“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.