Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41 (13 page)

 
          
 
Cartwright's eyes didn't waver; his expression
didn't change. "I want to talk to my wife," he repeated.

 
          
 
"Listen," said Levine. "You've
been out here two hours now. You've had time to think about death, about non-being.
Cartwright, listen. Look at me,
Cartwright,
I'm going
to the doctor at
three o'clock
this afternoon. He's going to tell me about my heart, Cartwright. He's going to
tell me if my heart is getting too tired. He's going to tell me if I'm going to
stop being alive."

 
          
 
Levine strained with the need to tell this
fool what he was throwing away, and knew it was hopeless.

 
          
 
The priest was back, all at once, at the other
window. "Can we help you?" he asked. "Is there anything any of
us can do to help you?"

 
          
 
Cartwright's head swiveled slowly. He studied
the priest. "I want to talk to my wife," he said.

 
          
 
Levine gripped the windowsill. There had to be
a way to bring him in, there had to be a way to trick him or force him or
convince him to come in. He had to be brought in, he couldn't throw his life
away, that's the only thing a man really has.

 
          
 
Levine wished desperately that he had the
choice.

 
          
 
He leaned out again suddenly, glaring at the
back of Cartwright's head. "Jump!" he shouted.

 
          
 
Cartwright's head swiveled around, the face
open, the eyes shocked, staring at Levine in disbelief.

 
          
 
"Jump!" roared Levine. "Jump,
you damn fool, end it, stop being alive, die! Jump! Throw yourself away, you
imbecile, jump!"

 
          
 
Wide-eyed, Cartwright stared at Levine's
flushed face, looked out and down at the crowd, the fire truck, the ambulance,
the uniformed men, the chalked circle on the pavement.

 
          
 
And all at once he began to cry. His hands
came up to his face, he swayed, and the
crowd down below sighed,
like
a breeze rustling. "God help me!" Cartwright screamed.

 
          
 
Crawley
came swarming out the other window, his legs held by Gundy. He grabbed for
Cartwright's arm, growling, "All right, now, take it easy. Take it easy.
This way, this way, just slide your feet along, don't try to bring the other
foot around, just slide over, easy, easy
— "

 
          
 
And the man came stumbling in from the ledge.

 
          
 
"You took a chance," said
Crawley
. "You took one hell of a chance."
It was two-thirty, and
Crawley
was
driving him to the doctor's office.

 
          
 
"I know," said Levine. His hands
were still shaking; he could still feel the ragged pounding of his heart within
his chest.

 
          
 
"But you called his bluff," said
Crawley
.
"That kind, it's
just a bluff.
They don't really want to dive, they're bluffing."

 
          
 
"I know," said Levine.

 
          
 
"But you still took a hell of a
chance."

 
          
 
"It —" Levine swallowed. It felt as
though there were something hard caught in his throat. "It was the only
way to get him in," he said. "The wife wasn't coming, and nothing
else would bring him in. When the girlfriend failed
— "

 
          
 
"It took guts, Abe. For a second there, I
almost thought he was going to take you up on it."

 
          
 
"So did
I
."

 
          
 
Crawley
pulled in at the curb in front of the doctor's office. "I'll pick you up
around
quarter to four
," he said.

 
          
 
"I can take a cab," said Levine.

 
          
 
"Why? Why for the love of Mike? The
city's paying for the gas."

 
          
 
Levine smiled at his partner. "All
right," he said. He got out of the car, went up the walk, up the stoop,
onto the front porch. He looked back, watched the Chevy turn the corner. He
whispered, "I wanted him to jump."

 
          
 
Then he went in to find out if he was going to
stay alive.

 
          
 
Abraham Levine, Detective of Brooklyn's
Forty-third Precinct, sat at a desk in the squadroom and worriedly listened to
his heart skip every eighth beat. It was
two o'clock
on Sunday morning, and he had the sports
section of the Sunday Times open on the desk, but he wasn't reading it. He
hadn't been reading it for about ten minutes now. Instead, he'd been listening
to his heart.

