The Witness Page 2

  He could see the quick blinking, the dry swallow, the resolve that she would speak without letting her voice give her away. “All right, Dad. I am going to the Lincoln construction site this morning. We are going to protest the prejudice, narrowness, unfairness, cruelty, unfairness ... rottenness of the hiring practices of the building trades.” She bit her lip, aware that her voice had risen. “And,” she said softly now, “we are going to sit down, lie down, stop the trucks and the bigots from building that federally sponsored project!”

  Casey nodded curtly and ran his finger over his bottom lip. “Uh-huh. That’s what you’re going to do?”

  “Yes.”

  He glanced at his wife; she nervously fingered the collar of her robe. Her lips trembled and her voice was too loud. “Casey, I’ve talked to her. You know I’ve talked to her. She won’t listen to me.”

  He covered his forehead with his hand, addressing his daughter. “Are you going to get arrested too? Going to lie down on the street and have the policemen—you know, the big burly fascist brutes—drag you away? Did they teach you how to relax your body, how to let yourself go limp so that your—what? hundred and ten pounds?—will seem like a hundred and ninety?” His voice became harsh and mocking. “And did they tell you what to say when they drag you past the TV men and the newspapermen? Do you have it by rote, or what—you gonna play it by ear?”

  Her face paled and he knew the shame she experienced at being unable to control the long tears that streamed down her smooth cheeks, but she ignored them by refusing to wipe them away.

  “And did they tell you,” he said brittlely, “how to handle things in five years, ten years, from now, when you are in the middle of a career or married to some nice guy who’s looking to get ahead in life and a routine check of his background—your background—shows, in red ink, that Barbara Reardon, when she was just a confused little college girl of eighteen, got mixed up with a bunch of hippies and got herself locked up and dumped in a tank with an assortment of prostitutes and boosters and junkies? And maybe that she did thirty days as protest? Huh?”

  She smeared the tears across her face with the back of her hand, as his voice became softer but at the same time crueler. “Oh, I know; the future doesn’t matter. You don’t want any kind of future that isn’t your kind of future. Right? Christ, you little dumbbell. If there was anything I thought I could count on it was your intelligence: that your brains could put a check on your emotionalism.”

  There was a stark, empty silence now; he picked up the cup and drained the coffee, then slammed the cup back onto the saucer. He looked up suddenly, confronted by his other daughter, Ellen, firstborn of his eighteen-year-old twins. “Well, the Sleeping Beauty has decided to favor us with her presence. And what the hell are you made up for—the Grand Ball?”

  Ellen glanced uncertainly at her mother, then at her sister. Not able to measure the conflict, unprepared for her father’s attack, she said, “We’re having the college fashion show today at Lord and Taylor’s, Dad. I told you about it. I’m one of the commentators.”

  Casey slapped his hand on the table. “Jesus Christ,” he intoned. “Jumping Jesus Christ. One hippie and one clothes horse and both out of the same egg! It’s funny. I mean, in a way, it’s really funny, only maybe I don’t have a sense of humor.”

  Barbara, her paleness flushed by anger, shot out at him. “Oh, you have a sense of humor all right, Dad. A good, sharp, biting sense of humor! Maybe what you lack is a sense of justice!”

  Katherine, her voice shrill, her eyes on Casey, said, “Barbara, don’t you dare talk like that to your father!”

  Casey waved his hand impatiently at his wife. “No, let her go ahead and say what she thinks. I think that’s very interesting, Barbara, I really do. I see, I get it now. You have a sense of justice. You understand what it’s all about. Not me. I’ve spent the last sixteen years of my life in courtrooms and investigating rooms and in every corner and alley of this city, so how could I possibly have any sense of justice? I’m warped. Yes, I see: I’m not pure and innocent, seeing things as clearly as you.”

  The quiet mockery of his voice was his most effective weapon with Barbara. Knowing how desperately she wanted to be taken seriously, knowing the urgency of her feelings, he could reduce her to spouting the slogans she now began reciting impassionedly.

