The Ledger Page 22

  “And now,” Elena said, a touch of pleading in her voice for the first time, “will you tell me?”

  Christie sat on the floor, her back against the side of the bed. She felt the black eyes, hungry and anxious.

  The boy was tall and handsome; he glowed in the special way of a well-loved and happy child; he was bright and friendly.

  “Do the other children like him? Does he seem to have many friends?”

  Christie told her yes. To all the questions Elena needed to have answered, Christie told her yes.

  “Then, I did the right thing after all, didn’t I? To give him up?”

  Christie pulled herself up from the floor. Her back was sore and ached. “Why are you asking me, Elena? You said I’ve judged you too much. You’re right, so don’t ask for my judgment now.”

  The response surprised Elena. “So, out of all this, you’ve learned something, eh, Christie?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about anything at this point, Elena. I’m too tired.”

  Elena bowed her head, dug into her pocketbook and extracted the envelope of photographs of her son. She thrust them at Christie without looking at them. “Take these please. I never wanted souvenirs. I had made a vow never to see him again. I never will.” Her face was anxious and she leaned close to Christie. “You will destroy them? When all this is finished?”

  Christie nodded. “No one will ever see them, Elena. You have my word.”

  Elena stood up. “Yes. I believe you.” She turned and walked quickly across the room, pulled the door open. Her voice, still hoarse and tight, tried for a tough, playful brightness as she looked Marty Ginsburg over carefully. “He pulls his stomach in every time I come close to him, this one. But actually, Ginsburg, heavy men are the best.”

  Marty rubbed his nose and studied his shoes in a great effort to keep his eyes from Elena Vargas.

  When she faced Christie again, her face was a dark hard mask. She regarded the pale, fair-haired detective curiously. For a moment, it did not seem possible that this thin, almost innocently ignorant girl could have brought about the total destruction of the world Elena had carefully built and inhabited for so many years. Elena was overwhelmed by a sudden need to strike out and to destroy Christie Opara. And her only weapon was words.

  “Let me tell you something, Detective Opara.” Elena moved back into the room, jutted her hips forward, her breasts pushed against the smooth orange fabric of her dress. She felt the fullness of her body revealed and apparent and her eyes contemptuously traced Christie. She spoke in a mean whisper. “That Casey Reardon: he knows what to do with a woman. He is a bastard, that we both know. But he knows how to make a woman’s body come alive.” There was a small, hard smile on the full lips and the dark eyes narrowed. “That you do not know, because he has never made love to you.”

  Elena felt some small pleasure in the totally revealed pain she had inflicted. She turned, walked into the hall and her hand reached for Ginsburg’s arm. She made a harsh, vulgar, clicking sound with her tongue and dismissed Christie from her life.

  24

  CASEY REARDON IGNORED CHRISTIE’S request for just a cup of tea and carefully scanned the menu. The waitress was bright and cheerful, too happy and wide awake for six-thirty in the morning. Christie wondered what shift she worked. The only other person in the hotel coffee shop was the counterman and he looked appropriately sullen and morose.

  “You should eat a good breakfast, Christie. Gives you a start on the day.” Reardon reached across the table and took the cigarette from her lips. “Too early for that poison. I know you’d rather be sleeping right now, but I wanted to bring you up to date.”

  “Really. Why?”

  He tapped the unlit cigarette on the surface of the table, turned it end on end. It was hard to give her anything. It was even harder to understand his need to give her something. His hand touched the rough stubble along his jaw and chin and he tried to keep his voice reasonable. “Well, let’s say because you did a really fine job and that you played an invaluable role in pulling this case together.” The tough, wary expression crossed her face and he pretended not to notice. “By the way, I guess you’ll be relieved to know that the memo ... relative to your demotion ... won’t be sent through.”

  “Gee, Mr. Reardon, you mean I’m still a first-grade detective?”

  Reardon put the cigarette in his mouth, struck a match and inhaled. “You never felt for one minute that your grade really was in jeopardy, did you?”

