‘It don’t sound right, Mr Fortune,’ Pete said. ‘Jo-Jo ain’t the type. The broad was chasin’ him, you know?’
‘Maybe he decided he wanted her after all,’ I said. ‘The police have a good-luck piece. Did Jo-Jo have one like it?’
‘That little Ferrari?’ Pete said. ‘Hell.’
His hands rummaged among the opened letters on his bedtray. He came up with a key ring. On the ring, as he held it up, was another shiny red miniature Ferrari racing car.
‘See?’ Pete said.
‘Jo-Jo had one just like it?’ I asked.
‘Sure, we got ‘em together. I mean, here’s another one, right?’
‘You’ve got yours,’ I said. ‘Does Jo-Jo have his?’
‘There got to be a thousand around the city,’ Pete said.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘When we find Jo-Jo, and he has his, then the police will start looking for the other nine-hundred-and-ninety-eight.’
‘He never killed her,’ Pete said, but I heard the wavering in his voice. There was doubt in his voice.
‘Who then?’ I said. ‘Maybe the two who worked on you?’
‘It fits, don’t it? I mean, she knew Jo-Jo, too.’
‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but now I want something else. I want to know everything that happened on Water Street a week ago Thursday. The day Stettin was hit. Everything, Pete.’
Petey shrugged again. ‘We worked on the bike, drove around.’
‘They killed Schmidt,’ I said.
I saw the shudder go through him. Part of it was for Schmidt, I know that. Most of it was for himself. I know that, too. We think about ourselves. That’s the way it is. Ourselves here and now, that’s how we think. Most of the time most of us don’t even care that the ship is sinking as long as we can make a good buck selling life preservers before it goes down and be rich for a little while. Ask any soldier who ever prayed that his buddy would be killed instead of him. That same soldier might toss himself on a grenade and save ten men and die doing it, but that is a different thing. That’s not thinking about it. And that’s not most of us.
In the bed Pete Vitanza was remembering the feel of their fists, the kick of their shoes. They could return.
‘That’s rough,’ Pete said.
‘Anything at all out of the normal,’ I said.
Pete shook his bandaged head. ‘We worked on the bike. We ate lunch at the bike. I mean, what’s normal? Jo-Jo took the bike out. I took the bike out and around. We practised turns. Jo-Jo made these figures, you know, like figure-eights. He liked to stunt with the bike. So…’
‘Stunts? Turns?’ I said. ‘You needed space maybe?’
I closed my eyes. I saw the parked cars on Water Street. The two driveways out of the garage and the loading docks. There were just two parking spaces between the driveway out of the garage and the first loading dock.
‘You needed room for the manoeuvres?’ I said.
I saw the reaction. Under the bandages he reacted.
‘You moved a car?’ I said.
‘A black convertible,’ Pete said. ‘Yeh. We shoved this small, black convertible down by the loading dock. We laughed.’
One of those little things that happen and you never really remember. Like stopping to mail some letters on your way to work, and later you don’t remember it and wonder why you were five minutes late for work. Or the time you find some debris on your lawn and you cross the street to drop it into a waste can. That puts you on the wrong side of the street. When someone says they saw you on that side of the street you tell them they must be wrong because you never walk on that side. Why would you cross the street?
‘We needed some more room,’ Pete said. ‘This convertible was blocking the turns. It was unlocked. We just had to push it so Jo-Jo could make the stunts, yeh.’
‘Then what?’
‘Nothin’. We just shoved it down.’
‘You said you were both at Schmidt’s until six o’clock?’
Pete thought. ‘No, I had to get home, you know? I guess I left first. Jo-Jo he hung around to finish up, cover the bike.’
‘Did you talk to Jo-Jo again?’
‘Sure, maybe a couple of hours later. And Friday, too. Early like. He said he was busy, couldn’t work on the bike. I told you.’
‘Did he say anything else? Maybe about that car?’
‘No,’ Petey said.
I stood up. ‘Okay, you rest. The doc tells me the bandages come off maybe Monday.’
‘You got to find him,’ Pete said from behind his bandages. I mean, they already killed Schmidt and the Driscoll broad.’
‘I’ll find him,’ I said. But in what order? First or second?
On the dark — street in front of St Vincent’s my eyes took in everything that moved and all the shadows. I was jumpy. I felt like a spy on his first day in a strange city — all alone and not sure I could pass the first challenge. This was not my city now. It belonged to a killer. A killer who could hire men to look for Jo-Jo, and maybe for me. Two shadows who had no names and no faces, but who killed just for answers. It was their city now, because now I had some answers to give.
Patrolman Stettin had ticketed that black convertible because Jo-Jo and Pete had shoved it down into a no parking zone. It was all that made sense. The killer had come back to his car and found that it had been tagged. For some reason this was dangerous. Probably because it placed him on the block at that time, and for some reason that was very bad for him. Was it bad because it told the police, or told Pappas, or both? I did not know. But it had to be that he found the tag, hunted Stettin, mugged him, and took the summons book. That was one big answer. It left me with a big question: If the killer had the ticket and the summons book, why was he after Jo-Jo?
I was no longer in front of St Vincent’s. All this time my feet had been walking. My feet were taking me where I had to go next, where I would get the rest of it. I was not sure I wanted the rest of it. When I pushed this time it would be too late to back off and think. One more push and I could not turn back.
Chapter 14
I stood at the head of the block where Swede Olsen and family lived in their gaudy sewer and watched all the shadows around me. This street was dark, but it was not deserted. In the hot summer night the stoops and fire escapes and sidewalks were festooned with men in vests and women in house-dresses. They had carried chairs and boxes out of their stifling rooms and sat in silent apathy. Some rested on the kerb. The women stared into nothing. The men drank from beer cans. From time to time someone moved, talked. It was, after all, Saturday night. The free time. The happy time.
I went down the block, and they barely looked at me. They did not care about me. They did not see me. They were too busy trying to see themselves. I passed them and climbed the few steps into the vestibule of the Olsens’ building. The downstairs door was open on the hot night. I blended into the shadows of the dim downstairs hallway. I stood there for some time. There was no one suspicious on the street outside. Had they learned something from old Schmidt after all? If they had, it had probably been too late for Jo-Jo for some hours now. I was sure they had learned nothing from Schmidt, but where were they? I did not like the feel of it. I felt things closing in.
I climbed the stairs. Doors were open all through the tenement. The rooms inside the open doors were dark, because lights give off heat. Phantom shapes moved inside the dark rooms. The blue-white light of television sets flickered. Electric fans whirred. I went on up, slowly, and no one even turned a head to look at me.
The Olsens’ door was closed. The Olsens had more on their mind than the heat. I pressed the button and waited. I knew, of course, that I was taking a risk. I had been warned to lay off. This visit to the Olsens would be the final push. There was a big risk, but that is what life is in the end — the risks you take. If you never take a risk you never live. You just exist the way a carrot exists. I did not feel brave, I just had to go on living.