The Bait

by Dorothy Uhnak

  The small brown eyes hid beneath the bright blue lids for a moment, while the pearly lips pushed into a pout. The lids unrolled and Mrs. Ogden fingered her cocktail ring, turning it so Christie could enjoy the small rubies. “So, I made my calls every day, taking names out of the phone book. In one whole week, I sold only one subscription. To some kike in the Bronx.” The mouth went down in a smile. “You know—Abie could never resist a bargain!” The laugh was a hard sound.

  Christie’s eyes revealed nothing and her voice was flat and soft. “But then, you called them back, right, the number from the ad?”

  “Yeah. All I had was the one subscription and the ad had said I could earn up to seventy-five bucks a week. Some seventy-five. So I called, and then this guinea—whatever his name was—he told me that a lot of housewives did make a lot of money that way, but some didn’t. And that he worked for an agency that handles phone calls for a lot of clients—an answering service for people who can’t be around when their phones ring, you know? So he said I seemed reliable and intelligent”—the small body preened—“so I said, sure, why not? So he told me to take down messages every day between ten and twelve for a Mr. Stowe and that Mr. Stowe would call me at twelve-thirty and I should give him the messages. And that was all I did.” She held her arms out, palms turned toward the ceiling, her eyes rolling back and up. “That all I did and I’m here, like a criminal or something.”

  “Mrs. Ogden, do you know any other women who took messages?”

  The eyes, which had innocently beseeched the ceiling, now glared at Christie. “I already told that loudmouth redhead in there and I’m telling you now: that’s all. That’s it. I don’t know anything more about it.”

  “Didn’t you consider the messages peculiar? The names of horses and the numbers of races? Didn’t that seem odd to you?”

  “I took the calls when the kids were in school. I had things on my mind—like lunch and cleaning the house and going to the store and taking care of my kids. I took down whatever the people said and when Mr. Stowe called, I read off the messages and goodbye! I had my home and family on my mind, not a bunch of phone messages.”

  Christie leaned back in Reardon’s chair, responding to the shadow and the tap at the door. “Come on in.”

  Stoney Martin crossed to Reardon’s desk, an amused expression directed at Christie. “Excuse me, but Mr. Reardon asked me to get this file—yes, here, this is the one.”

  Christie nodded, but she was watching Mrs. Ogden; the viciousness broke through the makeup, cracking her face like old glass. Her small eyes watched Stoney’s dark hand reach for the folder, watched his tall, lithe body cross the office and leave. Her eyes on the door, her face twisting down, she asked, “That nigger—he’s a cop?”

  Christie played her fingers along the edge of her cast for a moment. She rose, came alongside Mrs. Ogden, sat tentatively beside the woman, meeting her eyes. Slowly, she shook her head. “No, he’s not a cop, Mrs. Ogden.” Christie paused, the words reaching her mouth almost before her brain thought them out. “He’s an F.B.I, agent”

  The face before her screwed into a look of bewilderment. “F.B.I.?”

  “Yes. Apparently, no one has bothered to explain this whole situation to you.” Mrs. Ogden shifted her weight; Christie felt the cushions moving and her voice was soft and she was amazed at how kind, how concerned she sounded. “Let me try and explain it to you. You see, the ‘agency’ you were working for—and taking bets for—is a very large syndicate: interstate. New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. Now, you live up on 175th Street in Manhattan, I believe? That means you’re part of the Manhattan operation.”

  “The Manhattan operation? What the hell does that mean?” The woman’s voice was not as tough as she tried to make it sound. There was just the merest breaking quiver beginning; Christie noted it with small pleasure.

  Christie let words come automatically from her lips, gauging their impact by the woman’s face. “The F.B.I. and the Treasury agents are involved in this as well. The F.B.I. because it’s an interstate operation and the Treasury men, of course, because of the income tax angle.”

  Mrs. Ogden leaped from the couch as though she had been touched by a live wire. Christie hadn’t noticed the high spiked-heel shoes before. “Taxes? Income taxes? What do you mean? I’ll file on my income when the time comes!”

  Christie’s voice was deliberately calm; it made Mrs. Ogden sound even shriller. “But on what amount? Sixty, seventy dollars a week?”

