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Michael Collins

Act of Fear

Chapter 1

It began with the mugging of the cop.

Person or persons unknown jumped the patrolman in broad daylight on Water Street near the river, dragged him into an alley, and cleaned him out. No witnesses. This is the lower west side, the Chelsea district, where alley windows are boarded up and people do not see what they’re not sure they should see.

We all knew the cop: Patrolman Stettin. He’s a young cop, Stettin, not long on the force and still eager. We all heard that he felt so bad about being taken that he offered to quit. That shows how young he is. Sooner or later everyone is taken in this world. This time the mugger took it all: billy club, pistol, cuffs, summons book, watch, billfold, tie clip, shoes, and loose change. The mugger was good. Stettin never even saw a shadow, according to the report I heard.

‘What’s a harness bull got worth stealing?’ Joe Harris said.

‘The pistol,’ I said.

Joe Harris is my oldest friend. He never left Chelsea, the way I did over the years, but we always kept in touch. Next to Marty, my woman, Joe is my best friend. Since I’ve been back in Chelsea this time, we see each other a lot. Joe is a bartender by trade. Which is probably why we see each other so much. Now Joe poured me a second free shot of good Irish whiskey while he thought about Stettin’s pistol.

We were in Packy’s Pub, where Joe was working that day. The boss, Packy Wilson, was too busy talking to his other twilight customers about Officer Stettin to notice the free drink. We had all heard about Stettin, even though they had it under wraps. The police were annoyed. When they are annoyed they go about their work with a grim efficiency. The police did not want publicity for a mugging of one of their men, but everyone in the know had heard.

In many ways New York is a strange city.

One of the ways is that in any given neighbourhood, like Chelsea or Yorkville, there are two kinds of people. There are the people who were born in, say, Chelsea, who have always lived there and most of whom always will unless they are in jail or on the run, who are part of Chelsea the way a Greek villager is part of his isolated village. And there are the people born somewhere else — maybe Queens and maybe Omaha — and who think of themselves as living in New York, not in Chelsea, people who happened to find an apartment in a section most of them don’t even know is called Chelsea. Like a summer resort — the natives and the visitors. When you’re a native you hear the news. I was born in Chelsea, so I rate as a native. I also rate as something else.

‘No,’ Joe said at last, ‘there’s easier ways to get a gun, Dan. Even a private snooper oughta know that much. ’

Daniel Fortune, Confidential Investigator: Reliable… Low Rates. The Fortune was once Fortunowski, and there used to be a T in the middle for Tadeusz. That was the name my grandfather carried off the boat: Tadeusz Jan Fortunowski. When I was a boy the old men told me that my grandfather carried that name with pride, even with arrogance. Like most middle and eastern Europeans, his pedigree was a chaos of history. He was born in Lithuania, under a Russian government, of Polish parents who spoke German. But he was proud that he was a Pole, and the name was all he had to prove what he was. My father was born here. Chelsea was a world of Americans and Irish then, and a man needs to belong. My father became Fortune. The old men told me that my grandfather had refused to speak to anyone named Fortune, son or no son. The old man died before I was born. I never knew him. Not that I knew my father. He gave me the name — changed — and not much else. Dan Fortune, who dropped even the T, and who doesn’t really belong anywhere. And, at the moment, a confidential investigator.