The Ledger Read online

  The Ledger

  A Detective Christie Opara Mystery

  Dorothy Uhnak

  With love to Mildred: my sister and my friend

  Contents

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  A Biography of Dorothy Uhnak

  1

  CHRISTIE OPARA TAPPED HER fingers lightly over the typewriter keys as she tried to phrase the next sentence of her report. She glanced at her notebook, filled with cryptic notations which, translated, provided the Dun and Bradstreet rating of one of the city’s major construction companies. It was just one of ten similar reports to be handed over to Chief Supervising Assistant District Attorney Casey Reardon, and since he had ordered the investigation, there was probably a perfectly valid reason for the hours of dull research.

  Christie picked up the telephone receiver on the second ring. “Special Investigations Squad, Detective Opara.”

  “Tom Dell here, Christie. Tell the Man his chariot awaits.”

  It was three-thirty. If Tom Dell had Reardon’s car ready, that meant she’d get an early break. “Okay, Tom. I’ll tell him you’re impatiently awaiting.”

  “Tell him that, kid, and we’re both in trouble.”

  Detective Bill Ferranti neatly tapped the pages of his report together, stapled them and stood up. “Christie, if you’re going into Mr. Reardon’s office, would you mind?” He extended the three copies of his report, nodded his thanks and began dusting the top of the desk, gathering together a small pile of eraser crumbs.

  Christie tapped twice lightly on the smoked-glass door, then entered Casey Reardon’s office. He was speaking on the telephone, his feet resting on a desk drawer that had been pulled open for that purpose. He waved his hand, motioned for the report. Reardon’s spacious office was warmer than the Squad Room. The sleet pounding against the two corner windows didn’t penetrate the room. Christie flexed her fingers, which were stiff from cold and from too much typing.

  Reardon balanced the telephone receiver between the side of his face and his shoulder. “Yeah, okay, Stoney, keep right with them. And keep in close touch.” Without another word, he replaced the receiver, ran his hand roughly over his face, then through his thick, dark-red hair. “What have you got, Christie?” He looked up expectantly, then, before she could answer, he said, “My God, it’s not that cold. You look like you’re freezing.”

  “Our heat is out again, Mr. Reardon. I called the maintenance department again and they said they’d send a man up tomorrow. That’s the third time they’ve said that and he still hasn’t shown.”

  Reardon’s amber eyes showed no sympathy. “Anything else?”

  “Tom Dell is downstairs with your car.”

  He glanced at his watch, then picked up Ferranti’s report and scanned it. “Where’s your report on the Corvella Corporation?”

  Christie answered sharply, the long tedious hours of note taking and typing catching up with her. “In my machine.”

  “It’s supposed to be on my desk, not in your machine.” He watched her face and anticipated the expression. Her eyes, an indefinite combination of gray and green, hardened and she started to answer but was stopped by a sudden sneeze. “For God’s sake, Opara, if you’re catching a cold, don’t spread your germs around in here. I need your report before I leave today. See if you can hurry it up.”

  He watched her move across the room, admired her thin, trim figure and her attempt at dignity against an onrush of sneezing.

  At four o’clock, Christie rolled the last page of her report from the typewriter and began to proofread, skipping whole paragraphs. She reached into the desk drawer and pulled out a wad of tissues in time to catch a wet sneeze.

  “God bless, God bless.”

  Jimmy Giaconna stood uncertainly in the center of the Squad Room. Christie waved her hand in thanks. Small and wiry at seventy-six, slightly hard of hearing, Jimmy Giaconna was a well-known and well-liked character in the building. His scanty black hair was combed straight back, his tiny eyes were bright and blinking rapidly.

  “Detective Ferranti here?” he asked loudly.

  Ferranti, patiently awaiting Reardon’s approval of his report, returned from down the hall where he had obviously scrubbed his hands clean of any traces of carbon paper. He greeted Jimmy Giaconna politely but with a slightly puzzled air.

