The Bait

by Dorothy Uhnak

  Nora emerged in the doorway, her face puzzled by sleep. “Did the phone ring, Christie, or did I dream it?”

  Christie pretended annoyance. “Wrong number, Nora. Go on back to bed. I’ll leave my light on until you get to your room.”

  She heard Nora muttering about people who dial wrong numbers in the middle of the night, heard her enter her room, then heard her settle on the bed.

  Wrong number. Christie switched off the light, lay back on her pillow. She could feel the tenseness of her body, the tight expectancy, the unwillingness to be caught off guard again, to be stabbed in the dark by the shock of unexpected sound. Consciously, she began a relaxing of her body, starting at her feet, wiggling her toes, flexing the muscles of her legs and thighs, her shoulders and arms and fingers and neck, but her stomach, filled only with milk, felt cold and knotted.

  Christie stared into the darkness. Wrong number. She closed her eyes, pushing the faceless voice away. “Hello, Christie Opara. Hello, Christie.” No image formed, no face, just a hollow repetition of her name. She put her arm across her forehead again, lying very still.

  Some wrong number.

  12

  WHY WAS IT THAT THE one particular key that didn’t work in the Underwood was always the one particular letter that seemed to appear in every single word? Christie smashed the “o,” jamming it onto the skipped spot. Ferranti sat alongside of her, consulting his notes as she sat, hands poised, listening to him, then, holding her hand up, she quickly rephrased the information and her fingers raced over the keyboard. Except when they reached for the letter “o.”

  Christie grumbled to herself, glaring at the irregular line of typing, and in sudden resolve, she ripped the half-page of work from the machine, crumpled it into a ball and tossed it to the wastebasket. Bill Ferranti offered to do the typing; he was slow, but steady.

  She shook her head. “It’s this bomb of a machine. You’d think the People of the City of New York could afford to supply decent typewriters. Or at least send a capable repairman.”

  Casey Reardon, leaning against the long table in the front of the room, instructing his driver, Third-Grade Detective Tom Dell, hadn’t heard Christie’s complaints but he had observed her annoyed balling up of her work (carbons and all) and the angry set of her head. He walked over to the desk, where she was working. She glanced up at him, then slammed the “o.”

  “What’s your problem?”

  “My problem,” she said shortly, as though he were somehow responsible, “is this typewriter. That’s my problem. The so-called repairman fixed the ‘k’ but he broke the ‘o.’”

  “Well, you do the best you can,” Reardon said softly. “I need all reports completed by 12:30. You have plenty of time, even allowing for the insurmountable problem of the ‘o.’”

  Christie failed to anticipate the stuck key and the typewriter skipped a space. She tapped her clenched hand on the stack of clean papers and he could tell she was turning something over in her mind; her mouth pulled down for a moment. He knew she would say whatever it was: she always did.

  “Mr. Reardon, is it true that we’re turning all of our information over to the Nassau County authorities? That we’re dropping the investigation?”

  “That’s right. Why?”

  Christie shrugged; Ferranti was thumbing through his notebook, his head down.

  “Why?”

  She looked at him steadily, her words bitter and, it seemed to Reardon, bordering on some accusation. “Then none of the ‘ladies’ we’ve been interviewing for the last two weeks—none of the ‘at-home-housewives-earning-money’ are going to be prosecuted?”

  His eyes, a glinting reddish now, never left hers. “That’s right. They’re cooperative witnesses. You don’t prosecute cooperative witnesses when they’re essential to the successful completion of an investigation.”

  “Swell.” Christie backspaced, ignored Reardon, hit the wrong key, but didn’t reach for an eraser. She’d wait until Reardon left.

  Aware that he had been dismissed, Reardon still stared down at her. “Why?” he demanded, noting the deep, slow breath, the deliberate way in which she lifted her fingers from the keys and placed them on the edge of the desk.

  “Because I think that someone should throw the book at them. Or even maybe a page of the book at them.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  Ignoring the slight pressure of Ferranti’s shoe on the tip of her foot, warning her, Christie said, “Yes. That’s what I think.”

