The Ledger Page 6

  Stoner Martin raised his fingers from the keyboard and flexed them. “Take five, Art.” He shook his head. “Christie, Christie.” He gestured toward the chair which Treadwell had vacated. “Better sit down.”

  Christie glanced toward Reardon’s office. “Is he in? I didn’t see Tom Dell around.”

  “Is he ever in. Wait right here. I’ll tell him you’ve arrived so he can turn off his stopwatch.”

  “I thought I was early. It’s only a quarter to nine.”

  “We’ve all been here since eight.” He disappeared down the corridor and returned almost immediately. “He has been informed. Now is the ‘Christie-is-sweating-it-out’ period. Well, do you want Uncle Stoney to advise you?”

  “How about Uncle Stoney going in for me?”

  The dark face was sad. “Now that I cannot do. In fact, if I could, I don’t think I would. Ask for my money, a pint of my blood—it’s yours. But there are some sacrifices a friend just cannot make.”

  Pat O’Hanlon came over to them. “Coffee, tea or arsenic? I’m going around the corner.”

  Christie sighed. “Arsenic. In a container of tea with a drop of milk.” She dug into her pocketbook, but Stoner handed Pat a dollar. “On me. That much I can do for you.” He leaned back in his chair. “Okay. Want to talk?”

  Christie lit a cigarette. “Well, I guess you know how I loused up last night?” Stoner nodded. “Well, it was ... a bad night. I mean, I know I was wrong to leave an assignment but ... I didn’t feel well.”

  “An excuse, but not a reason.” His voice was unmistakably Reardon’s.

  Christie turned quickly toward Reardon’s office, but the sound was Pat O’Hanlon leaving the Squad Room. She stubbed out the cigarette. “Okay. What do I do now?”

  “Well, like when a man catches you with your hand in his cash register, and he is holding on to your wrist and you are holding on to his money, baby, don’t try to tell the man a story. You look at the man and you take a long deep breath and you say ‘guilty- without-an-explanation.’ Unless of course there is an explanation, and if there is, it better be pretty damn good.”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. Not really. Nothing I could tell him.”

  “Christie, I’m sure you know there’s a lot riding on this case for Mr. Reardon.” He stopped abruptly; her face was puzzled. Stoner Martin didn’t often let something slip. He had the feeling that he just did. He spoke quickly. “Now, Detective Opara, you are going to go into that office and throw yourself on the renowned mercy of Mr. Casey Reardon ...”

  She ignored his banter and interrupted. “What did you mean? What’s riding on this?”

  He shrugged. “Couple million dollars worth of narcotics is pretty special, no?”

  “That isn’t what you meant. What else?”

  Stoner’s black eyes moved over her face carefully. He tapped his fingers on the keys of the typewriter. “Nothing else. Can you read Art’s notes to me? He goes too slow and breaks the tempo of my very rapid typing.”

  Christie read the cramped handwriting, stopped now and then to rephrase the information into a sentence, but she stored one fact away, deep inside her brain, for future reference. There was something in all of this that Reardon hadn’t told her. She looked up gratefully when O’Hanlon put the container of tea on the desk.

  “One with arsenic,” he said pleasantly.

  “Boy, do I need this.”

  Christie pried the plastic cover from the container, put the dripping teabag on the cover and leaned forward. Steam rose from the container and she carefully took a sip. Casey Reardon’s voice unexpectedly cut through the room, blasting from the intercom on Stoney’s desk.

  “Tell Detective Opara to come into my office.”

  Christie sucked the tip of her tongue. It felt scalded from the one quick contact with the tea. “His timing is perfect,” she whispered to Stoney.

  Stoney winked. “Stay down for the count, kid.”

  She tapped lightly on the door, but Reardon didn’t look up when she entered his office. He dug some papers from beneath the general debris on his desk, scanned them, initialed them and tossed them into the out-basket. He looked up, seemed surprised that she was standing before his desk.