  “Justice? In the courtroom? Equal justice, Dad? For poor and rich? For black and white? For Puerto Ricans? For the articulate and the inarticulate? And—justice for all? Where, Dad, where?”

  He leaned back easily, his elbows resting on the arms of his chair, his hands dangling loosely. Not answering her, he could defeat her. She continued until she realized her voice betrayed her; trembling, it merely mouthed words that suddenly seemed to have no meaning, that did not convey her feelings. Stopping in the middle of a sentence, she pressed her hand over her mouth and leaped to her feet, knocking over her chair. Katherine gasped; Ellen looked up, her eyes wide. Casey didn’t move or blink. In one final burst, Barbara whispered, “You don’t prosecute in your courtrooms; you persecute!”

  “Good exit line,” Casey muttered at the empty place where his daughter had been. He motioned at the chair. “Ellen, be a good girl; pick up your sister’s chair.” He folded his newspaper carefully, clicked his pen and placed it in his jacket pocket.

  “May I be excused,” Ellen murmured softly, leaving before anyone answered her.

  Katherine took a small sip of her coffee, waiting.

  Casey whistled between his teeth, shook his head. “Breakfast at the Reardons’. This is going to be quite a day. We’re off and running.”

  He headed for the telephone on the desk and Katherine called out softly, “Casey? Casey, what about Barbara?”

  He stopped dialing, replaced the receiver and turned to face his wife. Katherine Reardon was smaller than her daughters, a fragile, pretty, slender woman. She turned her hands palms up and shook her head.

  “I don’t understand her, Casey. I just don’t understand her. Why does she want to get involved in these things? Why can’t she just ... just ...”

  Reardon inhaled slowly. Her bewilderment was genuine. Her daughters, particularly Barbara, were a mystery to her. They always had been. What was it he had told her the day they were born, the day she apologized for giving birth to two girls? “You raise the girls, Kath, I’ll raise the boys.” But there hadn’t been any boys for the simple, or complicated, reason that there hadn’t been any Katherine. He had accepted that a very long time ago, not easily, but with a tense finality. She looked so forlorn, so completely at a loss, standing there before him. Casey reached out, pushed a stray lock of black hair from her forehead then dropped his hand abruptly in response to the familiar tightening of her lips.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to her, okay?” She nodded, hesitantly. “It’ll be all right, Katherine. I’ll take care of it.” The way I always have. The unspoken words hung between them for a minute, then his wife, reassured, smiled.

  “It’s just a stage she’s going through. I can’t seem to keep up with all these ‘stages,’ Casey, that’s all.”

  He turned his back and spoke so softly and quickly into the telephone that she couldn’t hear him. Nor would she have been interested if she had heard him. After all, Casey’s job was Casey’s responsibility.

  Barbara Reardon sat hunched on the window seat of her room, staring vacantly out the window without seeing the garden or the leafy branches of the tree that tapped against the pane with every small breeze. Her arms were wrapped around her knees, her chin rested on her locked hands. She heard her father’s step, the light, springy tread on the stairs, the sharp click of his shoes on the uncarpeted section of the hallway, then the three sharp raps on her door.

  Rubbing her hands over her face, she called out, “Come in.

  Casey motioned for her to stay where she was. He stood looking out the window, his eyes almost orange in the sunlight. He ran his hand over his thick dark red hair and pressed hi
s palm against the cowlick at the crown of his head. She could see the muscles of his jawline moving; he was grinding his teeth. He plunged his hands into his trouser pockets and sat down beside her, pushing her feet over with his knee.

  “Barbara, I don’t have the time this morning to go into all of this with you. I know that your feelings are sincere. I know that your beliefs are sincere. But I think you should know that my feelings and my beliefs are equally sincere. Also, I think you’re mature enough to give some thought to the facts. I’ve got twenty-five years on you. I may not have learned much but I’ve learned a few things you don’t know anything about. Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that your old man might—just might—know a little more than you?”

