Act of Fear

by Michael Collins

  The automatic shook this time. ‘Nancy? What could she know about me? I didn’t see her for a hell of a time. She wanted to get married.’

  ‘When did you leave New York?’ I snapped.

  ‘Friday!’

  ‘Can you prove it?’

  ‘Sure I can prove it! Friday early, right after I talked to Pete. He must have told you!’

  ‘Pete didn’t see you leave the city,’ I said.

  ‘I left! Friday morn …’ he stopped. The automatic steadied. ‘You’re making it up. Trying to shake me.’

  ‘Shake you?’ I said. ‘You’re damned right I’m trying to shake you. I’ve got Jake Roth after me, too. A man who was dumb enough to play with Andy Pappas’ girl friend and animal enough to kill her. Who knows why? She probably knew something about him, something he didn’t want Pappas to know. Sure, what else? He makes a play for a girl, makes love to her, and maybe along the way she finds out something about him he doesn’t want her to tell Pappas. He gets scared. When Roth is scared he kills to shut you up. He’s scared of you, kid.’

  Jo-Jo said nothing. He sat on the bed and watched me. I guess he was thinking about what to do about me. Maybe if he saw I knew the whole story he’d break down. At least I hoped that was what he would do. Hope was about all I had.

  ‘He needs that ticket, kid,’ I said. ‘You and me and maybe ninety-nine per cent of everyone else would have let it ride. The chances of it getting to Pappas were pretty slim. But Roth takes no chances, not when he can be safe with a little violence. I figure he killed Tani Jones just to be safe. He killed Schmidt and probably Nancy Driscoll just to find you. He mugged a cop for the other part of the ticket. You think he’s going to let you live now, no matter what your father says?’

  I lighted a cigarette. I had led him to where I wanted him. I wanted him to think about Swede. I wanted him to think about why he was in this mess. I smoked and waited and listened for the sounds from outside I knew had to come. It was probably a few seconds, the wait, but it seemed like an hour to me.

  Then he started. ‘He said Roth would feel safe, but I better take a trip anyhow. I remember the way he said it.’ In that hot motel room he was seeing the scene in his home that sudden morning. Swede scared and sweating. Roth was their cousin, their way of life, and would find out anyway. ‘It would be okay when I gave Mr Roth the ticket, but I better beat it anyway until it all blew over. Sure. He was on the phone telling Roth when I left.’

  ‘He knew Roth wouldn’t trust you. Not even if you gave up the ticket,’ I said. ‘Swede made excuses, but he knew.’

  ‘No, he didn’t know. He trusts Roth.’

  ‘He knows now Roth has killed to find you,’ I said.

  ‘All I got to do is stay away,’ Jo-Jo said.

  ‘Roth would kill his mother to be safe,’ I said. ‘He killed Tani Jones to be safe.’

  ‘I won’t talk,’ Jo-Jo said. ‘He knows that.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Roth doesn’t know that, kid.’

  Like Swede, he was talking to himself. Only in Jo-Jo’s case there was a difference. He wasn’t really trying to convince himself that Roth would let him go. He was telling himself that it did not matter, that he had no choice, that this was the way it had to be. He was not thinking of himself.

  ‘Why not talk?’ I said. ‘Then you’d really be safe. The police would protect you. Pappas would protect you. Talk and Roth is through.’

  I’m safe anyway,’ Jo-Jo said.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but why risk it? To protect Jake Roth?’

  ‘I don’t rat,’ Jo-Jo said.

  On his lips it sounded dirty. The sordid code of bandits and killers. There is nothing good in that dirty code of the criminal. A mean code designed to protect only sharks and parasites.

  ‘Silence. Never talk,’ I said. ‘But not for Roth. It’s not for Jake Roth, is it? No, silence for your family, right? That’s it, and it’s no good, boy. In the long run, it’s no good.’

  Jo-Jo looked at me. ‘I owe them that.’

  ‘You owe them,’ I said, ‘but not that.’

  ‘The old man can’t go back on the docks.’

  ‘What do you owe yourself?’ I said.

  ‘I’ll make out.’

  ‘You don’t really believe that they didn’t know what Roth would do,’ I said.

  ‘They trust him. They believe him.’