  “Sit down.” He gestured at a chair. “Okay, you got something to say to me?” Reardon watched her with such total concentration that Christie began to feel transparent. Her lips parted but he ignored his own question. “Because I have something to say to you.” His hand moved roughly over his face, a familiar, impatient gesture. “I received a telephone call last night. At about one A.M. At my home. Lieutenant Andrews was calling. He was supposed to have gone off duty at midnight but he had to stay on duty because of the particular situation in which he found himself.”

  Each word was a careful, calmly delivered accusation; District Attorney to defendant. “I was told that you walked out on your assignment at about nine P.M. Is that accurate?”

  She nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, Lieutenant Andrews, knowing full well that it is essential that a woman police officer be present when a female is in custody, particularly under the circumstances surrounding the particular female in question, realized there was a serious gap in proper procedure caused by your abrupt departure. It took some emergency arranging, but a policewoman did arrive within an hour. The policewoman found herself in a rather uncomfortable situation. There was our subject, Elena Vargas.” He interrupted himself. “I take it you remember Elena Vargas?”

  His eyes measured the effect of his words. He missed nothing, not the paleness, the unexpected twitch of her lips, the soft, stifled cough, the fingers tightly interlaced in her lap.

  “Yes, I’ve heard of her.”

  “Yeah, I thought you might remember Elena. Well, little Elena, who had been so well behaved and relaxed, had a change of heart. She began acting like the little bitch she no doubt is and she put on quite a performance. Would you care to hear about the tantrum the policewoman walked into?”

  Christie shook her head and studied her fingers. “No. Not really.”

  “No, not really,” he echoed softly. “I don’t blame you. I didn’t care to hear about it either. At any rate, nothing would satisfy little Miss Vargas but that she call me. She only wanted to speak to Mr. Reardon.” His smile was tight and unpleasant. “Now, on any other occasion, that would be very flattering. But at one A.M. this morning, it wasn’t too flattering. I imagine our Lieutenant Andrews must have done a lot of soul searching before he made that phone call. Wouldn’t you think so?”

  Christie thought of the tall, conscientious lieutenant carefully flicking through his index cards perhaps for some clue as to how to handle Elena Vargas. Carefully, she monotoned, “Yes, I guess he gave it a lot of thought.”

  “Wonderful. So far we seem to be in complete agreement.” He switched to a hard, cutting voice and his pace picked up. “Now here is where I think we’re not going to agree, Detective Opara. Would you care to hear the substance of Elena’s middle-of-the-night telephone conversation?” Christie shook her head. “No, I didn’t think you would, but I think you should. Elena Vargas said, quote: ‘Maybe you think I’m a fool, Mr. Reardon, and if you do, you are very much mistaken. You can’t hold me forever, you know it and I know it. If you want the ledger,’ ” his eyes burned into Christie and his hands flattened on the surface of his desk, “ ‘the ledger,’ the girl said, ‘ask Enzo Giardino about it.’ She said, ‘You have no bargaining power, Mr. Reardon, and your little girl friend is not quite as good as you seem to think.’ ” His silence lasted for nearly ten seconds before he added, “Unquote.”

  He moved his fingers to the edge of the desk, studied them for a moment. His eyes, motionless beneath the short thick red lashes, were translucent and more red than amber. “That was what Elena Vargas had to say at one o’clock this morning.” His voice shifted to the present moment. “Now here’s what I have to say. It seems to me that I adequately explained the importance of your assignment with this Vargas
girl. And I recall, very distinctly, cautioning you to play it very carefully. Now, in all fairness”—the puzzled, concerned near kindness only partially disguised his best sarcasm—“I want to ask you something. Did you understand what I told you last night? I mean, did anything I say confuse you, or what?” He accepted the quick shake of her head. “You see, I stayed awake for several hours trying to figure out what the hell went wrong. Since Detective Opara is a first-grade detective, I thought, maybe she felt the assignment was beneath her professional competency.” He stood up, jammed his hands into his trouser pockets. In the silence, the clicking of coins between his fingers sounded loudly metallic. He walked around the desk, leaned against it and looked straight down at her. His voice was cutting-edge steel. “Is that what the problem was, Christie? Even after all I told you, did you decide that it was just a baby-sit job?”

