Michael Collins - Act of Fear

And they know, on hot nights like this, that they are not of the very few with the luck or the strength or the strange and unexplained psychological quirk to escape. They are not special, and how should they be? How many of us escape what we were born to, who we are, what we have? How many in the bigger, richer, happier world are asked to be better than they were born? Or even different? Here, in the slums of the Olsens, they know that what the people above them get without effort they can have only if they are very strong, or very lucky, or very special. There are no more special people in the slums than in the suburbs, and just as few can move out of the slums into the suburbs as can move out of the suburbs on to the estates. So what do you tell the Olsens? That they must fall back because they have climbed to where they are by false means? That they must go down again because to stay even as far up as they have come now requires a method that sickens the fastidious who have never been down? Do you tell them that in a dirty world, some dirt is good and some dirt is bad? They know better. They know that they have only learned what their betters above them have taught them, not by word but by deed. They know that they did not create Jake Roth and Andy Pappas, they only have to live with them. They know that there is only one man in a thousand who can be different, who escapes where he was born.

That was when, on my back in the dark hotel room where I was even afraid to light a light now, I thought about Jo-Jo Olsen. Because it looked like Jo-Jo was one of the few. (I suppose I had somehow sensed this all along. I know I had sensed this. It was why I had kept going.) Jo-Jo was the one in a thousand. He could be different. He had been on his way out. Only now the slum, the world of all the victims, had reached up to pull him back. The world that he rejected had him by the ankle, if not the throat, and was dragging him down. He needed help if he was not to sink, quietly and unnoticed, out of sight into the slime of his birth. He needed help, because he was one of the special, the different. That Roth could not trust him, ever, proved in one way how different Jo-Jo was. Jo-Jo himself had proved it in another way.

A regular in Chelsea, or perhaps anywhere in this world, high or low, had two choices when he was in the position Jo-Jo found himself in the moment he had that parking ticket. He could keep quiet and be trusted, or he could stay and turn that ticket over to Andy Pappas. He could have risked his family and turned that ticket over to Pappas. He could have thought of himself. Andy Pappas could make life good for a man who did him a favour. Pappas could keep him safe. As safe as a man could ever be when he chose sides in a hard game. To be safe, maybe rich, all Jo-Jo had had to do was betray Jake Roth and his own family. In Chelsea I know how that decision would go most of the time. (I know how it would go in the rest of the world, too, and the decision would be the same.) But Jo-Jo had taken the hard way. He had run out on it all. He had run with no safety from Roth, no protection from Pappas, no help from the police, and no shelter from his family. He had refused to join any side. That is the real path of danger.

In the dark of the hotel room where I lay on the bed like some small animal afraid of the light, I laughed aloud. I laughed, but I did not feel amused. Jo-Jo had taken the way of real danger, and he might have made it. After a time, if Jo-Jo did not appear to finger him, Roth might have decided to give up. But Jo-Jo had a friend, and the friend had come to me, and I had brought in the police, and now Roth would not give up. Now Roth would be sure. He would have to kill Jo-Jo. He would have to kill me. Before either of us got to the police or to Pappas.

So I knew I had to get to the police. I had known that since I walked down those stairs from the Olsens’ apartment. There was nothing else I could do. Instead, I lay on the bed in the dark with the untouched whiskey beside me. Because what could I tell the police? Roth would kill me before I got to the police, if he could, and yet what could I tell them? But I had to get to the police, because once I reached them I would be safe. I would be safe, and, the way it was, it was all I could do to help Jo-Jo.

A telephone call to Gazzo, and I would be safe once they got here. If Roth or his boys didn’t find me before the police arrived, I was safe. Because once I had told my theory, Roth would have no more reason to kill me. All he would have would be a greater need to kill Jo-Jo. Because what I had was no more than a theory. The police would need much more. Even Andy Pappas would want some proof. For Andy it would not have to be much, but a little more than my hunch. Roth would deny it all. The Olsens would not back me. No one else alive knew anything. Except Jo-Jo.

Jo-Jo would be on the spot, because Roth would be on the spot. He would not care about me any more, but he would care a lot more about Jo-Jo than he did now. The police, and Pappas, would check out my story. They would look harder for Jo-Jo. Roth could not let them find him. A dead Jo-Jo would prove nothing. More than ever, Roth would have to kill Jo-Jo before he could tell anything to anyone. And yet it was all I could do now to help Jo-Jo. At least it would make Pappas look for Jo-Jo and make the police really look. There would be some chance that they would get to Jo-Jo before Roth or his killers. And I would be safe.

I had the telephone in my hand when I heard the scratching.

I looked around. The only weapon was the whiskey bottle. I picked it up by the neck.

The scratching came again. Someone was scratching lightly on my door. I got off the bed as quietly as possible. Maybe whoever it was would go away. I reached the door and stood there in the dark trying not to breathe. I saw a faint shadow in the line of light that came under the door from the corridor.

The scratching came again. Small scratching, feeble, like an insect or some small mouse. There was an urgency to it and a lot of nervousness. Whoever was out there was becoming more desperate. It occurred to me that gunmen do not scratch on doors. I didn’t think they did.

I could be wrong.

If I was wrong and I opened the door or even moved to prove that I was in the room, then I was as good as dead. My bottle would not get two of them. Maybe it was only one? I listened again. I heard nothing but a kind of quick breathing.

I opened the door.

A girl stood there. For a moment I did not know her at all. I had no interest in any girls at this point. I looked up and down the dim and sleazy corridor of the Manning.

‘Let me come in, Mr Fortune,’

She was nervous, and she was urgent. She pushed past me. She was shaking. A very scared girl. Then I recognized her. The Olsen daughter! I closed the door and locked it again. I put the whiskey bottle down on the bureau. The girl was looking at my face.

‘I had a chat with Cousin Jake,’ I said.

The girl sat down. ‘When? Tonight? I mean…’

I have seen fear, and I have seen terror. I have seen panic, and trembling and fright and cowardice. The Olsen girl was in terror. She could not control her hands. She could not remember how she had been taught to sit. Her knees kept coming apart. She crossed her legs. And uncrossed them.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not tonight. How’d you find me?’

‘I followed you.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘To the street. You were hiding, but I’m small, I know the streets. I’ve lived around here all my life.’

‘What do you mean, “to the street”?’

‘I saw you turn on this street. I didn’t see you after that. I took a chance on the hotels. This was the third. I asked the man downstairs what room.’ She looked at me. ‘You… you’re easy to describe.’ She was looking at my arm.