Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41 (14 page)

 
          
 
"Died on the way to the
hospitsil.
Okay, let's go talk to her."

 
          
 
Oh, God, thought Levine. We've got to be the
ones to tell her.

 
          
 
Don't think morbid thoughts. Think about life.
Think about your work.

 
          
 
Wills stayed in front, by the door.
Crawley
led the way back. It was a typical slum
neighborhood grocery. The store area was too narrow to begin with, both sides
lined with shelves. A glass-faced enamel-sided cooler, full of cold cuts and
potato salad and quarter-pound bricks of butter, ran parallel to the side
shelves down the middle of the store. At one end there was a small ragged-wood
counter holding the cash register and candy jars and a tilted stack of English
Muffin
packages. Beyond this counter were the bread and
pastry shelves and, at the far end, a small frozen food chest. This row gave
enough room on the customer's side for a man to turn around, if he did so
carefully, and just enough room on the owner's side for a man to sidle along
sideways.

 
          
 
Crawley
led
the way down the length of the store and through the dim doorway at the rear.
They went through a tiny dark stock area and another doorway to the smallest
and most overcrowded living room Levine had ever seen.

 
          
 
Mohair and tassels and gilt and lion's
legs, that
was the living room.
Chubby
hassocks and overstuffed chairs and amber lampshades and tiny intricate doilies
on every flat surface.
The carpet-design was twists and corkscrews, in
muted dark faded colors. The wallpaper was somber, with a curling ensnarled
vine pattern writhing on it. The ceiling was low. This wasn't a
room,
it was a warm crowded den, a little hole in the ground
for frightened gray mice.

 
          
 
The woman sat deep within one of the
overstuffed chairs. She was short and very stout, dressed in dark clothing nearly
the same dull hue as the chair, so that only her pale frightened face was at
first noticeable, and then the heavy pale hands twisting in her lap.

 
          
 
Stanton, the other uniformed patrolman, rose
from the sofa, saying to the woman, "These men are detectives. They'll
want to talk to you a little. Try to remember about the boy, will you? You know
we won't let anything happen to you."

 
          
 
Crawley
asked him, "The
lab been
here yet?"

 
          
 
"No, sir, not
yet."

 
          
 
"You and Wills stick around up front till
they show."

 
          
 
"Right."
He
excused himself as he edged around Levine and left.

 
          
 
Crawley
took
Stanton
's former place on the sofa, and Levine
worked his way among the hassocks and drum tables to the chair most distant
from the light, off to the woman's left.

 
          
 
Crawley
said, "Mrs. Kosofsky, we want to get the man who did this. We don't want
to let him
do
it again, to somebody else."

 
          
 
The woman didn't move, didn't speak. Her gaze
remained fixed on
Crawley
's lips.

 
          
 
Crawley
said, "You told the patrolman you could identify the man who did it."

 
          
 
After a long second of silence, the woman
trembled, shivered as through suddenly cold. She shook her head heavily from
side to side, saying, "No. No, I was wrong. It was very fast, too fast. I
couldn't see him good."

 
          
 
Levine sighed and shifted position. He knew it
was useless. She wouldn't tell them anything, she would only withdraw deeper
and deeper into the burrow, wanting no revenge, no return, nothing but to be
left alone.

 
          
 
"You saw him," said
Crawley
, his voice loud and harsh. "You're
afraid he'll get you if you talk to us, is that it?"

 
          
 
The woman's head was shaking again, and she
repeated, "No. No. No."

           
 
"He shot a gun at you,"
Crawley
reminded her. "Don't you want us to
get him for that?"

 
          
 
"No. No."

 
          
 
"Don't you want us to get your money
back?"

 
          
 
"No. No." She wasn't Hstening to
Crawley
,
she was merely shaking her head and
repeating the one word over and over again.

 
          
 
"Don't you want us to get the man who
killed your husband?"

 
          
 
Levine started. He'd known that was what
Crawley
was leading up to, but it still shocked
him. The viciousness of it cut into him, but he knew it was the only way they'd
get any information from her, to hit her with the death of her husband just as
hard as they could.

 
          
 
The woman continued to shake her head a few
seconds longer, and then stopped abrupdy, staring full at
Crawley
for the first time. "What you
say?"

