Bodies in Winter (16 page)

I lifted my glass to Sparkle, as always. For some reason, she was looking especially vivid tonight. Her red, Cupid's-bow mouth was pursed invitingly and her blue eyes were naughty and knowing.

‘You do something to Sparkle?' I asked Mike, who was filling a pitcher with Guinness.

‘I had her cleaned yesterday.'

‘You don't clean her yourself?'

‘Harry, you gotta be kiddin'. The woman I use, her day job's at the Metropolitan Opera!'

I was still mulling this over when Nydia Santiago called to me. She'd taken over the table usually reserved for Linus Potter, who was standing at the other end of the bar. ‘Harry, c'mere a minute.'

Nydia was sitting with her two main girlfriends, Rose Fulger and Mary Contreras (known universally as Mary Contrary), and an Eight-Three detective named Chris Tucker.

‘What's up?' I asked as I sat down beside Nydia.

‘What's up with your partner?' she countered. ‘What's wrong with her?'

‘Why don't you tell me?'

‘She's a cop hater,' Chris Tucker jumped in, his tone distinctly belligerent.

‘Is that what she's accused of, Chris? Hating cops?'

‘In the Eight-Three, they're sayin' she's an IAB rat. They're sayin' she was recruited while she was still in the Academy. You know that's what the headhunters do. They find the freaks, the ones that shoulda been social workers, and turn 'em into snitches.'

I'd stayed away from Sparkle's all week, avoiding a choice I knew I'd eventually have to make. Nydia had just invited me to sever all connection with Adele, to close her case and get on with my career. It was Nydia's way of covering my back and I was certain she expected me to accept the offer.

Some ultimately rational part of me insisted that I seize the opportunity. Adele was going down. I couldn't save her, but I could save myself. And I wouldn't have to join the chorus of her accusers. If I simply announced that Adele and I hadn't spoken during the last week, it would be enough.

As always on crowded Friday nights, despite an ordinance that prohibits the use of tobacco in bars, the atmosphere at Sparkle's was clouded by cigarette smoke. I watched the smoke drift across the intense beam of light trained on Sparkle's rhinestone dress, watched it rise and fall in slow waves, now white, now gray, now black. I was hoping that some answer would come floating out of that mist, a once-and-for-all decision that I could live with. Instead, I became more and more angry, with Sarney, with Adele, with the job, and with half-drunk Chris Tucker who just happened to be close enough to bear the consequences.

‘Chris,' I finally declared, ‘I don't care what you say about my partner as long as you don't say it to my face. Ever again. You understand where I'm goin' with this, right?'

My amiable reputation was so at odds with the look on my face, it took my companions a moment to grasp the essentials. Nydia was the first to react. She put her hand on my arm, but I shook it off. Chris Tucker's normally pale cheeks were flaming; his blue eyes seemed about to explode. Street cops are taught to confront any challenge to their authority. You back off once, so the lesson goes, you'll be retreating until the day you put in your papers.

‘That was over the top, Harry,' Nydia said. ‘That was uncalled for.'

I stood up, my eyes pinned on Tucker's. When he remained in his chair, I smiled before repeating my position. ‘That goes for you, too, Nydia. I don't care what bullshit rumors you tell each other, just keep them away from me.'

Though my act was convincing – probably because I meant what I said – I lost my courage at that point. I should have gone on to say that my partner was an honorable cop who'd been around long enough to separate the good guys from the bad guys. If she was pointing fingers, she was pointing them in the right direction. Instead, I carried my empty glass over to Jack Petro, who was standing at the bar.

‘What's up with Chris?' Petro asked. ‘He's red as a beet.'

‘Chris said something about Adele that I didn't want to hear. I had to ask him not to repeat those words in my presence.'

Like Nydia, Jack was solicitous. ‘Harry, c'mon,' he said, ‘don't get worked up. Whatever Adele's doing, she's doing on her own. Nobody's blaming you.'

Another should-have moment. I should have told my old friend that DuWayne Spott didn't kill David Lodge and that I was certain I could nail Lodge's true killers, but I settled for a shrug and a smile. ‘Tucker's saying Adele's an IAB snitch. You believe that?'

