Act of Fear

Chapter 2

‘He’s in trouble, Mr Fortune. I know it,’ the kid said.

It was a Monday five days after Stettin was mugged. My office is one room on Twenty-Eighth Street. I have one window with a view of a brick wall that has turned black with the grime of the city. The window itself is dirty, so I don’t have to look at the wall outside unless it is too hot. It was too hot, so I had been studying the shades of black on that wall while I waited until it was safe to call Marty and suggest a drink in a cool tavern. Since it was only eleven o’clock in the morning, Marty would not be up for breakfast for at least an hour. Marty snarls when you wake her up early. So I let the boy sit down.

‘He’s run out,’ the boy said. ‘I mean, I ain’t seen him.’

‘Start with the name,’ I said. The boy was nervous.

‘Jo-Jo Olsen,’ the kid said. ‘Joseph Olsen, only we always calls him Jo-Jo. I looked all week-end. No one seen him.’

‘I know you,’ I said. ‘Pete Vitanza, right? Tony’s boy?’

‘Yeh,’ Pete Vitanza said. ‘Jo-Jo, he’s my friend, Mr Fortune.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘He’s missing how long?’

‘Four days.’

I said, ‘For God’s sake, kid, four days isn’t…’

‘The whole week-end,’ Vitanza said. ‘Since maybe early Friday. We had plans like for the whole week-end. Big plans.’

‘Go to the police,’I said.

Missing persons are for the police. They have the tools. Rabbits are people who have found the world too heavy. One way or another they have been pounded too hard for too long. To be a rabbit is to want to run away more than anything else on earth, and I don’t like the role of the hound. That’s for the police.

‘Jo-Jo wouldn’t never stay away right now on his own,’ Pete insisted. ‘He just got a new bike, a beauty. We been workin’ on the motor for months. We was gonna race it Sunday. I mean, yesterday we was to race it out by East Hampton.’

‘He never showed?’

‘Not since Friday. He… was worried like. Some trouble.’

‘Is he married?’ Ninety-nine out of a hundred rabbits are married. Male or female rabbits. It makes you wonder.

‘Hell, no. I mean, he got girls, sure. No real steady, not even the Driscoll piece. Jo-Jo and me we got motors, see? Jo-Jo he studies hard by Automotive Institute. We’re gonna go over’n work for Ferrari someday.’

‘He lives with his family?’

‘They told me he went on a trip. I know that ain’t true. He didn’t take his bike. Not on his own he don’t go nowhere!’

‘What did he do, Pete?’ I said. ‘What did he pull?’

‘Nothin’! I swear.’

He was nervous. He had something more on his mind.

‘Come on,’ I said.

He was a thin kid, tall, and he had the hard muscles all the kids have around the docks. But he was lean and scrawny. I guessed he had never eaten too well or had much of anything. His Adam’s apple did a dance in his throat.

‘That cop,’ he said. He looked at me. ‘The fuzz got beat? He got it the day before Jo-Jo faded.’

‘Stettin?’ I said. ‘So what?’

‘The bull got it right down the block from Schmidt’s.’

‘The garage on Water Street?’

‘Yeh.’

He seemed to think he had painted a picture of great clarity. Maybe he had.

‘You mean that you and Jo-Jo were doing your work on the motorbike at Schmidt’s Garage?’

‘Yeh. Jo-Jo he works by Schmidt’s. I mean, he works there regular, ‘n the last couple months we been workin’ on the new bike there.’

What Pete Vitanza was trying to tell me, in the inarticulate manner of Chelsea, was this: Jo-Jo Olsen was missing when he had no reason to be missing that Pete knew, and every reason to not be missing; Patrolman Stettin had been mugged near where Jo-Jo Olsen worked; and Jo-Jo did his fade-out the morning after Stettin had been attacked. It could be something. It could be nothing.

‘Did Jo-Jo need money? The cycle must have cost,’ I said.

‘Jo-Jo stashed his loot. He’s a good mechanic. Schmidt pays him good, ‘n he don’t got to give money home.’

‘Did he need a pistol? Maybe he was going into business.’

‘Hell, no!’ Petey said quickly. ‘Anyway, his old man got guns. He could of got a gun.’

‘Did he ever have any trouble upstairs? Psycho? Any time on the funny farm?’

‘No,’ Pete said.

The day was too hot. It was a thousand-to-one that there was no connection between a kid missing a lousy four days, and the mugging of Stettin. But a thousand-to-one is still only odds. It is far from an impossibility. Jo-Jo did not sound like a bad kid, but, then, Pete Vitanza was his friend. Jo-Jo did not sound like a boy with any reason to do a rabbit act. He sounded like a hardworking, ambitious kid. He even sounded a little too good for Chelsea right then and there.

‘On the day Stettin was hit, last Thursday,’ I said, ‘were you and Jo-Jo at the garage all the time?’

