Эд Макбейн - Bread

“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.”