  What was immediately striking about Jimmy Giaconna’s appearance, aside from the fact that he always appeared in the morning hours, was that without the little wire-legged, backless stool slung over one arm and the intricately crafted shoeshine box, he looked incomplete. What was equally unusual was that Giaconna, normally an almost rigidly courteous man, clutched at Ferranti’s arm and began speaking in a loud, rapid combination of English and Italian.

  Bill Ferranti, pink-cheeked and owllike behind his hornrimmed glasses, his prematurely white hair adding to his immaculate appearance, spoke softly in English. “Jimmy, take it easy. Slow down.” Carefully, he led the old man to a chair. “Now, what’s wrong?”

  Immediately, Jimmy leaped from the chair and his words rang out in a jumble of two languages. Ferranti put his hand on Giaconna’s shoulder. It was a gentle, reassuring gesture, but surprisingly, the small shoeshine man shrugged the hand away and became more agitated.

  “Jimmy, you’re among friends. What’s happened?”

  Christie shared Ferranti’s concern. The old man looked terrible. His small eyes darted about the room, his hand reached out, patted Christie’s arm, then a huge sob, unexpected, folded the old man back into the chair. Christie brought Giaconna a paper cup of water which he drank, then, his eyes swimming, he lapsed into his native tongue, unable or unwilling to revert to his broken English. Ferranti listened, nodded, asked a question, slowed the old man down a bit, then listened again. He turned to interpret as Casey Reardon came into the Squad Room.

  “Hey, Jimmy, what’s the problem?”

  The old man shrugged and looked at Ferranti.

  “Jimmy’s a little upset, Mr. Reardon,” Ferranti explained. “His little granddaughter, Theresa, is missing. She was playing in front of her house a little earlier ...”

  Reardon glanced at his watch. “What time was she last seen?”

  “Two-thirty, right, Jimmy?” The old man nodded.

  “How old is your granddaughter, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy Giaconna held up four fingers. “Four years. She has four years.”

  Reardon motioned for Ferranti to continue. “Theresa was playing in front of her house with a few of her playmates. Jimmy lives right around the corner, Mr. Reardon. He got home at about two-thirty and saw the children on the front stoop. At three o’clock, Jimmy’s daughter looked out the window to call Theresa in, because the snow had changed to sleet, and the kids were gone.”

  Finally the English words burst from Jimmy. “My daughter she no just leave the kid out, Mr. Reardon. Every minute she know where the little girl is. So she no see little Theresa, right away she check with the neighbor on the phone, you know? Little Janice, her friend, come home with her sister Philomena, but Theresa no come into their house with them. So my daughter right away she put on the coat and come down and look all around. But she no see the kid. She come back upstairs and I hear all the noise in the hall. See, we all live in the same house, my two married daughters and their families and me. I ask what’s the matter and we go down toget
her and we look and we ask the neighbors and everybody.” The old man spread his arms in an empty gesture. “What we going to do now, eh?”

  Reardon pushed his fingers through his thick hair, closed his eyes for a moment, then nodded at Ferranti. “Detective Ferranti is going to go back to the house with you now, Jimmy. You take him to your daughter’s apartment, and I’ll bet you a bottle of booze that your little Theresa is home right now, crying her eyes out, and that your daughter is smacking her, hugging her and stuffing her with food all at the same time.”

  The old man smiled with relief. If a man like Mr. Reardon said it would be all right, it had to be all right.

  Reardon stepped back, shook his head over Jimmy. “What the hell are you doing out on a day like this wearing just your sweater? A man your age, you might catch cold. Look at Christie here, she’s coughing and sneezing and you should see the way she bundles up.”

  Jimmy smiled weakly, indicated Ferranti, who was bent, red-faced with exertion, as he pulled his rubber stretch boots over his shoes. “Ah, these young people, Mr. Reardon. A snowflake hits them and right away they got pneumonia. No blood in the veins. This little girl here, Mr. Reardon, ah, Christie. She look too skinny, you know? You make her work too hard, all the time I see her work, work.”

  “It’s good for her,” Reardon said briskly. “Go ahead, Jimmy, you tell little Theresa for me not to stay out in the snow so long next time, right?”

