Read Online Bread (87th Precinct) by Ed McBain - Free Book Online

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