by JJ Partridge
Turn the thumb screw tighter, Nadie, so when it’s released, I’ll feel better.
The pot smoke hung over the bed like a canopy and that didn’t help my growing crankiness. It galled me how she had quickly and thoroughly destroyed my crime scenario. I knew Reinman was a walking skeleton. How could he have taken on Annie Sullivan? Anyway, as Nadie reminded me, he was probably dead when she was murdered. What the hell was I thinking? I turned over, lay on the opposite side of the bed, and brooded.
She didn’t let up. “Now, what about me? What am I supposed to do? I took Civics, didn’t you? Maybe they didn’t teach that at Moses Brown Academy but at Benjamin Cardozo Junior High, they did. I know you’re supposed to give any evidence you have in a criminal investigation to the police, and not wait for somebody else to trip over it or volunteer it. Maybe Franks spilled the beans but maybe not. You’ve got to talk to Tony about the money and abortion and be done with it!”
I remained silent and, eventually, she went into the bathroom and I heard the toilet flush. End of the pot. She came back into the bedroom and announced, “I’m due at the Center at six o’clock. I’ll be there for at least a couple of hours.”
I dressed; she sat on the bed and watched me. “I’ll call you in the morning,” I said as I left the bedroom. She didn’t reply.
I didn’t drive directly home; instead, I parked across from the tenement on Veasey Street. The plowed portion of the pavement glistened like oil in the streetlight. Without meaning to, I visualized Reinman’s shuffling approach to the apartment last Friday night, his slow ascent up the stairs, the moment of conflict ... and then, nothing! Something in that part of my brain that doesn’t necessarily respond to direct logical inquiry begged for recognition. Something I could not shake off.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The key.
It lay in a pile of pocket debris on my work table. I picked up the string that ran through the ringhole; the shiny brass threw reflections on the walls as it slowly revolved. I didn’t immediately recollect what the key locked, and then it clicked: Eustace Pine, the key to Reinman’s office. It took a few more seconds to realize what I had twirling before me. Want to know what someone with a private office has been up to? What the family needn’t know? Safe and far away from prying eyes? Search the office!
The key dropped into my fist. “Great,” I said half-aloud, how the hell was I going to get into Ramsden Hall on a Friday night?
I used my worktable phone. Tuttle, fortunately, was still at the Security Office. Before I could request his assistance, he was into a litany of complaints about Kingdom’s rally. The Black Student Caucus, the dorm administration people, even the fraternities claimed that they’ll be watching out for black women on Saturday night. “S-u-re” was his reaction. “Off-campus people, a couple of thousand if you count the grad students, half of them women and lots of them minorities, what about them? The Stalker has broken in at least twice!” My lack of response eventually registered. “So?”
“I have to get into Ramsden tonight. I’m the executor of Professor Reinman’s estate and I need to ....”
“Tonight?” His tone implied ‘What’s this got to do with the rally? With The Stalker?’
I lied. “It’s a probate matter. An inventory has to get done by Monday. I’m free tonight, and who knows what will happen tomorrow.”
That seemed to satisfy him. “Yeah, everything’s in flux. I suppose you’ll want to be there ..., at the rally, I mean.” I almost responded that it wasn’t my problem when he added, “If you want to, you could watch it here on the campus interconnect. I gotta be at the Complex. This is still our center for response and you could get over to the Complex or The Green fast enough.”
“Thanks.” Did my assent betray my impatience? “How about Ramsden tonight?”
“Oh, sure. Sorry. What time? I’ll have somebody meet you there.”
I checked my watch. “What about seven? Can I let myself out?”
“You’ll need the security code, and there’s a deadbolt lock, so you’ll need a key when you leave. You’ll have to drop the key back here.”
“This will save me a lot of time.”
“No problem.”
