Levine forced himself to turn away, say into the phone, “I’m at the Brodeks. Bring Mrs. Kosofsky up here, will you? It’s the next block down to your right, 1342, apartment 4-D.”
It was a long silent wait. No one spoke at all from the time Levine hung up the telephone till the time Wills arrived with Mrs. Kosofsky. The five of them sat in the drab living room, avoiding one another’s eyes. From another room, deeper in the apartment, a clock that had before been unnoticeable now ticked loudly. The ticks were very fast, but the minutes they clocked off crept slowly by.
When the rapping finally came at the hall door, they all jumped. Mrs. Brodek turned her hopeless eyes toward Levine again, but he looked away, at his partner. Crawley lumbered to his feet and out of the room, down the corridor to the front door. Those in the room heard him open the door, heard the murmur of male voices, and then the clear frightened voice of the old woman: “Who lives here? Who lives in this place?”
Levine looked up and saw that Danny Brodek was watching him, eyes hard and cold, face set in lines of bitter hatred. Levine held his gaze, pitying him, until Danny looked away, mouth twisting in an expression of scorn that didn’t quite come off.
Then Crawley came back into the room, stepping aside for the old woman to follow him in. Beyond her could be seen the pale young face of the patrolman, Wills.
She saw Levine first. Her eyes were frightened and bewildered. Her fingers plucked at a button of the long black coat she now wore over her dress. In the brighter light of this room, she looked older, weaker, more helpless.
She looked second at Mrs. Brodek, whose expression was as terrified as her own, and then she saw Danny.
She cried out, a high-pitched failing whimper, and turned hurriedly away, pushing against Wills, jabbering, “Away! Away! I go away!”
Levine’s voice sounded over her hysteria: “It’s okay, Wills. Help her back to the store.” He couldn’t keep the bitter rage from his voice. The others might have thought it was rage against Danny Brodek, but they would have been wrong. It was rage against himself. What good would it do to convict Danny Brodek, to jail him for twenty or thirty years? Would it undo what he had done? Would it restore her husband to Mrs. Kosofsky? It wouldn’t. But nothing less could excuse the vicious thing he had just done to her.
Faltering, nearly whispering, Mrs. Brodek said, “I want to talk to Danny. I want to talk to my son.”
Her husband glared warningly at her. “Esther, he was here all—”
“I want to talk to my son!”
Levine said, “All right.” Down the corridor, the door snicked shut behind Wills and the old woman.
Mrs. Brodek said, “Alone. In his bedroom.”
Levine looked at Crawley, who shrugged and said, “Three minutes. Then we come in.”
The boy said, “Mom, what’s there to talk about?”
“I want to talk to you,” she told him icily. “Now.”
She led the way from the room, Danny Brodek following her reluctantly, pausing to throw back one poisonous glance at Levine before shutting the connecting door.
Brodek cleared his throat, looking uncertainly at the two detectives. “Well,” he said. “Well. She really... she really thinks it was him, doesn’t she?”
“She sure does,” said Crawley.
Brodek shook his head slowly. “Not Danny,” he said, but he was talking to himself.
Then they heard Mrs. Brodek cry out from the bedroom, and a muffled thump. All three men dashed across the living room, Crawley reaching the door first and throwing it open, leading the way down the short hall to the second door and running inside. Levine followed him, and Brodek, grunting, “My God. Oh, my God,” came in third.
Mrs. Brodek sat hunched on the floor of the tiny bedroom, arms folded on the seat of an unpainted kitchen chair. A bright-colored shirt was hung askew on the back of the chair.
She looked up as they ran in, and her face was a blank, drained of all emotion and all life and all personality. In a voice as toneless and blank as her face, she told him, “He went up the fire escape. He got the gun, from under his mattress. He went up the fire escape.”
Brodek started toward the open window, but Crawley pulled him back, saying, “He might be waiting up there. He’ll fire at the first head he sees.”
Levine had found a comic book and a small gray cap on the dresser-top. He twisted the comic book in a large cylinder, stuck the cap on top of it, held it slowly and cautiously out the window. From above, silhouetted, it would look like a head and neck.
The shot rang loud from above, and the comic book was jerked from Levine’s hand. He pulled his hand back and Crawley said, “The stairs.”
Levine followed his partner back out of the bedroom. The last he saw in there, Mr. Brodek was reaching down, with an awkward shyness, to touch his wife’s cheek.
This was the top floor of the building. After this, the staircase went up one more flight, ending at a metal-faced door which opened onto the roof. Crawley led the way, his small flat pistol now in his hand, and Levine climbed more slowly after him.
He got midway up the flight before Crawley pushed open the door, stepped cautiously out onto the roof, and the single shot snapped out. Crawley doubled suddenly, stepping involuntarily back, and would have fallen backward down the stairs if Levine hadn’t reached him in time and struggled him to a half-sitting position, wedged between the top step and the wall.
Crawley’s face was gray, his mouth strained white. “From the right,” he said, his voice low and bitter. “Down low, I saw the flash.”
“Where?” Levine asked him. “Where did he get you?”
“Leg. Right leg, high up. Just the fat, I think.”
From outside, they could hear a man’s voice braying, “Danny! Danny! For God’s sake, Danny!” It was Mr. Brodek, shouting up from the bedroom window.
“Get the light,” whispered Crawley.
Not until then had Levine realized how rattled he’d been just now. Twenty-four years on the force. When did you become a professional? How?
He straightened up, reaching up to the bare bulb in its socket high on the wall near the door. The bulb burned his fingers, but it took only the one turn to put it out.
Light still filtered up from the floor below, but no longer enough to keep him from making out shapes on the roof. He crouched over Crawley, blinking until his eyes got used to the darkness.
To the right, curving over the top of the knee-high wall around the roof, were the top bars of the fire escape. Black shadow at the base of the wall, all around. The boy was low, lying prone against the wall in the darkness, where he couldn’t be seen.
“I can see the fire escape from here,” muttered Crawley. “I’ve got him boxed. Go on down to the car and call for help.”
“Right,” said Levine.
He had just turned away when Crawley grabbed his arm. “No. Listen!”
He listened. Soft scrapings, outside and to the right. A sudden flurry of footsteps, running, receding.
“Over the roofs!” cried Crawley. “Damn this leg! Go after him!”
“Ambulance,” said Levine.
“Go after him! They can make the call.” He motioned at the foot of the stairs, and Levine, turning, saw down there anxious, frightened, bewildered faces peering up, bodies clothed in robes and slippers.
“Go on!” cried Crawley.
Levine moved, jumping out onto the roof in a half-crouch, ducking away to the right. The revolver was in his hand, his eyes were staring into the darkness.
Three rooftops away, he saw the flash of white, the boy’s shirt. Levine ran after him.