  Reardon smiled. He turned away without another word: what Christie Opara thought was not particularly important. He heard her resume her sporadic typing, stopping—probably for the ‘o’—as he entered his office. Sitting at his desk now, Reardon rapidly scanned the pile of material submitted by the teams of investigators. He absorbed the information while at the same time allowing some part of his mind to engage the problem of Christie Opara. Very quickly, that particularly annoying problem engaged a greater portion of his attention. He removed his glasses, tapped them on the edge of his desk, then dug his thumb and index finger into his eyes.

  Was it the pinch? The fact that no one in the Squad—particularly not Detective Christie Opara—was going to make an arrest on this case? He knew she had worked hard the last few weeks—hell, they all worked hard on this. He didn’t like handing over his Squad’s work any better than his people did, but it was one of those things. A cooperative effort had a way of being repaid in the future. The jurisdiction with the strongest evidence was the logical location for prosecution. He certainly didn’t owe her any explanation.

  The expression on her face: Reardon had seen it the first time he had prosecuted a case when she was the arresting officer, a few years ago, when he was in Special Sessions. What was it?—a bag opener. She had testified during direct in that steady, confident way, stating the facts, then had handled the cross-examination capably, if almost defiantly. It was just a routine bag opener and the decision was acquittal, two-to-one. They had both done their job properly, and then it was up to the three judges and no longer his or Opara’s responsibility. Reardon had gone into the briefing room with a young uniformed cop, and was listening to a recitation of the facts involved in his next case when, absently scanning the room, he had noticed her scowling over her acquittal report as though she were the only police officer in the world who had ever lost a case, and as he observed her, she looked up and glared at him coldly. Reardon grinned, remembering the anger in that look and the way she dismissed him with a deliberate blinking of her eyes.

  She had been neither surprised nor disturbed when he excused himself from the cop, walked to her and asked, “What’s your problem?”

  He had caught the momentary hesitation, the determination to frame exactly the right answer in exactly the right tone. “Doesn’t it bother you—in the slightest—that a guilty man was just set free?”

  He had shaken his head nonchalantly, amused, annoyed, yet somehow touched by the realness of her anger. “No, not in the slightest. Win one—lose one. Why does it bother you?”

  She hadn’t hesitated that time, blurting it out at him, “If you don’t know, I doubt if I could explain it.”

  Fresh little bastard, he had thought then, and thought it now: fresh little bastard. But the words contained a strong element of respect. She cared. She really cared and God knows that was rare enough. Reardon’s finger reached for the intercom button, he played with it for a moment, then pushed it down. “Detective Opara, come into my office.”

  Reardon knew what it was about her that made her attractive. Her figure was neat—a little thin and wiry, but she moved well with a confident, easy grace. But that wasn’t it. Nor her face: that was pretty in a cute way, the clean-cut all-American girl, showing every feeling with too much honesty. It was something else, something he didn’t think she was aware of, or if she was aware of it, wouldn’t realize it was a point of attraction: her intensity. There was a vitality about Christie Opara; it was interesting and curious
and somewhat mystifying. He let her sit there for a minute; he knew the tricks she used to relax herself—at least outwardly. A few deep, silent breaths, a conscious flexing and unflexing of her fingers, then forcing them to rest on the arms of the chair.

  He ran his thumb across his lip, then closed the folder and raised his head. Reardon didn’t think there was a woman alive who didn’t look good in pink: deep, vibrant pink. Opara was no exception. “Now,” he said, pacing his words so that they were not just a repetition of what he had asked before, “what-exactly-is-your-problem?”

  He could see that she was making some decision and in the four or five seconds it took, she bit the corner of her lip, blinked twice without looking at him, then, resolved, met his eyes.

  “I have been getting some phone calls.”

  He responded without any infliction of surprise. “What kind of phone calls?”

  She shrugged.

  “Obscene phone calls?”

