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.
‘All right, someone wanted Stettin out of the way,’ I said. ‘For what? Just to knock over one apartment? To make a getaway? In the first place the burglary took place before the mugging. The getaway theory is out, Stettin saw nothing. He doesn’t know why he was hit.’
‘Baby, it could all be coincidence,’ Marty said. ‘All coincidence, or part coincidence. Maybe Stettin is the piece that doesn’t fit. The patrolman isn’t involved. Your Jo-Jo just saw the burglar and can place him on the scene of Tani’s murder. Or maybe all Jo-Jo saw was who mugged the policeman, and the murder isn’t part of it. Either murder.’ She chewed her fingernail. ‘What I don’t understand, Dan, is something else. Those two men who are following you. I mean, are they Pappas’ men, and if they are, why does he warn you and have you chased? They’re not just tailing you, honey, they’re after you, and Pappas could talk to you any time.’
I let her analyse. ‘So?’
‘So,’ she said, ‘who are the two men? Who would send men out against Pappas? I mean, if they aren’t Pappas’ men and they are after this Jo-Jo, then they must be out to cover up for the killer of Tani, and that means they are against Pappas. Who works against Pappas?’
As I said, Marty could think. Who, in our local underworld, worked against Andy Pappas? It was one of my very best unanswered questions.
‘Maybe Olsen hired them without Andy knowing it just to make sure I laid off,’ I said. ‘Maybe they don’t know they’re bucking Pappas.’
Marty sighed, finished her martini. ‘Maybe, maybe, and maybe. Honey, you know less than the CIA knew about Cuba before the Bay of Pigs. Maybe you’re in the wrong business. They solve a case a lot faster on television.’
‘In one hour flat, less time for the commercials,’ I said. ‘They’re smart, and the criminals are co-operative. I’ve got no sponsor buying prime time. Maybe I’ll never solve it.’
‘If you don’t solve it, baby, you won’t be fit for human company. I know you. Your pride’ll be hurt.’
‘Right now I’d settle for hurt pride. They won’t let me.’
‘Think well then. I’ve got to go take my clothes off.’
She put on her suede coat, kissed me, and left. I sat on the bed and watched her go. Then I got up and went to the window. I opened the edge of the shades a crack. My eyes scanned the night street. I saw nothing but the usual crowd of a Friday night. There were no shadows lurking in the doorways. I watched Marty come out of the building below and cross the street.
She strode out like a racehorse, her suede coat open and swinging in the hot night. People, men and boys, looked at her, but she looked at no one. (In case you are wondering about that suede coat on a hot summer night, it’s not a mistake. The Kat Klub isn’t far from Marty’s place, the girls often run out for a quiet drink, coffee, or hamburger between shows — who can afford Monte’s prices — and like to be covered. Besides, there is always the off-chance of a raid, and the girls have a coat all the time just in case they have to ride the wagon.) I watched her turn the corner and disappear. I felt a sudden sense of loss. I always do. That is what love means; that you feel a loss every time you see her vanish from your sight.
I went back to the bed but I felt restless. The truth was that I was tired, but that I knew I should be working on something. Or perhaps the real truth was that I was comfortable here, I felt safe here, and I did not want to leave to go out where there was danger and uncertainty. I had that inertia that comes when you can’t think of anything to do that you feel optimistic about. I did not care if I never heard of Jo-Jo Olsen again. I could think of nothing that would be worth doing, that gave me a reason to think that I would learn anything important. Which was also not true.
I had not really talked it out with old Schmidt before Petey was beaten and I went to the hospital. Schmidt had been on Water Street all the day last Thursday, he might have seen something he didn’t even remember. Then there was Petey. He should be able to talk a little by now. I could ask better questions now, especially about the Driscoll girl.
There was the Driscoll girl’s building. Someone might have heard something that would mean more to me than to the police. And there were her other men. There was a great deal I could do. Too much. There is a kind of paralysis that comes when there seems to be too much to get done.
I got up and went out into the kitchen for another beer. Then I turned on the television and sat in Marty’s best easy chair. I told myself that I would think while I watched TV. By the end of the latest super-spy show I had still not begun to think. I liked the TV show. It was so intricately simple, so complex and yet childish. All fuss and feathers around the most simple of concepts — the chase; the Keystone Kops. A beautiful comic-book world where the utterly impossible has such a real surface and where every possible terror is looked at, but there are no surprises.
