Michael Collins - Act of Fear

In the bed Pete Vitanza was remembering the feel of their fists, the kick of their shoes. They could return.

‘That’s rough,’ Pete said.

‘Anything at all out of the normal,’ I said.

Pete shook his bandaged head. ‘We worked on the bike. We ate lunch at the bike. I mean, what’s normal? Jo-Jo took the bike out. I took the bike out and around. We practised turns. Jo-Jo made these figures, you know, like figure-eights. He liked to stunt with the bike. So…’

‘Stunts? Turns?’ I said. ‘You needed space maybe?’

I closed my eyes. I saw the parked cars on Water Street. The two driveways out of the garage and the loading docks. There were just two parking spaces between the driveway out of the garage and the first loading dock.

‘You needed room for the manoeuvres?’ I said.

I saw the reaction. Under the bandages he reacted.

‘You moved a car?’ I said.

‘A black convertible,’ Pete said. ‘Yeh. We shoved this small, black convertible down by the loading dock. We laughed.’

One of those little things that happen and you never really remember. Like stopping to mail some letters on your way to work, and later you don’t remember it and wonder why you were five minutes late for work. Or the time you find some debris on your lawn and you cross the street to drop it into a waste can. That puts you on the wrong side of the street. When someone says they saw you on that side of the street you tell them they must be wrong because you never walk on that side. Why would you cross the street?

‘We needed some more room,’ Pete said. ‘This convertible was blocking the turns. It was unlocked. We just had to push it so Jo-Jo could make the stunts, yeh.’

‘Then what?’

‘Nothin’. We just shoved it down.’

‘You said you were both at Schmidt’s until six o’clock?’

Pete thought. ‘No, I had to get home, you know? I guess I left first. Jo-Jo he hung around to finish up, cover the bike.’

‘Did you talk to Jo-Jo again?’

‘Sure, maybe a couple of hours later. And Friday, too. Early like. He said he was busy, couldn’t work on the bike. I told you.’

‘Did he say anything else? Maybe about that car?’

‘No,’ Petey said.

I stood up. ‘Okay, you rest. The doc tells me the bandages come off maybe Monday.’

‘You got to find him,’ Pete said from behind his bandages. I mean, they already killed Schmidt and the Driscoll broad.’

‘I’ll find him,’ I said. But in what order? First or second?

On the dark — street in front of St Vincent’s my eyes took in everything that moved and all the shadows. I was jumpy. I felt like a spy on his first day in a strange city — all alone and not sure I could pass the first challenge. This was not my city now. It belonged to a killer. A killer who could hire men to look for Jo-Jo, and maybe for me. Two shadows who had no names and no faces, but who killed just for answers. It was their city now, because now I had some answers to give.

Patrolman Stettin had ticketed that black convertible because Jo-Jo and Pete had shoved it down into a no parking zone. It was all that made sense. The killer had come back to his car and found that it had been tagged. For some reason this was dangerous. Probably because it placed him on the block at that time, and for some reason that was very bad for him. Was it bad because it told the police, or told Pappas, or both? I did not know. But it had to be that he found the tag, hunted Stettin, mugged him, and took the summons book. That was one big answer. It left me with a big question: If the killer had the ticket and the summons book, why was he after Jo-Jo?

I was no longer in front of St Vincent’s. All this time my feet had been walking. My feet were taking me where I had to go next, where I would get the rest of it. I was not sure I wanted the rest of it. When I pushed this time it would be too late to back off and think. One more push and I could not turn back.

I stood at the head of the block where Swede Olsen and family lived in their gaudy sewer and watched all the shadows around me. This street was dark, but it was not deserted. In the hot summer night the stoops and fire escapes and sidewalks were festooned with men in vests and women in house-dresses. They had carried chairs and boxes out of their stifling rooms and sat in silent apathy. Some rested on the kerb. The women stared into nothing. The men drank from beer cans. From time to time someone moved, talked. It was, after all, Saturday night. The free time. The happy time.

I went down the block, and they barely looked at me. They did not care about me. They did not see me. They were too busy trying to see themselves. I passed them and climbed the few steps into the vestibule of the Olsens’ building. The downstairs door was open on the hot night. I blended into the shadows of the dim downstairs hallway. I stood there for some time. There was no one suspicious on the street outside. Had they learned something from old Schmidt after all? If they had, it had probably been too late for Jo-Jo for some hours now. I was sure they had learned nothing from Schmidt, but where were they? I did not like the feel of it. I felt things closing in.

I climbed the stairs. Doors were open all through the tenement. The rooms inside the open doors were dark, because lights give off heat. Phantom shapes moved inside the dark rooms. The blue-white light of television sets flickered. Electric fans whirred. I went on up, slowly, and no one even turned a head to look at me.

The Olsens’ door was closed. The Olsens had more on their mind than the heat. I pressed the button and waited. I knew, of course, that I was taking a risk. I had been warned to lay off. This visit to the Olsens would be the final push. There was a big risk, but that is what life is in the end — the risks you take. If you never take a risk you never live. You just exist the way a carrot exists. I did not feel brave, I just had to go on living.

Swede himself opened the door. ‘You’re crazy, Fortune.’

His sons sat in chairs behind the big Norwegian. They got up as Swede spoke. The mother, Magda, was in a green dress that made her wrinkled face a nauseating yellow. She seemed, for an instant, unable to believe that I was actually there again. I did not see the daughter. I pushed in past Swede. The two boys came to meet me with their clenched fists. I felt Swede big behind me.

Before they could gather their wits and swing into action I started to talk. I hit them with every hunch I had and every word I could remember. No names and a lot of guesses. It’s an old police method.

‘He came back and found that Stettin had tagged the car, right? After he killed Tani Jones he came back and found that Jo-Jo had moved the car; it was tagged, and he went out and got the summons book from Stettin. Then he came after Jo-Jo. Sure, I can see how scared you’d all be. I would be, with him after me. I’d be terrified. A man like that, big enough to try to buck even Pappas? Caught in the middle…’

No names, just ‘he’, and it sounds like you know more than you do. If the other man is confused, scared, he will usually slip. The other man knows, he has the secret inside his mind, and all at once under the barrage of words he assumes that you too know. It slips out. He tries to defend himself, and out it comes. I’ve used it a hundred times in divorce cases. A guy thinks his wife knows, and I make him think that; and out it comes.

‘… There he was cheating on Pappas, making a big play for Andy’s girl friend. Then, bang-bang, he kills her. Man, I mean, he’s got trouble. But he can get away all right. Then he gets to the car — and it’s been tagged. People know he’s on the block. Jo-Jo knows he’s on the block. He had to try to kill Jo-Jo! Jo-Jo saw him! What else could he do but try to get Jo-Jo?’