 
          
 
"The man who murdered your husband,"
said
Crawley
. "Don't you want us to get him for
murdering your husband?"

 
          
 
"Nathan?"

 
          
 
"He's dead."

 
          
 
"No," she said, more forcefully than
before, and half-rose from the chair.

 
          
 
"He died in the ambulance," said
Crawley
doggedly, "died before he got to the
hospital."

 
          
 
Then they waited. Levine bit down hard on his
lower lip, hard enough to bring blood. He knew
Crawley
was
right,
it was
the only possible way. But Levine couldn't have done it. To think of death was
terrible enough. To use death —to use the fact of it as a weapon — no, that he
could never do.

 
          
 
The woman fell back into the seat, and her
face was suddenly stark and clear in every detail. Rounded brow and narrow nose
and prominent cheekbones and small chin, all covered by skin as white as candle
wax,
stretched
taut across the skull.

           
 
Crawley
took a deep breath. "He murdered your husband," he said. "Do you
want him to go free?"

 
          
 
In the silence now they could hear vague
distant sounds, people walking, talking to one another, listening to the radio
or watching television, far away in another world.

 
          
 
At last, she spoke. "Brodek," she
said. Her voice was flat. She stared at the opposite wall. "Danny Brodek.
From the next block down."

 
          
 
"A boy?"

 
          
 
"Sixteen,
seventeen."

 
          
 
Crawley
would have asked more, but Levine got to his feet and said, "Thank you,
Mrs. Kosofsky."

 
          
 
She closed her eyes.

 
          
 
In the phone book in the front of the store
they found one Brodek—Harry R —listed with an address on Tanahee. They went out
to the car and drove slowly down the next block to the building they wanted. A
taxi passed them, its vacancy light lit. Nothing else moved.

 
          
 
This block, like the one before it and the one
after it, was lined on both sides with red brick tenements, five stories high.
The building they were looking for was two-thirds of the way down the block.
They left the car and went inside.

 
          
 
In the hall, there was the smell of food. The
hall was amber tile, and the doors were dark green, with metal numbers. The
stairs led up abruptly to the left, midway down the hall. Opposite them were
the mailboxes, warped from too much rifling.

 
          
 
They found the name, shakily capital-lettered
on an odd scrap of paper and stuck into the mailbox marked 4-d.

 
          
 
Above the first floor, the walls were plaster,
painted a green slightly darker than the doors. Sounds of television filtered
through most of the doors.
Crawley
waited at the fourth floor landing for Levine to catch up. Levine climbed
stairs slowly, afraid of being short of breath. When he was short of breath,
the skipped heart beats became more frequent.

 
          
 
Crawley
rapped on the door marked 4-d. Television sounds came through this one, too.
After a minute, the door opened a crack, as far as it would go with the chain
attached. A woman glared out at them. "What you want?"

 
          
 
"Police," said
Crawley
. "Open the door."

 
          
 
"What you want?" she asked again.

 
          
 
"Open up," said
Crawley
impatiently.

 
          
 
Levine took out his wallet, flipped it open to
show the badge pinned to the ID label. "We want to talk to you for a
minute," he said, trying to make his voice as gentle as possible.

 
          
 
The woman hesitated, then shut the door and
they heard the clinking of the chain being removed. She opened the door again,
releasing into the hall a smell of beer and vegetable soup. She said, "All
right. Come." Turning away, she waddled down an unlit corridor toward the
living room.

 
          
 
This room was furnished much like the den
behind the grocery store, but the eff"ect was different. It was a somewhat
larger room, dominated by a blue plastic television set with a bulging screen.
An automobile chase was careening across the screen, pre-war Fords and
Mercuries, accompanied by frantic music.

 
          
 
A short heavy man in T-shirt and work pants
and slippers sat on the sofa, holding a can of beer and watching the television
set. Beyond him, a taller, younger version of himself, in khaki slacks and
flannel shirt with the collar turned up, was watching, with a cold and wary
eye, the entrance of the two policemen.

 
          
 
The man turned sourly, and his wife said,
"They're police. They want to talk to us."

 
          
 
Crawley
walked across the room and stood in front of the boy.
"You
Danny Brodek?"