  ‘They don’t trust him, and you don’t. You’re on your own against a killer, boy, and you know it.’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  But his voice was down to a whisper now. I had pushed him hard. Now I played my trump.

  ‘Why did you keep the ticket then, kid?’

  Those blue eyes blinked at me. ‘What?’

  ‘You never gave Roth the ticket, did you?’ I said. ‘You left while Swede was on the telephone to Roth. You knew that Swede knew you had to run. When he told you it would be okay, but you better leave town anyway. You knew Roth would kill you even if you gave up the ticket. So you kept it for insurance.’

  I watched him. It had figured all along that Roth did not have the ticket. Jo-Jo sat there and stared at me.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I never trusted him. So what?’

  ‘They tossed you to the wolves, boy, and they did it for themselves. You know that, or you wouldn’t have run with the ticket.’

  ‘I owe them,’ he said. ‘They got to live. The family.’

  He was really a good kid. A kid with big dreams. And he was caught. It’s always harder for the good ones. He wanted no part of Swede’s world. He knew what his family was, and he hated them; but he loved them, too. Whatever they were, they were his family, and he had a code of his own he was strong enough to try to stick to no matter what the risk. He might have been able to keep his code and also stay alive if I had not come along muddying the waters. I think Roth would have tried to silence him all the way anyway, but I had made it certain. It was up to me to try to save him.

  ‘How much do you owe them, Jo-Jo?’ I said. ‘How much do you owe yourself?’

  ‘I’ll keep ahead,’ Jo-Jo said.

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘let’s say you can keep ahead of them. Let’s say no one rats on you. What then, kid? What about all that you want to do? What about those big plans?’

  ‘I’ll do it all, Fortune.’

  ‘A race driver?’ I said. ‘Out in the public eye? Maybe your picture in the newspaper? Who are you kidding?’

  ‘I’ll make it,’ he said. But the gun shook in his hand.

  ‘You’ll make nothing! You’ll be nothing,’ I said, making it as harsh as I could make it. ‘You won’t have any experience record. You won’t have any diploma or proof of education. You won’t be Jo-Jo Olsen anymore. Dan Black’s got no record, no history, no past and no future. You won’t even be Dan Black for long. You’ll never be anyone. Just a man without a name who jumps at every shadow.’

  He was looking at the floor now. The automatic was down. I did not let up. I could be talking for my own life as well as his. If I did not convince him, and soon, there was no telling what he would do when Roth’s men showed up. I poured it on.

  ‘You’ve got three choices, kid. You can come back with me, hand that ticket over to the police, and let Roth take what’s coming to him. Then you can go ahead and live your own life.

  ‘Or you can try to keep a jump ahead of Roth. Maybe you’d make it. You’ll live in shacks like this. You’ll hop from town to town taking lousy jobs just to eat. You’ll change your name so often you’ll begin to forget who you are.

  ‘Or you could try to talk to Roth and join him. Maybe you could convince him that you’re okay, that you want to play his side of the street. I doubt if he’d believe you now, but he just might. You could even kill me for openers to show Roth how regular you are.’

  That was a shocker to make him face the life it would be with Roth. Actually, I doubted that Roth would trust him now no matter what he did. It would always be too easy for Jo-Jo to get in good wit
h Pappas by telling on Roth. Jo-Jo was ahead of me.

  ‘There’s a fourth way, Fortune,’ Jo-Jo said. ‘I could take the ticket to Pappas. That should put me in good. The family, too.’

  I nodded. ‘Why not? Only that would be the same as going in with Roth. I’m not even sure Andy would trust you now, or help your family after they tried to hold out on him, but maybe he would. Then you’d be just another punk kid hood who sooner or later would end up on a slab or in the river.’

  Jo-Jo said nothing. I watched him. I blew a cloud of smoke. Now I had to try to use him against himself. I had to use who and what I knew he was.

  ‘Besides,’ I said. I leaned towards him. ‘You could have done that from the start. You could have gone to Pappas in the first place. Only you couldn’t do it, could you? You hate Pappas and all he stands for. You want no part of the rackets. That was why you ran in the first place. You didn’t want to hurt your family by going to the police, but you couldn’t stomach either covering for Roth or going to Pappas. So all you could do was run and hide.’

