Act of Fear (13 page)

‘She was his mistress?’

The Brandt girl nodded. ‘She told me. Walsh had been after her for a long time. I don’t know, Mr Fortune, I think she sort of snapped. Inside, you know? She was in such a hurry. The men she knew were so nothing. Young boys who could give her little and did not want to marry. Walsh couldn’t marry, but he could give her something. One day she just took it, said yes to him. She said she was tired of waiting.’ She looked straight at me. ‘It’s illogical, Mr Fortune, but there is a type of woman who won’t let a potential husband touch her before he makes it marriage, but will sleep, at last, with a man who cannot even think of marriage.’

‘I know,’ I said.

It was an old and sad story. A nice and proper young virgin who is lonely, anxious, in a hurry. She wants not a man but marriage – and she wants a man, too. She is bored, feels empty, cheated. Somehow she cannot make love to a man who might marry her before they are married. It’s a block in her. Then she meets a man who cannot marry her, who only wants her for sex and adventure, and all her desires come out without the check of possible marriage. It becomes a paradox. She has an impregnable barrier deep inside against passion without marriage, and it takes a strange twist because suddenly marriage does not exist, cannot happen, and the need becomes naked without the barrier. Her barrier is against passion before marriage. Without the potential of marriage, suddenly there is only passion.

‘Do you think Walsh killed her?’ I said.

‘I don’t know, Mr Fortune. Who knows what happened between them? He came to her apartment. She went on trips on his boat. She even went on business trips with him sometimes. It was strange, but the way she talked about Walsh I had the feeling that she separated her life with him from her pursuit of a husband. A man might not understand that.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Can you tell me anything more about that Saturday?’

‘Nothing,’ she said ‘A girl like Nancy doesn’t confide much. She lives in a kind of dream world. Every male was a goal, every female a rival.’

‘What about a woman?’ I said. ‘As the killer?’

‘I think I’m about the only woman she knew.’

‘Mrs Walsh?’

‘I wouldn’t know, Mr. Fortune.’

She stood up and looked at her watch. ‘I have work, I’m sorry.’

I left. I had learned nothing that harmed Jo-Jo Olsen, and nothing that helped him, unless you counted the fact that it did not sound like there was a motive for Jo-Jo. The girl had been after him. Gazzo had not indicated that the girl had been pregnant. It was the kind of killing where the motive and the killer would be discovered at the same time. Sooner or later, one of the men Nancy Driscoll had known would be found without an alibi, with motive and opportunity, and he would be the man. It would take only time. Such cases were the commonplace of police work. Somewhere in the city, or in some other city by this time, a man sweated in a bar and tried to think he would not be caught and tried to remember why he had lost his head and killed a woman he thought he was in love with. He had not been caught yet only because it was amazing how little any of us really know of the lives of our friends when they are not with us. Time, that was all, and the slow routine of the police.

Unless this was one of those one-in-a-thousand killings that was not simple, that tied in with more and bigger crime.

On the chance, I would try Walsh again.

I walked from Park Avenue west to the office of the Trafalgar Travel Bureau. Walsh was not glad to see me. He could tell by my face that I knew more than when I had been in his office this morning. He was nervous. He hurried me into his office as if he felt that all the women in his office were watching him. They were. I guessed that he had had a shot at most of them who he thought would look good in a nightgown and that he knew they all knew about Nancy Driscoll. He was a confused man. He was proud of his conquest of Nancy Driscoll, but terrified of discovery by the wrong people. A nervous lover can be dangerous.

‘I’m sorry about calling the police, Mr Fortune, but …’ Walsh began. He was rubbing his bicep.

‘You thought I was a killer,’ I said. ‘Yes, you did I What happened, Walsh, was she going to blow the whistle?’

Under his tan Walsh was ashen. ‘No! She … she loved me.’

‘You don’t believe that,’ I said. ‘She was bored, she wanted a sugar-baby. How much did she cost you a month?’

Walsh smirked at me. He rubbed at his bald spot. ‘You’re way off, Fortune.’

I noted the disappearance of the ‘mister’. Walsh was being man-to-man, virile.

