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.
Levine joined the early part of the questioning, and got Mosca's alibi for the night Morry Gold was killed. He made four phone calls, and the alibi checked out. Jake Mosca had not murdered Morry Gold.
The fourth day, Levine again arrived at the precinct at four o'clock. He was scheduled to catch this tour, so he spent another eight hours at the telephone, and got nothing done on the Morry Gold killing. The fifth day, working alone now, he went on with the investigation.
May Torasch, the woman whose name Andy Stettin had learned, worked in the credit department of a Brooklyn department store. Levine went to her apartment, on the fringe of Sunset, at seven o'clock, and found her home. She was another blowsy woman, reminding him strongly of Sal Casetta's wife. But she was affable, and seemed to want to help, though she assured Levine that she and Morry Gold had never been close friends.
"Face it," she said, "he was a bum. He wasn't going nowhere, so I never wasted much time on him."
She had seen Morry two days before his death; they'd gone to a bar off Flatbush Avenue and had a few drinks. But she hadn't gone back to his apartment with him. She hadn't been in the mood.
"I was kind of low that night," she said.
"Was Morry low?" Levine asked.
"No, not him. He was the same as ever. He'd talk about the weather all the time, and his lousy landlady. I wouldn't have gone out with him, but I was feeling so low I didn't want to go home."
She didn't have any idea who might have murdered him. "He was just a bum, just a small-timer. Nobody paid any attention to him." Nor could she add to the names of Gold's acquaintances.
From her apartment, Levine went to the bar where she and Morry had last been together. It was called The Green Lantern, and was nearly empty when Levine walked in shortly before nine. He showed his identification to the bartender and asked about Morry Gold. But the bartender knew very few of his customers by name.
"I might know this guy by sight," he explained, "But the name don't mean a thing." And the same was true of May Torasch.
There were still two more names on the list, Joe Whistler and Arnie Hendricks, the latter being the Arnie Sal Casetta had mentioned. Joe Whistler was another bartender, so Levine went looking for him first, and found him at work, tending bar in a place called Robert's, in Canarsie, not more than a dozen blocks from Levine's home.
Whistler knew Gold only casually, and could add nothing. Levine spent half an hour with him, and then went in search of Arnie Hendricks.
Arnie Hendricks was a small-time fight manager, originally from Detroit. He wasn't at home, and the gym where he usually hung out was closed this time of night. Levine went back to the precinct, sat down at his desk, and looked at his notes.
He had eight names relating to Morry Gold. There were one brother, one woman, and six casual friends. None of them had offered any reasons for Morry's murder, none of them had suggested any suspects who might have hated Morry enough to kill him, and none of them had given any real cause to be considered a suspect himself, with the possible exception of Abner Gold.
But the more Levine thought about Abner Gold, the more he was willing to go along with Andy Stettin's idea. The man was afraid of an investigation not because he had murdered his brother, but because he was afraid the police would be able to link him to his brother's traffic in stolen goods.
Eight names. One of them, Arnie Hendricks, was still an unknown, but the other seven had been dead ends.
Someone had murdered Morry Gold. Somewhere in the world, the murderer still lived. He had a name and a face; and he had a connection somehow with Morry Gold. And he was practically unsought. Of the hundreds of millions of human beings on the face of the earth, only one Abraham Levine, who had never known Morry Gold in life, was striving to find the man who had brought about Morry Gold's death.
After a while, wearily, he put his notes away and pecked out his daily report on one of the office Remingtons. Then it was midnight, and he went home. And that was when he got some good news from the hospitsd — Andy Stettin was going to live.
The sixth day, he went to the precinct, reported in, got the Chevy, and went out looking for Arnie Hendricks. He spent seven hours on it, stopping off only to eat, but he couldn't find Hendricks anywhere. People he talked to had seen Hendricks during the day, so the man wasn't in hiding, but Levine couldn't seem to catch up with him. It was suggested that Hendricks might be off at a poker game somewhere in Manhattan, but Levine couldn't find out exactly where the poker game was being held.
He got back to the precinct at eleven-thirty, and started typing out his daily report. There wasn't much to report. He'd looked for Hendricks, and had failed to find him. He would look again tomorrow.
Lieutenant Barker came in at a quarter to twelve. That was unusual; the Lieutenant was rarely around later than eight or nine at night, unless something really important had happened in the precinct. He came into the squadroom and said, "Abe, can I talk to you? Bring that report along."
