“A thirty-eight. You look tired, Abe.”
“I guess I am. I can sleep late tomorrow.”
“Sure.”
“Oh, one more thing. Elly Kapp isn’t at that address any more. See what you can find there, will you?”
“Will do.”
Levine walked down the hall again and took over the questioning of Gold. After Andrews and Campbell had left the room, Levine looked at Gold and said, “What did Morry do to you?”
Gold shook his head.
“You’re a cautious man, Gold.” Levine’s voice rose impatiently. “It had to be something strong to make you kill him. Did he cheat you?”
Humor flickered at the corners of Gold’s mouth. “He cheated me always,” he said. “For years. I was used to it, Abraham.”
Levine shrugged off the use of the first name. It wasn’t important enough to be angry about. “So he was blackmailing you,” he said, “and finally you’d had enough. But didn’t you know someone would hear the sound of the shot? Mrs. Temple saw you go out.”
“A false identification,” said Gold. “I would risk nothing for Maurice. He was not worth the danger of killing him.”
Levine shrugged. If Gold knew a potato silencer had been used, he hadn’t mentioned it. Not that Levine had expected the trick to work. Tricks like that work only in the movies. And killers go to the movies, too.
Levine asked questions for over two hours. Sometimes Gold answered, and sometimes he didn’t. As the time wore on, Levine grew more and more tired, more and more heavy and depressed, but Gold remained unchanged, displaying only the same solid patience.
Finally, at three-thirty, Levine told him he could leave. Gold thanked him, with muted sardonicism, and left. Levine went back down the hall to the squadroom.
There was a note from Stettin. Elly Kapp was being held in a precinct in west Brooklyn. Last night, he’d been caught halfway through the window of a warehouse near the Brooklyn piers, and tomorrow morning he would be transferred downtown.
Levine phoned the precinct and got permission from the Lieutenant of Detectives there to come over and question the prisoner. Stettin had taken the Chevy, so Levine had to drive an unfamiliar car, newer and stiffer.
Kapp had very little useful to say. At first, he said, “Morry Gold? I ain’t seen him since we took the fall. I’m a very superstitious guy, Mister. I don’t go near anyone who is with me when a job goes sour. That guy by me is a jinx.”
Levine questioned him further, wanting to know the names of other thieves with whom Gold had had dealings, whether or not Gold had been known to cheat thieves in the past, whether or not Kapp knew of anyone who harbored a grudge against Gold. Kapp pleaded ignorance for a while, and then gradually began to look crafty.
“Maybe I could help you out,” he said finally. “I don’t promise you nothing, but maybe I could. If we could work out maybe a deal?”
Levine shook his head, and left the room. Kapp called after him, but Levine didn’t listen to what he was saying. Kapp didn’t know anything; his information would be useless. He would implicate anybody, make up any kind of story he thought Levine wanted to hear, if it would help him get a lighter sentence for the attempted robbery of the warehouse.
It was four o’clock. Levine brought the unfamiliar car back to the precinct, signed out, and went home.
The third day of the case, Levine came to work at four in the afternoon, starting a three-day tour on the night shift. As usual, Stettin was already there when he arrived.
“Hi, Abe,” Stettin greeted. “I talked to Feldman yesterday. He owns a grocery store in Brownsville. Like everybody else, he didn’t know Morry Gold all that well. But he did give me a couple more names.”
“Good,” said Levine. He had been about to shrug out of his coat, but now he kept it on.
“One of them’s a woman,” said Stettin. “May Torasch. She was possibly Gold’s girl friend. Feldman didn’t know for sure.”
“What about Feldman?”
“I don’t think so, Abe. He and Gold just know each other from the old days, that’s all.”
“All right.”
“I tried to see the other one, Jake Mosca, but he wasn’t home.”
“Maybe he’ll be home now.” Levine started to button his coat again.
Stettin said, “Want me to come along?”
Levine was going to say no, tell him to check out the other names he had, but then he changed his mind. Stettin would be his partner for a while, so they ought to start learning how to work together. Besides, Stettin was only half-hearted in this case, and he might miss something important. Levine wished he’d questioned the grocer himself.
“Come on along,” Levine said.
Mosca lived way out Flatbush Avenue toward Floyd Bennett. There were old two-family houses out that way, in disrepair, and small apartment buildings that weren’t quite tenements. It was in one of the latter that Mosca lived, on the second floor.
The hall was full of smells, and badly-lit. A small boy who needed a haircut stood down at the far end of the hall and watched them as Levine knocked on the door.
There were sounds of movement inside, but that was all. Levine knocked again, and this time a voice called, “Who is it?”
“Police,” called Levine.
Inside, a bureau drawer opened, and Levine heard cursing. His eyes widening, he jumped quickly to one side, away from the door, shouting, “Andy! Get out of the way!”
From inside, there were sounds like wood cracking, and a series of punched-out holes appeared in the door just as Stettin started to obey.
Levine was clawing on his hip for his gun. The shots, sounding like wood cracking, kept resounding in the apartment, and the holes kept appearing in the door. Plaster was breaking in small chunks in the opposite wall now.
The door was thin, and Levine could hear the clicking when the gun was empty and the man inside kept pulling the trigger. He stepped in front of the door, raised his foot, kicked it just under the knob. The lock splintered away and the door swung open. The man inside was goggle-eyed with rage and fear.
The instant the door came open he threw the empty gun at Levine and spun away for the window. Levine ducked and ran into the apartment, shouting to Mosca to stop. Mosca went over the sill headfirst, out onto the fire escape. Levine fired at him, trying to hit him in the leg, but the bullet went wild. But before he could fire again Mosca went clattering down the fire escape.
Levine got to the window in time to see the man reach the ground. He ran across the weedy back yard, over the wooden fence, and went dodging into a junkyard piled high with rusting parts of automobiles.
Levine was trying to do everything at once. He started out the window, then realized Mosca had too much of a head-start on him. Then he remembered Andy and, as he descended to the floor, he realized that Stettin hadn’t followed him into the room and wondered why.
The moment he emerged into the hallway the reason became clear. Andy was lying on his side a yard from the door, his entire left shoulder drenched with blood and his knees drawn up sharply. He was no longer moving. Levine bent over him for an instant, then swung about, ran down the stairs and out to the Chevy and called in.
Everyone seemed to show up at once. Ambulance and patrolmen and detectives, suddenly filling the corridor. Lieutenant Barker, chief of the precinct’s detective squad, came with the rest and stood looking down at Andy Stettin, his face cold with rage. He listened to Levine’s report of what had happened, saying nothing until Levine had finished.
Then he said, “He may pull through, Abe. He still has a chance. You mustn’t blame yourself for this.”
Should I have been able to tell him? Levine wondered. He was new, and I was more or less breaking him in, showing him the ropes, so shouldn’t I have told him that when you hear the cursing, when you hear the bureau drawer opening, get away from the door?