“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.
The hydrants all up and down Kruger Street were on as Hawes made his way up the block. Black boys and girls in bathing suits splashed in and out of the icy cold cascades, while grownups sat on front stoops and fire escapes, fanning themselves and watching in envy. It was only a quarter to eleven in the morning, but the temperature had already soared to ninety-one degrees, and the air was stifling. 1512 Kruger was a red-brick tenement with a Baptist storefront church on one side of it and a billiard parlor on the other. Three young men wearing blue denim gang jackets were standing outside the green-painted, plate-glass window of the pool hall, watching the younger kids frolicking in the water at the nearest open johnny pump. They glanced at Hawes as he climbed the three steps to the front stoop of the building. A fat black man in a white undershirt sat against the iron railing, fanning himself with a copy of Ebony, holding a bottle of Coca-Cola in which there were two twisted straws. The street gang members knew that Hawes was a cop. So did the fat man in the white undershirt. This was a slum.
Hawes went into the vestibule and checked the mailboxes. There were twelve boxes in the row. Eight had broken locks. Only one of them had a name in the space provided, and the name was not Charles Harrod’s. Hawes came out onto the stoop again. The street gang members had disappeared. The fat man was watching the kids playing under the water.
“Good morning,” Hawes said.
“Morning,” the man replied briefly. He put both straws between his lips, sipped from the bottle, and kept looking at the kids.
“I’m looking for a man named Charles Harrod...”
“Don’t know him,” the man said.
“He’s supposed to live in this building...”
“Don’t know him,” the man repeated. He had not taken his eyes from the children playing near the fire hydrant.
“I was wondering if you knew what apartment he lived in.”
The man turned and looked up at Hawes. “I just told you I don’t know him,” he said.
“Know where I can find the super of the building?”
“Nope,” the fat man said.
“Thanks a lot,” Hawes said, and walked down the flat steps to the pavement. He wiped the back of his hand across his sweating upper lip, and then went into the pool hall. There were two tables in the place, one of them empty, one of them occupied by the gang members he had seen standing outside a few minutes ago. Hawes walked over to the table. “I’m looking for a man named Charles Harrod,” he said. “Any of you fellows know him?”
A young man, leaning over the table, stick in hand, said, “Never heard of him,” and triggered off a shot that sank two balls and left the cue ball in position for an easy chip shot. He was tall and thin, sporting a black beard and mustache, the back of his denim jacket ornately painted with the name of the gang — The Ancient Skulls — curving over an appropriate painting of a grinning white skull and crossbones. Hawes thought he had seen the last of the street gangs twenty years ago, but he supposed all good things — like plagues and locusts — returned at regularly spaced intervals.
“He’s supposed to live in the building next door,” Hawes said.
“We don’t live in the building next door,” another of the young men said. He was bigger than the bearded one, almost as big as Hawes, the pool cue looking undersized in his enormous hands.
“Where do you live?” Hawes asked.
“Who wants to know?”
“I’m a police officer, let’s cut the crap,” Hawes said.
“We’re shooting a friendly game of pool here,” the bearded one said, “and we don’t know Charlie whatever-his-name-is...”
“Harrod.”
“We don’t know him. So, like, what’s the beef, Officer?”
“None at all,” Hawes said. “What’s your name?”
“Avery Evans.”
“And you?” Hawes said, turning to the big one.
“Jamie Holder.”
“And none of you know Harrod, huh?”
“None of us,” Holder said.
“Okay,” Hawes said, and walked out.
The fat man was still sitting on the stoop. His Coke bottle was empty and he had placed it between his shoes. Hawes climbed onto the stoop and went into the vestibule. He opened the broken glass door dividing the vestibule from the inner hallway, and then started up the flight of steps to the first floor. The hallway stank of urine and cooking smells. He rapped at the first door he came to, and a woman inside said, “Who is it?”
“Police officer,” he said. “Want to open up, please?”