 
          
 
A few months ago, he'd discovered the way to
listen to his heart without anybody knowing he was doing it. He'd put his right
elbow on the desk and press the heel of his right hand to his ear, hard enough
to cut out all outside sound. At first it would sound like underwater that way,
and then gradually he would become aware of a regular clicking sound. It wasn't
a beating or a thumping or anything like that, it was a click-click-click-click
—click-click-

 
          
 
There it was again. Nine beats before the skip
that time. It fluctuated between every eighth beat and every twelfth beat.

           
 
The doctor had told him not to worry about
that, lots of people had it, but that didn't exacdy reassure him. Lots of people
died of heart attacks, too.
Lots of people around the age of
fifty-three.

 
          
 
"Abe?
Don't you
feel good?"

 
          
 
Levine gfuiltily lowered his hand. He looked
over at his shift partner.
Jack Crawley, sitting with the
Times crossword puzzle at another desk.
"No, Fm okay," he
said. "I was just thinking."

 
          
 
"About your
heart?"

 
          
 
Levine wanted to say no, but he couldn't. Jack
knew him too well.

 
          
 
Crawley
got
to his feet, stretching,
a
big bulky harness bull.
"You're a hypochondriac, Abe," he said. "You're a good guy, but
you got an obsession."

 
          
 
"You're right." He grinned
sheepishly. "I almost wish the phone would ring."

 
          
 
Crawley
mangled a cigarette out of the pack. "You went to the doctor, didn't you?
A couple of months ago.
And what did he tell you?"

 
          
 
"He said I had nothing to worry
about," Levine admitted. "My blood pressure is a litde high, that's
all." He didn't want to talk about the skipping.

 
          
 
"So there you are," said
Crawley
reasonably. "You're still on duty,
aren't you? If you had a bum heart, they'd retire you, right?"

 
          
 
"Right."

 
          
 
"So relax. And don't hope for the phone
to ring. This is a quiet Saturday night. I've been waiting for this one for
years."

 
          
 
The Saturday night graveyard shift —Sunday
morning, actually,
midnight till eight
—was usually the busiest shift in the week.
Saturday night was the time when normal people got violent, and violent people
got murderous, the time when precinct plainclothesmen were usually on the jump.

 
          
 
Tonight was unusual. Here it was, after two
o'clock, and only one call so far, a bar hold-up over on 23rd. Rizzo and
McFarlane were still out on that one, leaving
Crawley
and Levine to mind the store and read the
Times.

 
          
 
Crawley
now
went back to the crossword puzzle, and Levine made an honest effort to read the
sports section.

 
          
 
They read in silence for ten minutes, and then
the phone rang on
Crawley
's desk.
Crawley
scooped the receiver up to his ear,
announced himself, and listened.

 
          
 
The conversation was brief.
Crawley
's end of it was limited to yesses and
got-its, and Levine waited, watching his wrestler's face, trying to read there
what the call was about.

 
          
 
Then
Crawley
broke the connection by depressing the cradle buttons, and said, over his
shoulder, "Hold-up.
Grocery store at Green and Tanahee.
Owner shot. That was the beat cop.
Wills."

 
          
 
Levine got heavily to his feet and crossed the
squadroom to the coatrack, while
Crawley
dialed a number and said, "Emergency, please."

 
          
 
Levine shrugged into his coat, purposely not
listening to
Crawley
's half of the conversation. It was brief
enough, anyway. When
Crawley
came over to get his own coat, he said,
"DOA.
Four bullets in him.
One
of these trigger-happy amateurs."

 
          
 
"Any witnesses?"

 
          
 
"Wife.
The beat
man —Wills —says she thinks she recognized the guy."

 
          
 
"Widow," said Levine.

 
          
 
Crawley
said, "What?"

 
          
 
Widow.
Not wife any
more, widow. "Nothing," said Levine.

