Bread (87th Precinct) (14 page)

“Oh, sure, sure,” Avery said. “I got nothing to hide, man.”

“Okay, then, you want to give me your full name?”

“Avery Moses Evans.”

“Where do you live, Ave?”

“On Ainsley Avenue—1194 Ainsley, Apartment 32.”

“Live alone?”

“I live with my mother.”

“What’s her name?”

“Eloise Evans.”

“Father living?”

“They’re separated,” Avery said.

“Where were you born, Ave?”

“Right here. This city.”

“How old are you?”

“I’ll be twenty-seven two days before Christmas.”

“Where do you work?”

“I am at present unemployed.”

“Are you a member of the gang called The Ancient Skulls?”

“It’s a club,” Avery said.

“Sure. Are you a member?”

“I’m the president,” Avery said.

“Is Jamie Holder a member?”

“Jamison Holder, that’s right. Good man,” Avery said, and grinned.

“Where were you and Jamie Holder tonight between five and five-thirty
P.M.
?”

“I don’t remember exactly.”

“Try to remember exactly,” Ollie said.

“Hanging around.”

“Hanging around where?”

“Probably shooting pool.”

“Where would that have been?”

“Ace Billiards. On Kruger Street.”

“Anybody see you and Jamie there at that time?”

“Lots of guys from the Skulls were there.”

“Anybody besides members of your gang?”

“Club.”

“Anybody besides them?”

“I couldn’t say for sure. I don’t make a habit of finding out who’s in a place.”

“Know anybody named Charlie Harrod?” Ollie asked, and tweaked his nose with his thumb and forefinger. This was the signal to begin a flanking attack, Ollie continuing the frontal assault while Carella and Hawes closed in from either side.

“Never heard of him,” Avery said.

“Elizabeth Benjamin?” Hawes asked. “Ever hear of her?”

“Nope.”

“Harrod was a junkie,” Carella said.

“Yeah?” Avery said, and smiled. “I notice you used the past tense, man. Did he kick the habit?”

“Yes, he kicked it,” Hawes said.

“Good for him. We got no junkies in our club. I think you guys already know that. Ask any of the cops up here, they’ll tell you the Skulls are clean.”

“Oh yeah, we know that,” Ollie said.

“It’s a fact, man.”

“But you never heard of Harrod, huh?”

“Nope. All I know is if he kicked the habit, I’m proud of him. Too
much
junk in this neighborhood. That’s one thing you got to say about the Skulls, we’re doing our share to make this neighborhood a better place to live in.”

“Oh, ain’t we all,” Ollie said, doing his now-famous W. C. Fields imitation, “ain’t we all.”

“And another thing,” Avery said, “it’s the Skulls, and
only
the Skulls, who’re always negotiating with the other clubs to keep the peace around here. If it wasn’t for us, you guys would have your
hands full. There’d be war all the goddamn time. I think you owe us at least a
little
gratitude for that.”

“Oh, sure we do,” Ollie said.

None of the cops bothered to mention that if there were no street gangs, there would be no wars, and therefore no need for any of the gangs to negotiate for peace. Each of the men questioning Avery knew that today’s gangs were far more dangerous than those existing twenty years ago, mainly because the current version came fully equipped with an ideology. The ideology provided a built-in justification for mayhem. If you’re doing something because it’s helping the neighborhood, why then, you can do any damn thing you like. Moreover, you can do it with a sense of pride.

“Where were you this afternoon, a little before twelve?” Hawes asked.

“Man, you guys sure expect a person to pinpoint his whereabouts, don’t you?”

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” Hawes said.

“I got nothing to hide,” Avery said. “I was probably down at the clubhouse.”

“Anybody see you there?”

“Oh sure, lots of the guys…”

“
Besides
members of the gang.”

“Only club members are allowed in the clubhouse.”

“By the clubhouse, do you mean the basement we found you in tonight?” Ollie asked.

“That’s the clubhouse,” Avery said.

The three detectives had moved closer to him, and they now formed a somewhat claustrophobic circle around his chair. They began to interrogate him more rapidly now, firing their questions one after the other, Avery at first turning to look at each of them in turn, and then finally directing all of his answers to Ollie, who stood directly in front of him.

“You got an annex to that clubhouse?” Ollie asked.

“No.”

“Where do you keep your arsenal?” Carella asked.

“We don’t have no arsenal, man. We’re a peace-loving club.”

“No guns?” Hawes asked.

“No knives?” Carella asked.

“No ball bats?” Ollie asked.

“None of that stuff.”

