Robert Knightly - Bodies in Winter

‘But there wasn’t a second blow?’

‘According to the ME, Spott was killed by a single blow that crushed the back of his skull. Russo — or anyone else — could have delivered it and come away clean.’

I slid to the curb in front of the Taco Bell, dropped my ON OFFICIAL POLICE BUSINESS placard onto the dash board and shut off the car. Though I hadn’t begun to complete the puzzle, I could now see a few of the pieces.

‘Something else,’ Adele said as we got out of the car. ‘The bosses scapegoated the desk lieutenant, Justin Whitlock. The theory was that Spott should have been transported to an emergency room, not dumped in a cell. Whitlock was run out of the job after a departmental hearing and a series of appeals. The way it reads in the file, he was lucky to keep his pension.’

I got on the horn to Bill Sarney after we finished eating, summarizing our interviews with Ellen Lodge and Dante Russo, then repeating the anonymous tip I’d received on my cell phone. If Sarney was unhappy with Russo’s treatment, he didn’t say so. He jumped right on the tip.

‘You think he was talking about DuWayne Spott?’

‘That would be my guess, lou, but it would’ve been a lot more helpful if he’d told us where to look. Adele got the names of a few relatives from the gang unit yesterday, but if DuWayne isn’t willing to make himself available, we’re not likely to find him. Not in the short term, anyway.’

When Sarney told me that we’d have to look anyway, I didn’t argue. Instead, I changed the subject.

‘I want to jam Pete Jarazelsky’s parole,’ I told him. ‘Jarazelsky’s a rat in his heart. He’d roll over on the Pope if he thought it was in his best interest.’

‘Keep goin’.’

‘First, Jarazelsky took protective custody after a bad beating, so he’s doing hard time. Second, he’s scheduled for release six months down the line. What I was thinking…’ I stopped suddenly as an idea caught my attention, a sequence of events which I filed away for later. ‘I was thinking it might be possible to contact Jarazelsky’s parole board, tell ’em we have strong reason to believe that Pete obstructed a homicide investigation and maybe they should reconsider their decision to release him.’

After a moment, Sarney told me that he’d ‘look into it’, then went on to other matters. The NYPD lab, he explained, had done a preliminary analysis of the blood evidence. All of the samples they’d examined contained Type A blood, matching Lodge’s blood type. DNA results would follow in forty-eight hours. The Toyota had also been examined. While no fingerprints had been found, blood, fiber and hair evidence were recovered. The blood was all Type A. The fibers were black wool and might have come from the masks worn by the shooters. The hairs, two of which were dyed, had been deposited by four different Caucasians.

I wasn’t overly concerned with any of this physical evidence. A comparison of two human hairs, unless they contain some obscure deformity, can never be said to match, not the way fingerprints match. The best that can be said is that a comparison doesn’t exclude the defendant. Fibers are better evidence, but unless very rare, just marginally.

Nevertheless, after hanging up, I dutifully relayed the information to Adele before describing the sequence of events that had caught my attention a few minutes before.

‘According to Nagy,’ I told her, ‘Lodge became certain of his innocence about six months before his release. Around the same time, Jarazelsky caught a bad beating and asked for segregation. Why can’t these two events be directly related?’

‘You mean Lodge beat the information out of Jarazelsky?’

‘Exactly.’

‘That presumes Jarazelsky knew the truth about Clarence Spott.’

‘Or some piece of it that convinced David Lodge that he was innocent.’ I smiled and shrugged my shoulders. ‘It’s only a theory, Adele, but it’s a theory that makes sense. Pete Jarazelsky takes protective custody after Lodge kicks his ass, then contacts one of his pals in the city. He explains the situation and measures are taken to eliminate the threat.’

‘Any idea who that pal would be?’

‘Dante Russo’s obviously a possibility, or Ellen Lodge, but it could be someone unknown to us. What we need to do is take a closer look at Jarazelsky himself, but what we’re actually going to do is waste our time searching for DuWayne Spott.’

We spun our wheels for the next seven hours, running from relative to acquaintance to relative, never even close to finding DuWayne Spott. We did pick up little tidbits, however, teasers that confirmed the information Adele had gotten from the gang unit at OCCB.

Our first stop was at the apartment of DuWayne’s aunt, Mrs Ivy Whittington, in the Bushwick Houses. Ivy sat us down in her living room, insisted we take tea, then patiently answered our questions.

DuWayne, it turned out, had lived most of his life in the shadow of his brother’s violence, a mama’s boy until he reached adolescence.

‘Clarence was a handful,’ Ivy explained. ‘You could whip that boy from morning till night, didn’t do no good. No, sir. Clarence jus’ take that whippin’ and do what he gonna do.’

‘And DuWayne?’

‘Now DuWayne, he near about worshipped his big brother. Wanted to be just like the boy. Onliest thing, he was a sweet child. No kinda way did he have the heart for that life. Tore me up when the streets got him.’

Ivy’s prim living and dining rooms were smothered with lace doilies — the couch where Adele and I sat, the chairs facing us, the end tables, the polished tops of a dining-room table and a long sideboard. The doilies echoed the oversized lace trim on the collar and sleeves of Ivy’s tan dress, which she’d buttoned to the throat. A widow in her mid-seventies, her eyes swam behind thick-lensed glasses with amber frames large enough to hide her forehead.

I’d run across Ivy Whittingtons in the past, black women who’d seen everything there was to see, who’d suffered every kind of sorrow life has to offer. Always polite, they maintained their dignity with an iron will and their eyes gave nothing away.

‘See, what happened, after that cop murdered Clarence, the city offered Reba — that’s Clarence and DuWayne’s mama — a two hundred thousand dollar settlement. Reba’s lawyer, he says, “You hold out, Reba, you’ll get a lot more.” But Reba was always flighty. She took the deal and went off to Trinidad with Quentin.’

‘Quentin?’

‘Her new husband. Quentin’s from the Islands, a musician.’

‘And what about DuWayne? Did she cut him in?’

‘She gave the boy a little somethin’, but he just turned around and stuck it in his arm. See, the way it was, DuWayne couldn’t keep up with his brother. That’s why he started usin’ the drugs. So he wouldn’t have to face himself.’

At that point, I made my pitch. ‘I won’t insult you,’ I told her, ‘by saying that half the cops in New York are looking for your nephew. You’ve read the papers, watched the news. You know. But what I am gonna say is that if DuWayne surrenders, he’s gonna be a hundred times better off. I’m not asking you to tell us where he is, even if you know. Just talk to him, Mrs Whittington, put the facts out there. Does he really want to be in some apartment when a SWAT team breaks through the door?’

Ivy stopped me with a wave of her hand. ‘Is there a warrant out on the boy?’ she asked.

When I admitted there wasn’t, she smiled, exposing teeth so pearly-white they could not have been her own. ‘Now why,’ she asked, ‘would a damn SWAT team be lookin’ for somebody who ain’t wanted for nothin’?’

Though I didn’t have a ready answer, I persisted, explaining once again the benefits of voluntary surrender, finally offering my business card. Ivy held the card up to the light, as if examining it for flaws. ‘DuWayne and me don’t stay in touch,’ she finally said. ‘You wanna speak to DuWayne’s cousin, Kamia. She and DuWayne, they run with the same crowd.’