  She shook her head. “No. It’s crazy, I guess. Not obscene phone calls. Just—phone calls. Late at night. Just some voice getting on and saying, ‘Hello, Christie Opara—how are you?’—things like that.”

  No turn in any conversation, no information unexpectedly revealed ever rattled or detoured the neat, precise workings of Reardon’s mind. His courtroom experience served him under any and all circumstances and the questions rose, one after the other, in logical sequence, to track down the needed information.

  “When did they start?”

  “Couple of weeks ago.”

  “How many have you received?”

  She looked at the ceiling for a moment. “Two in a row—then none for a few nights—then one every night for a week. Last one—last night.”

  “At what time?”

  “Between midnight and about 1:45 A.M. The first one was the latest, then the time varied. Last night was just after midnight.”

  “Recognize the voice?”

  She hesitated. “No. Not really.”

  “What does ‘not really’ mean?”

  She took one of those steadying breaths. Then, firmly, “No, I don’t recognize the voice.”

  Reardon considered his glasses for a moment, then, annoyed, asked, “Why the hell are you listed in the phone book?”

  “I’m not,” she shot back, then, softer, “but my mother-in-law is.”

  “Uh-huh. And how many other ‘Oparas’ are listed in the Queens directory? Or in any of the five boroughs?”

  “Not many,” she said weakly. “In Queens, only Nora. My mother-in-law.”

  “You ever get anonymous calls before?”

  “A few times. Obscene—routine nut calls.”

  “Did they rattle you?” His sarcasm has been building slowly.

  Not as much as you do, Reardon. Not realizing it showed on her face, she carefully adjusted her voice. “It is a little—disturbing—to lie there in the middle of the night, knowing that somewhere, some man has nothing better to do than to dial your number and ask you how you are.” She added, without intending to, “It’s upsetting.”

  “What have you done about it?”

  The question was sharp and logical and she answered it without a word: her blank expression told him what he wanted to know and set the cutting edge to his voice. “So, you just lie awake every night waiting for the phone to ring and then it does and this anonymous caller asks how you are, and then when he’s sure you’re fine, you can get to sleep?”

  “Mr. Reardon, I don’t think it’s a very funny situation.”

  Tapping his glasses against his chin, his eyes the color of honey held to light, he said, “Neither do I. What do you think you can do about it?”

  Impatiently, she said, “Oh, I know, I know. I could get the number changed and keep it unlisted or leave the phone off the hook or put a pillow over it or something but ...” She stopped, biting her lip.

  “But what?”

  She was silent, not looking up until he repeated his last two words insistently. “I don’t know. There’s something more to it. Something I can’t quite put my finger on.” She shook her head, puzzling thoughtfully. “There’s ‘something’ way in the back of my mind and when I hear that voice, I feel like any minute it’ll come to me. It sounds stupid, I know.”

  “Then, in effect, you’re willing to take the phone calls and wait it out to see if the ‘something’ materializes?”

  “Yes, I guess so. In a way.”

  Reardon ran his hand over his face, then scratched the small red hairs at the back of his neck. She knew that sign: it always preceded the softly, steadily building verbal assault. “So, you’re up half the night waiting for some nut to call and ask how you are and then you get a few hours sleep and come in here and bitch about the Underwood and bitch about not getting the chance to lock up some cooperating, vital witnesses, and mope around like a sullen kid when your real problem is that you need some more sleep which you’re not, getting because instead of taking some definite, logical action to stop these phone calls, you’re waiting them out because of some ‘feeling’ of some kind or other which you can’t explain. Right?”

  “Right,” she snapped, matching his tone exactly.

  They held it between them for a long time, neither of them moving, but she dropped her eyes first, because she could feel the redness, the damn, stupid, uncontrollable blushing, and she knew he had seen it because the grin was pulling at the corners of his mouth. Not only did he think she was stupid, he thought she was amusing.

