Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41 (25 page)

 
          
 
He turned away, saying, "Andy, give the
place a going-over. Address book, phone numbers,
somebody's
name in the flyleaf of a book. You know the kind of thing."

 
          
 
"Sure."
Stettin
glanced around, eager to get at it.
"Do you think he'd have any of the swag here?"

 
          
 
The word sounded strange on
Stettin
's tongue, odd and archaic. Levine smiled,
as the death-dread wore off", and said, "I doubt it. Stick around
here for the M.E. and the technical crew. Get the time of death and whatever
else they can give you,"

 
          
 
"Sure thing."

 
          
 
Mrs. Francis Temple was still outside in the
hall, jabbering now at the second patrolman, who was making no attempt to hide
his boredom. Levine took her away, much to the patrolman's relief, and they
went downstairs to her cellar apartment, the living room of which was Gay
Nineties from end to end, from the fringed beaded lampshades to the marble
porcelain vases on the mantle.

 
          
 
In these surroundings, Mrs. Temple's wordiness
switched from the terrible details of her discovery of the body to the
nostalgic details of her life with her late husband, who had been a newspaperman.

 
          
 
Levine, by main force, wrestled the
conversation back to the present, in order to ask his questions about Maurice
Gold, "What did he do for a Hving," he asked. "Do you
know?"

 
          
 
"He said he was a salesman. Sometimes he
was gone nearly a week at a time."

 
          
 
"Do you know what he sold?"

 
          
 
She shook her head. "There were never any
samples or anything in his room," she said. "I would have noticed
them." She shivered suddenly, hugging herself, and said, "What a
terrible thing. You don't know what it was like, to come into the room and see
him
— "

 
          
 
Levine thought he knew. He thought he knew
better than Mrs. Temple. He said, "Did he have many visitors? Close
friends, that
you know about?"

 
          
 
"Well —
There
were two or three men who came by sometimes in the evenings. I believe they
played cards."

 
          
 
"Do you know their names?"

 
          
 
"No, I'm sorry. I really didn't know Mr.
Gold very well — not as a friend. He was a very close-mouthed man." One
hand fluttered to her lips. "Oh, listen to me. The poor
man
is lying dead, and listen
to me talking about him."

 
          
 
"Did anyone else ever come by?"
Levine persisted. "Besides these three men he played cards with."

 
          
 
She shook her head. "Not that I remember.
I think he was a lonely man. Lonely people can recognize one another, and I've
been lonely, too, since Alfred died. These last few years have been difficult
for me, Mr. Levine."

 
          
 
It took Levine ten minutes to break away from
the woman gently, without learning anything more. "We'd like to try to
identify his card-playing friends," he said. "Would you have time to
come look at pictures this afternoon?"

 
          
 
"Well, yes, of course. It was a terrible
thing, Mr. Levine, an absolutely terrible
— "

 
          
 
"Yes, ma'am."

 
          
 
Levine escaped, to find
Stettin
coming back downstairs, loose-limbed and
athletic. Feeling a little bit guilty at palming the voluble Mrs. Temple off on
his partner, Levine said, "Take Mrs,
Temple
to look at some mug shots, will you? Known
former acquaintances of Gold —or anyone she recognizes. She says there were two
or three men who used to come here to play cards."

 
          
 
"Will do."
Stettin
paused at the foot of the steps. "Uh,
Abe," he said, "
we
don't have to break our
humps over this one, do we?"

 
          
 
"What do you mean?"

 
          
 
"
Well "
Stettin
shrugged, and nodded his head at the
stairs. "He was just a bum, you know.
A small-time
crook.
The world's better off without him."

 
          
 
"He was alive," said Levine.
"And now he's dead."

 
          
 
"Okay, okay. For Pete's sake, I wasn't
saying we should forget the whole thing—just that we shouldn't break our humps
over it."

 
          
 
"We'll do our job," Levine told him,
"just as though he'd had the keys to the city and money in fifty-seven
banks."

 
          
 
"Okay. You didn't have to get sore,
Abe."

 
          
 
"I'm not sore. Take Mrs. Temple in the
car. I'm going to stay here a while and ask some more questions. Mrs. Temple's
in her apartment there."

 
          
 
"Okay."

 
          
 
"Oh, by the way.
When you get out to the car, call in and have somebody get us the dope on that
arrest two months ago. Find out if you can whether there was anybody else
involved, and if by chance the arresting officer knows any of Gold's friends.
Anything like that."

