Bread (87th Precinct) (5 page)

“What’s it to you?” the kid said.

“Dumb bastard,” Meyer said, and walked away.

“All right, Sammy,” Brown said, “how’d you get those two decks you were carrying?”

“If you think I’m going to tell you the name of my connection, we can quit talking right this minute.”

“I didn’t ask you
who,
and I didn’t ask you
where.
I asked you
how
.”

“I don’t follow,” Sammy said.

“Now, Sammy,” Brown said, “you and I both know that two weeks ago there was the biggest narcotics bust we’ve ever had in this city…”

“Oh, is that it?” Sammy said.

“Is
what
it?”

“Is that why it’s so tough to score?”

“Don’t you read the papers?” Brown asked.

“I ain’t got time to read the papers. I just been noticing the stuff is scarce, that’s all.”

“It’s scarce because the 5th Squad busted a dope factory and confiscated two hundred kilograms waiting to be cut and packaged.”

“How much is that?”

“More than four hundred pounds.”

“Wow!” Sammy said. “Four hundred pounds of scag! That could keep me straight for a year.”

“You and every other junkie in this city. You know how much that’s worth pure?”

“How much?”

“Forty-four million dollars.”

“That’s before they cut it, huh?”

“That’s right. Before they put it on the street for suckers like you to buy.”

“I didn’t ask to be a junkie,” Sammy said.

“No? Did somebody force it on you?”

“Society,” Sammy said.

“Bullshit,” Brown said. “Tell me how you got those two decks.”

“I don’t think I want to talk to you anymore,” Sammy said.

“Okay, are we finished then? Meyer, the kid’s ready for booking.”

“Okay,” Meyer said, and walked over.

“I been saving it,” Sammy said suddenly.

“How’s that?”

“I been a junkie for almost three years now. I know there’s good times and bad, and I always keep a little hid away. That was the last of it, those two decks. You think I’d’ve busted a store window if I wasn’t desperate? Prices are skyrocketing, it’s like a regular junk inflation. Listen, don’t you think I
know
we’re in for a couple of bad weeks here?”

“Couple of bad
months
is more like it,” Meyer said.

“Months?” Sammy said, and fell silent, and looked up at the two detectives. “Months?” he said again, and blinked his eyes. “That can’t be. I mean…what’s a person supposed to do if he can’t…? I mean, what’s gonna happen to me?”

“You’re going to break your habit, Sammy,” Brown said. “In jail. Cold turkey.”

“What’ll they give me for the burglary?” Sammy asked. His voice was quite low now; he seemed drained of all energy.

“Ten years,” Brown said.

“Is this a first offense?” Meyer asked.

“Yeah. I usually…I usually get money from my parents, you know? I mean, enough to get me through the week. I don’t have to steal, they help me out, you know? But the prices are so high, and the junk is so lousy…I mean, you’re paying twice as much for half the quality, it’s terrible, I mean it. I know guys who’re shooting all
kinds
of shit in their arms. It’s a bad scene, I got to tell you.”

“How old are you, Sammy?” Meyer asked.

“Me? I’ll be twenty on the sixth of September.”

Meyer shook his head and walked away. Brown unlocked the handcuff and led Sammy out of the squadroom, to where he would be booked for Third-Degree Burglary at the muster desk downstairs. He had told them nothing new.

“So now what?” Meyer said to Carella. “Now we book him on the smash-and-grab, and he’ll be convicted, of course, and what did we accomplish? We sent another addict to prison. That’s like sending diabetics to prison.” He shook his head again and, almost to himself, said, “A nice Jewish boy.”