  Christie shrugged slightly. “I know my capabilities. You wouldn’t want me to be guilty of false modesty, would you, Mr. Reardon?”

  Carefully, deliberately, he stubbed out the unwanted cigarette. There was nothing he had said, no word or gesture or expression of his, that led to the tension between them. “Okay, Christie, what is it? What the hell is bothering you? Are you still sore because I shoved you?”

  “What’s a shove between friends?”

  He tried to hold his responsive anger back, but her coldness was getting to him more than he thought possible. It had been a long hard night, but the revelations which poured out of the tape recorder had kept them all wide awake and alert. Elena had known more than they had anticipated. She had confirmed wide areas of their own investigations and had opened other, unexpected areas.

  It was the sense of excitement he had wanted to share with Christie, the realization that all the fragmentary pieces had fit into a larger puzzle, that all the hours and anxieties and fatigue were worthwhile, were leading to something really valuable.

  He leaned back and studied Christie thoughtfully, tried for an objectivity he did not really possess where she was concerned. Across the table from him was the tomboy face: the same face that had confronted him in the hallway, at the mail slide. Come hell or high water, she would hold her own: outweighed, outdistanced, outranked, she had actually been ready to grapple with him because she was convinced that he was going to mail those photographs to Enzo Giardino, and in the one fleeting instant, he had recognized the complete integrity of her determination.

  “Is it about the photographs, Christie? Did you really believe I would have mailed them to Giardino?”

  Her face changed, softened. “I don’t know whether I thought that or not. I guess I did, for a second or two.”

  “But what the hell, I told you why I played it that way. I’m a good actor. Give me credit.”

  “Well, that’s not the point.” She turned her face, bit her lip.

  “What is the point?”

  She glanced at her watch without seeing the time, over her shoulder toward the waitress who would bring them food she did not want, out the window, toward the empty street. Reardon felt a tightening along his throat because a casual question had unexpectedly become important to both of them.

  “You didn’t answer me, Christie.”

  “I’m not going to answer your question. You figure it out for yourself. You know what? I’m not at all hungry. I’m more tired than hungry and I think I’ll just go back upstairs and ...”

  The waitress arrived as Christie was trying to extricate herself from the booth. She sat down, watched as the woman placed the food before them. She winked and nodded and smiled and made little pleasant sounds and poured Christie’s tea and left a carafe of hot coffee beside Reardon’s filled cup. “It’s nice to see people with some good sense,” she told them. “My mother always told me there was nothing like a good hearty breakfast to get you going in the right direction.” She followed her words with a hearty laugh. “Well, I don’t know what direction she meant for me to take, but just look at me now!”

  Christie pushed the scrambled eggs around the edge of her plate, stabbing with her fork. “There is something I’d like to know,” she said, her eyes on the eggs. “A while back, when I first was assigned to the case, I heard ...” She stopped for a moment, tried to be careful.

  “You heard what?” Reardon’s voice was sharp, District Attorney to witness.

  “Wel
l, that something more was involved in this case. For you, personally. Than just ... breaking up an important narcotics ring.”

  Reardon dropped the piece of toast back to his plate. There was no point in asking where she’d heard the rumor, from whom. He wanted to break the mood between them, not continue it. He swallowed some coffee, then motioned toward her food. “All right. Eat something and I’ll tell you about it, okay? Come on, like a good girl. Haven’t you read the papers for the last few days?” He snapped his fingers and his voice was more familiar to her than it had been: mocking and sarcastic. “Gee, that’s right. You’ve been so damn busy playing private detective all by. yourself, you haven’t been in touch with the rest of us. Well, you see, Detective Opara, the Great Master of Us All, up on the top floor,” Reardon said, referring to the District Attorney of New York County, “called three of his top assistants in about a month ago. Being the charming gent he is, our Master advised us that he had finally decided to call it quits and give the rest of us an opportunity to fill the great, and doubtless unfillable shoes. This being an election year, the kindly fellow decided that one of us would be appointed in the very near future so that by election day, the fortunate appointee would have had a chance to establish himself as the incumbent, very likely to be elected to the post come November.”

