Bread (87th Precinct)

by McBain, Ed

Hawes walked slowly and deliberately to the telephone on one corner of the desk. He lifted the receiver, dialed Frederick 7-8024, and said, “Dave, this is Cotton Hawes. We’ve got a police officer manhandling a witness here—unnecessary use of force and abuse of authority. Let me talk to the lieutenant, please.”

  “Whose side are you on, anyway?” Ollie said, but he released Worthy’s shirtfront. “Put up the phone, I was just having a little fun. Mr. Worthy knows I was just kidding around. Don’t you, Mr. Worthy?”

  “No, I don’t,” Worthy said.

  “Put up the phone,” Ollie said.

  Hawes replaced the phone on its cradle.

  “Sure,” Ollie said. He sniffed once, tucked his shirt back into his trousers where it had ridden up over his belt, and then walked to the door. “I’ll be back, Mr. Worthy,” he said. “Soon as I find out a little more about this company here. See you, huh?” He waved to Hawes and walked out.

  “You okay?” Hawes asked Worthy.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Were you telling the truth? Did Charlie Harrod really take pictures for you?”

  “That’s what he did,” Worthy said. “We’re looking for buildings that’ve been abandoned. Once we find them, we do title searches and then try to locate the landlords—which isn’t always an easy job. If we can get to them before the city repossesses a building…” Worthy paused. In explanation, he said, “If a building’s been abandoned, you see, the landlord stops paying taxes on it, and the city can foreclose.”

  “Yes, I know that,” Hawes said.

  “What the city does then is offer the building to any city agency that might want to use it. If none of them want it, the city offers it for sale at public auction. They have seven or eight of these auctions every year, usually at one of the big hotels downtown. Trouble is, you get into a bidding situation then, and so we try to find the landlord before it comes to that.”

  “What do you do when you find him?” Hawes asked.

  “We offer to take the building off his hands. Pay the back taxes for him, give him a little cash besides, to sweeten the pot and make it worth his while. Usually, he’s delighted to go along. You’ve got to remember that he abandoned the building in the first place.”

  “What do you use for capital?” Hawes asked.

  “We’re privately financed. There are black men in Diamondback with money to invest in projects such as this. The return they expect on an investment is only slightly more than we would pay a bank for interest on a loan.”

  “Then why not go to a bank?”

  “We’ve been to every bank in the city,” Chase said.

  “None of them seem too enthusiastic about the possibility of developing property in Diamondback.”

  “How many buildings have you bought so far?”

  “Eight or ten,” Worthy said. He gestured toward the wall again. “Those marked with the red crosses there, plus several others.”

  “Did Harrod find those buildings for you?”

  “Find them? What do you mean?”

  “I take it he served as a scout. When he saw a building that looked abandoned…”

  “No, no,” Chase said. “We told him which buildings to photograph. Buildings we already knew were abandoned.”

  “Why’d you want pictures of them?”

  “Well, for various reasons. Our investors will often want to see the buildings we hope to acquire. It’s much easier to show them photographs than to accompany them all over Diamondback. And, of course, our architects need photographs for their development studies. Some of these buildings are beyond renovation.”

  “Who are your architects?”

  “A firm called Design Associates. Here in Diamondback.”

  “Black men,” Chase said.

  “This is a black project,” Worthy said. “That doesn’t make it racist, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Did Harrod take these gas-station pictures, too?”

  “Yes,” Worthy said. “That’s another project.”

  “An allied project,” Chase said.

  “How long was he working for you?”

  “Since we started.”

  “About a year?”

  “More or less.”

  “Know anything about his personal life?”

  “Not much. His mother lives alone in a building off The Stem. Charlie was living with a girl named Elizabeth Benjamin, over on Kruger Street. She’s been up here once or twice. In fact, she called him while he was here today.”

  “What was he doing here?”

  “We gave him a list of some buildings we wanted photographed.”

  “What time was this?”

  “He got here about eleven or so, stayed maybe a half hour.”

  “What about the girl?” Hawes said. “Is she a hooker?”

