Michael Collins - Act of Fear

The monster was out. It slouched in that room like some leering black shape without human form.

Swede Olsen sweated. ‘I got to tell Jake. I mean, when I finds out how bad it is, I got to tell him. He was gonna find out, you know? He don’t stop till he finds out. If he finds out and I ain’t told him, you know what happens? I mean, Jake he got to trust me.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Jake got to trust you. That’s important.’

Swede wiped his face. ‘Listen, Fortune, I owe Jake. I got to tell Jake so he knows it’s okay. I got to tell him he’s safe.’

‘So you found out he killed Andy Pappas’ girl friend, and you had to show how loyal you are,’ I said. ‘And Jo-Jo? You know Roth can’t trust Jo-Jo. Cousin or no cousin. You knew that.’

Swede was eager. ‘I make Jo-Jo beat it. I tell Jake he knows we won’t talk and I’ll make Jo-Jo get out of town. I mean, I got Jo-Jo safe out of town, and Jake trusts me. See? Jake he was real grateful. He says it’s okay. He don’t got to worry, and Jo-Jo he’s safe out of town.’

Then they all began to talk. At me. They all talked at me, the words tumbling out as if a dam had burst.

‘Then you got to come around!’ Magda Olsen said. ‘You got to ask questions.’

‘You got to talk to the cops!’ one boy said.

‘You got to tell them go look for Jo-Jo!’ the other boy said.

‘You got to kick it all up!’ Swede said.

‘You!’ Magda said. ‘You got to worry Jake!’

I looked at all of them.

‘You’re not worried?’ I said.

The silence after that was like thick cream. A room full of heavy yogurt. If I could stand high enough I could have walked on that silence.

‘You really thought Roth would leave Jo-Jo alone?’ I said. ‘Jake Roth? You really thought Jake would let a man he didn’t trust run around with enough on him to hang him? Even without the ticket, Jo-Jo knew! Jo-Jo could talk to Pappas! Any time in the next hundred years!’

‘Mr Roth is family!’ Magda Olsen said.

I laughed at her. In her face. ‘A fifty-fifty chance at best. Roth would kill his mother if she knew too much and he didn’t trust her to keep quiet.’

But the old woman was tough. ‘Mr Roth he says it’s okay, you hear? Mr Roth he trusts us. Then you come around. You and that stupid dirt pig Vitanza. You come looking, you ask questions, you go to the cops!’

She raved at me, and I listened; and maybe she was right after all. Maybe Roth would have trusted the Olsens to keep Jo-Jo quiet as long as Jo-Jo never came back to Chelsea. Maybe I had put the boy’s neck in the noose. It can happen that way when you start stirring up the muddy water. Maybe Petey Vitanza had crucified his friend by trying to help him. I did not think so, I knew Roth too well for that, but it was possible. Anything is possible; even that Jake Roth might stop short of being absolutely sure. But I had asked the questions. The water had been stirred up.

‘Then?’ I said. ‘After I came around? What then? I got Roth worried, okay, but you knew he was worried. You know he is worried. You know he’s looking for Jo-Jo right now! You can go to the cops now. Or to Pappas. You think Jake just wants to talk to Jo-Jo now?’

‘Sure, talk,’ Swede Olsen said. The big Norwegian said it to the floor, to his feet in those ridiculous two-toned shoes. ‘Jake wants to talk to Jo-Jo, make it sure, you know?’

I think my mouth hung open. I know I laughed. It was more a snort than a laugh.

Magda Olsen’s voice was clear and steady. She stood in that room as rigid as steel, and her voice was as hard as steel.

‘Jo-Jo takes care of himself,’ Magda Olsen said. ‘Lars is an old man. We live good. We got five kids. We got one in college, yeh. All our life Lars he works like a pig on the docks. I work, I sweat. Like animals we live. Now we live good. Mr Roth, he’s a cousin, he gets Lars work with Mr Pappas. Good work, good money, the best. Mr Pappas he’s good to us because Jake Roth asks him to be good. In one day for Mr Pappas, Lars he makes more money than two months on the docks. He is too old to go back to the docks. We got five kids. We only got one Jake Roth.’

