Levine

The Death of a Bum

Abraham Levine of Brooklyn’s Forty-Third Precinct sat at his desk in the squadroom and wished Jack Crawley would get well soon. Crawley, his usual tour partner, was in the hospital recovering from a bullet in the leg, and Levine was working now with a youngster recently assigned to the squad, a college graduate named Andy Stettin. Levine liked the boy — though he sometimes had the feeling Stettin was picking his brains — but there was an awkwardness in the work without Crawley.

He was sitting now at the desk, thinking about Jack Crawley, when the telephone rang. He answered, saying, “Forty-Third Precinct. Levine.”

It was a woman’s voice, middle-aged, very excited. “There’s a man been murdered! You’ve got to come right away!”

Levine pulled pencil and paper close, then said, “Your name, please?”

“There’s been a murder! Don’t you understand—”

“Yes, ma’am. May I have your name, please?”

“Mrs. Francis Temple. He’s lying right upstairs.”

“The address, please?”

“One ninety-eight Third Street. I told all this to the other man, I don’t see—”

“And you say there’s a dead man there?”

“He’s been shot! I just went in to change the linen, and he was lying there!”

“Someone will be there right away.” He hung up as she was starting another sentence, and looked up to see Stettin, a tall athletic young man with dark-rimmed glasses and a blond crewcut, standing by the door, already wearing his coat.

“Just a second,” Levine said, and dialed for Mulvane, on the desk downstairs. “This is Abe. Did you just transfer a call from Mrs. Francis Temple to my office?”

“I did. The beat car’s on the way.”

“All right. Andy and I are taking it.”

Levine cradled the phone and got to his feet. He went over and took his coat from the rack and shrugged into it, then followed the impatient Stettin downstairs to the car.

That was another thing. Crawley had always driven the Chevy. But Stettin drove too fast, was too quick to hit the siren and gun through busy intersections, so now Levine had to do the driving, a chore he didn’t enjoy.

The address was on a block of ornate nineteenth-century brownstones, now all converted either into furnished apartments or boarding houses. One ninety-eight was furnished apartments, and Mrs. Francis Temple was its landlady. She was waiting on the top step of the stoop, wringing her hands, a buxom fiftyish woman in a black dress and open black sweater, a maroon knit shawl over her head to keep out the cold.

The prowl car was double-parked in front of the house, and Levine braked the Chevy to a stop behind it. He and Stettin climbed out, crossed the sidewalk, and went up the stoop.

Mrs. Temple was on the verge of panic. Her hands kept washing each other, she kept shifting her weight back and forth from one foot to the other, and she stared bug-eyed as the detectives came up the stoop toward her.

“Are you police?” she demanded, her voice shrill.

Levine dragged out his wallet, showed her the badge. “Are the patrolmen up there?” he asked.

She nodded, stepping aside to let him move past her. “I went in to change the linen, and there he was, lying in the bed, all covered with blood. It was terrible, terrible.”

Levine went on in, Stettin after him, and Mrs. Temple brought up the rear, still talking. Levine interrupted her to ask, “Which room?”

“The third floor front,” she said, and went back to repeating how terrible it had been when she’d gone in there and seen him on the bed, covered with blood.

Stettin was too eager for conscious politeness. He bounded on up the maroon-carpeted stairs, while Levine plodded up after him, the woman one step behind all the way, the shawl still over her head.

One of the patrolmen was standing in the open doorway at the other end of the third-floor hall. As was usual in this type of brownstone, the upper floors consisted of two large rooms rented separately, each with a small kitchenette but both sharing the same bath. The dead man was in the front room.

Levine said to the woman, “Wait out here, please,” nodded to the patrolman, and went on through into the room.

Stettin and the second patrolman were over to the right, by the studio couch, talking together. Their forms obscured Levine’s view of the couch as he came through the doorway, and he got the feeling, as he had had more than once with the energetic Stettin, that he was Stettin’s assistant rather than the other way around.

Which was ridiculous, of course. Stettin turned, clearing Levine’s view, saying, “How’s it look to you, Abe?”

The studio couch had been opened up and was now in its other guise, that of a linen-covered bed. Between the sheets the corpse lay peaceably on its back with the covers tucked up around the sheets and rested stiffly on its chest.

