Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41 (5 page)

 
          
 
After Perkins was led out of the room by two
uniformed cops,
Crawley
got to his feet, stretched, sighed,
scratched, pulled his earlobe, and said, "What do you make of it,
Abe?"

 
          
 
"I don't like it."

 
          
 
"I know that. I saw it in your face. But
he confessed, so what else is there?"

 
          
 
"The phony confession is not exactly
unheard of, you know."

 
          
 
"Not this time," said
Crawley
. "A guy confesses to a crime he didn't
commit for one of two reasons. Either he's a crackpot who wants the publicity
or to be punished or something like that, or he's protecting somebody else.
Perkins doesn't read like a crackpot to me, and there's nobody else involved
for him to be protecting."

 
          
 
"In a capital punishment state,"
suggested Levine, "a guy might confess to a murder he didn't commit so the
state would do his suicide for him."

 
          
 
Crawley
shook his head. "That still doesn't look like Perkins," he said.

 
          
 
"Nothing looks like Perkins. He's given
us a blank wall to stare at. A couple of times it started to slip, and there
was something else inside."

 
          
 
"Don't build a big thing, Abe. The kid
confessed. He's the killer; let it go at that."

 
          
 
"The
job's
finished, I know that. But it still bothers me."

 
          
 
"Okay," said
Crawley
. He sat down behind the desk again and put
his feet up on the scarred desk top. "Let's straighten it out. Where does
it bother you?"

 
          
 
"All over.
Number one, motivation.
You don't kill a man for being a
pompous ass. Not when you turn around a minute later and say he was your best
friend."

 
          
 
"People do funny things when they're
pushed far enough.
Even to friends."

 
          
 
"Sure. Okay, number two.
The murder method.
It doesn't sound right. When a man kills
impulsively, he grabs something and starts swinging. When he calms down, he
goes and turns himself in. But when you poison somebody, you're using a pretty
sneaky method. It doesn't make sense for you to run out and call a cop right
after using poison. It isn't the same kind of mentality."

 
          
 
"He used the poison," said
Crawley
, "because it was handy. Gruber bought
it, probably had it sitting on his dresser or something, and Perkins just
picked it up on impulse and poured it into the beer."

 
          
 
"That's another thing," said Levine.
"Do you drink much beer out of cans?"

 
          
 
Crawley
grinned. "You know I do."

 
          
 
"I saw some empty beer cans sitting
around the apartment, so that's where Gruber got his last beer from."

 
          
 
"Yeah.
So what?"

 
          
 
"When you drink a can of beer, do you
pour the beer out of the can into a glass, or do you just drink it straight
from the can?"

 
          
 
"I drink it out of the can. But not
everybody does."

 
          
 
"I know, I know. Okay, what about the
library books? If you're going to kill somebody, are you going to bring library
books along?"

 
          
 
"It was an impulse killing. He didn't
know he was going to do it until he got there."

 
          
 
Levine got his feet. "That's the hell of
it," he said. "You can explain away every single question in this
business. But it's such a simple case. Why should there be so many questions
that need explaining away?"

 
          
 
Crawley
shrugged. "Beats me," he said. "All I know is, we've got a
confession, and that's enough to satisfy me."

 
          
 
"Not me," said Levine. "I think
I'll go poke around and see what happens. Want to come along?"

 
          
 
"Somebody's going to have to hand the pen
to Perkins when he signs his confession," said
Crawley
.

 
          
 
"Mind if I take off for a while?"

 
          
 
"Go ahead. Have a big time," said
Crawley
, grinning at him. "Play detective."

           
 
Levine's first stop was back at Gruber's
address. Gruber's apartment was empty now, having been sifted completely
through normal routine procedure. Levine went down to the basement door under
the stoop, but he didn't go back to Gruber's door. He stopped at the front
apartment instead, where a ragged-edged strip of paper attached with peeling
scotch tape to the door read, in awkward and childish lettering,
superintendent. Levine rapped and waited. After a minute, the door opened a
couple of inches, held by a
chain,
A round face peered
out at him from a height of a little over five feet. The face said, "Who
you looking for?"

 
          
 
"Police," Levine told him. He opened
his wallet and held it up for the face to look at.

 
          
 
"Oh," said the face.
"Sure thing."
The door shut, and Levine waited
while the chain was clinked free, and then the door opened wide.

