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.