  Worthy hesitated. “I couldn’t say for sure. She’s very cheap-looking, but that doesn’t mean much nowadays.”

  “What’d you pay Harrod for taking these pictures?”

  “We paid him by the hour.”

  “How much?”

  “Three dollars. Plus expenses.”

  “Expenses?”

  “For the film. And for developing and printing it. And for the enlargements you see here on the wall. Charlie did all that himself. He was very good.”

  “But you say he worked only part time.”

  “Yes.”

  “How much would you say he earned in a week?”

  “On the average? Fifty dollars.”

  “How’d he manage to drive a Cadillac and wear hand-tailored suits on fifty bucks a week?” Hawes asked. “I have no idea,” Worthy said.

  Maybe Elizabeth Benjamin had some ideas.

  Maybe Detective Oliver Weeks, in his desire to pin something on Worthy and Chase, had rushed back to the Eight-Three and was at this very moment searching through his files and calling the Identification Section, instead of being where he should have been, which was at 1512 Kruger, in Apartment 6A, shaking down the joint and finding out what Elizabeth knew about Harrod’s source of income.

  She was coming out of the apartment as Hawes approached the sixth-floor landing. She was wearing the clothes he had seen her in earlier, her high-stepping street clothes, and she was carrying two matched valises, one of which she put down on the floor. She pulled the door shut behind her, and was reaching for the valise when Hawes stepped onto the landing and said, “Going someplace, Liz?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Clear the hell out of this city.”

  “Not yet,” he said. “We’ve got something to talk about.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a dead man named Charlie Harrod.”

  “Reason I’m getting out of this city,” Elizabeth said, “is because I don’t want nobody talking about a dead girl named me. Now you mind getting out of my way, please?”

  “Unlock the door, Liz,” Hawes said. “We’re going back inside.”

  Elizabeth sighed, put down both valises, swung her shoulder bag onto her abdomen, unclasped it, and was reaching into it when she saw the revolver appear in Hawes’s fist. Her eyes opened wide.

  “Bring your hand out slowly,” Hawes said. “Wide open and palm up.”

  “I was only going for the key, man,” Elizabeth said, and withdrew her hand and turned the open palm toward Hawes, the key to the apartment resting on it.

  “Turn the bag over,” Hawes said. “Empty it on the floor.”

  “Ain’t nothing deadly in it.”

  “Empty it, anyway.”

  Elizabeth turned the bag over. As she had promised, there was nothing deadly in it. Hawes felt a trifle foolish, but no more foolish than he would have felt if she’d later pulled a .22.

  “Okay?” she said, and began putting the collection of lipsticks, mascara, Kleenex, Life Savers, address book, wallet, loose change, ballpoint pen, postage stamps, and grocery list back into the bag. “What’d you expect to find in there?” she said. “An arsenal?”

  “Just hurry it
up,” Hawes said, still mildly embarrassed.

  “No, tell me what you thought was in there, Officer,” she said sweetly. “A squadron of B-52s?” She snapped the bag shut, threw it over her shoulder, and then turned to unlock the door. “The whole Sixth Fleet?” she said, and threw the door wide and picked up the valises.

  Hawes followed her into the kitchen, closing and locking the door behind them. Elizabeth put both bags down, went directly to the sink, leaned against it, and folded her arms across her breasts.

  “You forgot to turn on the water tap,” Hawes said.

  “Hell with it,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t care what they hear no more.”

  “Is the place bugged?”

  “From top to bottom. Can’t even go to the John without somebody listening.”

  “What about the phone?”

  “Charlie busted the mike they had in there.”

  “Who’s bugging the place, Liz?”

  “You got me.”

  “What was Charlie into?”

  “Photography.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Are you a hooker?”

  “No, Officer, I am not a hooker.”

  “You’re unemployed, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And Charlie was earning fifty dollars a week, right?”

  “I guess so. I don’t know what he earned.”

  “Where’d he get the Cadillac?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “And the fancy threads?”

  “Didn’t say.”