  “That’s all I made! I swear to God, that’s all I made!”

  “Mrs. Ogden, sit down and let me explain your situation a little better.” Christie didn’t give herself time to think, didn’t plan or calculate the words, just took her cue from the tense, rigid body on the edge of the couch beside her. “You see, the way these gambling syndicates operate is pretty standard. Let’s say a particular operation—upper Manhattan, your area—pulls an operation averaging approximately one hundred thousand dollars a week.”

  The black eyebrows shot up to the hairline, the mouth dropped open in protest. Christie held her hand up. “Don’t get excited, now, just listen. Standard operating expenses for ‘message-takers’ or ‘relay-people’ like you are set at a flat 5 percent for each area.” The words, unquestioned by Mrs. Ogden, came from some unexpected reservoir within her; Christie felt a small trickle of perspiration streaming between her shoulder blades and she spoke rapidly, for if she stopped, was interrupted, was questioned, she might not be able to continue. “So, the amount involved would be about five thousand dollars a week, right? Therefore, the F.B.I. and the Treasury men, who of course know exactly how an operation is set up and know exactly how much money is spread around to people like you, however innocently you became involved, aren’t really interested in you or in your ‘innocent-involvement.’ They just want to know who got what money, so the government can get the amount it is entitled to.”

  Christie stood up, moved silently to Reardon’s desk, sat in the tilting chair, swiveled to face the woman. She caught the steadily growing panic that crept through’ the woman, working into her eyes and cheeks and down along her mouth, through her shoulders and into her suddenly busy hands which locked and unlocked one into the other. “So you see, Mrs. Ogden, if they don’t come up with more names—they always have you.”

  “That’s all I got, seventy-five a week. That’s all I got.” The voice was an empty chant, then the woman looked at her and there was some new emotion now, clearly evident, unhidden and terrible: fear. “Could they do that, miss? I mean, you’re a detective, you’d know. Could they really do that?”

  “Yes,” Christie said, a logical answer to a logical question, without emotion of any kind, “they really could.”

  Mrs. Ogden walked to the window. Christie could see the rapid calculation, the profile frozen with decision. Mrs. Ogden turned, her hands nervously plucking words out of the air. “My sister, she took calls. And two of my cousins. And a few of my neighbors; some other girls, too.” Then, trying to qualify the betrayal, “They didn’t know either what it was—no more than me. I mean, I don’t want them to get into any trouble, they didn’t know either.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Christie opened Reardon’s top drawer, her fingers playing among a collection of broken pens and pointless pencils and stray Life Savers and gum. She found one ball point that seemed to work; testing it on a white legal pad, Christie tore off the sheet. “Here, Mrs. Ogden. Write down the, names, addresses and phone numbers of all the people you know who took phone calls the way you did.”

  The woman snatched at the pad and pen, curling herself in one corner of the couch. Christie, hearing the frantic scratchings the woman was making on the pad, felt a cold and angry pleasure at the sound, but the sight of the woman, revealed now beneath the destroyed surface smugness, filled her with contempt and revulsion and she avoided looking at her. She took a stick of half-wrapped gum from the top drawer, absently curled it into a roll, dropped the tiny piece of wrappin
g back into the drawer and pressed the gum between her back teeth. She reached for the double-framed photograph, leaning back in the chair.

  Mrs. Casey Reardon wasn’t what she had expected, although it would have been difficult to say exactly what she had expected. She really hadn’t given any thought to Reardon’s wife. The face, at first glance, was surprisingly young and pleasantly pretty, the smile just a little aware of the camera. The eyes, a clear cornflower blue, were startling against pale skin and black hair, which had a few becoming streaks of pure silver. The bright blue at her neckline was probably a favorite color: it did a lot for her eyes. Christie regarded the eyes thoughtfully. They seemed to convey a vague sadness. They did not match the expression of the lips, which now seemed mechanical.

  She shifted her attention to the two young faces in the opposite side of the frame: the same dark hair and blue eyes and small features and pointed chins, each girl indistinguishable from her twin. Their young faces were clear and earnest, unsmiling: younger versions of their mother. Yet not exactly. The girl on the right could have been her mother in an earlier photograph: no slightest trace of Casey was contained in her delicate face. It was odd: her twin, though identical, had something about her that was familiar, something of Casey’s, some hint, maybe in the slight tilt of the chin or the set of the mouth.

