is crazy and you have to be crazy to handle it. He says that he would not know what to do with a sane person, because he never gets to meet any. He includes me with the insane. Maybe he knows.
Despite the morning hour and the heat, Gazzo’s office was dim behind drawn shades. Gazzo says that the sun does not fit with his work. I could tell by the size of his grey eyes that he had not slept well again. There are those who say that the captain never sleeps at all, that he has no bed, that he does not even really have a home. These people say that Gazzo files himself in his own office when other people sleep. But I know that Gazzo has insomnia. He does not hide this. He says that insomnia is the wound-stripe of the cop, the price you pay. He says it just proves that he is human after all.
This morning he waved me to a seat at once. It was an order, not an offer. He wasted no time on preliminaries.
‘Before you go into the act about your rights, protecting your client, and all that, I’ll give it to you. I know you’re looking for a Jo-Jo Olsen. You think he’s missing. He works around Water Street. My birds sang that much. Now you’ll tell me who, what, when, where, why, and how. Okay?’
That is Gazzo’s trademark: he never uses one word when ten will do. He’s been called Captain Mouth and Preacher Gazzo, and the word is that when Gazzo starts talking you’re dead. They say that Gazzo makes men talk who would have held out under a week of rubber hoses.
‘Joseph “Jo-Jo” Olsen,’ I said. I never hold out unless I have to protect myself. I never know when I might need the cops.
‘Olsen works on Water Street at Schmidt’s Garage,’ I said. ‘He seems to be missing since last Friday morning. I’m trying to find out why and where. A kid friend of his hired me. One Pete Vitanza. So far I haven’t found a hair of Olsen.’
‘Joseph Olsen,’ Gazzo said. He was hearing the name. I could see him run it through the thirty years of police work that was all that his brain contained now. The computer of his mind checked the name against the parade of hoods, con men, hustlers, killers, wife-beaters, muggers, and practitioners of every other crime in the book he had come to know in the thirty years. A card clicked out. ‘Any part of Swede Olsen?’
‘Son,’ I said. ‘Swede is hiding him.’
I told him about Olsen’s inefficient attempt to beat my brains out last night and a certain amount of my interview with the Olsens. I did not tell him about the gun I had used, and I did not mention my impression that the Olsens had trouble of their own. I also left out the two shadows under Marty’s window. Gazzo seemed interested in what I told him, but with the captain you can never tell. I’ve known him for twenty-five years, and I don’t know if he likes me or hates me. With Gazzo it does not matter. He does his job, friend or foe.
Gazzo rubbed the grey stubble of his chin. ‘And the kid works at Schmidt’s Garage?’
‘He did.’
‘He was there last Thursday, but gone on Friday?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Interesting,’ Gazzo said. ‘You have nothing yet on why he ran or where?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Now tell me what you’ve got, Captain. You didn’t drag me down about some unknown kid. What don’t I know? I know about Patrolman Stettin. Is there more?’
Gazzo smiled. ‘I thought you gave up on the world, Dan.’
‘I try, but it hangs around,’ I said. ‘What’s up, Captain?’
Gazzo pressed a button. A policewoman came in. Gazzo seemed surprised to see her. I know that she has been in Gazzo’s office for years. He still looks at her face to see if she needs a shave. He stares at her blue skirt as if sure that something is wrong. Change comes slow in the dim world of Homicide.
‘Jones file, er, Sergeant,’ the captain said.
Gazzo is resigned to knowing and meeting every perversion and horror man can do to man, but he can’t get used to a female sergeant. When she returned he took the file without a smile.
‘Tani Jones, not her right name,’ Gazzo read from the file. ‘Real name: Grace Ann Mertz. Born: Green River, Wyoming. Parents still there. Caucasian; twenty-two years old; blonde; five-foot-eight; 132 pounds. Model and chorus girl. Worked at The Blue Cellar. A tourist club on Third Street.’
Gazzo looked up at me. ‘Your sparrow works in one of the tourist clubs, right?’
‘Monte’s Kat Klub.’
‘She know a Tani Jones?’
‘Not that I know. When Marty puts her clothes back on she forgets the clubs. When we talk shop, it’s acting. Real acting.’
‘Maybe this time?’ Gazzo said. ‘There must have been talk.’
‘She doesn’t socialize with the club girls, Captain. She spends her time, all she can, with the off-Broadway people,’ I explained. ‘What is it? Dead? Killed? Some time last Thursday or Friday?’
It was a simple guess. Gazzo is Homicide. He was interested in a boy who was on Water Street on Thursday and gone on Friday.
‘Thursday afternoon,’ Gazzo said. He went on reading his file. ‘Lived alone in a four-room luxury apartment in a non-doorman building on Doyle Street. Self-service elevator. Body found Friday morning by maid who comes in twice a week. Death from single gunshot wound in the head, close range. Gun was a. 38 calibre, probably a small belt gun according to ballistics. The place had been cleaned out. A lot of jewellery was gone. Worth maybe fifteen thousand dollars appraised value. There was an insurance list of the jewellery. Her boyfriend also confirmed what was gone and that nothing else had been touched.’
The captain watched me the whole time he read. I could not figure why. Unless he thought I knew more than I did. What could I know? All right, I got the picture now: Doyle Street was the next block to Water Street. But, as I said before, we get fifty violent crimes a day on the West Side, and a robbery killing doesn’t rate more than a couple of inches in most papers except the Daily News. I don’t read the News. I read the crime news in the better papers, sure, but I’ve got my own interests, and if I’m not hired for a job, why would I connect a two-bit killing on Doyle Street with a cop mugging on Water Street? I mean, Doyle is a long street.
‘I suppose the building on Doyle backs towards Water Street?’ I said. ‘Same crosstown block as Schmidt’s Garage on Water?’
‘With an alley on the side that opens into both streets,’ Gazzo said.
I thought about the city. Most cities have slums and middle-class areas all properly separated. The rivers make Manhattan special. Manhattan is an island, and there is little space to move in. The result is that the city moves in circles from good to bad and back to good again. You end up with a city in constant flux; with tenements, businesses, private houses, small factories, and luxury buildings all mixed together. And new buildings on polyglot streets are prime targets for burglars.
‘She caught a burglar in the act?’ I said.
‘That’s the way it reads,’ Gazzo said. ‘Door was locked and on the chain. The maid had to go to the back entrance. The back door was open, the lock cracked. The back door opens into a service stairway that goes down to the alley and a basement garage. The alley opens into Doyle Street at one end and Water Street at the other. No one saw the thief. At least, no one who’s talking.’
‘Broad daylight?’ I said. ‘With the woman at home?’
‘Her man says Tani was almost always out in the afternoon on her modelling work. Thursday she called in sick and cancelled a date with the photographer. The photographer says she missed a lot of appointments. She wasn’t too reliable. The bed had been slept in. She was in her slip, pants, and bra.’
‘Has the loot shown up?’
‘No,’ Gazzo said, and brushed me off. ‘Tell me more about this Olsen kid.’
I sensed the change of subject, the brush-off. The captain did not want to talk about the loot. It should have appeared by now. Burglars unload fast. I did not push it. If Gazzo held back, he had his reasons. He would tell me when he wanted to.
‘I told you all of it,’ I said. ‘He’s gone, period. A lot of people on Doyle and Water Streets probably went on trips.’
‘You think this Jo-Jo saw something?’
Gazzo did not believe that a lot of people from Doyle and Water had gone on trips. Neither did I.
‘Jewels don’t show, I said. ‘Even if the burglar came out on Water Street, all Jo-Jo would see is a man walking around.’