  He poured more coffee into his cup, sipped it, then continued. “The announcement was made public last week. Little Tony Otis, supervisor of criminal torts, was named as successor. Tom Smith and I were told we were out of the running just before the public announcement.” Reardon shook his head and exhaled between his teeth. “Now if you could tell me why the hell I’m bothering to explain all this to you ...”

  The tomboy was gone; the tough, wary, angry face was replaced by a suddenly vulnerable young girl who had been following his every word and who suddenly looked as though she had been somehow assaulted.

  “Now what the hell is the matter?”

  She put the fork down and raised her chin. Her eyes were shimmering. “But when you asked me ... when I loused up with Elena that first night ... and then when I came into your office ... you asked me if I deliberately loused things up. Do you mean that you considered, even for a moment, that for some reason I might have been trying to ruin your chances for the appointment?”

  “Christie, it is in the nature of the job we’re both involved in to be suspicious. Of everyone and everything. Even without justification of any kind for our suspicions.”

  “But, I wouldn’t have. You should have known that. I wouldn’t have.”

  “Let me put it to you this way, Christie. I would have asked that question of any member of the Squad who had muffed an important assignment. Any and every member. It seems to me that it’s always been a sore point with you—your feeling that you want to be treated like any other member of the Squad, right?”

  “Well, yes but ...”

  Finally, Reardon’s anger came through. “Damn it, Christie, there’s always a ‘but’ with you. Let me put it to you this way. You’ve indicated some pretty damn rough suspicions as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t get all red in the face and insulted and indignant and outraged, did I? I just accepted the fact that it is in the nature of the job we do to have suspicions. Now just shut up and eat your goddamn eggs.”

  Reardon attacked his scrambled eggs which were cold and greasy, with great concentration, reached for some toast, which was dry and hard. “You really spoiled a nice breakfast, you know that, don’t you?”

  “I thought you were going to bring me up to date. About the case.”

  He finished the coffee, then poured the remaining few drops from the carafe. “Well just for your information, approximately fifty percent of the information Elena gave us about the narcotics shipment we already had.”

  “That makes fifty percent new information, right?”

  “Yeah, but I thought you might like to know that some other people besides you have been working.” He relented. “That’s not to take any credit from you, Christie. You really did a hell of a job. And if you say yes, you know, I’ll dump this coffeepot right on your head.”

  “And what about Elena? What happens to her now?”

  “Oh, Elena has a long, long way to go. We spent the entire night on the narcotics thing. The beautiful part of the whole thing is that there is no way to call back any shipment, no way for Giardino or any of his people to notify anyone involved. We’ll be on top of it from the minute the stuff starts hitting ports. Which will be tomorrow, by the way. Everyone on our side has been notified. Hell, we’ve been photostating copies of the tape transcriptions and distributing them to all agencies involved. Funny thing is, with all she told us, it will still be tough to nail Enzo Giardino on a narcotics rap.”

  “But why? He’s the number one man, right?”

  “Yeah, but the network is so loose that no finger points directly at him. But that’s where our girl comes in handy again. Elena’s got the goods on Enzo Giardino about ten different ways: murder, extortion, grand larceny. Not to mention hijacking, stock manipulation and that old reliable demon of the mob boys, income tax evasion.”

  “How about Tonio?”

  “Ah, yes, Tonio the creep. We’ve got him cold. Combined with some damn good legwork by Marty Ginsburg and Dudley and what Elena told us and the lab workup, we’ll send Tonio away for a long time.” Reardon’s hand went to the clump of hair at the crown of his head. “Boy, there is nothing truer than that old saying: only a woman knows how to really get you. And Elena knows how. And how!”