  She tried to use the weapons of silence and a cold stare, but he smiled, reached his hand to her knee and shook it lightly. “Babs—oh, Babs. Christ. I wish you were ten years old again. I’d whack the hell out of you and that would be it. But you’re eighteen and you’re all grown up and you know all there is to know and you have all the solutions.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got one hell of a day ahead of me. I’ve got enough things to worry about without your adding to it. We’ll talk it over tonight, okay?”

  She clenched her hands tightly around her knees, raised her face to him. “I’m going, Dad. I am going!”

  His face tightened and his voice, while still low, was unyielding. “Barbara, get one thing straight. You are still my daughter. You are still living under my roof. You will do what I say, whether you approve or disapprove of my decisions.”

  “I have responsibilities! You’re the one who taught me that! You said every individual has to learn to be responsible—”

  “Don’t misquote me, for Christ’s sake, not to my face.” He rubbed the back of his neck angrily. “Learn to be responsible for yourself—for yourself—before you undertake the responsibility of the whole human race.” Again, the watch: the time racing him. He started to cross the room.

  “I am going, Dad.”

  Now his anger burst forth, and he planted his feet wide apart, facing her, his finger jabbing the air. “Okay, now I’ll tell you. You listen, and get this straight. Get yourself out of those clothes and put on a dress and stockings and some lipstick and get your goddam school books together and get yourself to classes today; and when your classes are over, you get yourself home and up here to your room and you stay here until I come home.” The dark eyes, glistening, challenged him; he took a slow, deep breath. “Because if you make the slightest attempt to attend that goddam demonstration, I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. Two of my men are going to be there. There will be one detective at each side of you the minute you show up. And they will very quietly escort you to a car—very quietly so no one will even notice you. And there will be no reporters to ask you your educated sophomoric opinions and your learned intellectual judgments on society as you see it. Just two guys from my squad who will quietly and gently and firmly escort you home and will see to it that you remain in your room until I come home. Then I will write a letter to the Dean of Students at Sarah Lawrence and notify her that Miss Reardon, who was allowed to make an independent decision and take summer courses at Columbia, has now made another independent decision. She has decided to abandon all her great plans for a B.A. and an M.A. and a goddam Ph.D. that was going to qualify her to save the world from the mess her father and his generation have created. And that Miss Reardon, although she has never earned the price of a sneaker in her life, has decided to become self-supporting and independent. And that Mr. Reardon, as a thoroughly modern father, who has been footing all the bills up to this point, feels that his daughter is mature enough to know what the hell she is doing.”

  “You really would do that, wouldn’t you?”

  “You know it!”

  She dropped her face to her knees, and when she looked up, her face was red and wet.

  Reardon stood waiting impatiently. “I want your word, Barbara.”

  “Do I have any choice?”

  “I just gave you your choice.”

  “Did you? No. You said, ‘My way or my way.’ That’s always my choice, isn’t it, Dad?”

  “I want your word,” he repeated.

  “Is my word any good? I mean, will you take my word?”

  “I always have, Barbara, and I better be able to.”

  She stood up, planting herself in front of her father, her chin raised. “All right. All right, you have my word. Your way: like a good, obedient little girl. Daddy does all the thinking in the family. Daddy tells us what to think, what to feel, what to believe, what to say and what to do. Brainless little Barbara, and brainless little Ellen and brainless—”

  “Watch it, Barbara,” he warned.

  “And brainless little Mother,” she continued, defying him, “all do exactly what Daddy says!”

  His reaction quicker than his control, Casey slapped his daughter sharply across the mouth, then whirled away from her and crossed the room. He pulled the door open, then turned, coldly regarding her stunned face. “Okay. Is that what you wanted? ‘Daddy is nothing but a brute.’ Okay, that’s the way you want it—that’s the way you got it!” He slammed the door behind him and, cursing, took the stairs two at a time.

  Reardon yanked his dark brown suit jacket from the back of the dining room chair. His anger was directed at himself now. That was a hell of a demonstration of intellect over emotion he had just given Barbara. He bunched his fingers into a fist and jammed his arm through a sleeve. He turned so quickly that he collided with Ellen, who had just come to the hallway. For a fleeting moment, seeing her, he thought she was Barbara. It was a mistake he hadn’t made for many years. “Ellen? Give me a hand with this damn jacket, will you?”

