The Ledger Page 17

  Christie saw Den 4 come back to their site. She flexed her fingers, dug her library card from her wallet and put it into her coat pocket. She slung the camera over her shoulder and took a deep breath. She waited until the man in charge was sufficiently besieged by complaining scout leaders, shivering mothers and vociferous, healthy young scouts.

  She thrust her leather-gloved hand at him. “How do you do, sir. I’m Virginia Kilby. Of the Allenby News.” She flashed her library card quickly, in confirmation of her words, then slipped it back in her pocket. “I’m here to shoot the troops!” She gave a sudden, arch little laugh. “May I start with you? You know, directing things?”

  The man regarded Christie blankly for a moment, then, distracted by horseplay practically under his feet, he scolded several boys, warning them of demerits for their den. Finally, he turned to her. “Look, could you get around to me later? I mean, we’ll be here, God, all day long. Get me later, when we’re better organized, Miss ... er ...”

  “Kilby. Virginia Kilby. And may I have your name?”

  “Frisby. George Frisby. Excuse me, please. Now listen, you fellas, I’m not going to give you too many more chances ...”

  She started with the group of boys nearest to her: arranged them in a grinning, leering, face-making semicircle. The tallest boy held the banner proudly until just before she clicked the shutter. Then his face twisted into a grotesque leer. Charming child, Christie thought. She reached for her notebook. “Now, no one move. I’ll go around the group and get you in order, so we’ll know who you are. For the newspaper. In case we decide to print your den’s picture.”

  “Here, here, now, just a minute. What’s this all about?”

  The leader of the pack, an intent, dark-browed man with the build of a wrestler, scowled at Christie, then at Den 4, who kept the places she had assigned them.

  Her smile was quick and relaxed. “How do you do. I’m Virginia Kilby, the photographer. For the Allenby News.”

  The information did nothing to change the challenging expression.

  Christie waved her hand to Mr. Frisby. “George Frisby knows all about it. Didn’t he tell you?”

  “George Frisby thinks that just because he’s been appointed temporary leader of the area ... he never told me about the photographs. Maybe he told the other leaders, but he didn’t tell me. I’m going to straighten that guy out before the day is over. First, he tells us there won’t be any snacking before noon. And did you see the kids marching on that canteen? Ah, the hell with it.”

  No other leader interfered with Christie in any way. Her fingers were stiff and numb by the time she got to Den 4. It seemed that she was taking the same picture, over and over again: the same semicircle, the same clowning, the same faces in the same uniforms.

  Okay, don’t move now. Please stay exactly as you were until I write your names down.”

  Elena’s son was the fourth boy from the left. He had light-brown hair, a fair complexion reddened by the cold, fine features and huge black eyes which had an unexpected upward slant, and long, familiar black lashes. He jabbed his elbow sharply into the ribs of the boy next to him. He stopped roughhousing only long enough to give Christie his name.

  “Richard C. Arvin, Junior.”

  It was the only name that mattered.

  She went through the motions: photographed two more dens, wrote down names. She spent the next hour taking candid shots of the skaters: she didn’t even need the zoom lens. She shot right out in the open: Elena’s son at the end of a crack-the-whip; hunched over his den’s campfire; as he relaced his skates; as he glanced up, directly into the camera, smiling; as he picked himself up from a spill on the ice; as he looked, impatiently, over his shoulder for a friend.

  She tossed the camera into the front seat beside her, warmed up the motor, watched the energetic boys for a moment, thought of Mickey, shuddered once, emptied her mind and drove home.

  15

  EDGAR KATZ WAS A lanky boy of eighteen who had only recently grown used to his stiltlike legs. He was beginning to overcome his adolescent stoop, despite his mother’s nagging.

  “Put your shoulders back, you’re going to be a hunchback,” Harriet Katz informed her son.

  Edgar ran a bony hand through his shaggy long hair and ignored his mother. “Christie, I thought you were putting me on when you told me the pictures were for a guy in your squad.”

  “Edgar,” Christie said, “I told you it was to surprise one of the fellows. You didn’t want to believe me.”

