Read Bread (87th Precinct) for Free Online Page B

said.
    “Ain’t allowed to drink on the job,” Barnes said.
    “But you do enjoy a little drink every now and then, don’t you?”
    “Oh, sure,” Lockhart said. “ Everybody enjoys a little drink every now and then.”
    “But not on the job.”
    “No, never on the job.”
    “Well, it’s a mystery to me,” Carella said. “Chloral hydrate works very fast, you see…”
    “Yeah, it’s a mystery to us, too,” Lockhart said.
    “Yeah,” Barnes said.
    “If you both passed out at ten o’clock…”
    “Well, ten or a little after.”
    “Are you sure you didn’t have another cup of coffee? Try to remember.”
    “Well, maybe we did,” Lockhart said.
    “Yeah, maybe,” Barnes said.
    “Be easy to forget a second cup of coffee,” Carella said.
    “I think we must’ve had a second cup. What do you think, Lenny?”
    “I think so. I think we must’ve.”
    “But nobody came to the warehouse, you said.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Then who put the knockout drops in your coffee?”
    “Well, we don’t know who could’ve done it,” Lockhart said.
    “That’s the mystery,” Barnes said.
    “Unless you did it yourselves,” Carella said.
    “What?” Lockhart said.
    “Why would we do that?” Barnes said.
    “Maybe somebody paid you to do it.”
    “No, no,” Lockhart said.
    “Nobody gave us a penny,” Barnes said.
    “Then why’d you do it?”
    “Well, we didn’t do it,” Lockhart said.
    “That’s right,” Barnes said.
    “Then who did it?” Carella asked. “Who else could have done it? You were alone in the warehouse, it had to be one or both of you. I can’t see any other explanation, can you?”
    “Well, no, unless…”
    “Yes?”
    “Well, it might’ve been something else. Besides the coffee.”
    “Like what?”
    “I don’t know,” Lockhart said, and shrugged.
    “He means, like something else we didn’t realize,” Barnes said.
    “Something you drank, do you mean?”
    “Well, maybe.”
    “But you just told me you didn’t drink anything but the coffee.”
    “We’re not allowed to drink on the job,” Barnes said.
    “No one’s suggesting you ever get drunk on the job,” Carella said.
    “No, we never get drunk,” Lockhart said.
    “But you do have a little nip every now and then, is that it?”
    “Well, it gets chilly in the night sometimes.”
    “Just to take the chill off,” Barnes said.
    “You really didn’t have a second cup of coffee, did you?”
    “Well, no,” Lockhart said.
    “No,” Barnes said.
    “What did you have? A shot of whiskey?”
    “Look, we don’t want to get in trouble,” Lockhart said.
    “Did you have a shot of whiskey? Yes or no?”
    “Yes,” Lockhart said.
    “Yes,” Barnes said.
    “Where’d you get the whiskey?”
    “We keep a bottle in the cabinet over the hot plate. In the little room near the wall phone.”
    “Keep it in the same place all the time?”
    “Yes.”
    “Who else knows about that bottle?”
    Lockhart looked at Barnes.
    “Who else?” Carella said. “Does Frank Reardon know where you keep that bottle?”
    “Yes,” Lockhart said. “Frank knows where we keep it.”
    “Yes,” Barnes said.
    There’s nothing simpler to solve than an inside job, and this was shaping up as just that. Frank Reardon knew that the two nighttime shleppers hit the bottle, and he knew just where they stashed it. All he had to do was dose the booze, and then let nature take its course. Since one of the watchmen worked outside, any observer would know the minute the Mickey took effect.
    Carella drove back over the Calm’s Point Bridge, eager now to confront Reardon with the facts, accuse him of doctoring the sauce, and find out why he’d done it and whether or not he was working with anyone else. He parked the Chevy at the curb outside the warehouse and walked swiftly to the gate in the cyclone fence. The gate was unlocked, and so was the side entrance door to the building.
    Frank Reardon lay just inside that door, two bullet holes in his