The Bait

by Dorothy Uhnak

  Dr. Sidney Ginsburg opened the door, nodded briefly at Christie without meeting her eyes and led the way into his small examination room. She sat where he indicated, removed her wristwatch and placed her arm on the small cushion of clean lintless towels which Dr. Ginsburg had prepared on the table before her. With great care, quickly and deftly, the doctor’s long fingers removed a series of wide strips of gauze from the small steel bowl containing the plaster of paris solution. Christie noticed a beaded line of moisture forming over his thin mustache. His eyes were very small and very black and they darted from her arm to her face and when they met her eyes, they fled away again. She noted with admiration that not one drop of the wet solution touched anywhere but on his fingertips and her arm. Silently, he worked his way almost to her elbow.

  “Isn’t that a little high, Doctor?”

  His hand leaped at the sound of her voice and for one split second, it seemed that he might drop the wet strip; instead, he carefully unwound the last layer, then with a damp cloth, he washed away all traces of the solution from the freed portion of her arm.

  “Thank you,” Christie said softly.

  Dr. Ginsburg nodded and indicated another table where her arm was to repose under the purple glow of a lamp which, he informed them, quietly, would hasten the hardening process. Christie watched him as he moved rapidly, without a single wasted motion, cleaning up: scrubbing the little bowl spotless, winding up unused gauze, putting everything into little built-in compartments against the wall. She noticed that he had a tremor going near his left eye and a slight twitching at the corner of his lip which made his mustache look like a nervous, undernourished caterpillar. She dropped her eyes quickly when his beady black eyes met hers: Marty must have told him she was a subdued but unpredictable homicidal maniac.

  She could feel a pulling all along the skin under the cast; it was hardening rapidly and she could feel the weight of it. Dr. Ginsburg ran his fingers lightly along the cast, turned off the purple lamp and held up an expanse of white cotton cloth which he folded deftly into a sling. Carefully, he rested Christie’s arm along the length of it, then tied a knot behind her neck and asked if it was comfortable.

  Her eyes glistened maliciously at Marty who stood like a bulky wall behind his cousin. “City Hall perfect, Doctor. My daddy will be pleased.”

  For one brief instant, the doctor studied her face furtively, as though trying to memorize her features. Christie gazed vacantly at Marty’s shoulder, letting the doctor get his good look.

  “Good, good, good, Doc,” Marty said, slapping the starch down the center of his cousin’s spine. “Wait for me outside, kid, will you? Be right with you.”

  Christie smiled brightly. “Anything you say, Marty. You know that.”

  Marty handed his cousin a wad of tissues. “Your forehead is all wet, Sidney. Sidney, I want to tell you something. You handled that really beautiful. Beautiful. I knew I could trust you. As you can see, this is a highly touchy situation.” He leaned his face close, whispering, “You recognized her, of course?”

  Dr. Ginsburg blotted his face, removed his coat and ran a single tissue inside his shirt collar. His face was very white. “My God,” he said. “Yes. Yes I did. But don’t worry about it Marty. I thought—I thought it was just one of your games.” He shook his head. “Very sad.” He flicked his dry tongue, almost touching the black line of hair over his lip. “The Secretary-General of the U.N.—he has other children besides the girl, doesn’t he?”

  Marty clamped a heavy hand over his cousin’s mouth, glaring menacingly into the startled black eyes. “Swallow those words, Sidney Ginsburg! Swallow them down! Spit them out! Forget them!” he commanded.

  The pale face squirmed free. “I will, I will. It’s forgotten, Marty, believe me, it’s forgotten!” The high shrill voice was comfortably familiar now: the voice of skinny little cousin Sidney with all the A’s on his report card and all the whining complaints: Cousin Marty hit me; Cousin Marty spit in my orange soda.

  Marty left his cousin washing his hands and face in cold water. Christie was standing before the magazine rack, wishing she had time to dig into a few of the new home-furnishings editions. Marty grabbed at her cast and steered her out of the office.

