Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41 (3 page)

 
          
 
Detective Abraham Levine of
Brooklyn
's Forty-Third Precinct chewed on his pencil
and glowered at the report he'd just written. He didn't like
it,
he didn't like it at all. It just didn't feel right, and the more he thought
about it the stronger the feeling became.

 
          
 
Levine was a short and stocky man,
baggily-dressed from plain pipe racks. His face was sensitive, topped by
salt-and-pepper gray hair chopped short in a military crewcut. At fifty-three,
he had twenty-four years of duty on the police force, and was halfway through
the heart-attack age range, a fact that had been bothering him for some time
now. Every time he was reminded of death, he thought worriedly about the aging
heart pumping away inside his chest.

 
          
 
And in his job, the reminders of death came
often.
Natural death, accidental death, and violent death.

 
          
 
This one was a violent death, and to Levine it
felt wrong somewhere. He and his partner, Jack Crawley, had taken the call just
after lunch. It was from one of the patrolmen in
Prospect
Park
, a patrolman named Tanner. A man giving his
name as Larry Perkins had walked up to Tanner in the park and announced that he
had just poisoned his best friend. Tanner went with him, found a dead body in
the apartment Perkins had led him to, and called in. Levine and
Crawley
, having just walked into the station after
lunch, were given the call. They turned around and walked back out again.

 
          
 
Crawley
drove their car, an unmarked '56 Chevy, while Levine sat beside him and worried
about death. At least this would be one of the neat ones. No knives or bombs or
broken beer bottles. Just poison, that was all. The victim would look as though
he were sleeping, unless it had been one of those poisons causing muscle spasms
before death. But it would still be neater than a knife or a bomb or a broken
beer bottle, and the victim wouldn't look quite so completely dead.

 
          
 
Crawley
drove leisurely, without the siren. He was a big man in his forties, somewhat
overweight, square-faced and heavy jowled, and he looked meaner than he
actually was. The Chevy tooled up
Eighth Avenue
, the late spring sun shining on its hood.
They were headed for an address on
Garfield Place
, the block between
Eighth Avenue
and Prospect Park West. They had to circle
the block, because
Garfield
was a one-way street. That particular block on Garfield Place is a
double row of chipped brownstones, the street running down between two rows of
high stone stoops, the buildings cut and chopped inside into thousands of
apartments, crannies and cubbyholes, niches and box-like caves, where the
subway riders sleep at night. The subway to
Manhattan
is six blocks away, up at
Grand
Army
Plaza
, across the way from the main library.

 
          
 
At
one P.M.
on this Wednesday in late May, the
sidewalks were
deserted,
the buildings had the look of
long abandoned dwellings. Only the cars parked along the left side of the
street indicated present occupancy.

           
 
The number they wanted was in the middle of
the block, on the right-hand side. There was no parking allowed on that side,
so there was room directly in front of the address for
Crawley
to stop the Chevy. He flipped the sun visor
down, with the official business card showing through the windshield, and
followed Levine across the sidewalk and down the two steps to the basement
door, under the stoop. The door was propped open with a battered garbage can.
Levine and
Crawley
walked inside. It was dim in there, after
the bright sunlight, and it took Levine's eyes a few seconds to get used to the
change. Then he made out the figures of two men standing at the other end of
the hallway, in front of a closed door. One was the patrolman, Tanner, young,
just over six foot, with a square and impersonal face. The other was Larry
Perkins.

 
          
 
Levine and
Crawley
moved down the hallway to the two men
waiting for them. In the seven years they had been partners, they had
established a division of labor that satisfied them both.
Crawley
asked the questions, and Levine listened to
the answers. Now,
Crawley
introduced himself to Tanner, who said,
"This is Larry Perkins of
294 Fourth Street
."

 
          
 
"Body in there?" asked
Crawley
, pointing at the closed door.

 
          
 
"Yes, sir," said Tanner.

 
          
 
"Let's go inside," said
Crawley
. "You keep an eye on the pigeon. See
he doesn't fly away."

 
          
 
"I've got some stuff" to go to the
library," said Perkins suddenly. His voice was young and soft.

 
          
 
They stared at him.
Crawley
said, "It'll keep."

 
          
 
Levine looked at Perkins, trying to get to
know him. It was a technique he used, most of it unconsciously. First, he tried
to fit Perkins into a type or category, some sort of general stereotype. Then
he would look for small and individual ways in which Perkins diff'ered from the
general type, and he would probably wind up with a surprisingly complete mental
picture, which would also be surprisingly accurate.

