“I suppose you’re right. What about girl friends, other people who knew them both?”
“Well, there was one girl whom both were dating rather steadily. The rivalry again. I don’t think either of them was particularly serious about her, but both of them wanted to take her away from the other one.”
“Do you know this girl’s name?”
“Yes, of course. She was in the same class with Perkins and Gruber. I think I might have her home address here.”
Stonegell opened a small file drawer atop his desk, and looked through it. “Yes, here it is,” he said. “Her name is Anne Marie Stone, and she lives on Grove Street, down in the Village. Here you are.”
Levine accepted the card from Stonegell, copied the name and address onto his pad, and gave the card back. He got to his feet. “Thank you for your trouble,” he said.
“Not at all,” said Stonegell, standing. He extended his hand, and Levine, shaking it, found it bony and almost parchment-thin, but surprisingly strong. “I don’t know if I’ve been much help, though,” he said.
“Neither do I, yet,” said Levine. “I may be just wasting both our time. Perkins confessed, after all.”
“Still—” said Stonegell.
Levine nodded. “I know. That’s what’s got me doing extra work.”
“I’m still thinking of this thing as though—as though it were a story problem, if you know what I mean. It isn’t real yet. Two young students, I’ve taken an interest in both of them, fifty years after the worms get me they’ll still be around—and then you tell me one of them is already wormfood, and the other one is effectively just as dead. It isn’t real to me yet. They won’t be in class tomorrow night, but I still won’t believe it.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Let me know if anything happens, will you?”
“Of course.”
Anne Marie Stone lived in an apartment on the fifth floor of a walk-up on Grove Street in Greenwich Village, a block and a half from Sheridan Square. Levine found himself out of breath by the time he reached the third floor, and he stopped for a minute to get his wind back and to slow the pounding of his heart. There was no sound in the world quite as loud as the beating of his own heart these days, and when that beating grew too rapid or too irregular, Detective Levine felt a kind of panic that twenty-four years as a cop had never been able to produce.
He had to stop again at the fourth floor, and he remembered with envy what a Bostonian friend had told him about a City of Boston regulation that buildings used as residence had to have elevators if they were more than four stories high. Oh, to live in Boston. Or, even better, in Levittown, where there isn’t a building higher than two stories anywhere.
He reached the fifth floor, finally, and knocked on the door of apartment 5B. Rustlings from within culminated in the peephole in the door being opened, and a blue eye peered suspiciously out at him. “Who is it?” asked a muffled voice.
“Police,” said Levine. He dragged out his wallet, and held it high, so the eye in the peephole could read the identification.
“Second,” said the muffled voice, and the peephole closed. A seemingly endless series of rattles and clicks indicated locks being released, and then the door opened, and a short, slender girl, dressed in pink toreador pants, gray bulky sweater and blonde pony tail, motioned to Levine to come in. “Have a seat,” she said, closing the door after him.
“Thank you.” Levine sat in a new-fangled basket chair, as uncomfortable as it looked, and the girl sat in another chair of the same type, facing him. But she managed to look comfortable in the thing.
“Is this something I did?” she asked him. “Jaywalking or something?”
Levine smiled. No matter how innocent, a citizen always presumes himself guilty when the police come calling. “No,” he said. “It concerns two friends of yours, Al Gruber and Larry Perkins.”
“Those two?” The girl seemed calm, though curious, but not at all worried or apprehensive. She was still thinking in terms of something no more serious than jaywalking or a neighbor calling the police to complain about loud noises. “What are they up to?”
“How close are you to them?”
The girl shrugged. “I’ve gone out with both of them, that’s all. We all take courses at Columbia. They’re both nice guys, but there’s nothing serious, you know. Not with either of them.”
“I don’t know how to say this,” said Levine, “except the blunt way. Early this afternoon, Perkins turned himself in and admitted he’d just killed Gruber.”
The girl stared at him. Twice, she opened her mouth to speak, but both times she closed it again. The silence lengthened, and Levine wondered belatedly if the girl had been telling the truth, if perhaps there had been something serious in her relationship with one of the boys after all. Then she blinked and looked away from him, clearing her throat. She stared out the window for a second, then looked back and said, “He’s pulling your leg.”
Levine shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
“Larry’s got a weird sense of humor sometimes,” she said. “It’s a sick joke, that’s all. Al’s still around. You haven’t found the body, have you?”
“I’m afraid we have. He was poisoned, and Perkins admitted he was the one who gave him the poison.”
“That little bottle Al had around the place? That was only a gag.”
“Not anymore.”
She thought about it a minute longer, then shrugged, as though giving up the struggle to either believe or disbelieve. “Why come to me?” she asked him.
“I’m not sure, to tell you the truth. Something smells wrong about the case, and I don’t know what. There isn’t any logic to it. I can’t get through to Perkins, and it’s too late to get through to Gruber. But I’ve got to get to know them both, if I’m going to understand what happened.”
“And you want me to tell you about them.”
“Yes.”
“Where did you hear about me? From Larry?”
“No, he didn’t mention you at all. The gentlemanly instinct, I suppose. I talked to your teacher, Professor Stonegell.”
