Robert Knightly - Bodies in Winter

Gregorio, our waiter, showed up at that moment with a pair of Heinekens, which he set on the table. Though Gregorio also brought two glasses, Adele and I quickly pushed them to the side. They were still warm from the dishwasher, one of the hazards of ordering beer in a diner.

‘According to Sarney,’ I began, ‘there’s gonna be a press conference tonight, at which a boss named Meyers will tell the world that DuWayne is a person of interest, and that some of the shell casings recovered at the Lodge scene were fired by the TEC-9 found in the Toyota.’

I watched Adele’s cheeks flame. ‘Ellen Lodge and Jarazelsky are both lying,’ she declared, her tone bitter and contemptuous, ‘and the job is buying into their lies. I went to OCCB this morning and spoke to Sgt Merkovich. DuWayne Spott isn’t a ghetto don, not even close. He’s a pimp and a low-level cocaine dealer. According to Merkovich’s snitches, there are only four men in his entire crew, most of them relatives or kids he grew up with. He couldn’t have known when Lodge was going to be released, much less where Lodge was headed. It’s simply impossible.’

I broke a salted roll in half and buttered one end. ‘What was Sarney’s reaction when you told him about Lodge’s file being… How did that jerk from Archives put it?’

‘Unable to locate at this time.’

‘So, what’d Sarney have to say when you told him Lodge’s file was temporarily unlocatable?’

‘He said he’d make a formal request to the DA’s office for their copy, plus he’d contact CSU and the crime lab to see what they had in their own files.’

‘He offer a time-frame?’

‘Nope. But there’s good news, too. We’ll have Ellen Lodge’s phone records tomorrow morning.’

Our dinners arrived a few minutes later: meat, gravy, potatoes and a few broccoli spears that’d been stewing for the better part of the day. As I ate, I allowed myself to fall into the minds of the conspirators, a practice I commonly follow prior to interrogations. From their point of view, the news coming from Jarazelsky must have been devastating. Lodge’s recovered memory would be meaningless in a court of law. The only way he could prove his innocence was by persuading somebody else to confess.

By this time I knew quite a bit about David Lodge, and not only from Nagy and Beauchamp. The newspaper stories had included extensive accounts of the events leading up to Lodge’s guilty plea seven years earlier. One item in particular had caught my attention. According to the ME, Clarence Spott had been severely beaten prior to being struck with the blackjack. That beating had occurred outside the precinct and had been delivered by David Lodge, who’d already been the subject of a dozen civilian complaints alleging police brutality.

What would I do if I was one of the co-conspirators, say the man at the top of the pyramid, and I learned that Lodge was coming after me? What would I do to protect myself? What risks would I take? What level of fear would Lodge inspire, this large violent man who spent his days in Attica’s weight yards?

The death of the Broom was one answer to those questions. Ellen Lodge and Pete Jarazelsky provided two more answers. Like Szarek, they were weak links, points at which a good detective places the splitting wedge before driving it home. Nobody would rely on them unless they were desperate.

‘Eva Hinckle called this morning,’ Adele said, ‘to report her newly surfaced memory. She was very definite. The ski cap rode up and she saw the back of the driver’s neck. He was black.’

‘Which proves what? Even if she’s right?’

‘Don’t you read the newspapers, Corbin? It proves that DuWayne Spott and his army of ghetto gangsters killed David Lodge.’

Lieutenant Bill Sarney was a compulsive organizer and the walls of his office were dominated by a series of cork boards. As Adele and I sat before his desk the following morning, I found myself caught up in the notes and departmental notices pinned to the boards. What struck me was that the paperwork was absolutely square to the frame and the colored pins holding them had been placed at uniform heights.

‘Alright, guys,’ Sarney declared once we were seated. ‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing you don’t already know, lou,’ I replied. ‘Our day’s just gettin’ started.’

Sarney’s tone was supremely casual, and his face gave nothing away. ‘Ah, but that’s the point, Harry. I want to know what you’re going to do with your day. That’s why I asked you to stop in.’

Adele handed Sarney a printed document, Ellen Lodge’s phone records, which Adele had taken off the computer a few minutes before Sarney called us into his office. Two days ago, she pointed out, at 9:01 a.m., an incoming call from a pay phone was taken by someone at the Lodge residence. That didn’t surprise me; as a cop’s wife, Ellen Lodge would expect us to check her records. But a second, outgoing call did catch me off-guard. It was made to a cell phone at 9:06 and lasted a mere nine seconds.

‘My partner and I think,’ Adele told Sarney, ‘that we should begin with another visit to Ellen Lodge. We can ask her about the second call and return her husband’s personal effects at the same time.’

‘Fine,’ Sarney replied without hesitation. ‘What else?’

‘Dante Russo. He was Lodge’s partner on the night Spott was killed. We think he should be interviewed.’

‘You know who Russo is?’ When neither of us jumped to reply, Sarney nodded once, then continued. ‘Russo is the PBA’s Trustee for Brooklyn North. He knows everybody. So, please, unless you have enough evidence to secure an arrest warrant, don’t get in his face.’

The Patrolman’s Benevolent Association represents every uniformed cop in New York City below the rank of sergeant, some 27,000 in all. That they have clout — in city and state government as well as with the job — goes without saying. Dante Russo was a Trustee, one of only twelve. This gave him clout within the PBA.

Under ordinary circumstances, I would’ve made a call to an old partner now working in the personnel bureau and asked him for a peek at Russo’s service file. But that wasn’t going to happen here. We were going to play by the rules and that was all she wrote.

It was snowing when Adele and I left the precinct to re-interview Ellen Lodge. The snowflakes, large and virtually weightless, fell out of a pewter sky, drifting ever so slightly as they made their way to an already-covered sidewalk. The snow covered the streets and the radio cars parked at the curb as well. It softened the right angles of the shotgun tenements, gathering in the window frames, and rounded the knobby branches of Marino’s Maple, planted three decades before to honor an officer slain in the line of duty.

When I finally took a step, the snow floated up, playful as baby powder, then settled back on the supple leather of my tasseled loafer where it proceeded to melt. ‘How bad is this supposed to be?’ I asked Adele.

‘You didn’t check the weather before you left home?’

‘I barely had time to shave.’

‘Well, don’t worry, it’s only a snow shower. It’ll be sunny by noon.’

Adele got busy on her cell phone while I drove the few blocks to Ellen Lodge’s home. Like every PBA trustee, Dante Russo would no longer wear a uniform and have no assigned duties. His job was to move from precinct to precinct, conferring with delegates, handling union-related problems as they arose.

Adele’s first call went to PBA headquarters where she was told that Russo still worked out of the Eight-Three and she should contact the desk lieutenant. From the desk lieutenant, she was shuttled to the precinct’s executive officer, then to the community affairs officer, before Dante Russo finally came on the phone.