Эд Макбейн: Bread

“You mind if I talk to those watchmen again?” Carella asked.

“Be my guest,” Parker said. “I’m on vacation. I done all I could before I left, and I don’t intend to do anything else till I get back.” He rose, walked to the wall telephone, ripped a piece of paper from the pad beneath it, and began scribbling on it. “Here’re their names,” he said. “Have fun.”

“Thanks,” Carella said, and got up, and started for the door.

Belatedly and reluctantly, Parker said, “While you’re here, you want a bottle of beer?”

“I’m not allowed to drink on duty,” Carella said, and walked out.

The Art Department of Blake, Fields, and Henderson occupied the entire fourteenth floor of 933 Wilson Avenue. George Aronowitz was a short, stubby man in his early forties, totally bald, with a walrus mustache that compensated for the lack of hair on his head. His office was starkly decorated in white — white walls, white furniture, white lighting fixtures — the better to exhibit the various posters, magazine ads, photographs, and bits and pieces of artwork he’d either done himself, commissioned, or admired. All of these were tacked to the walls with pushpins, so that he resembled a stout deity sitting in a stained-glass window or a mosaic niche. He shook Hawes’s hand briefly, folded his stubby fingers across his chest, leaned back in his swivel chair, and said, “Shoot.”

“I want to know all about the fire last night.”

“I saw the flames at a little after eleven. I called the Fire Department and they came right over.” Aronowitz shrugged. “That’s about it.”

“Hear anything before that?”

“Like what?”

“Any unusual sounds outside? Dog barking, car driving in, ash can being knocked over, glass breaking? Anything out of the ordinary?”

“Let me think,” Aronowitz said. “There’re always dogs barking in that neighborhood, so that wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary. Everybody around there keeps a dog. I hate dogs. Rotten, filthy animals, bite you on the ass for no reason at all.”

“I take it you don’t keep a dog.”

“I wouldn’t keep a dog if it could talk six languages and read and write Sanskrit. I hate dogs. Grimm doesn’t have a dog, either.”

“Well, were there dogs barking last night?”

“There are always dogs barking,” Aronowitz said. “Damn things won’t shut up. One of them barks at a moth or something, and next thing you know, some other hound is yapping at him from over the hill, and he gets answered by another stupid mutt, and they keep going all night long, barking at nothing. It’s a miracle anybody gets any sleep around there. And it’s supposed to be an exclusive neighborhood! If I had my way, I’d poison every dog in the United States of America. Then I’d have them stuffed and put on wheels, and anybody who’s a dog lover could buy himself a stuffed one and wheel him around the house, and he wouldn’t bark all night long. God, I hate dogs!”

“Did you, ah, hear anything besides dogs barking last night?”

“Who can hear anything with all those mutts howling?” Aronowitz asked. He was becoming very agitated.

Hawes thought he had best change the subject before Aronowitz began frothing at the mouth. “Let’s try to work out a timetable, okay? Maybe that’ll help us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for example, what time did you get home last night?”

“Six-thirty,” Aronowitz said.

“Did you pass the Grimm house?”

“Sure. He’s right next door, I pass the house every day.”

“Everything seem all right at that time?”

“Everything seemed fine.”

“Nobody lurking around or anything?”

“Nobody. Well, wait a minute, the gardener was watering the lawn at the Franklin house across the way. But he’s their regular gardener, he’s there maybe three, four times a week. I wouldn’t consider that lurking, would you? You should see the dog they’ve got, a big Great Dane who comes bounding out of the driveway like a lion, he could tear out your throat in one gulp. God, what a monster!”

“What’d you do then? After you got home?”

“I changed my clothes, and I had a couple of martinis before dinner.”

“Are you married, Mr. Aronowitz?”

“Fourteen years to the same woman. She hates dogs, too.”

“Did she hear anything unusual last night?”

“No. At least, she didn’t mention anything.”

“Okay, you had dinner at... what time?”

“About seven-thirty, eight o’clock.”

“Then what?”

“We went outside and sat on the terrace, and had some brandy and listened to some music.”

“Until what time?”

“Ten o’clock.”

“No strange sounds outside?”

“None.”

“What’d you do then?”

“Well,” Aronowitz said, and shrugged.

“Yes?”

“Well... this is sort of personal.” He hesitated, looked down at his folded hands, and shyly said, “We made love.”

“Okay,” Hawes said.

“We didn’t hear anything while we were making love,” Aronowitz said.

“Okay,” Hawes said.

“Afterwards, we went upstairs. I was getting ready for bed when I happened to look out the window. Grimm’s lights were still on, and the place was in flames.”

“In other words, between the time you got home and the time you went upstairs to bed, nothing unusual happened.”

“Well, yes,” Aronowitz said.

“What?” Hawes said, leaning forward.

“We made love on the terrace. That’s unusual. We usually do it upstairs in the bedroom.”

“Yes, but aside from that...”

“Nothing.”

“Mr. Aronowitz, did you happen to glance over at the Grimm house any time before you noticed the fire?”

“I guess so. We were on the terrace, and the terrace faces Grimm’s house, so I guess we looked at it occasionally. Why?”

“This was after dinner, am I correct? You were on the terrace until about ten o’clock...”

“Well, even later,” Aronowitz said. “We were listening to music until ten o’clock, but after that...”

“Yes, I understand. What I’m trying to find out is whether there were any lights showing in the Grimm house?”

“Lights? You mean...”

“At any time during the night, did you notice lights in the Grimm house?”

“Well... no. I guess not. I think the house was dark.”

“But the lights were on when you noticed the fire.”

“Yes,” Aronowitz said, and frowned.

“Thank you,” Hawes said.

“I don’t get it,” Aronowitz said. “Why would anybody turn on the lights if he was about to set a fire?”

Except in cases of pyromania, where the perpetrator acts without conscious motive, there are very real reasons for arson, and every cop in the world knows them by heart.

Parker had checked out Grimm’s competitors in the brisk wooden-goods trade, and expressed the opinion that none of them had sufficient motive for committing a crime as heavy as arson. Well, even if Carella respected Parker’s judgment (which he didn’t), he’d have been unwilling to accept such a sweeping acquittal. Competition was possibly the strongest motive for arson, and Carella wasn’t about to dismiss Grimm’s business rivals as suspects until he’d checked them out thoroughly himself. Nor was he willing to dismiss insurance fraud (First Comic: “Hello, Sam, I hear you had a big fire in your store last night.” Second Comic: “Shhh, that’s tomorrow night!”) or the destruction of books and records as alternate motives, even though Parker seemed convinced that Grimm was clean. As for extortion, intimidation, or revenge, those possibilities would also depend on what they could learn about Mr. Roger Grimm. For all Carella knew, Grimm may have been hobnobbing with all sorts of criminal types who’d finally decided to make things hot for him. Or maybe there were a dozen people Grimm had screwed in the past, all of whom might have been capable of setting the torch to his house, his warehouse, and also the brim of his straw hat. Carella would have to wait and see.