Эд Макбейн - Bread

“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.