Bodies in Winter (14 page)

I went inside first, holding the flashlight well away from my body, shouting, ‘Police,' as loud as I could. Abandoned tenements are haunted by the street's ultimate bottom feeders, the terminally addicted and the truly insane, either of whom might pose a serious threat to life and limb. Especially if surprised.

But DuWayne Spott was one bottom feeder who would never again pose a serious threat to anyone. He was lying on his back, on a mattress, his coat beside him, the right sleeve of a Los Angeles Lakers sweatshirt pushed up almost to his shoulder. A thin belt, a tourniquet, circled his arm just above his elbow, while a disposable syringe rose from his forearm like an upraised finger. Though open, his unblinking eyes were fixed and dull, his chest neither rising nor falling.

Adele ran her flashlight over the stretch of concrete floor between herself and Spott, illuminating a dozen well-formed shoe impressions. Carefully avoiding them, she approached the mattress and squatted to verify the obvious. First, she placed her fingers to Spott's throat, then laid her ear on his chest, finally nodded once. Then she began to manipulate Spott's joints and muscles in an effort to measure rigor mortis. Typically patient and thorough, she worked his fingers, elbows and shoulders, his knees, hips and neck, his eyelids, mouth and jaw.

I remained on my feet. We were in a small room, no more than ten by twelve, with a door on the far wall that led to a corridor. While I managed to keep one eye on Adele, I never lost track of that door.

‘How long?' I asked.

Adele lifted Spott's arm to examine the flesh along the underside. Spott was relatively dark-skinned which made post-mortem lividity harder to identify, but after a moment she lowered his arm to the mattress. ‘Lividity is fairly well advanced, but there's no sign of rigor yet. I'd put time of death somewhere between two and three hours ago.'

I crossed to the door and shined my flashlight into the corridor. Through a second door to my right, I saw another mattress and a pile of blankets. A portable electric heater, resting next to the blankets, was plugged into an extension cord which ran beneath the window and into the back yard. I walked up to the heater and switched it on. It cranked up without hesitation, emitting a loud hum as the coils began to glow.

When Adele joined me a moment later, I said, ‘You think it'd throw enough heat to keep Spott alive for a few days? It's been cold as hell all week.'

Adele let the beam of her flashlight play across the floor until it met the red eyes of a large rat. One paw resting on an open can of Vienna sausages, the rat had raised itself up and was sniffing the air, its head swiveling from side to side. Unfazed, Adele continued, systematically exploring the room until she came upon a series of semi-liquid puddles that had the unmistakable shape, color and texture of human vomit. ‘Look there, Corbin,' she said. ‘That tells the whole story.'

The sequence I imagined at that moment – of DuWayne carried to this building, of DuWayne's cold-turkey withdrawal, of DuWayne begging for dope, of DuWayne vomiting in the corner – seemed flawless to me. When his captors finally offered him a taste, he hadn't hesitated, not for a split second.

I walked back toward the body, letting my eyes take in the little touches, the open glassine envelope, the guttered candle, the disposable red lighter, the tiny ball of cotton lying in the bowl of a blackened tablespoon. As I approached, I tried to summon up a trace of pity for DuWayne Spott but came away empty. He was a player who got played. It happens all the time.

‘I'm gonna call in the troops,' I finally said.

‘Better come in here and take a look first.'

When I complied, Adele, ever the impresario, yanked up a corner of the mattress to reveal the point of the charade, a TEC-9 semi-automatic handgun with an extended magazine that had to be a foot long.

Two uniforms by the Eight-Three's arrived first, followed by the Eight-Five's patrol sergeant, two detectives, a squad lieutenant named Burke and the Crime Scene Unit. This was all routine and I let Adele conduct the relevant briefings, only nodding agreement when absolutely necessary. But then Bill Sarney turned up in the company of the precinct commander, followed shortly by an inspector from borough command and a deputy chief from One PP. Sarney's attitude as he approached the deputy chief was so deferential he might have been a house servant on a southern plantation.

