Act of Fear

by Michael Collins

  Pete stammered. ‘There’re hundreds of them! Thousands!’

  ‘Sure there are,’ I said. ‘I remember something that manager, Walsh, said. He talked about Jo-Jo and Nancy, how Nancy said that all they talked about was cars and motors. Plural, Pete, you understand? More than one person talked to Nancy about cars.’

  Then Jo-Jo spoke up. He had guessed what I was saying at last. That’s how I had wanted it to happen.

  ‘We used to go up to her place together sometimes.’ Jo-Jo said. ‘Yeh, I remember. When she came around, he talked to her. Yeh, I remember how he looked at her.’

  ‘Damn it, everyone knows I knew her!’ Pete said, cried.

  ‘Sure, but not that way. You had a yen for her, didn’t you, Pete; a big yen,’ I said. ‘The miniature, the grease-stained handkerchief, anything else that fits Jo-Jo fits you, too. You acted like you barely knew her. But you implied all along that she could be involved in it all. You sent me to her, Pete.’

  ‘You knew I hadn’t even seen her for months,’ Jo-Jo said.

  ‘You knew she wouldn’t know anything about Jo-Jo,’ I said.

  ‘You knew I left town before she got killed,’ Jo-Jo said.

  ‘You knew no one would go to her to look for Jo-Jo,’ I said.

  Our voices hammered at him, beat him, slashed him.

  ‘No! I didn’t know! Those two hoods beat her. Roth got to her! Sure, that was it, Roth got to her. Roth!’

  He was like a trapped animal. A small animal caged in that bed and unable to move or run or hide. He thrashed like a fish in a net. I did not like what I was doing, but I had to push him. I had to push him right to the wall.

  ‘You brought her into it, Pete,’ I said. ‘You sent me to her. You wanted all of them connected to her, because you knew she was dead. You killed her, Pete, and then you remembered that Jo-Jo was on the run.’

  ‘No!’Pete shouted. ’No!’

  ‘She had a man with her late Saturday afternoon,’ I said. ‘A drunk kid. That was you. Jo-Jo was gone, you were lonely I guess; you had always wanted her. You went up there. I don’t know what happened. I don’t suppose you meant to kill her, you’re not Jake Roth. I figure you got crazy drunk. You hit her, Pete. You hit her and hit her and hit her and hit her!’

  ‘No,’ Pete said. ‘No … no …’ But he was backed to the wall, and there was no power left in his voice.

  ‘You were scared. I’d have been scared. You wiped her face. I guess you tried to revive her. You saw she was dead. That was when you ran. How far did you run, Pete? All the way back to Chelsea? Were you back here and feeling safer when you found that you had dropped that miniature Ferrari? When you saw you’d left the handkerchief, and the bottle? You were not one of her regular men, but you had left that Ferrari, and sooner or later the police would dig you out. You’ve seen them work. They don’t give up easy, no. There was that Ferrari, right? It was the Ferrari miniature that gave you the idea, sure. Jo-Jo had one just like it. Jo-Jo was a real boyfriend. Jo-Jo was on the run. Jo-Jo was already in trouble.’

  I stopped. I waited. Pete had turned his face to the wall of that white room. ‘You decided to give Jo-Jo to the police. You’re a bright kid. You probably even figured that someone was after Jo-Jo, and maybe that someone would get blamed. Or maybe you’d be real lucky and Jo-Jo would never be found, not alive. A dead Jo-Jo would be a great suspect. Maybe you even knew it was Roth after him by then. Maybe, not. But you sure knew about Stettin and maybe even Tani Jones. You wanted someone blamed; you know the cops don’t stop looking unless they have someone to pin a killing on; it doesn’t look good. So you got the bright idea to give them Jo-Jo. You got the idea to stir it all up by hiring me to make waves. You knew I’d go to the police about Jo-Jo’s rabbit act. You knew the police, or maybe me, would connect Jo-Jo to Nancy Driscoll.’

