“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.