  It was true: Christie studied Reardon’s face and knew it was true. Elena knew how to leave her with an unexpected wound. His thick orangey eyelashes shadowed the honey-colored eyes which were not seeing her now. It was a strong face, marked with deepening lines across the forehead. There was no trace of the cruelty she had seen and been frightened by. His short, tight smile was amused, puzzled.

  “Well, what’s on your mind?”

  “I guess I was wondering about Elena.”

  There was no reaction, no flicker, and she knew, as a certainty, that Elena had lied to her.

  “Listen, Christie,” Reardon told her earnestly, “don’t worry about Elena. She’s had one hell of a ride. Been everywhere, done everything, had the best, first class all the way. Now she has to pick up the tab. She was smart enough to know there were risks involved. She’s smart enough to play straight now. Someday, all the big magazines and publishers will be offering her a million bucks for her memoirs. With her total recall, all she has to do is put it on paper. She won’t even need to split with a ghost-writer.” He signaled the waitress, paid the check and stood up.

  “Oh, Mr. Reardon. Elena gave me these photographs. I gave her my word that I’d destroy them, but I guess I should hold off a while ...”

  Reardon’s face froze. “Oh, Jesus. I just remembered something. Come on, Christie. Move.”

  She followed him rapidly through the lobby and into the elevator. He stabbed the button for the fifteenth floor, glanced at his watch and tapped his knuckles impatiently until the elevator came to a halt.

  He looked carefully up and down the length of the hallway and whispered, “Think anybody’s around? Be careful, Christie, we could get locked up on a federal rap.”

  There was a sudden boyish enthusiasm as he put his finger over his mouth and gestured for her to follow him silently. He pointed to the mail slot, then quickly clamped his hand over her mouth.

  “Don’t make a sound. We get caught and we’re in big trouble. I’m not kidding, Christie.”

  He ran his finger under the warning engraved into the metal placket over the slot, which informed the public of the dire consequences faced by those who tampered with the United States mail. There was an accumulation of letters and postcards rising about six inches above the open slot. They rested on an almost invisible piece of celluloid which had been inserted about four inches below the slot, through a fine line cut into the glass of the mail chute.

  Re
ardon carefully pried the celluloid free and tapped the glass until the mail fell down the chute. “That’s good. It’ll make the seven o’clock collection and we didn’t commit any crime.”

  Christie touched the glass with her fingertip. “You can’t even see the cut. How did ...”

  Casey Reardon cupped his hand around his mouth. “Forget what you seen, kid. Them Feds are tough. Five-to-ten on the first offense. You won’t turn me in, will ya?” He pulled her arm, led her to the fire exit. “Come on, we’ll walk up the flight of stairs. Good exercise.”

  The iron stairs and concrete landing of the fire exit added to the coldness. The area was dimly lit by small electric bulbs which flickered inside of wire mesh cages.

  “Watch your step,” Reardon told her. He reached out for her arm. “You fall and break your leg here, I don’t know how the hell I’d explain it.” His hand tightened on her arm as they reached the first landing. “Hold it a minute, Christie.”

  She turned, faced him. The boyishness was gone, the playfulness. His voice was low and serious now.

  “Why did it matter to you, Christie? What difference did it make to you?”

  “Because it matters to me ... very much ... what kind of a man you are. And ...”

  Reardon leaned down and kissed her very gently, his mouth scarcely touching hers, just pressing lightly and withdrawing. Her eyes caught the flicker of a bulb and were shiny, not definitely blue or green or gray, just flashes of brightness. He leaned his elbow against the tile wall, his hand at the back of his head. His right hand traced empty patterns along her shoulder and neck and face, along her eyebrows, through her hair, down her ear to her chin. His smile was unfamiliar, relaxed, unguarded.

  “You know what this reminds me of?” He gestured, indicated the atmosphere of the hallway. “My first girl. A long, long time ago. Standing in her hallway, on the landing. You look like her, Christie.” His hand moved to the back of her neck, naturally, warmly, and she moved her face against his arm. “You don’t really look like her of course. But like the memory of her. Do you remember the first time a boy kissed you?”