* * *
Ramsden Hall is on the easterly side of the main campus, close to the Wheeler School, near the corner of Angell and Hope, and it took only a few minutes to navigate the Range Rover through the slick streets and enter a well-plowed and empty parking lot. The night was moonless, with a low cloud cover, and the drop in temperature penetrated my leather jacket. A damp wind, heavy and ominous, blew off hardpacked snow mounds and whipped around me as I approached the two-story, granite-faced building with Gothic embellishments, narrow windows of intricately leaded glass, and cathedral-like arches. The snow had been cleared from the four stone steps that led to its vaulted doorway. The promised security officer had not yet arrived.
The few minutes of waiting in the cold gave me ample time to examine my motives and feel the guilt of being downright sneaky. I was there because my ego had been bruised by Nadie and what I sought, a further thread of contact between Carl Reinman and Annie Sullivan, was to prove to Nadie, if to no one else, that Carl Reinman had been Annie Sullivan’s lover. Ignobly, I was using my executorship as my excuse to search his office. Suppose it had been me who had popped off? How would I like strangers rummaging through my office desk and twenty years of odds and ends that had accumulated there?
Out of the gloom, a uniformed security officer approached me. As he climbed the steps, I recognized him as one of Tuttle’s senior people, a sergeant by the name of Ewell. He scrutinized me, took a step closer to check my face shadowed by the brim of the fedora, said “Evenin’, Mr. Temple,” and used a key from a jingling ring on his belt. He pulled open the heavy door, entered, and punched in numbers on the alarm box located on an inside wall. I followed him inside as lights went on in the reception area and hallway.
“Now, when you leave,” he said, pointing at the alarm box, “hit eight, eight, one, zero. Then,” he added as he unhooked a clasp on the ring, picked off a key, and handed it to me, “use the key.” His tone indicated that this numerical sequence and mechanical action might be beyond my ken.
“Eight, eight, one, zero,” I repeated. “Got it,” and took the key without showing any smugness.
“We’ll check the building again around nine-thirty. If you’re still here, the guard will wonder what’s up, so you probably should call in to Security just to let them know it’s you.”
“Thanks,” I said, and he left without another word.
An office directory, on the wall above the mail cubbies near the reception desk listed Reinman’s office as Room 113. It was at the rear of the building, down the hallway and in an ell off to the right. Unlike the doors I had passed, Reinman’s was not covered by clippings from the comic pages, editorial cartoons, tacked-up bumper stickers or other political and social commentary. The key turned easily in the lock and the office door swung open silently. I groped inside for a switch and, when it was found, I was impressed.
The office had to be twice as large as my own, furnished with comfortable looking chairs, a glass table with an arrangement of silk flowers, a handsome light wood desk and credenza, and a sleek Herman Miller Aeron chair. The carpet was grayish-green, with a dense cut pile that didn’t shout “office”. On a worktable by a window overlooking the parking lot sat a powerful-looking Hewlett-Packard computer and a fax machine and printer, with a shredder on the floor nearby. The wall by the door was lined with bookshelves; the far wall was filled by a glossy entertainment center holding a television monitor that reflected slices of light within the room and an audio system and DVD player. A flashy circle of awards and diplomas covered the wall behind the desk; by the door, Theodore Roosevelt grinned down from a vintage campaign poster, his pince-nez on his nose, his hand raised in challenge, his teeth bared, exuding vigor and drive. “The strenuous life,” I remembered. The overall neatness of the office was marred by a
jumble of cardboard boxes of various sizes near the desk.
I sat in Reinman’s ergonomic chair. Damn comfortable! I recently had bought one at the Design Within Reach store in DownCity for my worktable at home. I unzipped my jacket; the fedora was pushed back with my index finger, a gesture straight out of a B movie. Okay, shamus, where to begin?
The desktop was bare except for a halogen lamp, which I snapped on, and a black blotter. I swung around to the credenza which held a multi-buttoned telephone console and a cluster of framed photographs. Reinman with President Reagan, maybe in the Oval Office, took pride of place, while others showed Reinman in black tie, one with the first President Bush, another with Henry Kissinger, and still another with Larry King. In the middle of the pack was a slightly faded studio photograph of a young Carl Reinman and a fresh-faced woman of twenty-five or so. I picked it up—it took me a moment to recognize Deborah Reinman—and was struck by the incongruity of their pairing, the pretty, but not overly so, girl with her handsome husband. What had brought them together? Reinman, I had learned, wasn’t the type to cherish a woman for her personality.
