Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41 (20 page)

 
          
 
"Neither do
I
."
He reached for the coffee cup, drank. "The question is
,
what do I do?"

 
          
 
She shook her head again. "A child like
that," she said.
"A woman like that.
And then again, maybe not."
She looked at her husband.
"For right now," she said, "you eat. We can think about
it."

 
          
 
For the rest of dinner they discussed other
things. After the meal, as usual, the craving for a cigarette suddenly
intensified, and he was unable to concentrate on anything but his resolution.
They watched television during the evening, and by bedtime he still hadn't made
a decision.
Getting ready for bed.
Peg suddenly said,
"The little girl. You've been thinking?"

 
          
 
"I'll sleep on it," he said.
"Maybe in the morning.
Peg, I am longing for a
cigarette."

 
          
 
"Nails in your coffin," she said
bluntly. He blinked, and went away silently to brush his teeth.

 
          
 
The lights turned out, they lay together in
the double bed which now, with age, had
a pronounced
sag toward the middle, rolling them together. But it was a cold night out, a
good night to lie close together and feel the warmth of life. Levine closed his
eyes and drifted slowly toward sleep.

 
          
 
A sudden sound shook him awake. He blinked
rapidly, staring up in the darkness at the ceiling, startled, disoriented,
not
knowing what it was. But then the sound came again, and
he exhaled, releasing held breath. It was the baby from next door, crying.

 
          
 
Move over, world, and give us room, he
thought, giving words to the baby's cries.
Make vuayfor the
new.

 
          
 
And they're right, he thought. We've got to
take care of them, and guide them, and then make way for them. They're
absolutely right.

 
          
 
I've got to do something for that little girl,
he thought.

           
 
In the morning, Levine talked to
Crawley
. He sat in the client's chair, beside
Crawley
's desk. "About that little girl,"
he said.

 
          
 
"You, too?
I got
to thinking about it myself, last night."

 
          
 
"We ought to check it out," Levine
told him.

 
          
 
"I know. I figure I ought to look up the
death of the first father. Jason Thornbridge, wasn't it?"

 
          
 
"Good," said Levine. "I was
thinking of going to her school, talking to the teacher. If she's the kind of
child who makes up wild stories all the time, then that's that, you know what I
mean?"

 
          
 
"Sure. You know what school she's
in?"

 
          
 
"Lathmore Elementary,
over on Third."

 
          
 
Crawley
frowned, trying to remember. "She
tell
you that?
I didn't hear it if she did."

 
          
 
"No, she didn't. But it's the only one it
could be." Levine grinned sheepishly. "I'm pulling a Sherlock
Holmes," he said. "She told us she'd stopped in on her way home from
school. So she was walking home, and there's only three schools in the right
direction —sO we'd be between them and Prospect Park —but they're close enough
for her to walk." He checked them off on his fingers. "There's St.
Aloysius, but she wasn't in a school uniform. There's PS 118, but with a
Prospect Park West address and the clothing she was wearing and her good
manners, she doesn't attend any public school. So that leaves Lathmore."

 
          
 
"Okay, Sherlock," said
Crawley
. "You go talk to the nice people at
Lathmore. I'll dig into the Thornbridge thing."

 
          
 
"One of us," Levine told him,
"ought to check this out with the Lieutenant first. Tell him what we want
to do."

 
          
 
"Fine.
Go
ahead."

 
          
 
Levine scraped the fingers of his left hand
together, embarrassment reminding him of his need for a cigarette. But this was
day number four, and he was going to make it. "Jack," he said,
"I think maybe you ought to be the one to talk to him."

           
 
''Why me?
Why not you?"

 
          
 
"I think he has more respect for
you."

 
          
 
Crawley
snorted. "What the hell are you talking about?"

 
          
 
"No, I mean it, Jack." Levine
grinned self-consciously. "If I told him about it, he might think I was
just dramatizing it, getting emotional or something, and he'd say thumbs down.
But you're the level headed type. If you tell him it's serious, he'll believe
you."

 
          
 
"You're nuts," said
Crawley
.

 
          
 
"You are the level-headed type,"
Levine told him. "And I am too emotional."

 
          
 
"Flattery will get you everywhere. All
right, go to school."

 
          
 
"Thanks, Jack."

 
          
 
Levine shrugged into his coat and plodded out
of the squadroom, downstairs, and out to the sidewalk. Lathmore Elementary was
three blocks away to the right, and he walked it. There was a smell of snow in
the air, but the sky was still clear. Levine strolled along sniffing the
snow-tang, his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his black overcoat. The
desire for a smoke was less when he was outdoors, so he didn't hurry.