Levine came over and stood by the bed, looking down at it. The bullet had struck the bridge of the nose, smashing bone and cartilage, and discoloring the flesh around it. There was hardly any nose left. The mouth hung open, and the top front teeth had been jarred partially out of their sockets by the force of the bullet.

The slain man had bled profusely, and the pillow and the turned-down sheet around his throat were drenched with blood.

The top blanket was blue, and was now scattered with smallish chunks of white stuff. Levine reached down and picked up one of the white chunks, feeling it between his fingers.

“Potato,” he said, more to himself than to the cop at his side.

Stettin said, “What’s that?”

“Potato. That stuff on the bed. He used a potato for a silencer.”

Stettin smiled blankly. “I don’t follow you. Abe.”

Levine moved his hands in demonstration as he described what he meant. “The killer took a raw potato, and jammed the barrel of the gun into it. Then, when he fired, the bullet smashed through the potato, muffling the sound. It’s a kind of home-made silencer.”

Stettin nodded, and glanced again at the body. “Think it was a gang killing, then?”

“I don’t know,” Levine replied, frowning. He turned to the patrolman. “What have you got?”

The patrolman dragged a flat black notebook out of his hip pocket, and flipped it open. “He’s the guy that rented the place. The landlady identified him. He gave his name as Maurice Gold.”

Excited, Stettin said, “Morry Gold?” He came closer to the bed, squinting down at the face remnant as though he could see it better that way. “Yeah, by God, it is,” he said, his expression grim. “It was a gang killing, Abe!”

“You know him?”

“I saw him once. On the lineup downtown, maybe — two months ago.”

Levine smiled thinly. Leave it to Stettin, he thought. Most detectives considered the lineup a chore and a waste of time, and grumbled every time their turn came around to go downtown and attend. The line-up was supposed to familiarize the precinct detectives with the faces of known felons, but it took a go-getter like Stettin to make the theory work. Levine had been attending the lineup twice a month for fifteen years and hadn’t once recognized one of the felons later on.

Stettin was turning his head this way and that, squinting at the body again. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Morry Gold. He had a funny way of talking — a Cockney accent, maybe. That’s him, all right.”

“What was he brought in for?”

“Possession of stolen goods. He was a fence. I remember the Chief talking to him. I guess he’d been brought in lots of times before.” He shook his head. “Apparently he managed to wriggle out of it.”

The patrolman said, “He’d have been much better off if he hadn’t.”

“A falling out among thieves,” said Stettin. “Think so, Abe?”

“It could be.” To the patrolman, he said, “Anything else?”

“He lived here not quite two years. That’s what the landlady told me. She found him at quarter after four, and the last time she saw him alive was yesterday, around seven o’clock in the evening. He went out then. He must have come back some time after eleven o’clock, when the landlady went to bed. Otherwise, she’d have seen him come in.” He grinned without humor. “She’s one of those,” he said.

“I’ll go talk to her.” Levine looked over at the body again, and averted his eyes. An old English epitaph flickered through his mind: As you are, so was I; as I am, so you will be. Twenty-four years as a cop hadn’t hardened him to the tragic and depressing finality of death, and in the last few years, as he had moved steadily into the heart-attack range and as the inevitability of his own end had become more and more real to him, he had grown steadily more vulnerable to the dread implicit in the sight of death.

He turned away, saying, “Andy, give the place a going-over. Address book, phone numbers, somebody’s name in the flyleaf of a book. You know the kind of thing.”

“Sure.” Stettin glanced around, eager to get at it. “Do you think he’d have any of the swag here?”

The word sounded strange on Stettin’s tongue, odd and archaic. Levine smiled, as the death-dread wore off, and said, “I doubt it. Stick around here for the M.E. and the technical crew. Get the time of death and whatever else they can give you.”

“Sure thing.”

Mrs. Francis Temple was still outside in the hall, jabbering now at the second patrolman, who was making no attempt to hide his boredom. Levine took her away, much to the patrolman’s relief, and they went downstairs to her cellar apartment, the living room of which was Gay Nineties from end to end, from the fringed beaded lampshades to the marble porcelain vases on the mantle.