 
          
 
"Will do."

 
          
 
Levine went on upstairs to ask questions.

 
          
 
The other tenants knew even less than Mrs.
Temple. Levine was interrupted for a while by a reporter, and by the time he'd
finished questioning the tenants it was past
four o'clock
, and late enough for him to go off duty. He
phoned the precinct, and then went on home.

           
 
The following morning he
arrived
ai the precinct at
eight o'clock
for his third and last day-shift on this cycle.
Stettin
was already there, sitting at Levine's desk
and looking through a folder. He leaped to his feet, grinning and ebullient as
ever, saying, "Hiya, Abe. We got us some names."

 
          
 
"Good."

 
          
 
Levine eased himself into his chair, and
Stettin
hovered over him, opening the folder.
"The arresting officer was a Patrolman Michaels, out of the Thirtieth. I
couldn't find out why the charge didn't stick, because Michaels was kind of
touchy about that. I guess he made some kind of procedural goof. But anyhow, he
gave me some names. Gold has a brother, Abner, who runs a pawnshop in
East New York
. Michaels says Gold was a kind of
go-between for his brother. Morry would buy the stolen goods, cache it, and
then transfer it to Abner's store."

 
          
 
Levine nodded.
"Anything
else?"

 
          
 
"Well, Gold took one fall, about nine
years ago. He was caught accepting a crate full of stolen furs. The thief was
caught with him."
Stettin
pointed to a name and address. "That's him —Elly Kapp. Kapp got out last
year, and that's his last known address."

 
          
 
"You've been doing good work,"
Levine told him. He grinned up at
Stettin
and
said, "Been breaking your hump?"

 
          
 
Stettin
grinned back, in embarrassment. "I can't help it," he said. "You
know me, old Stettin Fetchit."

 
          
 
Levine nodded. He'd heard
Stettin
use the line before. It was his half-joking
apology for being a boy on the way up, surrounded by stodgy plodders like Abe
Levine.

 
          
 
"Okay," said Levine.
"Anything from Mrs. Temple?"

 
          
 
"One positive
identification,
and a dozen maybes. The positive is a guy named Sal Casetta. He's a small-time
bookie."

 
          
 
Levine got to his feet. "Let's go talk to
these three," he said.
"The brother first."

           
 
Twenty-two minutes later they were in the
East New York
pawnshop. Abner Gold was a stocky man with
thinning hair and thick spectacles. He was also —once Levine had flashed the
police identification —very nervous.

 
          
 
"Come into the office," he said.
"Please, please. Come into the office."

 
          
 
Levine noticed that the thick accent Gold had
worn when they'd first come in had suddenly vanished.

 
          
 
Gold unlocked the door to the cage, relocked
it after them, and led the way back past the bins to his office, a small and
crowded room full of ledgers. There was a rolltop desk, a metal filing cabinet
and four sagging leather chairs.

 
          
 
"Sit down, sit down," he said.
"You've come about my brother."

 
          
 
"You've been notified?"

 
          
 
"I read about it in the News. A terrible
way to hear, believe me.

 
          
 
"I'm sure it must be," Levine said.

 
          
 
He hesitated. Usually, Jack Crawley handled
the questioning, while Levine observed silently from a corner. But Jack was
still laid up with the bad leg, and Levine wasn't sure
Stettin
—eager though he might be —would know the
right questions or how to ask them. So it was up to him.

 
          
 
Levine sighed, and said, "When was the
last time you saw your brother, Mr. Gold?"

 
          
 
Gold held his hands out to the sides, in a
noncommittal shrug.
"A week ago?
Two weeks?"

 
          
 
"You're not sure."

 
          
 
"I think two weeks. You must understand,
my brother and
I
—we'd drifted apart."

 
          
 
"Because of his trouble
with the law?"

 
          
 
Gold nodded.
"A part of
it, yes.
God rest his soul,
Mister ?"

 
          
 
"Levine."

 
          
 
"Yes. God rest his soul, Mister Levine,
but I must tell you what's in my heart. You have to know the truth. Maurice was
not a good man. Do you understand me? He was my brother, and now he's been
murdered, but still I must say it. His life went badly for him, Mr, Levine, and
he became sour. When he was young —
" He
shrugged
again. "He became very bitter, I think. He lost his belief."