‘Harry, listen to me. It's not like Bentibi's gonna be shot at sunrise. She's just gettin' transferred.'

I turned away at that point, to ask Mike Blair for a refill. The larger truth, that Adele was still out there, digging her own grave, would only render her more culpable.

A few minutes later, too restless for the small talk around me, I carried my drink over to Linus Potter, edging in between his massive body and the wall. Potter was staring down into a mug of dark beer.

‘What's new, Linus?' I asked.

‘I'm havin' an anxiety attack,' he announced.

‘About what?'

‘You ever been smacked by pigeon shit? While you were just walkin' down the street?'

‘Yeah, I have.'

‘Not me. I never got smacked and I been around pigeons all my life.'

‘That makes you overdue.'

‘Which is exactly what concerns me. Forty-four years without gettin' smacked? My time is comin' soon. It could even be a multiple occurrence.'

Potter reached into the pocket of his overcoat and drew out a black Kangol cap which he placed on his tiny head. Amazingly, the cap was too small.

‘Forewarned is forearmed, right? I went and got me a little protection. Whatta ya think?'

‘It's you, Linus. The real you, the one who never stopped visiting David Lodge.'

Potter's lips came apart in what I took for a smile. His eyes, though, didn't waver by so much as a millimeter. What he was about to tell me had been carefully thought out.

‘Davy and me were partners for about six months, right before I got promoted. We did OK together.'

‘Was he drinking then?'

‘Yeah.'

‘How'd you handle it?'

‘I told him if he showed up drunk or drank on the job, I'd shove his head so far up his bony ass, he'd be lookin' out between his teeth.'

My turn to smile as I imagined David Lodge, knucklehead extraordinaire, cowed by Linus Potter. Potter's back was broad enough to support a grand piano.

‘You told me you investigated the Clarence Spott murder. That must have been tough, being as Lodge was once your partner.'

‘I exaggerated.'

‘Exaggerated what?'

‘It's four o'clock in the morning when I get a call from the lieutenant. He tells me there's been a homicide inside the Eight-Three, a citizen. An hour later, when I arrive at the house, IAB is already working the case. So what I do, more or less, is observe the proceedings. I wasn't even called to testify before the grand jury.'

Potter stopped long enough to drain his mug, then signal Mike for another. ‘But what I told you was true. Every piece of evidence pointed at Davy. And the consensus, at the time, was that his blackout was so much bullshit.'

‘At the time?'

‘Davy was a good cop who destroyed himself with booze. Clarence Spott was a piece of shit who deserved worse than he got.' Potter stuck out his hand to intercept a frosted mug sliding along the length of the bar. As he grabbed the mug, beer spilled over the rim and onto his hand. He licked the beer off his fingers, then resumed. ‘I felt sorry for Lodge, so I went up to see him a couple of times a year. He really didn't remember what happened. That much was obvious. But he also thought he was innocent, at least at the end, which wasn't obvious. Something happened to him, though, after the last time I visited, something he remembered that made him sure.'

‘How do you know that?'

‘He wrote me a letter.' Potter withdrew a folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket. ‘I been carryin' it around all week, figurin' you'd show up sooner or later.'

That little voice, the rational one, spoke again, demanding that I leave well enough alone.
Next thing
, it insisted,
you'll be calling Adele
.

I took the letter anyway, and read it through twice. It contained nothing I didn't already know. A memory had surfaced, a fragment, and Lodge had become sure of his innocence. The nature of that memory was not described, nor was Pete Jarazelsky's name mentioned.

‘Old news,' I said as I returned the letter.

Potter refolded the page and stuck it back in his pocket. ‘Letters get screened goin' in and out of prison. Phone calls get monitored. Even face-to-face visits, the guards can listen in. So what I figure is that Davy was playin' his cards close to the vest. One thing I can say for sure: after seven years in the joint, he'd become a patient man. Took care of his body, too. Last time I was up to see him, he told me he was benchin' three hundred pounds.'

