Robert Knightly - Bodies in Winter

My initial impression, when I entered Greenpoint Carton Supply, was of an impenetrable maze. Brown cartons of every size, stacked on wooden pallets, rose to the second-floor windows in a seemingly random pattern. The cardboard smelled like fresh sawdust and reminded me of Sparkle’s in the early evening.

All around me, workers zipped by on forklifts powered by cylinders of propane. I expected one of them to slow down long enough to ask me what I wanted. They didn’t, though I was favored with a number of curious glances, and I finally wandered across the face of the building until I found a set of stairs leading up. Again, though I was in plain sight, nobody challenged me as I climbed to a second-floor balcony fronting a small office.

For a moment, before going inside, I watched the activity below me. There were four active fork-lifts moving through the stacks, lifting pallets, carrying them to the rear of the building, where two workers in heavy jackets and woolen caps cut the straps binding the cartons. They were putting together orders for delivery on the following day. When the trucks returned in the late afternoon, they’d be loaded before the workers punched out.

I finally turned to an open door leading into a deserted office. The office was as starkly functional as the rest of the warehouse: three battered wooden desks topped by gray blotters, dusty computers and telephones so grimy I couldn’t name their color. Along the back wall, a row of three-drawer filing cabinets caught my attention and I walked over to them, trying the first drawer I could reach. It was locked.

‘Whatta ya think you’re doin’?’

Though startled, I straightened up slowly before turning to face the man who’d addressed me.

‘I’m looking for Justin Whitlock.’

‘Well, you found him. And my question still stands. What the fuck you think you’re doing in my file cabinets?’

Whitlock had that ex-cop look about him. In his mid-fifties, he was thirty pounds overweight, with a crepey neck that hung in soft folds and a red nose coarsened by one too many visits to the bottom of a bottle.

‘You gonna play the outraged citizen, lieutenant?’ I pushed a stack of invoices to one side, flashed my shield and sat on the edge of the desk. Though I was on Whitlock’s turf, I was determined to dominate the space.

‘I want you out of here.’

‘Without even knowing why I came?’

Whitlock folded his arms across his chest and shifted his weight from one foot to another before cocking his head to the side. As this was a posture commonly assumed by superior officers annoyed by their subordinates, I failed to react appropriately.

‘Of course,’ I told him, ‘if you already know what I’m doing in your office at nine-thirty in the morning, your demand is entirely reasonable.’

‘Cut the bullshit, detective. You got no right to come in here without my permission.’

‘If you wanna call the cops, Justin, I got the phone number of a good one. His name is Dante Russo and he works out of the Eight-Three. What I hear, he’s got serious juice with the PBA.’

Again, Whitlock shifted his weight back and forth as he attempted to deal with the situation. I had a badge and a gun and I wasn’t leaving. What, if anything, could he do about it?

‘I’m gonna call my lawyer,’ he finally said.

‘That wouldn’t be Ted Savio, would it?’ The question produced an unmistakable flinch. I’d tossed the dart blindfolded and hit the bull’s-eye. For a moment, as his narrow eyes bulged and his ears turned bright red, I thought Whitlock was going to attack me. But then he calmed enough to ask the question he should have asked in the beginning.

‘What do you want?’

‘I want to know who got the Broom’s piece.’

‘What?’

‘Tony Szarek’s shares in Greenpoint Carton reverted to the company when he died. That has to be good news for somebody.’

‘Well, it’s not good news for me. All I do is work here. I’m a manager, not an owner.’

I covered my surprise with another question. ‘And who manages you, Justin? Now that Tony Szarek’s dead.’

Whitlock’s face tightened down. ‘You’re fishing,’ he declared, ‘but I’m through biting.’

‘You won’t tell me who your bosses are? Why not, Justin? What have you got to hide?’

When he failed to reply, I decided to get moving. There was a lot to do and not much time to get it done. I straightened abruptly, then sauntered through the door onto the balcony before turning for a goodbye salute.

‘Oh, yeah, before I forget. Pete Jarazelsky told me to make sure I gave you his regards.’

I’d tossed in the last bit for two reasons: to sow confusion and to protect Ewa Gierek. Jarazelsky was another of those wild cards, his prison also his protection. Was he being a good boy, keeping his mouth shut? Or was he cooperating? Lodge’s murderers couldn’t answer either question with certainty. Maybe Pete had taken the heat for the warehouse burglary, but he was a rat in his heart, a rat who knew far too much.

The sequence, as I read it, went like this: Lodge recovers a memory implicating Jarazelsky and persuades Jarazelsky to confess, after which Jarazelsky warns his co-conspirators. As this takes place months before Lodge’s release, there’s plenty of time to prepare a welcome-home party for good old Davy.

So much the better, then, if those party-givers now suspected that the untouchable Pete Jarazelsky provided the details that led me to Greenpoint Carton Supply. As for Ewa Gierek, the boys would have to be wondering what sort of alcohol-driven pillow talk might have transpired between her and Tony. My fear was that they’d decide to limit their exposure as I drew near. What is it they say about killing? That it gets easier as you go along? First there was Clarence Spott, then Tony Szarek, then David Lodge, then DuWayne Spott. If the state managed to accumulate evidence of a conspiracy, Dante Russo and his pals would be looking at a first-degree murder indictment and a potential sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

I passed the afternoon working my various informants, finishing up at the apartment of Mejorana Delgado who supplemented her welfare and food stamps by snitching on her neighbors. Like my other informants, Mejorana repeated the crooked cop mantra. Everyone knew, or so she said, that Bushwick’s most notorious drug dealer, Paco Luna, was being protected by crooked cops who routinely closed down every independent operation. Though I listened patiently, I didn’t place all that much store in the information. Like Paul Rakowitz, Mejorana named no names. The important thing was that she knew the man called Bucky, whose real name was Maximo Chavez. Bucky was married to a woman named Nina Francisco who lived only a few blocks away.

‘But if you talk to her, you gotta be careful, detective. Nina, she got a temper that could scare off a pit bull.’

T he sun had broken through the clouds and the snow was gone by the time I stepped onto the sidewalk fronting Mejorana’s Woodward Avenue apartment. I stood where I was for a moment, my eyes adjusting to the glare as I considered my next move. Mejorana had not only confirmed the existence of Bucky Chavez, she’d supplied his address. All to the good and I was encouraged. But Paul Rakowitz had insisted that Bucky could identify a cop he’d observed walking into Paco Luna’s headquarters. Mejorana, who knew him well, hadn’t mentioned anything of the kind.

My choices were simple. I had a second informant in Ridgewood, an Italian kid named Greg Ianuzzi. I could look him up or I could pay a visit to Bucky’s wife, Nina Francisco. The problem with Ianuzzi, a small-time marijuana dealer, was that he could be difficult to locate. His only known address was the home of his parents, the place I’d be least likely to find him. Nina Francisco, on the other hand, had a fixed address and three children to hold her down. Plus, if Bucky had blabbed to Rakowitz, he would certainly have blabbed to his pillow mate. But there was a definite problem. Nina Francisco had a belligerent attitude and no reason to cooperate, while Ianuzzi was a professional snitch who sold information as readily as sidewalk vendors sell pretzels.