  She hadn’t heard Casey Reardon at the door and as he approached his desk, she felt the silver frame stick to her hands like some personal correspondence she had been caught reading. Deliberately, her eyes on the desk, she carefully replaced the frame in its proper location. His questioning look, however, was not directed at her actions but at Mrs. Ogden. Christie said quietly, “Mrs. Ogden just remembered some of the other ladies who took those phone calls.”

  His eyes, appraising the woman who kept her head bent over her pad, returned to Christie, questioning. Why did he always seem so surprised when she accomplished what she had been assigned to do? His hand signaled her. “You’ll excuse us for a moment, Mrs. Ogden?” The woman’s head moved without her face showing itself.

  In the hallway, Reardon looked at Christie with a kind of amused admiration. “How the hell did you do it?”

  Christie told him the story she had made up as Reardon covered his eyes, shaking his head. “Where in God’s name,” he asked, “did you ever hear anything like that? About the percentage of operation set aside for ‘message-takers’?”

  Not sure if she had to defend herself, Christie said carefully, “I thought I heard it somewhere.” Then, seeing the grinning wonder on his face, she shrugged. “Maybe I just made it up as I went along. It just seemed to be the right thing to hit her with.”

  “Stoney,” he called, “come over here a minute. Opara, tell him what you just told me.”

  Christie repeated her explanation of how she had gotten Mrs. Ogden to “cooperate.” Stoner Martin’s mouth dropped open and he filled the hallway with a soft, low, musical voice. “Great God in the morning. You’ve never been to Gamblers Course at Detective School, that’s for sure. Casey, I think we could use Christie to give a few lectures!”

  Reardon’s voice was hard and sharp, but his eyes, on hers, acknowledged what she had done. “Well, it worked this time because that bitch in there is an idiot. But you try that story on a sharper operator and she’d laugh you right out of the room. Remind me to have someone educate Opara on gambling operations.”

  “But it did work, didn’t it?” she asked him triumphantly.

  Reardon rubbed his chin. “Beginner’s luck,” he said shortly. “Well, Stoney, you’re an F.B.I. man—let’s make Sammy Farrell our Treasury agent.”

  “Sam would make a fine Treasury man, boss. Just picture him making a casual tour of the mint one day: Washington on a dollar bill with two unexplainable heads.”

  Reardon jabbed a finger into Stoney’s shoulder. “You leave Sam alone. He’s working his fingers off on that two-paragraph report for me, and you can stake your life on the fact that he won’t leave here today until that report is done, complete.”

  Christie accepted Reardon’s needling without resentment. She knew she had accomplished something that would become part of the Squad legend: one of those implausible, unlikely, one-in-a-million, spur-of-the-moment, impossible-to-preplan con jobs that were in the realm of the unteachable part of police work: the intuitive chance-taking of being a good police officer.

  The Squad worked late, the teams breaking into small busy huddles, dividing the long list of names among them, knowing that each woman interviewed the next day would, in turn, realize that she had to protect herself, and provide them with equally long lists. Calls were made to other Squad detectives who would become involved, to county police, notifying them of the new development, checking on their progress in other parts of the investigation.

  Casey read over Christie’s report, scanning the last page while it was still in the typewriter. “Good, good. You and Ferranti will get up to the Bronx early tomorrow and hit this Ogden’s sister, Mrs. Phyllis Lynn.” Christie tried to interrupt him, but Reardon kept talking, giving his directions, his suggestions, his eyes all around the room, checking on what was happening, who was in action. Finally, they returned to Christie and the dark red brows shot up. “What’s the matter? What’s your problem?”

  “Mr. Reardon, I have court tomorrow—it’s Tuesday.”

  “Court? What the hell for?”

  “You know—Rogoff?”

  “Who?”

  “The 1140 I collared on Friday.”

