Manhunt. Volume 14, Number 2, April/May 1966

Viking Blood by Dennis Lynds

]o-]o Olsen was Norwegian, a descendant of the Vikings. But when you’re one of five kids trying to claw a life out of New York’s west side... it’s pretty hard to live up to your heritage.

It began with the mugging of the cop.

Person or persons unknown jumped the patrolman, dragged him into one of our dark alleys near the river, and cleaned him out. We all knew him: Patrolman Stettin on one of the river-front beats. A young cop, Stettin, not too long on the beat, and eager. The mugger took it all: billy club, gun, cuffs, summons book, watch, tie-clip and loose change.

The story went around the back rooms like the news of free drinks at some grand opening. Because it didn’t figure. Who robs a cop?

“What’s a harness bull got worth stealing?” Joe Harris said.

“The pistol,” I said.

Joe thought about that while he poured me a second free shot of Paddy’s good Irish. Packy Wilson, the owner of this saloon, was too busy talking to his other morning customer about Stettin’s mugging to notice the free drinks. Some good comes out of everything.

“There’re a lot easier ways to get a gun,” Joe said.

Joe was right. Getting a gun isn’t exactly like picking fruit off a tree, even here in Chelsea, but there are easier ways than mugging The Man. Kids born between the river and Broadway know that much before they’re weaned.

“Cops make less than you do,” Joe said. “When you get around to working.”

Joe and I live together, we have for a lot of years, and his name is on my life insurance. That doesn’t tempt him, and it says a lot about his character these days when you read about kids who kill their parents to get the insurance money to go to college. Joe thinks I should bring in more money, but I point out to him that he really likes tending bar and I need a reason to work.

“Try hunger,” Joe said. “That’s my reason.”

“It’s not enough,” I said.

And it’s not. You don’t need much money to eat and sleep and get enough to drink to quiet the voices in your head or the pain in an arm that isn’t even there. The missing arm holds me back a little, but we make enough to eat. Real work is for something else. There has to be a reason for real work — a reason that’s part of the work itself. That was a fact Jo-Jo Olsen had to face before it was all over.

That morning I hadn’t even heard of Jo-Jo Olsen, and no one had mentioned the other robbery or the murder. Nothing is that neat in. real life, and the cops don’t tell all they know to the neighborhood grapevine. On the West Side we get maybe 40 burglaries a day alone, and another robbery isn’t news. The mugging of a cop is news.

“A cop gets killed, that I figure,” Packy Wilson said. The other morning customer had left and Packy had to talk to me. “It’s the robbing and not killing I don’t get.”

Packy’s Pub is kind of a fancy name for a Tenth Avenue saloon, but Packy has ideas of drawing the young executive crowd and their Vassar-girl secretaries. He might even do it. The bright kids are always running out of places to “discover” these days. It’s a nervous time we have, everyone on the go-go. It doesn’t matter where they go, just somewhere else.

“I guess it was the gun,” Joe said, decided.

“Even an out-of-town hood oughta have better connections,” Packy Wilson said. “Jumping a cop is the hard way.”

“A junkie, maybe,” Joe said. “A junkie could sell the gun, and the other stuff, for a couple of good fixes.”

“Even you don’t believe that,” I said. “A junkie shakes when he sees a cop in the movies.”

“Maybe just a cop-hater,” Packy Wilson said. “And he took what he could while he was at it.”

It was good for a lot of talk for a while, but after a week or so even I had almost forgotten it. People are strange. I mean, cops are killed somewhere every day, but cops don’t get mugged and robbed very often. Yet a cop-killing rates headlines, and a mugging, which is real news, gets forgotten. People are more interested in death.

That’s the way it is, and. the talk about Stettin faded fast. I guess I would have forgotten it completely in a month. But I didn’t get the month. I got Jo-Jo Olsen and a couple of killings, and I caused a lot of trouble myself.

The kid walked into my office about three weeks later. It was a Monday and Joe’s day off. The Mets were away, it was too hot for fishing, and I was broke anyway. So I was in my office. The kid was looking for his friend Jo-Jo Olsen.

The experts tell you that a man can’t think up an alias that won’t give him away if you know enough about him. I believe that. A man can’t have something inside his head that didn’t have a start somewhere. Sometimes you have to know a lot, and sometimes not very much, but if you know enough about the man you’ll spot the alias. That was one of the things I knew and Jo-Jo Olsen didn’t know, and it almost cost him.

Another thing they tell you is that a good man is a man who faces up to his obligations, accepts his duty. Maybe that’s true, too. Only I’ve seen too many who face up to every obligation except the hard one. The hard one is a man’s obligation, duty, to himself. It’s hard because it always has to hurt someone else, the way it had to for Jo-Jo Olsen in the end.

“You writing a gossip column,” Joe said, “or you telling about Jo-Jo Olsen?”

Joe likes to read over my shoulder when I decide to write about all of it instead of working. He’s my friend, and he’s got the right, and most of the time he was there when it happened so he can help me tell it the way it was.

“They pay by the word,” I said.

Joe thinks I go off on angles, don’t tell it straight. He’s right, and he’s wrong. He wants me to tell the story of Jo-Jo Olsen. But what I’ve been telling is the story, the real story of Jo-Jo Olsen.

Most of the time it’s not the facts, the events, that tell the story, it’s the background, the scenery. It’s all the things floating around a man in the air he breathes, the air he was born to and lives in. Things waiting for a spark to set them off. That’s the real story of Jo-Jo Olsen, not the spark that blew it all up, or the dead faces he never knew.

Joe would say it started on the day Petey Vitanza happened to find me in my office that Monday morning. Or maybe on the day Patrolman Stettin was mugged, and the woman killed. But it really began the day Jo-Jo Olsen was born, or maybe a hell of a long time before that when the Vikings still roamed the seas. Petey Vitanza, sitting in my dingy office with the brick wall for a view out the one window, was just one of the sparks.

“Almost three weeks, Mr. Kelly,” Petey Vitanza said.

“A rabbit act?” I said. “Try the police.”

“Jo-Jo wouldn’t never stay away three weeks on his own,” the Vitanza boy said. “He just bought a new bike. We was fixing it for racing.”

The kid was scared. That was one of the things I mean. He was scared, and should have minded his own business, but Jo-Jo Olsen was his friend, so he came to me. He picked me because I’d known his father, Tony, before Tony Vitanza died building the Lincoln Tunnel so people could get to Atlantic City faster.

Missing persons are jobs for the police. Even when I was working steadier at private snooping, I didn’t like them. Most of the rabbit cases I got were fathers after stray daughters, or wives after stray husbands who had all of a sudden wondered why they were working to their graves for women who weren’t any fun. There could be a message. I mean, what happens between the time the daughter runs and the wife is run on? Makes a man think.

This time was different. Jo-Jo Olsen was a nineteen year old boy. He hadn’t been lured into bad company, he’d been born into bad company. He wasn’t married or even going steady.

“Sure,” Petey Vitanza said, “we got girls, you know? Only no steady. Jo-Jo and me got motors, you know? I mean, Jo-Jo is studyin’ hard by Automotive Institute. He’s good. We’re gonna go over ’n work for Ferrari someday. Maybe England, the Limeys sure knows cars.”

And it wasn’t Jo-Jo’s parents who were looking for him.

“They said he went on a trip,” Petey said. “His old man told me to stop botherin’ him, and his old lady got mad. She said I should mind my own business and go dig dirt with the other hogs.”

I didn’t know the Olsens, and I was glad. From that crack about hogs, they sounded like those people who think hard work is for suckers. We have a lot like that in Chelsea. They live around the rackets and the fast buck, and honest sandhogs get their contempt. The story sounded like that. It also sounded like a cover up.

“Is Jo-Jo in trouble, Petey?” I asked.

“Hell no!” Petey said, but he looked scared.

“It’s got the sound,” I said.

Petey was scared. “That cop, the one got beat up bad? The fuzz got it the day before Jo-Jo took off. The bull got beat right down the block from Schmidt’s Garage.”

“And you and Jo-Jo were working on the bike in Schmidt’s?”

Petey nodded. “Jo-Jo works by Schmidt’s. Only we been there near every day for months, the both of us! We was working on his new bike, fixin’ the motor for racin’. It’s a sweetheart, a Yamaha. I mean, we was together all the time!”

“A Yamaha costs real bread,” I said.

“Jo-Jo he stashed his loot. He’s a good mechanic, Mr. Kelly, and Schmidt pays him good.”

I had a funny feeling in my arm, the left arm that isn’t there. I get that when things don’t sound right. This didn’t sound right.

“He had a good job,” I said, “he was studying hard at school, and he had a new cycle you were readying for racing. But a cop’s been beaten right on the block where he works, and he’s run.”

Petey nodded. Nobody is with somebody else all the time. Like I said, my advice on rabbits is go to the cops. They have the tools. Most rabbits are repeaters. Once a man runs, unless the pressures change which they usually don’t, he will run again. It’s the rabbit’s answer to run. Some men drink, some mainline, some watch TV, some beat their wives, some let everyone beat them to see how much they can take, and rabbits run.

But this sounded different. Jo-Jo Olsen had no reason to run, and a cop had been attacked on his block. Jo-Jo sounded like a straight kid, but in Chelsea if a man wants quick money his mind turns only one way, and it isn’t to a bank loan. Besides, if Petey went to the police they would check with the parents and go home.

“Okay, Petey,” I said. “You go home, I’ll check it out.”

I meant it, but you know how it is. It was summer and so hot the chewing gum on the streets turned liquid, and I was having my troubles with Marty again, and it all made me thirsty and tired.

Marty is my woman. Martine Adair, that’s her name on the off-Broadway theater programs and the signs outside the tourist nightclubs on Third Street. Her real name doesn’t matter. She changed her name, and I don’t tell how I really lost my arm. She’s fifteen years younger than me, and she gives me trouble. That’s my own private business. I wouldn’t mention Marty except that she was the reason I was almost too late, and she knew about Pappas.