“You wouldn’t keep a stash of guns someplace else, huh?”

“No.”

“Someplace other than the clubhouse?”

“No.”

“Or knives?”

“No.”

“Charlie Harrod was stabbed today.”

“Didn’t know him.”

“He was also beaten to death.”

“Still don’t know him.”

“You familiar with that Kruger Street area?”

“Just a bit.”

“You just told us you shoot pool in Ace Billiards.”

“That’s right, I do. Every now and then.”

“That’s next door to where Charlie lived.”

“That a fact?”

“Apartment 6A, 1512 Kruger.”

“What about it?”

“Ever
in
that apartment?”

“Never.”

“Ever see Elizabeth Benjamin in the neighborhood?”

“Nope.”

“Did you know Charlie Harrod was a junkie?”

“Didn’t know
what
he was. Didn’t
know
the man, you dig?”

“Ever beat up a junkie?”

“Never.”

“That’s a lie,” Ollie said. “We had you punks in here six months ago for beating up a pusher named Shoemouth Kendricks.”

“That was a
pusher,
man. That wasn’t no junkie. Junkies are sick people. Pushers are what
makes
them sick.” Avery paused. “How come
you
know about that, anyway? You weren’t the cop who handled it.”

Ollie reached behind him, lifted a manila folder from the desk, and threw it into Avery’s lap. “This is the file on your little club, Mr. President. It gets thicker every day. We know all about you punks, and we know you stink.”

“Well now, I wouldn’t say exactly that, Mr. Weeks,” Avery said, and grinned, and handed the folder back to Ollie.

“We know, for example,” Ollie said, “that you keep your arsenal in the apartment of one Melissa Beam at 211 North 23rd, and that it consists of fourteen handguns, two dozen hand grenades, six World War Two bayonets and sheaths, and any number of switchblades, baseball bats, and sawed-off broom handles.”

“That’s a lie, man,” Avery said. “Who told you that jive?”

“A member of another little club called The Royal Savages.”

“
Those
jerks?” Avery said disdainfully. “They wouldn’t know an arsenal from their own assholes. Anyway, if you thought all that stuff was over there on Twenty-third, how come you didn’t raid it?”

“Because the last time you were up here, Mr. President, you made all kinds of law-abiding promises to a detective named Thomas Boyd, and in return he made a deal not to hassle you or your club.”

“That’s right, we
are
law-abiding,” Avery said. “We keep the peace.”

“Detective Boyd is over on Twenty-third right this minute,” Ollie said, “busting into that apartment. I hope he doesn’t find
any weapons we can trace back to you and your gang. Like, for example, the knife that was used on Charlie Harrod.”

“He won’t, don’t worry,” Avery said, but he seemed a trifle shaken now. He cleared his throat.

“What do you call Jamie Holder?” Carella said.

“I call him Holder.”

“You call him by his last name?”

“That’s right.”

“How come?”

“Jamie sounds like a pansy. He likes being called Holder. It’s a strong name. He’s a big man, and a proud man. Holder fits him good.”

“Ever hear of voiceprints?” Hawes asked.

“Nope.”

“They’re like fingerprints,” Carella said.

“We can compare them. We can make positive identifications of voices.”

“Ain’t that interesting,” Avery said.

“We’ve got
your
voice on tape,” Ollie said.

“You been taping this?” Avery said, and looked quickly around for a hidden recorder. “I didn’t give you permission to do that.”

“No, no, we haven’t taped this,” Ollie said, and smiled.

“We’ve got a tape, though,” Carella said, and smiled.

“You and Holder are the stars on it,” Hawes said, and smiled.

“Want to hear it, Avery?”

“Sure, why not?” Avery said, and shrugged, and folded his arms across his chest.

Ollie immediately left the squadroom. The tape recorder was in the Clerical Office down the hall, and he could have picked it up in thirty seconds flat, but he dallied for a full five minutes before returning to where Avery was sitting in his straight-backed
chair, arms folded. Neither of the other two detectives had said a word to him while Ollie was gone. Now Ollie put the recorder on the desk, gave Avery a sympathetic look that translated as “Man, are you in trouble,” and stabbed at the
PLAY
button. Casually, the detectives stood around Avery Evans and watched him as he listened to the tape.

—Hawes? You better get here fast. The apartment. I did what you said, I stayed here. And now they’ve come to get me. The ones who killed Charlie. They’re outside on the fire escape. They’re gonna smash in here as soon as they work up the courage.

Avery blinked when he heard the sound of glass shattering. His arms still folded across his chest, he leaned forward only slightly when he heard the next voices:

—Get away from that phone!