“I see.” She stood up suddenly, in a single rapid and graceless movement, as though she had to make some motion, no matter how meaningless. “Do you want some coffee?”
“Thank you, yes.”
“Come on along. We can talk while I get it ready.”
He followed her through the apartment. A hallway led from the long, narrow living room past bedroom and bathroom to a tiny kitchen. Levine sat down at the kitchen table, and Anne Marie Stone went through the motions of making coffee. As she worked, she talked.
“They’re good friends,” she said. “I mean, they were good friends. You know what I mean. Anyway, they’re a lot different from each other. Oh, golly! I’m getting all loused up in tenses.”
“Talk as though both were still alive,” said Levine. “It should be easier that way.”
“I don’t really believe it anyway,” she said. “Al—he’s a lot quieter than Larry. Kind of intense, you know? He’s got a kind of reversed Messiah complex. You know, he figures he’s supposed to be something great, a great writer, but he’s afraid he doesn’t have the stuff for it. So he worries about himself, and keeps trying to analyze himself, and he hates everything he writes because he doesn’t think it’s good enough for what he’s supposed to be doing. That bottle of poison, that was a gag, you know, just a gag, but it was the kind of joke that has some sort of truth behind it. With this thing driving him like this, I suppose even death begins to look like a good escape after a while.”
She stopped her preparations with the coffee, and stood listening to what she had just said. “Now he did escape, didn’t he? I wonder if he’d thank Larry for taking the decision out of his hands.”
“Do you suppose he asked Larry to take the decision out of his hands?”
She shook her head. “No. In the first place, Al could never ask anyone else to help him fight the thing out in any
way. I know, I tried to talk to him a couple of times, but he just couldn’t listen. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to listen, he just couldn’t. He had to figure it out for himself. And Larry isn’t the helpful sort, so Larry would be the last person anybody would go to for help. Not that Larry’s a bad guy, really. He’s just awfully self-centered. They both are, but in different ways. Al’s always worried about himself, but Larry’s always proud of himself. You know. Larry would say, ‘I’m for me first,’ and Al would say, ‘Am I worthy?’ Something like that.”
“Had the two of them had a quarrel or anything recently, anything that you know of that might have prompted Larry to murder?”
“Not that I know of. They’ve both been getting more and more depressed, but neither of them blamed the other. Al blamed himself for not getting anywhere, and Larry blamed the stupidity of the world. You know, Larry wanted the same thing Al did, but Larry didn’t worry about whether he was worthy or capable or anything like that. He once told me he wanted to be a famous writer, and he’d be one if he had to rob banks and use the money to bribe every publisher and editor and critic in the business. That was a gag, too, like Al’s bottle of poison, but I think that one had some truth behind it, too.”
The coffee was ready, and she poured two cups, then sat down across from him. Levine added a bit of evaporated milk, but no sugar, and stirred the coffee distractedly. “I want to know why,” he said. “Does that seem strange? Cops are supposed to want to know who, not why. I know who, but I want to know why.”
“Larry’s the only one who could tell you, and I don’t think he will.”
Levine drank some of the coffee, then got to his feet. “Mind if I use your phone?” he asked.
“Go right ahead. It’s in the living room, next to the bookcase.”
Levine walked back into the living room and called the station. He asked for Crawley. When his partner came on the line, Levine said, “Has Perkins signed the confession yet?”
“He’s on the way down now. It’s just been typed up.”
“Hold him there after he signs it, okay? I want to talk to him. I’m in Manhattan, starting back now.”
“What have you got?”
“I’m not sure I have anything. I just want to talk to Perkins again, that’s all.”
“Why sweat it? We got the body; we got the confession; we got the killer in a cell. Why make work for yourself?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just bored.”
“Okay, I’ll hold him. Same room as before.”
Levine went back to the kitchen. “Thank you for the coffee,” he said. “If there’s nothing else you can think of, I’ll be leaving now.”
“Nothing,” she said. “Larry’s the only one can tell you why.”
She walked him to the front door, and he thanked her again as he was leaving. The stairs were a lot easier going down.
When Levine got back to the station, he picked up another plainclothesman, a detective named Ricco, a tall, athletic man in his middle thirties who affected the Ivy League look. He resembled more closely someone from the District Attorney’s office than a precinct cop. Levine gave him a part to play, and the two of them went down the hall to the room where Perkins was waiting with Crawley.
“Perkins,” said Levine, the minute he walked in the room, before Crawley had a chance to give the game away by saying something to Ricco, “this is Dan Ricco, a reporter from the Daily News.”
Perkins looked at Ricco with obvious interest, the first real display of interest and animation Levine had yet seen from him. “A reporter?”
“That’s right,” said Ricco. He looked at Levine. “What is this?” he asked. He was playing it straight and blank.
“College student,” said Levine. “Name’s Larry Perkins.” He spelled the last name. “He poisoned a fellow student.”
“Oh, yeah?” Ricco glanced at Perkins without much eagerness. “What for?” he asked, looking back at Levine. “Girl? Any sex in it?”
“Afraid not. It was some kind of intellectual motivation. They both wanted to be writers.”
