The Night and The Music by Lawrence Block Read Free Book Online Page A

elevator. It was crazy.
    “I left her here and went to her apartment. I thought maybe Cary would help me. I rang the bell and nobody answered and I used her key and the chain bolt was on. Then I remembered she used to fasten it from outside. She’d showed me how she could do that. I tried with mine but it was installed properly and there’s not enough play in the chain. I unhooked her bolt and went inside.
    “Then I got the idea. I went back to my apartment and got her clothes and I rushed back and put them on her chair. I opened her window wide. On my way out the door I put her lights on and hooked the chain bolt again.
    “I came back here to my own apartment. I took her pulse again and she was dead, she hadn’t moved or anything, and I couldn’t do anything for her, all I could do was stay out of it, and I, I turned off the lights here, and I opened my own window and dragged her body over to it, and, oh, God in heaven, God, I almost couldn’t make myself do it but it was an accident that she was dead and I was so damned afraid — ”
    “And you dropped her out and closed the window.” He nodded. “And if her neck was broken it was something that happened in the fall. And whatever drugs were in her system was just something she’d taken by herself, and they’d never do an autopsy anyway. And you were home free.”
    “I didn’t hurt her,” he said. “I was just protecting myself.”
    “Do you really believe that, Lane?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You’re not a doctor. Maybe she was dead when you threw her out the window. Maybe she wasn’t.”
    “There was no pulse!”
    “You couldn’t find a pulse. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t any. Did you try artificial respiration? Do you know if there was any brain activity? No, of course not. All you know was that you looked for a pulse and you couldn’t find one.”
    “Her neck was broken.”
    “Maybe. How many broken necks have you had occasion to diagnose? And people sometimes break their necks and live anyway. The point is that you couldn’t have known she was dead and you were too worried about your own skin to do what you should have done. You should have phoned for an ambulance. You know that’s what you should have done and you knew it at the time but you wanted to stay out of it. I’ve known junkies who left their buddies to die of overdoses because they didn’t want to get involved. You went them one better. You put her out a window and let her fall twenty-one stories so that you wouldn’t get involved, and for all you know she was alive when you let go of her.”
    “No,” he said. “No. She was dead.”
    I’d told Ruth Wittlauer she could wind up believing whatever she wanted. People believe what they want to believe. It was just as true for Lane Posmantur.
    “Maybe she was dead,” I said. “Maybe that’s your fault, too.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You said you slapped her to bring her around. What kind of a slap, Lane?”
    “I just tapped her on the face.”
    “Just a brisk slap to straighten her out.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Oh, hell, Lane. Who knows how hard you hit her? Who knows whether you may not have given her a shove? She wasn’t the only one on pills. You said she was flying. Well, I think maybe you were doing a little flying yourself. And you’d been sleepy and you were groggy and she was buzzing around the room and being a general pain in the ass, and you gave her a slap and a shove and another slap and another shove and — ”
    “No!”
    “And she fell down.”
    “It was an accident.”
    “It always is.”
    “I didn’t hurt her. I liked her. She was a good kid, we got on fine, I didn’t hurt her, I—”
    “Put your shoes on, Lane.”
    “What for?”
    “I’m taking you to the police station. It’s a few blocks from here, not very far at all.”
    “Am I under arrest?”
    “I’m not a policeman.” I’d never gotten around to saying who I was and he’d never thought to ask. “My