Michael Collins - Act of Fear

‘All right,’ I said. ‘They must be after me. They won’t try to come in.’

‘Dan, I don’t like it.’

‘Neither do I,’ I said. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

The ways of fear are strange. We wanted each other.

Marty went to sleep just as the dawn came. I lay awake. The two men down there in the street made all this something else.

I wondered what I had got into for fifty bucks and a kid who wanted to find his friend?

The ringing of the telephone woke me up at ten o’clock. Marty was still asleep, and I wished I was. But I groaned my way to the telephone. The voice on the other end was unfamiliar and official. It identified itself as a Lieutenant Dolan, New York City Police Department, and its message was that Captain Gazzo wanted to see me — now.

I hung up and went back to the bed wondering if this was it. Had they found Jo-Jo? Floating in the river? Under a pile of old garbage in a cellar? I had no doubts what Gazzo wanted to talk about. My feelers on Jo-Jo would not have gone unnoticed at headquarters. And Gazzo is Homicide. I looked at the bed, and my whole body groaned to get back in and vanish under the covers. Instead, I took a deep shudder to try to wake up and touched Marty.

She snarled and burrowed deeper into the pillow. She does not like to wake up any more than she likes to go to sleep. Under the sheet she was small and slender and pale. At that moment it did not seem that there could be anything important enough to leave her for. And yet I would leave. If I could.

I went to the window to check. My two shadows were still there. In a way I felt for them; it must have been a long night. I dressed and went to kiss Marty. She swore at me and flopped over.

‘Don’t open the door to anyone you don’t know,’ I said.

I slapped her rump. She opened one angry eye.

‘You got that?’ I said.

She closed the one eye and nodded.

I slipped out and went down to the first floor. I took the back way out into the yard. I went over a fence and through the building behind Marty’s building and out into the next street. To be sure, I did a few fancy turns around the blocks and through a few more doors and back yards. The heat had instantly drained any desire for breakfast. I settled for two cups of coffee at a luncheonette and took the subway downtown to headquarters.

Captain Gazzo is an old cop. I’ve know him since I was a kid. He knew my mother, and he calls me Dan if it’s not official. He never married; he has only his work. Most of the time he is a good cop, the kind who knows that his job is to help the people of the city, not scare them. He knows that a cop is a necessary evil, and he does not complain often when the rights of citizens get in his way, as they must. But he is human, too, and there are times when the restraints make him swear. There are other times when he says he is crazy, because the world he lives in is crazy and you have to be crazy to handle it. He says that he would not know what to do with a sane person, because he never gets to meet any. He includes me with the insane. Maybe he knows.

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?’