  I could not see those flat, dark eyes. His head was turned away. But I saw his shoulders shake. ‘I don’t suppose you wanted him dead, not at first. I don’t suppose you even thought about that. You just wanted a smokescreen. But then you got beaten up, and you knew there were some hard people after Jo-Jo. That was a break for you, that beating. It made you look good, and it gave you more possible killers of Nancy Driscoll. After all, she had been beaten, too. You got too smart, Pete. You sent me after Nancy, you pushed too hard. You got to thinking that it would be a lot better if the police never found Jo-Jo alive. With what they had on him, if they found him dead, they’d probably pin her killing on him and close the books. Or pin it on the same guys who killed him. It didn’t matter which. If they got him alive, it would not be so good. So you called Roth and told him where to find Jo-Jo. And that was your mistake. Because only you could have told Roth. You had the letter from Jo-Jo.’

  He was still weak. Maybe he was tired. In that bed he could not run or fight. And he knew what he had done. There is an urge to confess. There is, ask any cop. I’ll leave the why of that to the psychiatrists, but I know it is true, I’ve seen it too often. I’ve seen a hundred men with no proof against them that will stand up in court, with just enough suspicion on them to be hauled in for questioning, and sooner or later they confess. No rubber hoses. Just weariness and perhaps guilt and that something else I can’t explain – that urge to finally tell. Maybe it is only that it becomes too hard to lie when you know the truth. I’m not talking about the professional criminal, the Jake Roth. I’m talking about the ordinary man who never wanted to kill. A man like Pete Vitanza. He had not meant to kill, I was sure of that, and he was filled by guilt, but he was also afraid, and he tried once more.

  ‘You got nothin’ll stand up,’ Pete said. His face towards the wall. ‘You got no proof.’

  ‘I’ve got enough to make Gazzo take you downtown, Pete,’ I said. ‘He’ll ask the questions, Pete. I’ve got enough for that. You know how Gazzo’ll ask. You know you’ll tell him.’

  When he turned from that wall his battered face was almost calm. His dark eyes were no longer flat. The eyes had depth again; they had colour. He had been afraid, worried, for a long time now, and it was over. His face even seemed younger under the bruises. He looked at both of us from the bed. His arms stuck out like bandaged boards.

  ‘She turned me down.’ There was a tone of surprise in his voice as if he still could not believe that Nancy Driscoll had turned him down. ‘I was drunk. I mean, Jo-Jo was gone and I got drunk. So I went up to her place. I took a bottle and some beer. I was there a long time. She threw the tease at me. The bitch! I mean, she shook it all in my face. She gave me the full show. Then she said no. I mean, she said no! I hit her. She called me a pig. She called me a punk, a kid. A dirty pig she said. I hit her again. She was on the floor and I hit her some more. I hit her a lot more. I was crazy drunk. I hit her. Then she didn’t move. I remember something like screams, you know? I mean, I didn’t hear her scream, I just sort of remember. She stopped moving. She was on the floor. I wiped her face. She was dead.’

  Pete stopped. His arms stuck straight out. His eyes saw the dead face of Nancy Driscoll. He closed his eyes.

  ‘So you wiped the beer cans and the bottle,’ I said. ‘You’ve seen the movies. They always wipe off the fingerprints. You took the address book. Maybe your name was in it. But you ran too soon. You left too much. Later you remembered what you had left, and you remembered that Jo-Jo was on the run. Everything you’d left fitted Jo-Jo, too. It looked like a good chance for you. Just frame Jo-Jo. With any luck Jo-Jo might not even be alive to deny it – only you had to be sure Jo-Jo was tied to the Driscoll girl. That was where I came in.’

  ‘I was scared,’ Pete said. His eyes were still closed. He shivered there in the bed. ‘I was so scared … so scared …’

  I went to the telephone to call Gazzo.

  Jo-Jo walked out of the hospital room without speaking again. Not to Pete, and not to me.

  Chapter 20

  Pete signed a statement for Captain Gazzo while he was still in the hospital. When he could get up, Gazzo took him downtown and book
ed him. I went back to Marty.

