The Ledger Page 21

  Carefully, Reardon extracted one photograph, turned it over to check that it was the one he wanted. He tossed it to Elena.

  She retrieved it from the floor. “But this one isn’t clear. It’s blurred. Please ...”

  “Turn it over,” he told her shortly.

  Elena studied the small neat writing on the reverse side of the photograph then looked up blankly.

  Casey Reardon’s voice was the voice of a stranger: cruel and relentless. “His name, his address, his date and place of birth, the date of his adoption, the name of his adoptive parents, their address. And the name of his natural mother.”

  Christie cut through her own sense of shock at Reardon’s lack of feeling. “Mr. Reardon, let her look at them a little longer.”

  In response, he took the photograph from Elena. “She’s seen enough to know that this is her kid.” He put the photographs into the envelope, sealed it and tapped the envelope against his open palm. “You have information we want, Elena.”

  Slowly, she moved her head from side to side. “I know nothing. Nothing. I’ve told you that over and over again.”

  “Yeah. I know you’ve told me that.” He held the envelope before her eyes. “It’s addressed to Enzo Giardino. It’s stamped and ready to be mailed. There’s a mail slot in the hallway. You want to talk to me, or what?”

  For a moment, the words did not seem to penetrate, made no sense, and then the reality hit her and Elena lunged.

  “Uh-uh.” Reardon stepped back easily. “Not that easy, Elena. We deal now: we make a trade. The kid for the information.”

  Elena turned to Christie. Her voice was a whisper, hoarse and frightened. “Detective Opara, you found him? You found my son for this ... this trade?”

  Christie stubbed out her cigarette and avoided Elena’s eyes. “Mr. Reardon, couldn’t you give her a minute or two to pull herself together? She hasn’t seen her son in almost seven years. Give her a little time to ...”

  Reardon cut her off harshly. “You know, Detective Opara, this is one of the times when I do think you are stupid. Elena’s had all the time she’s going to get. Once this letter is dropped down the mail slot in the hall, Elena, it’s on its way. I’ve wasted enough goddamn time on you. We making a deal or not?”

  Elena breathed deeply and tried to regain some composure. She tried to measure the words against the man: it was too blatant an attempt at blackmail. Her lips attempted a smile and she took her last chance. “I don’t think you would do it.”

  Reardon stood perfectly still for several seconds then turned abruptly. “The hell I won’t.”

  It was not his quick movement across the room, nor his words; it was Christie Opara’s reaction. Her face crumpled into a look of disbelief, she cried out a word, a sound, and threw herself after Reardon. It was Christie’s face and Christie’s reaction that sent Elena racing, in total, absolute terror, after them.

  The hallway was long and narrow and Elena crashed against the wall, grasped Reardon’s arm. He pushed her away from him. Christie caught his elbow and Reardon stopped for an instant, his face turned toward her.

  “Get your hands off me, Opara.” But Christie’s hands held, tried to work upward, reaching for the envelope, which he held over her head. “Christie, I will bounce you right down the hall. Let go!”

  But she persisted, tried to stop him, threw her body against him with a desperate force; for one fleeting instant, she saw his face clearly: his lips were parted in surprised amusement, a familiar mocking expression that confused her. Then his shoulder slammed against her cheek and she fell back against the wall.

  Both girls watched incredulously as Reardon inserted the envelope into the mail slot and held it by the corner. He breathed heavily and spoke softly. Okay. We’re here, Elena. No bluff. Don’t try me, because your kid means no more to me than your cousin’s kid, Raphael, means to you.”

  “Oh no,” the imitation of Elena’s voice told him, “you don’t understand about Raphael. You don’t understand.”

  “I understand perfectly. He was a substitute. To protect your own son. You set the whole thing up, Elena, not me.” Reardon eased the envelope several inches down into the mail slot.

  Elena leaned against the wall. Her head fell back and her face, turned up toward the dim light, registered total defeat. “Oh, no. Please no. Detective Opara. Tell him. Tell him.”

  Christie glared at Reardon. “Elena will tell you everything you want to know.”