  He sat silent. I had not told him anything he had not told himself. He was a smart kid and a good kid, and he had had a week to think all alone. I just made him face what he knew. Like a psychiatrist. He hated his father’s way of life. He hated what his father had become. He hated Roth and Pappas and all that he had grown up with. He wanted to be free to do what he dreamed of doing. Yet he loved his father and the whole crummy family.

  ‘Listen to me, Jo-Jo,’ I said. I’m going to tell you a story. There was a kid once a lot like you. He … no, to hell with that. The kid was me, Dan Fortune. I was sixteen, born and raised in Chelsea. A kid no better than any other in Chelsea. It was the Depression, and it was bad. My father was a cop. Yeh, that’s right. He was a cop about as good as any other. If he got a little offer of graft, maybe he took it and maybe he didn’t, it depended. Maybe he was fair to people, and maybe he wasn’t. My mother was a dancer and a beauty. She was alone a lot. One day my old man caught her with a guy and he nearly killed the guy. He was tossed off the force for that. He started to drink. He beat my mother regular. Then one day he left. He never could forgive her, so he left. After that she had to raise me the best she could. She got old, she wasn’t so pretty, she took to booze herself. What could she do to support me? She liked men. So she had a lot of “friends,” many of them on the police force. I had a different “uncle” every couple of months, and a lot of distant cousins in between.’

  I stubbed out my cigarette in the seashell this cheap motel called an ashtray. My arm hurt; the missing arm. The arm that wasn’t there ached from my toes to my teeth. I rubbed at it, but I knew that the ache was not going to go away. Not yet. I heard my own teeth grind in my mouth. This was the full story, the real story I never thought about and made up the other stories to hide. Now I was telling it. To save a good kid, and myself.

  ‘I hated them. My dirty rotten father who didn’t love enough to forgive or even understand. My whore of a mother who could not face life sober or alone. She couldn’t face an empty bed when it got dark. Sure, she told herself that it was all for me, but it wasn’t for me. She just had to have men to tell her that she was a woman even if her man had run out on her. So I hated them, and because I hated them I was going to show them I could do for them what they never did for me. I was going to take care of my mother. I was going to be a big man and show my rotten coward of a father. You know what a kid does in Chelsea if he wants to be big. Sure. He steals, he mugs, he becomes a crook.’

  I lighted a cigarette. Another. My arm throbbed and my teeth hurt down to the roots. ‘You do what your society tells you to do to get ahead. If I’d been born in the suburbs I’d probably have quit school to get a job and to hell with any fine future. But I was born in the slums, so I started stealing. I was pretty good. I supported my mother for a year. Then I fell into the hold of a ship I was looting. The cops couldn’t touch me, but I lost my arm from that fall. In the hospital I was bitter at first, then I started to think. One night around 4 a.m. I suddenly got the message. Who was I to set myself up as judge and jury? Because that was what I was doing. My mother and father had lived their own lives, made their own choices. They were what they were. Who the hell was I to sacrifice myself for them? Who gave me the right to be responsible for their lives? I lost my arm stealing for them! I had gone out and done what my world told me to do. It had cost me my arm. And for what? I had no right to judge them, to be a martyr for them. I didn’t want to be a thief. I suddenly asked myself what I wanted? Me. What did I owe myself?’

  I smoked easier. My arm did not ache as much. ‘I asked myself what I was doing? I was living their lives. I had no right to apologize for their lives. I had, somewhere, a life of my own. I had a duty to myself. My mother had to live her own life, and my father had to make his own amends. I had no right to suffer for them. When I got out of the hospital I left the city. I never broke the law again. I made my own life, Jo-Jo. Maybe I didn’t make it much, but that’s another story. At least I failed in my own life, not in their life.’

  My throat was dry. It had been a long speech. Maybe I should have heard it more often myself and made more of my life. Who knows? All I knew is that I wanted Jo-Jo to hear it. He was young, and I had never had a son.

  ‘People say that a good man faces his obligations,’ I said. ‘Maybe it’s true. Only too many men face every obligation except the hard one. The hard duty is what you owe yourself. When you face your obligations to everyone else the only person you can hurt is yourself. For most people that’s easy. It’s a lot harder to hurt someone else, someone you love, are close to. When you hurt someone for a purpose you take the risk that the purpose wasn’t worth it. Because you have to hurt them before you know you can do what you hurt them to do. You might not be worth another person’s pain. You don’t know until you do it, and if you fail, it’s too late. It’s easier to let it slide, hurt yourself for the sake of others, and feel good and noble and loved. It’s harder to follow your own dream the way the old Vikings did.’