I replaced the photograph and attacked the desk drawers. The top one was empty, as was the deep drawer on the desk’s left pedestal. The drawer on the right side, however, was crammed with Merrill Lynch account statements addressed to the office, each wad a year’s worth, held together by a thick rubber band. For this year, the statement for January was on top of the wad; the slimmest of all, for May and dated June 15, was at the bottom. Where was June? That had to be when Deborah Reinman took over the family’s financial affairs.
For reference, I started with the January statement. It was comprised of eight or nine computer-printed pages. The first few listing stocks, bonds, and other investments totaling well over a million, investment transactions during the month, and a flow of deposits close to twenty thousand in total from the University, a variety of publishers, Fox News, and what could have been the producers of television news shows; the last page covering debits to the account, including a transfer to Deborah Reinman for six thousand and other payments that appeared to be routine. I put January aside and checked the subsequent months for consistency; except for federal and state tax payments in April, each statement showed virtually the same credits to the account and similar payees. Nothing was out of place until the next to last transaction in May. On May twenty-seven, a ten thousand dollar debit to cash!
My breath caught. I thumbed through the statements for prior months and exhaled loudly. A single cash entry in all that time! And not for chump change! Franks said the first deposit entry in Annie’s bankbook was early June. Ten grand! Slow down, boy. Reinman could have used the cash for something normal and everyday; it didn’t necessarily have anything to do with the money that ended up with Annie Sullivan. You need a lot more to make a case. I reassembled the statements, snapped the rubber band around them, and put them back in the drawer, except for the one for May. That went into my jacket pocket.
The carton nearest the desk caught my eye. Ah, that’s why the desktop was clear and the drawers empty: their contents had been dumped into the cartons. Maybe Pine’s paralegal had gotten here after all. I pulled the closest one toward me and found it contained memo pads, a pen set, pencil holder, letter openers, an address book, glass paperweights, and a stamp box resting on a bed of rubber bands, paper clips, business cards, caps from discarded ballpoint pens, and similar desk drawer cheese. The address book was a thin, expensive-looking one, with the gold initials CRR embossed on its worn black leather cover. Definitely, Reinman was pre-Palm Pilot and it led my now overheated imagination to its identification as a proverbial “little black book.” I ran a finger down its alphabetical, cut away pages, to “S.”
There were three pages of names, some scribbled while others were printed neatly, with telephone numbers, some crossed out and restated. No Sullivan. Ugh! Disappointed, I was about to toss it back when my eyes focused on the name “Samantha.” A first name! I went to “A.” Again, lots of names on the pages, mostly scribbled, and bingo! “Annie,” and two local telephone numbers! I stared at the printed name for a few seconds.
Annie!
I turned to the credenza, reached for the telephone, punched in the second listed number, and waited, thinking that if an Annie answered, I was dead wrong. A mechanical voice told me the number was no longer in service. Ugh! I tried the first number, and after four rings, a young woman’s voice said, “Hi, Jason, Joanne’s waiting downstairs.” She was chewing something, and music throbbed in the background.
I paused. In which dorm did Tuttle say she lived last year? “Is this Johnson Hall?” I said uncertainly.
“Yeah, who do you want?” The voice had cooled.
“Well, I’m trying to find someone who lived there last year and ....”
“Last year? Who’s that?” Now, she was suspicious.
“Someone who lived on the floor last year,” I repeated numbly.
“Look, I wasn’t here then. You’ll have to call back,” she said and hung up.