  Elena’s head bobbed up and down in confirmation. Her eyes were locked tight against the sight of the envelope in the mail slot. She shuddered at the unexpected pressure of Reardon’s hand on her arm.

  “I’ll keep the photographs for the time being,” he said quietly. “Come on, let’s get back into the room before someone calls the house dicks.”

  Elena Vargas sipped the coffee without tasting it, then put the cup back on the saucer. She took a bite of sandwich, chewed automatically, swallowed. Nothing had flavor: everything was flat and dull. Her beautiful dark mink coat was a collection of dead animal bodies. And Casey Reardon, lithe and strong and energetic, the electric excitement radiating from him, was just another man, now that she had agreed to be used.

  And Christie Opara. Elena raised her eyes. Just a little girl after all. Her wide-open face bore traces of shock and disbelief and betrayal. Had she really not seen brutality before?

  “Do either of you girls want anything else?” Reardon asked them.

  “No, thank you, Mr. Reardon.” Christie avoided looking at him.

  He reached forward and lit Elena’s cigarette for her. He had won, could afford this politeness now. “Okay, Elena, whenever you’re ready. Where is this ledger we’ve been hearing so much about?”

  She glanced at Stoner Martin who stood quietly in the doorway. Smoke from his cigarette curled upward in spirals over his head. They all waited.

  Elena stretched her arms before her. Her color had come back: she was reconciled. “Oh, Mr. Reardon. No one, not even you, guessed? How about you, Detective Stoner-Stoney Martin?” She stood up and crossed the room. She reached out and her fingers lightly touched the dark, handsome face. Her lips moved, made playful, suggestive sounds, then she removed his cigarette from his mouth, replaced it with her own. She inhaled deeply on Stoner’s cigarette and turned. “Not Christie Opara? Didn’t you guess? She is your best detective, Reardon, isn’t she? Or your bravest. Or your dumbest, maybe. To walk into my apartment with Enzo and Tonio. A baby, this one.”

  Reardon’s voice was firm. “Okay, Elena. Let’s get to it.”

  “Get to it? But, Mr. Reardon, that is so funny. You don’t know how funny that is. You are right at it. Right at it, stud, all the time, right in the room with you, moving in front of you, playing with you.” Her hand lightly caressed his face. “Touching you.” She turned to Christie. “Macho, this one, eh? Much man. But this one,” she indicated Stoner Martin, “this one much more so, eh, Stoney.” Her voice changed suddenly, the playfulness gone, anger and contempt and defiance filling the room. Her hands moved along her body and she said to Reardon, “Me, you stupid bastard. Me.”

  Elena glanced around the room, spotted a newspaper. “Here. I will show you.” She opened The New York Times, turned to the real estate section. Her eyes raced over the print, then she flung the newspaper at Reardon. Her finger pointed to a section. She closed her eyes tightly. “Stores: Nassau and Suffolk. Central Avenue and 236th Street. Oliver. 20’ x 80’ plus basement and out building; suitable for women’s and children’s wear; call 212-HE 6-1130. Floral Park: renovate this solid 900-square-foot building yourself; handyman’s special; ideal location machine shop. Hauppauge: 14,000 feet commercial; ideal location; suit any type retail or service business.”

  The dark eyes snapped open. “Well, do you get it now, Casey Reardon? I am Enzo Giardino’s ledger!”

  23

  ELENA’S VOICE DRONED ON and on until the words became a hum devoid of meaning. Christie reached down and turned off the tap
e recorder, but she could still hear Elena’s voice, speaking from the tape recorder in the outer room, stopped from time to time by Stoner Martin, whose fingers quickly caught up with her words on his typewriter.

  She rolled the paper up on her typewriter and read what she had typed. Places, names of places, and people and numbers; codes, aboard which ship departing from which port, arriving on which date; in the hold of what ship, packed carefully into a predetermined location, among thousands of tons of legitimate goods, carefully planted, sixteen pounds of uncut heroin; nineteen pounds of uncut heroin; twenty-five pounds of uncut heroin. Hundreds and hundreds of pounds of uncut heroin, destined to arrive over a period of the next five days. On its way, not to be recalled, on its way to handlers, distributors, hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of narcotics, millions and millions of dollars’ worth of narcotics.