‘Up to maybe six o’clock.’

I did not know the exact time of Stettin’s mugging, but from the rumours it figured to be between 5.30 and 7.30 p.m.

‘You were together the whole time?’

Pete Vitanza’s Adam’s apple worked again. ‘We took turns riding the bike. I mean, we was testing it, working it. Maybe we’d be gone ten, fifteen minutes sometimes.’

‘Out of sight?’

‘Yeh.’

‘You think he saw something he shouldn’t have?’

His Adam’s apple did a dance. ‘I don’ know, Mr Fortune. Only I know he wouldn’t of faded this week-end for nothin’ except some bad trouble. When I seen him Friday mornin’ he was scared, you know? I mean, he said he couldn’t work none, he had some business.’ And the scrawny kid looked at me out of those dark eyes. ‘Maybe he needs some help, Mr Fortune. I mean, you got to help him, find him. I can pay.’

I like to think I had decided to help Petey before he said that. Like most men who despise money, I always need some. But I know I wasn’t considering the money angle at that point. How much could a slum kid have anyway? No, I had already decided to help, I know I had. I had nothing better to do, and I was pretty sure then that it was all nothing. Jo-Jo was on a binge. Maybe away in the hay with some juvenile Jezebel. Boys don’t tell each other everything. But it was important to Pete; he was sweating in his chair. As my cases go it was no worse than usual. A boy wanted to help his friend. It was better than most of my cases, and I could always use money.

‘I’ll check it out,’ I said. ‘How much can you pay?’

‘Would fifty bucks be okay? I mean, for a start?’

I get five dollars for a summons and two dollars an hour for guard work. Industrial snooping pays better, plus expenses. For just about anything else I get what the traffic will bear up to maybe twenty-five dollars a day. Chelsea is not a haven of the rich. The kid surprised me by having fifty dollars. I didn’t think that there would be more.

‘Tell me more about Jo-Jo. Other friends?’

‘We ain’t got a lot of friends. Jo-Jo he’s kind of a loner, you know? We works mostly on motors. I asked around some.’

‘I’ll start from scratch,’ I said. ‘Girls?’

‘Nothin’ special. Maybe some I don’ know about.’

‘You mentioned a Driscoll?’

‘Nancy Driscoll. She’s older like. Only she ain’t a real girl friend. I mean, she chased him, you know?’

‘Where do I find her?’

‘I don’ know. I ain’t seen her in a while. I figure Jo-Jo been keepin’ her under wraps from me, you know?’

‘Where did he play cards, shoot dice, drink, have his fun?’

‘Jo-Jo don’t gamble. He likes movies. He drinks a lot o’ places. Maybe by Fugazy. He goes to dances by Polish Hall. He goes to the Y. He goes by the Y alone; I don’ swim.’

‘Give me a list; anyone and anywhere. His home address. You got a picture?’

‘I figured you’d want that,’ Pete said.

He handed me a small snapshot. It was poor, but it showed Pete with a motorbike and a tall, blond, good-looking boy of the same age. It would have to do. After Pete gave me the list of names and places, I sent him home.

I called Marty. I had fifty dollars and first things first, right? She was friendly but busy.

‘New girls at the club, baby, I have to rehearse,’ Marty said, ‘I’ll see you at five, okay? Don’t spend the fifty.’

It left me with a free afternoon. There was nothing to do but go to work. I was not anxious. A boy missing for four days was hardly a hot case. But I was on my way out when the phone rang.

‘Fortune,’ I said. I waited. ‘This is Dan Fortune.’

Silence.

But not quite silence. There was something like heavy breathing. I waited. Nothing but the breathing. I hung up. I suppose I should have sensed something then and there. I did stare at that telephone. But that kind of call happens to someone every day in New York. We’ve got a lot of cranks.

I went out and walked to the precinct station. That’s always the first stop. They had no record on Jo-Jo Olsen, but Lieutenant Marx seemed interested. I wondered some about a kid who had reached nineteen in Chelsea without even a juvenile record of any kind. Not even a prank arrest. It made this Jo-Jo sound even more special. I also wondered why Lieutenant Marx seemed interested. I asked him if Jo-Jo Olsen mean something to him, record or no record. Marx said no. He offered no other comment. The police do not give out free information.

I saw the big man when I came out of the precinct into the hot sun.

He was across the street. He was very interested in the window of a bookstore. Which is one of the things that caught my eye. He did not look like a man who read books, and I was pretty sure the level of his eyes and the angle at which he stood showed that he was not looking at the books at all. He was watching the station-house in the window.

The second thing that caught my eye was his shoes. He had the smallest feet I ever saw on such a big man, and the shoes were those old-fashioned, pointed, two-tone brown and beige the sports wore in the twenties.

I started across the street. He walked away fast. I watched him go and thought about the silent telephone call.