But how could I have told him everything, all the different things you learn? You learn by trial and error, the same as in any other walk of life. But here, sometimes, they only give you one error.
It isn’t fair.
The apartment was swarming with police, and soon they found out why Mosca had fired eight times through the door. A shoebox in a closet was a quarter full of heroin, cut and capsuled, ready for the retail trade. Mosca had a record, but for theft, not for narcotics, so there was no way Levine and Stettin could have known.
For an hour or two, Levine was confused. The world swirled around him at a mad pace, but he couldn’t really concentrate on any of it. People talked to him, and he answered one way and another, without really understanding what was being said to him or what he was replying. He walked in a shocked daze, not comprehending.
He came out of it back at the precinct. The entire detective squad was there, all the off-duty men having been called in, and Lieutenant Barker was talking to them. They filled the squadroom, sitting on the desks and leaning against the walls, and Lieutenant Barker stood facing them.
“We’re going to get this Jake Mosca,” he was saying. “We’re going to get him because Andy Stettin is damn close to death. Do you know why we have to get a cop-killer? It’s because the cop is a symbol. He’s a symbol of the law, the most solid symbol of the law the average citizen ever sees. Our society is held together by law, and we cannot let the symbol of the law be treated with arrogance and contempt.
“I want the man who shot Stettin. You’ll get to everyone this Mosca knows, every place he might think of going. You’ll get him because Andy Stettin is dying — and he is a cop.”
No, thought Levine, that’s wrong. Andy Stettin is a man, and that’s why we have to get Jake Mosca. He was alive, and now he may die. He is a living human being, and that’s why we have to get his would-be killer. There shouldn’t be any other reasons, there shouldn’t have to be any other reasons.
But he didn’t say anything.
Apparently, the Lieutenant could see that Levine was still dazed, because he had him switch with Rizzo, who was catching at the squadroom phone this tour. For the rest of the tour, Levine sat by the phone in the empty squadroom, and tried to understand.
Andrews and Campbell brought Mosca in a little after eleven. They’d found him hiding in a girl friend’s apartment, and when they brought him in he was bruised and semiconscious. Campbell explained he’d tried to resist arrest, and no one argued with him.
Levine joined the early part of the questioning, and got Mosca’s alibi for the night Morry Gold was killed. He made four phone calls, and the alibi checked out. Jake Mosca had not murdered Morry Gold.
The fourth day, Levine again arrived at the precinct at four o’clock. He was scheduled to catch this tour, so he spent another eight hours at the telephone, and got nothing done on the Morry Gold killing. The fifth day, working alone now, he went on with the investigation.
May Torasch, the woman whose name Andy Stettin had learned, worked in the credit department of a Brooklyn department store. Levine went to her apartment, on the fringe of Sunset, at seven o’clock, and found her home. She was another blowsy woman, reminding him strongly of Sal Casetta’s wife. But she was affable, and seemed to want to help, though she assured Levine that she and Morry Gold had never been close friends.
“Face it,” she said, “he was a bum. He wasn’t going nowhere, so I never wasted much time on him.”
She had seen Morry two days before his death; they’d gone to a bar off Flatbush Avenue and had a few drinks. But she hadn’t gone back to his apartment with him. She hadn’t been in the mood.
“I was kind of low that night,” she said.
“Was Morry low?” Levine asked.
“No, not him. He was the same as ever. He’d talk about the weather all the time, and his lousy landlady. I wouldn’t have gone out with him, but I was feeling so low I didn’t want to go home.”
She didn’t have any idea who might have murdered him. “He was just a bum, just a small-timer. Nobody paid any attention to him.” Nor could she add to the names of Gold’s acquaintances.
From her apartment, Levine went to the bar where she and Morry had last been together. It was called The Green Lantern, and was nearly empty when Levine walked in shortly before nine. He showed his identification to the bartender and asked about Morry Gold. But the bartender knew very few of his customers by name.
“I might know this guy by sight,” he explained, “But the name don’t mean a thing.” And the same was true of May Torasch.
There were still two more names on the list, Joe Whistler and Arnie Hendricks, the latter being the Arnie Sal Casetta had mentioned. Joe Whistler was another bartender, so Levine went looking for him first, and found him at work, tending bar in a place called Robert’s, in Canarsie, not more than a dozen blocks from Levine’s home.
Whistler knew Gold only casually, and could add nothing. Levine spent half an hour with him, and then went in search of Arnie Hendricks.
Arnie Hendricks was a small-time fight manager, originally from Detroit. He wasn’t at home, and the gym where he usually hung out was closed this time of night. Levine went back to the precinct, sat down at his desk, and looked at his notes.
He had eight names relating to Morry Gold. There were one brother, one woman, and six casual friends. None of them had offered any reasons for Morry’s murder, none of them had suggested any suspects who might have hated Morry enough to kill him, and none of them had given any real cause to be considered a suspect himself, with the possible exception of Abner Gold.
But the more Levine thought about Abner Gold, the more he was willing to go along with Andy Stettin’s idea. The man was afraid of an investigation not because he had murdered his brother, but because he was afraid the police would be able to link him to his brother’s traffic in stolen goods.
Eight names. One of them, Arnie Hendricks, was still an unknown, but the other seven had been dead ends.
Someone had murdered Morry Gold. Somewhere in the world, the murderer still lived. He had a name and a face; and he had a connection somehow with Morry Gold. And he was practically unsought. Of the hundreds of millions of human beings on the face of the earth, only one Abraham Levine, who had never known Morry Gold in life, was striving to find the man who had brought about Morry Gold’s death.
After a while, wearily, he put his notes away and pecked out his daily report on one of the office Remingtons. Then it was midnight, and he went home. And that was when he got some good news from the hospital — Andy Stettin was going to live.
The sixth day, he went to the precinct, reported in, got the Chevy, and went out looking for Arnie Hendricks. He spent seven hours on it, stopping off only to eat, but he couldn’t find Hendricks anywhere. People he talked to had seen Hendricks during the day, so the man wasn’t in hiding, but Levine couldn’t seem to catch up with him. It was suggested that Hendricks might be off at a poker game somewhere in Manhattan, but Levine couldn’t find out exactly where the poker game was being held.
He got back to the precinct at eleven-thirty, and started typing out his daily report. There wasn’t much to report. He’d looked for Hendricks, and had failed to find him. He would look again tomorrow.
Lieutenant Barker came in at a quarter to twelve. That was unusual; the Lieutenant was rarely around later than eight or nine at night, unless something really important had happened in the precinct. He came into the squadroom and said, “Abe, can I talk to you? Bring that report along.”