 
          
 
Lathmore Elementary, one of the myriad private
schools which have sprung up to take the place of the enfeebled public school
system long since emasculated by municipal politics, was housed in an old
mansion on one of the neighborhood's better blocks. The building was mainly
masonry, with curved buttresses and bay windows everywhere, looming three
ivy-overgrown stories to a patchwork slate roof which dipped and angled and
rose crazily around to no pattern at all. Gold letters on the wide glass pane
over the double-doored entrance announced the building's new function, and just
inside the doors an arrow on a wall was marked "OFFICE."

 
          
 
Levine didn't want to have to announce himself
as a policeman, but the administrative receptionist was so officious and
curious that he had no choice. It was the only way he could get to see Mrs.
Pidgeon, the principal, without first explaining his mission in minute detail
to the receptionist.

 
          
 
Mrs. Pidgeon was baffled, polite, terrified
and defensive, but not very much of any of them. It was as though these four
emotions were being held in readiness, for one of them to spring into action as
soon as she found out exactly what it was a police officer could possibly want
in Lathmore Elementary. Levine tried to explain as gently and vaguely as
possible:

 
          
 
"I'd like to talk to one of your
teachers," he said.
"About a little girl, a student
of yours."

 
          
 
"What about her?"

 
          
 
"She made a report to us yesterday,"
Levine told her. "It's difficult for us to check it out, and it might help
if we knew a little more about her, what her attitudes are,
things
like that."

 
          
 
Defensiveness began to edge to the fore in
Mrs. Pidgeon's attitude. "What sort of report?"

 
          
 
"I'm sorry," said Levine. "If
there's nothing to it, it would be better not to spread it."

 
          
 
"Something about this
school?"

 
          
 
"Oh, no," said Levine, managing not
to smile.
"Not at all."

 
          
 
"Very well."
Defensiveness receded, and a sort of cold politeness became more prominent.
"You want to talk to her teacher, then."

 
          
 
"Yes."

 
          
 
"Her name?"

 
          
 
"Amy Walker. Amy Thornbridge
Walker."

 
          
 
"Oh, yes!" Mrs. Pidgeon's face
suddenly lit with pleasure, not at Levine but at his reminding her of that
particular child. Then the pleasure gave way just as suddenly to renewed
bafflement. "It's about Amy? She came to you yesterday?"

 
          
 
"That's right."

 
          
 
"Well." She looked helplessly around
the room, aching to find out more but unable to find a question that would get
around Levine's reticence. Finally, she gave up, and asked him to wait while
she went for Miss Haskell, the fifth grade teacher. Levine stood as she left
the room,
then
sank back into the maroon leather
chair, feeling bulky and awkward in this hushed heavy-draped office.

 
          
 
He waited five minutes before Mrs. Pidgeon
returned, this time with Miss Haskell in tow. Miss Haskell, unexpectedly, was a
comfortable fortyish woman in a sensible suit and flat shoes, not the thin tall
bird he'd expected. He acknowledged Mrs. Pidgeon's introduction, hastily rising
again, and Mrs. Pidgeon pointedly said, "Try not to be too long, Mr.
Levine. You may use my office."

 
          
 
"Thank you."

 
          
 
She left, and Levine and Miss Haskell stood
facing each other in the middle of the room. He motioned at a chair.
"Would you sit down, please?"

 
          
 
"Thank you. Mrs. Pidgeon said you wanted
to ask me about Amy Walker."

 
          
 
"Yes, I want to know what kind of child
she is, anything you can tell me about her."

 
          
 
Miss Haskell smiled. "I can tell you she's
a brilliant and well-brought-up child," she said. "That she's the one
I picked to be student in charge while I came down to tsilk to you. That she's
always at least a month ahead of the rest of the class in reading the
assignments, and that she's the most practical child I've ever met."

 
          
 
Levine reached to his cigarette pocket, cut
the motion short,
awkwardly
returned his hand to his
side. "Her father died two weeks ago, didn't he?"

 
          
 
"That's right."

 
          
 
"How did they get along, do you know?
Amy and her father."

 
          
 
"She worshipped him. He was her
stepfather actually, having married her mother only about a year ago, I
believe. Amy doesn't remember her real father. Mr. Walker was the only father
she knew, and having been without one for so long
" Miss
Haskell spread her hands. "He was important to her," she finished.