  ‘Why do they confess, baby?’ Marty asked. ‘They always do, men like Pete.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe because they’re not really killers. The killing is panic, a moment of irrationality, an emotional accident. When the moment is over they become themselves again, and the guilt and horror gets to them.’

  ‘But he tried to get Jo-Jo killed, too.’

  ‘That’s another matter,’ I said. ‘That was fear. No one knew anything, and he had a chance to evade it all. Pin it on another man, that’s the way we are. He might have got away with it if he hadn’t tried too hard. Just like Jake Roth. All either of them had to do was sit tight and they would probably have never been caught.’

  We were in her apartment. There were no more shadows waiting out in the dark, or at least no shadows I knew about. No shadows beyond the normal shadows that are always waiting. I had a beer in my hand, it was cool in the room, and Marty was there. Only a week had passed since I had brought Jo-Jo Olsen back from Florida, but it was already history, something to be talked about with a fine detachment.

  ‘It’s that word probably,’ Marty said. ‘They couldn’t sit tight. They couldn’t live with the danger hanging over them, maybe for the rest of their lives. To never know when it might all be discovered? Listen for every knock at the door? They chose to try to end the danger all the way. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them. I suppose I’d think that way, too. Killers are human, baby. Pete would have lived with fear every day. He tried to get away free.’

  She’s a good actress. Maybe she’ll have a chance someday. Not to do Hamlet, of course. Sometimes it bothers her that there are so many parts she can’t do; that she’s a woman and not a man. I’m glad she’s a woman. Anyway, women have done Hamlet. She might get the chance to even do that, you never know. Of course, she was right. That was what Pete and Jake Roth could not face even if they did not know it consciously: the threat that would always hang over them. They had to try to get clear no matter how many people had to suffer or die.

  ‘A noble principle,’ I said, ‘and a rotten result. The name of the game. Par for the course. Action without ethics. I guess it’s not all Pete’s fault. No one ever taught him ethics.’

  ‘What will happen to him, Dan?’

  ‘Manslaughter,’ I said. ‘They could go for murder two, but they won’t. He’ll go away for a good trip. Maybe he’ll learn something, but I doubt it. He’s weak.’

  ‘Don’t be righteous, baby. Fear makes a man do a lot.’

  ‘Even Jake Roth?’

  ‘Even Jake Roth,’ Marty said.

  We all talked about it for a time. It was good conversation, but life went back to normal. The two hired punks were indicted on various counts of assault and attempted murder, and one good count of murder two. The district attorney’s office could have gone for murder one on Schmidt and probably got it, but juries can be chancy, and big trials cost the state a lot of money. The two punks were not important enough to waste time or money on. They would plead guilty to the lesser counts, and that would put them away just about forever.

  Jake Roth continued to run free, but he ran. Roth went on a nationwide hookup. Every cop was looking for him, not to mention Pappas and his connections. It was only a matter of time. But Roth was no amateur, and he made it a matter of a long time.

  Autumn came to Chelsea and moved on towards winter. I began to get a little nervous. Roth eluded the police and Pappas. In Chelsea they began to lay odds on how long Roth could keep it up and on who would get to him first. The smart money, of course, was on Pappas and his minions. The smart money is always cynical, on the obvious and the worst of human nature, and it is usually the winner. Which says a lot about the world. A few dreamers got long odds on Jake actually making it away. There are always a few who believe in long odds and the miracle that will make them rich, and there are also always a few who see even Jake Roth as Robin Hood. That also says a lot.

  Joe thought that what Roth should do was come in and surrender to the police.

  ‘The longer he stays out, the closer Pappas gets,’ Joe said behind his new bar in a good Village joint. ‘They ain’t got enough to make the Jones killing stick.’

  ‘What about Schmidt?’ I said.

  ‘A good shyster could handle that,’ Joe said. ‘Hell, the only witnesses are those two punks. A good shyster could make the jury cry. None of it’s sure to nail him.’

