‘Does she have a name?’
‘Who got a name? Hell, maybe he joined the Vikings.’
‘Vikings?’ I said. ‘A street gang?’
‘Man, like you got no education. The Vikings, them old-time guys, you know? I mean, Jo-Jo was hipped on them. Horns on their heads ‘n all. Beards ‘n horns.’
‘The Vikings,’ I said. I think I stared. In Chelsea no one cares about the past, not even yesterday. ‘He was interested in history?’
But I had lost her again. ‘Hey, one arm! Crazy!’
She had spotted my missing arm. Her eyes dilated as she stared at my pinned sleeve.
‘Who else knew Jo-Jo good?’ I asked.
‘One arm!’ she said. ‘Like crazy.’
‘You can count,’ I said. ‘Now tell me more about Jo-Jo.’
‘Beards’n horns. Crazy.’
She was gone. I left her dreaming of beards and horns and one-armed men. She had her troubles. She was big and ugly and her home was a sinkhole. Maybe she made a lot of her own troubles, but don’t we all when you come down to it? I went down and out into the heat and sun.
I walked across town to Water Street and Schmidt’s Garage. Schmidt wasn’t there. The garage office was locked. Schmidt had not replaced Jo-Jo. I studied my list. Both the YMCA and Automotive Institute were up on Twenty-Third Street. My feet hurt already. I took a taxi.
The Automotive Institute was closest to the river, and the cab reached it first. I went in and asked about Jo- Jo Olsen. They handed me over to a thin, pale man who wore glasses and a snarl and was called an instructor.
‘No, I haven’t seen Olsen! He had an important exam on Friday. He didn’t come. He had shop on Saturday. He missed it!’
He was annoyed as hell about Jo-Jo. He seemed to think that it all made him look bad. He took it personally. He acted like a man who would enjoy kicking a student out.
‘Do you know anyone who might know about Jo-Jo?’ I asked. ‘Some student, maybe? A special friend?’
‘Rhys-Smith,’ the instructor said. ‘He might know what Olsen was up to. Not that I don’t know what Olsen is kicking around.’
I perked up my ears. ‘You know?’
‘Who doesn’t? They’re all the same. I try to teach them how to be useful. All they want is some floozie. I know Olsen.’
I sighed. Everyone has a hobby horse in his brain. The instructor spent too many hours trying to teach kids who really only wanted to grow up fast and be big men. The instructor was discouraged by too many years of failure. He was bitter. A teacher who had learned that no one wanted to be taught; they just wanted an easy road to easy money.
‘What about this Rhys-Smith?’ I said. ‘Who is he and where do I find him?’
‘He’s a part-time instructor we use sometimes. You can find him almost any time at The Tugboat Grill. Which is why we only use him sometimes. He knows more about fuel injection than any man in New York, only most of the time the fuel he knows best is alcohol.’
I left the instructor brooding. His real trouble was that he still cared. He cared about Jo-Jo Olsen and all the others. He wanted to teach them, so he hated them. Somewhere deep in the hidden corners of his heart he was a true teacher, and each time one of his boys failed him his heart could not help whispering that perhaps it was, after all, he who had failed.
For Cecil Rhys-Smith the whisper of his own failure had long ago become a shout that could only be lessened by the rush of booze down his always thirsty throat. I found The Tugboat Grill moored at the edge of the river so close beneath the West Side Highway that the shadows of cars flickered the window all day long.
Cecil Rhys-Smith sat on a bar stool with the air of a man who has learned that a bar stool is man’s best friend. His beer glass was not quite empty. If the glass had been empty he would not have been allowed to sit there without refilling it. And if he were not there at the bar, how could some generous stranger buy him a drink? It was clear that Rhys-Smith did not have the price of a refill, only the hope. I braced him with the offer of a free whiskey. The suspicion that had begun the instant I had approached him vanished. On the strength of one whiskey and the perpetual hope of one more, he allowed me to take him to a reasonably private back booth.
‘Missing?’ Rhys-Smith said when I told him about Jo-Jo. I had wondered. He’s a generous boy for one so young.’
Rhys-Smith looked at my missing arm. ‘The young are not often generous, Mr Fortune. Generosity requires some suffering.’
I was not in the mood to tell the story of my arm. Not any of the stories of my arm. So I watched Rhys-Smith. He fitted his name if not his present location. Cecil Rhys-Smith is not a name heard often in Chelsea.
He was a small man, slender and wiry, with the light skin and ruddy complexion of the British Isles. His moustache was thin and pale, and his hair was thin and had once been pale. The hair was grey now, and it looked like he cut it himself. His clothes had once been good tweed. He looked like a man who had once been someone. Not someone important, just someone. He had been a man who had something to do and a place in the world. Now he was no one, and what had happened was as obvious as the shaking of his hands when he tried to sip, not gulp, his free whiskey. Somewhere in his life his way out had become a monster on his back, and he had ended in a cheap bar a long way from home.
‘Talk to me,’ I said, ‘and there’ll be more.’
He was not all the way down yet. ‘I would talk about my friend Jo-Jo without it, Mr Fortune. I will also take every dram you care to offer.’
‘Sorry,’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘It’s a simple life. Only one problem to think about every day, and a good chance that the problem will not last long. But tell me about Jo-Jo?’
‘He seems to have vanished. His family say he’s just on a trip. Peter Vitanza thinks different.’
‘His family, yes,’ Rhys-Smith said. ‘I never met them. There is some trouble there, Mr Fortune. Jo-Jo was disturbed about his family. I would say that he hated them, and yet, well, he loved them, you see? He is a close- mouthed boy.’
‘Where could he have gone?’
‘I don’t know, but never far from cars or some kind of motor racing. I suppose the Vitanza boy told you of Jo- Jo’s dreams? Plans, I should call them. He’ll do what he says. All he needs is training and experience. He has the drive.’
‘They both do,’ I said, and told him about Petey coming to me, and about the fifty bucks.
‘A good boy, Petey, but not strong the way Jo-Jo is. Peter has the dreams, not the drive. He’s too human, he wants too many other things. Jo-Jo is a rock. Pride if you like.’
‘Where do you fit in?’
‘I once drove for Ferrari.’
He looked at his empty glass. I waved for another round for both of us. I never let a man drink alone. For a drunk that is demeaning. I’m lucky; I don’t depend on a drink. Not yet. My hiding places have not become prisons. That doesn’t say that they won’t someday, and I try to remember that. A man in prison needs a human word.
‘A relief man,’ Rhys-Smith said. ‘Useful to test the cars. There was the bottle. Once I had ideas. When I did not get what I needed the bottle was the consolation. Now I console the bottle. But I was a driver. I know racing. I know fuel injection. Jo-Jo liked to talk to me. He is a generous boy.’
‘Can you give me any leads where he might go?’
‘I don’t really know much about him beyond his plans.’
‘What about women?’
‘No, none that I ever saw. He was a remarkably controlled boy. Pete and women, definitely.’ Rhys-Smith smiled. ‘Pete is like me. Not that Jo-Jo did not have use for a female. But he did not get involved.’
‘And Vikings?’
Rhys-Smith laughed. ‘Ah, yes, the Vikings. He knew all the sagas. How brave they were, he would say. They could outsail anyone. They had pride, he said, style. Yes, style. He could reel off their names: Harald the Stern, Sweyn Fork-Beard, Halfdan the Black, Harald Fair-haired, Eric the Red, Sweyn Blue-Tooth, Gorm the Old. All they