—Holder, watch it!

—She’s…

—I’ve got her!

Elizabeth screamed, and Avery began to sweat. The perspiration popped out on his forehead and ran down over his temples and cheeks as he heard the click of the phone being replaced on its cradle, the sounds of the chair being overturned, the tattoo of feet on linoleum, Elizabeth sobbing, the brutal sounds of flesh yielding to weapons.

—Oh, please, no.

—Shut up, bitch!

—Holder, get her legs!

—Please, please.

There was another scream, and the sweat rolled over Avery’s jaw and into his beard, moved inexorably in rivulets down the corded muscles of his neck, and was sopped up by the white T-shirt under the blue denim gang jacket. He listened to the beating, blinked when he heard the voices again:

—Come on, that’s enough.

—Holder, lay off, you’re gonna kill her!

—Let’s go, let’s go.

—What’s that?

—Let’s get the hell
out
of here, man.

He listened to the running footsteps and the tinkle of the broken window shards, and turned his head away when Elizabeth moaned. The tape went silent.

Ollie cut off the machine. “Recognize any of those voices?”

Avery did not answer.

“The girl’s alive,” Hawes said. “She’ll identify you.”

“How come you didn’t finish her off? Figure a scare was good enough?”

Avery did not answer.

“Did you think Harrod was a pusher?”

“Did his expensive clothes and Caddy fool you?”

“Did you think the girl was dealing, too?”

Avery still said nothing.

“Who hung up the phone, Ave?”

“We’ll get fingerprints from the receiver, you know.”

“And we’ll compare the voices on that tape with voiceprint of you and Holder.”

“And the
rest
of your pals, too.”

“And we’ll compare the white paint scrapings under Harrod’s fingernails with the paint on those jackets you wear.”

“How many of you jumped Harrod?”

“You stupid little punk!” Ollie shouted. “You think you can run around killing and hurting anybody you want? We’re gonna lock you up and throw away the key, you hear me, Mr. President?”

“I want a lawyer,” Avery said.

It was still Friday. It had been Friday forever.

Legal Aid sent over an attorney to make certain that none of The Ancient Skulls’ rights were being violated. At the same time the detectives—figuring they had hooked into real meat—called the District Attorney’s office and asked that a man be sent over before they messed up the legal ramifications by asking any further questions. By 11:00
P.M.
everyone was assembled. By ten minutes to 12:00 they all realized they were going to get nowhere, since the Skulls’ appointed attorney advised them to keep silent. The man from the DA’s office felt they had a good case, nonetheless, and so the Skulls were booked for acting in concert on one count of homicide and one count of assault, and were taken downstairs to the detention cells to await transportation to the Criminal Courts Building for arraignment. The lawyers shook hands with each other and the detectives, and everybody left the squadroom at a few minutes past midnight. It was Saturday at
last. Ollie Weeks had cracked his case in less than twelve hours, and one might have expected him to go home and sleep the sleep of angels secure in the knowledge that he had performed admirably and well.

Carella’s bedside phone rang in the middle of the night. He fumbled for the receiver, lifted it, and said, “Hullo,” not sure he was talking into the right end.

“Carella? This is Ollie Weeks.”

“Ollie?” Carella said. “Oh, hullo, Ollie. How are you? What time is it, Ollie?”

“I don’t know what time it is,” Ollie said. “Carella, I can’t sleep.”

“That’s too bad,” Carella said, and squinted at the luminous dial on the alarm clock near his bed. It was ten minutes past 4:00. “Have you tried counting sheep, Ollie?”

“I’ve been thinking about this guy,” Ollie said.

“What guy, Ollie?”

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

“Oh, yes,” Carella said. “Yes, what about him?”

“I’ve been thinking if I wait till morning, he’s liable to be not there.”

“Well,” Carella said, and hesitated. It seemed to him that Ollie had just uttered a choice
non sequitur,
but he couldn’t be quite certain because he was still half asleep.

“At his apartment, I mean,” Ollie said. “At the address I have for him.”

“Yes, there’s always the chance he’ll be out,” Carella said, and looked at the clock again.

“Unless I go there
now
,” Ollie said.

“It’s four o’clock in the morning,” Carella said. “It’s twelve past four.”

“That’s the idea,” Ollie said. “Nobody’s not home at four in the morning. It’s too late to be out on the town and too early to be getting out of bed. If I go there now, I’m sure to nab him.”

“Okay,” Carella said. “Fine.”

“What do you mean?”

“Go there. Go nab him.”

