Bread

7

Maybe Elizabeth Benjamin had some ideas.

Maybe Detective Oliver Weeks, in his desire to pin something on Worthy and Chase, had rushed back to the Eight-Three and was at this very moment searching through his files and calling the Identification Section, instead of being where he should have been, which was at 1512 Kruger, in Apartment 6A, shaking down the joint and finding out what Elizabeth knew about Harrod’s source of income.

She was coming out of the apartment as Hawes approached the sixth-floor landing. She was wearing the clothes he had seen her in earlier, her high-stepping street clothes, and she was carrying two matched valises, one of which she put down on the floor. She pulled the door shut behind her, and was reaching for the valise when Hawes stepped onto the landing and said, “Going someplace, Liz?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Clear the hell out of this city.”

“Not yet,” he said. “We’ve got something to talk about.”

“Like what?”

“Like a dead man named Charlie Harrod.”

“Reason I’m getting out of this city,” Elizabeth said, “is because I don’t want nobody talking about a dead girl named me. Now you mind getting out of my way, please?”

“Unlock the door, Liz,” Hawes said. “We’re going back inside.”

Elizabeth sighed, put down both valises, swung her shoulder bag onto her abdomen, unclasped it, and was reaching into it when she saw the revolver appear in Hawes’s fist. Her eyes opened wide.

“Bring your hand out slowly,” Hawes said. “Wide open and palm up.”

“I was only going for the key, man,” Elizabeth said, and withdrew her hand and turned the open palm toward Hawes, the key to the apartment resting on it.

“Turn the bag over,” Hawes said. “Empty it on the floor.”

“Ain’t nothing deadly in it.”

“Empty it, anyway.”

Elizabeth turned the bag over. As she had promised, there was nothing deadly in it. Hawes felt a trifle foolish, but no more foolish than he would have felt if she’d later pulled a .22.

“Okay?” she said, and began putting the collection of lipsticks, mascara, Kleenex, Life Savers, address book, wallet, loose change, ballpoint pen, postage stamps, and grocery list back into the bag. “What’d you expect to find in there?” she said. “An arsenal?”

“Just hurry it up,” Hawes said, still mildly embarrassed.

“No, tell me what you thought was in there, Officer,” she said sweetly. “A squadron of B-52s?” She snapped the bag shut, threw it over her shoulder, and then turned to unlock the door. “The whole Sixth Fleet?” she said, and threw the door wide and picked up the valises.

Hawes followed her into the kitchen, closing and locking the door behind them. Elizabeth put both bags down, went directly to the sink, leaned against it, and folded her arms across her breasts.

“You forgot to turn on the water tap,” Hawes said.

“Hell with it,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t care what they hear no more.”

“Is the place bugged?”

“From top to bottom. Can’t even go to the John without somebody listening.”

“What about the phone?”

“Charlie busted the mike they had in there.”

“Who’s bugging the place, Liz?”

“You got me.”

“What was Charlie into?”

“Photography.”

“What else?”

“That’s all.”

“Are you a hooker?”

“No, Officer, I am not a hooker.”

“You’re unemployed, right?”

“Right.”

“And Charlie was earning fifty dollars a week, right?”

“I guess so. I don’t know what he earned.”

“Where’d he get the Cadillac?”

“He didn’t say.”

“And the fancy threads?”

“Didn’t say.”

“Have you ever been arrested, Liz?”

“Never in my life.”

“I can check.”

“So check.”

“Who’re you running from, Liz?”

“I’m running from whoever killed Charlie.”

“Got any idea who that might be?”

“No.”

“Where’s the bedroom?”

“What you got in mind?” Elizabeth asked, and grinned nastily.

“I want to look through Charlie’s things.”

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

“The police have been here before?”

“Not while we were home.”

“Then how do you know they were here?”

“Charlie set traps for them. Pigs ain’t exactly bright, you know. Charlie found those bugs ten minutes after they planted them.”

“Then why didn’t he rip them out?”

“He was jerking them off. He got a kick out of feeding them phony information.”

“About what?”

“About whatever they wanted to hear.”

“What did they want to hear, Liz?”

“Haven’t the faintest,” she said.

“Why were the police interested in Charlie Harrod?”

“Who knows? He was an interesting person,” Elizabeth said, and shrugged.

“Was he your pimp?” Hawes asked.

“I ain’t a hooker, so why would I need a pimp?”

“All right, show me the bedroom.”

“In there,” she said.

“Ladies first.”