  “Have you ever been arrested, Liz?”

  “Never in my life.”

  “I can check.”

  “So check.”

  “Who’re you running from, Liz?”

  “I’m running from whoever killed Charlie.”

  “Got any idea who that might be?”

  “No.”

  “Where’s the bedroom?”

  “What you got in mind?” Elizabeth asked, and grinned nastily.

  “I want to look through Charlie’s things.”

  “His things’ve been looked through,” Elizabeth said. “Four times already. The pigs’ve been in and out of this place like it was a subway station.”

  “The police have been here before?”

  “Not while we were home.”

  “Then how do you know they were here?”

  “Charlie set traps for them. Pigs ain’t exactly bright, you know. Charlie found those bugs ten minutes after they planted them.”

  “Then why didn’t he rip them out?”

  “He was jerking them off. He got a kick out of feeding them phony information.”

  “About what?”

  “About whatever they wanted to hear.”

  “What did they want to hear, Liz?”

  “Haven’t the faintest,” she said.

  “Why were the police interested in Charlie Harrod?”

  “Who knows? He was an interesting person,” Elizabeth said, and shrugged.

  “Was he your pimp?” Hawes asked.

  “I ain’t a hooker, so why would I need a pimp?”

  “All right, show me the bedroom.”

  “In there,” she said.

  “Ladies first.”

  “Yeah,” she said, and led him through the apartment.

  There were two closets in the bedroom. The first one contained a dozen suits, two overcoats, three sports jackets, six pairs of shoes, two fedoras, and a ski parka. The labels in most of the suits, both overcoats, and one of the sports jackets were from a store specializing in expensive, hand-tailored men’s clothing. Hawes closed the door and went to the second closet. It was locked.

  “What’s in here?” he asked.

  “Search me,” Elizabeth said.

  “Have you got a key for it?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’ll have to kick it in,” Hawes said.

  “You need a warrant for that, don’t you?”

  Hawes didn’t bother answering. He backed away from the door, raised his right leg, and released it pistonlike and flat-footed against the lock. He had to kick it three more times before the lock sprang.

  “I’m sure you need a warrant for that,” Elizabeth said.

  Hawes opened the door. The closet wasn’t a closet at all. Instead, it was a small room equipped as a darkroom, complete with steel developing tank, print washer, dryer, and enlarger. The room’s single window was painted black, and a naked red safelight hung over a countertop that rested on a bank of low metal filing cabinets. The countertop was covered with eight-by-ten white-enamel trays, metal tongs, and packages of developer, hypo, and enlarging paper. Wires had been tacked from one wall to the other, hung with photography clips. Hawes tried all the file drawers under the counter, but they were locked.

  “You wouldn’t have the key to these, either, I suppose,” he said.

  “I don’t have the key to nothing but the front door,” Elizabeth said.

  Hawes nodded and closed the door. The bedroom dresser was on the wall opposite the bed, alongside the single window in the room. He went through each drawer methodically, poking through Harrod’s shirts and shorts, socks and handkerchiefs. In Harrod’s jewelry box, tucked under three sets of long red underwear in the bottom drawer, he found eight pairs of cuff links, a wristwatch with a broken crystal, a high school graduation ring, four tie tacks, and a small key. He took the key out of the box and showed it to Elizabeth.

  “Recognize it?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, let’s try it,” Hawes said, and went back into the darkroom. The key did not fit any of the file drawers. Sighing, Hawes went out to Harrod’s dresser and replaced the key where he’d found it. With the girl following him, he went into the kitchen and carefully inspected the cabinet over the sink. The bug, as he’d suspected, was tacked up under the bottom wooden trim. He followed the wire up to the molding where wall joined ceiling, and then across the room to the kitchen window. Stepping out onto the fire escape, he studied the rear brick wall. The wire ran clear up to the roof and then out of sight. He climbed back into the room again.

  “The one in the John is behind the toilet tank,” Elizabeth said. “There’s another one in the bedroom, behind the picture of Jesus, and there’s also one in the living-room floor lamp.”

