The Night and The Music Read Online Free PDF

cop.”
    “You can always sue me.”
    “You can’t take that stereo. You can’t even be in this room.”
    “That’s right.” I was itching for him. I could feel my blood in my veins. “I’m bigger than you,” I said, “and I’m a whole lot harder, and I’d get a certain amount of satisfaction in beating the crap out of you. I don’t like you. It bothers me that you didn’t kill her because somebody did and it would be a pleasure to hang it on you. But you didn’t do it. Unplug the stereo and pack it up so I can carry it or I’m going to take you apart.”
    I meant it and he realized as much. He thought about taking a shot at me and he decided it wasn’t worth it. Maybe it wasn’t all that much of a stereo. While he was unhooking it I dumped a carton of his clothes on the floor and we packed the stereo in it. On my way out the door he said he could always go to the cops and tell them what I’d done.
    “I don’t think you want to do that,” I said.
    “You said somebody killed her.”
    “That’s right.”
    “You just making noise?”
    “No.”
    “You’re serious?” I nodded. “She didn’t kill herself? I thought it was open and shut, from what the cops said. It’s interesting. In a way, I guess you could say it’s a load off mymind.”
    “How do you figure that?”
    He shrugged. “I thought, you know, maybe she was upset it wasn’t working out between us. At the Web the vibes were on the heavy side, if you follow me. Our thing was falling apart and I was seeing Sunny and she was seeing other guys and I thought maybe that was what did it for her. I suppose I blamed myself, like.”
    “I can see it was eating away at you.”
    “I just said it was on my mind.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “Man,” he said, “ nothing eats away at me. You let things get to you that way and it’s death.”
    I shouldered the carton and headed on down the stairs.
    Ruth Wittlauer had supplied me with an Irving Place address and a GRamercy 5 telephone number. I called the number and didn’t get an answer, so I walked over to Hudson and caught a northbound cab. There were no messages for me at the hotel desk. I put Paula’s stereo in my room, tried Ruth’s number again, then walked over to the Eighteenth Precinct. Guzik had gone off duty but the desk man told me to try a restaurant around the corner, and I found him there drinking draft Heinekens with another cop, named Birnbaum. I sat at their table and ordered bourbon for myself and another round for the two of them.
    I said, “I have a favor to ask. I’d like you to seal Paula Wittlauer’s apartment.”
    “We closed that out,” Guzik reminded me.
    “I know, and the boyfriend closed out the dead girl’s stereo.” I told him how I’d reclaimed the unit from Cary McCloud. “I’m working for Ruth, Paula’s sister. The least I can do is make sure she gets what’s coming to her. She’s not up to cleaning out the apartment now and it’s rented through the first of October. McCloud’s got a key and God knows how many other people have keys. If you slap a seal on the door it’d keep the grave robbers away.”
    “I guess we can do that. Tomorrow all right?”
    “Tonight would be better.”
    “What’s there to steal? You got the stereo out of there and I didn’t see anything else around that was worth much.”
    “Things have a sentimental value.”
    He eyed me, frowned. “I’ll make a phone call,” he said. He went to the booth in the back and I jawed with Birnbaum until he came back and told me it was all taken care of.
    I said, “Another thing I was wondering. You must have had a photographer on the scene. Somebody to take pictures of the body and all that.”
    “Sure. That’s routine.”
    “Did he go up to the apartment while he was at it? Take a roll of interior shots?”
    “Yeah. Why?”
    “I thought maybe I could have a look at them.”
    “What for?”
    “You never know. The reason I knew it was Paula’s stereo in McCloud’s