  When she had brought the roll of film to him the previous night, she told Edgar that she had taken candid snapshots of the son of one of the detectives she worked with: that it was to be a surprise birthday present. The young amateur photographer had regarded her with a surge of secretive enthusiasm, assuring her he could be trusted in a confidential police matter. Finally, Christie told him that the roll of film contained pictures of a notorious car thief at work and that the careful development of these pictures could lead to his immediate capture and incarceration.

  “See, Edgar, you never believe when someone tells you something. You’d rather believe a make-believe fairy tale. Why would Christie lie to you? Stand up straight. Christie, eat some of that pie. You’re playing with your fork.” Mrs. Katz, mother of five, automatically mothered everyone who came into her home. It was easier to eat the pie than to protest that ten A.M. was a little early for such a rich dessert.

  Christie felt a mild, passing guilt at the stories she had told to Edgar: that too was part of her profession. Tell a story, any story, as long as it is believed. Sometimes, she lost track of what really was true.

  “Ed, you’re really getting professional. The pictures are good.”

  Harriet Katz glanced at the photographs. “A cute little boy. This is the son of one of your partners? It’s a shame they’re all married.”

  “This is Tommy O’Hanlon. You met his father, Pat O’Hanlon, remember, when they stopped by a few weeks ago to take Mickey ice skating? That’s right, you didn’t see Tommy, he waited in the car.”

  The woman didn’t really notice the face in the pictures. Her eyes watched for the stoop, the hunch, the motionless fork. “Did Edgar really do a good job? This looks a little blurred. You’re not eating, Christie. They got you working even on a Saturday?” She shook her head. “They give you crazy hours. Not even weekends off. I saw Nora leave in a taxicab. She’s going to Boston? She told me yesterday. And your brother came for Mickey before? Listen, if you’re lonely tonight, come over and you’ll have supper with us, Edgar, stand up. You look like you’re shrinking.”

  16

  IT WAS FOUR O’CLOCK AND nearly dark when Christie arrived at the hotel on Park Avenue. The sky was a somber, heavy, impenetrable gray. The brief spell of clear weather was apparently over and Christie felt an aching coldness across her shoulders. She watched a mink-clad woman come from the hotel, walk to the nearest lamp post and carefully deposit a tiny, blanketed poodle at its base. The little dog shivered for a moment before the woman carried it farther down the street.

  Christie walked past the hotel, around the corner to the street entrance to the coffee shop. Now that she was so close, she felt a sense of caution. It would not be particularly pleasant to run into either Casey Reardon or Stoner Martin. Not at this point. She went into a phone booth, dialed the hotel desk and asked for Suite 16A. She wanted to find out who was on duty upstairs.

  “Who’s calling, please?” the desk clerk asked after a moment’s pause.

  “This is Detective Opara, of the District Attorney’s Squad.”

  “Well, then, surely you know ...”

  “Look, could you just connect me with the suite.”

  “Well, I could but there’s no one there.”

  “What do you mean, no one there?”

  The desk clerk became cautious. “I am sorry, but I’m not at liberty to give out any information over the telephone.”

  Christie hung up abruptly, walked through the coffee shop an
d emerged inside the lobby of the hotel. It was warm and elegant and quiet. There was a group of well-dressed men seated in a discrete cluster. They rose soundlessly as a beautiful woman, dressed in a candy-satin, figure-revealing gown, came toward them from the elevator. She was trailed by a pasty-complexioned, tall thin man who kept his eyes on the carpet.

  “Sit down, fellas, sit down, sit down. Let’s get the conference over with, okay? I got a dinner engagement.”

  Christie recognized the woman as a very well-known film star. And the pasty-faced thin man as her husband. She didn’t think he was her dinner date.

  The woman with the mink coat entered the lobby, the little dog huddled against her. “Jack, would you have Henry take Boo-Boo out for a walk in about an hour? Boo-Boo has some ‘unfinished business’ to attend to, right darling?” She pressed her face against the little blanketed body.