Anyway, I did get around to checking with precinct on Jo-Jo. They had no record on the Olsen boy, but Lieutenant Marx was interested. Maybe it should have interested me, the fact that Jo-Jo had reached the age of nineteen in our neighborhood without picking up any record at all, and yet his name seemed to ring some kind of bell with Lieutenant Marx. But it didn’t register at the time, and Marx didn’t offer any comment. Most cops don’t.

I put out a few other feelers asking for any information on Jo-Jo, and went back to my own problems. It could have stopped right there, too, but the spark had been set off. Marty got friendly again, and I got mauled a little, and they picked Petey Vitanza out of a gutter beaten blind, and Captain Gazzo down at Homicide told me about the other robbery — and about the killing.

The guy who mauled me was big but slow. I’m not big, and I’m not slow. When you’ve got only the average number and size of muscles, and you picked up a handicap like one arm along the way, you need good legs and fast thinking. It’s called compensation, or adaptation, or just learning to use what you have in a world you can’t do much about.

It was a night about a week after I’d talked with Petey Vitanza. Hotter than the engine room on some old coal-burners I’ve sailed on, and I was heading for Paddy’s Pub. I passed one of our convenient dark alleys, and he came down on me like a whole hod of bricks.

He hit me once on the right shoulder. He’d lunged off-balance, and he only got the shoulder. He was no trained fighter, but he had muscles, and his fist felt like a small bowling ball. I bounced off a wall. His second blow was slow, and I had time to roll with it. That was lucky because it was aimed at my chin and was more accurate. I think his trouble was that he had something on his mind, and his brain was too slow to think of two things at once.

“Lay off Jo-Jo!”

He grunted that message just as he swung the second punch at my jaw, and so he was slow, and I rolled with it. I threw one punch just to make him slow down, kicked his shin hard, and rolled two garbage cans into his path. He ducked the punch, howled when I got his shin, and sprawled over the cans as he lunged again. By the time he had picked himself up I was nothing but heels going away fast. I think I was leaning on Packy Wilson’s bar, and half way through my first drink, before he was sure I had gone.

“A big guy,” I described to Joe. “Blond, I think, or going grey. Kind of a square face, flabby. Dressed good in a suit from the little I got to see.”

Joe shook his head. “He don’t drink much, I don’t know him.”

“He drinks,” Packy Wilson said, “only not in bars you work, Joe. He drinks in the good joints, the Clubs over in the Village and down Little Italy.”

“The racket-owned places?” I said.

“If he’s who I think, and it sounds like him,” Packy said.

“Who?” I said. “Or are we guessing?”

“Olsen,” Packy said. “Lars Olsen. They call him Swede only he’s Norwegian, I think.”

“Jo-Jo’s old man?” I said. There is a big difference between not looking for a missing son, and trying to stop someone else from looking. Good or bad, Jo-Jo had some kind of trouble.

“Yeah,” Packy said. “It was Jo-Jo told me they was really Norwegian. The kid come in here for a beer sometimes. He was real hipped on the Vikings and all, that’s how he come to tell me they was Norwegians not Swedes.”

“Vikings?” I said. “Jo-Jo knew history?”

“The kid knew the Vikings,” Packy said. “Read all them old Sagas he said. He used to say they was tough, and brave, and always won because they was daring and could outsail anyone. He said they never took no handouts from no one.”

I listened to Packy, but I was thinking of something else. In my mind Jo-Jo Olsen was moving down two streets. It didn’t make sense. Everything that had happened, the events, put Jo-Jo more-and-more into trouble, some kind of trouble. But everything I heard about Jo-Jo made it more-and-more clear that he did not sound like a kid who would get into trouble.

“Those old kings sure had names,” Packy said, remembering. “Harald the Stern, Sweyn Blue-Tooth, Halfdan The Black, Gorm The Old. The kid used to rattle them off like they tasted good just to say. He said that today was nothing, his old man even let guys call him Swede and didn’t give a damn.”

“History and motors and racing,” I said. I was talking to myself. I rubbed the stump of my arm where sweat from the heat had made it sore. No record, history, motors, a bank account, and maybe joining Ferrari in Italy just didn’t sound like either a cop-beater or a rabbit.

“They never come in here much,” Packy said. “The old man is too good for the place, and the kid is saving his dough.”

I needed a key, a link that would connect motors and racing and dreams of Ferrari in Italy, with a mugging-robbery of a cop that might make a man do a rabbit.

“Maybe saving his money wasn’t fast enough,” I said.

And Packy gave it to me. The possible zinger, the “maybe tie-in between a vanished kid, an angry father, and a mugged cop.”

“You think maybe it was Jo-Jo pulled that job on the dame?” Packy said. “You know, I was thinking about that myself.”

“What job?” I said.

“The couple-of-grand jewel heist down on Water Street,” Packy said. “Maybe you didn’t hear. The Man got it under the cool for some reason. Not much, just a few grand take, but the dame got killed. In one of them new buildings.”

New York is a peculiar city. Most big cities have slums and rich areas, but the rivers make New York special. Manhattan is an island, so there isn’t much space to move in, and the whole city moves in slow circles from good to bad to good and back to bad. You end up with tenements, businesses, factories, and luxury buildings all on the same block.

Water Street is a slum street near the river that is getting good again. There are three new apartment houses on the street, a lot of old-law tenements — and Schmidt’s Garage. It is also on the beat of Patrolman Stettin. It is the street where Stettin got hit. Now it had another robbery, and a killing!

I waited until next morning to pay a call on Captain Gazzo down at Homicide.

“The killing and robbery happened the same day our man was mugged, Kelly,” Gazzo said. “We made the connection too.”

Gazzo is an old cop. He says he’s crazy because the world he lives in is crazy and you have to be crazy to handle it. He says he wouldn’t know what to do with a sane person, he never gets to meet any. He includes me with the crazy. Maybe he knows.

“Jo-Jo Olsen,” I said. “He’s done a rabbit it looks like.”

“Olsen?” Gazzo said as if listening to the sound. “Any part of Swede Olsen?”

“Son,” I said. “I think Swede doesn’t like me.”

I told him about the inefficient mangier of last night. He seemed interested, but with Gazzo you can’t tell. I’ve known him over twenty years, and I don’t know if he likes me or hates me. With Gazzo it doesn’t make any difference, he does his job.

“The kid worked at Schmidt’s Garage?” Gazzo said.

“He did,” I said.

“Interesting,” Gazzo said.

“Tell me about the murder, robbery and cop-jumping?” I said.

“I thought you gave up on the world?” Gazzo said.

“I try,” I said, “but it just hangs around. What have you got, Captain.”

Gazzo had a file, but it was thin. A woman named Myra Jones was robbed and killed. Fake name, Caucasian, 22 years old, blonde, five-foot-eight, profession: model and chorus girl. Two diamond rings and a diamond necklace stolen, value about $2800, nothing else missing and plenty left behind. She lived alone in a four room luxury apartment in a non-doorman building on Water Street with a self-service elevator. Death was quick from a massive brain hemorrhage. No suspects on record.

“It looks like a grab and run, unintentional killing,” Gazzo explained. “The stolen stuff must have been lying open, a lot more was left behind inside an unopened jewelry box. The girl hit her head on the corner of an andiron in front of one of those fake fireplaces. She hit hard. There was a big bruise on her chin.”

“She surprised him in her pad, he panicked and hit too hard,” I said.

“That’s the way it reads right now,” Gazzo said. “No one saw him leave who’s talking to us. He went out die back way and into an alley from the look of it. Tell me about the Olsen kid.”

“What could he see?” I said. “Two rings and a necklace don’t show. Schmidt’s Garage is at the other end of the block.”

“Maybe he recognized the guy,” Gazzo said.

“What, just walking on the street?” I said. “You just said the guy ducked out the alley. If he just killed a woman, he’d have been pretty careful not to be seen by anyone who knew him.”

“Accidents happen, Kelly,” Gazzo said drily.

For myself I was thinking about Swede Olsen. There aren’t many men you would see on the street, just walking, and wonder what they were doing. But your father you might. For some reason this did not seem to have occurred to Gazzo, and I wasn’t about to bring it up.

“What about the cop?” I said. “Maybe he saw the burglar and was slugged for that?”

Gazzo rubbed his chin. He needed a shave. He usually did need a shave unless City Hall wanted to see him. Gazzo took some acid in the face twelve years ago, and his skin is tender. The Captain was shaking his head.

“No one ever accused our men of being slow on the trigger, Kelly,” Gazzo said. “If Stettin had seen anything there would have been a rumpus. And why would our killer just knock him out and rob him? Anyway, he’s okay now, and he can’t tell us anything.”

“He was just jumped?” I said. “Persons unknown?”

“Unknown, unseen, and unexplained,” Gazzo said sourly. “Poor Stettin is embarrassed. He’s an eager rookie. It hurts him to have been slugged and not even guess why.”

“Clues?” I asked. “That you can talk about?”

Gazzo grinned. “Clues? Sure, we got a clue. A losing stub on a slow nag at Monmouth Park the day before the job. It was the only thing we found didn’t belong to the lady or her lover.”

“Thanks,” I said. Monmouth Park is a popular track. I’d hate to be chased down a dark street by half the losers there in a single day. “What about the times?”

Gazzo checked his file. “Woman died between five and six in the afternoon. Stettin was hit about six-thirty.” And Gazzo looked up at me. “The kid play the horses?”

“Cars and motorcycles are his line,” I said. I got up to leave. I had a breakfast date with Marty, and I Irate to keep her waiting when she feels friendly. “I don’t really see Olsen in this, Gazzo. I don’t even know he’s run. His family say he’s just on a trip.”

“Swede Olsen was only trying, to give his boy some privacy, eh?” Gazzo said.

“Maybe he just doesn’t like people talking to the cops about his family.” I said.

“I believe that much,” Gazzo said.

I left Gazzo putting in a call on Jo-Jo Olsen.