Frank Reardon had lived in an eight-story building on Avenue J, across the street from a huge multilevel parking lot. On Friday morning the electric company was tearing up the street outside in an attempt to get at some underground cables, and cars were stalled all up and down the avenue as Hawes rang the bell to the superintendent’s apartment. The apartment was on street level, at the far end of a narrow alley on the left-hand side of the building. Even here, insulated from the street outside, Hawes could hear the insistent stutter of the pneumatic drills, the impatient honking of horns, the shouts of the motorists, the angry retorts of the men tearing up the street. He rang the bell again, unable to hear anything over the din and wondered if it was working.

The door opened suddenly. The woman standing there in the shaded doorway to the apartment was perhaps forty-five years old, a blond slattern wearing only a soiled pink slip and fluffy
pink house slippers. She looked up at Hawes out of pale, cool green eyes, flicked an ash from her cigarette, and said, “Yeah?”

“Detective Hawes,” he said, “87th Squad. I’m looking for the super.”

“I’m his wife,” the woman said. She dragged on her cigarette, let out a stream of smoke, studied Hawes again, and said, “Mind showing me your badge?”

Hawes took out his wallet and opened it to where his shield was pinned to the leather opposite a Lucite-encased identification card. “Is your husband home?” he asked.

“He’s downtown picking up some hardware,” the woman said. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m investigating a homicide,” Hawes said. “I’d like to take a look at Frank Reardon’s apartment.”

“He kill somebody?” the woman asked.

“The other way around.”

“Figures,” she said knowingly. “Let me put something on, and get the key.”

She went back into the apartment without closing the door. Hawes waited outside in the cool alleyway. The forecasters had predicted a high of ninety-four degrees, a humidity reading of 81 percent, and an unsatisfactory air-pollution level. On the street outside, the motorists were honking and yelling, and the drills were yammering. Through the open doorway, Hawes saw the woman pull the slip over her head. She had been naked under the garment, and she moved silently across the room now, her body flashing white as she receded deeper into the dimness. When she came back to the doorway, her hair was combed and she had put on fresh lipstick, a short green cotton smock, and white sandals.

“Ready?” she said.

He followed her out of the alley into the sudden blinding heat of the day, and then to the front door of the building and up the
stairs to the third floor. The woman said nothing. The hallways and the steps were scrupulously clean and smelled of Lysol. At 10:00 in the morning the building was silent. The woman stopped outside an apartment marked with the brass numerals 34. As she unlocked the door, she said, “How’d he get killed?”

“Someone shot him,” Hawes said.

“Figures,” the woman said, and opened the door, and led him into the apartment.

“He live here alone?” Hawes asked.

“All alone,” the woman said.

There were three rooms in the apartment: a kitchen, a living room, and a bedroom. Except for some dirty dishes in the sink and a bed that had been hastily made, the apartment was neat and clean. Hawes raised the shades on both living-room windows, and sunlight streamed into the room “What’d you say your name was?” the woman asked.

“Detective Hawes.”

“I’m Barbara Loomis,” she said.

The living room was sparsely and inexpensively furnished: a couch, an easy chair, a standing floor lamp, a television set. An imitation oil painting of a shepherd and a dog in a pastoral landscape hung over the couch. An ashtray with several cigar butts in it was on the coffee table.

Barbara sat in one of the easy chairs and crossed her legs. “Where’d you get that white streak in your hair?” she asked.

“I was stabbed by a building superintendent,” Hawes said.

“Really?” Barbara said, and laughed unexpectedly. “You just can’t trust supers,” she said, still laughing. “Nor their wives, either,” she added, and looked at Hawes.

“Did Reardon smoke cigars?” he asked.

“I don’t know what he smoked,” Barbara said. “I still don’t see why it’s white.”

“They had to shave the hair to get at the wound. It grew back white.”

“It’s cute,” Barbara said.

