Robert Knightly: Bodies in Winter

The phone rang at that moment. I think Mike Blair would have preferred to ignore it, but he finally stepped away from the bar after the fifth ring. When he did, Adele reached into her purse to withdraw the S amp;W revolver.

‘You asked before, about why,’ she said. ‘About why Corbin didn’t quit. Now, I’m going to tell you. Corbin would never admit this, but he takes crime personally.’

Mike Blair picked up the phone and muttered a few words into the mouthpiece. When he hung up and turned to find Adele pointing the. 38 at Potter’s head, he decided to remain where he was.

‘When you commit a crime on Corbin’s watch,’ Adele continued, ‘he sees it as an act of contempt. For him, it’s like being challenged on the street. If you ignore the insult, your entire world implodes. This is a narrow view, and quite emotional at its base, but it’s still a view that produces results. This was especially true in your case, Linus. In fact, your intrusion so upset my partner that he risked his career in order to bring you down. See, from Corbin’s point of view, Linus Potter’s decision to pit his intelligence and abilities against Harry Corbin’s was more than a challenge. It was a calculated act of disrespect by a marked inferior. That’s really why he came to Sparkle’s in a blizzard. To show you that no pin-head freak can beat Harry Corbin at the game of policing. To show you face to face. Tell me something: how do you like it? Does it feel good? Does it feel as good, for instance, as hitting me in the face with a bat?’

Potter’s mouth expanded into a tight and bitter smile. His eyes began to shift again, back and forth, from pure hate almost to the point of regret.

‘You’ll have to excuse my partner,’ I said. ‘She tends to over-analyze. But it does seem to me you have a pair of viable options, Linus. And one that’s not viable. Let’s take the last option first. You could walk out the door right now and hide behind your lawyer. That would buy you a couple of weeks of freedom. But you don’t really want that, not after the way you’ve been humiliated tonight. You realize, of course, that once the story of what happened here gets around, you won’t be able to leave your house. Knowing, as you will, that everybody else knows, too.’

Once again, Mike Blair spoke up. Again, he made a plea for calm. This time, Linus Potter responded first. ‘Shut up, Mike,’ he said. Then he jerked his chin in my direction. ‘The viable options,’ he said. ‘Let’s hear ’em.’

‘The first one’s called redemption. I’m not armed, Linus. The shooting board took my weapon. If you wanted to, you could show me the error of my ways right this minute. And when you think about it, killing me, killing my partner, even killing good old Mike — it wouldn’t make all that much difference. You’re already on the hook for life without parole. Plus, if you redeem your honor, it’ll do wonders for your self-esteem.’

Potter shifted his weight to allow the right side of his unbuttoned jacket to fall to the side. ‘And what’s the downside?’ he asked.

‘The downside is that Adele’s pointing a gun at the back of your head, so you’re gonna have to be really quick.’

The information had no discernible effect on Linus Potter. ‘What’s my other option?’

‘The freak’s not gonna like this one, Linus, not one bit. The other option is confession, which is good for the soul, but not for the freak. Ellen’s still holding out. Jarazelsky’s in the dark. That gives you the option of being first. Now I know you’ve employed this line yourself, so I’m not gonna belabor the point. But if you want, we’ll take you down to the DA, right now, and you can cut that good deal.’

‘You and your partner, you want to take me to the DA?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Like I’m some kind of fucking trophy.’

‘I told ya the freak wouldn’t like it.’

Potter laughed. ‘In my whole adult life,’ he declared, ‘nobody has ever talked to me like this. It takes some gettin’ used to.’ He settled back in his seat and called out, ‘Hey, Mike, you think you could bring me that one last beer? The beer I been practicing all my life to drink?’

Blair waited for me to nod, then drew off a mug of Guinness. He brought it over to the table, careful to remain out of the line of fire, and set it down. Potter turned far enough to raise the mug in Sparkle’s general direction, then drank it dry.

‘Make up your mind, Linus. Which way do you wanna go?’

Linus answered by rising to his feet, then turning to face Adele and the gun she now held with both hands. Though he was seeing her weapon for the first time, his expression didn’t change. ‘You gonna shoot me, Adele?’ He spread his own hands apart. ‘I mean, I’m not threatening anyone here.’

After a moment, Potter took a step forward, then another, each step measured and deliberate. When they were ten feet apart, Adele cocked the revolver, the sharp click seeming almost obscene in my ears. Linus came to a stop at that point and I hastened to take myself out of the line of fire, circling to Potter’s right. If Potter took another step, I was certain that Adele would kill him.

Potter let his hands drop to his sides as he looked past me to Mike Blair. On the way, our eyes met for just a moment. The rage and the hate were gone now, discarded like a Halloween mask. In their place, I registered layer upon layer of pain, a bone-deep sorrow that revealed everything the freak wanted to hide. Mike Blair stared directly into those eyes for several seconds. I don’t know what he saw, or even if he recognized anything beyond the immediate threat. But Mike’s tone, when he commented, was far from compassionate.

‘If she blows your fucking brains out,’ he declared, ‘I’m gonna claim you made a try for your weapon.’

Potter flinched, the rebuke sharp enough to sting. He had no friends here. Slowly, he let his head come round far enough to face me.

‘More than I don’t wanna go to prison, I don’t wanna die,’ he explained with an apologetic shrug of his massive shoulders. ‘Would ya believe that?’

‘How about more than you want revenge?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘more than that, too.’

I came up behind him, then reached across his body to jerk his automatic out of its holster. As I backed away, I looked over at Adele. What I saw in her eyes was disappointment.

‘Besides,’ Potter said, ‘I swear, I was hardly involved.’

‘Just an innocent bystander?’

He winked. ‘Harry, you’re hell on wheels.’

My first instinct was to put the whole business behind me. After all, the bad guys were knocking on the DA’s door, each begging for an opportunity to testify against the others, and against Paco Luna whose operation was being systematically attacked by a task force that included the FBI and the DEA. About this outcome, I argued to myself, there was nothing not to like.

I made that rationalization last a couple of weeks, but it was like the first time you try to give up cigarettes. Somehow, the cravings just won’t go away. In this case, what I craved was an answer, and not even the mini-honeymoon Adele and I were thoroughly enjoying was enough to sooth the itch.

‘I have to do something about it,’ I finally told Adele.

‘Corbin,’ she replied, ‘are you taking this personally?’

I watched the knowing smile on her lips gradually expand, then came back at her with the wickedest shot in my arsenal. ‘Ya know, Adele, if you weren’t a girl, I’d hit you with this pillow.’

The proof was easy enough to gather, no more than the afternoon it took to track Justin Whitlock to an apartment on Avenue S, in Brooklyn. But I wasn’t satisfied with the proof, not even close. I wanted to know why, and that took a while, forcing us once again to dip into Adele’s old-girl network. As it turned out, we were well into the month of March by the time I fired up the Nissan and started out for Port Washington on the north shore of Long Island.