Out in the street I headed for the subway. The more I looked at it, the less I could see Jo-Jo in the robberies or the killing. I didn’t think Gazzo could either. Police work on patterns, records, the facts. Jo-Jo had no record, and the pattern stank. In Chelsea kids are born knowing better than to pull a job on their own block — and then point the finger at themselves by running.

But it looked like Jo-Jo was running. Swede Olsen was worried. I thought again about the older Olsen, but it played rotten. If Swede was the killer, he should have run not Jo-Jo. Why would a boy run just because he knew too much about his father? Afraid? I doubted that. Ashamed? That was possible, but I didn’t like it. If Swede was a thief, and Jo-Jo knew it, one accidental killing wouldn’t be likely to bring sudden shame.

Since it wasn’t noon yet, I had plenty of time for my breakfast-date with Marty, so I took the local north. The local is more comfortable, there’s more room to stand. While the local rattled, I went over it all again. The way it appeared now, I couldn’t fit it to Jo-Jo, so maybe there was another way to look at it all.

I didn’t like the way Myra Jones had died. You’d be surprised how few burglars panic — unless they are amateurs or junkies. Jo-Jo was an amateur, but he wasn’t a junkie. I never heard of a junkie with money in the bank, or who needs wheels to roll.

I didn’t much like the robbery. The thief had gotten in and out totally unseen and undetected, not a trace left behind. And yet the haul had been peanuts.

I didn’t like two violent crimes on the same block so close together — but unconnected. Somewhere there should be a connection between the robbery and the attack on Officer Stettin.

By the time I climbed out of the subway into the 90° cool of Sixth Avenue, I was working on the other side. Burglars did panic. Junkies made clever but sloppy robberies, and grabbed and ran. And unconnected crimes happened on the same block every day in New York.

To wash it all away I stopped in a tavern a block from Marty’s place. There was still a half an hour until noon and a decent breakfast hour for Marty. I planned to relax and think about her and get into the mood. Burglaries were a dime a dozen, the cop had probably written a ticket and got someone mad, and Jo-Jo Olsen had probably had a fight with his old lady. Marty was much better food for the inner man.

But they knew me in this saloon. Before I had a chance to blow the foam off my beer, I had heard all about Petey Vitanza. Marty isn’t the kind of woman you forget about for any reason, so I called her and told her I’d be late. She didn’t like it, and neither did I.

I like bars. Everything is cool and dim and simple in a man’s relation to a glass of beer. And I don’t like hospitals. But I left that bar and took a taxi down to St. Vincent’s because I liked Petey Vitanza.

They told me that Petey would see again. He wasn’t blind, it only looked that way. His face wasn’t a face, it was a bandage. They had broken both arms. But the real serious damage was the splintered ribs and the internal injuries.

“Very complete job,” the doctor said. “I had a case on the Bowery, but this is more complete.”

The cops were there, since it was pretty clear that Petey had not fallen down some stairs. One old cop agreed that it was a good beating, but not professional.

“Amateurs,” the old cop said. “They used their hands. Too much blood and damage without enough pain. Just amateurs.”

Petey could not talk, but he could hear. They gave me two minutes. They said that he would probably live and I could ask him more questions later. I asked him if he had known the ones who beat him. He shook his head, negative. I asked him if it had been anything to do with Jo-Jo Olsen, and he nodded that it had. I asked him if it had any connection to the robbery-killing, or the cop-mugging, and he seemed agitated. He passed out then.

When I came out of the hospital it was still summer and hot. It seemed that it should have been dark and cold.

At that point I didn’t really care about Jo-Jo Olsen, or about law and order. But I cared about Petey Vitanza and men who would, or could, beat a boy that badly. It’s like politics for me — I don’t care much about Anti-Poverty Crusades by politicians, but I care a lot about the poor.

I had let enough normal lack-of-interest in another man’s troubles slow me down. Now it was time to go to work. It was time to find Jo-Jo Olsen, and I had one new fact to go on. Petey knew Swede Olsen, and he had not known who beat him. Which meant that someone else had a strong interest in Jo-Jo Olsen beside his doting father.

It was past time to meet Swede Olsen and family formally. Not that I expected the Swedish Norwegian to want to tell me much. The big older Olsen had tried to dissuade my interest in Jo-Jo forcefully. The question was: was it only me he wanted to keep away from Jo-Jo, or was all outside interest a worry to him?

When I walked up to the building on Nineteenth Street, I was not surprised to find that the Olsens lived in the best big apartment in a not-too-good building near the river. And I was not surprised to find Swede at home at mid-day. Both Gazzo and Lieutenant Marx seemed to know Olsen, and from what Petey Vitanza had told me I had already guessed that the Olsens were not a hard working family.

Swede Olsen was surprised. The big man took one look at me and clenched his large fist. I dangled my not-so-large Police Special in my hand. I didn’t point the gun, you understand, I just showed it. He had the muscles. I had the equalizer. He scowled, but he stepped back and let me walk inside.

“What you want, Kelly?” Olsen growled.

I looked around. The apartment was big and ugly. Not lack-of-money ugly, but just plain rotten-taste ugly. It fitted. I mean, everything about Olsen and his apartment talked of enough money but not much experience in spending the money wisely. The place had cost a lot to furnish, but it still looked like a slum room. The rent in such a building would be high for our section, but low tor anywhere else.

Swede himself looked like a slob, and yet Packy Wilson said the big man went to the expensive bars for his beers. The whole picture was of making money too late. And the woman who came into the living room now fitted right in. She looked like one of those Okie women in Grapes of Wrath, except that her clothes had cost a bundle and her hands were clean. Too late. The woman had money for clothes and clean hands now, but the hands had been ruined long ago, and the years had left her nothing to hang the clothes on but a bag of old bones.

“Stay out of this, Magda,” Olsen snapped at the woman.

“It’s my business,” the woman said. She looked at me as if I was a cockroach she knew too well. “You the one askin’ about my boy?”

“I’m one of them,” I said. “I’m the one who doesn’t play so rough. The others are the mean type.”

“Get lost,” the woman said.

I turned to Olsen. “You don’t want your boy found?”

“Who said he’s missing?” the woman said.

“I say he’s missing,” I said. “The question I can’t answer is the one about if he’s missing from you, Mrs. Olsen.”

“He ain’t, Kelly,” Olsen said.

“Then where is he? If the other guys find him they might play rougher.”

There was a long silence. I watched them. Olsen looked unhappy, and he was sweating. The woman looked like the rock of Gibraltar. Olsen looked worried. The woman, Mrs. Olsen, looked determined. I got a funny feeling — they were worried about themselves, not about Jo-Jo.

“What did he run for?” I asked.

“He ain’t run,” Mrs. Olsen said. “Beat it.”

“Did he jump that cop?” I snapped.

“No,” Olsen said, cried, and realized he had shot his mouth off. He looked green. His wife, Magda Olsen the mother, glared at him.

“He did nothing. He took a trip,” Magda Olsen said.

I was ready to go on with the dance when the two boys came into the room. They were both big and both young. They looked enough like Swede to tell me I was looking at Jo-Jo’s brothers. A pretty girl behind them told me Jo-Jo had at least one sister. The girl was pretty, but the boys weren’t.

“Take off,” Olsen said.

I went. But all the way down the stairs and out into the mid-afternoon sun, I knew I had learned a lot. They were worried. Not worried about Jo-Jo, but about themselves. All of them, as if they were all in some kind of collective trouble, but not police-type trouble. They were angry worried, not scared worried.

And they were not surprised that others were looking for Jo-Jo. Olsen knew Jo-Jo had not beaten and robbed Officer Stettin, and I had a pretty strong hunch that he knew who had. Olsen didn’t like what he knew. The old lady, Magda Olsen, didn’t like it all either, but she was standing pat. They were all like people on eggshells. Like they didn’t want to breathe if that would rock the boat.

Only what was the boat? I’d have staked my reputation on them being clean about the killing and mugging. So it had to be that they knew something they wished they didn’t know, and that maybe Jo-Jo knew it, too. Then why had only Jo-Jo run? And what was there about a simple robbery-murder, and even a cop-mugging, that knowing it would worry Olsen and his family so much? It didn’t figure a smalltime heist man would worry them.

It was a good question, and I thought about it all the way across town in the sun. A good question, and I got a good answer a lot faster than I expected.

I told you that Marty was my girl. I had kept her waiting all day. Or maybe it’d be truer to say I’d kept myself waiting. I liked Petey Vitanza, but a man has to think of himself. It was too late for breakfast at Marty’s pad, so I met her at O.Henry’s. Outside, at one of the sidewalk cafe tables.

I needed a drink by then, two drinks, and Marty matched me all the way. She’s not so pretty, Marty, not really, but under the lights, and to me, she’s beautiful.

“That’s what counts,” I said. “To your audience and your man you’re beautiful.”

I got a nice smile. She’s small, and this month she was a red-head, and she’s built. But the real thing is she’s exciting, you know? She’s alive, she never stops moving even sitting there doing nothing. When I’m with her she keeps me busy. That was why I missed Pappas until he was sitting down at the table.

I’ve known Andy Pappas all my life. We’re the same age, we grew up together on the river, we stole together, we learned to like girls together and we graduated high school together. Andy, me, and Joe Harris. That was where it ended. Joe is poor and hardworking. I’m poor and not so hardworking. Andy is rich and no one knows what he works at.

I mean, Andy is a boss. For the record, Andy Pappas is boss of a big stevedoring company on the docks. Off the record, Andy is the boss of something else. Everyone knows this something else is a racket and illegal. Only no one really knows just what Andy’s racket is. He’s got a piece of a lot of dirty pies, is my guess, but the main one is keeping the riverfront peaceful. He gets the ships unloaded — for a price and by force.

“Hello, Patrick,” Pappas said. He’s got a nice voice, low and even. He took lessons everyone says, but I remember he always had a good voice.

“Hello, Andy,” I said. I nodded to Marty that she should leave. Andy grinned.