“Yeah,” she said, and led him through the apartment.

There were two closets in the bedroom. The first one contained a dozen suits, two overcoats, three sports jackets, six pairs of shoes, two fedoras, and a ski parka. The labels in most of the suits, both overcoats, and one of the sports jackets were from a store specializing in expensive, hand-tailored men’s clothing. Hawes closed the door and went to the second closet. It was locked.

“What’s in here?” he asked.

“Search me,” Elizabeth said.

“Have you got a key for it?”

“Nope.”

“I’ll have to kick it in,” Hawes said.

“You need a warrant for that, don’t you?”

Hawes didn’t bother answering. He backed away from the door, raised his right leg, and released it pistonlike and flat-footed against the lock. He had to kick it three more times before the lock sprang.

“I’m sure you need a warrant for that,” Elizabeth said.

Hawes opened the door. The closet wasn’t a closet at all. Instead, it was a small room equipped as a darkroom, complete with steel developing tank, print washer, dryer, and enlarger. The room’s single window was painted black, and a naked red safelight hung over a countertop that rested on a bank of low metal filing cabinets. The countertop was covered with eight-by-ten white-enamel trays, metal tongs, and packages of developer, hypo, and enlarging paper. Wires had been tacked from one wall to the other, hung with photography clips. Hawes tried all the file drawers under the counter, but they were locked.

“You wouldn’t have the key to these, either, I suppose,” he said.

“I don’t have the key to nothing but the front door,” Elizabeth said.

Hawes nodded and closed the door. The bedroom dresser was on the wall opposite the bed, alongside the single window in the room. He went through each drawer methodically, poking through Harrod’s shirts and shorts, socks and handkerchiefs. In Harrod’s jewelry box, tucked under three sets of long red underwear in the bottom drawer, he found eight pairs of cuff links, a wristwatch with a broken crystal, a high school graduation ring, four tie tacks, and a small key. He took the key out of the box and showed it to Elizabeth.

“Recognize it?” he asked.

“No.”

“Well, let’s try it,” Hawes said, and went back into the darkroom. The key did not fit any of the file drawers. Sighing, Hawes went out to Harrod’s dresser and replaced the key where he’d found it. With the girl following him, he went into the kitchen and carefully inspected the cabinet over the sink. The bug, as he’d suspected, was tacked up under the bottom wooden trim. He followed the wire up to the molding where wall joined ceiling, and then across the room to the kitchen window. Stepping out onto the fire escape, he studied the rear brick wall. The wire ran clear up to the roof and then out of sight. He climbed back into the room again.

“The one in the John is behind the toilet tank,” Elizabeth said. “There’s another one in the bedroom, behind the picture of Jesus, and there’s also one in the living-room floor lamp.”

“And you’ve got no idea who planted them?”

Elizabeth shrugged. Hawes went back to the cabinet and searched through the shelves. Then he went through the drawers in the cabinet flanking the sink, and the single drawer in the kitchen table.

He found the pistol in the refrigerator.

It was wrapped in aluminum foil, and it was hidden at the rear of the bottom shelf, behind a plastic container of leftover string beans.

The gun was a Smith & Wesson 9-mm Automatic. Tenting his handkerchief over the butt, Hawes pulled out the magazine. There were six cartridges in the magazine, and he knew there would be one in the firing chamber.

“I don’t suppose this belongs to you,” he said.

“Never saw it before in my life,” Elizabeth said.

“Just sprang up there among the string beans and celery, huh?” Hawes said.

“Looks that way.”

“Happen to have a license for it?”

“I just told you it’s not mine.”

“Is it Charlie’s?”

“I don’t know whose it is.”

Hawes nodded, shoved the magazine back into the butt, tagged the gun, wrapped it, and stuck it into his jacket pocket. He gave Elizabeth a receipt for it, and then wrote his name and the squadroom telephone number on a slip of paper and handed it to her. “If you remember anything about the gun,” he said, “here’s where you can reach me.”

“There’s nothing to remember.”

“Take my number, anyway. I’ll be back later,” he said. “I suggest you stick around.”

“I’ve got other plans,” Elizabeth said.

“Suit yourself,” Hawes said, and hoped it sounded like a warning. He unlocked the door and left the apartment.

On the way down to the street, he wondered if he shouldn’t have arrested her on the spot. The law sometimes puzzled him. He was now in possession of certain facts and certain pieces of evidence, but he wasn’t sure any of them added up to grounds for a legal arrest:

(1) Frank Reardon had been shot to death with two bullets from a 9-mm pistol.