I put the receiver back on the console, turned away from the desk, and raised my arms in a hoo-rah! Vindicated! I wondered about the first number I tried but who needed that? Johnson Hall in Reinman’s address book under Annie was enough for me. As the precious little book joined the Merrill Lynch statement in my jacket pocket, my gaze fell on the lineup of photographs on the credenza. Reinman, the defender of America’s public virtue and family values, the relentless critic of the permissive liberals, had been rutting with undergraduates, getting one pregnant and then paying for her abortion and silence!
I returned to my task. Okay, I had enough to give me credence with Nadie. What else? Forget the computer since without his password, it was a dead end and there was neither a personal journal nor a pocket calendar among his effects. Realizing I didn’t have the time to check everywhere, I decided to concentrate on the remaining cartons and I moved to squat next to one which was filled with thick manila folders of resumés, book offerings, departmental meeting notices, and schedules. Nothing there. The next carton contained two extra-large ring binders, one, with its cover emblazoned with the name of T.R.’s publisher, held plastic protected reviews of T.R. from Time, Newsweek, the Sunday Times, bestseller lists, and so on, and related news clippings recounting President Reagan’s interest. The other, more randomly put together, held reviews of T.R. from Modern History, Journal of American History, American Historical Review, and other academic journals. A pattern emerged as I flipped through the second binder and sampled the reviews. Upon publication, T.R. merited favorable scholastic reviews, praise from colleagues that ran along the line of “an important biography”, “rich with insights”, and “a witty, accessible account of a complex man.” After the presidential endorsement and the notoriety of Reinman’s political conversion, an academic reaction clearly set in, with letters and notes in the same journals reflecting anger and skepticism as to Reinman’s sharp turn to the right. Why did Reinman keep this stuff? To remind him why he had such contempt for his peers?
The largest carton was packed with dated folders from a news clipping service, mostly xerox copies of magazine articles and newspaper op-ed pieces written by Reinman, some fairly recently. Hard to believe that he wrote so much for the popular media, and …, then, I remembered the magazines in Annie Sullivan’s apartment. Could they have contained some of these articles? Is that why they were so varied? What a damn shame I had let them be carted away to the Central Landfill!
“Ugh!”
I shuffled folders to put them back into the carton and something made out of thick paper stock to fall on to my lap. A greeting card. On its front was a squiggly cartoon of a little girl, with a pug nose, long Mary Jane curls, doleful eyes, and downturned mouth, sitting on the floor with a banana peel behind her. I opened the card. The tag line was, “I slipped up. Sorry!” There was a caret after the I and the hand-printed words “might have” inserted. Below that, also hand-printed, was “Need to
see you” and under that, an “A” in cursive. I fingered the card for a moment, trying to put its message into context and searched the carton for its envelope without success. My mind raced with the prospect that Annie was “A.” How had she “slipped up”?
The greeting card went with the rest of my cache and I tackled the last carton. Unlike the others, which were standard packing cartons, this one had once held Sterling Vineyard Merlot and was empty except for a single manila folder. Inside was a pamphlet with a smudged yellow-gold cover. It read: “Information for Patients: Your Vasectomy.” The name of a well-known East Side urologist was printed below the title. Tucked into the middle of the pamphlet were two folded pink receipts from the doctor’s office. The first one I opened was for a sperm test in May of this year. The other receipt was worn and faded, made out to Carl Reinman for the surgery, and dated almost twenty years ago!
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The voice mail had two impatient demands from Tramonti for return calls and a curt message from Nadie saying she’d call tomorrow.
I stripped, filled the tub, and eased myself into hot sudsy water scented with a capful of sandalwood bath oil that Nadie keeps in a basket hanging between the hot and cold faucets. I let the heat penetrate and closed my eyes. After a few quiet minutes, I didn’t feel quite as foolish as I had on the drive back through a daunting rain from Ramsden Hall. Reinman’s inability to father a child demolished my theory of the abortion hush money. He couldn’t have impregnated her. Probably was retested to make sure. So how could Annie hold something else over him? Was he, vasectomy or not, the cash cow? Who knows. Hey, at least with the address book, I could show Nadie that he was more than a book autograph to Annie.