“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.