“Can I help you?” Christie asked.
“Yes. I don’t know. My name is Richard C. Jackson. I’m looking for Detective Stoner Martin—I was told it would be all right for me to come up.”
Christie nodded, indicated a chair and buzzed Reardon’s office. “Mr. Jackson is here to see Detective Martin.”
Stoner’s face indicated no recognition, just a weary resolve. He shook the hand offered to him with some impatience. Mr. Jackson’s voice was thin and wavery. “I’ve been trying to reach you all day, Detective Martin, all day and all night. Since the moment I was notified, but—”
“Notified? About what?” Stoner’s question was mechanical.
“Why, about Tomlin Carver’s death.”
Stoner’s arm encircled Mr. Jackson, pulling him more than guiding him into Casey Reardon’s office. Reardon’s voice blasted into the Squad Room. “Detective Opara, you there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Call the Commissioner’s office—tell him we’ll be delayed, that something just came up and I’ll call him as soon as I can.”
Christie relayed the message to the Commissioner’s secretary but could give no further information to the sharp voice questioning her. “That’s all Mr. Reardon told me. He’ll be in touch with the Commissioner.”
Christie rested her head on the surface of the desk and wished the whole thing was over and done with.
THIRTY-TWO:
CHRISTIE OPARA SAT ON a bench in the mirrored outer office of the Police Commissioner’s domain and regarded her image in dizzying repetition. Fatigue weighed so heavily on her that she was no longer disturbed by her appearance. So she had a black eye and a swollen cut mouth. So what? All she wanted to do was sleep. But she knew that she had to force herself awake; more than that, she had to force herself to be alert. She crossed the room and threw the damp container, with remnants of tea, into the wastebasket beside the desk of the uniformed patrolman. He did not look up. In fact, he had been bent over a large ledger for over an hour, laboriously making entries, not even raising his eyes as the parade of visitors entered and departed. Yet as each person stopped at his desk, he added a name, time of arrival and time of departure to his journal.
“Where’s the ladies’ room?” Christie asked.
The patrolman raised his left hand but didn’t look up. “Next flight up, turn left at top of the stairs. Wait a minute. You’ll need the key.” He dug in the top drawer, then handed her an oblong block of wood with a key dangling from a large metal circle.
There was an eeriness in the large, dark old building. Not just because of the emptiness and the echoing of her every step, but it seemed that suddenly, at any moment, people would emerge from behind all the locked doors, that the building would come to life and be filled with sound and movement. Christie ran cold water over her wrists for a moment, then cupped come water in her hands and held it to her cheeks and forehead. It had no stimulant effect at all and she had to shake off the terrible dead weariness. She dug in her pocketbook and found a small shiny smooth green capsule. Marty Ginsburg had slipped it into her hand before she left the office. He had told her it was one of his reducing capsules—an amphetamine. It would get her through. She put the slippery capsule in her mouth, then scooped up a mouthful of water and swallowed. She returned to the Commissioner’s waiting room, vaguely disappointed at her continuing exhaustion.
The first effect of the capsule, some fifteen minutes later, was an urgent nausea. Her image in the succession of mirrors seemed to be floating around in a circle. Christie closed her eyes and clamped down on her back teeth, then found some gum in her pocketbook and chewed hard. The sick feeling subsided and she began to feel better. She began to feel good. She stood up, stretched, and paced around the large, circular, windowless room. The patrolman looked up from his ledger, finally, curious.
“Mind if I put your transistor on?”
The patrolman shrugged. “You won’t get the news for another fifteen minutes.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s four-fifteen.”
“Maybe some music, then. What’s happening, anyway?”
“In there—or where?”
Christie turned the radio on. The music was soft and dreamy. “Anywhere—in there—uptown, downtown, anywhere.”
The patrolman clicked his ball-point and stretched his arms across his desk. Apparently he had finished his work for the time being.