  She held it for him, eased it over his shoulders. He leaned toward her briefly, gave her a kiss on the forehead. “Thanks, Ellie. See you.”

  She held his arm. “Dad, could I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Look, it’s all right. Take that worried look off your face. Come on, Ellie, no problems with you, okay? I’m late as it is.

  She nodded, not speaking. Christ, Reardon thought, how could the one face look so different on the two girls? The same small pale oval, the same dark hair and brows, the same intensely blue eyes, yet this was unmistakably Ellen, and because it was he had that old, vague feeling that he was giving her the short end of something. He reached impulsively to her long silky hair. “Okay, Ellen, make it quick. What’s the problem?”

  Her eyes didn’t quite meet his. Her voice, low and barely audible, was apologetic. “Dad, that fashion show I told you about? You know, at Lord and Taylor’s?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, I guess this isn’t the right time, but ...” She hesitated, then spoke rapidly. “It’s being held in conjunction with the Peace Corps—it’s an international show to interest college students in ...”

  Reardon nodded brusquely and pressed a bill into her hand. Ellen looked at the money, puzzled. “Will this solve your problem, Ellie? A twenty, okay? If you see something that this won’t cover, use Mother’s charge plate. Tell her I said so, okay?” Reardon stopped speaking, trying to figure what the hell was wrong. She smiled, but even in his acceptance of her brief cheek kiss, he caught that something: something. Well, he’d worry about that later. “Tell Mother I might be late tonight. See you, Ellie.”

  Detective Tom Dell turned the key and started the motor so that the black Pontiac was ready to move as soon as Casey Reardon settled into the front seat beside him. Dell, who had been waiting patiently in front of the house for nearly forty minutes, noted that his boss had not returned his greeting.

  Reardon’s first words were a terse order. “Make a U-turn and take the hill slow.”

  “Opara’s down there at the bus stop, Mr. Reardon,” Dell assured him.

  Reardon stiffened, turned so that he was confronting Dell. He spoke between clenched teeth. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble for you, Detective Dell, I mean if i
t wouldn’t put you out too much, would you mind turning this goddam vehicle in the other direction and taking the goddam hill real slow?”

  Dell kept his eyes averted from Reardon’s face. “Yes, sir.” It was going to be one of those days.

  Reardon slumped in the seat and pressed his knees against the dashboard. He saw Christie Opara before she spotted the car coming toward her. She was leaning against the iron post that supported the bus-stop sign, the second stop from his house. Her hair, cropped short, was brightened to light blond in the glare of the sun. She dangled a folded copy of The New York Times between two fingers and turned her face up toward the hill. She didn’t move or give any indication that she had seen him, and yet Reardon caught it all as they slowly rolled past her. The slim, long-legged girl pulled away from the post, her chin raised slightly in his direction. Though she was wearing large, round sunglasses, he could see the expression on her face. He glanced into the rearview mirror without adjusting it and saw that she had turned, staring after the car. Reardon could feel her anger and resentment and it intensified his own irritation. He swore softly and directionlessly and Tom Dell kept his eyes on the road.

  This was starting out to be one hell of a day.

  FOUR:

  CASEY REARDON FLICKED THE switch on his air conditioner back and forth, impatiently waiting for the motor to turn over. He had a natural antipathy toward all mechanical appliances, and this malfunctioning air conditioner was no exception. He smashed the palm of his hand against the machine and drew forth a low moaning response, followed by a soft, tentative chugging and turning that did not promise much relief from the thick hotness of his large office. He surveyed the disordered condition of his desk. Various reports and case files lay scattered from one end to the other, exactly where he had left them the night before.

  Reardon held his thumb firmly on the lever of his intercom. “Detective Ginsburg, come in here.”

  He released the lever before hearing any response and looked up expectantly as a shadowy figure filled the smoked-glass top of his door. “Come in, come in.”