  Jimmy nodded. It would be okay now. Ferranti turned and caught Reardon’s signal. He would keep in touch.

  Reardon reached for Christie’s report, rolled it into a cylinder which he tapped absently on the surface of her desk. He stared across the room, through the window, out into the darkness of the cold, sleety afternoon. “You got a description of Jimmy’s granddaughter?”

  Christie nodded, held up the notes she had jotted down.

  “Give the local precinct a call,” he said quietly. “And stick around a while.”

  Tom Dell carefully placed his topcoat on a wooden hanger, brushed it lightly with his palms and hung it on the aluminum coat rack. He turned to the boy who had accompanied him into the Squad Room.

  “Want to take your jacket off, John?”

  He handled the threadbare, lightweight jacket with the same care he had shown his own coat. Dell rubbed his hands together, blew lightly on his fingers.

  “Christie, do we have some hot coffee? This is John D’Amico, Jimmy Giaconna’s grandson. Could you use some coffee, John?”

  The boy shrugged and kept his head down. It was difficult to see his face. His eyes were hidden behind wire-framed eyeglasses which were rain-spotted. Christie went to Reardon’s office and poured two cups of coffee from the electric percolator. She brought them back into the Squad Room and set them on a desk. Tom Dell moved easily, settled the boy in a chair, commented on the weather which had turned raw in the blackness of night.

  “Is this a police station?” John D’Amico’s voice had an odd, flat quality.

  “No, this is the District Attorney’s office, John. This is Detective Opara. She works with Mr. Reardon and me.”

  He was about seventeen years old. Physically. He looked around the room, then at Christie and pointed at her. “Gee, she’s a detective? I didn’t know there were lady detectives.”

  Tom sat on the edge of the desk and nodded pleasantly. “John here has been very helpful, Christie. John and me are good friends, aren’t we, John?”

  “Yeah. We’re good friends.”

  For no discernible reason, Christie felt tension beginning. Not from Tom’s voice or gestures or manner. Not even from his quick, sharp glance directly into her eyes. Just from something vague ... but strong enough to tighten her stomach and her throat. She followed Dell’s lead, lit a cigarette, pulled up a chair.

  “You’re helping Detective Dell, John? Is Theresa your little sister?”

  The boy regarded her blankly.

  “No, Theresa’s his little cousin. Right, John?”

  The boy nodded. “She got lost in the snow. She was crying because ... I don’t know why she was crying.”

  “That’s okay, John. Drink some coffee. You look cold.” Dell waited while the boy gulped the hot coffee. “It was real cold this afternoon, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. It was real cold.”

  Dell led the conversation, gently, easily, not insisting, letting the boy respond however he wished, but irrevocably he moved closer and closer to what Christie had sensed from the moment they had walked into the Squad Room.

  Yeah, John had seen little Theresa out front. Yeah, she was cold and wet. Yeah, her friends went home and left her. Yeah, she was going upstairs. But she fell on the front stoop and banged her chin.

  “There was blood on her chin. And she was crying. You know how little kids cry?”

  Christie’s voice sounded strangely false in her own ears. “That’s too bad, John. You must have felt bad to see your little cousin cry.”

  John D’Amico turned to face Christie. His eyes were magnified behind his glasses; they were round and empty. His mouth fell open. Dell reached over and touched his shoulder.

  “Sure he felt bad. John’s a good cousin. Right, John?”

  His head swung around, his face pale and expressionless, toward Dell again. “Yeah. She didn’t have to cry so much. I just held my handkerchief to her chin. To stop the bleeding. Because ... because ... you know what? Her tooth came out. It was a loose tooth and it came out, right into my handkerchief.” He smiled. “I even showed it to her. That’s why she was bleeding. I showed her the tooth, to make her stop crying.” The boy became agitated, looked from one to the other. He had offered the tooth, why didn’t his little cousin stop crying?

  They didn’t press him. They did it easily and by steps, Dell and Christie taking turns, offering him more coffee, moving on, waiting, stop and go. Until they had it all, and then they sat with it.