‘All she wanted was me. I’m pretty good, if you want to know.’

‘I’ll dream about you,’ I said.

He flushed under that fine tan, but his eyes snapped as if in memory of his own prowess. That was what pleased him, his own prowess, not the pleasure of a woman. He was probably pretty good, ego-maniacs often are.

‘I gave her what she wanted, and it wasn’t money.’

‘You gave her what she wanted plus money, if I know women and your kind, Walsh,’ I said.

He flexed his muscles. ‘I gave her some stuff. Why not?’

‘Ask your wife.’

Walsh leaned forward. ‘Leave her out.’

‘What happened? Did Nancy tell you she was running off with Joe?’

‘Joe?’

‘The guy she wanted to marry.’

‘Him? Not unless he changed his mind. Him and his racing cars. Jesus! Can you imagine a guy who’d prefer a motor to the action Nancy could give? These kids, Jesus! She told me once that all they talked about when they came up to her place was racing.’ He smirked again. ‘I didn’t talk about racing.’

‘You knew Jo-Jo?’

‘Who?’

‘Joseph, her boyfriend.’

‘I knew of him, Fortune, no more. Do you think he killed her? Maybe he found out about me and couldn’t take it after all.’

It was a good shot. The thought had occurred to me more than once by now. It had, of course, also occurred to Gazzo. It happened; men are like that. It’s called dog in the manger, and it’s as good a reason for a beating as any; and maybe Walsh was so good in bed the Driscoll girl had been hooked on him. And maybe Jo-Jo had been on the run already and, with his dreams shattered, had changed his mind and tried to take Nancy with him. A sudden shift of power can destroy a man. But I did not want Walsh to get the impression that he had shaken my ideas.

‘I think you killed her,’ I said.

I thought he was going to come over the desk. I braced and looked for a weapon. But he changed his mind and sat back and just watched me.

‘Did your wife worry you?’ I said. ‘Did Nancy get ideas?’

‘The police don’t think I killed her.’

‘They can change their mind.’

‘Not with my alibi.’

‘You’ve got no alibi. Anyone can turn a boat in the other direction.’

‘You have to prove it.’

‘I may try,’ I said. ‘I may do a little snooping around. I may even do a lot of snooping.’

Now he was scared, really scared, but it was not of what I might find.

He leaned at me. ‘You stay away from me! You hear? I don’t want you around my life! I don’t want …’

‘I don’t care what you want, Walsh,’ I said.

He sweated in that good cool office with its big desk and four windows. He changed his tactics from bluster to man-to-man comradeship. ‘Come on, Fortune, give me a break. If my wife … my kids …’

What he was afraid of was his wife finding out – now. I mean, after all, why get caught now that he couldn’t get any use out of Nancy Driscoll?

‘I don’t care about you, Walsh,’ I said. ‘How about Nancy?’

He wiped at his face with a Kleenex from a monogrammed leather box. I don’t know anything. I called her on the Saturday. All right, I didn’t tell the police that. Why should I? I’m not involved really, and if my wife …’

‘You called her,’ I said.

‘She had this man with her. She was mad, said he was drunk, a rotten drunk kid. She said all men were cheats. This guy was there, you know? I mean, listen, Fortune, give me a break. Lay off my wife, my home. I mean … please?’

I got out of there. Maybe he killed her, and maybe not. (I was sure he had not killed her. His story checked the Brandt girl’s story.) But if he had done it, Gazzo would nail him. It looked like Gazzo was playing it soft, maybe to lull Walsh, or maybe to spare three kids who had hurt no one yet. But if Jo-Jo did not pay off, Walsh was in for a bad time. Walsh did not have a rosy future. That did not make me sad.

I needed something clean. There was only Marty. I called her from the lobby of the building. She was at home. When I heard her voice I had to see her. I had to. I had not seen my shadows all day. Maybe I could chance it. I had to see her if I died for it.

Which is an easy thing to say.

Chapter 12

‘You can’t catch what you can’t see,’ I said. ‘That’s called philosophy. I got that from the manager of some baseball team. His centrefielder had just dropped two fly balls.’