 
          
 
The super was a short and round man, dressed
in corduroy trousers and a grease-spotted undershirt. He wheezed, "Come
in, come in," and stood back for Levine to come into his crowded and
musty-smelling living room.

 
          
 
Levine said, "I want to talk to you about
Al Gruber."

 
          
 
The super shut the door and waddled into the
middle of the room, shaking his head. "Wasn't that a shame?" he
asked. "Al was a nice boy. No money, but a nice boy. Sit down somewhere,
anywhere."

 
          
 
Levine looked around. The room was full of
low-slung, heavy, sagging, over-stuffed furniture, armchairs and sofas. He
picked the least battered armchair of the lot, and sat on the very edge.
Although he was a short man, his knees seemed to be almost up to his chin, and
he had the feeling that if he relaxed he'd fall over backwards.

 
          
 
The super trundled across the room and dropped
into one of the other armchairs, sinking into it as though he never intended to
get to his feet again in his life. "A real shame," he said again.
"And to think I maybe could have stopped it."

           
 
"You could have stopped it?
How?"

 
          
 
"It was around
noon
," said the super. "I was watching
the TV over there, and I heard a voice from the back apartment, shouting, ‘A1!
Al!’ So I went out to the hall, but by the time I got there the shouting was
all done. So I didn't know what to do. I waited a minute, and then I came back
in and watched the TV again. That was probably when it was happening."

 
          
 
"There wasn't any noise while you were in
the hall? Just the two shouts before you got out there?"

 
          
 
"That's all. At first, I thought it was
another one of them arguments, and I was gonna bawl out the two of them, but it
stopped before I even got the door open."

 
          
 
"Arguments?"

 
          
 
"Mr. Gruber and Mr.
Perkins.
They used to argue all the time, shout at each other,
carry
on like monkeys. The other
tenants
was
always complaining about it. They'd do it late at night sometimes,
two or
three o'clock
in the morning, and the tenants would all start phoning me to complain."

 
          
 
"What did they argue about?"

 
          
 
The super shrugged his massive shoulders.
"Who knows?
Names.
People.
Writers.
They both think they're great writers or
something."

 
          
 
"Did they ever get into a fist fight or
anything like that? Ever threaten to kill each other?"

 
          
 
"Naw, they'd just shout at each other and
call each other stupid and ignorant and stuff like that. They liked each other,
really, I guess. At least they always hung around together. They just loved to
argue, that's all. You know how it is with college kids. I've had college kids
renting here before, and they're all like that. They all love to argue. Course,
I never had nothing like this happen before."

 
          
 
"What kind of person was Gruber,
exactly?"

 
          
 
The super mulled it over for a while.
"Kind of a quiet guy," he said at last. "Except when he was with
Mr. Perkins, I mean. Then he'd shout just as loud and often as anybody. But
most of the time he was quiet.
And good-mannered.
A real surprise, after most of the kids around today.
He was
always polite, and he'd lend a hand if you needed some help or something, like
the time I was carrying a bed up to the third floor front. Mr. Gruber come
along and pitched right in with me. He did more of the work than I did."

 
          
 
"And he was a writer, wasn't he? At
least, he was trying to be a writer."

 
          
 
"Oh, sure.
I'd
hear that typewriter of his tappin' away in there at all hours. And he always
carried a notebook around with him, writin' things down in it, I asked him once
what he wrote in there, and he said descriptions, of places like
Prospect
Park
up at the corner, and of the people he
knew. He always said he wanted to be a writer like some guy named Wolfe, used
to live in
Brooklyn
too."

 
          
 
"I see." Levine struggled out of the
armchair. "Thanks for your time," he said.

 
          
 
"Not at all."
The super waddled after Levine to the door. "Anything I can do," he
said. "Any time at all."

 
          
 
"Thanks again," said Levine. He went
outside and stood in the hallway, thinking things over, listening to the latch
click in place behind him. Then he turned and walked down the hallway to
Gruber's apartment, and knocked on the door.

 
          
 
As he'd expected, a uniformed cop had been
left behind to keep an eye on the place for a while, and when he opened the
door, Levine showed his identification and said, "I'm on the case. I'd
like to take a look around."

 
          
 
The cop let him in, and Levine looked
carefully through Gruber's personal property. He found the notebooks, finally,
in the bottom drawer of the dresser. There were five of them, steno pad size
loose-leaf fillers. Four of them were filled with writing, in pen, in a slow
and careful hand, and the fifth was still half blank.