  “No,” she answered quickly, raising her face. “No, it wasn’t that ...”

  “Fine, that eliminates my first thought. Now, my second thought is a little harder to dispose of. My second thought, Detective Opara, really has me concerned. My second thought was that for some reason you deliberately loused up this assignment.”

  Her mobile face registered her complete surprise. “Deliberately? But why ... why would I?” She stopped speaking. It raced through her; not answers, but questions. Why would he think that? What reason would she have? What more was there to all of this?

  “Yeah, why would you?”

  Because he was wrong, at least in this, Christie could meet him now, had some ground on which to stand. She narrowed her eyes. “Mr. Reardon, I messed it up last night. Okay. Guilty. Without an explanation. Guilty of ... of unprofessional behavior or ... or incompetence or of personal dislike or whatever.”

  She saw the hard face relax. Somehow, she had just cleared herself of something. He nodded abruptly. “Okay, go ahead. What happened?”

  The impact of some hidden accusation propelled her. “You want an excuse? No excuse, okay? Elena Vargas and I just ... we just didn’t like each other. We ... we needled each other. It got out of hand.” She moved her hands vaguely and choked back the words she could not say: that we touched on areas that should not have been reached. Her sigh was weary and resigned. “I was not behaving in a proper, professional manner last night.”

  Reardon watched her thoughtfully. His anger continued but it seemed different now, almost forced. “Well, I can understand how offensive it must have been for you to have to spend the night with a girl like that. Of course you’d feel antagonistic. Any woman would.” He sat on the desk now, his hands on either side of him. “Except that you’re not just any goddamn woman. You’re a first-grade detective and that was your assignment.”

  He slid off the desk, brushed against her crossed legs as he turned and searched through a stack of paper, picked up a single sheet. He held it in front of him for a moment, then handed it to her. “Here, Detective Opara. Read this.”

  Christie scanned the paper, then looked up at him.

  “Did you read it already? You read pretty fast. But actually it’s a pretty short memo. Short, direct and with no detailed explanation. You realize that dropping a first-grade detective to third grade is entirely up to the Squad Commander? That memo will take effect the minute it arrives at the office of the Chief of Detectives.”

  “You mean ... just like that?” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that, you’re dumping me to third grade?”

  Reardon’s mouth fell open. His laugh was a short hard sound of surprise. “Opara, you really kill me. I mean, you have more goddamn guts. You walk out on a vital assignment and have the nerve to sit there, absolutely stunned at the thought that I’d really do such a thing. You’re lucky I don’t send you all the way back into uniform. How long has it been since you worked a midnight-to-eight-A.M. guarding a bunch of female winos and boosters?”

  Christie leaned forward and carefully placed the memo on Reardon’s desk. She swallowed dryly, moved her hand across her forehead. The sleeve of her dark-green sweater brushed her eyes. “Mr. Reardon, I’d like to ask you something.”

  Curiosity held his anger back. “Go ahead, Christie. What?”

  “Are you going to send that memo through?”

  There was a silence between them. Reardon reached for the memo, held it by one corner. “Tell me why I shouldn’t?”

  She raised her face. She blinked rapidly and her eyes were shining. “Because I’ve earned my first grade rating. A couple of times over. And ... and I think if you’d give me a chance, I can still do the job you assigned me to last night ...”

  Reardon rose and walked slowly to the window in the corner of the office. He stood silently for a minute, then turned. “I’m going to ask you two questions, Christie. Give me two straight answers, right?”

  She nodded, tense and ready.

  “Have you discussed anything relative to this investigation with anyone outside of this Squad?”

  Everything about her changed; the paleness receded, color flooded her face. Her eyes hardened with anger; all of her uncertainty and defensiveness disappeared. Reardon was oddly touched by the transformation, by the fact that she could not control or hide her indignation, by the fact that she almost passionately attacked his question.

  “I have never discussed any assignment with anybody outside of this Squad. Or inside of this Squad either unless they happened to be working on the same case. And if you don’t know that by now, Mr. Reardon, then I’m not even going to answer your other question!”