I remember watching the network vans rolling up, a pair of cops refusing to let them turn onto Ingraham Street, frantic reporters behind a web of crime-scene tape, the unblinking eyes of a dozen video cameras. I kept thinking that maybe Adele was right, maybe the bad guys had played their last card, but that card was a beauty. The bosses were about to bet the house on DuWayne Spott. Never mind the fact that neither Mr Spott, nor any of his associates, could possibly have acquired the number of my cell phone. And never mind the faint ligature marks encircling Spott's wrists, either. Those were details that could easily be put to the side. The important thing was that whatever doubt the voting public might have had about DuWayne Spott's guilt would be wiped away by the recovery of the TEC-9. The job could now bury David Lodge, once and for all, simply by going along with the script.

It ended very nicely. A deputy inspector whose name I've long forgotten approached Adele and me, offering his hand for a quick, firm shake. He told us that we'd done a great job, but the case was going over to a special unit in the Chief of Detectives Office. We should return to our squad, write whatever fives were necessary to cover the day's events, then copy the entire Lodge file and place the copy on Sarney's desk. Forthwith.

Sarney was waiting for us when we arrived and he was smiling. I told him about the second tip, the one that had carried us to Spott's resting place. He listened carefully before also congratulating us.

‘You guys have a few days coming,' he told us, ‘and I want you to take them. I don't expect to see either one of you before Monday.
Capisch
?'

When I began to write up my fives a few hours later, the interviews of Ellen Lodge and Dante Russo seemed part of some ancient history I'd discarded long before. I can't say I hadn't expected this sort of an ending, or that I didn't feel relieved to have concluded the business without having to inform on my partner. But there was a bitterness as well and I couldn't get the taste of it out of my mouth.

Mike Blair had a drink waiting for me before I reached the bar. When I chugged it down, he refilled my glass without me having to ask. ‘It's goin' bad, right?' he said. ‘The Lodge thing?'

‘I'm done with it,' I explained. ‘The case's gonna be run from the Puzzle Palace. What I think they'll do – if they haven't already done it – is put the murder on DuWayne Spott, then hunt for a second shooter among his associates.'

‘That's good you're getting clear of it. Because I've been hearing things.' Blair's eyes jumped to mine, a quick penetrating glance designed to catch me off-guard.

‘Like what?'

He leaned out over the bar. ‘Nobody's talkin' against
you
, Harry. Everybody knows you're a cop's cop. But your partner? The word out there is that she has a hard-on for the job.'

I might have debated the logic of the charge, given Adele's gender, or I might have defended her, but I didn't do either. Instead, halfway through a third scotch, I carried my drink to Linus Potter's table and sat down without being invited.

With Potter, you had to get past the gargantuan shoulders and the tiny head and the buzz cut before you could see what he really looked like. Far from raging, his blue eyes were slanted at the corners and a little sad, while his mouth, beneath a thick brown mustache, was free of tension. The impression I got was of a man who knew his life might have gone in a different direction if not for circumstances beyond his control.

‘Tell me about Lieutenant Justin Whitlock,' I asked. ‘What happened to him?'

Potter laughed, then let his eyes drop to the table. I think he was waiting for me to go away, but I simply held my ground, as I had at our first discussion. Gradually, his eyes came up. This time, they appeared amused.

‘Whitlock, one day he calls Dave into his office. He tells Dave that complaints are comin' from all over the house and nobody wants to ride with him. So Dave, what he does is throw a tantrum, figuring he can intimidate Whitlock. He tosses his chair, kicks the waste basket, slams his hand on Whitlock's desk.' Potter laughed again, a deep chuckle that rumbled in his chest. ‘And it works. Would ya believe that? Instead of puttin' the asshole on suspension, Whitlock teams Dave up with Dante Russo, one bad deed leading to another, if you take my meaning.'

I pushed my chair back, started to get to my feet, then sat back down. ‘Lemme ask you somethin' serious, Potter, if you don't mind?'

He looked at me for a moment, then nodded.

‘I got two things on my mind. First, my shoes are ruined from the snow and my feet are freezing. Second, the Broom, he didn't commit suicide. And what I can't figure out is which one is bothering me the most.'

Potter was still laughing when I walked out of Sparkle's a moment later.

