Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41 (15 page)

 
          
 
"So what?"

 
          
 
"Get on your feet."

           
 
"Why should I?"

 
          
 
Before
Crawley
could answer, Mrs. Brodek stepped between
him and her son, saying rapidly, "What you want Danny for? He ain't done
nothing
. He's been right here all night long."

 
          
 
Levine, who had waited by the corridor
doorway, shook his head grimly. This was going to be just as bad as the scene
with Mrs. Kosofsky.
Maybe worse.

 
          
 
Crawley
said, "He told you to say that? Did he tell you why? Did he tell you what
he did tonight?"

 
          
 
It was the father who answered. "He
didn't do
nothing
. You make a Federal case out of
everything, you cops. Kids maybe steal a
hubcap,
knock
out a streetlight, what the hell? They're kids."

 
          
 
Over Mrs. Brodek's shoulder,
Crawley
said to the boy, "Didn't you tell
them, Danny?"

 
          
 
"Tell them what?"

 
          
 
"Do you want me to tell them?"

 
          
 
"I don't know what you're talking
about."

 
          
 
On the television screen, the automobile chase
was finished. A snarling character said, "I don't know what you're talking
about." Another character said back, "You know what I'm talking
about, Kid."

 
          
 
Crawley
turned to Mr. Brodek. "Your boy didn't steal any hubcap tonight," he
said. "He held up the grocery store in the next block.
Kosofsky's."

 
          
 
The boy said, "You're nuts."

 
          
 
Mrs. Brodek said, "Not Danny. Danny
wouldn't do
nothing
like that."

 
          
 
"He shot the old man," said
Crawley
heavily. "Shot him four times."

 
          
 
"Shot him!" cried Brodek.
"How?
Where's he going to get a gun? Answer me that,
where's a young
kid like that going to get a gun?"

 
          
 
Levine spoke up for the first time. "We
don't know where they get them, Mr. Brodek," he said. "All we know
is
they get them. And then they use them."

           
 
"I’ll tell you where when he tells
us," said
Crawley
.

 
          
 
Mrs. Brodek said again, "Danny wouldn't
do
nothing
like that. You've got it wrong."

 
          
 
Levine said, "Wait, Jack," to his
partner. To Mrs. Brodek, he said, "Danny did it. There isn't any question.
If there was a question, we wouldn't arrest him."

 
          
 
"The hell with that!" cried Brodek.
"I know about you cops, you got these arrest quotas. You got to look
good,
you got to make a lot of arrests."

 
          
 
"If we make a lot of wrong arrests,"
Levine told him, trying to be patient for the sake of what this would do to
Brodek when he finally had to admit the truth, "we embarrass the Police
Department. If we make a lot of wrong arrests, we don't stay on the
force."

 
          
 
Crawley
said, angrily, "Danny, you aren't doing yourself any favors. And you
aren't doing your parents any favors either. You want them charged with
accessory? The old man died!"

 
          
 
In the silence, Levine said softly, "have
a witness, Mrs. Brodek, Mr. Brodek.
The wife, the old man's
wife.
She was in the apartment behind the store and heard the shots. She
ran out to the front and saw Danny at the cash register. Shell make
a
f>ositive identification."

 
          
 
"Sure she will," said the boy.

 
          
 
Levine looked at him. You killed her husband,
boy. She'll identify you."

 
          
 
"So why didn't I bump her while I was at
it?"

 
          
 
"You tried," said
Crawley
. "You fired one shot, saw her fall,
and then you ran."

 
          
 
The boy grinned. "Yeah, that's a dandy.
Think it'll hold up in court? An excitable old woman, she only saw this guy
while he's shooting at her, and then he ran out.
Some
positive identification."

 
          
 
"They teach bad law on television,
boy," said Levine. "It'll hold up."

 
          
 
"Not if I was here all night, and I was.
Wasn't I, Mom?"

           
 
Defiantly, Mrs. Brodek said, ''Danny didn't
leave this room for a minute tonight. Not a minute."

 
          
 
Levine said, "Mrs. Brodek, he killed.
Your son took a man's life. He was seen."

 
          
 
"She could have been mistaken. It all
happened so fast, I bet she could have been mistaken. She only thought it was
Danny."

           
 
"If it happened to your
husband, Mrs. Brodek, viO
make a
mistake?"

 
          
 
Mr. Brodek said, "You don't make me
believe that. I know my son. You got this wrong somewhere."