“Let the lady stay, I’ve seen her work,” Andy Pappas said. “Besides, we’re friends, right, Patrick?”

“You don’t have a friend, Andy,” I said. “You’re the enemy of everyone.”

Pappas nodded. He did not stop smiling. It was an old story with us.

“You don’t soften up, do you, Pat?” Pappas said.

“And you never change,” I said. “This isn’t a social visit.”

I nodded toward the lamppost a few feet away. It was one of those old gas-light lampposts O.Henry’s had put up for atmosphere. Just leaning against it, pretending he was watching the little girl tourists pass, Was Jake Roth. Roth wasn’t watching girls, he was watching me. They say that Andy Pappas never carries a gun. But Jake Roth went to bed with a shoulder holster under his pajama top. Roth is Pappas’s first lieutenant and top killer.

Across the street I could see Max Bangio. Bangio is Pappas’s next best gun after Roth, and the little gunman was trying to read a newspaper in front of the stationery store by spelling out the words in the headline. Actually, Bangio was watching me in the store-front window.

Just up the block toward Sheridan Square, Pappas’s long, black car was parked in front of a Japanese knick-knack shop. The driver sat behind the wheel with his cap down and his arms folded. I didn’t need a ouija board to know that there was a pistol ready beneath those folded arms.

Pappas shrugged. “You said it, Patrick, everyone’s my enemy.”

“That isn’t exactly what I said, but let it pass. What’s on your mind, Andy?”

“Let’s have a drink first, Patrick. You’re my friend if I’m not yours,” Pappas said.

“I don’t drink with you, Andy. Those days went a long time ago,” I said.

I know I go too far with Pappas. There was that glint in his cold eyes. I’ve seen it before, and I push too hard. It’s not brave to refuse to back off from a mad dog, it’s stupid. But with Andy I can’t help it. I know him, and that makes it worse. It’s one thing to hear about Andy Pappas and hate him, and another to really know him and hate him. I feel guilty around him, because in some way I failed and he’s my fault. I have to share the blame.

I can’t back off from Pappas, tread softly, because he is what is wrong with it all. A man like Andy Pappas is where we went off the track. All the men like Andy who believe that all that counts is some advantage, some victory, some success, here and now, no matter how or who gets hurt. The men who will destroy us all just to try to win something even if only King of The Graveyard.

“All right, Pat,” Pappas said at last, “I’ll make it short. Lay off Olsen and his family.”

And there was the answer. Somehow, Andy Pappas was mixed up with this. If I were the Olsens I would be worried, too. I’m not the Olsens, and I knew nothing, and I was still worried as I watched Pappas.

“Why?” I said.

“Olsen works for me,” Pappas said.

“Olsen?” I said, and the question was clear.

“Odd jobs, driving, stuff like that,” Pappas said. “But he gets my protection.”

“Does he need it now, Andy?” I said.

Pappas laughed. “Look, Patrick.

I don’t know everything. I don’t want to know everything. All I know is that Olsen doesn’t want you bothering him or his boys, okay?”

“Did he tell you why I’m bothering him?” I said.

“I didn’t talk to him,” Andy Pappas said. “I got the request through channels. If it was anyone except you, I’d have sent a punk to tell you.”

“His boy’s done a rabbit,” I said.

“So it’s a family matter,” Pappas said. “Since when you work for the cops on a rabbit?”

“I’m not working for the cops,” I said. “I’m working for a nice kid who wants to find his friend. A nice kid who got beaten ninety-percent to death today. You wouldn’t know about that, would you, Andy?”

“I don’t beat ninety percent, Pat,” Pappas said. Pappas stood up. He was smiling, but his eyes were not smiling. “He’s got my protection, Patrick, remember that.”

When Pappas stands up it is a signal. I heard the motor start in the big car up the block. Max Bagnio crossed the street toward us. Jake Roth stepped up to the table. Roth never took his eyes off me. I watched Pappas.

“Olsen must be in real trouble, Andy,” I said.

Jake Roth answered me. The tall, skinny killer leaned half down like a long necked vulture. He stank of sweat.

“Listen, peeper, Mr. Pappas said lay off, forget it, you got that? Mr. Pappas said cool it, he means cool it. Forget you ever heard about Olsen.”

Roth’s black, luminous eyes seemed to float in water. His breath was thick, his breathing fast as he bent close to me. Andy Pappas touched Roth lightly. The skinny gunman jerked upright like a puppet on a string.

“I told him, Jake, that’s enough,” Andy Pappas said. “You can tell Olsen that Kelly got the word.”

Roth nodded. Max Bagnio said nothing. The black car slid up to the curb. Andy Pappas touched his hat to Marty, and climbed into the back of his car. Roth climbed in beside him, and Max Bagnio went around to get in beside the driver. The car eased away into the traffic and turned uptown on Sixth Avenue. I didn’t breathe until it was gone. Then I ordered a double for both of us. Marty was still staring after Pappas.

“I know you know him,” Marty said, “but I’m surprised every time. Just seeing him makes me shiver.”

“Join the club,” I said.

The drinks came and we were busy gulping for a long minute. Then I sighed, let out my breath, and smiled as I sat back. Marty still looked toward where the black car had vanished.

“How can you talk to him like that, Patrick,” Marty said.

“I can’t talk to him any other way,” I said. “What I never really understood is why he lets me. I guess even Andy needs to think he has some human feeling. I’m his charity.”

Marty shuddered. “But now,” she said. “I could hardly look at him. I heard he was almost insane he was so mad.”

“Mad?” I said. “Now? Why now, Marty?”

“His girl friend was killed, Patrick,” Marty said.

“Killed? But Andy’s married,” I said slowly.

Marty gave me a withering look. “I never heard that marriage had much to do with a girl-friend, except to make it harder on the girl.”

“How was she killed, Marty?” I said. “How do you know about it?”

I had forgotten my thirst. I was not holding my breath because I had no breath to hold. I was seeing Andy Pappas’s smiling face as he told me to lay off the Olsens. I was remembering the thick air of worry in the Olsen’s apartment.

“I know because she worked sometimes at the Club. Not much, she had no talent. Just a pretty girl,” Marty said. “She had to tell someone about Pappas. She was a dumb girl.”

“Did Pappas kill her?” I said.

“I don’t know, Patrick. They say not. They told me it was just an accident, during a robbery,” Marty said.

“Myra Jones,” I said.

“You knew her?” Marty said.

“No,” I said.

So there it was. I could imagine a sneak thief learning that he had killed the mistress of Andy Pappas. I could imagine the problems of anyone involved. Jo-Jo Olsen? I did not want to think about it. But I had to think, and I still did not see Jo-Jo Olsen as a thief. But I saw him as a witness. Everyone in Chelsea knew Andy Pappas. Men had killed their mistresses for thousands of years.

I wanted to talk to Gazzo.

Captain Gazzo leaned back and shrugged when I walked in and told him what I knew. Gazzo looked tired, too tired to amuse himself with me.

“Why didn’t you tell me she was Pappas’s girl?” I said.

“You didn’t ask, and it was none of your business,” Gazzo said. “As a matter of fact, it still isn’t your business.”

“It might have saved a boy from almost being killed”, I said.

“I doubt it,” Gazzo said. “Pappas is pretty busted up.”

“I’ll bet,” I said. “It’s a classic, Gazzo. Andy always was jealous.”

“If anyone got the Vitanza kid beat up it was you,” Gazzo said. “You went around looking for Jo-Jo Olsen.”

“I mean Pappas,” I said. “It’s a thousand to one he killed her! Who would kill Andy Pappas’s girl friend?”

“No,” Gazzo said.

I blinked. “No, what?”

“No, Pappas didn’t kill her.” Gazzo said.

I laughed. “Alibi? Of course Andy would have an alibi!”

Gazzo swore. “Knock it off, Kelly. Don’t you think I’ve been around long enough to know a real air-tight alibi when I see one?”

“I’ll listen,” I said.

Gazzo smiled. “Andy Pappas was in Washington in front of a Congressional Committee at the exact time. He’d been there all day, and he was there half the night.”

“All right, he had it done,” I said. “That would be perfect. Pappas would pick just such a time. Were all his boys with him?”

“No,” Gazzo said. “But they all have alibis.”

“Sure. Each other, probably.”

“No, Roth was at the Jersey shore swimming. Bagnio was in Philadelphia. All the others were in Washington or somewhere else they can prove.”

“Air tight alibis?” I said.

“Not like Pappas,” Gazzo said. “No one saw any of them who could not be bought, I admit it. Roth has the best. Jake says he was on the beach all day. We checked that his car never left the shore. Bagnio was seen, off and on, in Philly, but only by other hoods. The rest can account for a lot of their time, but not all.”

“It’s got to be Pappas himself!” I said. I suppose I wanted it to be Andy. It’s nice to think that evil always trips itself up; that a human monster like Andy Pappas would finally be betrayed by his one weakness — that he was, after all, human, and not a pure monster.

“I was there when we told him,” Gazzo said. “I saw him. Pappas almost fainted when we broke it. I know real shook when I see it. He cried, Kelly. I mean, Pappas really cried.”

“Touching,” I said, but I wasn’t as hard as I sounded. It was just that I wanted Andy to make the mistake that way. I wanted Andy to get it from something as stupid and simple as a jealous rage; some lousy little mistake anyone could make. I wanted it real bad.

“Give us some credit, Kelly,” Gazzo said wearily. “I’ve been a cop a long time. The Man isn’t all stupid, no matter what you hear around the city. We checked it all ways and upside down. Everything says that Pappas was really hooked on the girl, treated her almost like a daughter.”

“Daughters cheat,” I said, because I was still hoping.

“We dug deep, Kelly,” Gazzo said. “There isn’t a whisper that Pappas might have done it. A year ago he caught her holding hands with a young punk. He didn’t do anything except tell the kid to get lost, and tell the Jones girl to choose. She’s dumb, but not that dumb. She chose Pappas.”

I had nothing to say.

“Think of the odds, Kelly,” Gazzo said.