In these surroundings, Mrs. Temple’s wordiness switched from the terrible details of her discovery of the body to the nostalgic details of her life with her late husband, who had been a newspaperman.

Levine, by main force, wrestled the conversation back to the present, in order to ask his questions about Maurice Gold. “What did he do for a living,” he asked. “Do you know?”

“He said he was a salesman. Sometimes he was gone nearly a week at a time.”

“Do you know what he sold?”

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?”

“Maurice always expected trouble. But I do know what you mean. No, nothing like that, nothing more than his usual pessimism.”

“Do you yourself know of any enemies he might have made?”

“Ever since I read the article in the paper, I’ve been asking myself exactly that question. Did anyone hate my brother enough to want to kill him. But I can think of no one. You must understand me, I didn’t know my brother’s associates. We... drifted apart.”

“You didn’t know any of his friends at all?”

“I don’t believe so, no.”

“Not Sal Casetta?”

“An Italian? No, I don’t know him.” Gold glanced at Stettin, then leaned forward to say to Levine, “Excuse me, do you mind? Could I speak to you alone for a moment?”

“Sure,” said Stettin promptly. “I’ll wait outside.”

“Thank you. Thank you very much.” Gold beamed at Stettin until he left, then leaned toward Levine again. “I can talk to you,” he said. “Not in front of the other policeman.”

Levine frowned, but said nothing.

“Listen to me,” said Gold. His eyes were dark, and deepset. “Maurice was my brother. If anyone has the right to say what I am going to say now it is me, the brother. Maurice is better dead. Better for everyone. The police are shorthanded, I know this. You have so much work; forget Maurice. No one wants vengeance. Listen to me, I am his brother. Who has a better right to talk?”

You’re talking to the wrong man, Levine thought. Stettin’s the one who thinks your way. But he kept quiet, and waited.

Gold paused, his hands out as though in offering, presenting his ideas to Levine. Then he lowered his hands and leaned back and said, “You understand me. That’s why I wanted to talk to you alone. You are a policeman, sworn to uphold the law, this new law in this new country. But I am speaking to you now from the old law. You follow me, Levine. And if I say to you, I don’t want vengeance for the slaying of my brother, I speak within a law that is older and deeper.”

“A law that says murder should be ignored and forgotten? A law that says life doesn’t matter? I never heard of it.”

“Levine, you know what law I’m talking about! I’m his brother, and I—”

“You’re a fool, Gold, and that’s the damnedest bribe I’ve ever been offered.”

“Bribe?” Gold seemed shocked at the thought. “I didn’t offer you any—”

“What do I do to belong, Gold? I send in the label from a package of Passover candles, and then what do I get? I learn all about the secret handshake, and I get the ring with the secret compartment, and I get the magic decodifier so we can send each other messages others won’t understand. Is that it?”

“You shouldn’t mock what—”

“Is there anything you wouldn’t use, Gold? Do you have respect for anything at all?”

Gold looked away, his expression stony. “I thought I could talk to you,” he said. “I thought you would understand.”

“I do understand,” Levine told him. “Get on your feet.”

“What?”

“You’re coming back to the precinct to answer some more questions.”

“But... but I’ve told you—” Gold started to say.

“You told me you didn’t want your brother’s murderer found. After a while, you’ll tell me why. On your feet.”

“For God’s sake, Levine—”

“Get on your feet!”

It was a small room. The echoes of his shout came back to his ears, and he suddenly realized he’d lost his temper despite himself, and his left hand jerked automatically to his chest, pressing there to feel for the heartbeat. He had a skip, every eighth beat or so, and when he allowed himself to get excited the skipping came closer together. That irregularity of rhythm was the most pronounced symptom he had to support his fear of heart trouble and it was never very far from his consciousness. He pressed his hand to his chest now, feeling the thumping within, and the skip, and counted from there to the next skip... seven.

He took a deep breath. Quietly he said, “Come along, Gold. Don’t make me call in the other policeman to carry you.”

Abraham Levine couldn’t bring himself to grill Gold personally after all; he was afraid he’d lose control. So he simply filled Stettin in on what had been said, and what he wanted to know. Stettin took care of the questioning, with assists from Andrews and Campbell, two of the other detectives now on duty, while Levine left the precinct again, to find Sal Casetta.