  The outer door opened onto a small terrace two steps down from the sidewalk, lined on both sides by black and white wooden flower boxes filled with real looking artificial white roses. Focusing on Marty’s beaming face, Christie demanded, “Come on, Marty. What was the game? What in the world did you tell him?”

  Marty’s face pulled into a look of offended innocence and he spread his hands, palms up. “He’s a real nut, like I told you. But you know, I got a theory,” Marty said, and flow he smiled broadly over his own personal private joke which he would not share with her. “Sidney’s trouble is that he takes life too serious. He don’t know how to have a little fun once in a while!”

  9

  BILL FERRANTI’S VOICE ON the telephone was pleasantly mild and somewhat puzzled by Christie’s annoyance. “I don’t know why, Christie. Stoney Martin called me around six this morning and told me to cancel out on the LSD.”

  “You mean cancel out or delay it, or what?” Christie’s index finger could not reach high enough under the heavy cast to relieve the itchy spot.

  “Cancel out altogether from what Stoner said. We’re to report to the M.O. Apparently, they have something going and Mr. Reardon specifically wants you in this morning. Stoner said he’d explain when we get there.”

  The itch was tantalizingly close to the tip of her finger. She pressed the receiver between her cheek and shoulder and concentrated her efforts but to no avail. “You mean I won’t need this cast?”

  “I don’t think so, Christie. I guess you could slip it off and leave it at home. See you in the office.”

  The cast had not been made to slip off or pry off: it would have to be hammered off and Mr. Reardon’s directions had been to report to the M.O. forthwith which usually meant twenty minutes prior to whatever time you arrived.

  There were more Squad members in the office than Christie had ever seen at one time. She correctly surmised that the gambling teams had made some kind of collar: they were rarely in the office and all six men were present now, holding quick conversations with each other, with Stoner Martin and with Casey Reardon who appeared briefly, then returned to his own office.

  Detective Sam Farrell was a man who had been born clumsy and each year, as he had grown to his present large dimensions, his clumsiness had increased accordingly. Even standing absolutely still, his wide, nicely proportioned shoulders at ease, his large hands resting easily on his narrow hips, his broad flushed face looking at nothing in particular, Sam Farrell had the undeniable look of a clumsy man. There was something in his manner that marked him as the man most likely to find the one existing crack in an otherwise smooth sidewalk: the man whose toe would find that crack, catch in it and send his body sprawling. When Sam Farrell crossed a room—any room—pieces of furniture seemed to reach out toward an unprotected thigh, smashing it. His kneecaps seemed drawn to low tables and his head was invariably the target of low-hanging lamps. He was the kind of man who did not walk across a room: he lurched, as though by moving in an almost galloping stride, he could thus avoid the unknown pitfalls which forever seemed to await him.

  Bill and Christie watched Sam Farrell banging away, two fingers jabbing at the keys of the old Underwood. Christie grinned as Sam dug around in the top drawer for an eraser, then, hunched over the machine, he scrubbed furiously, stopping in surprise to regard the little hole he had made. He flipped the carbon paper from his copy, hoping to do a better job, and was confronted by a blank sheet of white paper. He had placed the carbons in the machine backwards.

  Christie and Bill Ferranti moved in on Sam Farrell; Farrell was the man to speak to when you wanted confidential information.

  “You fellows sure look busy, Sam.”

  He looked up, squinted, then his face stretched into a broad grin. �
�Hey, you guys really loused up on Friday, huh?”

  Christie shrugged. “We’ll make up for it.”

  “Oh, nobody told you yet, huh?” Sam shook his head. “Tough. Well, that’s the breaks.”

  “Told us what?” Ferranti asked.

  Sam Farrell hunched his shoulders forward and motioned them toward him. “Geez, Friday night the LSD blast went off and so did the kid. You know, the kid the whole thing was all about.”

  Christie felt the cast on her left arm get a few pounds heavier. “Which kid, Sam?”