  The room clerk made a notation on his pad and nodded. His eyes fastened on Christie and his smile held. “May I help you, Miss?”

  She held her palm out and showed him her detective’s shield. “Did I just speak to you on the phone? I’m Detective Opara.”

  “Why, yes. But ... where did you pop up from?”

  Christie ignored his confusion. “Why isn’t there anyone in Suite 16A? Look, I’ve been upstate for the last few days and haven’t been in touch with my office. Where’s Elena Vargas?”

  The room clerk looked around, then leaned forward. His lips barely moved as he spoke: he was being confidential. “Why, so far as I know, Miss Vargas was ... I believe the word is ‘bailed’ out. At any rate, her lawyer came this afternoon and they left together. The detective, I believe it was Mr. Farrell ... the gentleman with the bandaged hand? ... he stopped at the desk and said that your squad wanted the suite held for the time being but that Miss V ... wouldn’t be staying there. I don’t mind telling you that I am relieved. This is hardly the type of hotel that encourages ‘guests’ of that type.”

  The burst of laughter from the other side of the lobby was loud and female and dangerously close to hysteria. The room clerk closed his eyes for a moment, then whispered to Christie, “We could do without her too. But her studio keeps a number of rooms on a permanent basis. What can we do?”

  “There isn’t anyone up there now?”

  He turned, indicated the key hanging on the board behind them. “If you want to go upstairs, you may, of course.”

  Christie shook her head. “No. No, thanks very much.”

  As she passed the group, Christie had a better look at the movie star: she was loud and slightly drunk but, Christie noted with some slight disappointment, she was even more beautiful than in her films.

  It was seven short blocks downtown and three long crosstown blocks to Elena Vargas’s apartment. Christie walked rapidly, her hands deep inside her pockets, her eyes straight ahead. She noticed an occasional umbrella, but the snow was light and scattered and the air had warmed a bit. A taxicab jumped the light, edged close to the sidewalk and sent a spray of black slush against her legs. Christie brushed at her boots and coat with tissues, then felt a cold lump of ice press inside her boot against her ankle. She balled the wad of tissues into a tight missile which she tossed into a wire wastebasket on the corner of the street.

  The lump of ice was a cold dull wetness against her foot by the time she reached the tall, gleaming white brick apartment house where Elena Vargas lived. This might be the only opportunity she would have to speak to Elena alone. The doorman had his back turned toward the entrance. He was speaking on the intercom telephone and didn’t see Christie as she entered the building. Music, the same as she had heard in the lobby previously, swept through the large expanse softly. The elevator was waiting for her touch on the button and the door slid open. She hesitated for a moment, then remembered, and touched the square over the number nine.

  Christie slid her fingers inside her shoulder bag and felt the contours of the envelope containing the pictures of Elena’s son. She would have to handle this meeting precisely right, yet she still could not anticipate how it would go. It would just have to go: she would play it by ear, instinctively. Absently, she unbuckled the change compartment on the outside of her pocketbook and looked down in surprise. The envelope of pictures that Enzo Giardino had given her, and which Casey Reardon had tossed back at her, was still there. She redid the buckle as the elevator door opened.

  Christie blinked at her reflection in the small, square mirrored peephole, but it was difficult to see more than the outline of her face. She heard the echo of chimes through the interior of the apartment, then the soft click as she was observed through the two-way mirror.

  The door to Elena Vargas’s apartment opened swiftly and Tonio LoMarco stepped to one side. His eyes were bright and his thin lips pulled back into an unpleasant smile.

  “Come on in, Detective Opara.”

  17

  CASEY REARDON LET THE telephone ring one more time, then smashed the receiver back into place. He searched randomly through the morass of papers on his desk, then glanced at his watch. He depressed the button on the intercom. “Stoney, come on in here.”

  Stoner Martin knew the answer before he asked his question. “Still didn’t reach Christie?”

  “No. Where the hell could she be? We’ve been sitting on that phone most of the day.”

  “Well,” Stoner said reasonably, “you did tell her to take off. Maybe that’s what she did—took off.”