  He had met his little cousin in the hallway, bleeding and crying. He had taken her into his family’s apartment. His mother, a widow, was at work. His two younger sisters were at a friend’s house. He just wanted to help Theresa. He held the handkerchief to her mouth. He helped her take off her wet clothing. He just wanted to. She wouldn’t stop crying. She just wouldn’t and then she began to, you know, pull and push at him and he didn’t really get mad. It was just that—she had no reason to act that way. And the crying. Gee, it made a pain inside his head. So he. Well, he just. And then, he put her in the closet in his room. Under some things. And she was very quiet and his head felt much better.

  Christie took her control from Tom Dell. His expression never changed: friendly, comforting, easy. Just his light gray eyes, catching hers once or twice, seemed to have deepened. He reached for the phone on the first ring.

  “Detective Dell. Yeah, Mr. Reardon.” He turned his body so that his face was away from Christie and John. He spoke very softly, very rapidly. When he finished, he asked Christie if she wanted something to eat. She shook her head.

  “I’m going to call up the luncheonette for some hamburgers for John and me. Okay, John?”

  John D’Amico walked around the office, munching his hamburger. There was a stream of ketchup and juice along his chin and he wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand. He reached out, touched the various items on the bulletin board, asked Tom Dell questions, simple questions, and seemed pleased with Tom’s answers. When the phone rang again, Dell swung around easily, kept his voice even and pleasant, but the color drained from his face.

  “Right, Mr. Reardon. Yeah.” And then, to himself, “Jesus.”

  Christie, watching him, felt nausea, heavy and insistent, almost gag her. Dell extended the receiver.

  “Christie, Mr. Reardon wants to talk to you.”

  Reardon’s voice, hard and familiar, held her steady. “Christie, do you know what’s happened?”

  “Yes. Yes, sir.”

  “Okay. I want you to come over here. Tom will give you the address. Christ, we have two mothe
rs. You’re going to have to tell one of them; take your pick. The victim’s mother or the boy’s mother.”

  Christie shook her head. “No. Uh-uh. I don’t want to, Mr. Reardon.”

  There was a short pause, and then Reardon, firm and certain. “Nobody asked you if you want to, Detective Opara. You are needed over here and you have exactly five minutes to get here. Got that?”

  “Yes. Yes, sir, all right.”

  Christie jammed her arms into her coat, buttoned it, pulled her boots on. She dug in her pocketbook, pushed aside gun, shield, makeup case, keys, and came up with some tissues. Her nose was raw from blowing and sneezing. There was a loud, hissing burst of sleet and wind against the window, but Christie felt sweat, clammy and dank, run along the side of her body. Her mouth felt dry and sticky.

  “I’m going to show John some pictures of culprits we’re looking for, Christie. Come on over here, John.” He settled the boy at a card catalogue, then moved across the office to Christie. His hands went to her coat collar and carefully pulled the collar up over her neck and ears.

  “Cold out there.” Then, softly, “Take it easy, kid. You’ll be okay.”

  She took it home with her. As hard as she tried to leave it behind, the voices, the sickened faces, the screams and cries came home with her.

  Nora Opara, her eyes a brilliant blue above the royal-blue housecoat, heard Christie at the door. “Hold it a minute, Christie. I have the chain lock on.” She stepped aside as a blast of cold wet air rushed into the entrance hall. “Wow, this is a great night. Good for your cold. Christie, let me look at you.”

  Christie kept her head down. “I’m all right. I just want to get out of these things. Nora, it’s nearly two o’clock. What are you doing up?”

  Nora ran a hand over Christie’s forehead. Her dark eyebrows pulled together. “You’re warm, Christie. You must be running about a hundred and one.”

  Christie shrugged. It wasn’t important.

  “Well,” Nora said, taking her cue from Christie, “I could lie and say that I was so taken by the Late Late Show that I didn’t realize the time. But actually, if you’ve seen one Dracula Meets the Son of the Wolfman’s Daughter, you’ve seen them all. I’d rather be a martyr and tell the truth. My only grandson’s only mother sounded pretty awful on the telephone and I figured you might need me. Or a cup of hot chocolate. Or something.”