“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.