“What odds?” I said.

“The odds that a guy who meant to kill her would have been able to do it with one punch that happened to make her hit her head on an andiron. The Medical Examiner says it just about couldn’t have been done any other way. The odds against it being deliberate, the way it happened, are so big you’d laugh.”

“He knocked her out,” I said, “and then belted her with the andiron. Then he arranged it to look good.”

Gazzo shook his head. “The M.E. says it’s possible, but only barely. I say it’s impossible because the andiron had not been touched. It had clear, unsmudged prints of the girl and her maid, and no one else. It had not been wiped. It still had dust on it.”

I gave up. Even Andy Pappas could not arrange for a girl to be killed by a real accident. I still had enough problems without Andy.

“Damn it, Gazzo, someone is looking for Jo-Jo Olsen,” I said. “And I don’t think it’s some sneak thief or junkie. The kid has run, Pappas and the Olsen family are involved with each other, and Pappas’s girl is dead. It’s too much coincidence. Jo-Jo Olsen knows something.”

“We’ll know it too when we find him,” Gazzo said.

“If we find him,” I said.

I was thinking of the others looking for Jo-Jo. At least they were still looking. Which meant that Jo-Jo was not in some shallow grave yet — or he had not been about noon today.

I thought about them, the ones who had beaten Petey Vitanza, all the way down and out into the evening streets of the city. The old cop at the hospital had called them amateurs. He was probably right, and Andy Pappas did not use amateurs.

It was now evening, the city cooled down to a nice 89° in the shade, and I was getting a theory. I took a taxi, uptown to get a wind in my face and think better. By the time the cab got to Fourth Street and Sixth Avenue I had the theory down solid. I looked in at O.Henry’s, but Marty was gone. I went on down the block and into the dingy plebian silence of Fugazy’s Tavern.

I had an Irish with my theory.

What had been wrong all along was the small-time nature of the bit. In Chelsea even the best of kids would not fink to the cops over a small-time robbery and accidental killing. Mind your own dirt is the motto here. Kids drink it from the bottle. No one would have been really afraid that Jo-Jo Olsen would run to the cops over such a crime — and the Olsens had the protection of Andy Pappas. If all it was a simple robbery-killing, then silencing Jo-Jo would have been more dangerous than the original crime.

But Myra Jones had been Andy Pappas’s girl. That changed it. Now the killer of the Jones girl had a reason to be scared. Now he had a reason to silence any witness. Now the Olsens had a reason to worry: two reasons. First, that the original killer might be after Jo-Jo. Second, that Pappas might be after Jo-Jo! It wasn’t the cops the unknown killer was afraid of, it was Andy Pappas!

That was my new theory, and it made a lot of sense, but I didn’t like it. There was still too much that rattled. A big loose piece was the killer himself — a small-timer who killed a woman in a robbery, and found out she was Pappas’s girl, should have run far and fast. It was double-jeopardy: a felony murder that carried the chair; and a capital offense against Pappas that carried maybe worse than the chair. A smalltime jewel thief would have run, not hung around trying to cover. Penny-ante crooks don’t hire men to work for them, and I couldn’t see even amateurs letting themselves be hired to get mixed up in the killing of Andy Pappas’s woman!

The second big rattler was that the Olsens were tight with Pappas. If Jo-Jo knew something about who had killed Pappas’s girl, why not tell Pappas? Even if Jo-Jo himself were not part of the Pappas-Olsen scene, he would have no reason to protect a killer from Pappas. From the cops, yes, that was the code, but tipping Pappas would only get him a medal, especially from his old man Swede Olsen.

Unless the killer was Swede Olsen! I could see Jo-Jo saving his father. But I could not buy Swede as the killer — he was not that worried.

Pappas himself was out as the killer, which was too bad because that would have explained it all. If I knew Pappas was a killer, I’d fly not run.

If Jo-Jo was the killer that would explain it all, too. But in this world you have to go on more than facts, and I did not see the Olsen kid as the man.

Which left me still nowhere, and with my one last big question: Officer Stettin. Somehow the mugged cop figured in this. He had to. You have to go on probability in this world. The pivot, the center, of this mess was Water Street. That street was all that Myra Jones, Pappas, Jo-Jo Olsen, Petey Vitanza and the unknown killer had in common. And Patrolman Stettin had Water Street, too.

I finished my Irish and headed across toward the river. The block I wanted on Water Street was right on top of the river. It was still twilight when I got there. I stood at the head of the block and looked down it toward the docks.

The apartment house stood up like a giant among shabby pygmies half way down the block. The other two good buildings were across the street and nearer to me. The alley beside the good building where Myra Jones had been killed opened on both Water Street and Sand Street behind it. Which meant that the killer had not come out on Water Street unless he was crazy.

Schmidt’s Garage was all the way down at the far end and across the street. Cars were parked on both sides of the block, bumper to bumper at this hour, except in front of driveways and two loading docks. There was a light in Schmidt’s office. And I thought of Schmidt. Maybe he had seen, or knew, something.

I was the second one to get that idea.

They had worked the old man over before they killed him. I don’t think they meant to kill him. Amateurs again. His grey hair lay in a pool of blood that had poured from his nose and mouth. Blood that was still wet. I didn’t look to see what they had done in detail to get him to talk. I called Gazzo.

Then I walked out into Water Street again. The old man had not told them, I was sure of that. He had not been killed on purpose after talking. He had died while they were still asking. Either he was, or had been, tough, or he had not known what they wanted. I figured it was the last. Schmidt had not known what they had killed him to find out.

I took deep breaths in the twilight of Water Street. I lighted a cigarette. At times like this the dangers of cigarettes don’t seem so big. You have to live a while for the coffin-nails to kill you, and I’m not sure many of us are going to make it. The guys who control the bombs wear better clothes and speak better in more languages than the killers who worked Schmidt over, but they are the same kind of men.

Then I saw the cop. A patrolman walking lazily along the block. Officer Stettin’s replacement until Stettin got back to work. This cop had his billy in his hand and was idly batting tires with it as he passed the parked cars. He stopped in front of the loading docks, and at the fire hydrants, and looked real close at the cars parked on either side of the open spaces. He seemed annoyed that no one had parked illegally.

That was when I heard the click in my head. Like a piece suddenly slipping into place in a busted motor. All of a sudden, the motor hummed as smooth as silk in my brain. The piece had fitted like a glove. The old missing link. I dropped my smoking butt into the gutter, and headed back toward the brighter lights of the avenues. I looked for a taxi, but there weren’t any except six Off-Duty whizzers, and I walked all the way to St. Vincents.

It took me ten minutes, but they finally let me see Petey Vitanza. He was propped in bed like a side of meat wrapped in cheesecloth. He could talk now. He could not see yet, and his words were like the speech of an idiot with a rag stuffed in his mouth, but he could talk.

“That day, Pete,” I said. “The day before Jo-Jo ran, what were you doing?”

The boy shrugged.

“Anything and everything,” I said. “They killed Schmidt.”

Behind the bandages Petey did not move. Then his eyeless head nodded. His thick voice was shaky. They could easily come back.

“Two... of... them,” he said, or he said something like that and I was able to translate. “Big guy... fat... with muscles. Twenty-five, dark hair, scar... on his eye. Other guy... maybe twenty... real good build... lifts weights type... blond. Punks... tryin’ for the big... time... yeh.”

I could fill in the picture. Two young hangers-on, eager to get in the “organization,” and ready to do anything to please. Amateurs who wanted to be pros and live the good life. And that meant the one who had hired them was a man who could do them favors, get them “inside.” It fitted with what I had had in mind.

“That day,” I said.

Petey shrugged again. “Work... on the bike. Same as always. Just work on the... bike.”

“At Schmidt’s?” I said.

“Yeh... the steering... I remember,” Petey said, nodded as eagerly as he could with a plaster neck. “Jo-Jo was doing... turns... you know, like figure... eights and... all.”

“And you needed space?” I said. “You needed room to run the bike.”

“Yeh, sure... so...?”

The angle of his head showed a question. I answered it.

“So you moved a car, maybe a couple of cars. You...” I began.

I could not see his eyes, but I know that Petey blinked. It was just one of those little things that happen every day that you never remember you did. Like which car you got onto when you took the subway uptown. Like walking to the corner to drop your empty cigarette pack into a basket. Like nicking yourself shaving, and then wondering how blood got on your collar.

“One car,” Petey said. “We shoved it down by the loading dock. We... needed room... to make... the turns. A small... black convertible... guy left the brake... off. Jo-Jo he saw... the cop...”

“And he took the ticket off,” I said, because that was the click I had heard when I had watched that cop on Water Street. “The cop, Stettin, ticketed the car because you had shoved it into a No Parking zone. Jo-Jo got worried. He took the ticket off so the owner wouldn’t get mad.”

Petey nodded. “I forgot all...”

“Yeh, of course. It was funny at the time,” I said. “You shoved a car and it got a ticket. Only you had been on the street all day, and Jo-Jo figured the owner of the car would guess who had shoved his car, moved it. So he grabbed the ticket off, and you both beat it. Did you know whose car it was?”

Petey shook his head. No, the two kids would not have known at the time. But I guessed that Jo-Jo had found out later. He had grabbed the ticket, figuring that by the time the police got in touch with the car-owner, no one would remember the day. But he must have done a bad job.

“He must have left the string on the wipers, or wherever it was,” I said. “The owner came back and saw the string. He knew he had been ticketed. That placed him on the spot, on that block, at that time. That was why he mugged Officer Stettin — to steal the summons book. The rest was window dressing.”

It all fitted like a polished mechanism. And, of course, the killer was no burglar. I had not really believed he was a burglar all along. The grabbed jewels were a cover, grabbed after Myra had died. As smooth and simple as one of those Japanese haiku poems.

A man called on Myra Jones. A man who had an argument with her and hit her and she died by accident. A man who went out through the alley, circled the block, and came back to Water Street to his car. Only his car had been moved and ticketed! A man who knew there was a record of the ticket in Stettin’s summons book. He jumped Stettin and stole the book. Then he went looking for the original ticket and the person who had taken it.

