Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41 (7 page)

 
          
 
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 plants, 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 wierd 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 any more."

 
          
 
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 recendy, 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 ofl&
ce
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
.