The Bait

by Dorothy Uhnak

Stoner’s tongue clicked. “Age finally takes its toll; never thought the day would come when Casey Reardon needed the protective escort of a policewoman against the advances of a blonde!”

  Smoothly slipping in his punchline, Reardon said, “The blond is a fella!”

  Not joining the easy, relaxed laughter, Reardon gestured impatiently to Christie. “C’mon, come on, Opara, I have to move.” He grasped her arm, then stopped for a moment, his eyes meeting each man in turn, locking for one split moment of communicated but unstated concern. “It’s all yours now, fellas; stay loose.”

  She didn’t know whether he was kidding, but Reardon pulled her into the hallway with him, pushed her against the wall, then he glanced over his shoulder for a moment. His fingers pressed her arm and he leaned his face to her ear. “There, the bastard,” he whispered, “see the crack in that door? He wriggles in and out.” His thumb jerked behind him. “Tell you what, Opara, let’s straighten him out about me, okay?” He pulled her toward him, pressing his lips lightly on hers, then moved away, his eyes not on hers. “Is he looking?”

  Christie tried to see Reardon’s face in the yellow-lit darkness of the hallway; she moved back but her shoulders were against the wall. She raised herself on her toes, trying to see some face behind the small crack in the door. Reardon’s face, half hidden in the dimness, seemed serious. “I think he’s watching. Yes, he just ducked back behind the door, but he is watching.”

  “Well, we ought to fool him, huh?” Reardon’s lips were against her ear and his breath was warm. “Hey, did you shrink or what? You weren’t always this short, were you?” Still gripping on her arm he took a step back. “Oh, yeah, you got your sneakers on again. For pete’s sake, you’re not very tall at all, are you?”

  She started to answer, but his face was suddenly against hers again and he asked, earnestly, “He looking again? I heard the door move!”

  Not understanding his concern, but caught up in his seriousness, she stretched her neck, tilted her face up, then her eyes came back to his and she had some vague impression that he was making fun of her. “Why are you so worried that some little mixed-up blond wrong-o might get the wrong impression about you?”

  He grinned at the fresh, mocking tone and his hands moved along her shoulders to her neck. “Hell, I’m always concerned about creating a wrong impression. I like to keep the image intact. At all times.”

  “What image?” she asked, and his lips pressed against hers again, only slightly harder this time, taking a little longer to withdraw, and when he moved his face back, his eyes seemed almost red.

  “Relax, Opara, relax. You don’t think that was for you, do you? That was for cutie, behind me,” he whispered.

  Christie smiled now, released from the pressure of his mouth, released from whatever had held back the words that could match and top him; her voice was firm and clear and loud in the narrow corridor. “Okay, Dad, and you tell Mom I’m all settled in and I’ll be just fine here.”

  Reardon’s eyes narrowed and his voice was tough and low. “You little wise-guy, you have to have the last word, don’t you?” Then, his hands reached behind her head, his fingers plunged roughly through her short, thick light hair. “Okay, honey,” he said, “we’ll give cutie in there something that’ll send him running to his Freud books,” and now Reardon’s mouth was on hers, firmly, strongly, surprisingly full and warm, and Christie, not expecting it, anticipating another, light, teasing, playful kiss, accepted it, then, startled, tried to turn away, then stood, motionless, her hands hanging limply, but not really motionless: participating, but not really participating, surprised again by the gently affectionate touch of his hand along her earlobe, the quick caressing of her cheek and chin as he withdrew from her and walked briskly down the length of the hallway. Reardon turned for just a moment before leaving and called to her, “So long, Daughter. I’ll tell Mom you’re just fine, yes sir, just fine!”

  Christie heard a small, harsh gasp and the sharp closing of an apartment door and the fumbling of a chain lock being slid into place but her eyes stayed down the length of the hallway. She touched her lips lightly with her fingers, closing her eyes for a moment. Her heart was pounding and she wasn’t quite sure how she felt: amused? angry? what?

  At 9:32 P.M. the telephone rang. It wasn’t a particularly loud ring: it didn’t blast through an intense silence, for they had been story-telling, reminiscing, teasing, joking, arguing. Yet the sound cut through their cross-conversations as clearly and shockingly as the spattering of a live electric wire tossed suddenly in their midst and three masculine hands hinged, simultaneously, for the instrument as though it were somehow vital that it not be permitted to ring again.

