Роберт Артур - Alfred Hitchcock’s A Hangman’s Dozen

“He’s on the way down now. It’s just been typed up.”

“Hold him there after he signs it, okay? I want to talk to him. I’m in Manhattan, starting back now.”

“What have you got?”

“I’m not sure I have anything. I just want to talk to Perkins again, that’s all.”

“Why sweat it? We got the body; we got the confession; we got the killer in a cell. Why make work for yourself?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just bored.”

“Okay, I’ll hold him. Same room as before.”

Levine went back to the kitchen. “Thank you for the coffee,” he said. “If there’s nothing else you can think of, I’ll be leaving now.”

“Nothing,” she said. “Larry’s the only one can tell you why.”

She walked him to the front door, and he thanked her again as he was leaving. The stairs were a lot easier going down.

When Levine got back to the station, he picked up another plainclothesman, a detective named Ricco, a tall, athletic man in his middle thirties who affected the Ivy League look. He resembled more closely someone from the District Attorney’s office than a precinct cop. Levine gave him a part to play, and the two of them went down the hall to the room where Perkins was waiting with Crawley.

“Perkins,” said Levine, the minute he walked in the room, before Crawley had a chance to give the game away by saying something to Ricco, “this is Dan Ricco, a reporter from the Daily News. ”

Perkins looked at Ricco with obvious interest, the first real display of interest and animation Levine had yet seen from him. “A reporter?”

“That’s right,” said Ricco. He looked at Levine. “What is this?” he asked. He was playing it straight and blank.

“College student,” said Levine. “Name’s Larry Perkins.” He spelled the last name. “He poisoned a fellow student.”

“Oh, yeah?” Ricco glanced at Perkins without much eagerness. “What for?” he asked, looking back at Levine. “Girl? Any sex in it?”

“Afraid not. It was some kind of intellectual motivation. They both wanted to be writers.”

Ricco shrugged. “Two guys with the same job? What’s so hot about that?”

“Well, the main thing,” said Levine, “is that Perkins here wants to be famous. He tried to get famous by being a writer, but that wasn’t working out. So he decided to be a famous murderer.”

Ricco looked at Perkins. “Is that right?” he asked.

Perkins was glowering at them all, but especially at Levine. “What difference does it make?” he said.

“The kid’s going to get the chair, of course,” said Levine blandly. “We have his signed confession and everything. But I’ve kind of taken a liking to him. I’d hate to see him throw his life away without getting something for it. I thought maybe you could get him a nice headline on page two, something he could hang up on the wall of his cell.”

Ricco chuckled and shook his head. “Not a chance of it,” he said. “Even if I wrote the story big, the city desk would knock it down to nothing. This kind of story is a dime a dozen. People kill other people around New York twenty-four hours a day. Unless there’s a good strong sex interest, or it’s maybe one of those mass killings things like the guy who put the bomb in the airplane, a murder in New York is filler stuff. And who needs filler stuff in the spring, when the ball teams are just getting started?”

“You’ve got influence on the paper, Dan,” said Levine. “Couldn’t you at least get him picked up by the wire services?”

“Not a chance in a million. What’s he done that a few hundred other clucks in New York don’t do every year? Sorry, Abe, I’d like to do you the favor, but it’s no go.”

Levine sighed. “Okay, Dan,” he said. “If you say so.”

“Sorry,” said Ricco. He grinned at Perkins. “Sorry, kid,” he said. “You should of knifed a chorus girl or something.”

Ricco left and Levine glanced at Crawley, who was industriously yanking on his ear-lobe and looking bewildered. Levine sat down facing Perkins and said, “Well?”

“Let me alone a minute,” snarled Perkins. “I’m trying to think.”

“I was right, wasn’t I?” asked Levine. “You wanted to go out in a blaze of glory.”

“All right, all right. Al took his way, I took mine. What’s the difference?”

“No difference,” said Levine. He got wearily to his feet, and headed for the door. “I’ll have you sent back to your cell now.”

“Listen,” said Perkins suddenly. “You know I didn’t kill him, don’t you? You know he committed suicide, don’t you?”

Levine opened the door and motioned to the two uniformed cops waiting in the hall.

“Wait,” said Perkins desperately.

“I know, I know,” said Levine. “Gruber really killed himself, and I suppose you burned the note he left.”

“You know damn well I did.”

“That’s too bad, boy.”

Perkins didn’t want to leave. Levine watched deadpan as the boy was led away, and then he allowed himself to relax, let the tension drain out of him. He sagged into a chair and studied the veins on the backs of his hands.

Crawley said, into the silence, “What was all that about, Abe?”

“Just what you heard.”

“Gruber committed suicide?”

“They both did.”

“Well... what are we going to do now?”

“Nothing. We investigated; we got a confession; we made an arrest. Now we’re done.”

“But—”

“But hell!” Levine glared at his partner. “That little fool is gonna go to trial, Jack, and he’s gonna be convicted and go to the chair. He chose it himself. It was his choice. I’m not railroading him; he chose his own end. And he’s going to get what he wanted.”

“But listen, Abe—”

“I won’t listen!”

“Let me... let me get a word in.”

Levine was on his feet suddenly, and now it all came boiling out, the indignation and the rage and the frustration. “Damn it, you don’t know yet! You’ve got another six, seven years yet. You don’t know what it feels like to lie awake in bed at night and listen to your heart skip a beat every once in a while, and wonder when it’s going to skip two beats in a row and you’re dead. You don’t know what it feels like to know your body’s starting to die, it’s starting to get old and die and it’s all downhill from now on.”

“What’s that got to do with—”

“I’ll tell you what! They had the choice! Both of them young, both of them with sound bodies and sound hearts and years ahead of them, decades ahead of them. And they chose to throw it away! They chose to throw away what I don’t have any more. Don’t you think I wish I had that choice? All right! They chose to die, let ’em die!”

Levine was panting from exertion, leaning over the desk and shouting in Jack Crawley’s face. And now, in the sudden silence while he wasn’t speaking, he heard the ragged rustle of his breath, felt the tremblings of nerve and muscle throughout his body. He let himself carefully down into a chair and sat there, staring at the wall, trying to get his breath.

Jack Crawley was saying something, far away, but Levine couldn’t hear him. He was listening to something else, the loudest sound in all the world. The fitful throbbing of his own heart.