 
          
 
If you're a man fifty-three years of age,
there's a statistical chance your heart will stop this year. But there's no
sense getting worried about it. There's an even better statistical chance that
it won't stop this year. So, if you go to the doctor and he says
don't worry
, then you shouldn't worry. Don't think morbid
thoughts. Don't think about death all the time, think about life. Think about
your work, for instance.

 
          
 
But what if it so happens that your work, as
often as not, is death? What if you're a precinct detective, the one the wife
calls when her husband just keeled over at the breakfast table, the one the
hotel calls for the guest who never woke up this morning? What if the short end
of the statistics is that end you most often see?

 
          
 
Levine sat in the squad car next to
Crawley
, who was driving, and looked out at the
Brooklyn
streets, trying to distract his mind. At
two a.m.
Brooklyn
is dull, with red neon signs and grimy windows
in narrow
streets. Levine wished he'd taken the wheel.

 
          
 
They reached the intersection of Tanahee and
Green, and
Crawley
parked in a bus-stop zone. They got out of
the car.

 
          
 
The store wasn't exacdy on the corner. It was
two doors down Green, on the southeast side, occupying the ground floor of a
red-brick tenement building. The plate-glass window was filthy, filled with
show-boxes of Kellogg's Pep and Tide and Premium Saltines. Inevitably, the
letters SALADA were curved across the glass. The flap of the rolled-up green
awning above the window had lettering on it, too: Fine Tailoring.

 
          
 
There were two slate steps up, and then the
store. The glass in the door was so covered with cigarette and soft-drink decals
it was almost impossible to see inside. On the reverse, they all said,
"Thank you — call again."

 
          
 
The door was closed now, and locked. Levine
caught a glimpse of blue uniform through the decals, and rapped softly on the
door. The young patrolman, Wills, recognized him and pulled the door open.
"
Stanton
's with her," he said.
"In back."
He meant the patrolman from the prowl
car parked now out front.

 
          
 
Crawley
said, "You got any details yet?"

 
          
 
"On what happened," said
Wills
, "yes."

           
 
Levine closed and locked the door again, and
turned to listen.

 
          
 
"There weren't any customers," Wills
was saying. "The store stays open till three in the morning, weekends.
Midnight
during the week.
It was just the old couple — Kosofsky,
Nathan and Emma—they take turns, and they both work when it's busy. The husband
—
Nathan —he was out here,
and his wife was in back,
making a pot of tea. She heard the bell over the
door "

 
          
 
"
Bell
?" Levine turned and looked up at the
top of the door. There hadn't been any bell sound when they'd come in just now.

 
          
 
"The guy ripped it off the wall on his
way out."

 
          
 
Levine nodded. He could see the exposed wood
where screws had been dragged out. Somebody tall, then, over six
foot
.
Somebody strong, and nervous, too.

 
          
 
"She heard the bell," said Wills,
"and then, a couple minutes later, she heard the shots. So she came
running out, and saw this guy at the cash
register "

 
          
 
"She saw him," said
Crawley
.

 
          
 
"Yeah, sure.
But
I'll get to that in a minute. Anyway, he took a shot at her, too, but he missed.
And she fell flat on her face, expecting the next bullet to get her, but he
didn't fire again."

 
          
 
"He thought the first one did it,"
said
Crawley
.

 
          
 
"I don't know," said
Wills
. "He wasted four on the old guy."

 
          
 
"He hadn't expected both of them,"
said Levine.
"She ratded him.
Did he clean the
register?"

 
          
 
"All the bills and a
handful of quarters.
She figures about sixty-two bucks."

 
          
 
"What about identification?" asked
Crawley
.
"She saw him, right?"

 
          
 
"Right.
But you
know this kind of neighborhood. At first, she said she recognized him. Then she
thought it over, and now she says she was mistaken."

           
 
Crawley
made a sour sound and said, "Does she know the old man is dead?"

 
          
 
Wills looked surprised. "I didn't know it
myself. He was alive when the ambulance got him."