Casetta lived in the New Utrecht section of Brooklyn, in a brick tenement on 79th Street. It was a walk-up, and the bookmaker’s apartment was on the fourth floor. Levine climbed the stairs slowly, stopping to rest at each landing. When he got to the fourth floor, he paused to catch his breath, and light a cigarette before knocking on the door marked 14.

A woman answered — a short blowsy woman in a loose sweater and a tight black skirt. She was barefooted, and her feet were dirty, her toenails enameled a deep red. She looked challengingly at Levine.

Levine said, “I’m looking for Sal Casetta.”

“He ain’t home.”

“Where can I find him?”

“What do you want him for?”

“Police,” said Levine. “I don’t want to talk to him about bookmaking. A friend of his was killed; maybe he could help us.”

“What makes you think he wants to help you?”

“It was a friend of his that was killed.”

“So what? You ain’t a friend of his.”

“If Sal was killed,” Levine said, “and I was looking for his murderer, would you help me?”

The woman grimaced, and shrugged uneasily. “I told you he wasn’t here,” she said.

“Just tell me where I can find him.”

She thought it over. She was chewing gum, and her jaw moved continuously for a full minute. Finally, she shrugged again and said, “Come on in. I’ll go get him for you.”

“Thank you.”

She led the way into a small living room, with soiled drapes at the windows, and not enough furniture. “Grab a seat any place,” she said. “Look out for roaches.”

Levine thanked her again, and sat down gingerly on an unpainted wooden chair.

“What was the name of the friend?” she asked.

“Morry Gold.”

“Oh, that bum.” Her mouth twisted around its wad of gum. “Why waste time on him?”

“Because he was killed,” said Levine.

“You want to make work for yourself,” she told him, “it’s no skin off my nose. Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

While he waited Levine’s thoughts kept reverting to Morry Gold. After about ten minutes, he heard the front door open, and a few seconds later the woman came back accompanied by a short, heavyset man with bushy black hair and rather shifty eyes.

He came in nodding his head jerkily, saying, “I read about it in the papers. I read about it this morning.”

“You’re Sal Casetta?”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s right, that’s me. You’re a cop, huh?”

Levine showed his badge, then said, “You used to play cards with Morry Gold?”

“Yeah, sure, that’s right. Poker. Quarter, half-dollar. Friendly game, you know.”

“Who were the other players?” Levine asked.

“Well, uh—” Casetta glanced nervously at the woman, and rubbed the back of his hand across his nose. “Well, you know how it is. You don’t feel right about giving out names.”

“Why? Do you think one of them killed Gold?”

“Hey now— Listen. We’re all friends. Nothing like that. I wouldn’t want to bump Morry, and neither would those guys. We’re all buddies.”

“Then give me their names.”

Casetta cleared his throat, and glanced at the woman again, and scuffed his feet on the floor. Finally, he said, “Well, all right. But don’t tell them you got it from me, huh?”

“Gold’s landlady identified you,” Levine told him. “She could have identified the other two.”

“Yeah, sure, that’s right. So it’s Jake Mosca — that’s like Moscow, only with an ‘a’ — and Barney Feldman. Okay?”

Levine copied the names down. “You know where they live?”

“Naw, not me.”

“We’ll leave that a blank, then. When was the last game?”

“At Morry’s? That was on Saturday. Right, baby?”

The woman nodded. “Saturday,” she said.

“Did Gold act nervous or depressed Saturday?”

“You mean, did he know he was gonna get it? Not a bit. Calm like always, you know?”

“Do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill him?”

“Not me. I know Morry from when we used to live in the same neighborhood, that’s all. His business is his business.”

“You wouldn’t know who his enemies were.”

“That’s right. If Morry had enemies, he never said nothing to me.”

“What about other friends?”

“Friends?” Casetta rubbed his nose again, then said, “We didn’t see each other that much since we moved away. Just for the games. Uh, wait a second. There was another guy came in the game for a while, Arnie something. A fish, a real fish. So after a while he quit.”

“You don’t remember his last name?”