“Well, the local citizenry marched on the Twenty-Third Precinct in force. We rushed troops up there and it’s under control, but there’s been some bad injuries: them and us. We’re sealing off streets and reinforcing barricades. Some looting; some shooting. Earlier, of course, we locked up about twenty-eight of those Secret Nation guys—all armed with firearms. We’re really geared and it’s been blowing in a few places but no fatalities so far.” He sounded like a general in complete command of the situation, cool, uninvolved, but on top of it all. “Oh, and his Honor the Mayor is on his way—got a blast on the phone when you went upstairs.”
His Honor the Mayor arrived exactly five minutes later. Christie was surprised at how tall he was and how quickly he moved. He strode across the carpeted expanse in a rapid, gliding motion and she instinctively came to her feet. The patrolman leaped to attention and the Mayor tossed him a casual, friendly salute. The patrolman must have buzzed a signal somewhere, for the heavy door leading into the Commissioner’s office opened as his Honor approached. Christie caught one quick glimpse of light before the door silently closed.
The door opened again some thirty minutes later, and Casey Reardon stepped out. Christie stood up, meeting him in the center of the room.
“So far, so good,” he said slowly, not looking at her. “The Mayor has skimmed over our reports and the medical reports confirm that Champion was hit across the throat, so that lends credence to Davis’s tale of woe. Now, you’re just going to answer some questions. Nothing too detailed. He was impressed by your work.” Reardon sat down and looked up at Christie. “Sit down for a minute. This is important.”
Christie sat on the edge of the cushioned bench. Reardon looked terrible. There were deep lines across his forehead and his eyes were narrowed to slits. He was speaking rapidly. “Very briefly, a touchy area relates to your appearance at the precinct. Listen carefully. You knew the men were detectives when you got into the car with them, right? As soon as you got to the precinct, you called our office and asked that we send someone for you. Tom and I picked you up. Got that?”
Christie nodded briskly and stood up. “Okay, got it. Let’s go.”
Reardon pulled her back onto the bench and studied her face. “Christie, what’s wrong with you?”
“Me? Nothing. I feel great. Anything else?”
He studied her for a moment, not releasing her arm. “Yes, something else. You’ll be asked about the Everett shooting—about why you were on the scene and ...”
She nodded. “Right. I was on a special assignment at the building site and was right up against Everett when I saw Champion pull the gun from Patrolman Linelli and—”
Reardon’s fingers tightened about her arm. “Christie, take it easy. You didn’t see Champion take the gun, you—”
Christie snapped her fingers. “That’s right—I meant that I saw him transfer the gun into Linelli’s hand. Listen, Mr. Reardon, don’t worry about me. Really. I’m fine. But you look awful. Gee, you look tired. Are you all right?”
She started to stand up again, but Reardon held onto her arm. “Christie, did you take something? Don’t look blank; this is important. What the hell is the matter with you? You act like you’re hopped up or something.”
Christie grinned. “Just got my second wind, that’s all.”
“All right, we’ll talk about that later. Right now, listen to me. If you are asked for specifics about your assignment at the building site—”
She interrupted, her voice earnest. “Listen, Mr. Reardon, don’t worry about a thing. A confidential assignment is confidential. I won’t tell
them a thing.”
“My God, Opara, shut up and listen. If they ask for specifics, you are to tell them exactly. You got that—exactly. That you were assigned to tail my daughter—tell it exactly the way it was.”
“I don’t see why ...”
Reardon felt a terrific urge to belt her. He knew how to stimulate her through her exhaustion but he hadn’t the slightest idea how to calm her down. Particularly when he didn’t know what she had taken. He spoke quietly, trying to carry her along with him. “Christie, that is the Mayor of the City of New York and the Police Commissioner of the City of New York in that room. Answer every question they ask and we’ll all be fine, okay?”
“Right.”
Reardon released his breath slowly between his teeth. “That’s my girl,” he said.
Detective Christie Opara was completely at ease during the fifteen minutes she spent inside the Police Commissioner’s office. She was bright, alert, rapid and articulate. A little too articulate, Reardon thought, watching her closely. But the Mayor, his eyes slightly glassy and his color bad, seemed favorably impressed, and the Police Commissioner, with a more serious problem before him, paid cursory attention to her statement.