  “I got it, I got it,” Stoney said in the voice of an outfielder warding off unwanted assistance. The eyes of the others fixed on Stoney’s face and they moved toward him.

  “Yeah, Sam, Stoney here.” He glanced at his watch, nodding. “Yeah, yeah, go ahead and play it.” Then, his hand over the receiver, “The call came.”

  Stoney held the receiver slightly away from his ear, but the voices were so clearly familiar that Christie would have heard them had her head been buried beneath sand.

  “Hello?” Nora. Friendly and pleasant.

  “Hello, Christie? Is this Christie Opara?” The voice went through her body like a needle: the faceless nighttime voice. They were all watching her now, dropping their eyes as she met theirs.

  “No, Christie isn’t here.” Quickly. Nora said it quickly, not giving him time to continue the pacing of his own conversation, stopping him, forcing him to listen.

  There was a silence now lasting a full five seconds and Marty groaned as the same thought flashed through everyone: Sam Farrell had loused it up. But Stoney’s hand impatiently kept them quiet.

  And then, “I want to talk to Christie Opara.” The voice was hoarsely insistent.

  No pause. “Christie moved away from here, you see. She moved out this morning, to a place of her own.” Nora, sounding so cheerful and reasonable.

  Again a pause, a little longer this time. Their minds held the singular thought: the caller would hang up.

  But the voice again, different, a strange quality, somewhere between anger and panic. “Where did she move to?”

  No one in the room breathed. Nora’s voice, easy, relaxed, “Do you have a pencil? I’ll give you her address.”

  Quickly, “I want her phone number.”

  “No, she hasn’t had a phone installed yet.” Don’t say that, Nora; don’t say yet! He’ll hang up and call back tomorrow for the number; oh God, Nora, that was a mistake.

  But the voice, “Yes. I have paper. Wait a minute.” A muffled, digging around sound, a heavy sigh. “Okay.”

  Listening to Nora’s voice, carefully spelling out the address, giving the apartment number, Christie felt the sense of unreality bearing down on her; the pleasant casual insignificant conversation was so out of keeping with her surroundings, with the circumstances. She studied the faces of the men, huddled in a small semi-circle around Stoney; nothing around her balanced. The two voices speaking from the telephone, asking for and giving information, the normal, polite exchange of goodbyes, the clicking of the two receivers yet the call not disconnected and now, Sam Farrell’s voice, normal, familiar. “That’s it, Stoney. I hung up and dialed your number as soon as he disconnected.”

  “Right,” Stoney said. “You did fine, Sam.” And now Sam was out of it; staying beside Nora until ordered to leave, but out of it, finished and done with it.

  Stoney’s hand still rested on the telephone. “Marty, you spoke with Rogoff. What do you say? Recognize the voice?”

  Marty shrugged. “Hard to say; yes and no.”

  “It is Rogoff.” They all turned, no one questioning the cold hard certainty in Christie’s voice.

  At 9:42 P.M. the telephone rang again. It seemed less sharp, less insistent this time, but Stoner Martin grabbed it midway in the first ring. “Martin here. Right. Right, Casey.”


  He replaced the receiver on the cradle and said softly, “Devereaux just called Casey from the subway station; they’re waiting for a Manhattan-bound IRT.” Stoney lit a new cigarette from the inch-long glow between his fingers, smashed out the stub, blew smoke around his head. “Devereaux and Rogoff,” he said quietly.

  “Of course Rogoff,” Christie said to no one in particular. “Who’d you think it would be, Devereaux and Santa Claus?”

  Stoney said evenly, “Now the next time, it will be a one-ring blast and then it should be a matter of minutes. Marty, take a run around the corner and alert Jimmy O’Neill that his partner is close on suspect and that they are on their way, then tap on the door down the hall and tell the other Homicide men.” Stoney picked up a magazine, slumping into the upholstered chair, his long legs dangling over the arm.