 
          
 
The general stereotype was easy. Perkins, in
his black wool sweater and belt-in-the-back khakis and scuffed brown loafers
without socks, was "arty". What were they calling them this year?
They were "hip" last year, but this year they were —"beat."
That was it. For a general stereotype, Larry Perkins was a beatnik. The
individual differences would show up soon, in Perkins' talk and mannerisms and
attitudes.

 
          
 
Crawley
said again, "Let's go inside," and the four of them trooped into the
room where the corpse lay.

 
          
 
The apartment was one large room, plus a
closet-size kitchenette and an even smaller bathroom. A Murphy bed stood open,
covered with zebra-striped material. The rest of the furniture consisted of a
battered dresser, a couple of armchairs and lamps, and a record player sitting
on a table beside a huge stack of long-playing records. Everything except the
record player looked faded and worn and secondhand, including the thin maroon
rug on the floor and the soiled flower-pattern wallpaper. Two windows looked
out on a narrow cement enclosure and the back of another brownstone. It was a
sunny day outside, but no sun managed to get down into this room.

 
          
 
In the middle of the room
stood a card table, with a typewriter and two stacks of paper on it.
Before the card table was a folding chair, and in the chair sat the dead man.
He was slumped forward, his arms flung out and crumpling the stacks of paper,
his head resting on the typewriter. His face was turned toward the door, and
his eyes were closed, his facial muscles relaxed. It had been a peaceful death,
at least, and Levine was grateful for that.

 
          
 
Crawley
looked at the body, grunted, and turned to Perkins. "Okay," he said.
"Tell us about it."

 
          
 
"I put the poison in his beer," said
Perkins simply. He didn't talk like a beatnik at any rate. "He asked me to
open a can of beer for him. When I poured it into a glass, I put the poison in,
too. When he was dead, I went and talked to the patrolman here."

 
          
 
"And that's all there was to it?"

 
          
 
"That's all."

 
          
 
Levine asked, "Why did you kill
him?"

 
          
 
Perkins looked over at Levine.
"Because he was a pompous ass."

 
          
 
"Look at me,"
Crawley
told him.

 
          
 
Perkins immediately looked away from Levine,
but before he did so, Levine caught a flicker of emotion in the boy's eyes,
what emotion he couldn't tell. Levine glanced around the room, at the faded
furniture and the card table and the body, and at young Perkins, dressed like a
beatnik but talking like the politest of polite young men, outwardly calm but
hiding some strong emotion inside his eyes. What was it Levine had seen there?
Terror?
Rage?
Or pleading?

 
          
 
"Tell us about this
guy.
" said
Crawley
, motioning at the body.
"His
name, where you knew him from, the whole thing."

 
          
 
"His name is Al Gruber. He got out of the
Army about eight months ago. He's living on his savings and the GI Bill. I
mean, he was."

 
          
 
"He was a college student?"

 
          
 
"More or less.
He was taking a few courses at
Columbia
, nights. He wasn't a full-time
student."

 
          
 
Crawley
said, "What was he, full-time?"

 
          
 
Perkins shrugged. "Not much of anything.
A writer.
An undiscovered writer.
Like me."

 
          
 
Levine asked, "Did he make much money
from his writing?"

 
          
 
"None," said Perkins. This time he
didn't turn to look at Levine, but kept watching
Crawley
while he answered. "He got something
accepted by one of the quarterlies once," he said, "but I don't think
they ever published it. And they don't pay anything anyway."

           
 
"So he was broke?" asked
Crawley
.

 
          
 
"Very broke. I know the feeling
well."

 
          
 
"You in the same
boat?"

 
          
 
"Same life story completely," said
Perkins. He glanced at the body of Al Gruber and said, "Well, almost. I
write, too. And I don't get any money for it. And I'm living on the GI Bill and
savings and a few home-typing jobs, and going to
Columbia
nights."

 
          
 
People came into the room then, the medical
examiner and the boys from the lab, and Levine and
Crawley
, bracketing Perkins between them, waited
and watched for a while. When they could see that the M.E. had completed his
first examination, they left Perkins in Tanner's charge and went over to talk
to him.

 
          
 
Crawley
, as
usual, asked the questions. "Hi, Doc," he said. "
What's it look
like to you?"