Robert Knightly: Bodies in Winter

Bill Sarney was living the good life. His three-story colonial had wings at either end, one newly constructed, by the look of the still-raw brick, and a cobblestone driveway that swept up to the front of the house. Despite the fog, the paint job on an S-Class Mercedes parked in that driveway gleamed as though lit from within.

The money for all this high living came from Bill Sarney’s wife, Rebecca, a senior partner at some Wall Street law firm with too many names to remember. I’d met Rebecca the few times I’d been out to the house, and I only had two memories of her. The first of her small and graceful hand, offered with the palm down, the second of her clear devotion to her husband and her two children.

The front door opened as I walked up the flagstone path, and Bill Sarney stepped onto the porch. He was wearing gray wool slacks, freshly pressed, and a pale blue shirt that fit tightly over the small bulge of his belly.

‘Rebecca took the kids to her sister’s,’ he explained as I walked past him. ‘We’ve got the place to ourselves.’

He closed and double-locked the door behind us, then led me through the living and dining rooms, to that newly built wing on the side of the house which he’d turned into a billiard room. I smiled appreciatively. The green felt on the table was so smooth it might have been combed fur.

‘You want something to drink?’ he asked. ‘A beer, maybe?’

‘Sure, a beer would be fine.’

Sarney opened a small refrigerator, removed two bottles of Bass Ale, poured them into a pair of tall glasses bearing unidentified crests. I got a shield on my glass, flanked by two standing lions who seemed about to break into song.

‘So,’ he asked, ‘how’re they treatin’ ya, Harry?’

‘No worse than expected.’ I hesitated for a moment, then changed the subject. ‘You hear about Tony Szarek?’

That caught his attention. His chin came up for a change and he looked directly into my eyes. ‘No,’ he admitted.

‘Szarek was killed by his girlfriend’s brother, a man named Ryszard Gierek. It was funny, Bill, how it went down. For reasons he took to the grave, Szarek told his lover that she was his sole heir when he didn’t even have a will. Some kidder, that Tony.’

‘How’d you know,’ he asked, ‘about the Szarek arrest?’

‘I got a pipeline into the task force, but that’s not the point. What I’m talking about is the irony. When Szarek’s death came up suspicious, me and Adele, we assumed that it was linked to the David Lodge killing. That got us trying to connect Lodge, Jarazelsky, Russo and Szarek, which we eventually did. Meanwhile, after drinking himself into unconsciousness, Tony was capped by a Polish immigrant who collects baseball memorabilia.’

Sarney smiled, drawing his thin lips into a crooked grimace that seemed more pained than happy. ‘I take your point,’ he conceded, ‘but that’s how it goes sometimes. You try your best to draw a straight line between where you are and where you want to be, only the world doesn’t cooperate.’

I ignored the implications. ‘And Bucky Chavez, that was another one,’ I said. ‘Another irony.’

Maximo ‘Bucky’ Chavez, who had us connecting dirty cops in the Eight-Three with Paco Luna’s drug operation, had re-emerged a few days after my confrontation with Linus Potter. Subjected to an intense grilling, Bucky had finally admitted that he’d seen nothing more than a ‘white man in a suit’ enter Paco Luna’s town house. The rest — the part about a cop from the Eight-Three — was the product of his naturally dishonest imagination. And there was nothing suspicious about Chavez’s disappearing act, either. After a three-dollar hit on the number 437 netted him $1500, Bucky had quit Brooklyn to hang out with his ‘outside woman’ in Jersey City. Nina Francisco, he’d explained, would only have thrown the money away on something foolish. Like clothes for the kids.

‘What’s with the ironies?’ Sarney asked. ‘You and Bentibi writing a book?’

‘Nope, in fact Adele got a job. She’s starting on Monday.’

‘What kind of job?’

‘She’s going to work for Alessio, the Queens DA, as an investigator for Major Cases.’

Again, I caught Sarney off guard. He turned away from me and walked to a window framed by pale yellow curtains. For a long moment, his gaze remained fixed on a slice of yard dominated by an ancient fruit tree. The tree was gnarled and twisted, its bark slick with dew, its every branch dotted with thick green buds that seemed about to explode.

‘Well,’ he said without turning, ‘it looks as if Bentibi managed to land on her feet.’

‘Yeah, she did. Just like you. But there’s one more irony out there, and we need to discuss it.’ I laid what remained of my beer on a coaster and took a few steps in Sarney’s direction. I think by then he knew I had an agenda, and what that agenda was. One thing for sure, I hadn’t come to beg forgiveness, which is what I’d told him in the course of a long phone call.

‘When I first heard about Greenpoint Carton from Tony Szarek’s sister,’ I continued, ‘I didn’t think that much of it. A retired cop owns a little business? No big deal. But when I found out that Justin Whitlock was managing that business? The same Justin Whitlock who alibied Russo in the Clarence Spott homicide? I tell ya, that got the old sap rising.’

Sarney finally turned around to face me. His features were composed, even relaxed, except for his eyes. They were focused on me with the intensity of a blow torch. ‘When Justin Whitlock came up clean,’ he admitted, ‘it surprised everyone.’

But that, of course, was the irony. Justin Whitlock was exactly what he appeared to be: a hard-working manager who kept the inventory up and the deliveries flowing, who cashed his check at the end of the week and went home to his wife.

‘Justin still works at Greenpoint Carton, making that commute from Gravesend every weekday. Personally, I don’t see why he does it. Him and his wife, they own a nice little co-op, with no mortgage, in a nice little neighborhood. Plus they both have pensions and social security. Justin could just lay back and enjoy the remaining years, but…’

‘Is there a point here?’ Sarney finally interrupted.

‘Only that Justin Whitlock told me, if I should run into you, to remember to say hello for him.’ I smiled. ‘Hello, Bill.’

When Sarney didn’t reply, I turned to a cluster of photographs on the wall to the right of the window: Sarney shaking hands with Rudolph Giuliani, with Michael Bloomberg, with George Pataki, with Hillary Rodham Clinton, with two police commissioners, with a host of lesser lights. Arranged in what appeared to be a perfect rectangle, the tight grouping was impressive, even though I knew the photos had been snapped at expensive fund-raisers attended (and occasionally sponsored) by his wife’s law firm.

‘Where do you want to go, Bill?’ I finally asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re a captain, now, and there’s no more civil service exams for you. If you’re gonna move up, you’re gonna have to do it by appointment. So my question is real simple. How big are your dreams? How high do you hope to rise? Inspector? Deputy Chief? Chief? How about Chief of Detectives? You stay another ten, fifteen years, it’s not impossible.’

‘Funny thing,’ Sarney replied after a moment, ‘but I somehow don’t feel the slightest need to discuss the issue with Detective Harry Corbin.’

I nodded to myself, then turned and took a step in Sarney’s direction. We were now standing a couple of yards apart. ‘You remember those tips Adele and I received?’ I asked. ‘There were five of them in all.’

‘Yeah, what about ’em?’

‘Well, did you ever wonder who sent them?’