This left me with three questions: who, why he was so worried about the presence of his car being known, and how Jo-Jo Olsen had learned that the ticket was a danger. I had a pretty good idea of all three answers.

I did not know exactly who, but I had a picture. A man big enough to be able to hire men to go against Andy Pappas. A man who would beat and even kill to get what he wanted. A man the Olsens knew. Someone big enough to risk two-timing Andy Pappas with Myra, but not big enough to want Pappas to know.

Because that was the second answer. The mere presence of his car would not be enough for the police to nail him. The police would have to place him, somehow, in the apartment. No, the answer to why he was so worried about the ticket, had to be that it would tell Pappas he had been with Myra. Which meant that he was a man with an alibi, an alibi not intended to cover the killing, which had not been premeditated, but to cover that he was seeing Myra!

This left me with a sub-question. How would a summons have told Pappas? A summons would come back to the owner of the car. I thought I knew that, too, but I would find out for sure when I checked out my last question. How had Jo-Jo learned the danger of that ticket?

I had reached Swede Olsen’s apartment before I had finished all those interesting thoughts. I had made a straight, fast passage from St. Vincent’s to the Olsen pad. The big Swede and his sons were no happier to see me this time. The mother, Magda, was less happy than anyone. I faced her vicious face, and the clenched fists behind her.

Before they could swing into action I hit them with the crusher.

“What was it, Olsen? Was Jake Roth driving one of Pappas’s own cars the day he killed Myra?”

Because I had remembered what Gazzo had said: Jake Roth’s car never left the Jersey Shore that day. Roth had an alibi, he had been on the beach but his car had not moved. And Roth would have known Myra, could hire men afraid enough of him to risk bucking Pappas, and would kill to keep Andy Pappas from knowing what had really happened to Myra Jones.

It took Swede Olsen an hour to tell me what I already had guessed. When they heard what I knew, the man and boys had lost all fight. Only the old woman still would not budge. The girl sat silent in the gaudy, cheap room.

“He’s my cousin,” Swede Olsen said. “What could I do? His name ain’t Roth, its Lindroth. Jake Lindroth, he’s Norwegian. The stupid kid showed me the ticket. I knew the license number. I drive a lot for Jake and Mr. Pappas. I recognized the number, and I knew Mr. Pappas was in Washington.”

“Roth was playing footsie with Myra Jones?” I asked for the record.

Olsen nodded. “Not really, he just wanted to, you know, Kelly? I mean, he made the pass, went to see her a couple of times. I don’t know what happened, but there was a fight, I guess. Jake had used the car because he was supposed to be in Jersey.”

“And when he saw that ticket, he was in trouble. The summons would come to Pappas sooner or later,” I said. “And Jo-Jo had the original. If Pappas ever got wind of that ticket, he’d know who had been with Myra. I guess Roth was at Monmouth Park the day before?”

“Yeh, he was,” Olsen said. “He even told Bagnio what horse he had lost on!”

Like I said, it wasn’t the police who scared Roth so much, it was Pappas. That would have scared me, too. It would have been almost a death-warrant to be caught two-timing Pappas, much less killing his girl even by accident.

“How did Roth find out Jo-Jo had the ticket?” I said.

There was a long silence. The men all looked at each other. The old woman stared straight at me. Only the girl looked away. Magda Olsen, the mother, did not flinch.

“Jake Roth is our cousin. Lars works for Mr. Roth,” the old woman said. “All this,” and she waved her bony old hand around to indicate the whole, grotesque apartment, “is from Jake Roth. We got a duty to help Mr. Roth.”

The silence got thicker. I watched the old woman. She gave me her Gibraltar face, a rock of granite.

After a while I said it. “You mean you told Roth? You told him it was Jo-Jo who had the ticket.”

Swede Olsen was sweating. “I got to tell Jake. I made Jo-Jo beat it fast, and I told Jake it was okay. I mean, only us and Jo-Jo knew, and we wouldn’t tell no one, see? I told Jake I got Jo-Jo safe out of town, he don’t got to worry. Jake he was grateful like, he said I was okay.”

“Then you come!” Magda Olsen hissed. “You! You got to ask questions, talk to cops! You got to tell them look for Jo-Jo!”

“You got Jake worried!” Olsen snarled.

“You’re not worried?” I said.

This time the silence was like thick, sour cream. A room of black, heavy yogurt. If I stood up high enough I could have walked in that silence. All eyes were on the floor except those of the girl and me. I understood, but I didn’t want to.

“You mean you really thought Jake Roth would leave Jo-Jo alone?” I said. “You really thought that? Even without the ticket Jo-Jo saw the car!”

“Jake Roth is family,” Magda Olsen said.

“A fifty-fifty chance at best,” I said. “You give him the ticket, and it’s still fifty-fifty he kills Jo-Jo!”

For the first time the young girl, the daughter, spoke. She was pretty, Jo-Jo’s sister, and her voice was small, light.

“They don’t give him the ticket. Jo-Jo got the ticket,” the young girl said.

I guess my mouth hung open.

“Jo-Jo went away. By himself,” the girl said. “He wouldn’t give the old man the ticket, and he went away.”

“Shut up!” Magda Olsen said to her daughter. And she looked at me. “Mr. Roth he says okay. Even without the ticket! He trusts us. Then you! That stupid dirt-pig Vitanza! You start asking questions.”

“Sand-hog,” I said, but I got her message. Maybe she was right. Maybe Jake Roth would have trusted the Olsens, even Jo-Jo as long as Jo-Jo never came back. Maybe I did put the boy’s neck in the noose, it happens that way when you start stirring up the muddy water in the detective business. But I had asked the questions, and the water had been stirred.

“Then?” I said. “After I started? You could have told the police, even Pappas. They would have stopped Roth. He’s only a cousin and a killer.”

Magda Olsen sat as stiff as steel. He voice was old and clear and steady.

“Lars is an old man. We live good. We got five kids. We got a lot to do for five kids. All our life Lars works like a pig on the docks. I work, sweat. We live like animals, now we live good. Lars asks Mr. Roth be a good cousin, get him good work with Mr. Pappas. Roth gets Lars good work.

“Mr. Pappas he is good to us because Roth tells 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, and we only got one Jake Roth!”

What do you say? You feel sick, yes, but what do you say? Do you tell them that no human being risks a child to help Jake Roth? Sure, that’s true. Do you say that Lars Olsen and his worn-out old woman should work to death if they must to save their boy? I’m not so sure how true that is. How far is a father responsible for saving his son? How much must a father and mother endure for the mistakes of a child?

It is easy to feel sick when you are not asked to give up all that you want, no matter how rotten it may be. And what about the other four kids? Eh? Do you sacrifice one boy to give four better lives? Lars Olsen, back on the docks at his age, could do nothing for his children. Are you so sure? I’m not. But I made it easy on myself. My duty was to my client.

“You can go to the police now,” I said.

“With what, a story? Jo-Jo has the ticket,” Magda Olsen said. The old woman had made her decision.

I nodded. It was too late anyway. Roth would have his hired hands searching all over by now. Roth had had a man killed, the police would not take him quickly. But the old women did not rely on me.

“No,” Magda Olsen said. “No!”

“Jo-Jo, he’ll be okay,” Swede Olsen said, but he did not believe it now.

“You don’t know where he is?” I said.

“No,” the old woman said.

“I do,” the young girl said.

She was sitting up straight now, and all eyes turned toward her. A small, pretty young girl. I guessed that she was very close to her brother Jo-Jo.

“He wrote me a card,” the girl said.

She handed me the postcard. It was from Daytona Beach, and that fitted. They have a big raceway, speedway for racing cars, at Daytona Beach. The card was unsigned. It said nothing that would show it was from Jo-Jo. Just a few cheery words about the fine weather, the fine racing cars, and a fine job he had selling programs. It could have been from anyone, but the girl knew who it was from.

“I got it yesterday,” the girl said. “They didn’t tell me about Mr. Roth. I knew Jo-Jo had some trouble, but they didn’t tell me.”

“We don’t want to worry the kids,” Swede Olsen explained.

But I was watching the girl. She was telling me something. I felt hollow all the way to my toes because I guessed what it was. I felt like a man on a roller coaster heading far down.

“Roth was here?” I said. “He saw the card?”

“Uncle Jake, we call him Uncle Jake, was here this morning,” the girl said. “I didn’t tell him, I know Jo-Jo is hiding. But he...”

“But he saw the card? He read it?” I said.

“I think so. He was in my room. It was on the table,” the girl said.

The boys, who had never spoken at all, sat and looked at the floor. The Olsen family had discipline. It did not come from Swede. The big old man blustered.

“Jo-Jo’ll be okay. Jake he won’t hurt my Jo-Jo,” Olsen said. “Jake is okay. Jake is a good man.”

He was trying to convince himself still. He was trying to convince his other sons. He was saying he was, after all, a good father and a big man.

The old women did not bother. She knew. She knew the truth, and she faced it.

I left them sitting there. The old woman got up and went to prepare dinner. She had decided about her life and where her duty lay. I left and begun to move in high. I had to if I was to help decide about Jo-Jo’s life. I took a taxi to Idlewild.

Daytona Beach was hot, and loud, and crowded in the night. There was action at the raceway, and I went straight there from my jet. The only lead I had was that he was selling programs, and I figured that Roth and his men had about two hours on me.

I gave myself that much break because of Schmidt and the jet schedules. Even though Roth had seen the postcard this morning, he apparently hadn’t tumbled right away. Otherwise he would not have worked over Schmidt. I guessed that Roth had not known about Jo-Jo’s interest in racing, or had forgotten it, and had not thought of it until his boys questioned Schmidt.

Jake Roth was not noted for his brains, that was pretty clear from his play with Myra Jones. I hoped I was right. If I was, the best flight out of New York after the death of Schmidt was only two hours before my jet. Even if I was right, two hours was a long time. It only takes seconds to kill a man.