SEVENTEEN

T
he highlight of my weekend was a pair of stories in Sunday's
New York Times
. I lived in a middle-income housing development on the east side of Manhattan called Rensselaer Village. My two-bedroom apartment, for which I paid $950 per month, was an inadvertent legacy from my parents who'd resided in the complex for the better part of four decades. In line with New York's complicated rent laws, after my father and mother split for a retirement community on Long Island, I simply inherited the 800 square feet, along with the extremely low rent. Nearly identical apartments in my building now went for three grand a month.

When my parents announced that they were off to the burbs, I was living in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, and considering the possibility of relocating to Maplewood, New Jersey. Instead, I went to live in the heart of the great financial engine that drove Sheepshead Bay, Maplewood and everything else within a radius of fifty miles. I was pleased, to be sure, but still cautious. Before moving in, I had every stick of furniture removed, including the curtains on the windows, the artwork on the walls and the cabinets in the bathroom. Then I had the rooms painted, the windows washed and the floors refinished with two coats of clear polyurethane specially formulated for basketball courts.

If I'd known a priest, I'd have had an exorcism performed as well.

The two stories appeared in the Metro section. The first, and by far the larger, revealed the latest developments as related by Deputy Chief Simon Kramer in the course of a press conference. Kramer had begun the conference by announcing that the gun found by Detectives Bentibi and Corbin near the body of DuWayne Spott had been positively linked to the murder of David Lodge by the Ballistics Unit. Moreover, two prints left by Spott's right index finger were found on the automatic's receiver. Then he went on to confirm a pair of facts already leaked to the media: Spott died of an accidental heroin overdose and he was alone when his body was discovered.

A twist of the knife, our names appearing in the paper. The integrity of the crime scene was now guaranteed by my and Adele's personal integrity. It was no longer possible to suggest the gun had been planted without suggesting that Adele and I had planted it.

But if the first story had the feel of a nail driven into a coffin, the second managed to at least crack the lid. It's author, Albert Gruber, had somehow wangled a phone interview with Dr Vencel Nagy.

David Lodge, Nagy told Gruber (as he'd told me) had not been fearful as his release date approached, nor had he spoken about the possibility of assassination. Instead, though Lodge still had no clear memory of his whereabouts when Spott was murdered, he was convinced of his innocence.

The Gruber story had almost certainly been planted. At the very least, the reporter had been fed enough information about Nagy to inspire a phone call. My first thought was of Adele. They were already talking about her in the One-Sixteen. If she was blamed for the leak, the buzz would grow louder. Of course, there was also the possibility that Adele was guilty as charged. I'd left the precinct right after finishing the paperwork, my goal to avoid another lecture. Of Adele's plans for the weekend, I knew nothing.

Mike Blair's voice sounded in my ear at that moment.
Nobody's talkin' about you, Harry. Everybody knows you're a cop's cop.

At six o'clock, too restless to stay inside, I headed over to the Y. There were people in the pool, swimming laps, and I had to share a lane with a teenage kid who kept sprinting forward as if trying to reach the end of a punishment. He splashed water in my face every time I went by.

After a choppy half-hour, the kid took off, leaving me alone with thoughts I was unable to arrange in a sequence that reached any good end. Maybe the rumors would die away. Maybe Adele would back off. Maybe we'd resume our regular duties. But the bitterness would remain, of that I was certain. David Lodge would become the part of my career I avoided thinking about.

And I knew I could take his killers down. I had no doubt whatever. The bad guys' blitzkrieg strategy was driven by necessity. They needed DuWayne Spott in the ground and the Lodge murder closed before the various discrepancies Adele and I had uncovered were closely scrutinized. And the emergence of the wild card, Vencel Nagy, had compounded the pressure. If it wasn't done quickly, they must have known, it wouldn't be done at all.

I stayed at it for another forty-five minutes, but I couldn't settle into my stroke. For once, I was unable to separate the events from the emotions they aroused. And I didn't even know who I was angrier with, Adele or Sarney. Because they were both right. Letting David Lodge's killers off the hook went against every instinct. On one level, I was as outraged as Adele. But that didn't make Sarney wrong. There were definitely times when you had to watch your own ass, when you had to acknowledge your place in the greater scheme of things. Otherwise, you paid the price.