(2) Hawes had found a Smith & Wesson 9-mm pistol on the premises occupied jointly by Charles Harrod and Elizabeth Benjamin.

(3) The gun had an eight plus one-shot capacity, but there were only seven bullets in it when he’d slid open the magazine for a look.

(4) Harrod’s name had been listed in Reardon’s skimpy address book.

(5) Barbara Loomis, the super’s wife, had described as Reardon’s visitors in the week or so before the fire, a black man and a black girl who sounded a lot like Harrod and Elizabeth.

In other words, take this fellow Reardon. He’s been seen socializing with two other people. He is found shot to death with a 9-mm pistol, and a 9-mm pistol is later found in the refrigerator of those very two people with whom he’d earlier been socializing. Pretty strong circumstantial stuff, huh?

But socializing is not a crime, and keeping a gun in your refrigerator doesn’t necessarily mean you used it to kill someone, no matter how many bullets are in it. In fact, if you have a license for a gun, you can keep the gun in your refrigerator, your breadbox, or even your hat. It is not difficult to get a gun in the United States of America. People in America keep guns the way Englishmen keep pussycats. The reason people in America keep guns is because America is a pioneer nation, and one never knows when the Indians will attack. (Hawes knew, as a matter of absolute fact, that a band of fanatic Apaches in war paint had only the week before attacked an apartment building on Lakeshore Drive in Chicago.) That was why the National Rifle Association did all that lobbying in Congress — to make sure that pioneer Americans retained the right to bear arms against hostile Indians.

Elizabeth Benjamin and Charlie Harrod kept a gun in their refrigerator, so Hawes assumed they were at least as American as any Cherokee. But if an American had a license for a gun, carry or premises, you could not arrest him unless he committed a crime with the weapon. Until Ballistics told Hawes whether or not the suspect pistol was indeed the one that had chopped down old Frank Reardon, he did not have much he could pin on Elizabeth. He might be able to arrest her for keeping a gun without a premises permit, but she had claimed the gun was not hers, and the apartment she lived in was Charlie Harrod’s, and he couldn’t arrest Charlie for anything because Charlie was dead.

But even if the gun did turn out to be the murder weapon, Hawes had further doubts about arresting Elizabeth. If there was no way to link her to the pistol — no license, for example, no record of purchase, no fingerprints on it, nothing but the fact that she’d kept it in Charlie’s icebox — what could they charge her with? The crime was murder, the biggest felony of them all. A party to a crime, according to the Penal Law, is either a principal or an accessory. If Elizabeth had directly committed the act of murder, or aided or abetted in its commission, whether present or absent, or directly or indirectly counseled, commanded, induced, or procured another to commit the murder, she was a principal. If, on the other hand, she had harbored, concealed, or aided the murderer after the commission of the crime, with intent that he might avoid or escape from arrest, trial, conviction, or punishment, having reasonable ground to believe that he had committed the crime — why then, she was an accessory. So what the hell was she? Hawes would have to ask the lieutenant. And assuming she was anything at all, principal or accessory, how could they prove it on the basis of a gun found in Charlie’s refrigerator, even assuming it was the gun that had killed Reardon?

It sometimes got extremely difficult.

The joke about the patrolman chasing a fleeing bank robber, while simultaneously reading his regulations booklet in an attempt to discern whether or not he was permitted to fire his revolver, was too close to the truth for comfort. Hawes sighed and stepped out into the blazing heat of the afternoon, squinting his eyes against the onslaught of the sun.

There was always routine to fall back on.

Routine now dictated that he send the gun over to the Ballistics Section of the Police Laboratory with a Rush-Urgent request, and then run a Pistol Permits check on Harrod and the girl. Routine further dictated that he get somebody from the Safe and Loft Squad to open Harrod’s file drawers. Or would he need a goddamn court order for that, too?

Sometimes he wished he worked in an office building, running an elevator.

Detective First Grade Michael O. Dorfsman worked for the Ballistics Section, and it was he who took the hurry-up call from Cotton Hawes. He was already in possession of the two spent 9-mm cartridge cases, as well as the pair of bullets dug from the head of Frank Reardon. One of those bullets had been slightly deformed through collision with bone, but the other, once buried deep in Reardon’s brain matter, was in excellent condition. He had not yet begun work on the evidence, because the cartridge cases had been sent to him only yesterday, and the bullets had arrived this morning, sent to him from the morgue after the autopsy had been performed.

