A guess? Yes. A hunch. But it had to be. Have you ever had a thought that you suddenly just know is true? Nothing else, you just know. That is sometimes all that detective work is — a flash of hunch that must be true. Sometimes, did I say? Most of the time. Ask any cop. All else aside, most of the crimes of the kind the police get — small, violent, messy crimes — are solved by informers or a hunch. Not clues, not a neat trail, but the experienced hunch.
I had the hunch I had been looking for. Stettin did not know why he had been mugged. There had to be a reason. And the only thing stolen that could have involved someone else was the summons book. End of hunch. Next question: How did a summons book become so dangerous?
Even as I thought I had begun to walk fast in the night. Towards St Vincent’s Hospital. Because if my hunch were right, and I knew it was, then Pete Vitanza should be my confirmation even if he did not know it. If my hunch were right, then I had a whole new picture of the murder of Tani Jones. A picture I liked better. The picture I had sensed from the start. Burglars rarely kill, and Tani Jones had put up no fight. The shooting had been quick, close, sudden. The killer had not run. He was out looking for Jo-Jo. Looking hard to the point of two more murders. Why? Because there had been no burglar. There had been no robbery. That was all a cover-up.
Tani Jones had known her killer.
She had known her killer, and the killer had known her. He had known that she was Andy Pappas’ girl friend.
The killer was a man who had called on Tani Jones. A man who went to see her while Pappas was safely out of town. A man who was cheating Andy Pappas with Tani Jones, the dumb little girl who liked men too much. Then what had happened in Tani Jones’s apartment that day? I did not know that, a hunch can only go so far, but for some reason the man had killed her. When I knew who, I would probably know why, but one thing I was sure of — the man had not planned to kill Tani. The whole faked robbery had an impromptu ring about it, an aura of improvisation, a spur-of-the-moment desperate cover-up. Something had happened in Tani Jones’s apartment that day that made a secret lover into a sudden killer.
What that was my hunch could not tell me, but my hunch told me one more big fact. After the killer had killed, faked his robbery, and got clean away unseen, something more had happened down on Water Street. Something had suddenly gone very wrong for the killer, and it had involved Patrolman Stettin and his summons book.
By this time I was at St Vincent’s. The doctor did not want to let me talk to Pete Vitanza. I argued. I told the doctor that it was urgent police business. He had seen me there with Lieutenant Marx earlier. It finally worked. I went into Pete’s room.
Pete was propped up in bed, his splinted arms thrust straight out. He looked better. He was young and resilient, and the young recover quickly. But his eyes were still bandaged, and when I entered his whole head turned towards the sound I made as I came in.
‘Mr Fortune?’
He had had some visitors, there was mail on his bedtray and books on the bed he could not read yet. Apparently the nurse had been reading to him. But he was really waiting for me. Some of his visitors had been police, and he wanted to talk about Nancy Driscoll.
‘It don’t sound right, Mr Fortune,’ Pete said. ‘Jo-Jo ain’t the type. The broad was chasin’ him, you know?’
‘Maybe he decided he wanted her after all,’ I said. ‘The police have a good-luck piece. Did Jo-Jo have one like it?’
‘That little Ferrari?’ Pete said. ‘Hell.’
His hands rummaged among the opened letters on his bedtray. He came up with a key ring. On the ring, as he held it up, was another shiny red miniature Ferrari racing car.
‘See?’ Pete said.
‘Jo-Jo had one just like it?’ I asked.
‘Sure, we got ‘em together. I mean, here’s another one, right?’
‘You’ve got yours,’ I said. ‘Does Jo-Jo have his?’
‘There got to be a thousand around the city,’ Pete said.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘When we find Jo-Jo, and he has his, then the police will start looking for the other nine- hundred-and-ninety-eight.’
‘He never killed her,’ Pete said, but I heard the wavering in his voice. There was doubt in his voice.
‘Who then?’ I said. ‘Maybe the two who worked on you?’
‘It fits, don’t it? I mean, she knew Jo-Jo, too.’
‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but now I want something else. I want to know everything that happened on Water Street a week ago Thursday. The day Stettin was hit. Everything, Pete.’
Petey shrugged again. ‘We worked on the bike, drove around.’
‘They killed Schmidt,’ I said.
I saw the shudder go through him. Part of it was for Schmidt, I know that. Most of it was for himself. I know that, too. We think about ourselves. That’s the way it is. Ourselves here and now, that’s how we think. Most of the time most of us don’t even care that the ship is sinking as long as we can make a good buck selling life preservers before it goes down and be rich for a little while. Ask any soldier who ever prayed that his buddy would be killed instead of him. That same soldier might toss himself on a grenade and save ten men and die doing it, but that is a different thing. That’s not thinking about it. And that’s not most of us.
In the bed Pete Vitanza was remembering the feel of their fists, the kick of their shoes. They could return.
‘That’s rough,’ Pete said.
‘Anything at all out of the normal,’ I said.
Pete shook his bandaged head. ‘We worked on the bike. We ate lunch at the bike. I mean, what’s normal? Jo-Jo took the bike out. I took the bike out and around. We practised turns. Jo-Jo made these figures, you know, like figure-eights. He liked to stunt with the bike. So…’
‘Stunts? Turns?’ I said. ‘You needed space maybe?’
I closed my eyes. I saw the parked cars on Water Street. The two driveways out of the garage and the loading docks. There were just two parking spaces between the driveway out of the garage and the first loading dock.
‘You needed room for the manoeuvres?’ I said.
I saw the reaction. Under the bandages he reacted.
‘You moved a car?’ I said.
‘A black convertible,’ Pete said. ‘Yeh. We shoved this small, black convertible down by the loading dock. We laughed.’
One of those little things that happen and you never really remember. Like stopping to mail some letters on your way to work, and later you don’t remember it and wonder why you were five minutes late for work. Or the time you find some debris on your lawn and you cross the street to drop it into a waste can. That puts you on the wrong side of the street. When someone says they saw you on that side of the street you tell them they must be wrong because you never walk on that side. Why would you cross the street?
‘We needed some more room,’ Pete said. ‘This convertible was blocking the turns. It was unlocked. We just had to push it so Jo-Jo could make the stunts, yeh.’
‘Then what?’
‘Nothin’. We just shoved it down.’
‘You said you were both at Schmidt’s until six o’clock?’
Pete thought. ‘No, I had to get home, you know? I guess I left first. Jo-Jo he hung around to finish up, cover the bike.’
‘Did you talk to Jo-Jo again?’
‘Sure, maybe a couple of hours later. And Friday, too. Early like. He said he was busy, couldn’t work on the bike. I told you.’
‘Did he say anything else? Maybe about that car?’
‘No,’ Petey said.
I stood up. ‘Okay, you rest. The doc tells me the bandages come off maybe Monday.’
‘You got to find him,’ Pete said from behind his bandages. I mean, they already killed Schmidt and the Driscoll