  “Well,” he said slowly, “why don’t you dig up your copy of the penal law and maybe you can find a loophole in the area of annoying, obscene phone calls? Maybe there’s a special subdivision that makes it a violation of law for someone to call you to ask how you are, Christie Opara.” He knew she didn’t trust her voice to answer him. He leaned back, locking his fingers over his stomach. “Christie Opara,” he repeated softly. “What the hell kind of a name is Opara anyway?”

  “Pronounced properly,” she said coldly, “it is ‘O-per-uh’: not Opara. It is a Czech name.” As you damn well know.

  “Opara. What was your maiden name?”

  “Choriopoulous.” Which you damn well know.

  He raised his brows, two dark red indications of surprise. “Greek? A fair-haired, green-eyed. Greek?”

  “My mother was Swedish.” As you probably know. All this is in my personnel folder; plus whatever other information, private, and official, you wanted to know about me from the day I was born right up to and including this very minute. Right, Reardon?

  Reardon shook his head. “A Swedish-Greek with a Czech name that comes out Irish.”

  “And my mother-in-law is Irish, so that adds a little to the stew.”

  “It does indeed. Well, Opara”—he purposely reverted to the Irish pronunciation, which nearly everyone used—“if you come up with anything exciting, you know, anything worthwhile, on these phone calls, you be sure to let me know. Maybe the whole Squad can get in on it.”

  “I’ll do that, Mr. Reardon.”

  “In the meantime, Detective Opara, regardless of your sleepless nights, you see if you can’t shake yourself out a little and get your work done without so much glaring and cussing and wasting of taxpayers’ stationery.”

  “I don’t swear, Mr. Reardon. I am as careful with my language as I expect the people I work with to be.”

  “You can outcuss me any day, tiger. Remember, I told you I can read you right through those green eyes and I wouldn’t ever want to hear you say out loud what you’re saying with your eyes right now. Go on, beat it and get that report typed up.”

  Reardon knew the report would be typed up quickly and accurately in spite of the delinquent “o,” and with all facts explicitly and concisely stated. Whatever she did, she did well. He reached for Sam Farrell’s report, filled with near holes and poorly disguised strikeovers, but containing all necessary information somewhere in the wandering, un-grammatical statements.

  There was something about that ki
d that aroused an odd combination of responses within him. There was some kind of a continuous battle going on between them and it was irritating and annoying and yet, something more, leading to something other than sharp, biting word duels. For a moment, he thought about the phone calls and, more importantly, her reaction to them. She was too sharp to let just the normal, female reaction to the situation disturb her that much. He trusted her intuition to a great extent: she was a real pro and he’d let her ride with it for a while. Then, he filed the entire matter, including Christie Opara, into some neat chamber of his brain for future reference, and turned his full attention to Farrell’s sloppy but informative report.

  13

  CHRISTIE CLIMBED THE BROAD flat steps of the Fifth Avenue entrance to the 42nd Street Library, stepping around the midtown sunbathers who were trying to reinforce their weekend tans on late lunch hours. In her hand was the slip of paper Mr. Reardon had given her, covered on both sides with his cryptic notes: “Gerardo Const. Co—Alf. Gerardo—connect. w/Cong. Littlejohn-R—Feb. 64 (?) any n.g. info. (Times—Trib.).” Which meant that she had to spend the better part of the day squinting at the library’s microfilm: endless columns of print dating back, probably, to 1963 and possibly up to the present date, since when Mr. Reardon indicated a date of February 1964 he meant “maybe” and from having done some previous research for him, “maybe” covered a long area of possibility.

  She was beginning to feel the full force of her usual springtime blues and some of her growing uneasiness and restlessness related directly to her job. She didn’t like jumping from assignment to assignment—still not having a definite partner—still not following through an investigation from its initiation to an arrest, trial and conviction. She didn’t like to have loose ends dangling, never knowing if what she had worked on two days ago was merely some curious whim of Reardon’s or part of a larger whole, which she would never know about anyway. There was a lack of satisfaction, a lack of accomplishment in her work now.