Robert Knightly - Bodies in Winter

Adele’s nose, once overly sharp, was now flattened in the center. There were two cuts beneath the lower orbits of her eyes, one on each cheek, and a vertical gash that ran from the inner corner of her left eye down along the side of her nose. These were not knife wounds. They were not clean and straight. Adele’s cuts had been caused by the impact of a blunt object. They were jagged and irregular, their inflamed edges held together by dozens of micro-stitches that reminded me of ants swarming across slices of overripe fruit.

‘The dressings came off easily, but I’m having a little trouble putting them back on.’ She smiled as I continued to stare at her, then said, ‘I’ve decided not to wear the splint over my nose. I only want to cover the cuts.’

I took her into the kitchen and positioned her beneath the overhead fluorescent light, far and away the brightest light in the apartment. Then I washed my hands thoroughly. Though I had a box of latex gloves (filched from the job), I worked with my fingers exposed, pressing a thin layer of antibiotic ointment into her wounds. I knew her wounds were still tender, but I felt no reluctance. I was far more aware of her eyes. With her chin tilted up, Adele was looking directly at me and for a moment I thought I could see all the way back to the twelfth century, that I could trace every voyage in the long wanderings of the Bentibi clan, that every calamity which befell them had also fallen across my shoulders.

It was the most intimate moment of my life. More intimate even than the sight of her naked when I undid her robe a few moments later. More intimate than when I entered her for the first time a short while later.

We didn’t speak of Mel afterwards, though I remember thinking what a jerk he was to let Adele slip away and how I wasn’t going to make the same mistake. That Adele was finished with him was obvious. I hadn’t come between wife and husband. If Adele were more religious, she’d already have chanted the prayer for the dead over his memory, abandoning him the way her family had abandoned Europe in 1948. So long, scumbag.

But if Mel was in her past, our future — Adele’s and mine — was far from certain, a point she made as I was drifting off.

‘I meant what I said, Corbin,’ she told me. ‘I won’t live a trivial life.’

After careful consideration, I said, ‘Do you think it’s possible, in light of our changed relationship, for you to call me by my first name?’

‘Alright, Harold.’

Thus comforted, I fell into a dreamless sleep.

I was up at six o’clock, online and retrieving my emails. Now that I was doing this chore every day, I had fewer messages to deal with, and my eye was immediately drawn to the one from B. ARNOLD@cyberlandcafe. net. I clicked on the little envelope and a text message appeared.

Harry, Harry, Harry. What am I going to do with you? Russo’s picture is for Ridgewood; for the lady, not for Bushwick. Bushwick’s a dead end.

And watch your back in the Eight-Three. The talk is that you and your girlfriend should be stopped before you bring down the whole precinct.

When I re-entered the bedroom, Adele was sitting up with the bedclothes gathered about her waist. For some inexplicable reason, my eyes fell to her breasts which were small and set high on her chest, the swollen aureoles surrounding her nipples as smooth as butter.

‘Do I have to get dressed?’ Adele finally asked.

I sat on the edge of the bed, looked into her eyes and saw that she was pleased. Everybody wants to be desired and Adele was no exception. Nor was I. As I recounted the phone calls from Nydia Santiago and our anonymous angel, she reached out with her uninjured arm to pull me down alongside her. The touch of her hand was so casually sensual that my eyes narrowed and I breathed in through my nose as though reaching for some un-nameable and ultimately intoxicating fragrance. When Adele laid her head on my shoulder, I remember thinking, if this is what comes of acting virtuously, I’ll be a good boy forever. Then I looked down at Adele and realized that I wouldn’t have all that much choice in the matter.

Over breakfast the following morning, Adele and I settled on an unpleasant topic we might have discussed earlier. First, we had been tailed on the previous night by two mutts who we then humiliated. Second, the talk among the rank and file in the Bushwick Precinct was that Detectives Corbin and Bentibi should be stopped before they brought down the house. That made for an awful lot of suspects if one of us (or both of us) should meet a violent end.

I buttered a piece of toast, dipping it into the yolk of my egg. That we would have to move fast went unsaid, and our conversation drifted to Ellen Lodge. If we were to accomplish anything in the short term, she would have to come clean. Nevertheless, there were difficulties and no guarantee that I could overcome them.

‘Ellen Lodge?’ I told Adele. ‘If you asked me yesterday, I would have told you that she was easy meat, that I was playing her like a violin. Now I’m beginning to think it’s the other way round.’

‘Maybe someone convinced her that she was better off staying the course. Maybe the same person who told her that Russo disappeared.’

‘And who would that person be?’

‘Someone inside the conspiracy, someone she trusts. Maybe Justin Whitlock.’

‘Then who told Justin?’

The large dressing that covered the center of Adele’s face had been abandoned in favor of three smaller dressings. Her bruises were now the color of French mustard, the swelling, except around her nose, greatly reduced. Her breathing had improved as well, and she was beginning to use her right arm. Nevertheless, fifteen minutes later, I had to help her into the body armor I insisted she wear, then into her coat.

The phone rang as I was about to unlock the door. I answered to find Bill Sarney on the other end of the line.

‘Can you talk?’ he asked.

‘Better make it fast, Adele’s in the bedroom. We’re sleeping in this morning.’

‘Tell me what happened last night. In Sparkle’s.’

I ignored the suspicious tone, taking care to keep my own voice casual. ‘It was my idea, Bill,’ I explained, ‘to let her blow off steam. Otherwise, she was going to call that reporter from the Times, what’s his name…?’

‘Albert Gruber.’

‘Yeah, Gruber.’

‘She wants to call him?’

‘What could I say, the woman’s pissed off. When I tried to tell her that her attack could have been a random mugging, I thought she was gonna shoot me.’

Sarney’s breath hissed into the phone. ‘You think she’ll listen to reason?’

‘Yeah, Boss, I do. And getting it off her chest helped a lot. You just give it a few more days, Bill, and I guarantee she’ll come around.’

As Adele and I drove south along Avenue A toward the Williamsburg Bridge, I considered Dante Russo’s fate. Was he dead? Or had he run without playing the last cards in his hand? When I put the question to Adele, she laughed at me.

‘Russo’s most likely crab food by now,’ she declared.

The thing about bodies is that they sink to the bottom when immersed in water. The thing about New York is that there’s water within a few miles of almost any place you happen to commit a murder. True, bodies eventually rise when enough gas builds up in the abdominal cavity. But if Russo was in one of the rivers, or in the harbor, that wouldn’t happen until next spring when the water temperature became high enough for bacteria to multiply.

We were on our way back to Ridgewood, to the homes surrounding Ellen Lodge’s, to do another canvas. Our mission was simple: to connect Dante Russo and Ellen Lodge. It didn’t take us long.