  “And you’ve got no idea who planted them?”

  Elizabeth shrugged. Hawes went back to the cabinet and searched through the shelves. Then he went through the drawers in the cabinet flanking the sink, and the single drawer in the kitchen table.

  He found the pistol in the refrigerator.

  It was wrapped in aluminum foil, and it was hidden at the rear of the bottom shelf, behind a plastic container of leftover string beans.

  The gun was a Smith & Wesson 9-mm Automatic. Tenting his handkerchief over the butt, Hawes pulled out the magazine. There were six cartridges in the magazine, and he knew there would be one in the firing chamber.

  “I don’t suppose this belongs to you,” he said.

  “Never saw it before in my life,” Elizabeth said.

  “Just sprang up there among the string beans and celery, huh?” Hawes said.

  “Looks that way.”

  “Happen to have a license for it?”

  “I just told you it’s not mine.”

  “Is it Charlie’s?”

  “I don’t know whose it is.”

  Hawes nodded, shoved the magazine back into the butt, tagged the gun, wrapped it, and stuck it into his jacket pocket. He gave Elizabeth a receipt for it, and then wrote his name and the squadroom telephone number on a slip of paper and handed it to her. “If you remember anything about the gun,” he said, “here’s where you can reach me.”

  “There’s nothing to remember.”

  “Take my number, anyway. I’ll be back later,” he said. “I suggest you stick around.”

  “I’ve got other plans,” Elizabeth said.

  “Suit yourself,�
�� Hawes said, and hoped it sounded like a warning. He unlocked the door and left the apartment.

  On the way down to the street, he wondered if he shouldn’t have arrested her on the spot. The law sometimes puzzled him. He was now in possession of certain facts and certain pieces of evidence, but he wasn’t sure any of them added up to grounds for a legal arrest:

  (1) Frank Reardon had been shot to death with two bullets from a 9-mm pistol.

  (2) Hawes had found a Smith & Wesson 9-mm pistol on the premises occupied jointly by Charles Harrod and Elizabeth Benjamin.

  (3) The gun had an eight plus one-shot capacity, but there were only seven bullets in it when he’d slid open the magazine for a look.

  (4) Harrod’s name had been listed in Reardon’s skimpy address book.

  (5) Barbara Loomis, the super’s wife, had described as Reardon’s visitors in the week or so before the fire, a black man and a black girl who sounded a lot like Harrod and Elizabeth.

  In other words, take this fellow Reardon. He’s been seen socializing with two other people. He is found shot to death with a 9-mm pistol, and a 9-mm pistol is later found in the refrigerator of those very two people with whom he’d earlier been socializing. Pretty strong circumstantial stuff, huh?

  But socializing is not a crime, and keeping a gun in your refrigerator doesn’t necessarily mean you used it to kill someone, no matter how many bullets are in it. In fact, if you have a license for a gun, you can keep the gun in your refrigerator, your breadbox, or even your hat. It is not difficult to get a gun in the United States of America. People in America keep guns the way Englishmen keep pussycats. The reason people in America keep guns is because America is a pioneer nation, and one never knows when the Indians will attack. (Hawes knew, as a matter of absolute fact, that a band of fanatic Apaches in war paint had only the week before attacked an apartment building on Lakeshore Drive in Chicago.) That was why the National Rifle Association did all that lobbying in Congress—to make sure that pioneer Americans retained the right to bear arms against hostile Indians.

  Elizabeth Benjamin and Charlie Harrod kept a gun in their refrigerator, so Hawes assumed they were at least as American as any Cherokee. But if an American had a license for a gun, carry or premises, you could not arrest him unless he committed a crime with the weapon. Until Ballistics told Hawes whether or not the suspect pistol was indeed the one that had chopped down old Frank Reardon, he did not have much he could pin on Elizabeth. He might be able to arrest her for keeping a gun without a premises permit, but she had claimed the gun was not hers, and the apartment she lived in was Charlie Harrod’s, and he couldn’t arrest Charlie for anything because Charlie was dead.