Michael Collins - Act of Fear

I went out into the dark of Water Street. Squad cars blocked the street. Their red revolving lights played across all the parked cars. I thought about Schmidt. The killers were still looking for answers. I did not think they had found any here. I took deep breaths in the hot night. I almost wished they had found their answers, ended it all. I lighted another cigarette. At a time like this the dangers of cigarettes don’t seem so bad. You have to live a while for them to kill you, and I’m not sure many of us are going to make it. The men who control the bombs wear better clothes and speak better in more languages than Pappas or Jake Roth or the ones who killed Schmidt, but they are the same men.

I smoked and watched a solitary patrolman walk along the dark street. He was not one of the squad-car boys; he was a beat cop. Stettin’s replacement. I watched him and smiled. He had come round the corner, and caught my eye, at a slow amble. He had probably been snoozing somewhere or cadging a quick free drink and had not heard the squad cars arrive. In the instant he saw the squad cars he assumed a purposeful efficient air. He came down the block batting car tyres with his billy, trying to appear tall and alert. He peered closely at the cars parked near the driveways and fire hydrants. He stopped at the cars parked in front of the loading docks. That was legal at night and on Sundays. He seemed annoyed that no one had parked illegally. I watched his slow progress down the block towards the river. I saw him pass the mouth of the alley where Stettin had been mugged. He looked into that alley.

There was a click inside my head.

That’s the closest word I can think of. A click. A sudden sensation of something being released, of clicking into place. Where there had been all jagged pieces there was a click and a sudden smooth surface.

I knew where Officer Stettin fitted into this. I knew why he had been mugged. Suddenly, like that.

Not chapter and verse, not the full implications, but the connection. I was suddenly as sure as a man can ever be sure of anything. I did not know why I had not seen it before. It was so clear. So obvious. I knew what the mugger had wanted. I knew why Stettin had been attacked. The mugger had wanted the only thing taken from Stettin that could possibly have been a danger to anyone. The only thing taken that could have involved anyone else.

The summons book.

A guess? Yes. A hunch. But it had to be. Have you ever had a thought that you suddenly just know is true? Nothing else, you just know. That is sometimes all that detective work is — a flash of hunch that must be true. Sometimes, did I say? Most of the time. Ask any cop. All else aside, most of the crimes of the kind the police get — small, violent, messy crimes — are solved by informers or a hunch. Not clues, not a neat trail, but the experienced hunch.

I had the hunch I had been looking for. Stettin did not know why he had been mugged. There had to be a reason. And the only thing stolen that could have involved someone else was the summons book. End of hunch. Next question: How did a summons book become so dangerous?

Even as I thought I had begun to walk fast in the night. Towards St Vincent’s Hospital. Because if my hunch were right, and I knew it was, then Pete Vitanza should be my confirmation even if he did not know it. If my hunch were right, then I had a whole new picture of the murder of Tani Jones. A picture I liked better. The picture I had sensed from the start. Burglars rarely kill, and Tani Jones had put up no fight. The shooting had been quick, close, sudden. The killer had not run. He was out looking for Jo-Jo. Looking hard to the point of two more murders. Why? Because there had been no burglar. There had been no robbery. That was all a cover-up.

Tani Jones had known her killer.

She had known her killer, and the killer had known her. He had known that she was Andy Pappas’ girl friend.

The killer was a man who had called on Tani Jones. A man who went to see her while Pappas was safely out of town. A man who was cheating Andy Pappas with Tani Jones, the dumb little girl who liked men too much. Then what had happened in Tani Jones’s apartment that day? I did not know that, a hunch can only go so far, but for some reason the man had killed her. When I knew who, I would probably know why, but one thing I was sure of — the man had not planned to kill Tani. The whole faked robbery had an impromptu ring about it, an aura of improvisation, a spur-of-the-moment desperate cover-up. Something had happened in Tani Jones’s apartment that day that made a secret lover into a sudden killer.

What that was my hunch could not tell me, but my hunch told me one more big fact. After the killer had killed, faked his robbery, and got clean away unseen, something more had happened down on Water Street. Something had suddenly gone very wrong for the killer, and it had involved Patrolman Stettin and his summons book.

By this time I was at St Vincent’s. The doctor did not want to let me talk to Pete Vitanza. I argued. I told the doctor that it was urgent police business. He had seen me there with Lieutenant Marx earlier. It finally worked. I went into Pete’s room.

Pete was propped up in bed, his splinted arms thrust straight out. He looked better. He was young and resilient, and the young recover quickly. But his eyes were still bandaged, and when I entered his whole head turned towards the sound I made as I came in.

‘Mr Fortune?’

He had had some visitors, there was mail on his bedtray and books on the bed he could not read yet. Apparently the nurse had been reading to him. But he was really waiting for me. Some of his visitors had been police, and he wanted to talk about Nancy Driscoll.

‘It don’t sound right, Mr Fortune,’ Pete said. ‘Jo-Jo ain’t the type. The broad was chasin’ him, you know?’

‘Maybe he decided he wanted her after all,’ I said. ‘The police have a good-luck piece. Did Jo-Jo have one like it?’

‘That little Ferrari?’ Pete said. ‘Hell.’

His hands rummaged among the opened letters on his bedtray. He came up with a key ring. On the ring, as he held it up, was another shiny red miniature Ferrari racing car.

‘See?’ Pete said.

‘Jo-Jo had one just like it?’ I asked.

‘Sure, we got ‘em together. I mean, here’s another one, right?’

‘You’ve got yours,’ I said. ‘Does Jo-Jo have his?’

‘There got to be a thousand around the city,’ Pete said.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘When we find Jo-Jo, and he has his, then the police will start looking for the other nine-hundred-and-ninety-eight.’

‘He never killed her,’ Pete said, but I heard the wavering in his voice. There was doubt in his voice.

‘Who then?’ I said. ‘Maybe the two who worked on you?’

‘It fits, don’t it? I mean, she knew Jo-Jo, too.’

‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but now I want something else. I want to know everything that happened on Water Street a week ago Thursday. The day Stettin was hit. Everything, Pete.’

Petey shrugged again. ‘We worked on the bike, drove around.’

‘They killed Schmidt,’ I said.

I saw the shudder go through him. Part of it was for Schmidt, I know that. Most of it was for himself. I know that, too. We think about ourselves. That’s the way it is. Ourselves here and now, that’s how we think. Most of the time most of us don’t even care that the ship is sinking as long as we can make a good buck selling life preservers before it goes down and be rich for a little while. Ask any soldier who ever prayed that his buddy would be killed instead of him. That same soldier might toss himself on a grenade and save ten men and die doing it, but that is a different thing. That’s not thinking about it. And that’s not most of us.