Hawes went out of the living room and into the bedroom. Barbara stayed in the easy chair, watching him through the doorframe. There was a bed, a dresser, an end table with a lamp on it, and a straight-backed chair over which was draped a striped sports shirt. A package of Camel cigarettes and a matchbook advertising an art school were in the pocket of the shirt. The bed was covered with a white chenille spread. Hawes pulled back the spread and looked at the pillows. There were lipstick stains on one of them. He went to what he assumed was the closet, and opened the door. Four suits, a sports jacket, and two pairs of slacks were hanging on the wooden bar. A pair of brown shoes and a pair of black shoes were on the floor. A blue woolen bathrobe was hanging on the door hook. On the shelf above the bar, there was a blue peaked cap and a gray fedora. Hawes closed the door and went to the dresser. Opening the top drawer, he asked, “How long was Reardon living here?”

“Moved in about a year ago,” Barbara said.

“What kind of a tenant was he?”

“Quiet, for the most part. Brought women in every now and then, but who cared about that? Man’s entitled to a little comfort every now and then, don’t you think?”

The top drawer of the dresser contained handkerchiefs, socks, ties, and a candy tin with a painted floral design. Hawes lifted off the cover. There were six sealed condoms in the tin, a photostated copy of Reardon’s birth certificate, his discharge papers from the United States Navy, and a passbook for a savings account at one of the city’s larger banks. Hawes opened the passbook.

“Can’t say I cared much for the company he was keeping these past few weeks,” Barbara said.

“What kind of company was that?” Hawes asked.

“Coloreds,” Barbara said.

The passbook showed that Frank Reardon had deposited $5,000 in his account on August 2, five days before the warehouse fire. His previous deposits, on July 15 and June 24, had been for $42.00 and $17.00 respectively. The balance, before the $5,000 deposit, had been $376.44. Hawes put the passbook into his jacket pocket.

“I got nothing against coloreds,” Barbara said, “so long as they stay uptown. He had these two big coloreds coming here, and last week he had this bitch come in stinking of perfume. Couldn’t get her smell out of the hallway for a week. You should’ve seen her. Hair out to here, earrings down to here, skirt way up to here.” Barbara pulled her smock higher in illustration. “Spent a couple of nights with him, used to wait for him outside the building till he got home from work.”

“When was this?” Hawes asked.

“Last week sometime.”

“Would you remember when last week?”

“Monday and Tuesday, I think. Yeah, both nights.”

“Do you know her name?”

“Frank didn’t introduce me,” Barbara said. “I’d have told her to get her black ass uptown, where she belongs.”

“And you say some black men were here, too?”

“Yeah. But not at the same time, you understand.”

“When were they here?”

“The last week in July sometime.”

“How many times were they here?”

“Two or three times.”

“How many men did you say?”

“Two of them. Black as the ace of spades. I ran into one of them once, he scared hell out of me.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean the
look
of him. Big as a house, and wearing these clothes the coloreds think are so sharp, you know, and with a knife scar running clear down the left-hand side of his face. Drove up in a big white Caddy. I told my husband about him, and he said I’d better stay in the apartment whenever people like that were around. You know those coloreds, nothing they’d like better than to get their hands on a white woman. Especially a blonde,” Barbara said. “Not that my husband’s ever around to stop anybody from doing anything they
wanted
to do. He’s always running downtown to Bridge Street, picking up hardware and electrical stuff on those sidewalk stalls they got down there. I could get raped here by half a
dozen
coloreds, he’d never know the difference.”

“Would you know the names of those two men?” Hawes asked.

“Nope. I’m not interested in knowing those kind of people, thank you. It’s awfully hot in here, don’t you think?”

“Supposed to hit ninety-four,” Hawes said, and opened the second dresser drawer.

“Thank God I’ve got air conditioning downstairs,” Barbara said. “Only in the bedroom, but that’s at least something.”

There were half a dozen shirts, a cardigan sweater, three pairs of undershorts, and two T-shirts in the second drawer. A white plastic battery-powered vibrator in the shape of a penis was tucked under the cardigan sweater. Hawes closed the drawer.

“What I’m going to do, soon as we finish here,” Barbara said, “is go downstairs, pour myself a beer, and go hide in the bedroom, where the air conditioner is.”

