Эд Макбейн - Bread

“How old are you, Sammy?” Meyer asked.

“Me? I’ll be twenty on the sixth of September.”

Meyer shook his head and walked away. Brown unlocked the handcuff and led Sammy out of the squadroom, to where he would be booked for Third-Degree Burglary at the muster desk downstairs. He had told them nothing new.

“So now what?” Meyer said to Carella. “Now we book him on the smash-and-grab, and he’ll be convicted, of course, and what did we accomplish? We sent another addict to prison. That’s like sending diabetics to prison.” He shook his head again and, almost to himself, said, “A nice Jewish boy.”

Frank Reardon had lived in an eight-story building on Avenue J, across the street from a huge multilevel parking lot. On Friday morning the electric company was tearing up the street outside in an attempt to get at some underground cables, and cars were stalled all up and down the avenue as Hawes rang the bell to the superintendent’s apartment. The apartment was on street level, at the far end of a narrow alley on the left-hand side of the building. Even here, insulated from the street outside, Hawes could hear the insistent stutter of the pneumatic drills, the impatient honking of horns, the shouts of the motorists, the angry retorts of the men tearing up the street. He rang the bell again, unable to hear anything over the din and wondered if it was working.

The door opened suddenly. The woman standing there in the shaded doorway to the apartment was perhaps forty-five years old, a blond slattern wearing only a soiled pink slip and fluffy pink house slippers. She looked up at Hawes out of pale, cool green eyes, flicked an ash from her cigarette, and said, “Yeah?”

“Detective Hawes,” he said, “87th Squad. I’m looking for the super.”

“I’m his wife,” the woman said. She dragged on her cigarette, let out a stream of smoke, studied Hawes again, and said, “Mind showing me your badge?”

Hawes took out his wallet and opened it to where his shield was pinned to the leather opposite a Lucite-encased identification card. “Is your husband home?” he asked.

“He’s downtown picking up some hardware,” the woman said. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m investigating a homicide,” Hawes said. “I’d like to take a look at Frank Reardon’s apartment.”

“He kill somebody?” the woman asked.

“The other way around.”

“Figures,” she said knowingly. “Let me put something on, and get the key.”

She went back into the apartment without closing the door. Hawes waited outside in the cool alleyway. The forecasters had predicted a high of ninety-four degrees, a humidity reading of 81 percent, and an unsatisfactory air-pollution level. On the street outside, the motorists were honking and yelling, and the drills were yammering. Through the open doorway, Hawes saw the woman pull the slip over her head. She had been naked under the garment, and she moved silently across the room now, her body flashing white as she receded deeper into the dimness. When she came back to the doorway, her hair was combed and she had put on fresh lipstick, a short green cotton smock, and white sandals.

“Ready?” she said.

He followed her out of the alley into the sudden blinding heat of the day, and then to the front door of the building and up the stairs to the third floor. The woman said nothing. The hallways and the steps were scrupulously clean and smelled of Lysol. At 10:00 in the morning the building was silent. The woman stopped outside an apartment marked with the brass numerals 34. As she unlocked the door, she said, “How’d he get killed?”

“Someone shot him,” Hawes said.

“Figures,” the woman said, and opened the door, and led him into the apartment.

“He live here alone?” Hawes asked.

“All alone,” the woman said.

There were three rooms in the apartment: a kitchen, a living room, and a bedroom. Except for some dirty dishes in the sink and a bed that had been hastily made, the apartment was neat and clean. Hawes raised the shades on both living-room windows, and sunlight streamed into the room “What’d you say your name was?” the woman asked.

“Detective Hawes.”

“I’m Barbara Loomis,” she said.

The living room was sparsely and inexpensively furnished: a couch, an easy chair, a standing floor lamp, a television set. An imitation oil painting of a shepherd and a dog in a pastoral landscape hung over the couch. An ashtray with several cigar butts in it was on the coffee table.

Barbara sat in one of the easy chairs and crossed her legs. “Where’d you get that white streak in your hair?” she asked.

“I was stabbed by a building superintendent,” Hawes said.

“Really?” Barbara said, and laughed unexpectedly. “You just can’t trust supers,” she said, still laughing. “Nor their wives, either,” she added, and looked at Hawes.

“Did Reardon smoke cigars?” he asked.

“I don’t know what he smoked,” Barbara said. “I still don’t see why it’s white.”

“They had to shave the hair to get at the wound. It grew back white.”

“It’s cute,” Barbara said.

Hawes went out of the living room and into the bedroom. Barbara stayed in the easy chair, watching him through the doorframe. There was a bed, a dresser, an end table with a lamp on it, and a straight-backed chair over which was draped a striped sports shirt. A package of Camel cigarettes and a matchbook advertising an art school were in the pocket of the shirt. The bed was covered with a white chenille spread. Hawes pulled back the spread and looked at the pillows. There were lipstick stains on one of them. He went to what he assumed was the closet, and opened the door. Four suits, a sports jacket, and two pairs of slacks were hanging on the wooden bar. A pair of brown shoes and a pair of black shoes were on the floor. A blue woolen bathrobe was hanging on the door hook. On the shelf above the bar, there was a blue peaked cap and a gray fedora. Hawes closed the door and went to the dresser. Opening the top drawer, he asked, “How long was Reardon living here?”

“Moved in about a year ago,” Barbara said.

“What kind of a tenant was he?”

“Quiet, for the most part. Brought women in every now and then, but who cared about that? Man’s entitled to a little comfort every now and then, don’t you think?”

The top drawer of the dresser contained handkerchiefs, socks, ties, and a candy tin with a painted floral design. Hawes lifted off the cover. There were six sealed condoms in the tin, a photostated copy of Reardon’s birth certificate, his discharge papers from the United States Navy, and a passbook for a savings account at one of the city’s larger banks. Hawes opened the passbook.

“Can’t say I cared much for the company he was keeping these past few weeks,” Barbara said.

“What kind of company was that?” Hawes asked.

“Coloreds,” Barbara said.

The passbook showed that Frank Reardon had deposited $5,000 in his account on August 2, five days before the warehouse fire. His previous deposits, on July 15 and June 24, had been for $42.00 and $17.00 respectively. The balance, before the $5,000 deposit, had been $376.44. Hawes put the passbook into his jacket pocket.

“I got nothing against coloreds,” Barbara said, “so long as they stay uptown. He had these two big coloreds coming here, and last week he had this bitch come in stinking of perfume. Couldn’t get her smell out of the hallway for a week. You should’ve seen her. Hair out to here, earrings down to here, skirt way up to here.” Barbara pulled her smock higher in illustration. “Spent a couple of nights with him, used to wait for him outside the building till he got home from work.”