I had not done that I could think of now. Not that I was looking for more to do. What I needed was a better theory. I needed a theory of any kind. Right then, let’s face it, I had no proof that Jo-Jo was in any kind of trouble, and I could not fit the trouble I had to Jo-Jo. It did not ring true. Jo-Jo did not sound like a burglar. Maybe there was another way to look at the events on Water and Doyle Streets? As a matter of fact there were a lot of other ways. There was much that I did not like.

  I did not like the way Tani Jones had died. The theory of her murder, I mean. You would be surprised how few burglars panic and use guns. Even amateurs or junkies. Jo-Jo was an amateur, but he was not a junkie. At least, I had no word that he was on the fix. Also, assuming that the burglar had for some reason mugged Stettin, he did not sound like an amateur. The mugging had been expert. Of course, there was no real connection so far between the mugging and the robbery, except that they had happened at nearly the same time on adjoining blocks. Still, what I really did not like was the theory of a panicked burglar. Gazzo had made no mention of Tani Jones fighting back, of even having a weapon. About the only time a robbery victim is killed is when he tries to resist, fight.

  Professional thieves carry guns, yes, although not as often as you might think. (Blackjacks and iron pipes are more in their line.) And they use them even less often. Felony murder is a hard charge. This burglar had made a perfect entrance and exit. Unseen all the way. Yet the theory was he had been surprised by a woman asleep in the bedroom and had shot. He should not have been surprised, and he should not have shot. Unless Tani had recognized him – and that was something else again.

  By the time I climbed out into the ninety-degree cool of Sixth Avenue, I had switched to the other side. Burglars did panic. Junkies could be clever one minute, stupid the next. Accidents happened, and surprised men shot. Unconnected crimes happened within a few feet
every day in New York. My brain was still making the circles when I reached Schmidt’s Garage.

  Old Schmidt was under a car with his pale legs sticking out like those of a chicken. When he heard my errand he crawled out. He was a small, chunky man of about seventy. White-haired and with the ruddy round face of a cherub. There was grease on his face. It was a good face. He reminded me of a little German pastry cook I had known when I was a kid. The bakeries had gone out on strike. The little cook marched in the snow with all the others. He was an old man who should have been home with his pipe, his grandchildren, and his memories. But there was a principle at stake: his fellow men needed him, so he marched. When two company toughs knocked him down he got up and went back to the picket line without a word. Schmidt looked like that kind of man.

  ‘I am worried,’ the old man said. ‘Jo-Jo is good boy, work hard. He go and he don’t tell me? That is funny. I am worried.’

  ‘Kids get ideas. Maybe he just got tired.’

  ‘Not without he tell me, no. And the bike. There it wait.’

  The old man pointed to a motorcycle in the corner of the garage. A motorcycle carefully covered by a heavy plastic cover. It shone through the plastic like a jewel. Jo-Jo took good care of his motorcycle.

  ‘I call by his old man,’ Schmidt said. ‘He say Jo-Jo take a trip. I should mind my sauerkraut. His kind I know, ja! I am worried.’

  ‘What do you know about Tani Jones or Patrolman Stettin?’

  ‘The woman who was killed and the policeman? I know what I read, hear. No more. You think Jo-Jo? Never! No!’

  ‘Did he have any trouble you know? Any new friends, maybe? Any girl trouble? A sudden need for money?’