Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41 (28 page)

 
          
 
Levine shrugged off the use of the first name.
It wasn't important enough to be angry about. "So he was blackmailing
you," he said, "and finally you'd had enough. But didn't you know
someone would hear the sound of the shot? Mrs. Temple saw you go out."

 
          
 
"A false identification," said Gold.
"I would risk nothing for Maurice. He was not worth the danger of killing
him."

 
          
 
Levine shrugged. If Gold knew a potato
silencer had been used, he hadn't mentioned it. Not that Levine had expected
the trick to work. Tricks like that work only in the movies. And killers go to
the movies, too.

 
          
 
Levine asked questions for over two hours.
Sometimes Gold answered, and sometimes he didn't. As the time wore on, Levine
grew more and more tired, more and more heavy and depressed, but Gold remained
unchanged, displaying only the same solid patience.

 
          
 
Finally, at three-thirty, Levine told him he
could leave. Gold thanked him, with muted sardonicism, and left. Levine went
back down the hall to the squadroom.

 
          
 
There was a note from
Stettin
. Elly Kapp was being held in a precinct in
west
Brooklyn
. Last night, he'd been caught halfway
through the window of a warehouse near the
Brooklyn
piers, and tomorrow morning he would be
transferred downtown.

 
          
 
Levine phoned the precinct and got permission
from the Lieutenant of Detectives there to come over and question the prisoner.
Stettin
had taken the Chevy, so Levine had to drive
an unfamiliar car, newer and stiffer.

 
          
 
Kapp had very little useful to say. At first,
he said, "Morry Gold? I ain't seen him since we took the fall. I'm a very
superstitious guy.
Mister.
I don't go near anyone who
is with me when a job goes sour. That guy by me is a jinx."

 
          
 
Levine questioned him further, wanting to know
the names of other thieves with whom Gold had had dealings, whether or not Gold
had been known to cheat thieves in the past, whether or not Kapp knew of anyone
who harbored a grudge against Gold. Kapp pleaded ignorance for a while, and
then gradually began to look crafty.

 
          
 
"Maybe I could help you out," he
said finally. "I don't promise you
nothing
, but
maybe I could.
If we could work out maybe a deal?"

 
          
 
Levine shook his head, and left the room. Kapp
called after him, but Levine didn't listen to what he was saying. Kapp didn't
know anything; his information would be useless. He would implicate anybody,
make up any kind of story he thought Levine wanted to hear, if it would help
him get a lighter sentence for the attempted robbery of the warehouse.

 
          
 
It was
four
o'clock
,
Levine brought the unfamiliar car back to
the precinct, signed out, and went home.

 
          
 
The third day of the case, Levine came to work
at four in the afternoon, starting a three-day tour on the night shift. As
usual,
Stettin
was already there when he arrived.

 
          
 
"Hi, Abe,"
Stettin
greeted. "I talked to Feldman
yesterday. He owns a grocery store in
Brownsville
. Like everybody else, he didn't know Morry
Gold all that well. But he did give me a couple more names."

 
          
 
''Good," said Levine. He had been about
to shrug out of his coat, but now he kept it on.

 
          
 
"One of them's a woman," said
Stettin
.
"May Torasch.
She was possibly Gold's girl friend. Feldman didn't know for sure."

 
          
 
nVhat
about
Feldman?"

 
          
 
"I don't think so, Abe. He and Gold just
know each other from the
old days, that's
all."

 
          
 
"All right."

 
          
 
"I tried to see the other one, Jake
Mosca, but he wasn't home."

 
          
 
"Maybe hell
be
home now." Levine started to button his coat again.

 
          
 
Stettin
said, "^^^ant me to come along?"

 
          
 
Levine was going to say no, tell him to check
out the other names he had, but then he changed his mind.
Stettin
would be his partner for a while, so they
ought to start learning how to work together. Besides,
Stettin
was only half-hearted in this case, and he
might miss something important. Levine wished he'd questioned the grocer
himself.

 
          
 
"Come on along," Levine said.

 
          
 
Mosca lived way out
Flatbush Avenue
toward Floyd Bennett. There were old
two-family houses out that way, in disrepair, and small apartment buildings
that weren't quite tenements. It was in one of the latter that Mosca lived, on
the second floor.

 
          
 
The hall was full of smells, and badly-lit. A
small boy who needed a haircut stood down at the far end of the hall and
watched them as Levine knocked on the door.

 
          
 
There were sounds of movement inside, but that
was all. Levine knocked again, and this time a voice called, "Who is
it?"

 
          
 
"Police," called Levine.

