Эд Макбейн - Bread

“When does it start looking bad?” Carella asked.

“Give me a minute, will you?” Ollie said. He consulted his notes, which he had fastidiously hand-lettered onto the backs of several printed Detective Division forms, and then looked up again. “Okay, so these guys are in the business of buying property and redeveloping it, right? So I called Land Transfer Records, and I found out these guys bought a total of nine abandoned buildings in Diamondback since they went into business. They bought all those buildings from their original owners, and the prices paid were less than what they would’ve got them for at auction. You want to hear some of the prices?”

“Sure, why not?” Carella said.

“The prices are important,” Ollie said. “For example, they paid sixty-three hundred for a three-story brick building on the south side of Thorp Avenue; twenty-seven hundred for a two-story frame on Kosinsky Boulevard; thirty-eight hundred for a three-story limestone facade on Hull and Twenty-fifth, and like that. Total cost for the nine buildings was forty-eight thousand seven hundred fifty. You got that?”

“I’ve got it,” Carella said, not so sure he had.

“So next I called License and Building Records, and I learned that Diamondback Development, even though they now have nine buildings that they own outright and a firm of architects making drawings for them, has only renovated one building in all this time — a dump over on St. Sebastian Avenue. The architects are a firm called Design Associates on Ainsley. I called them and they told me their fee for the drawings had been fifty thousand dollars.”

“How’d you know who the architects were?”

“I called Worthy and Chase and they told me, how do you think? Those two creeps are anxious to establish they’re legit; they told me the name of their architects, and also the name of their bank — which was their first mistake.”

“What’s the bank?”

“Bankers First on Culver Avenue, three blocks from their office. I called about four o’clock, it must’ve been. They close the doors at three, you know, but they keep working inside there till five, sometimes six o’clock. I spoke to the manager, a guy named Fred Epstein, and he told me Diamondback Development had a checking account and also a safety deposit box. I asked him if I could take a peek in the box, and he said not without a court order — you need a goddamn court order for a coffee break nowadays. So I ran out of the office, and downtown, and I got a municipal judge to write me the order, and I got uptown again around five and went through the box, and guess what?”

“What?” Carella said.

“There’s close to eight hundred thousand in cash in that box. Now that’s a pretty hefty sum for three bare-assed develop ers who started their business with five thousand nine hundred seventy-five dollars, don’t you think?”

“I think so, yes.”

“And who, don’t forget, have already laid out close to a hundred thousand buying buildings and getting architects to make drawings for them. Not to mention what it must’ve cost to do that one renovation job. Where’d all that money come from, Carella?”

“I don’t know,” Carella said.

“Neither do I.”

“Did you tell all this to Hawes?”

“I knew it when I called him, but there was one other thing I wanted to check before I filled him in.”

“What was that?”

“The third guy in Diamondback Development. Oscar Hemmings. The treasurer.”

“Did you get a line on him?”

“Yeah, he lives in that building on Saint Sebastian, the one Diamondback Development renovated. I plan to look him up tomorrow. I already checked with the IS, he hasn’t got a record. Neither has Worthy, by the way. Chase is another story. He took a fall five years ago, for Burglary/Two, was sentenced to ten at Castleview, got out on parole in three-and-a-half.”

“When was that?”

“When he was released? Be two years come November.”

“Has the FBI got anything on any of them?”

“Got a request in now,” Ollie said. “I should be hearing pretty soon.”

“You’ve been busy, Ollie,” Carella said. He did not like Ollie, but he made no attempt to hide his admiration for what Ollie had accomplished in the space of several hours. This was what he had tried to explain to Hawes earlier. Fat Ollie Weeks was a terrible person, but in many respects a good cop. Throwing away his investigative instincts and his dogged ferreting-out of facts would be tantamount to throwing away the baby with the bathwater. And yet, working with him rankled. So what was one to do? In all good conscience, what was one to do? Treat him like a computer spewing out information, thereby dehumanizing him and committing the same offense that so offended? Ollie Weeks was a problem. Moreover, Carella suspected he was a problem without a solution. He was what he was. There was no taking him aside and calmly explaining the facts of life to him. “Uh, Ollie baby, it’s not nice, these things you say. Some people may find them offensive, you dig, Ollie?” How do you explain to a crocodile that it’s not nice to eat other animals? “It’s in my nature,” he’ll reply. “That’s why God gave me such sharp teeth.” God alone knew why He had given Ollie Weeks such sharp teeth, but short of knocking them out of his mouth, Carella didn’t know quite what to do about them.

“You’re damn right I’ve been busy,” Ollie said, and grinned, thereby adding modesty to all his other virtues.

Both men heard voices in the corridor outside, and turned toward the slatted railing. Hawes was coming into the squadroom, followed by Kissman, who was carrying a tape recorder. Kissman looked older than Carella remembered him. He suddenly wondered if he looked the same way to Kissman.

“Hi, Alan,” he said.

“Martin,” Kissman said.

“Martin, Martin, right,” Carella said, and nodded. He was tired, his head was full of too many figures. Money, money, money, it always got down to love or money in the crime business. “This is Ollie Weeks of the Eight-Three. Martin Kissman, Narcotics.”

The men shook hands briefly, and looked each other over, like advertising executives wondering if they’d be working together on the same account.

“Where’s the girl?” Ollie asked, suddenly realizing Hawes had gone out to bust Elizabeth Benjamin and had come back with a Narcotics cop instead.

“In Diamondback Hospital,” Hawes said.

“With two broken legs, some broken ribs, and a broken jaw,” Kissman said.

“Why didn’t you call me?” Ollie said to Hawes, offended.

“It all happened too fast,” Hawes answered. “But Kissman’s got a tape of what went on in the apartment...”

“A tape?” Ollie said. He was enormously confused. He blinked his eyes and reached for a handkerchief. Mopping his brow, he said, “I don’t know what’s going on here,” which was true enough.

Hawes explained it to him while Kissman set up the recorder. Then the four men sat in straight-backed chairs around the desk as Kissman pressed the PLAY button. The tape started with a sequence that had been recorded earlier in the day:

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

“Who’s that?” Ollie whispered.

“The girl,” Hawes whispered back.

— The police have been here before?

— Not while we were home.

— Then how do you know they were here?

“Who’s the guy?” Ollie asked.

“Me,” Hawes said.

“You?” Ollie said, even more confused.

— Charlie set traps for them. Pigs ain’t exactly bright, you know. Charlie found those bugs—