  “You her mouthpiece or something?” Casey demanded brusquely. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry, Stoney. Damn it, she should have called in. Give her number a ring periodically, right? Now, what have you got for me?”

  He reached for the typed papers, scanned them as he listened to Stoner’s verbal report.

  “That’s Pat O’Hanlon’s report from his waterfront contact. There seems to be a definite pattern. Sam Farrell’s over at the Bureau of Narcotics and their information jibes with what we’ve been getting. The word is out along the waterfront that something ‘special’ is due to arrive within the next few days. They’ve got a grapevine like you wouldn’t believe. A couple of heavies show up during shape-up. They just ‘show up,’ wait quietly, don’t even expect to work. But it puts the hiring boss on notice. When the time comes, he’ll know exactly when to assign them, and where to assign them, without a word being exchanged. No questions asked, no answers given. These guys show up a couple of times a year and work a couple of days each time. They might work just one ship or two or ten. On anything from fragile stuff to imported cars. But when they do work, nobody bothers them.”

  “Does the Narcotics Squad have anybody on the docks? Besides informers, I mean—their own men?”

  “They have two: one guy is a real rough character. Actually was a dock-walloper before he came on the job. The other guy is kind of quiet, minds his own business, does his day’s work. But both of them have been getting the same vibrations. The general feeling is that something big is going to happen pretty soon.”

  Stoney leaned forward, ran his hands quickly through the papers on Reardon’s desk. “Here, this one. This is a rundown from the Port of New York Authority, Customs Division. Relative to the number of cargo ships due to arrive in New York harbor this coming week.” His long dark finger slid down the page. “Approximately forty-two, carrying approximately a zillion and two tons of cargo from ports in Spain, Italy, Morocco, England, Ireland, West Germany and France. Not to mention what cargo might have been picked up prior to the last port of departure. Cargo listed here ranges the whole scale: automobiles to perfume. And this doesn’t cover airfreight, which is covered in another report.” He searched briefly, pulled out the proper neatly typed information.

  Casey Reardon rubbed his fingers into his aching eyes then squinted through the blurred irritation he had caused. “In other words, unless we know where the hell to look, it’s a needle in a haystack.”

  “That’s about it, Casey. The customs people will be working like crazy because they’ve been a
lerted, but hell,” his hand swept over the desk, “with all this material coming in ... without some good information, as you said, a needle in a haystack. Or lots of needles in lots of haystacks.”

  Reardon leaned back in his chair, stretched his legs and carefully placed his feet on an opened drawer. He locked his hands behind his head. “Okay. Now, tell me again. What’s funny about Elena Vargas?”

  The detective cupped his hands over a match, inhaled deeply on his cigarette, closed his eyes momentarily against the smoke. “One: too much money. Her own bank account, in the five figures. Two: no trade. She’s not earning and Enzo Giardino is not known for his generosity. Three: Giardino is also not known as a great lover, either sexually or sentimentally. What it adds up to is that there is no known reason for him to be keeping Elena Vargas.”

  Reardon said, “Except that she is somehow vital to his operation. If this goddamn ledger—or alleged ledger—is in Puerto Rico, and if it is the only complete rundown on the whole operation, that means Elena Vargas should be making a trip to Puerto Rico. And very, very pronto.”

  “Lucky for Ferranti. I wish to hell I spoke Spanish. Why I ever studied German in college I will never know.”

  Bill Ferranti, fluent in Spanish, had taken the nine P.M. flight to San Juan the previous night. He confirmed, by telephone call that morning, that he had been met at the airport by a top investigator from the San Juan Police Department and by the agent-in-charge of the F.B.I, regional office. Reardon’s phone calls to both of these men had been brief and explicit and both had promised complete cooperation.

  “Where’s Opara’s report?” It was always a source of wonder to Reardon that Stoner could immediately find the right papers. “Did Ferranti take a carbon of this with him?”

  “Yeah. He’ll call again at about eight or eight-thirty tonight. He’s located the village where Elena’s cousin fives. The locals gave him quite a bit of assistance. By the time he contacts us tonight, he should have some pretty concrete information.”