  Ferranti adjusted the gas higher under the glass pot of water, spooning instant coffee into a mug. He stood watching the odd shapes of the orange fire under the tall, transparent, slightly roiling water. It was like a flower with long bright tentacles reaching out from a blue center. He poured boiling water into his cup and adjusted the flame so that Marty could have a cup of coffee when he returned.

  Christie walked into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. For a moment, she stood in the darkness, then switched on the light, gazing without recognition at her reflection in the small scarred mirror over the sink. Her cheeks seemed drawn in, her mouth was tight. She ran the cold water full strength, cupping it into her hands, sloshing the coolness over her face, but it seemed to turn warm on contact with her skin. She filled her mouth from her hands then let the water run back into the sink, finally swallowing a mouthful, but it did not slake her thirst nor the dryness that was not only in her mouth but deep inside her throat. Not reaching yet for one of the paper towels on the roller directly under the mirror, Christie turned sideways, holding her dripping hands out before her. No tremor: not the slightest tremble. She regulated her breath, remembering one of Nora’s endless yoga exercises: empty the lungs completely, force out the air even though there doesn’t seem to be anything left because there is some stale pocketful of air stagnating inside. Feeling emptied to the point of suffocation, Christie slowly drew new breath into her but the air was heavy and unclean and gave no sense of purification or revitalization. She ran the water again, on the insides of her wrists, then blotted her face and hands on the scratchy paper towels, but, stopped by the eyes in the mirror, she could see that her face was wet again, sprinkled with small drops of perspiration. She felt the damp clinging all along her back: the lightweight cotton shirt glued to her body. She pushed the tail-ends into her dungarees which had become part of her skin. She ran her fingers through her hair, then across her neck, stretched her face, pulling her lips back into an exaggerated smile, then let them ease back into a normal expression.

  Switching off the light, Christie carefully stepped into the bathtub, raised the window an inch or so, hunched down so that her eyes could scan the darkness of the small, common courtyard formed by the arrangements of tenement houses, back to back on a square block of city street; her eyes found the alleyway and her lips said quietly into the emptiness: “I’m ready for you; I’m ready.” Her eyes closed now, she carefully slid the window to exactly the location Stoney had placed it, her fingers measuring the distance. Then she went back into the room.

  Marty broke into their silence, his eyes glowing. “Man, you should see what Jimmy O’Neill’s got going for him up there!” His hands traced voluptuous forms in the air.

  “Knock it off, Marty,” Bill Ferranti said, his voice unexpectedly angry.

  “Not me,” Marty said innocently, “but hell, if Jimmy up there don’t knock it off, he’s crazy!”

  Bill’s voice was tight and unfamiliar and he stood up, putting his cup of coffee on the edge of the table. “Watch that kind of talk, Marty.” His chin jutted toward Christie and she blinked at him.

  “Don’t shush him on my account, Bill. Frankly, I wasn’t listening. I didn’t even hear what he said.”

  “Well, what I said was ...”

  Stoney steered Marty to the stove, taking control now. “Have your cuppa and fill your mouth with a few pickles, Marty. It’s too hot to get tense.” Stoney poured the steaming water into a cup, then carefully closed the marbleized black and white tin cover over the burners, then placed the toaster, a shining, aluminum four-slicer, in place. “Little old toaster,” he intoned, “you are an important part of this here little old plan and if you do your job properly and guide our suspect well, we will reward you handsomely by eating anything—regardless of condition—that pops out of you.”

  “Except raisin toast,” Marty said, his eyes on the toaster.

  “Because with raisin toast, unless you count carefully before the bread goes down, you never really know if any of the raisins are actually bugs when the toast pops up!”

  They all had casually positioned themselves about the room now, Stoner Martin leaning against the arm of the chair, Marty squatting beside the closet, Ferranti taking his half-empty cup with him as he eased himself to the top of the waist-high refrigerator.

  Christie sat stiffly on the edge of the bed, her back straight, her hands over her knees. The denim clung heavily to her thighs and constricted her movements. There were no sounds in the room except for the occasional swallowing, as the men finished their tepid coffee.

  “I think,” Stoner Martin said, “that we will turn out the lights now and maintain a modicum of silence.” His hand reached out, clicked the yellow circle of light over his head. Ferranti pushed the silent button over the refrigerator, obliterating the purplish cast from the fluorescent tube.