TWENTY

I
got up the next morning and fixed myself a breakfast of fried eggs and toast which I washed down with two mugs of coffee. Then I spent the next three hours cleaning my apartment. A hated job, to be sure, but one at which I've become more efficient over the years. As I worked, I considered a pair of options: hiring a housekeeper or living in filth. But the reality was that I couldn't afford professional help, not while my credit card remained in deficit. And I couldn't live with the dirt, either. Not only did I fear the chaos, but nothing diminishes the female libido like food-stained upholstery, underwear on the floor and greasy pillowcases.

I put the vacuum cleaner away around noon and went to my computer. This was another chore I didn't look forward to. I hadn't checked my email for a week and I knew my inbox would be choked with spam. I found thirty-five pieces of mail awaiting me. The few from individuals whose names I recognized were opened first. They'd been sent by cop friends who'd moved on to greener pastures and I archived them, intending to reply at some later date. Then I went to work on the garbage.

Instant credit. Normalize blood pressure. Obtain a university diploma. Trace anybody anywhere. Enlarge your penis. Enlarge your breasts. The kicker was the domain address of a gay porn site: weaponsofassdestruction.com.

For the most part, I was able to delete the junk without opening it, but there were a number sent by individuals whose names I didn't recognize. It was possible (just barely) that I'd discover somebody trying to reach me on legitimate business among these.

Though each bore the name of a different sender, the first three were for a brand of septic tank cleaner. The fourth was from a gentleman who identified himself as B-Arnold. Initially, I judged the name to be a clumsy ploy designed to trick me into opening the message, but then my gaze drifted to the subject line: It Ain't Over Till It's Over.

For the next thirty seconds, I watched a white envelope turn round and round, like a dog chasing its tail. My primitive dial-up system was loading a photo. I can't say I knew what was coming, but I was impatient enough to wish I'd coughed up the extra twenty bucks a month and switched to broadband. Then an image appeared on the monitor, a head-shot of Dante Russo in uniform, facing front. The full-color photo had been shot against a white background, virtually guaranteeing that it had come from Russo's personnel file.

A few years before, on impulse, I'd purchased a digital camera, intending to pursue photography as a serious amateur. It hadn't taken all that long, a couple of months at most, before I admitted that I was virtually without talent. By then, however, I'd grown fascinated with the processing of images and was spending most of my time at the computer, working in Photoshop.

I had two problems with Russo's photograph, which showed him in full uniform, including a billed cap. First, I feared that citizens, shown the photo, would be drawn to the uniform and not the man. Second, as a PBA Trustee, Russo had no assigned policing duties and never wore a uniform. His job was to roam from precinct to precinct within Brooklyn North's territory, conferring with PBA delegates, troubleshooting problems the delegates were unable to handle.

What I might have done, if I was a true artist, was remove the cap and create a hairline from scratch. But that task was beyond my abilities. The best I could do was search through my archived photos until I found an individual with a hairline similar to Russo's, cut that hairline out, then paste it over Russo's cap before smoothing the rough edges. Though far from perfect, the final version I printed was serviceable, a 4x6 likeness that caught Russo with his chin up, his lips compressed, his dark eyes suspicious and superior at the same time.

I sat back in the chair and allowed my thoughts to drift. Not surprisingly, they quickly settled on Adele. I was sure Russo's photograph hadn't come from her. Adele's inability to manipulate was her biggest flaw. If she wanted me to look at Russo's picture, she'd have knocked on my door and shoved it in my face.

Last night, in Sparkle's, I'd briefly considered phoning Adele. Now I was thinking a little harder, thinking that maybe I should give her a warning, let her know the attack was intensifying. The charge made by Chris Tucker was not without foundation. Internal Affairs did, in fact, recruit cops while they were still at the Academy. These recruits were called field associates and their job, simply put, was to spy on their peers.

I didn't believe that Adele was a field associate. She was too independent, too unpredictable, a born rule-breaker who could never be trusted. But the truth didn't matter here. If Adele's peers decided she was an IAB rat, they'd be as likely to leave her hanging as come to her defense when she needed back-up. Especially those who had something to hide.