  The cabin was quiet. I listened to the cars pass on the highway. Then Jo-Jo smiled. Not a smile of happiness or of triumph or of relief. A smile of simple recognition.

  ‘They did, didn’t they?’ Jo-Jo said. ‘The Vikings didn’t take handouts. My father even lets them call him Swede.’

  It’s his life, Jo-Jo,’ I said.

  ‘Yeh,’ Jo-Jo said.

  ‘Win or lose, they have their own lives,’ I said. ‘They made their choice. You can’t live for them. The Vikings left their kids and old folks behind. Not because they were mean or cruel, but because they were honest; and it had to be that way.’

  ‘I guess it does,’ Jo-Jo said.

  And that was all.

  I called the police. Gazzo had been in touch, and they said they would start right out.

  I borrowed Jo-Jo’s extra pistol, and together we waited for the two hard boys. With any luck the police would arrive first.

  We didn’t have that luck.

  Chapter 18

  They came in a hired grey car, and they walked right up to the door of Cabin Three.

  Why not? They expected to find only one unsuspecting boy who had never been known to carry a weapon. One scared boy on the run, supposedly even hiding out as a kind of favour to Roth, that was what they expected. I could almost see the smiles of secret anticipation on their faces as they thought about the surprise they were going to hand Jo-Jo.

  I watched them get out of the car and check their guns before they came on. They put the guns loose in their suit-coat pockets and walked across the dusty courtyard to the door of Cabin Three. I went and started the water running in the sink. They knocked as easy as two men calling on a pal. We waited. They knocked again. Louder to sound above the running water.

  ‘It’s open,’ Jo-Jo called out. ‘Come on in.’

  They stepped inside. They were that stupid. No, not stupid, arrogant. They had the arrogance of the man with the gun who has used the gun
with success and not been stopped. They had that false security that comes to all dull men who have guns and think that having the gun makes them strong and bright. They were also young and inexperienced, and they had been unopposed so far; and they were near the end of the trail and already thinking of their reward.

  I was behind the door when it opened. Jo-Jo was flat against the wall on the other side of the door, hidden by a kind of hat rack on legs.

  The two men came in fast. They were past both of us before they saw the water running in an empty sink and started to turn to look around.

  I hit the smaller one with the barrel of my borrowed gun before he turned an inch.

  Jo-Jo had to hit the one with muscles three times before he went down to stay.

  Neither of them got their guns out of their pockets. Jo-Jo bent to get the guns. I jumped to close the door.

  The two shots hit the door frame just over my head.

  Wood splinters kicked. The bullets whined away. There was blood on my face where a splinter had cut me so fast I did not feel it. I went down and inside the room, flat and backward. I hit my head a solid bump. My feet kicked the door closed. Jo-Jo headed for a window. I staggered up, a little groggy from the bump on my skull.

  ‘No!’ I shouted to Jo-Jo. ‘Below the window! Stay down.’

  I went to the other window. I crouched low and peered out at the lower left-hand corner. I saw their grey car, and a kind of shadow behind it. There was a bright sun. Cars were passing on the road as jaunty as you please. The flowers and trees were myriad colours. The whole scene was as ridiculous as a battlefield in any war. Even the birds were singing.

  The shadow behind the car stood up warily and still half hidden. A tall, thin shadow in a grey suit.

  ‘Roth,’ I said, as much to myself as to Jo-Jo crouched at the other window. ‘Watch the first two.’

  Jo-Jo sat with his back to the wall and covered the two unconscious men. It was now clear why they had been so slow. They had waited for Jake Roth. They had called Roth, as the small man at the speedway had overheard them say, and Roth had told them to wait for him before they went out after Jo-Jo. It is amazing how many mistakes a smart man can make. Of course, Jake was smart only if you mean shrewd or cunning. He was not bright, and he was both too arrogant and too careful. He made his men wait, probably to make sure himself that they really got Jo-Jo and the ticket. That had cost him his last chance.