Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41 (22 page)

 
          
 
The
New York
complication.
In a smaller town, people know their
neighbors,
have some idea of the comings and goings around
them. But in
New York
, next-door neighbors remain strangers for years. At least that was true
in the apartment house sections, though less true in the quieter outlying
sections like the neighborhood in which Levine lived.

 
          
 
Levine got to his feet. ''We'll see what we
can do," he said. *This clang you told me about. Do you have any idea what
your mother used to make the noise?"

 
          
 
"No, I don't.
Fm sorry.
It sounded like a gong or something. I don't know what it could possibly have
been."

 
          
 
"A tablespoon against
the bottom of a pot?
Something like that?"

 
          
 
"Oh, no.
Much louder than that."

 
          
 
"And she didn't have anything in her
hands when she came out of the bedroom?"

 
          
 
"No, nothing."

 
          
 
"Well, we'll see what we can do," he
repeated. "You can go back to class now."

 
          
 
"Thank you," she said. "Thank
you for helping me."

 
          
 
He smiled. "It's my duty," he said.
"As you pointed out."

 
          
 
"You'd do it anyway, Mr. Levine,"
she said. "You're a very good man. Like my stepfather."

 
          
 
Levine touched the palm of his hand to his
chest, over his heart. "Yes," he said.
"In
more ways than one, maybe.
Well, you go back to class. Or, wait. There's
one thing I can do for you."

 
          
 
She waited as he took a pencil and a small
piece of memo paper from Mrs. Pidgeon's desk, and wrote on it the precinct
phone number and his home phone number, marking which each was. "If you
think there's any danger of any kind," he told her, "any trouble at
all, you call me.
At the precinct until
four
o'clock
, and then at home after that."

 
          
 
"Thank you," she said. She folded
the paper and tucked it away in the pocket of her skirt.

 
          
 
At a
quarter to four
, Levine and
Crawley
met again in the squadroom. When he'd come
back in the morning from his talk with the little girl, Levine had found
Crawley
just back from having talked with Dr.
Sheffield. It was
Sheffield
's opinion,
Crawley
had told him, that Amy was making the whole
thing up, that her stepfather's death had been a severe shock and this was some
sort of delayed reaction to it. Certainly he couldn't see any possibility that
Mrs. Walker had actually murdered her husband, nor could he begin to guess at
any motive for such an act.

 
          
 
Levine and Crawley had eaten lunch together in
Wilton's, across the street from the station, and then had separated, both to
try to find someone who had either seen Amy or her mother on the shopping trip
the afternoon Mr. Walker had died. This, aside from the accusation of murder
itself, was the only contradiction between their stories. Find proof that one
was lying, and they'd have the full answer. So Levine had started at the market
and
Crawley
at the apartment building, and they'd spent
the entire afternoon up and down the neighborhood, asking their questions and
getting only blank stares for answers.

 
          
 
Crawley
was
there already when Levine came slowly into the squadroom, worn from an entire
afternoon on his feet, climaxed by the climb to the precinct's second floor. He
looked at
Crawley
and shook his head.
Crawley
said, "Nothing?
Same
here.
Not a damn thing."

 
          
 
Levine laboriously removed his overcoat and
set it on the coatrack. "No one remembers," he said. "No one
saw, no one knows anyone. It's a city of strangers we live in. Jack."

 
          
 
"It's been two weeks," said
Crawley
. "Their building has a doorman, but he
can't remember that far back. He sees the same tenants go in and out every day;
and he wouldn't be able to tell you for sure who went in or out yesterday, much
less two weeks ago, he says."

 
          
 
Levine looked at the wall-clock. "She's
home from school by now," he said.

 
          
 
"I wonder what they're saying to each
other. If we could listen in, we'd know a hell of a lot more than we do
now."

 
          
 
Levine shook his head. "No. Whether she's
guilty, or innocent, they're both saying the exact same things. The death is
two weeks old. If Mrs. Wadker did commit murder, she's used to the idea by now
that she's gotten away with it. She'll deny everything Amy says, and try to
convince the girl she's wrong.
The same things in the same
words as she'd use if she were innocent."

 
          
 
''What if she kills the
kid?"
Crawley
asked him.

 
          
 
"She won't. If Amy were to disappear, or
have an accident, or be killed by an intruder, we'd know the truth at once. She
can't take the chance. With her husband, all she had to do was fool a doctor
who was inclined to believe her in the first place. Besides, the death was a
strong possibility anyway. This time, she'd be killing a healthy ten year old,
and she'd be trying to fool a couple of cops who wouldn't be inclined to
believe her at all." Levine grinned. *The girl is probably safer now than
she was before she ever came to us," he said. "Who knows what the
mother might have been planning up till now?"