At the raceway I found that it was closed for the night. That was strike one. I searched around until I found the office. There was light in the office. My first base hit. I went into the office, the door was not locked. The man behind the desk looked up annoyed.

“Yes?” he snapped.

I showed him my credentials. He was only mildly impressed. He looked at my missing arm.

“Lost it on Iwo-Jima,” I told him. “The state don’t hold it against me. I’m a real detective.”

“Private,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“Unless you want to save the life of one of your program boys,” I said.

“Them? Between you and me, mister, they ain’t worth saving. Punks, all of them. They takes the job so they can watch the races. Race nuts, all of them. Half the time I finds them up looking at the races instead of selling.”

The man was small and red. He had a pet peeve. It was racing and the younger generation. I could see that he hated racing, and hated children. That didn’t leave him much to like in his world.

“Talk to me, and I’ll take one off your hands,” I said. “The name is Olsen. Jo-Jo Olsen. Tall, blond, not bad looking I hear. No telling what he was wearing, and no marks on him. He likes motors. Been here maybe three weeks to a month.”

“You just described half of them,” the man said. “What the hell’s so important about this Olsen anyway?”

It’s strange how they always tell you but don’t actually get around to saying it. The man had just told me I was still running second.

“Someone else was here?” I said.

“All night I get nuts,” the man said.

“How many of them? I mean, how many who asked about Olsen?”

“Two,” he said.

“Tell me about them?” I said.

He described the two who had beaten Petey Vitanza. I was running a bad second.

“What did you tell them?” I said.

“What I’m telling you. Listen, so I don’t have to say it again. I got no Olsen, the description fits about ten of the punks. I can give you a list, the rest is up to you.”

“How long have they got on me?” I asked.

The man looked at the clock on the wall. “Maybe an hour and forty minutes.”

They had taken a slower taxi from the airport. I was gaining. I almost laughed at myself. But instead I took the list the man wrote down. He picked the names from a paysheet, and stared up at the hot ceiling as he recalled what his various boys looked like. In the end the list contained eight names.

“I gave them other two ten names, but I figured since that two of them been around town for over two months,” the man said.

“Eight is enough,” I said.

I looked at the eight names. Somehow I had to cut down the hour and forty minutes lead. It could be the first name or the last. If it was the first name, Jo-Jo Olsen could be already dead. I read the names: Diego Juarez, George Hanner, Max Jones, Ted John, Andy Di Sica, Dan Black, Mario Tucci, Tom Addams.

I looked at the names, and you could take your choice. It could be any of them, or none. In a way I prayed it was none, at least the killers wouldn’t find him. I could take them from the front, and hope to be faster than the two hoods, or take them from the back and hope Jo-Jo was one at the end.

It was bad either way. If I took it from the front, and Jo-Jo was Tom Addams, then I lost a good chance to beat them to him. If I took it from the back, and Jo-Jo was Diego Juarez, then I lost any chance of reaching him second but maybe in time.

If I started at random, it was pure chance. It was pure chance most of the way: I didn’t know the town, the addresses meant nothing so I couldn’t map the best route. What I needed was a short cut — some way to go straight to Jo-Jo Olsen. I needed to crack the alias right here and now.

I ruled out Diego Juarez with a sigh of relief — too unusual for a tall blond boy, it had to be a real name, it would have drawn attention. I ruled out Max Jones and Ted John for the opposite reason — too common as aliases. Jo-Jo was a smart boy, Petey Vitanza said. George Planner could be, it sounded a little like Honda which was the name of a motorcycle. Andy Di Sica and Mario Tucci were both good bets — Jo-Jo grew up with a lot of Italians, and he dreamed of Ferrari in Italy. Tom Addams was far out, but it sounded a little phony, and Addams is an historical name.

That left Dan Black, and I had it!!

I remembered what Packy Wilson had told me about Jo-Jo and the Vikings. I remembered what the experts said about an alias always being connected to a man. I hoped they were right, and that I knew enough. Dan Black. The name of a great Viking King, the first of the Norwegian Kings, and one of the names Packy Wilson had mentioned, was — Halfdan The Black! Dan Black.

“Call the police,” I said to the small man behind the desk, “and get them out to Dan Black’s room. What is the address, a motel?”

The man looked at the address and nodded. “A cheap motel about two miles from here. How do I know you...”

“Just call them, and tell them to make it quick. My name is Patrick Kelly, from New York, take my license number.”

He took my license number, and I was gone. I was probably in the taxi and half way to the motel before the guy made up his mind he better call the police after all. It didn’t matter. What I needed now was luck, not police.

So many cases, so many things in life, turn on luck, fortune, chance. I needed the luck that they had not reached Dan Black yet. I needed the luck that Dan Black was Jo-Jo. I needed luck to go against those two hoodlums, amateurs or not. I needed the luck that Jo-Jo was home. And I would need luck to hold on before the police did arrive.

I got some of the luck right away. The luck I didn’t have was something I had not thought about. Jo-Jo Olsen was Dan Black, all right. And he was there. He was in the third cabin of the very cheap motel. The motel had shacks not cabins, the john was outside in a big central building with the showers, and the driveway was dirt.

I was the first one there, because all was quiet and yet normal, and Jo-Jo opened the door. That was all good luck. The bad luck was in his hand. A large .45 automatic aimed at my heart.

It had not occurred to me that Jo-Jo Olsen, alias Dan Black, might not want to be rescued.

He was tall, blond and good-looking. He was neat and clean and there was a bright look in his eyes. But the automatic was neither neat nor clean-looking, and he did not want help.

“Who asked you, Kelly? Yeh, I know you. Who asked you to butt-in? Who asked Pete?”

I didn’t answer because I had no answer. Who had asked me and Petey Vitanza?

“How did you find me so easy?” Jo-Jo asked.

He was seated on the single brass bed in the room. The room was as cheap as the motel itself. The walls were paper thin. I could hear every sound outside, every car on the street. I was listening. I expected company any minute.

“Dan Black,” I said. “Halfdan The Black. You got a yen for Vikings and history.”

I told him what Packy Wilson had told me, and about what the experts say. He seemed interested.

I told him about the two boys Roth had sent after him, and about Schmidt being dead, and Petey beaten.

“Roth wouldn’t do that,” the boy said. “He’s my father’s cousin.”

“You don’t believe that,” I said. “Roth would kill his mother if he had to.”

“I left town. Dad told him we wouldn’t talk,” Jo-Jo said.

Then I heard his voice clear. Like his father, Swede Olsen, he was talking to himself. Only in his case there was a difference. He wasn’t really trying to convince himself that Jake Roth would lay off him, he was telling himself that it did not matter. He was telling himself that this was the way it had to be. I had to be sure.

“All you have to do is talk, and you’re safe as a church,” I said. “If the cops don’t protect you, Andy Pappas will. Talk, and Roth is through, and you don’t have a worry. Nobody is going to back a beaten Jake Roth against a live Andy Pappas.”

“I’ll be okay anyway,” Jo-Jo said.

“To protect Jake Roth?” I said. “You’re a good kid, you’ve got ambitions, dreams. And you’ll risk your life to save a known killer, a punk?”

“We don’t rat,” Jo-Jo said, and it sounded dirty when he said it. It is dirty, that code of the underworld.

“But not for Jake Roth,” I said. “It’s for your father. You want Roth to still do them favors, the favors they live on, your father and mother.”

Jo-Jo looked at me steadily. “I owe them that. Dad can’t go back to the docks. I can take care of myself.”

“He’ll be back on the docks anyway when I tell the police what I know,” I said.

“You won’t tell,” Jo-Jo said, the automatic coming up.

“You’ll kill me?” I said. “You’ll commit murder to save Jake Roth?”

The tall, blond boy flushed, shouted. “NO! Not for Roth, for my family! They depend on him. I owe them. I...”

I lighted a cigarette. When I had it going I leaned back in my sagging old chair. I listened all the time. They would be here sooner or later, and the boy did not have to kill me. He just had to leave me for them.

“What about yourself?” I said. “What about what you owe yourself? You really think your father and mother thought you’d be safe?”

“They did! They do,” Jo-Jo cried out, the pistol up again.

“No,” I said. “Maybe at first they could fool themselves, but they can’t even do that now. If I hadn’t chased them down, they’d be sitting up there doing nothing while Roth’s boys gun you. They’re worrying about themselves!”

“They don’t know,” Jo-Jo said. “They believe Roth. And so do I.”

“Then why did you keep the ticket?” I said.

The automatic wavered in his hand. It was a good hand, strong and clean. His face reddened again, and then became calm. Very calm and set as he looked at me.

“That ticket is insurance,” I went on. “You’re a good kid, but even good kids learn that kind of play in our neighborhood, right? You’ve got it stashed, probably. Addressed envelope and all that? You never trusted Roth from the start.”

“So?” he said.

“So you knew your folks didn’t either, not deep down. They just wanted to trust Roth. They wanted to believe it was okay so they could go on living their nice life in comfort. But deep down they knew Roth as well as you do. They tossed you to the wolves, kid.”

“They’re old,” he said. “I owe them.”

He was a really nice kid, it was written all over him. A kid with big dreams of a big world. But he was caught. It’s always harder for the really good ones. He wanted no part of his father’s world, but he had a sense of duty, of responsibility to his father and mother. He knew what his parents were, but he had a code of his own, and he was good enough to stick to it.

He might have made it, keeping his code and still staying alive, if I hadn’t come along. I queered the deal. I had them all looking for him. Sooner or later even Pappas would hear about it and begin to wonder. Roth knew that, and so did I. I had ruined his chance, it was up to me to save him.

“How much?” I said. “You owe them, sure, but how much do you owe them, Jo-Jo? You’ve got a duty to them, sure, but how about your duty to yourself? That’s the hard one, Jo-Jo. You got a duty to stay alive.”