  “Gee, nobody told you, huh? Well, I don’t know what kid it was exactly—some girl. Her uncle is a state senator, I think. From what I hear, the kid blasted off and is still revolving in outer space. Her family hustled her off to some upstate sanitarium.” Sam snapped his fingers, as though he had just solved a problem. “That’s right, you weren’t here Saturday morning. Boy, did it ever hit the fan. Mr. Reardon got called upstairs to the old man. When he came down, well, it’s just a good thing you weren’t around. We were all in because of this round-up we got on and I heard him.” Farrell laughed without malice. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear him out where you live.”

  Christie ignored the itch inside the cast and kept her voice level. “What’s going on here, Sam? What have you got?”

  “Very hush-hush,” Farrell said. “A little ordinary housewife, how do you like that?”

  A female prisoner; that’s why she was needed. They didn’t have to ask Sam anything, he was telling them.

  “Very confidential. She’s part of a ring of little ordinary housewives. Been using her telephone for bets. She answered an ad in the paper—you know: ‘make extra money at home’—that kind of thing.” Sam had very round blue eyes which never remained still. “It reaches all over the place—very extensive. We’ll be working in conjunction with Nassau and Suffolk police—even Westchester County.”

  Christie leaned over, turning the papers in Sam’s typewriter. “You have the carbons in backwards, Sam.”

  Smacking his lips together, Sam muttered, “Boy, these machines are tricky, aren’t they? I hate this old Underwood, it never works right.”

  Christie and Bill moved across the office. Christie leaned facing out of the window, while Bill kept his eyes on the activity. They deliberately avoided discussing the LSD case and in some desperation, Christie turned to him. “Sorry I can’t tell you about all the goings on, but it’s very hush-hush. You understand, don’t you?”

  Bill went along with her. “Please, don’t tell me anything I’m not supposed to know: just tell me the confidential facts and we’ll let it go at that.”

  Reardon’s voice called her name and everyone heard it over the steady sound of conversation and irregular typewriter clatterings. “It’s been nice knowing you,” she said to Ferranti without looking at his face; his expression would be sad and she preferred not to see it.

  Christie stood beside Reardon, waiting. She noted the quick, jerking nod, the impatience with which he set Stoney’s comments into place with a few sharp questions. There was a kind of electricity emanating from him, touching everyone in the room with a distinct vitality: Reardon was a man who moved and who forced everyone around him to move.

  His eyes circled the room restlessly, accounted for everyone present, then, satisfied with what he saw, he spoke to her without looking at her. “We have a woman in there, a Mrs. Lydia Ogden. She’s been taking calls for a bookie ring: a little housewifely moonlighting.” Now, his eyes rested on Christie; they were as clear as two amber stones. Without hesitating over a word, his eyes moved over her, stopped briefly, then flickered along the lines of her two-piece dress. Reardon’s eyes had an expression completely removed from his words or business-like tone of voice. “We haven’t had much luck with this dame. I thought she might need another woman to talk to. You know—girl talk.” Then his voice and his eyes seemed to join forces as he looked at her body again. “You look more like a girl today.”

  “What will I be looking for, Mr. Reardon?”

  “What I need is names; the more the merrier. We’ve handled her with kid gloves and that’s how it has to be. She’s a particularly beltable bitch and she knows we’re being careful with her. She’s important to this investigation. Very important. Think you can handle her?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Reardon’s eyes narrowed, and, as though he had seen it for the first time, he reached out and tapped his knuckles against her cast. “You better get this damn thing off.” His voice had that sharp irritable edge to it.

  “Mr. Reardon, I heard what happened on Friday night and ...”

  “You want to go round on that again?” he demanded sharply.

  “No, sir, but ...”

  “Then take the goddamn cast off.”

  “Mr. Reardon,” she persisted, “I’ve made my contacts; we know who’s involved. Couldn’t we just play it for a while and ...”

  Reardon’s face was angry and he shook his head and started to speak but then, for some reason, he changed his mind and just stood looking at her for a moment. “Ya never know,” he said tersely, and walked toward his office. “Come on, Opara, come on, move.”

  Reardon turned unexpectedly at the door to his office and Christie slammed into him. “Take it easy, Opara, you’ll knock the boss down.”