The Mayor rose and everyone in the room stood up, ignoring the brief wave of his long hand that indicated informality. “Almost five A.M.,” the Mayor said, sounding surprised.
“The night sure flew by, didn’t it?” Christie asked brightly, not seeing Casey Reardon’s face.
“It seemed very long to me,” the Mayor said. The clearness of his light gray eyes surprised Christie; he seemed to be rallying somehow. “You know, Detective Opara, I had a slightly different impression of what happened uptown. When we all hit the deck, I raised my head for a moment and it seemed to me that you were grappling with a uniformed patrolman. Was there a uniformed man there, near you?”
Christie shook her head. “No, sir, just the two detectives. And we weren’t grappling. They were assisting me to get out of there, as I told you before.”
The Mayor clicked his tongue against his teeth, and he said thoughtfully, “A matter of perspective, I guess. Commissioner Moreley was lying right next to me and he was under the impression that a uniformed policeman collared this fellow Claude Davis.”
Christie started to speak, but Reardon moved suddenly and spoke before she could. “No, sir, apparently no one even saw Davis until he presented himself at our office. Seems he found himself caught in the middle of the two factions of the Secret Nation people and decided to seek our protection.”
“That’s right,” Christie added; “he just popped up in our office and—”
Reardon’s hand grasped her wrist, pulling it around in back of her. “It’s interesting how things appear in retrospect, Mr. Mayor,” Reardon said, and the Mayor nodded in agreement.
The Mayor turned to the Police Commissioner. “This other matter—this information from this man Tomlin Carver—we’ll have to discuss it at length. You realize what seems to be involved?”
The Police Commissioner’s face was pale and his voice was thin. “I realize fully what seems to be involved.”
The Mayor said, “I’m going to shoot uptown. Detective Opara is, I think, entitled to some rest. Mr. Reardon, I’ll leave that to you. You also have the rather tricky matter of the Grand Jury presentation relative to the Everett shooting. You still have your twenty-five witnesses. Well, sleep on it and we’ll see what we come up with after some rest.”
Reardon, still holding Christie’s wrist, agreed with the Mayor and he watched Christie in amazement. A sudden light glowed on her face; an idea seemed to flow through her and she seemed about to reach out for the Mayor’s arm as he walked past them. Reardon wrenched her closer to him and in a hoarse whisper, right into her ear, he told her, “Christie, keep quiet or I’ll murder you!”
Christie sat in the back seat of the Pontiac and didn’t answer Reardon. She didn’t know what he was so angry about; she had handled her part well and, besides, she had a great plan, if only Reardon would shut up for a minute.
He was turned from the front seat and his voice was a steady, continuous blast at her. “I don’t know what the hell you took or where you got it, but we’re going to drop you off at your house and you take a hot shower and get a few hours’ sleep and drink lots of coffee. I want you back in the office by two P.M. at the latest and I expect you to be quieted down and—” He leaned toward the back seat. “Christie, are you listening to me?”
She shook her head thoughtfully. “No, not really, because I’m thinking about something else.”
Tom Dell stared straight ahead and concentrated on the black and empty streets. Reardon’s voice was like a razor. “You’re thinking about something else?”
Dell thought Christie had gone off the deep end: probably too many hours without food or sleep. The poor kid just went on, completely unaware of the boss’s mood.
“Mr. Reardon, I’ve got a great plan—really great. About the twenty-five witnesses.” Christie laughed. “Wow! Even the Mayor of the City of New York and his Commissioner of Human Relations didn’t know what they saw. Can you imagine—they were eyewitnesses and they don’t know what they were witnessing. It’s great. It’s perfect.”
Instead of an explosion, which is what Dell was prepared for, there was a silence, and then there was Mr. Reardon’s voice, quiet and controlled, almost interested. “All right, Christie. We’ll go back to the office and you tell me about your idea.” The threat implied by his next words didn’t bother her. “It better be good.”