  Reardon held up his hand. “Okay, okay, Christie. Second question.” He kept his voice serious and official, but his eyes moved slowly over her. “When you got dressed this morning did you deliberately pick out that outfit?”

  “Huh?”

  Reardon rubbed the back of his neck. “Forget it. Or think about it later if you want to.” Briskly, he said, “All right, now I assume you’ve given some thought to the situation since last night and that you came here prepared to continue your assignment, right?”

  “Yes, of course, but ...”

  “But not back in the hotel room,”

  She had to relinquish what advantage he had given her by his confusing questions and turn her attention back to Elena Vargas. “No, not back in the hotel room. But, I know this will sound crazy, under the circumstances, Mr. Reardon. But in a way, Elena and I did communicate last night. In a way.”

  Reardon’s red brows shot up. “I’d like that explained. Hell, that really requires clarification.”

  “Well you might say we communicated negatively, but in a way I did learn something about her. That, in retrospect, she is vulnerable in some areas. That she isn’t really what she seemed to be. I’d like to do a background on her and see what I come up with.”

  “All right, but you’ll have to move fast. Put in a little overtime, right? Make up for some skipped hours. Check with Sam Farrell, he’s been working on another angle, but he might have something of value. Marty Ginsburg can give you a hand for a day or so, but that’s all.” She was jotting notes down as he spoke, but the pen was poised, her face trancelike. “Hey, Opara, are you with me or what?”

  She blinked rapidly. “I’m sorry. I was just remembering Elena Vargas. The way she looked before I left last night. I think that if I can find the right information ... that she will be very vulnerable. That she will cooperate completely.” The words seemed to surprise her and amuse Reardon.

  “What the hell is this, some of that ‘feminine mystique’?”

  “I don’t know. I just thought of how she looked last night.”

  “All right, Detective Opara, you get going. And keep in touch with the office. Well, now what?”

  She stood uncertainly, her eyes went to the memo. Reardon opened his top drawer and slid the paper into it. “For the time being,” he said sharply. “Anything else on your mind?”

  “Well. What you said before. Asked before. About when I got dressed this morning. ...”

  Casey Reard
on’s eyes moved over the green skirt and sweater, down, then up until he met her eyes directly. Softly but firmly, he said, “Goodbye, Detective Opara.”

  4

  CHRISTIE OPARA IGNORED THE dark, suspicious eyes that watched her enter the tenement. She glanced at the scrap of paper. Top floor. Always, no matter what, it was the top floor. Any police officer, in any country in the world, on any assignment, always knew that the person being sought would be found on the top floor.

  She climbed the long, tin-edged flights of steps, her eyes squinting in the brown darkness. The acrid odors cut through her nose and lungs in a potent mixture of human body odors and rancid cooking fumes. She walked carefully on the center of the stairs, being sure that no part of her clothing made contact with the wall; one quick glimpse revealed furious scurryings of unidentified insects. The four long flights of stairs made her gasp for oxygen. There were four doors on the top landing; none were numbered or lettered. The number on the scrap of paper she held was “12.” Christie glanced around, tapped her knuckles on the nearest door. It opened immediately, a dark inch that did not reveal the face of the speaker.

  “Sí?” The hoarse whisper asked, “Sí? What you want?”

  Christie strained to see the face but only a slash of unidentifiable clothing showed. “Gonzalez?” she asked.

  The door slammed shut and there was a heavy sliding of chain and a twisting of locks. Christie waited for a moment, then moved to the next door. She felt as she had felt from the moment she had entered the building: that she was being watched by hidden pairs of eyes, but there were no openings or peepholes on any of the doors. She turned, tapped randomly on the next door and waited. There was a jumble of sounds, voices, feet moving. There were children’s voices, loud and high pitched, then a woman’s voice, irritably silencing them. The door was flung open abruptly and several small dark faces stared up at her. Then, a woman, not much larger than the children, appeared among them, pulling them back into the room so that she could stand in the doorway. She started to close the door, but Christie moved forward, casually but deliberately, and placed her shoulder against the opened door.