Marty was in her street clothes now. The apartment was cool with her air-conditioning. The bedroom was dark, the shades drawn over the closed windows and the night outside. I had drawn the shades partly out of propriety and partly in case my two shadows made a return appearance. So far they had not. The last time I had looked, the street had held no menace. I had not looked for some time, and I had finished my third beer while Marty dressed. She does not hide when she dresses or undresses. She knows that there is beauty in the simple fact of a proud and matter-of-course nakedness. She understands that it is important that there be as few hidden and private corners between a man and a woman as possible. It must be as complete and simple as possible, and after the love it is important to lie side by side and smoke, to talk easily, to finally get up and dress quietly together.

Now I had my fourth beer and lay dressed on the bed while she sat in the bedroom chair. It was almost time for her to leave for work.

‘It’s easier to face something when you know what it is,’ Marty said.

‘No,’ I said, ‘its not easier at all, but it’s better. If I knew what it was I’d probably be more scared than I am, but I’d feel better about it.’

‘It’s a mess, baby,’ she agreed. She twirled her martini on the rocks with her finger. She licked the finger thoughtfully. ‘All you really know is that a lot of people have been knocked around, Jo-Jo Olsen has vanished, and someone is looking for him besides you.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I know a lot.’

She was right, of course. That was all I really knew. I had a lot of guesses and a lot of possible connections, but what she had summed up was all that I really knew. Except that my client was in hospital and that for fifty bucks I had a good chance of joining him and that I could not get out of it now with any self-respect. Not with my client almost beaten to death. I could not even get out of it without self-respect. I thought of nicer things.

Marty was wearing a slim grey jersey skirt that curved well and had those folds across the belly that a woman with hips but no belly always has in her skirt. She wore a black turtleneck silk jersey top without jewellery and a grey jersey jacket like the coat of a man’s suit but tailored for a woman. On the jacket she wore a silver, star-shaped abstract pin I had given her. Her long suede coat was over the chair. Most of her clothes are tailored and stylish.

When she had first come to New York to be an actress she had dressed casually; she really cared little for clothes. But casual clothes got more stares these days, and she lived all night with stares since taking the job in the girl-show at Monte’s Kat Klub. (She had had to face the truth that it was not going to be easy to become an actress.) Most of her clothes covered her from knee to throat for the same reason. She favoured high turtle-necks. She said that she could not stand to be exposed even an inch below her throat when she came off the stage, where her working clothes might have had trouble covering a three-year-old midget.

‘You can’t forget it? Walk away?’ she said.

‘No,’ I said.

‘The boy?’

‘Partly,’ I said. ‘I can’t leave a client who’s got more bandages than hair. It isn’t done.’

‘Do you think Jo-Jo killed this Driscoll girl?’

‘No, but Gazzo does,’ I said. ‘No, Gazzo doesn’t think that either. Gazzo doesn’t think, he learns. He’s a good cop. He’ll find Jo-Jo before he thinks about guilt.’

‘If anyone finds Jo-Jo,’ Marty said.

‘They’re still looking,’ I said. I drank my beer. ‘What I don’t figure is Stettin. How does he fit in? They took it all, but what did they want? The gun? The billy? The wallet? What?’

‘Maybe just time,’ Marty said. ‘Maybe whoever did it is just cautious and wanted Stettin out of the way for a time.’

‘She’s young, Marty, but she thinks. She is too young for me, really, and I often ask myself why. I mean, why do I want a woman so young? All right, there is a normal reason – she’s nubile as hell. But there is more. We worship the young in this country, and a lot of the world has begun to follow us. But what we worship isn’t really the young, or even being young. It’s
youth
– the hope and innocence and immortality of youth. We want to be young not because it is physically good to be young and virile, but because to be young is to not yet know that the world is transient, incomplete, and not often what we want it to be. You cease to be young that first instant when you know that nothing is complete and that nothing can last forever ‘ not even your own dreams and desires. To be young is to see the world through eyes that think that all is possible. And one way to feel young is to have a woman twenty years younger, more or less. Marty is my illusion of youth, and she’s a smart girl.