She knew it was good and she wasn’t worried.
THIRTY-THREE:
IT RAINED ON MONDAY morning: not a cool, refreshing, relieving rain, but a steady hot steamy relentless outpouring of liquefied heat. The room on the fifth floor of the Criminal Courts Building shimmered with moisture. The dim yellow light that radiated in glowing circles from the antiquated chandeliers across the ceiling added to the gloom. Slashes of rain streaked and tapped at the narrow windows, which had been opened for a moment, then hurriedly closed when the direction of the wind shifted and poured warm water onto the tiled floor.
It was a small courtroom, used for various purposes: conferences, briefings, meetings. At various times when court calendars were desperately overloaded, it was used for arraignments of juveniles, family court proceedings, Night Court, Women’s Court; and on this particular Monday morning it was being used by Casey Reardon.
The students sat in uneasy groups along the shiny wooden benches, as subdued and hushed as though they were aligned in pews. The darkness added to the churchlike atmosphere, the altar being a high, unoccupied magistrate’s desk in the front of the room. Several men appeared, then disappeared, across the front of the courtroom; yet no one addressed them or gave any indication as to why they had been requested to appear here. They had all received subpoenas to appear before the Grand Jury on Tuesday, relative to the matter of Billy Everett, and had been requested by telegram, received late Sunday afternoon, to present themselves in this room at 9:30 A.M. They weren’t quite sure if this was proper legal procedure, but they had all shown up. Well, this was the District Attorney’s show and they waited, miserable, clammy, despondent, in the depressing room.
Casey Reardon lit a cigarette and noted with some surprise that his hand trembled.
“How about offering me one, Dad? I could use it.”
Reardon extended a cigarette to his daughter Barbara. “I keep forgetting that you’re grown up.” He held the match to the cigarette, noting that the girl didn’t inhale. She blew smoke directly into her eyes and blinked furiously.
“I don’t really enjoy it—I’m just very jumpy. And surprised, I guess.”
Reardon shrugged. “We can’t just brush facts away, can we? You were there; you feel a moral obligation to see this thing through. Well, okay. Let’s just say that after an unbelievably busy weekend I found a minute or two to think about you—about your point of view—and that I feel I don’t have the right
to make this decision for you, right?”
Barbara nodded, crushed out the cigarette and studied her father. She raised her hand and touched Reardon’s cheek. “Dad, you look so tired. Have you been eating—sleeping?”
Reardon laughed sharply and pressed her hand in his, turning her toward the door. “Listen, kiddo, I’m letting you make your own decision this morning, but I’m not reversing roles. Don’t start mothering me.”
It was the needling, tough, in-charge Casey, and Barbara smiled, reassured. She had spent a long, miserable, disturbing weekend at her aunt’s cottage upstate and had come to several unpleasant, unacceptable conclusions. The chief conclusion was the one that pained the most: that her father was, basically, a coward; that he would advocate standing up for what you believe in only as long as you weren’t in danger. She had dissected her father completely, going back through the years. Incidents long forgotten came back to her. He had always insisted that she and her sister be willing to take the consequences of their actions, good or bad. Yet when something really important, not just an object lesson but the real thing, came up, he surrounded her with a wall of protection and negated everything he had ever taught them. She had been surprised by his phone call last night. All the way from upstate, she sat staring out the train window, wondering what it was all about. He greeted her at his office with a professional remoteness and quietly asked if she wished to make a statement relative to what she had witnessed at the building site on the morning of Billy Everett’s death. A stenotypist arrived, Casey asked her questions, made no comments, and the stenotypist moved his fingers steadily over the keys, and the odd narrow tape unwound, filled with cryptic letters. Her statement was typed, Barbara signed it, and it was witnessed by a woman clerk. And that was that.
“Go up to the fifth floor, Room 594, and find a seat. The other witnesses are there. I’ll see you in a little while.”
“Dad, what’s going on this morning?”
Reardon grinned. “That would be telling, wouldn’t it? Go on, you’ll find out soon enough.”
The Witness Page 18