There were ways of determining the make of an unknown firearm by examination of the shell casings and bullets, and since Dorfsman was an expert, he undoubtedly would have discovered before long that the gun that had fired the 9-mm cartridges had been a Smith & Wesson 9-mm Automatic Pistol. But this would have involved a thorough search for marks on the cartridges, dismissing such insignificant marks as those left by the gun’s guide lips or the magazine slide and concentrating instead on more characteristic marks. Then, too, Dorfsman might have examined the one bullet that was still in good condition and come up with a classification in terms of caliber, direction of rifling twist, and number of lands and grooves that would have eventually yielded the murder weapon’s make — even without the corroborative cartridge evidence.

Hawes merely saved him a lot of time.

Hawes sent over a Smith & Wesson 9-mm Automatic Pistol, and now all Dorfsman had to do was compare the cartridges he had on hand with test cartridges fired from the suspect weapon, and lo and behold, he would know whether this gun was indeed the gun.

As simple as that.

Even Dorfsman’s wife knew that the word “automatic” as it applies to a handgun means, simply, that the introduction of a new cartridge into the firing chamber is accomplished by the weapon rather than the shooter. In other words, an automatic pistol is in reality a “self-loading” pistol. When one cartridge is fired, another moves into place immediately, ready for subsequent firing, whereas a revolver needs to be cocked by the thumb or the trigger finger. Dorfsman’s wife didn’t much care to know that the action of an automatic pistol is what makes it possible to identify shells fired from such a pistol. Dorfsman, on the other hand, had to understand the action if he was to perform his job properly. And, as he had said to his wife on more than one occasion, “This is where the action is, baby.”

Since all this action involves a number of movable parts, and since those parts are made of steel whereas shell casings are made of softer metals like copper or brass, the gun parts will leave marks on the cartridges. And since no two guns are exactly alike, no two guns will mark a cartridge in exactly the same way. That’s what makes a Ballistics Section possible, and that’s why Michael O. Dorfsman had a job.

The parts of the gun that mark a cartridge are:

If you know the marks a gun can leave, and if you know where to look for them on a spent cartridge case, why then, all you have to do is fire some shells from the suspect gun, retrieve them, and mark them for identification. Then you take the shell found at the scene of the crime, and you also mark that for identification, since any normal Ballistics Section has a lot of loose shells around, and you don’t want to spend all your time playing the shell game when you’ve got more important matters to consider — like homicide, for example. Then you wash (yes, that’s right, wash) all the shells in your favorite detergent (a woman works from sun to sun, but a man’s work is never done) and you are now ready to compare them. You do this with a microscope, of course, and you photograph your findings under oblique light to bring the marks into sharp relief, and then you paste up an enlargement of the suspect shell alongside an enlargement of the comparison shell, and you record the marks on each the way you would record the whorls and tents and loops and ridges of a fingerprint — and there you are.

Where you are, if you are Michael O. Dorfsman, is in that euphoric land known as Positive Identification. It is very nice when all those marks and scratches line up like separate halves of the same face. It makes a man feel good when he’s able to pick up the telephone and call the investigating detective to report without question that the gun delivered to Ballistics was definitely the gun that fired the bullets that killed somebody.

Which is exactly what Dorfsman did late that Friday afternoon.

Cotton Hawes, in turn, felt as though he had just caught a pass hurled by the quarterback. All he had to do now was run it to the goal line. Pistol Permits had earlier reported that no license had been issued to either Charles Harrod or Elizabeth Benjamin to carry a handgun or to keep one on the premises. The last permit issued for the particular gun in question, a Smith & Wesson 9-mm Automatic Pistol bearing the serial number 41-911-R, had been issued on October 12, 1962, to a man named Anthony Reed, then residing in Isola. A check of the telephone directories for all five sections of the city disclosed no listing for an Anthony Reed. But 1962 was a long time ago, and God knew how many hands that pistol had traveled through since Reed was issued his premises permit. A chat with the lieutenant had assured Hawes that since the pistol had been found in the refrigerator on the premises normally occupied by Elizabeth Benjamin, possession could be presumed to be hers, and if she didn’t have a permit for it, they could nail her with a gun violation at the very least. In addition, if and when Ballistics came up with a positive make, Hawes could feel free to arrest Elizabeth as either a principal or an accessory to the crime of murder. Lieutenant Byrnes wasn’t sure either charge would stick, but her arrest would give them an opportunity to question her legally. Hawes now had a green light from Ballistics, and he was ready to go uptown after Elizabeth. He was, in fact, putting on his jacket preparatory to leaving the squadroom when the telephone rang again. He picked up the receiver.