Hawes opened the bottom drawer of the dresser. It was empty. He closed the drawer and walked to the night table on the left-hand side of the bed.

“I can’t see you anymore,” Barbara said from the living room, “and I like to watch you work.” She suddenly appeared in the doorframe, arms folded across her midsection, cradling her breasts. “That’s better,” she said. She watched as Hawes opened the single drawer in the night table. There was a flashlight in the drawer, a half-empty carton of Camels, a box of wooden kitchen matches, and an address book.

“That husband of mine,” Barbara said, and hesitated.

Hawes opened the address book and quickly scanned it. Frank Reardon had not known too many people. There were perhaps a dozen listings in all, scattered alphabetically throughout the book. One of those was for a man who lived in Diamondback, uptown. His name was Charles Harrod, and his address was 1512 Kruger Street. The listing was significant only in that Diamondback was the city’s largest black ghetto.

“Probably be gone all day,” Barbara said. “My husband. Probably won’t get home till suppertime.”

Hawes put the address book in his pocket with the passbook and walked back through the living room and into the kitchen. Stove, refrigerator, wooden table, cupboard over the sink. He glanced through the cupboard quickly.

“Hot as hell in here,” Barbara said. “I’d open the windows, but I don’t know if I’m allowed to. I mean, with Frank being dead and all.”

“I’m almost finished here,” Hawes said.

“I don’t envy you men in the summertime,” Barbara said, “having to wear suits and ties. I’ve got nothing at all on under this little thing, and I’m still suffocating.”

Hawes closed the cupboard doors, took a cursory look through the drawer in the kitchen table, and then turned to Barbara, who was standing near the refrigerator, watching him. “Well, that’s it,” he said. “Thank you very much.”

“My pleasure,” she said, and walked silently out of the apartment. She waited for him to join her in the hallway, locked the door to Reardon’s apartment, and then started down the steps ahead of Hawes. “Nice cold bottle of beer’ll really hit the spot now,” she said. She glanced over her shoulder, one hand on the banister, and said, almost shyly, “You feel like joining me?” “I’ve got to get uptown,” Hawes said. “Thanks, anyway.” “Nice and cool in my bedroom,” Barbara said. “I got a nice air conditioner in there. Come on,” she said, and smiled. “Give yourself a break. Little beer never hurt anybody.” “Gee, I’d like to,” he said, “but I’ve got a lot of work to do.” “Well, okay,” she said, and went swiftly down the stairs. On the sidewalk outside, she said, “Anything else you need, you know where to find me.” “Thanks again,” Hawes said.

She seemed about to say something more. Instead, she nodded briefly, and went into the alley to her apartment, and her air-conditioned bedroom, and her bottle of beer.

The Police Department had advised all residents of the city that special spray attachments for fire hydrants were available at all precinct houses, and that any civic group could obtain them there free of charge, merely by applying. The idea behind this generous distribution of spray attachments was a good one. During the summertime people in the city’s slums opened the hydrants full force in order to provide showers for their sweltering kids. This was good for the kids but bad for the firemen. The open hydrants, you see, drastically reduced the water pressure needed for firefighting. Since the spray attachments needed very little water in order to operate effectively, they seemed like a logical and fair compromise.

But what excitement was there in
legally
obtaining one of those attachments from the fuzz, when it was just as simple to
screw off the nozzle caps with a monkey wrench, open the octagonal brass valve on top of the hydrant, and then tilt the end of a wooden orange crate against the high-pressure stream of water that roared from the open spout, providing a city waterfall of spectacular proportions? If, as a result, a tenement down the street happened to burn down because the firemen didn’t have enough water pressure when they attached their hoses—well, that was one of the prices a slum dweller had to pay for his summertime fun and games. Besides, most slum fires occurred in the dead of winter, caused by cheap, faulty heaters and bad electrical wiring.