 
          
 
Crawley
said, "Hidden in his bedroom, or hidden somewhere nearby, there's
sixty-two dollars, most of it in bills, three or four dollars in quarters. And
the gun's probably with it."

 
          
 
"That's what he committed murder for, Mr.
Brodek," said Levine.
"Sixty-two dollars."

 
          
 
"I'm going to go get it," said
Crawley
, turning toward the door on the other side
of
the living room.

 
          
 
Brodek jumped up, shouting, "The hell you
are! Let's see your warrant! I got that much law from television, mister, you
don't just come busting in here and make a search. You got to have a
warrant."

 
          
 
Crawley
looked at Levine in disgust and frustration, and Levine knew what he was
thinking. The simple thing to do would be to go ahead and make the arrest and
leave the Brodeks still telling their lie. That would be the simple thing to
do, but it would also be the wrong thing to do. If the Brodeks were still
maintaining the lie once
Crawley
and
Levine left, they would be stuck with it. They wouldn't dare admit the truth
after that, not even if they could be made to believe it.

 
          
 
They must be wondering already, but could not
admit their doubts. If they were left alone now, they would make the search
themselves that they had just kept
Crawley
from making, and they would find the money and the gun. The money and the gun
would be somewhere in Danny Brodek's bedroom. The money stuffed into the toe of
a shoe in the closet, maybe.
The gun under the mattress or at
the bottom of a full wastebasket.

 
          
 
If the Brodeks found the money and the gun,
and believed that they didn't dare change their story, they would get rid of
the evidence. The paper money ripped up and flushed down the toilet.
The quarters spent, or thrown out the window.
The gun
dropped down a sewer.

 
          
 
Without the money, without the gun, without
breaking Danny Brodek's alibi, he had a better than even chance of getting away
scot-free. In all probability, the grand jury wouldn't even return an
indictment. The unsupported statement of an old woman, who only had a few
hectic seconds for identification, against a total lack of evidence and a rock
solid alibi by the boy's parents, and the case was foredoomed.

 
          
 
But Danny Brodek had killed. He had taken
life, and he couldn't get away with it. Nothing else in the world, so far as
Levine was concerned, was as heinous, as vivious, as evil, as the untimely
taking of life.

 
          
 
Couldn't the boy himself understand what he'd
done? Nathan Kosofsky was dead. He didn't exist any more. He didn't breathe, he
didn't see or hear or taste or touch or smell. The pit that yawned so widely in
Levine's fears had been opened for Nathan Kosofsky and he had tumbled in.
Never to live, ever again.

 
          
 
If the boy couldn't understand the enormfty of
what he'd done, if he was too young, if life to him was still too natural and
inevitable a gift, then surely his parents were old enough to understand. Did
Mr. Brodek never lie awake in bed and wonder at the frail and transient sound
of his own heart pumping the life through his veins? Had Mrs. Brodek not felt
the cringing closeness of the fear of death when she was about to give birth to
her son? They knew, they had to know, what murder reallv meant.

           
 
He wanted to ask them, or to remind them, but
the awful truths swirling in his brain wouldn't solidify into words and
sentences. There is no real way to phrase an emotion.

 
          
 
Crawley
,
across the room, sighed heavily and said, "Okay. Youll set your own
parents up for the bad one. That's okay. We've got the eye-witness. And
there'll be more; a fingerprint on the cash register, somebody who saw you run
out of the store
— "

 
          
 
No one had seen Danny Brodek run from the
store. Looking at the smug young face, Levine knew there would be no
fingerprints on the cash register. It's just as easy to knuckle the No Sale key
to open the cash drawer.

 
          
 
He said, to the boy's father, "On the way
out of the store, Danny was mad and scared and nervous. He pulled the door
open, and the bell over it rang. He took out his anger and his nervousness on
it, yanking the bell down. Well find that somewhere between here and the store,
and there may be prints on it. There also may be scratches on his hand, from
yanking the bell mechanism off the door frame."

 
          
 
Quickly, Danny said, "Lots of people got
scratches on their hands. I was playing with a cat this afternoon, coming home
from school. He gave me a couple scratches. See?" He held out his right
hand, with three pink ragged tears across the surface of the palm.

 
          
 
Crawley
said, "I've played with cats, too, kid. I always got my scratches on the
back of my hand."

 
          
 
The boy shrugged. The statement needed no
answer.

 
          
 
Crawley
went on, "You played with this cat a long while, huh? Long enough to get three
scratches, is that it?"