“You want to come with me?” Ollie said.

“No,” Carella said.

“Aw, come on.”

“No,” Carella said. “Listen, are you crazy or something, waking me up at four o’clock, four-fifteen, whatever the hell it is? What’s the matter with you? You cracked your case, you’ve got your…”

“Those guys up there bother me.”

“Why?”

“Because they’ve got eight hundred thousand dollars in their safety deposit box. Where’d those jigs get money like that if it ain’t dirty money?”

“I don’t
know
where, Ollie.”

“Ain’t you even interested? Harrod worked for them, and Harrod knew Reardon, and Reardon is dead, and Hawes tells me Harrod’s gun killed him. Now ain’t that interesting to you?”

“It’s interesting. But Harrod’s
also
dead, and I can’t arrest a dead man for killing another dead man.”

“Why are all these guys getting knocked off?” Ollie said.

“The homicides aren’t connected,” Carella said patiently. “You’ve
got
the punks who killed Harrod, and if Harrod killed Reardon, it was because Reardon knew about an arson in which Harrod may or may not have been…
Damn
it, Ollie, you’re waking me up! I don’t want to wake up! I want to go back to sleep. Goodnight, Ollie ”

Carella hung up. Beside him, his wife Teddy lay asleep with one leg twisted in the sheet. She
could
not, and therefore
had
not, heard the ringing telephone or the ensuing conversation, and for that he was grateful. He untangled the sheet, and was snuggling up close to her when the phone rang again. He snapped the receiver from its cradle and shouted, “Yes, damn it!”

“Steve?”

“Who’s
this
?”

“It’s me. Cotton.”

“What do you want, Cotton?”

“Did Ollie Weeks just call you?”

“Yes, Ollie Weeks just called me! And now
you’re
just calling me! Why don’t you two guys get married and stop bothering me in the middle of the goddamn night? I’m trying to sleep here. I’m trying to get some sleep here. I’m trying…”

“Steve?”

“What?”

“You want to go with him?”

“No, I don’t want to go with him.”

“I think we ought to go with him,” Hawes said.

“You like him so much,
you
go with him,” Carella said.

“I don’t like him at all, but I think maybe he’s right,” Hawes said. “I think maybe Diamondback Development has something to do with Roger Grimm’s fires, and I think we’re not going to get anything out of Worthy and Chase right now, but maybe we’ve got a chance to get something out of the third guy if we go up there in the middle of the night and surprise him. I think Ollie’s right.”

There was silence on the line.

“Steve?” Hawes said.

There was more silence.

“Steve?”

“Where do you want to meet?” Carella said wearily.

They met in an all-night diner on Ainsley Avenue at a quarter to five. They sat in a corner booth and quietly discussed their next move. What they were about to do was risky in that they did not have a court order to enter the premises occupied by one Oscar Hemmings at 1137 St. Sebastian, and if Hemmings so chose, he could tell them to run along and go play cops and robbers elsewhere. America was not yet a police state, and the Gestapo could not break down your door in the middle of the night and haul you out of bed. They could question Hemmings, true, because they were seeking information about a crime of which they had knowledge, but they couldn’t question him unless he agreed to being questioned. If he refused, they could tell him they’d be back with a subpoena and he could answer questions before a grand jury, the choice was his, and that might scare him into cooperating. But they didn’t want to go that route with Hemmings, and so they concocted a ruse in the diner, and they hoped the ruse would work. If he bought their story, he might talk to them and reveal something important. If he did not buy it, he was within his rights to slam the door in their faces.

The ruse they concocted was a good one and a simple one.

They assumed that Hemmings, being a partner in Diamondback Development, already knew that Charlie Harrod was dead. However, no matter how fast the Diamondback grapevine worked, he probably did not yet know that The Ancient Skulls had been picked up and charged with Harrod’s murder. The several assumptions they had made about Roger Grimm’s warehouse fire were that (a) Reardon had doped the booze the night watchmen later drank, and (b) Reardon had been killed because he might talk about his role in the arson. They knew, in addition, that Reardon had been visited two or three times in the week or so before the fire by two black men—one of whom had been Charlie Harrod; that Reardon had deposited $5,000 into
his savings account five
days
before the fire; and that Elizabeth Benjamin had spent the two nights preceding the fire in Reardon’s apartment, presumably to add a little sexual persuasion to the financial inducement he’d already received. A positive identification of Harrod and Elizabeth would have to be made by Barbara Loomis, who had seen them both. In the meantime, her descriptions seemed to jibe, and so they worked on the assumption that Reardon was the connecting link between Harrod and the warehouse fire.