  Christie backed away. “Sorry. And, I can’t take the cast off now. It has to be hammered off.”

  “I’d be happy to oblige but I left my sledge hammer at home.” His voice wasn’t angry now and he briefly told her about the circumstances leading up to the interrogation of Mrs. Ogden.

  “Now look, I’m going to leave you on your own, okay? Got anything in mind?”

  “I’ll have to see her first, all right?”

  Reardon studied her thoughtfully, then opened the door, and jerked his head for her to follow. He made a quick introduction, his hand still on the doorknob, then left the two women alone.

  Mrs. Ogden was a small woman; small and round without being fat. She looked about a careful forty-two or forty-three years old. Her hair was held stiffly from her face and was coal black against the somewhat pale skin. She had small, sharp brown eyes, incongruously smeared with bright blue eyeshadow, a small nose and irregular lips which pulled downwards under the pearlized lipstick. Her short fingers wore a wide wedding band, encrusted with tiny diamonds, and the right hand, reaching for her throat as the door clicked shut, was decorated with a large cocktail ring of dull rubies and diamond chips.

  Christie walked to the window and with effort managed to open it with one hand. “It’s awfully hot in here, isn’t it?” Christie rested the cast in her right palm, wrinkling her nose at it. “This darn thing itches like mad.”

  Mrs. Ogden stared at her; her eyes were frozen little dark spots in her face. She resembled, for no reason Christie could pinpoint, a tough little dog, warily watching a potential enemy.

  “I broke my wrist playing baseball,” Christie said easily, sitting in Reardon’s chair, behind his desk. She wondered how he’d like that.

  “Baseball?” Mrs. Ogden asked carefully.

  Christie grinned. “Dopey, isn’t it? Yes, I was playing with my little boy and some of his friends and I slipped and snap! There went the wrist.”

  Mrs. Ogden’s head seemed to raise up a little, as though the stiff hair, acting as an antenna, was trying to catch some signals. “You have a little boy?”

  “Yes. Mickey. He’s just five.”

  The small arms folded themselves across her chest. The chin pointed upwards. Mrs. Ogden’s voice, brittle and unpleasant, had the added quality now of righteousness. “Well, I have three children and I am at home with my kids. I’m there when they need me and it seems that the police should be worrying about untended children of working mothers. They’re the ones who get in trouble, not children of mothers like me who stay home. Where they belong.”

  Christie let the words bounce against the particular shell she began forming around herself. Go righ
t ahead, Mrs. Ogden, you fine and virtuous little mother, get good and angry at me and tell me exactly what you think of me: because, lady, in a million years, I won’t tell you exactly what I think of you.

  “Tell me about your job, Mrs. Ogden. Mr. Reardon didn’t really fill me in on what this is all about. What’s the story?”

  “The story,” the woman said coldly, “is that I am a decent woman, just trying to help my husband out a little.” Her mouth twisted down again and Christie felt a twinge of sympathy for the man who had to face that mouth each day. “I answered this ad in the Journal—you’d think I was a criminal—I just answered an ad, that’s all!”

  “What did the ad say?” Christie asked, ignoring the nasty, impatient tone.

  “An ad—an ad. How can I remember what it said? It was a few weeks ago. You know, ‘Housewives, earn extra money in your spare time. At home.’ That kind of thing.”

  “I see. Did it give a phone number for you to call?”

  The small hands flew to the teased hair, catching an imaginary strand and pressing it back into place. “Yes, some phone number, don’t ask me what it was, I wouldn’t know. And I called and spoke to Mr. Somebody or other—some guinea name.”

  Another tiny piece fell into place; expressionless, Christie nodded the woman on.

  “So he told me that all I had to do was to call at least five or six people a day and give them this sales pitch about magazines. They were selling a whole group of magazines, and he sent me all the information: like you could get five years of the Ladies’ Home Journal and three years of the Saturday Evening Post and two out of a list of fifteen other magazines for a flat payment, which brought each copy, over a period of five years, down to about 13 cents a copy.”

  “Uh-huh. And then what?”