Casetta shook his head. “Just Arnie something. Maybe Jake or Barney knows.”

“All right. Do you know Gold’s brother, Abner?”

“Naw, I never met him. Morry talked about him sometimes. They didn’t get along.”

Levine got to his feet. “Thank you very much,” he said.

“Yeah, sure. Morry was okay.”

“Oh, one thing more. What about women? Did he have any woman friends that you know about?”

“I never seen him with a woman,” Casetta said.

“Saturday at the game, did he seem to have an unusual amount of money on him? Or did he seem very broke? How did he seem to be fixed?”

“Like always. Nothing special, pretty well heeled but nothing spectacular, you know?” Casetta looked around, at the woman, at the apartment. “Like me,” he said.

Elly Kapp’s last known address was in Gravesend, off Avenue X, and since Kapp had once been caught turning stolen goods over to Morry Gold it occurred to Levine that the man might know whom Gold had been dealing with lately. He might even be still selling to Gold himself.

There was no Kapp listed among the mailboxes at the address. Levine pressed the bell-button beneath the metal plate reading Superintendent, and several minutes later a slow-rolling fat woman with receding gray hair appeared in the doorway, holding the door open a scant three inches. She said nothing, only stared mistrustfully, so Levine dragged out his wallet and showed his identification.

“I’m looking for Elly Kapp,” he said.

“Don’t live here no more.”

“Where does he live now?”

“I don’t know.” She started to close the door, but Levine held it open with the palm of his hand. “When did he move?” he demanded.

The woman shrugged. “Who remembers?” Her eyes were dull, and watched his mouth rather than his eyes. “Who cares where he went, or what he’s done?”

Levine moved his hand away, and allowed the woman to close the door. He watched through the glass as she turned and rolled slowly back across the inner vestibule. Her ankles were swollen like sausages. When she disappeared in the gloom just beyond Levine turned away and went back down the stoop to the Chevy.

He drove slowly back to the precinct. Indifference breathed in the air all around him, sullen and surly. No man is important, the streets seemed to be saying. Man is only useful as long as he breathes. Once the breathing stops, he is forgotten. Time stretches away beyond him, smooth and slick and with no handholds. The man is dead, and almost as swiftly as a dropped heartbeat, the space which he occupied yawns emptily and there is nothing left of him but a name.

At times, another man is paid to remember the name long enough to carve it on stone, and the stone is set in the earth, and immediately it begins to sink. But the man is gone long since. What does it matter if he stopped a second ago or a century ago or a millenium ago? He stopped, he is no more, he is forgotten. Who cares?

Levine saw the red light just in time, and jammed on the brakes. He sat hunched over the wheel, unnerved at having almost run the light, and strove to calm himself. His breathing was labored, as though he’d been running, and he knew that the beating of his heart was erratic and heavy. He inhaled, very slowly, and let his breath out even more slowly while he waited for the light to change.

The instant it became green he drove on across the intersection. He was calmer now. The death of Morry Gold had affected him too much, and he told himself he had to snap out of it. He knew, after all, the reason he was so affected. It was because Morry Gold’s death had been greeted by such universal indifference.

Almost always, the victim of a homicide is survived by relatives and friends who are passionately concerned with his end, and make a nuisance of themselves by badgering the police for quick results. With such rallying, the dead man doesn’t seem quite so forlorn, quite so totally alone and forgotten.

In the interrogation room down the hall from the squadroom, Stettin and Andrews and Campbell were questioning Abner Gold. Levine stuck his head in, nodded at Stettin, avoided looking at Gold, and immediately shut the door again. He turned away and walked slowly back down the hall toward the squadroom. He heard the door behind him open and close, and then Stettin, in long easy strides, had come up even with him.

Stettin shook his head. “Nothing, Abe,” he said.

“No explanation?”

“Not from him. He won’t say a word any more. Not until he calls a lawyer.”

Levine shook his head tiredly. He knew the type. Abner Gold’s one lone virtue would be patience. He would sit in silence, and wait, and wait until eventually the detectives found his stubborn silence intolerable, and then he knew he would be allowed to go home.

“I have an explanation,” Stettin said. “He’s afraid of an investigation. He’s afraid if we dig too deep we’ll come up with proof he worked with his brother.”