What they wanted to know, and this was why they were visiting Hemmings in the early hours of the morning, was
why
Harrod had been involved in arson. Assuming he had contacted Reardon to engage his services in helping to administer the Mickey, and assuming Reardon had been paid $5,000 for those services, and assuming Elizabeth had been sent to him to sweeten the pot—why had Harrod wanted to burn down Grimm’s warehouse in the first place? What was his motive? Was he working for Diamondback Development or for himself? Worthy and Chase had already said all they would ever say about Charlie Harrod. Good photographer, mother lives alone, girlfriend a bit flashy, blah, blah, blah. Hemmings hadn’t yet told them anything, and now they hoped he would—
if
their little ruse worked.

This was the structure upon which they based their plan:

Hemmings knew that Harrod had been killed.

Hemmings did
not
know The Skulls had been charged with Harrod’s murder.

Worthy and Chase knew both Ollie and Hawes.

Worthy and Chase had undoubtedly told their partner, Hemmings, about the visit from the two cops, and may have also described them.

The only cop Worthy, Chase, and Hemmings did
not
know was Steve Carella.

This was the scenario they evolved:

Ollie and Hawes would knock on Hemmings’s door. They would apologize for awakening him so early in the morning, but they had a man with them who, they suspected, had killed Charlie Harrod that afternoon. They would then produce the man, in handcuffs. The man would be rather tall and slender, with brown hair and brown, slanted eyes, an altogether unimpressive nebbish, but nobody says you have to look like John Wayne in order to be capable of committing murder. The man in handcuffs would be Steve Carella.

Ollie and Hawes would tell Hemmings that the man, whose name they decided would be Alphonse Di Bari (over Carella’s objections, since he didn’t think he looked particularly Italian), had claimed he would never have murdered Charlie Harrod, because he was a close friend of his and had, in fact, worked together with him at Diamondback Development. It was essential to the case they had against Di Bari that someone from Diamondback Development either positively identify him as an employee, or else put the lie to rest. Hemmings, of course, would say he had never before seen this Alphonse Di Bari (Carella
still
objected to the name, this time on the grounds that he didn’t particularly look like an Alphonse). Then the detectives would get sort of chummy with Hemmings and explain how they had tracked Di Bari to his apartment and found the murder weapon there, and Carella (as Di Bari) would protest all along that they had the wrong man, and would beg Hemmings to please tell these guys he legitimately worked for Diamondback Development, that Charlie Harrod had hired him to take photographs of a warehouse belonging to a man named Roger Grimm,
please,
mister, will you please tell these guys they’re making a mistake?

Everybody would be watching Hemmings very closely at this point, hoping he would by his manner or by his speech
drop something revealing (like perhaps his teeth) the moment the warehouse was mentioned. If he did not react immediately, they would keep hammering at the warehouse story, supposedly enlisting Hemmings’s aid, listening all the while for telltale little clues, actually
questioning
him while making him believe they were in reality seeking information that would disprove Di Bari’s lie.

It was not a bad scenario.

Listen, this was 5:00 in the morning, and they weren’t shooting a picture for Twentieth Century-Fox.

With Carella in handcuffs (he felt stupid), the detectives went into the building on St. Sebastian Avenue and began climbing the steps to the fourth floor.

Even at this early hour of the morning, Ollie was no rose garden, but then again, he had never promised anybody he was. Cotton Hawes had a very sensitive nose. He hated firing his pistol senselessly because the stench of cordite almost always made him slightly nauseous. During his naval career this had been a severe handicap, since somebody or other always seemed to be firing a gun at somebody else or other. Ollie did not smell of cordite. It was difficult to place his smell.

“I thought they
renovated
this dump,” Ollie said. “It’s a garbage heap, that’s what it is.”

Yes, Hawes thought,
that’s
it.

They stopped outside Hemmings’s door and knocked on it. And knocked on it again. And again, and again, and again. Nobody answered.

“What now?” Hawes asked.

“You think he’s in there?” Ollie said.

“If he is, he’s not letting us know about it.”

“He should be in there,” Ollie said, frowning. “It’s five o’clock in the morning. Nobody’s not in bed at five o’clock in the morning.”

“Except me,” Carella said.

“What do you think?” Ollie said.

They held a brief consultation in the hallway outside Hemmings’s door, and decided to call off the movie. They removed the handcuffs from Carella’s wrists, and were starting down the steps to the street when Ollie said, “What the hell are we pussyfooting around for?” and went back to the door and kicked it in without another word.