Levine pulled the incomplete report from the typewriter and followed the Lieutenant into his ofice. The Lieutenant sat down, and motioned for Levine to do the same, then held out his hand.
"Could I see that report?" he asked.
"It isn't finished."
"That's all right."
The Lieutenant glanced at the report, and then dropped it on his desk. "Abe," he said, "do you know what our full complement is supposed to be?"
"Twenty men, isn't it?"
"Right. And we have fifteen. With Crawley out, fourteen. Abe, here's your reports for the last six days. What have you been doing, man? We're understaffed, we're having trouble keeping up with the necessary stuff, and look what you've been doing. For six days you've been running around in circles. And for what? For a small-time punk who got a small-time punk's end."
"He was murdered, Lieutenant."
"Lots of people are murdered, Abe. When we can, we find out who did the job, and we turn him over to the DA. But we don't make an obsession out of it. Abe, for almost a week now you haven't been pulling your weight around here. There've been three complaints about how long it took us to respond to urgent calls. We're understaffed, but we're not that understaffed."
Barker tapped the little pile of reports. "This man Gold was a fence, and a cheap crook. He isn't worth it, Abe. We can't waste any more time on him. When you finish up this report, I want you to recommend we switch the case to Pending. And tomorrow I want you to get back with the team."
"Lieutenant, I've got one more man to — "
"And tomorrow there'll be one more, and the day after that one more. Abe, you've been working on nothing else at all. Forget it, will you? This is a cheap penny-ante bum. Even his brother doesn't care who killed him. Let it go, Abe."
He leaned forward over the desk. "Abe, some cases don't get solved right away. That's what the Pending file is for. So six weeks from now, or six months from now, or six years from now, while we're working on something else, when the break finally does come, we can pull that case out and hit it hot and heavy again. But it's cold now, Abe, so let it lie."
Speeches roiled around inside Levine's head, but they were only words so he didn't say them. He nodded, reluctantly. "Yes, sir," he said.
"The man was a bum," said the Lieutenant, "pure and simple. Forget him, he isn't worth your time."
"Yes, sir," said Levine.
He went back to the squadroom and finished typing the report, recommending that the Morry Gold case be switched to the Pending file. Then it was twelve o'clock, and he left the precinct and walked to the subway station. The underground platform was cold and deserted. He stood shivering on the concrete, his hands jammed deep into his pockets. He waited twenty minutes before a train came. Then it did come, crashed into the station
and squealed to a stop. The doors in front of Levine slid back with no hands touching them, and he stepped aboard.
The car was empty, with a few newspapers abandoned on the seats. The doors slid shut behind him and the train started forward. He was the only one in the car. He was the only one in the car and all the seats were empty, but he didn't sit down.
The train rocked and jolted as it hurtled through the cold hole under Brooklyn, and Abraham Levine stood swaying in the middle of the empty car, a short man, bulky in his overcoat, hulk-shouldered, crying.
AFTER I'M GONE
Afternoon visiting hours at the hospital were from two till five, so when Detective Abraham Levine of Brooklyn's Forty-Third Precinct got off his tour at four p.m. he took a Rockaway Parkway bus to the hospital and spent thirty-five minutes with Detective Andy Stettin. Levine and Andy had been together when Andy was hit, a bullet high on the left side of the chest, fired through a closed door. Andy, a promising youngster, a hotshot, one of the new breed of college cops, had been close to death for a while, but was now on the mend, and very bored and impatient with hospital routine.
It wasn't really necessary for Levine to go through this ritual every day, nor did he have that much to say to the youngster, and in fact he knew full well he was only doing it because he so much didn't want to. There was a certain amount of guilt involved, since Levine was secretly happy that the bullet had ended his brief partnership with Andy Stettin, but in truth Andy wasn't the main point here at all. The main point was the hospital.
To Andy Stettin, a young fellow, healthy and self-assured, the hospital was merely a nuisance and a bore. To Abraham Levine, fifty-three years of age, short and stocky, overweight and short of wind, with a tired heart that skipped the occasional beat, the hospital was a horrible presentiment, an all-too-possible future. Those sad withered men, shrunken within their maroon or brown robes, shuffling down the wide featureless corridors in their Christmas-present slippers, were a potential tomorrow that could be very close indeed. Going to the hospital every afternoon was for Levine a painful repeated confrontation with his own worst fears.
Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41 Page 15