“Maybe,” said Levine. “Or maybe he’s afraid we’ll come up with proof he killed his brother.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know. For cheating him on some kind of deal. For blackmailing him. Your guess is as good as mine.”

Stettin shrugged. “We can keep asking,” he said. “But he can keep right on not answering until we can no longer stand the sight of him.”

Levine glanced at his watch. Quarter to one. He’d stopped off for lunch on the way back. He said, “I’ll go talk to him for a while.”

“That’s up to you.”

The way he said it, Levine was reminded that Stettin didn’t want to break his hump over this one. Levine walked over to his desk and sat down and said, “I got two more names. From Casetta. Jake Mosca and Barney Feldman. No addresses. See what you can dig up on them, will you? And go talk to them.”

“Sure. How was Casetta?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Gold cheated him at poker. Maybe Gold was playing around with his wife. He didn’t act nervous or worried.” Levine rubbed a hand wearily across his face. “I’ll go talk to Gold now,” he said. “Did we get the M.E.’s report?”

“It’s right there on your desk.”

Levine didn’t open it. He didn’t want to read about Morry Gold’s corpse. He said, “What kind of gun?”

“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?

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.”

Levine pulled the incomplete report from the typewriter and followed the Lieutenant into his office. The Lieutenant sat down, and motioned for Levine to do the same, then held out his hand.

“Could I see that report?” he asked.

“It isn’t finished.”

“That’s all right.”

The Lieutenant glanced at the report, and then dropped it on his desk. “Abe,” he said, “do you know what our full complement is supposed to be?”

“Twenty men, isn’t it?”

“Right. And we have fifteen. With Crawley out, fourteen. Abe, here’s your reports for the last six days. What have you been doing, man? We’re understaffed, we’re having trouble keeping up with the necessary stuff, and look what you’ve been doing. For six days you’ve been running around in circles. And for what? For a small-time punk who got a small-time punk’s end.”

“He was murdered, Lieutenant.”

“Lots of people are murdered, Abe. When we can, we find out who did the job, and we turn him over to the DA. But we don’t make an obsession out of it. Abe, for almost a week now you haven’t been pulling your weight around here. There’ve been three complaints about how long it took us to respond to urgent calls. We’re understaffed, but we’re not that understaffed.”

Barker tapped the little pile of reports. “This man Gold was a fence, and a cheap crook. He isn’t worth it, Abe. We can’t waste any more time on him. When you finish up this report, I want you to recommend we switch the case to Pending. And tomorrow I want you to get back with the team.”

“Lieutenant, I’ve got one more man to—”

“And tomorrow there’ll be one more, and the day after that one more. Abe, you’ve been working on nothing else at all. Forget it, will you? This is a cheap penny-ante bum. Even his brother doesn’t care who killed him. Let it go, Abe.”

He leaned forward over the desk. “Abe, some cases don’t get solved right away. That’s what the Pending file is for. So six weeks from now, or six months from now, or six years from now, while we’re working on something else, when the break finally does come, we can pull that case out and hit it hot and heavy again. But it’s cold now, Abe, so let it lie.”

Speeches roiled around inside Levine’s head, but they were only words so he didn’t say them. He nodded, reluctantly. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“The man was a bum,” said the Lieutenant, “pure and simple. Forget him, he isn’t worth your time.”

“Yes, sir,” said Levine.

He went back to the squadroom and finished typing the report, recommending that the Morry Gold case be switched to the Pending file. Then it was twelve o’clock, and he left the precinct and walked to the subway station. The underground platform was cold and deserted. He stood shivering on the concrete, his hands jammed deep into his pockets. He waited twenty minutes before a train came. Then it did come, crashed into the station and squealed to a stop. The doors in front of Levine slid back with no hands touching them, and he stepped aboard.

The car was empty, with a few newspapers abandoned on the seats. The doors slid shut behind him and the train started forward. He was the only one in the car. He was the only one in the car and all the seats were empty, but he didn’t sit down.

The train rocked and jolted as it hurtled through the cold hole under Brooklyn, and Abraham Levine stood swaying in the middle of the empty car, a short man, bulky in his overcoat, hulk-shouldered, crying.