 
          
 
Inside, a bureau drawer opened, and Levine
heard cursing. His eyes widening, he jumped quickly to one side, away from the
door, shouting, "Andy! Get out of the way!"

 
          
 
From inside, there were sounds Hke wood
cracking, and a series of punched-out holes appeared in the door just as
Stettin
started to obey.

 
          
 
Levine was clawing on his hip for his gun. The
shots, sounding like wood cracking, kept
resounding
in
the apartment, and the holes kept appearing in the door. Plaster was breaking
in small chunks in the opposite wall now.

 
          
 
The door was thin, and Levine could hear the
clicking when the gun was empty and the man inside kept pulling the trigger. He
stepped in front of the door, raised his foot,
kicked
it just under the knob. The lock splintered away and the door swung open. The
man inside was goggle-eyed with rage and fear.

 
          
 
The instant the door came open he threw the
empty gun at Levine and spun away for the window. Levine ducked and ran into
the apartment, shouting to Mosca to stop. Mosca went over the sill headfirst,
out onto the fire escape. Levine fired at him, trying to hit him in the leg,
but the bullet went wild. But before he could fire again Mosca went clattering
down the fire escape.

 
          
 
Levine got to the window in time to see the
man reach the ground. He ran across the weedy back yard, over the wooden fence,
and went dodging into a junkyard piled high with rusting parts of automobiles,

 
          
 
Levine was trying to do everything at once. He
started out the window, then realized Mosca had too much of a head-start on
him. Then he remembered Andy and, as he descended to the floor, he realized
that
Stettin
hadn't followed him into the room and
wondered why.

 
          
 
The moment he emerged into the hallway the
reason became clear. Andy was lying on his side a yard from the door, his
entire left shoulder drenched with blood and his knees drawn up sharply. He was
no longer moving, Levine bent over him for an instant, then swung about, ran
down the stairs and out to the Chevy and called in.

           
 
Everyone seemed to show up at once.
Ambulance and patrolmen and detectives, suddenly filling the
corridor.
Lieutenant Barker, chief of the precinct's detective squad,
came with the rest and stood looking down at Andy Stettin, his face cold with
rage. He listened to Levine's report of what had happened
,
saying nothing until Levine had finished.

 
          
 
Then he said, "He may pull through, Abe.
He still has a chance. You mustn't blame yourself for this."

 
          
 
Should I have been able to tell him? Levine
wondered. He was new, and I was more or less breaking him in, showing him the
ropes, so shouldn't I have told him that when you hear the cursing, when you
hear the bureau drawer opening, get away from the door?

 
          
 
But how could I have told him everything, all
the different things you learn? You learn by trial and error, the same as in
any other walk of life. But here, sometimes, they only give you one error.

 
          
 
It isn't fair.

 
          
 
The apartment was swarming with police, and
soon they found out why Mosca had fired eight times through the door. A shoebox
in a closet was a quarter full of heroin, cut and capsuled, ready for the
retail trade. Mosca had a record, but for theft, not for narcotics, so there
was no way Levine and
Stettin
could have known.

 
          
 
For an hour or two, Levine was confused. The
world swirled around him at a mad pace, but he couldn't really concentrate on
any of it. People talked to him, and he answered one way and another, without
really understanding what was being said to him or what he was replying. He
walked in a shocked daze, not comprehending.

 
          
 
He came out of it back at the precinct. The entire
detective squad was there, all the off-duty men having been called in, and
Lieutenant Barker was talking to them. They filled the squadroom, sitting on
the desks and leaning against the walls, and Lieutenant Barker stood facing
them.

 
          
 
"We're going to get this Jake
Mosca," he was saying. "We're going to get him because Andy Stettin
is damn close to death. Do you know why we have to get a cop-killer? It's
because the cop is a symbol. He's a symbol of the law, the most solid symbol of
the law the average citizen ever sees. Our society is held together by law, and
we cannot let the symbol of the law be treated with arrogance and contempt.

 
          
 
"I want the man who shot
Stettin
. You'll get to everyone this Mosca knows,
every place he might think of going. You'll get him because Andy Stettin is
dying —and he is a cop."

 
          
 
No, thought Levine, that's wrong. Andy Stettin
is a man, and that's why we have to get Jake Mosca. He was alive, and now he
may die. He is a living human being, and that's why we have to get his would-be
killer. There shouldn't be any other reasons, there shouldn't have to be any
other reasons.

 
          
 
But he didn't say anything.

 
          
 
Apparently, the Lieutenant could see that
Levine was still dazed, because he had him switch with Rizzo, who was catching
at the squadroom phone this tour. For the rest of the tour, Levine sat by the
phone in the empty squadroom, and tried to understand.