“It won’t come to that,” Jo-Jo said, almost whispered, and even he didn’t believe it because he added, “I’ll keep ahead of them.”

I nodded. “All right, let’s say you can, and that nobody tells about you. What then, kid? What about all you want to do? What about your dreams? You want to be a race driver, a Viking with cars!”

Jo-Jo’s eyes glowed there in the shabby room. I was still listening to the sounds outside. There could not be much more time.

“I’ll do it, too!” Jo-Jo said eagerly. “I get the diploma from automotive, and with my record driving, I’ll get with Ferrari!”

I hit him with it. “What record? What diploma? You’ll never get back to school, and you ain’t Jo-Jo Olsen anymore, you’re Dan Black. You’ll never be Jo-Jo Olsen. You’ll be on the run all your life!”

I could see him wince, blink, and I did not let up. In a way I was battling for my own life. If I didn’t convince him, there was no telling what would happen when the two bully boys arrived on the scene.

“You got three choices, Jo-Jo, and only three,” I said. “You can come back with me, give that ticket to the cops, and let Roth take what’s coming to him. Then you can go ahead and live your own life.

“You can try to keep a jump ahead of Roth and his men all your life, and maybe make it. You’ll live in shacks like this, you’ll never be Jo-Jo Olsen again, and you’ll have no past and no future. You’ll never be able to set-up a record because you’ll be changing your name too often.

“Or you can try to talk to Roth and join him. You can convince Roth you want to play his side of the street and that you’re a safe risk. I doubt if he’d go for it, but he might. Maybe you could kill me for openers so Roth knows he’s got a hold on you.”

I threw in that last one as a shocker. Even if he killed me, I doubted that Roth would trust him. Once Jo-Jo was a full-fledged criminal, it would be too easy for him to get in good with Pappas by telling. But he wasn’t dumb, he thought of that. In fact, he was ahead of me.

“There’s a fourth way, Mr. Kelly,” Jo-Jo said. “I could just go to Mr. Pappas and tell him without telling the police. That should put me in good with him and maybe save my father’s job.”

I nodded. “Sure, it might even work. But that would be the same as throwing in with Roth. You’d be an accessory to what happened to Roth. You’d be withholding evidence, and that’s a crime. Besides, kid, you thought of that from the start, didn’t you? That was why you ran and didn’t tell your father. You don’t want any part of that life or of Pappas.”

The boy sat there silent. I had not told him anything he had not thought himself. It was like a psychiatrist. I just made him face it more. His whole world was rising up on him like a tidal wave in a typhoon. He hated his father’s way of life, hated what his father had become, wanted to be free and alone, and yet he loved his father.

“Be a real man, Jo-Jo,” I said. “Be man enough to take your own dreams, your own way. You want a certain life, you want to do certain things. That’s the hardest road, kid. It’s easy to do what will please everyone else. It’s hard to take your own dream and follow it out of sight over the horizon like the old Vikings did.”

Jo-Jo smiled and looked up. It was not a smile of happiness or triumph or any of that. It was a smile of simple recognition.

“They did, didn’t they,” he said. “My father even lets them call him Swede when he takes their favors.”

“He lost it somewhere, Jo-Jo,” I said. “You’ve got a chance. It’s rough to accept the responsibility of your own dreams, but those old Vikings had to leave the old folks and the weak behind, too. I guess you have to hurt people to be honest with yourself.”

“I guess you do,” Jo-Jo said.

And that was all. After that it was, as the Limeys say, a piece of cake.

Even if the two bully boys had been pros they would not have had much chance. They expected to find one unsuspecting boy in that motel, and they found two ready-and-waiting men. Two well-armed men waiting for them like bearded Vikings in a cave. The two hoods walked out singing.

The police arrived and we all went down to Headquarters in Daytona Beach. We slept a nice night in the comfort of strong cell bars in case Jake Roth had any ideas of a last-gasp attempt to silence all of us. He didn’t try, and the next day we all flew North with lots of friendly guards around.

Gazzo welcomed us with open arms and a secure paddy wagon. Jo-Jo turned over the parking ticket, and the Captain had him locked up safely until Roth was accounted for. Gazzo called in Andy Pappas to identify the license number on the ticket. Pappas looked at it for a long time.

“Yeh, it’s the number of my small convertible, a black Mercury. I don’t use it much, Captain, I got a lot of cars. I keep the Mercury out in Jersey at my shore place, all the boys use it sometimes,” Pappas said very quietly. He looked at Gazzo. “You say Jake used it?”

“It figures that way, Pappas,” Gazzo said. “Kelly tells me Bagnio knows that Jake had a losing ticket on a certain horse at Monmouth the day before Myra was killed. You know we found a ticket like that in her place.”

Pappas nodded. “Jake always had a temper. Stupid, too. You say the ticket shows the car was on Water Street at five o’clock that day?”

“It does, and Jake hired some boys to find the Olsen kid.”

Pappas stood up. “Is that it, Captain?”

“That’s it for now. We’ll want you again when we pick up Jake Roth,” Gazzo said.

Pappas didn’t even smile, he was that sad. He looked at Jo-Jo, and them at me, and I almost felt sorry for him. I could see he was thinking about Myra Jones, and all at once he was like just another middle-aged man who had lost his woman through a stupid accident and the anger of another man. Only he was Andy Pappas, not just another man, and he had some pain coming.

“Thanks, Patrick,” Pappas said, “You did a good job. I’ll send you a check. The kid who got beat, too.”

“Petey thanks you,” I said. “I don’t. No checks for me from you, Andy. I made the choice a long time ago.”

“Suit yourself, Patrick,” Pappas said. He had begun to pull on those white kids gloves he affects now. But his mind wasn’t on the gloves.

“Leave Roth to us, Pappas,” Gazzo said.

“Sure,” Pappas said. As he went out Andy Pappas was smoothing his hand over his suit jacket at the spot where he used to carry his gun.

The two amateur hoodlums Roth had hired to find Jo-Jo sang like heldentenors in the last act of Siegfried. They told all there was to tell about how Jake Roth had hired them to find Jo-Jo, get the ticket, and kill him. The beating of Petey Vitanza, and the death of old man Schmidt, were just steps down the road to Jo-Jo.

“We never wanted to kill the old man,” one of them explained, as if he thought that made it okay, and we could all kiss and make up. “He just kicked-off on us, you know? Jeez, Roth was gonna give us good spots in the organization. Man, that was real opportunity!”

“Book them,” Gazzo said.

Both men were indicted on various counts of assault, and one good count of Murder-Second. The DA could have gone for Murder-One, and probably gotten it, but juries are chancy with real guilty ones, and trials cost the state money. The two bums would plead guilty to the lessers counts, all of them, and that would put them away forever.

Jake Roth vanished. When Gazzo and his men went to pick up the tall, skinny killer, Roth was long gone with two of Pappas’s lesser men who had always been friends of Roth. Gazzo got a city-wide search going. Then the hunt went state-wide, and, after a time, it got on a national hookup. But Jake Roth kept out of sight and running all the rest of the summer and into the fall.

They were laying odds on Roth in the neighborhood. Joe thought Roth should surrender to the police.

“That ticket and the stub on the Monmouth nag ain’t enough to make the Jones killing stick,” Joe said. “Besides, it was an accident. Manslaughter-Second at the worst.”

“Even the Schmidt killing could be beat with a good shyster,” Packy Wilson said. We were in Pace’s Pub as usual, with the Irish tasting better now that the leaves were beginning to fall if you could find a tree in the district. I had told Packy how he had saved us all with his story on Norwegian history. He was so pleased he was still setting up the drinks for me.

“None of it’s enough for the cops to really nail Roth,” Joe said.

“It never was,” I said, “but it’s enough for Pappas. It was always Pappas. If Myra hadn’t been Pappas’s girl, Roth would have walked in on Gazzo and taken a short one-to-five.”

“He’d be smarter to confess to Murder-Two and take twenty-to-life,” Packy Wilson said.

“He’d live a week,” I said. “In jail Pappas would get him in a week. He’d be a sitting duck.”

They both kind of studied their glasses. I tasted the fine Paddy’s Irish, and thought about the simple and happy men who had distilled it in the old country and had never heard of Jake Roth or Andy Pappas.

“All Roth’s got is a choice of how to die,” I said. “He can confess to Murder-One and take the chair. He can let the cops get him and sit in jail waiting for Pappas to give the word. Or he can run and try to stay a jump ahead of everyone.”

In the end it was the police who got Roth. On a cold day in October he was cornered in a loft in Duluth. He tried to shoot his way out and was nailed. He had lost fifteen pounds and was all alone when he died. Nobody 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, his dreams of being a modern Viking, had worked out best for everyone in the end. But it didn’t. With Roth gone, and with Pappas knowing that Olsen had tried to help Roth, Olsen is out.

Sometimes, when I’ve been up all night, I go past the docks and I see Swede Olsen standing in the shape-up. He’s old, and Pappas is down on him, so he doesn’t get much work even when he goes out and stands there every day waiting to be picked out of the shape. He doesn’t drink in the expensive places any more, he drinks in the cheap waterfront saloons. He’s drinking a lot, the last I saw.

Jo-Jo has gone. He never went home. Old Magda Olsen spit on him at the police station. As she said, and meant, they had five kids but only one Jake Roth to make life sweet. After all, Magda Olsen is descended from Vikings, too.

I don’t know what happened to Jo-Jo. But I know he’ll do something. He finished his schooling, and Petey tells me he’s riding his motorcycle on dirt tracks out west. I look for Jo-Jo’s name in the papers all the time. Someday I know I’ll see it. Maybe even as a member of the Ferrari team, or driving some Limey car to victory at Le Mans. Like I said before, it’s all in the background, the air a man breathes, and Jo-Jo goes all the way back to the Vikings. That was what made him run in the first place, and that was what made him come back to finish Jake Roth. His sense of what a man has to do.

Jake Roth didn’t have that, and it cost him. Andy Pappas doesn’t have it either. Maybe we’ll even get Pappas some day.