“87th Squad, Detective Hawes,” he said.

“Hawes, this is Ollie Weeks.”

“Hello, how are you?” Hawes said without noticeable enthusiasm.

“Listen, I’m sorry about that little fracas with the jigs,” Ollie said. “I don’t want you to get the idea I’m a cop who shoves people around.”

“Now where would I get that idea?” Hawes said.

“It’s just that the whole operation up there looks like a phony to me, that’s all,” Ollie said. “I’ve been working all afternoon here, and I found out a few things about our friends Worthy and Chase. I ain’t done yet, but in the meantime, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me.” Ollie paused, apparently waiting for an answer. When he received none, he said, “Also, I got the ME’s report on Harrod, and I thought you might be interested. He was beat to death, like we figured.”

“What was the weapon? Did the report say?”

“A numerosity of weapons,” Ollie answered, imitating W. C. Fields. “A veritable numerosity. Leastways, that’s how the ME’s got it figured. He says there were blunt instruments used and...”

“Instruments? Plural?”

“Yeah, plural. More than one instrument. And also, there was a stab wound under Harrod’s left arm, though that wasn’t what killed him. The blows to his head killed him, and the ME’s opinion is that the weapons used were of varying weights and sizes.”

“In other words, Harrod was attacked by more than one person.”

“It looks that way,” Ollie said. “Also, the ME found lesions and scars on Harrod’s arms and legs, and traces of heroin in the stomach, the parenchymatous organs...”

“The what?”

“I don’t know how to pronounce it,” Ollie said. “I’m reading it here from the report. And also the brain. You probably know this already, but the ME tells me alkaloids disappear from the system in about twenty-four hours, so it’s safe to assume Harrod had shot up sometime during the day. Also, there were white paint scrapings under the fingernails of his right hand.”

“Paint, did you say?”

“Yeah. Looks like Harrod was a photographer, a junkie, and a house painter besides. Anyway, that’s what I’ve got so far. I’m still checking on that operation Worthy and Chase are running up there, and I’ll let you know if I come up with anything else. What’s with you?”

“I was just on my way out to pick up Harrod’s girlfriend.”

“What for?”

“I found a gun in her icebox, and Ballistics just made it as the weapon used in this homicide we’re investigating.”

“What homicide? You’re not talking about Harrod, are you?”

“No, no.”

“Because he wasn’t shot, you know. I already told you...”

“This is another homicide. There are wheels within wheels, Ollie.”

“Ah yes, ain’t there always,” Ollie said, imitating W. C. Fields again. “Ain’t there always. You want me to come along?”

“I can handle it alone.”

“What are you charging her with?”

“Murder/One. It won’t stick, but it might scare her into telling us what she knows.”

“Unless she stands firm on Miranda-Escobedo and tells you to go jump.”

“We’ll have to see.”

“When will you be back there?”

“In an hour or so.”

“I’ll come over,” Ollie said, accepting an invitation Hawes could not remember extending. “I want to sit in on the questioning.”

Hawes said nothing.

“And listen,” Ollie said, “I hope you don’t think I was shoving that jig around because I enjoyed doing it.”

“I’m in a hurry,” Hawes said, and hung up.

He had reached the gate in the slatted railing when the phone rang again. Carella was down the hall in the men’s room, and Hal Willis was in with the lieutenant. Hawes grimaced and picked up the receiver at the phone nearest the railing. “87th Squad, Hawes,” he said.

“Cotton, this is Dave downstairs. I got a hysterical lady on the line, wants to talk to you.”

“Who is she?”

“Elizabeth something. She can hardly talk straight, I didn’t catch the last name.”

“Put her on,” Hawes said.

She came on the line in an instant. Her normally low-pitched voice was high and strident. “Hawes?” she said. “You better get here fast.”

“Where are you, Liz?”

“The apartment. I did what you said, I stayed here. And now they’ve come to get me.”

“Who?”

“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.”

“Who are they, Liz? Can you tell me that?”

He heard the sound of shattering glass. He heard a medley of voices then, and the piercing sound of Liz’s scream before someone gently replaced the phone on its cradle. Hawes hung up, raced down the iron-runged steps to the muster room, and told Dave Murchison, the desk sergeant, to call the dispatcher and have a car sent to 1512 Kruger Avenue, Apartment 6A, assault in progress. Then he ran outside to the curb and started his own car, and headed uptown.