  ‘It never was enough,’ I said. ‘But it’s enough for Pappas. It was always Pappas. Out or inside it’s the same. Once in a cell Roth’d be lucky to live a week. In jail he’s a sitting duck. He’d be dead from the first minute, only Pappas would let him sweat, and Roth’d never know when or how it would happen. All he can do is run and never stop.’

  In the end it was the police who got to Roth first. A lot of smart money was lost in Chelsea, which shows that there is maybe some hope for us all. Roth was cornered in a loft in Duluth on a cold day in November. He tried to shoot his way out. All he did was achieve a kind of suicide. He had not been able to get out of the country, he had lost twenty-five pounds, and he was all alone. They covered him with canvas, took the body to the morgue, and no one ever claimed the body. Nobody anywhere felt sorry for him.

  If this was an uplifting story, I’d probably tell you that Jo-Jo Olsen’s decision to accept his duty to himself worked out best for everyone. But it didn’t.

  In prison Pete is not taking it well. The last I heard he is bitter. He is bitter against his rotten luck. He is bitter against me. He has decided that he got a bad deal because the Driscoll girl deserved what she got – she was no good anyway. They say he is growing harder all the time up there.

  With Roth gone Swede Olsen is out. Pappas is aware of what the Olsens did to cover for Jake, and word has it that the Olsens at least knew about Roth’s plans to become boss instead of Pappas, if they weren’t actually involved. (Which adds a dimension to their actions, they were afraid of Pappas, too. They had reason to be. Since Roth died, some other gang faces are missing from Chelsea and Little Italy, too.)

  Pappas does not forgive. Sometimes, when I’ve been up all night, or when I can’t sleep because the missing arm hurts or Marty is busy, I walk past the docks at dawn and see Swede Olsen standing there in the shape-up. He’s not young, and Pappas is down on him, so he doesn’t get much work even when he goes out and stands there in the dawn waiting to be picked out of the shape. He doesn’t drink in the good bars anymore. He drinks in the cheapest saloons. They say he drinks a lot now.

  Magda Olsen spat on Jo-Jo in Gazzo’s office. As she said, she had five kids, but only one Jake Roth to make life sweet. The two Olsen boys who backed Swede are out as far as he is. One of them is with him on the docks and gets just about as much work. The other boy has left home. No one knows where he is or cares. The boy in college is back in Chelsea working as a cook in a diner. The daughter, Anna, left home, too. I see her from time to time on the street. She has a job, a decent boyfriend, and she may be okay.

  Jo-Jo never went home. I don’t know where he went. He never contacts me. Why should he? We hardly knew each other. I look for his name in the newspapers, maybe as a member of the Ferrari team. I don’t really expect to see it, and yet I just might someday. As I said at the start, a story is not in the facts and events, but in who and what a man is, and Jo-Jo goes all the way back to the Vikings. That was what made him run in the first place instead of going to Pappas or helping Roth, and that was what brought him back in the end to finish Jake Roth and Pete Vitanza. He has the sense of what a real man must do.

  ‘When we all have that,’ Marty said, ‘we’ll even finish Andy Pappas.’

  We were in the dark of her bedroom. It was near Christmas, and there were bright coloured lights all along the street outside; the Christmas lights and crowds all through the holiday city.

  ‘We don’
t want to finish Andy Pappas,’ I said.

  It was a cold night. There was snow on the streets. Marty was warm and close to me.

  ‘We don’t care about Pappas as long as he doesn’t touch us,’ I said. ‘Each of us alone. To hell with what Pappas does to the other guy.’

  ‘Think about Jo-Jo.’ Marty said.

  She said it into my ear, her lips close, soft.

  ‘I’m thinking about Pete Vitanza and Jake Roth and those two hoods and that manager Walsh and Pappas,’ I said. ‘I’m thinking that in the same boat as Roth how many of us would have acted any different? I’m thinking about all of them, and only one Jo-Jo.’

  ‘If there’s one, there can be more,’ Marty said. ‘Maybe everyone.’

  ‘I’d like to believe it,’ I said.

  And I would like to believe that. I would really like to believe that Jake Roth and Pete Vitanza were really only freaks. But my judgment is against me.

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