Эд Макбейн: Bread

It was August, and the temperature outside was ninety-six degrees, and the squadroom was not air-conditioned, and Detective Steve Carella was hot. The three rotating electric fans did little more than circulate air that was stale and moist, and there was a hole in one of the window screens (put there by some fun-loving, rock-throwing youngsters) that allowed the entrance of all kinds of flying vermin. A pusher was asleep in the detention cage in one corner of the room, and the phones on two vacant desks were ringing, and Cotton Hawes was talking to his girlfriend on another phone at another desk, and Carella’s shirt was sticking to his back and he wished he was still on vacation.

This was Wednesday, and he had come back to work on Monday, and half the 87th Squad (or so it seemed) had in turn gone on vacation, and here he was sitting behind a typewriter and a pile of paperwork, a tall, wide-shouldered man who normally looked athletic and lean and somewhat Chinese, what with brown eyes that slanted downward in his face, but who now looked wilted and worn and weary and beleaguered, like a man whose undershorts are slowly creeping up into the crack of his behind, which his were most surely and inexorably doing on this miserable hot day in August.

The man sitting opposite him was named Roger Grimm, no relation to the brothers Jakob and Wilhelm. He looked cool and crisp, albeit agitated, a dumpy little man in his late forties, conservatively dressed in a seersucker suit, pale blue shirt, blue tie of a deeper tint, and white shoes. He was holding a lightweight summer straw in his hands, and he demanded to know where Detective Parker was.

“Detective Parker is on vacation,” Carella said.

“So who’s handling my case?” Grimm asked.

“What case is that?” Carella said.

“The arson,” Grimm said. “My warehouse was burned down last week.”

“And Detective Parker was handling the case?”

“Yes, Detective Parker was handling the case.”

“Well, Detective Parker is on vacation.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Grimm asked. “I had five hundred thousand worth of wooden goods in that warehouse. My entire stock was lost in the fire.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Carella said, “but I don’t know anything about the case because I just got back from vacation myself. Monday. I got back Monday, and this is Wednesday, and I don’t know anything at all about your warehouse.”

“I thought you people worked on cases in pairs,” he said.

“Sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t.”

“Well, who was Detective Parker’s partner on the case, would you know that?”

“No, but maybe I can find out for you,” Carella said. He turned from his own desk to where Cotton Hawes was sitting not five feet away, still talking on the telephone. “Cotton,” he said, “have you got a minute?”

“Okay, Christine, I’ll see you at eight,” Hawes said, and then whispered something further into the mouthpiece, and hung up and began walking toward Carella’s desk. He was a big man, six-two and weighing 190 pounds, with a straight unbroken nose, a good mouth with a wide lower lip, and a square, clefted chin. His red hair was streaked with white over the left temple. He looked very mean this morning of August 14. He wasn’t particularly mean, he just looked that way.

“Yeah, Steve?” he said.

“This is Roger Grimm,” Carella said. “Detective Hawes.”

“How do you do?” Hawes said.

Grimm merely nodded.

“Parker was working on an arson for Mr. Grimm, and I’ve just explained that he’s on vacation now, and Mr. Grimm was wondering if anybody was on the case with Parker.”

“Yeah,” Hawes said. “Kling was.”

“Then may I please talk to Kling?” Grimm said.

“He’s on vacation,” Hawes said.

“Is the entire Police Department on vacation?” Grimm asked.

“No, we’re here,” Hawes said.

“Then how about giving me some help?” Grimm said.

“What kind of help do you want?” Carella asked.

“I’m having trouble with the insurance people,” Grimm said. “I want you to understand that my warehouse was protected with a burglar alarm system hooked into a central station, not to mention two night watchmen and an elaborate sprinkler system on every floor of the building...”

“What kind of burglar alarm?” Carella asked, and moved a pad into place and picked up a pencil.

“The best. Very sophisticated. Combination open- and closed-circuit. The arsonist cross-contacted one set of wires and cut the other.”

“How’d he get by your watchmen?” Hawes asked.

“Chloral hydrate. Drugged them both. He also smashed the water main in the basement of the building, so the sprinklers didn’t work when the fire got going.”

“Sounds like he knew the layout pretty well.”

“Yes.”

“Got any enemies in the wooden-goods business, Mr. Grimm?” Carella asked.

“I have competitors.”

“Did you tell Detective Parker about them?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Nothing.”

“What does that mean? Nothing?”

“In Parker’s opinion, nobody had a good enough reason for committing a crime that would net him forty years in jail.”

“How about personal enemies? Got any of those?” Hawes asked.

“Everyone has personal enemies,” Grimm said.

“Any who might be capable of something like this?”

“The only one I could think of was a man whose wife I began dating shortly after they were divorced. He’s since married again, and he has two children by his new wife. When Parker questioned him, he could barely remember my name.”

“Uh-huh,” Carella said, and nodded. “What kind of trouble are you having with the insurance company?”

“ Companies. There’s a pair of them involved. $500,000 is a big risk; they shared it between them. Now they’ve gone to one of these giant adjustment bureaus and asked them to handle the claim. And the bureau told them to hold off settlement until the arsonist is caught or until the Police and Fire Departments are sure I didn’t set fire to my own damn place.”

“ Did you set fire to it, Mr. Grimm?”

“Of course not,” Grimm said, offended. “There was $500,000 worth of merchandise in that building. I would have shipped it two days ago... that was the twelfth, am I right?”

“Right, Monday the twelfth.”

“Right, I was supposed to ship on the twelfth. So somebody set fire to the warehouse on the seventh, last Wednesday. I usually send out my bills the same day I ship, payable in ten days. If I’d have shipped Monday, when I was supposed to, I’d be getting paid sometime next week, you understand?” Grimm said.

“Not completely,” Carella said. “You paid $500,000 for the stuff that went up in the fire, is that it?”

“No, I paid about half that. Four Deutschemarks for each unit, about a buck and a quarter apiece, including the duty.”

“Then you paid approximately $250,000, is that right?”

“That’s right. And I insured it for $500,000 because that’s what I would have got from my customers ten days after I shipped the stuff. $500,000. That’s the fair market value, with firm orders to back it up, and that’s what I insured the stock for.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I’ve got another batch coming from Germany on the twenty-eighth of this month. But I’ve got nothing to sell now, and if the insurance companies won’t reimburse me for my loss, how am I going to pay for the new stuff when it gets here?”