  There was an expression of annoyance, a quick rubbing of his face with the palm of his right hand. “Swell,” he said tersely. “Wait here a minute.” He searched out Stoney, spoke rapidly to him while looking steadily at Christie, then he signaled her toward him. “Stoney’s going to make a call first thing in the morning to have your case put on top of the calendar. Ferranti, you meet Opara in Felony Court, then get going up to the Bronx, right? You got wheels?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ferranti answered

  Reardon held Christie’s cast and pulled her toward him. “Get this thing off your arm.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, and Opara: you looked pretty good sitting in the boss’s chair, but don’t get any ideas. You ain’t big enough to fill it.”

  The voice was tough and grating, but Christie was getting to know Reardon, learning to gauge what he said against when and how he said it. There was something in his eyes: an amusement but also a respect.

  Christie shrugged her arm free, imitating his voice and tone perfectly. “Ya never know!”

  Reardon’s lips turned into a short smile, then he shook his head slightly. “You are fresh, Opara, really fresh.”

  10

  FRANK SANTINO NODDED HIS head and grunted a few sounds in reply to the bits of court gossip being offered to him by one of his less distinguished colleagues. But his eyes, though seeming to rest responsively on the face of the speaker, darted across the corridor to where the Rogoff brothers stood.

  Frankie Santino was—if nothing else—a quick and good judge of a situation and from the moment he spotted Murray and David Rogoff standing silent and nearly rigid in the lobby of the Criminal Courts Building, Frankie knew he had better rush this thing through: cop Murray out and get it over and done with.

  At least, Davey had gotten his brother cleaned up. Frankie couldn’t help but admire the build on Murray Rogoff. The guy still had that lean hard look the girls used to climb all over. But from the neck up: Christ. Like something out of his kids’ horror comic books. And now, Murray-the-Norseman had to ride around subway trains, waving it at women.

  There was no doubt in Frank Santino’s mind that Murray was a psycho: but he wasn’t going to suggest mental tests. Hell, he had acted on an intuition that was the major reason why Frankie Santino rarely was done out of a fee: something had warned him that David Rogoff wasn’t going to stay with it: not for too long. So Frankie had made a phone call Friday afternoon and had the case waived to Special Sessions for pl
eading. It wasn’t a phone call anybody could have made; Frankie knew how to do favors and when to collect on favors done. And neither of the brothers even realized that he had done something special for them. They both just stood there when he told them they didn’t have to return to Felony Court, like he had said it was a sunny day. What the hell, they didn’t know the difference. But Frankie was going to make sure David Rogoff didn’t chicken out. Davey didn’t have to be present for sentencing and Frank would have his fee before then. As for Murray, he acted like he didn’t know what the hell was going on: and he wasn’t faking. Frankie knew all the tricks, and Murray was really living inside some kind of fog. He should really be psychoed, but what the hell. That wasn’t his responsibility.

  Frankie glanced at his wristwatch at the same moment that his friend consulted his, and with a quick exchange of shoulder slappings both men headed toward their clients.

  “Okay, boys,” Frankie said, taking Murray by the arm and smacking David with his briefcase, “we better get upstairs now. When they call the case, Murray, we just move up to the front of the court and the judge’ll ask you how you plead, and you’ll just say ‘guilty’—like we decided, okay, kid?”

  Murray nodded.

  “And then what?” David asked, looking straight ahead.

  Dropping Murray’s arm, Frank turned his full attention to David. “That’s it. You see, Murray is on bail and the judge’ll continue it, and set a sentencing date.” Quickly, he added, “You don’t have to be there, Dave, I’ll be with him, right Murray?” Frankie looked around, then put his hand over his lips. “I can practically guarantee a suspended sentence. Of course, it took a little doing, but what the hell is a friend for?” The way Murray batted his eyes under those weird glasses was terrible, like he was trying to make out exactly who you were. Frank guided David’s elbow, negotiating a turn. “Here we are, boys.”

  Murray and David sat on the bench in the courtroom. They waited, wordlessly, for Frankie to return from some mission which he assured them was very important to their interests. It was a small room, wider than it was long. It had an air of definite purpose about it. Everyone present knew his role now: defendants knew what was expected of them, for they had been guided and briefed by attorneys. Members of families sat, not less nervously than in the hugeness of Felony Court, but less distraught; a period of days had given them a certain heavy resignation. There was less directionless commotion; only those whose names were called moved forward, accompanied by lawyers who invariably made some physical contact with their clients: a touch on the back, a hand brushing along a sleeve.