  “I can see the toaster,” Christie said from the bed. “It does pick up a glint of light.”

  “Into the closet, Martin, and do not fall asleep.” But Marty was already in the closet as Ferranti was already settled behind the half-wall of the alcove and Stoney was down now, behind the chair, and Christie was stretched full length on the creaking bed.

  “Stoney?” Marty’s voice was different in the dark now; serious, no more joking. “Question.”

  “Yeah?”

  “When the lights go on, won’t we be blinded from all this darkness? I mean, hell, how will we see good enough?”

  There was a silence as they all visualized the stabbing glare of sudden light. Then, Stoney, softly, “This little light here is pretty dim. We’ll do the best we can: we’ll be fine.”

  18

  MURRAY ROGOFF SAT HUDDLED on the wicker seat of the slow-moving IRT train, his arms wrapped around his knees, his chin pressed into his locked hands. The train came to a hesitant, not-quite completed halt, then lurched forward a few feet, then picked up speed steadily until it was careening through the black tunnel, but Murray Rogoff was too filled with other things to notice the irregular movements of the train. His eyes, opened wide behind the enclosure of his glasses, saw no further than the smudge marks.

  He had known there was something wrong. All day, working in the store, he had felt it, known it. His hands closed even tighter against each other. His teeth moved hard, grinding the words inside his mouth: What kind of a mother was that woman? What kind of a mother? To let a girl like Christie move to a place like the Village. What kind of mother was she?

  He had kept his voice steady; he had kept all the anger and fury from his voice and from his words but not from inside himself; it grew surely and fully when the calm voice told him, “Christie moved out this morning.” Moved out: as though the woman had no idea what kind of place her daughter had moved to. Murray’s eyes remembered the woman: small and crisp and clean and taking the little boy by the hand, carefully fussing over him, smiling at him. That was it! She wanted to be alone with her little son. That was why she had made Christie move out, made her leave that safe, good brick house, attached to all those other nice houses, all lined up neat with, small flower gardens and patios on one side of the street and the old wooden houses fac
ing them. God, it had been so hard to find the place where Christie lived; so hard to make sure it was a safe place with all those sharp-eyed old women who had nothing better to do than watch anyone who walked past their houses. But he had been careful: Murray knew how to watch without being seen.

  Everything had been so hard: how could he keep watch over Christie when she worked at some crazy job with some crazy hours? Coming home every night at a different time: it was wrong for a girl like Christie, walking those long dark blocks in Queens. They seemed to think it was way out in the country, all safe and quiet, but they didn’t know what could happen. Murray’s mind whirled with images and pieces of things that did not fall into place and he closed his eyes against all the things he could not understand.

  What had Christie to do with Frankie Santino? Then, Murray smiled behind his hands: she knew how to talk to pigs like Frankie Santino. That day in the hallway of the court building, she had cut Frankie dead like so much gutter dirt, which is what Frankie Santino was and always had been and always would be. He remembered her face and her voice: the kind of face a girl like Christie always turned to a bum like Frankie and the kind of voice she saved for punks like that.

  The tormenting, puzzling mystery of why Christie had been there that day no longer bothered him, because Murray knew the important thing was that she had been there and that he had seen her and she had seen him and that they had looked at each other. His smile widened and Murray felt good, yet. the nagging worry bit into his happiness forcing him to remember that something was wrong and that Christie was not living at home anymore with her mother and little brother but had moved to some dump in the Village and that he had to find her.

  Murray Rogoff walked along the narrow Greenwich Village street deliberately slamming his hard body into all the queers who tried to block his way, leaving behind him a trail of shrieking insults. He knew they would love nothing better than for him to turn back, rough them up a little: touch them again. His hands deep in the pockets of his chinos, Murray walked with long steps, seeing only the sidewalk before him, using his wide shoulders to sweep a path for himself. His eyes saw the net stockings and spike heels of the whores, heard the dirty low voices of the pimps, but his eyes never met theirs. He walked through them with one terrible knowledge; this is where Christie must walk now, through them. They could reach out and touch her. God. Oh God. What kind of mother?