Ricco shrugged. “Two guys with the same job? What’s so hot about that?”
“Well, the main thing,” said Levine, “is that Perkins here wants to be famous. He tried to get famous by being a writer, but that wasn’t working out. So he decided to be a famous murderer.”
Ricco looked at Perkins. “Is that right?” he asked.
Perkins was glowering at them all, but especially at Levine. “What difference does it make?” he said.
“The kid’s going to get the chair, of course,” said Levine blandly. “We have his signed confession and everything. But I’ve kind of taken a liking to him. I’d hate to see him throw his life away without getting something for it. I thought maybe you could get him a nice headline on page two, something he could hang up on the wall of his cell.”
Ricco chuckled and shook his head. “Not a chance of it,” he said. “Even if I wrote the story big, the city desk would knock it down to nothing. This kind of story is a dime a dozen. People kill other people around New York twenty-four hours a day. Unless there’s a good strong sex interest, or it’s maybe one of those mass killings things like the guy who put the bomb in the airplane, a murder in New York is filler stuff. And who needs filler stuff in the spring, when the ball teams are just getting started?”
“You’ve got influence on the paper, Dan,” said Levine. “Couldn’t you at least get him picked up by the wire services?”
“Not a chance in a million. What’s he done that a few hundred other clucks in New York don’t do every year? Sorry, Abe, I’d like to do you the favor, but it’s no go.”
Levine sighed. “Okay, Dan,” he said. “If you say so.”
“Sorry,” said Ricco. He grinned at Perkins. “Sorry, kid,” he said. “You should of knifed a chorus girl or something.”
Ricco left and Levine glanced at Crawley, who was industriously yanking on his earlobe and looking bewildered. Levine sat down facing Perkins and said, “Well?”
“Let me alone a minute,” snarled Perkins. “I’m trying to think.”
“I was right, wasn’t I?” asked Levine. “You wanted to go out in a blaze of glory.”
“All right, all right. Al took his way, I took mine. What’s the difference?”
“No difference,” said Levine. He got wearily to his feet, and headed for the door. “I’ll have you sent back to your cell now.”
“Listen,” said Perkins suddenly. “You know I didn’t kill him, don’t you? You know he committed suicide, don’t you?”
Levine opened the door and motioned to the two uniformed cops waiting in the hall.
“Wait,” said Perkins desperately.
“I know, I know,” said Levine. “Gruber really killed himself, and I suppose you burned the note he left.”
“You know damn well I did.”
“That’s too bad, boy.”
Perkins didn’t want to leave. Levine watched deadpan as the boy was led away, and then he allowed himself to relax, let the tension drain out of him. He sagged into a chair and studied the veins on the backs of his hands.
Crawley said, into the silence, “What was all that about, Abe?”
“Just what you heard.”
“Gruber committed suicide?”
“They both did.”
“Well—what are we going to do now?”
“Nothing. We investigated; we got a confession; we made an arrest. Now we’re done.”
“But—”
“But hell!” Levine glared at his partner. “That little fool is gonna go to trial, Jack, and he’s gonna be convicted and go to the chair. He chose it himself. It was his choice. I’m not railroading him; he chose his own end. And he’s going to get what he wanted.”
“But listen, Abe—”
“I won’t listen!”
“Let me—let me get a word in.”
Levine was on his feet suddenly, and now it all came boiling out, the indignat
ion and the rage and the frustration. “Damn it, you don’t know yet! You’ve got another six, seven years yet. You don’t know what it feels like to lie awake in bed at night and listen to your heart skip a beat every once in a while, and wonder when it’s going to skip two beats in a row and you’re dead. You don’t know what it feels like to know your body’s starting to die, it’s starting to get old and die and it’s all downhill from now on.”
“What’s that got to do with—”
“I’ll tell you what! They had the choice! Both of them young, both of them with sound bodies and sound hearts and years ahead of them, decades ahead of them. And they chose to throw it away! They chose to throw away what I don’t have any more. Don’t you think I wish I had that choice? All right! They chose to die, let ’em die!”
Levine was panting from exertion, leaning over the desk and shouting in Jack Crawley’s face. And now, in the sudden silence while he wasn’t speaking, he heard the ragged rustle of his breath, felt the tremblings of nerve and muscle throughout his body. He let himself carefully down into a chair and sat there, staring at the wall, trying to get his breath.
Jack Crawley was saying something, far away, but Levine couldn’t hear him. He was listening to something else, the loudest sound in all the world. The fitful throbbing of his own heart.
THE MEN IN BLACK RAINCOATS
BY
PETE HAMILL
South Slope
(Originally published in 1977)
It was close to midnight on a Friday evening at Rattigan’s Bar and Grill. There were no ball games on the television, old movies only made the clientele feel more ancient, and the jukebox was still broken from the afternoon of Red Cioffi’s daughter’s wedding. So it was time for Brendan Malachy McCone to take center stage. He motioned for a fresh beer, put his right foot on the brass rail, breathed in deeply, and started to sing.
Oh, the Garden of Eden has vanished, they say,
But I know the lie of it still,
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