What do you say? Go on, tell me. You feel sick, sure, but what do you say? Do you tell them that no human being risks his child to help a Jake Roth? Sure, that’s true. It’s real easy to say, especially if you wear a white collar and drive to work through safe streets. Do you say that Lars Olsen and his worn-out old woman should go back and work themselves to death, risk all they have and what life they have left, to save their boy? It sounds good, only I’m not so sure how true it is. How far is a father responsible for saving his son from his own mistakes? How much must a mother endure in this life for her child? It’s easy to feel sick when no one is asking you to give up all that you have, all that you want, all that you need. Does it matter if the needs are rotten? Who says which need is good and which bad? And what about the other four kids? Do you sacrifice one boy to give the other four a better life — a life they at least think is better? Lars Olsen back on the docks at his age could do nothing for his kids. Magda Olsen was already an old woman long before her time. One for four. Are you so sure? I’m not.

‘You can go to the police,’ I said. ‘Maybe Pappas would be grateful.’

Magda Olsen had made her decision. ‘With what? We don’t know where Jo-Jo is.’

‘You don’t know?’ I said.

Swede Olsen watched his feet. ‘I don’t want I should know. Jo-Jo he’s okay. Jake is okay. Jake is a good man. He don’t hurt Jo-Jo.’

Swede was still trying to convince himself. Maybe he was trying to convince his other boys. He was saying that he was, after all, a good father and a big man. He was telling me, his sons, and himself that he really believed that Jo-Jo would be all right. The old woman, Magda, did not bother. She knew. She knew the truth and she faced it. Jo-Jo was on his own. Magda Olsen had more important things to think about, consider, and she did not hide from the truth. She had decided about her life and where her duty lay.

I left them.

I did not feel well. Magda Olsen was a woman who faced the facts, and she knew where her duty was and what it demanded. I knew that, too. All the way down those dark stairs past the opened doors where shadows moved in silence inside the stifling rooms my feet hardly seemed to touch the stairs. My legs felt stiff, my feet almost numb. Because I had done it. I had stood up and rocked the boat. It was all out in the open. I could not prove anything, but I had told the world what I knew. I had told Jake Roth what I knew. Because it did not take much imagination to know that Magda Olsen would be on the telephone. She was probably calling Roth right now.

All along that dark street my head felt light and my legs were still like stiff boards. I was a marked man now. Unless I could stop Roth, find Jo-Jo, and get some proof, I was a dead man.

And I did not even know where Jo-Jo could be.

In the hotel room I lay on the bed in the dark. The bottle was on the table beside the bed. A shot glass was full beside it. I had poured it, but I had not drunk it. Whiskey was not what would help now. I lay there with my hand behind my back and tried to think of what I could do next.

I had made it back to the hotel without being followed, as far as I knew. I had been careful. Dark alleys and the shadows close to the buildings. I had walked as fast as my stiff legs would let me. The light was an enemy. Every street I crossed had been like a glaring stage with me naked across it. And all the way I had thought about the Olsens. On the hot slum streets where the victims of this world sat on chairs and drank beer and tried to find some air to breathe. The slum-streets that had shaped the Olsens and was the world they knew. Streets where, on nights like this, the people of the slums know for sure that they are the victims. They are the people the TV commercials do not speak to. They are the people who never appear in the American Dream, or any other dream. All their dreams are nightmares. There is no escape, and nothing will ever change. They were born in a stacked deck, they will die to the roll of loaded dice. And on nights like this, or when the snow winds blow in winter, they know for a moment who and what they are. They know that all their cunning schemes fool no one but themselves. All their long-planned deals are so many useless motions in a game someone else invented and made the rules for. They know that only self-deception gives them the illusion of life. They are Olsens without the strength of Magda or the luck of Swede.