She shook her head. “There were never any samples or anything in his room,” she said. “I would have noticed them.” She shivered suddenly, hugging herself, and said, “What a terrible thing. You don’t know what it was like, to come into the room and see him—”
Levine thought he knew. He thought he knew better than Mrs. Temple. He said, “Did he have many visitors? Close friends, that you know about?”
“Well— There were two or three men who came by sometimes in the evenings. I believe they played cards.”
“Do you know their names?”
“No, I’m sorry. I really didn’t know Mr. Gold very well — not as a friend. He was a very close-mouthed man.” One hand fluttered to her lips. “Oh, listen to me. The poor man is lying dead, and listen to me talking about him.”
“Did anyone else ever come by?” Levine persisted. “Besides these three men he played cards with.”
She shook her head. “Not that I remember. I think he was a lonely man. Lonely people can recognize one another, and I’ve been lonely, too, since Alfred died. These last few years have been difficult for me, Mr. Levine.”
It took Levine ten minutes to break away from the woman gently, without learning anything more. “We’d like to try to identify his card-playing friends,” he said. “Would you have time to come look at pictures this afternoon?”
“Well, yes, of course. It was a terrible thing, Mr. Levine, an absolutely terrible—”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Levine escaped, to find Stettin coming back downstairs, loose-limbed and athletic. Feeling a little bit guilty at palming the voluble Mrs. Temple off on his partner, Levine said, “Take Mrs. Temple to look at some mug shots, will you? Known former acquaintances of Gold — or anyone she recognizes. She says there were two or three men who used to come here to play cards.”
“Will do.” Stettin paused at the foot of the steps. “Uh, Abe,” he said, “we don’t have to break our humps over this one, do we?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well—” Stettin shrugged, and nodded his head at the stairs. “He was just a bum, you know. A small-time crook. The world’s better off without him.”
“He was alive,” said Levine. “And now he’s dead.”
“Okay, okay. For Pete’s sake, I wasn’t saying we should forget the whole thing — just that we shouldn’t break our humps over it.”
“We’ll do our job,” Levine told him, “just as though he’d had the keys to the city and money in fifty-seven banks.”
“Okay. You didn’t have to get sore, Abe.”
“I’m not sore. Take Mrs. Temple in the car. I’m going to stay here a while and ask some more questions. Mrs. Temple’s in her apartment there.”
“Okay.”
“Oh, by the way. When you get out to the car, call in and have somebody get us the dope on that arrest two months ago. Find out if you can whether there was anybody else involved, and if by chance the arresting officer knows any of Gold’s friends. Anything like that.”
“Will do.”
Levine went on upstairs to ask questions.
The other tenants knew even less than Mrs. Temple. Levine was interrupted for a while by a reporter, and by the time he’d finished questioning the tenants it was past four o’clock, and late enough for him to go off duty. He phoned the precinct, and then went on home.
The following morning he arrived at the precinct at eight o’clock for his third and last day-shift on this cycle. Stettin was already there, sitting at Levine’s desk and looking through a folder. He leaped to his feet, grinning and ebullient as ever, saying, “Hiya, Abe. We got us some names.”
“Good.”
Levine eased himself into his chair, and Stettin hovered over him, opening the folder. “The arresting officer was a Patrolman Michaels, out of the Thirtieth. I couldn’t find out why the charge didn’t stick, because Michaels was kind of touchy about that. I guess he made some kind of procedural goof. But anyhow, he gave me some names. Gold has a brother, Abner, who runs a pawnshop in East New York. Michaels says Gold was a kind of go-between for his brother. Morry would buy the stolen goods, cache it, and then transfer it to Abner’s store.”
Levine nodded. “Anything else?”
“Well, Gold took one fall, about nine years ago. He was caught accepting a crate full of stolen furs. The thief was caught with him.” Stettin pointed to a name and address. “That’s him — Elly Kapp. Kapp got out last year, and that’s his last known address.”
“You’ve been doing good work,” Levine told him. He grinned up at Stettin and said, “Been breaking your hump?”
Stettin grinned back, in embarrassment. “I can’t help it,” he said. “You know me, old Stettin Fetchit.”
Levine nodded. He’d heard Stettin use the line before. It was his half-joking apology for being a boy on the way up, surrounded by stodgy plodders like Abe Levine.
“Okay,” said Levine. “Anything from Mrs. Temple?”
“One positive identification, and a dozen maybes. The positive is a guy named Sal Casetta. He’s a small-time bookie.”
Levine got to his feet. “Let’s go talk to these three,” he said. “The brother first.”
Twenty-two minutes later they were in the East New York pawnshop. Abner Gold was a stocky man with thinning hair and thick spectacles. He was also — once Levine had flashed the police identification — very nervous.
“Come into the office,” he said. “Please, please. Come into the office.”
Levine noticed that the thick accent Gold had worn when they’d first come in had suddenly vanished.
Gold unlocked the door to the cage, relocked it after them, and led the way back past the bins to his office, a small and crowded room full of ledgers. There was a rolltop desk, a metal filing cabinet and four sagging leather chairs.
“Sit down, sit down,” he said. “You’ve come about my brother.”
“You’ve been notified?”
“I read about it in the News. A terrible way to hear, believe me.”
“I’m sure it must be,” Levine said.
He hesitated. Usually, Jack Crawley handled the questioning, while Levine observed silently from a corner. But Jack was still laid up with the bad leg, and Levine wasn’t sure Stettin — eager though he might be — would know the right questions or how to ask them. So it was up to him.
Levine sighed, and said, “When was the last time you saw your brother, Mr. Gold?”
Gold held his hands out to the sides, in a noncommittal shrug. “A week ago? Two weeks?”
“You’re not sure.”
“I think two weeks. You must understand, my brother and I — we’d drifted apart.”
“Because of his trouble with the law?”
Gold nodded. “A part of it, yes. God rest his soul, Mister—?”
“Levine.”
“Yes. God rest his soul, Mister Levine, but I must tell you what’s in my heart. You have to know the truth. Maurice was not a good man. Do you understand me? He was my brother, and now he’s been murdered, but still I must say it. His life went badly for him, Mr. Levine, and he became sour. When he was young—” He shrugged again. “He became very bitter, I think. He lost his belief.”
“His faith, you mean?”
“Oh, that, too. Maurice was not a religious man. But even more than that, do you follow me? He lost his belief. In the goodness of man — in life. Do you understand me?”
“I think so.” Levine watched Gold’s face carefully. Stettin had said that the brothers had worked together in the buying and selling of stolen goods, but Abner Gold was trying very hard to convince them of his own innocence. Levine wasn’t sure yet whether or not he could be convinced.
“The last time you saw him,” he said, “did he act nervous at all? As though he was expecting trouble?”