Michael Collins - Act of Fear

The crowds were moving in phalanxes up and down Macdougall. I had no desire to be caught in Washington Square Park, so I went south. I passed the San Remo and kept going south into the darker streets of Little Italy. They were still behind me. They looked eager. They seemed to enjoy their work. From their manner I guessed that they thought I had made a mistake by leaving the crowds and running down towards Houston Street. They were wrong. Danny the Pirate still had friends.

I went around the corner on Houston Street and broke into an instant sprint. I not only had friends, I knew the neighbourhood. They probably did too, but I was sure they thought they had me and that that would make them careless and too sure of themselves. I made it the three doors before the two came around behind me. I went down the dark flight of six stone steps like a man falling into a hole. At the bottom I knocked the signal, and the door opened. I slid through, and the door closed behind me.

‘You got a wait for a seat, Fortune,’ the steerer on the door said.

I went down the dark hall and into the room where the table sat green and decorated with money under its single overhead hanging lamp with the green metal shade. The cards were going around in a silence broken only by the cold voice of the dealer: ‘… ace for the johnnie, another blue, the ladies are paired, and here we go. You have a hunch, bet a bunch. Throw it in ‘n it’ll all come home. Ladies say they’ve got the hammer. The blue says no, could be a bucket, and bumps all the way. When you’re out turn ‘em over. Acey-Johnnie talks like three, ‘n here we go…’

I knew the dealer, but he was in the slot and his cold eyes saw nothing but cards. My man was a shadow in a chair against the far wall. I had bought time, but not much. My two shadows would have turned the corner and found me gone. Maybe two, maybe three minutes of quick running, and then they would stop and they would know about the poker game down here. Maybe one minute. Any second I would hear the door open again far back down that long hall. I stepped to the shadow in the chair.

‘Hello, Dan, some action? The shill in the jeans’ll stand soon.’

‘I need some time, Cellars,’ I said. ‘And the back door.’

‘Cops?’ Cellars Johnson said, tilting his chair forward until his black face came into view. ‘Cellars’ Johnson because he knew every cellar in Little Italy, the Village, and Chelsea where his poker game could be played.

‘You know better,’ I said. No man brought the cops after him into one of Cellars’ games. It was not good manners.

Cellars stood up. I followed him back through the darkness. We reached the back door and Cellars unlocked it. I went through. I was in a back yard below street level. I went over a fence, across another yard, through an iron gate and up out on to Macdougall again.

The street was deserted. I ran back to Bleecker, across to Sixth Avenue, and flagged a taxi. Once in the cab I sat back. But I did not relax.

Now I was thinking clearly. Now I knew I had been wrong — I had nowhere to go. I knew nothing about Tani Jones or Stettin or Jo-Jo Olsen, but I was in this — and Andy Pappas was in it. With Pappas in it, and until I knew what it was all about, I could not go home. I could not go to Marty. They wanted to talk to me, and they would not let Marty or Joe just stand around watching. Until this was over, I had no friends. Not if I liked my friends. In that cab I never felt so alone in my life. Alone and scared.

I left the taxi in the heart of Chelsea and walked around a few blocks before I headed for the Manning Hotel. I took a room at the Manning. It is a cheap hotel about two notches above a flophouse, but they ask no questions and don’t know my face. I took my key up to the room and locked myself in. The room was like a sweatbox, and the bed was hard and lumpy. The noise of the street came through the single open window with the blinking colours of the neon signs. There was no fire escape.

I stood at the window for some time and looked down on the street and the people in the neighbourhood I did not really belong to any more but that was reaching out to pull me back. I thought about all I had studied and learned and that it did not add up to enough to teach me to stay out of trouble. I wanted peace and no waves like everyone else, but I had listened to a kid who wanted to find his friend when by all the rules he should have minded his own business. Now I was in something that involved Andy Pappas, and there is no peace that way.

After a time I called Marty and Joe. I did not tell them where I was. I said I would be in touch. Then I sent down for a bottle of Irish and some ice and lay on the bed to think. What was I doing? I was looking for Jo-Jo Olsen. So was someone else. Who? There was a burglar, maybe. And a cop mugger, maybe. The burglar and the cop mugger could be the same man or they could be two different men. One or both could be looking for Jo-Jo. Or Pappas could be looking for Jo-Jo. Which could mean that Jo-Jo himself was either the burglar or the mugger.

Or it could mean that Pappas was the burglar and/or the mugger. (I did not rule out Pappas no matter what Gazzo said, and no matter how much I thought Gazzo was right.) I did not think Pappas was either killer or mugger, or that he had ordered one or both, but someone had hired my two shadows. I was sure that the shadows were hired. We live more and more in a faceless world. Everyone works for someone and does not care who he helps or who he kills. All that counts is his efficiency rating and his credit rating. As a matter of fact, it was not important at the moment who had done what, but only who was looking for Jo-Jo.

I took a long drink. If Pappas were looking for Jo-Jo he could be the killer, or think that Jo-Jo could tell him who the killer was, or think that Jo-Jo was the killer. If it was not Pappas who was looking, then it had to be either the burglar, the mugger, or someone I had not even learned about yet! I knew nothing about the mugger. I knew that the burglar had killed the woman of Andy Pappas, and that is enough to make a man run far and fast. It was also enough to make him hire men to find a witness. Except would a common burglar hang around to hire men, or have the power to hire men — especially to go up against Pappas?

I took another drink. If Jo-Jo knew who killed Tani Jones, why not tell Pappas at least? The Olsens were tight with Pappas. What reason would Jo-Jo have to protect a killer from Pappas? Or from the police? Okay, to not tell the police was the code, although Jo-Jo did not sound like a boy who respected the code, but to tip Pappas was not against the code, and it would get the tipster a medal. If Jo-Jo were the killer, okay, but I did not see Jo-Jo as the burglar-killer. Then who was Jo-Jo protecting? If he was protecting anyone. If he knew anything. I took a big drink.

Because it was all still nothing. Not a shred of actual proof of anything. All I had were unconnected crimes and facts, and a missing boy I was trying to find. Nothing more, except that someone else was also looking, for reasons unknown to me. I really knew nothing.

No one was going to believe that. And there was my problem.

I had asked questions. I seemed to be involved, and it is not what you are that counts, it is what you seem to be. It isn’t reality that matters, it is what people think is real and act on. Not what is true, but what people believe is true.

So I was alone in a cheap hotel room. I was drinking alone and sweating alone. I was on a lumpy bed in a dark room in a world where I did not belong. A world that was pulling me back because I was looking for a missing boy. A world I could die in if I did not find that boy soon.

I woke up with a hangover and a knot in my stomach. I had not slept well. I had dreamed of running alone down a long dark street chasing my missing arm as it floated ahead of me just out of reach. I had a drink. I had two drinks until the knot in my gut eased and my hands stopped sweating. Then I got up and dressed and slipped out and down the back way. Because I had to do something more than hide in a cheap room.