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...”