 
          
 
"All right, that's fine so far. But what
do we do now?"

 
          
 
"Tomorrow, I want to take a look at the
Walker
apartment."

 
          
 
"Why not right now?"

 
          
 
"No. Let's give her a night to get
ratUed. Any evidence she hasn't removed in two weeks she isn't likely to think
of now." Levine shrugged. "I don't expect to find anything," he
said. "I want to look at the place because I can't think of anything else
to do. All we have is the unsupported word of a ten-year old child. The body
can't tell us anything, because there wasn't any murder weapon.
Walker
died of natural causes. Proving they were induced
won't be the easiest job in the world."

 
          
 
"If only
somebody,
'said
Crawley
angrily, "had seen that kid at the
grocery store! That's the only chink in the wall, Abe, the only damn place we
can get a grip."

 
          
 
"We can try again tomorrow," said
Levine, "but I doubt well get anywhere." He looked up as the door
opened, and Trent and Kasper came in, two of the men on the four to midnight
shift. "Tomorrow," he repeated. "Maybe lightning will
strike."

 
          
 
"Maybe," said
Crawley
.

 
          
 
Levine shrugged back into his overcoat and
left the office for the day. When he got home, he broke his normal habit and
went straight into the house, not staying on the porch to read his paper. He
went out to the kitchen and sat there, drinking coffee, while he filled Peg in
on what little progress they'd made on the case during the day. She asked
questions, and he answered them, offered suggestions and he mulled them over
and rejected them, and throughout the evening, every once in a while, one or
the other of them would find some other comment to make, but neither of them
got anywhere. The girl seemed to be reasonably safe, at least for a while, but
that was the best that could be said.

 
          
 
The baby next door was cr>'ing when they
went to bed together at
eleven o'clock
. The baby kept him awake for a while, and
his thoughts on the
Walker
death revolved and revolved, going nowhere. Once or twice during the
evening, he had absent-mindedly reached for a cigarette, but had barely noticed
the motion. His concentration and concern for Amy Walker and her mother was
strong enough now to make him forget his earlier preoccupation with the problem
of giving up smoking. Now, lying awake in the dark, the thought of cigarettes
didn't even enter his head. He went over and over what the mother had said,
what the daughter had told him, and gradually he drifted off into deep, sound
sleep.

 
          
 
He awoke in a cold sweat, suddenly knowing the
truth. It was as though he'd dreamed it, or someone had whispered it in his
ear, and now he knew for sure.

 
          
 
She would kill tonight, and she would get away
with it. He knew how she'd do it, and
when,
and
there'd be no way to get her for it, no proof, nothing, no way at all.

 
          
 
He sat up, trembling, cold in the dark room,
and reached out to the nightstand for his cigarettes. He pawed around on the
nightstand, and suddenly remembered, and pounded the nightstand with his fist
in frustration and rage. She'd get away with it!

 
          
 
If he could get there in time — He could stop
her, if he got there in time. He pushed the covers out of the way and climbed
from the bed. Peg murmured in her sleep and burrowed deeper into the pillow. He
gathered his clothes and crept from the bedroom.

 
          
 
He turned the light on in the living room. The
clock over the television set read ten till one. There might still be
time,
she might be waiting until she was completely asleep.
Unless she was going to do it with pills, something to help sleep,
to make sleep a permanent, everlasting sure thing.

 
          
 
He grabbed the phone book and looked up the
number of one of the private cab companies on Avenue L. He dialed, and told the
dispatcher it was urgent, and the dispatcher said a car would be there in five
minutes.

 
          
 
He dressed hurriedly, in the living room,
then
went out to the kitchen for pencil and paper, and left
Peg a short note. "I had to go out for a while. Be back soon." In
case she woke up. He left it on the nightstand.

 
          
 
A horn sounded briefly out front and he
hurried to the front of the house, turning off lights. As he went trotting down
the walk toward the cab, the baby next door cried out. He registered the sound,
thought, Baby next door, and dismissed it from his mind. He had no time for
extraneous thoughts, about babies or cigarettes or the rasp of his breathing
from only this little exertion, running from the house. He gave the address,
Prospect Park West, and sat back in the seat as the cab took off". It was
a strange feeling, riding in a cab. He couldn't remember the last time he'd
done it. It was a luxuriant feeling.
To go so fast with such
relaxing calm.
If only it was fast enough.