  Christie stood up, flexed her fingers. She had been typing steadily for nearly four hours. Reardon had set her to work on the hotel typewriter, a flimsy, tinny portable, as soon as the first tape had been completed, then had moved Elena into another room with a second tape recorder and now into a third room.

  There had been a steady procession of people in and out of the suite: the attorney with his writ, his face collapsing, his foundation of certainty deserting him when Elena told him, coldly, “I have requested that Mr. Reardon hold me in protective custody since I have reason to believe that my life is in danger.”

  “But what will I tell Enzo?”

  Elena’s answer had been bitter and pungent and to the point.

  Then, the endless stream of officials involved in the investigation: Reardon’s men, briefed rapidly, sent on their way. State Investigations people, checking out certain facts; Federal men from Internal Revenue checking their particular aspect of the case; F.B.I. agents, sharing and comparing notes with Reardon and with the others involved. The hotel suite had become a communications and information center, and still, in another room, Elena rambled on and on, stopping to explain wearily the various codes, the various, intricate routings that had been worked out and fed into her extraordinary brain.

  Casey Reardon came into the room and Christie sat down, her fingers on the tape recorder rewind switch.

  “How you doing, Christie?”

  “Fine.”

  His voice was light and excited. “I’ll take what you’ve typed already. Are you following the numbering sequence you worked out with Stoney? I don’t want to get these mixed up.” She nodded, without looking at him. “Jesus, we are really in business. She’s giving us more than we even began to suspect.”

  “That’s nice.”

  He reached down and hit the off switch on the tape recorder. “Okay. What’s the matter with you?”

  She raised her brows. “Is there something the matter with me?”

  “You mad at me because I shoved you in the hall? I didn’t hurt you, did I?” He reached for her face but she pulled back. “Ah, come on Christie, didn’t you ever play good-guy bad-guy before?”

  “Is that what we were playing?”

  “Think about it for a minute,” he told her. His thumb jerked toward himself, his index finger pointed at her. “Bad-guy, good-guy. Elena watched you a hell of a lot closer than she watched me. She reacted to your reaction, not to what I said.”

  It made sense, yet Christie felt there was still something lacking in his explanation. It was a perfectly acceptable technique but there was a difference in the way Reardon used it.

  He answered before she could state her objection. “I didn’t set it up in advance for one very good reason. I didn’t think you’d be able to carry it off.” He grinned. “Honey, I’ll go so far as to credit you with being one hell of a good detective, but I don’t think you’d ever be good as an actress. For instance, right now. You should be playing the role of competent detective, agreeing with the boss that he had the right instincts on that particular score. Instead, you’re glaring at me like a sore-headed twelve year old who’s been kept out of part of the game. Come on, baby, grow up.”

  “That envelope might have slipped from your fingers,” she said. “It just might have and ...”

  Casey Reardon tapped the edges of the papers together without taking his eyes from her. “You know, Christie, sometimes I wonder why the hell I feel that I owe you explanations of any kind. You just keep typing, Detective Opara. And make sure you don’t miss a thing. Every word coming out of Elena’s mouth is worth its weight in heroin.”

  Gray light shone between the half-opened slats of the Venetian blind. Christie squinted at her wrist watch. It was a quarter to six. She was supposed to be off duty until the afternoon tour. The loud, impatient knocking on the door could only be Reardon.

  “Just a minute,” she called out. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  She switched the lamp on and gazed around the small hotel room. The Arden might be one of the most exclusive hotels in New York City, but its lesser rooms were unattractive and cramped. Christie smoothed her dress on over her slip, zipped it hurriedly, left her shoes off. She glanced at herself in the mirror through half-closed eyes. Beautiful. Her hand was moving through her hair as she opened the door.

  Reardon stepped back and allowed Elena Vargas to enter the room. “You awake, Christie? Elena wants to see you.”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll be in the suite down the hall. You want coffee or anything, call room service.”

