Act of Fear by Dennis Lynds Page B

I was feeling as exposed and nervous as a fish in a fishbowl. There was no one on the street outside who looked suspicious or dangerous, but I had that tingling in the arm that wasn’t there that comes when I sense that all is not right. The door buzzed and I pushed it open and went in. It was a good sign. Nancy Driscoll was at home. I needed some good signs about now.
    The cellar door was directly in front of me at the end of a short hall. There was no elevator. I checked the cellar door and found it open. That was a good thing to know, just in case. Inside, it was a typical West Side apartment house, the hall and stairwell empty and silent with everyone out at work in the morning. I went up the stairs slowly. There was one short flight, a landing, another short flight, and the first floor. The first floor turned out to be no more than a small landing with two doors at right angles and the stairs going on up. The door to 2B was directly in front of me. I listened but heard no sound inside. I pressed the doorbell.
    The door opened instantly.
    A man stood there.
    There was a pistol in his right hand.
    I tried for the stairs down.
    ‘Don’t try!’
    I stopped.
    ‘Inside.’
    I turned and walked into the apartment. The man followed me down the narrow kitchen, the pistol steady in his hand, and into the living-room, which had a fine old fire-place and high ceiling. One look told me that Nancy Driscoll, wherever she was, had been a girl who wanted things – Things, you understand? The living room was filled with all the proper pieces of furniture: a small bar stocked with all the proper glasses, the whiskey in decanters with little metal name tags; there were the proper candle-sticks, bric-á-brac, prints on the walls; the bookcases were filled with elegant sets that looked as if they had never been cut and rows of best-sellers jacketed in plastic. Nancy Driscoll was a girl who wanted what everyone else in the middle had or wanted.
    ‘Against the wall! Hands flat on the wall. Lean.’
    I leaned against the wall with my lone hand flat on it. I felt his hand give me a quick but complete frisk for weapons. I came up clean, and he stepped back.
    ‘Okay, sit down.’
    I sat on a cheap modern couch facing him. Up close, the couch and everything else in the apartment was cheap, shoddy, built to look elegant but made of boxwood, pegboard and tacks. And I guessed that Nancy Driscoll had spent most of her salary for a lot of years to get together this pitiful show of what she yearned to have but could have only in shoddy imitation. I was getting a picture of Nancy Driscoll. A sad picture.
    My captor put his pistol away in a small belt holster.
    ‘Who are you? What do you want with the Driscoll dame?’
    He was a man of medium height and weight. His suit was old and had not cost more than fifty dollars new. His shoes were worn and half-soled. His hat had not been blocked for years. His socks drooped. His face was pale and tired. I looked at him and knew who Walsh had called. A man who looked and acted like this man and who had the right to carry a gun could only be a policeman. The cheapest hood would not have been so poorly dressed or so tired. He had detective written all over him, and he had been waiting for me.
    ‘Fortune,’ I said. ‘Walsh tipped you, right? I’m a private operator.’
    ‘Good for you,’ the man said. ‘Now tell me about the Driscoll woman.’
    ‘A case,’ I said. ‘The trail led here. Call Captain Gazzo at Homicide if you want to check, Lieutenant …?’
    ‘Sergeant Doucette,’ he said. ‘The girl wasn’t very important, Fortune.’
    I heard the word. ‘Wasn’t?’
    ‘Yeh, she’s dead. I figured you could …’
    The sergeant stopped and shrugged. I knew how he felt. He needed a break. I felt worse. I seemed to be moving fast backwards. Every lead turned into a new crime, and I was no closer to Jo-Jo Olsen. Except that this time I knew that Jo-Jo was connected to the Driscoll woman, and I now