Robert Knightly: Bodies in Winter

‘Tell me anyway.’

‘According to Pete, what Davy remembered was spotting two cops sitting in a cruiser as he drove away from the first confrontation with Clarence Spott, the one that took place on Knickerbocker Avenue. These cops were double-parked a block away from the scene, in full view of the scuffle, but they didn’t back him up. He thought this was strange.’

‘I take it one of those cops was Pete Jarazelsky?’

‘Come to seize the loot, Harry, not rescue the drunk.’

‘And the other one? The other cop?’

‘If Davy even saw the other cop, he didn’t remember. Just as well.’

I sipped at my scotch, then twirled the glass on the table as I watched Mike fidget behind the bar. ‘I don’t want any trouble here,’ he declared.

Potter ignored the comment. ‘Your turn to confess,’ he said to me.

I looked up at Sparkle, at her pursed lips forever about to blow a kiss, and asked her for luck. What was apparent to me, by then, was that news of the grand jury investigation soon to begin had reached Linus Potter. He knew he was beaten, knew that it was only a matter of time before Pete Jarazelsky or Ellen Lodge gave him up.

‘Those phone calls you made, they helped the bad guys, not me and Adele. The first one had us looking for DuWayne Spott when we should have been sweating Ellen Lodge. We wasted the whole afternoon on that search. The second call directed us to Spott’s body, which of course, had to be found right away. The game plan called for the job to make a quick and easy decision. DuWayne Spott in close proximity to one of the TEC-9s that killed David Lodge? What could be simpler?’

‘And it worked, too.’

‘What can I say, Linus? You know your NYPD.’

Potter skillfully avoided the trap. ‘Not me, Harry. I didn’t say anything about me.’ He turned to Mike Blair and shouted, ‘Hey, you think I can get another Guinness here?’ When Blair’s only response was a narrowing of the eyes, Potter rose and did the job himself.

‘Did I ever tell you,’ he said, ‘that me and Davy, we both had a little problem with alcohol?’

‘Actually, you told me you kept him sober when you worked together.’

‘God, I’m such a fibber.’ He set down his mug, then raised his head. Potter’s blue eyes were slanted at the corners, though not as sharply as Adele’s. They’d appeared sad to me, the first time I’d looked into them, a quality now overshadowed by an unwavering stare that held whatever sorrow they revealed at a distance too great to be bridged. I saw anger, instead, and a trace of resignation. If he’d only been a little bit luckier. If only the first detectives to respond to David Lodge’s murder had been other than Harry Corbin and Adele Bentibi. If only, if only, if only.

‘If all you were after was the product in Clarence Spott’s car,’ I finally said, ‘why did you have to kill him?’

‘Excuse me, Harry, but you are once again employing the word you very freely. We’re still talkin’ theoretically here.’

‘Answer the question, Linus.’

He flinched at my tone, his eyes hardening for a moment. Then he smiled a smile that amounted to no more than a twitch of his upper lip. ‘Do you think weasels are happy bein’ weasels?’ he asked.

‘You talking about the little animals?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I figure they probably have a hard time imagining alternatives.’

‘Good point, but that’s not true for human weasels. Take Tony Szarek, for example. Now there’s a guy, a weasel to his bones, who should’ve never come on the job. All he ever thought about was how to get over. Me, I’d rather cut my balls off than be a weasel, but Tony..’ Potter shook his head, apparently in admiration. ‘But you were right about Tony. He was a happy man.’

What struck me, as Potter rambled on, was that responsibility for the taking of a human life was again being assigned to somebody who would never answer for the deed. The widow had blamed her husband’s murder on the missing Dante Russo, who was probably dead. Now Clarence Spott’s murder was being blamed on a man who was indisputably dead. Still, some elements of Potter’s self-serving tale rang true.

According to Potter, Szarek had stolen David Lodge’s Fluugmann blackjack months before using it on Clarence Spott. He’d done this because he was a thief in his heart, a facet of his personality so well known that he was the only partner at Greenpoint Carton not allowed to sign checks.

‘An asshole like that, you figure he deserves what he gets,’ Potter explained, ‘but the Broom, well, he was always lucky. Ya see, Dante made sure that Tony and Davy lawyered up right away, the idea being to use the extra time to get their stories together. Only problem: Davy Lodge, he didn’t have a story. He didn’t remember a fucking thing. Now Dante Russo, he was a born schemer, like Tony was a born thief. When he heard about Davy’s blackout, he knew just what to do.’

‘Frame David Lodge?’

‘As Dante said at the time, “Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”’

‘What about Ted Savio?’

Potter showed surprise for the first time. ‘Savio helped out when Clarence Spott was killed and Dante’s been feeding him PBA business ever since. If there was something else goin’ on, I never heard about it.’

If Potter’s explanation of the events fit all the known facts, Szarek’s motive remained obscure, even after all these years. Initially, the Broom told Russo that he’d been physically attacked by Spott and he was only defending himself. But after the autopsy proved that Spott was struck from behind, Szarek changed his story. The way he then told it, Spott had attacked him psychologically by suggesting a physical relationship between Szarek’s daughter and the family dog. Though Szarek had neither daughter, nor dog, he’d felt obliged to avenge this deadly insult. As would any other red-blooded cop.

A third version emerged several years later when Szarek admitted (over drinks, naturally) that he was so drunk at the time, the murder of Clarence Spott might have amounted to nothing more than a passing whim.

Potter rose at that point, to re-fill his mug. This time he didn’t empty it in one gulp. He set it on the table and wrapped his fingers around the glass. ‘Is that the works?’ he asked. ‘You finished tellin’ me how bad I fucked up?’

‘Well, there’s the one item that’ll eventually seal your fate. I’m saving that for last. But let me ask you this. Do you have an alibi for the time of David Lodge’s murder? How about for the days leading up to DuWayne Spott’s overdose in that hell-hole of a tenement? How about for last Saturday evening when my partner was attacked? You got an alibi for last Saturday?’

Potter laughed. ‘You forgot Dante. I need an alibi for him, too.’

‘Does that mean he’s no longer among us?’

Again, Potter laughed. ‘I think I’ll wait for the punch line,’ he said.

I finished my drink, looked over at the bar, finally set my glass on the table. The last thing I needed was more booze.

‘You hooked up to the Internet, Linus?’ I asked.

‘Gimme a fuckin’ break.’

‘Hey, don’t take that attitude. You can find out all kinds of interesting things on the web. For instance, I once stumbled across a CIA interrogation manual posted on this obscure bulletin board. Call it idle curiosity, but I printed the manual out and read it in one night. Interrogation has always been my strong point.’

‘Mine, too. Only I got a suspicion we employ different methods.’

‘That I wouldn’t doubt. Anyway, the manual was pretty much a rehash of techniques you can read about in any textbook. But this one thing did catch my attention. The manual warned Agency de-briefers of a problem I’d never encountered. Terrorists and spies, it seems, are likely to have prepared fall-back stories to offer their interrogators if the pressure becomes intolerable. You understand, these fall-back stories are very elaborate and completely fabricated.’