  Elena seemed diminished, as though now drained of all her secrets she had become physically smaller.

  “Sit anywhere,” Christie told her. “You have a big choice, the floor, the chair or the bed.”

  Elena sat on the chair, waved away the offered cigarette. Christie turned the light higher, pulled up the Venetian blinds. “Another beautiful gray New York day. Tell me something Elena, why did you ever leave Puerto Rico?”

  The dark head moved. Her voice was thin and raspy, used up. “It was not the Puerto Rico of the posters. Not for me, when I was seventeen. Surely you know that.”

  “I’m sorry. Look, Elena. I’m about as exhausted as you are. What did you want?”

  Elena’s fingers moved over the arms of the small upholstered chair. The nail polish was cracked and chipped. “I’ve talked so much. My throat is hoarse. Please. Tell me about him.”

  Christie pulled at a torn bit of cuticle on her index finger. Pulled too hard and felt a needle of pain. Her wrists and fingers ached from the hours of typing. She felt too tired for pity.

  “You tell me first about the other boy. About Raphael, who Enzo Giardino thought was your son.” It was an accusation; soft-spoken, but an accusation.

  “I did not deliberately seek out Raphael. It did not happen that way. Maybe you should know about it. When I returned to New York, I went to work for Enzo Giardino.” Her hand brushed away details. “It is all really very simple and ordinary. I was what you said: a whore. But I had this very interesting trick with the brain.” Her finger tapped her forehead lightly. “Total recall, or instant memory or whatever it should be called. And I used to amuse Enzo by showing off this ... this talent of mine. He was as good to me as a man like that can be. When I asked to go and visit my family on the Island, he sent me. Many times.” Elena leaned back, moved her shoulders and head, to relieve the stiffness of the long night. “And eventually, this trick with the memory became important to him. No one would know about the operation but him. No one could steal his records. I would be his record and only he and I would know this. And to guarantee the integrity of this living ledger, he let me know that Raphael’s life would be at stake. You see, not even Enzo Giardino himself had access to the entire operation: he had to rely on me. That was the whole point: nothing written.” She stopped speaking for a moment, her hand rubbed her throat. Her eyes were dark again and steady. “Tell me, Christie, would you have told Enzo Giardino that he was mistaken, that Raphael was not your son?”

  “You used a child, Elena, you placed his life in jeopardy.”

  E
lena stood up, walked to the window, stared down for a moment. She turned slowly. “And still you judge me, eh? Well, you tell me then, Christie Opara, what the difference is between us? You used a child, too. My child.”

  “No. It’s not the same. His life was never in question. Reardon wouldn’t have ...” She pressed her lips together.

  “But you didn’t know he wouldn’t have! I watched you. If you believed he would have sent those pictures to Enzo, then I believed. And I saw your face. You can conceal nothing.”

  “No,” she said, “it was staged. The whole thing in the hallway. We planned it beforehand. I never believed he would have ...”

  Elena slumped into the chair. “It doesn’t really matter anyway. You believed, I believed. It doesn’t matter any more.”

  “Tell me about Raphael.”

  Elena was puzzled by Christie’s insistence, by her need to know. “Can’t you see?” she said. “He never was in danger, because I never would have revealed Enzo’s secrets. You are the one who has put him in danger. It is something I never thought could happen. Raphael was born four weeks after my child was born. I was present at his birth and I held him in my arms and he filled the terrible emptiness.” Without realizing it, Elena cradled her arms across her body. “He was my godson and I went to see him many times, and each time, I pretended to myself that he was my child. I loved him, my Raphael.”

  “Did you ask Mr. Reardon about what precautions were being taken to protect him now?”

  Elena nodded. “He told me that there is a detective from your office there now. He called this detective last night. There is a bank account, in my cousin’s name, in trust for Raphael. This detective—the quiet Italian with the white hair—he found out about the bank account even before I told Reardon. You people are very good at finding out secrets, aren’t you? Raphael will be taken care of; Reardon would not tell me more. I will have to rely on him.”

  “If he said the boy will be safe, you can believe it.”