Bodies in Winter (27 page)

Adele removed a small tape recorder from her coat pocket, started it up and laid it on a hassock midway between herself and her subject. Surprise number one and a big test. Plausible denial was now off the table. ‘Mrs Lodge, before we start, I want to make you aware of your constitutional rights.'

Ellen listened to Adele read from a printed card, controlling her impatience until Adele reached the part about representation by counsel.

‘What if I ask for a lawyer?' she demanded. ‘Right this minute.'

‘Then my partner and I will leave.' Adele's reply was the only one she could make. With the tape running, plausible denial was off the table for us as well. ‘Now, do you understand these rights as I've read them to you?'

‘Yeah, sure.'

‘And are you willing to waive those rights?'

Ellen Lodge's smile was a mere parting of the lips that revealed gritted teeth. This wasn't the way it was supposed to go. ‘Fine, let's just get it over with.'

‘Get
what
over with, Mrs Lodge?'

‘Whatever it is you're doing here.'

‘But you know what we're doing here, right?'

‘Why don't you tell me?'

‘Because you already know. You knew when you set your husband up with that phone call.' Adele waved off Ellen's reply. ‘Like you said, Ellen, let's just get it over with. Let's get your story on the record.'

THIRTY-FIVE

R
emoving and folding our coats was as much a signal as reading Ellen her rights. We were in control. We would proceed at a pace that we alone determined. The interrogation would be over when we said it was. This may seem absurd in light of our professed willingness to vacate the premises on demand, but I was almost certain that Ellen Lodge intended to stay the course, no matter how painful.

Adele began with the same general questions I'd asked on the days following Lodge's murder. The responses she drew echoed the party line. Ellen had offered her husband a pillow on which to lay his head, not because she loved, or even liked him, but out of the goodness of her heart. On the day of his release, she'd been too busy to talk when he showed up late in the afternoon and their dinner conversation had amounted to nothing more than chit-chat. On the next morning, she'd awakened him to answer the phone, after which he'd quit the house.

Adele's fingers drummed on the arm of the couch as she absorbed this recitation, occasionally shaking her head in disbelief. Ellen continued on, doggedly. From time to time, as she considered her answers, she focused on the turning spools of the little tape recorder as though to draw strength.

‘OK,' Adele said when Ellen finally grew silent, ‘now that we've got the bullshit over with, let's talk about the letters. Tell us what you did with them.'

‘I threw them out, because—'

‘I don't need a reason. Tell me what was in them. Tell me what your husband had to say.'

‘He wrote me that Clarence Spott's people were out for revenge. He wrote me that he was scared.'

‘Did he mention Spott by name?'

That brought a moment of hesitation. What had she said at that first interview? But then she recalled her lines. ‘I don't remember exactly. I think he did. I can't be sure.'

‘My partner went up to Attica, Mrs Lodge. He was there for maybe three whole hours. In that time, he met a corrections officer, a deputy warden and a prison psychiatrist who say that your husband left Attica believing he was innocent, that the only revenge he was concerned about was the revenge he expected to wreak on the people who framed him. Explain how your version and their versions can be so different.'

‘What about Pete Jarazelsky? He'll tell you Davy was afraid for his life.'

‘Oh, right, Jarazelsky. As it turns out, what you told us – that Pete and your husband were good buddies – was an outright lie. Not only didn't they watch each other's backs, we have reason to believe that Davy beat Jarazelsky to a pulp.'

Adele was perched on the edge of the couch now, within six feet of Ellen Lodge who was pushed as far back in her chair as she could get. I didn't blame Ellen. Between the look in Adele's eye, her various wounds and the body armor, she seemed truly ferocious, even in profile.

‘Explain it,' Adele again demanded. ‘Explain how these versions can be so utterly different.'

‘I can't.' Ellen's eyes dropped to the tape recorder.

‘So, then it's just a question of who I should believe: three disinterested professionals or a woman whose finances are tied up with Tony Szarek's, Justin Whitlock's and Dante Russo's? Put yourself in my position, Ellen. Who would you believe, if you were me?'

Though it was clear that Ellen Lodge didn't want to answer the question, Adele forced a response by repeating herself twice more. ‘If you were me, who would you believe?'

Finally, Ellen said, ‘You can believe who you want, but I'm telling the truth.' This time her eyes never left the tape recorder. This was what she had to say, no more, no less. But the effort seemed to cost her as she began to pick at a loose thread in the arm of the couch.

Adele was silent for a moment. Then she turned to me and asked me to retrieve a notebook in her coat pocket. When I complied, she flicked through several pages before asking a series of specific questions, each beginning with the phrase, ‘Did your husband ever mention . . .'

His plans for the future. His job prospects. Friends he wanted to look up. Friends who could help him find a job. Dante Russo. Tony Szarek. Justin Whitlock.

Ellen's responses were evasive throughout, every statement included a qualifier. ‘I don't remember, exactly, but . . . I'm not a hundred per cent sure, but . . .' They continued to be evasive when Adele shifted to Ellen's prison visit, asking the same questions she'd asked about his letters, snapping them out, one after another, her contempt even more obvious because she refused to challenge Ellen's lies. Of course, David Lodge had discussed his future plans as the date of his release approached. The future is all convicts have. But Adele's questions weren't designed to elicit relevant information. Stamina is one of the big advantages cops have in the wars euphemistically called interrogations. Not only do we know how to pace ourselves, our suspects' fatigue invigorates us. And Ellen Lodge was visibly wilting, the effort required to maintain the lies taking its toll.

‘Alright,' Adele said, ‘let's move on to a subject we haven't discussed before. Your phone conversations with your husband. How many times did you speak to your husband in the three months prior to his release?'

This was another of those weapons we'd been saving. State prisoners are allowed to make collect calls, a privilege that can be withdrawn for misbehavior. Ellen's phone records indicated that she'd received sixteen collect calls from Attica in the three months before Davy got out. As this was fourteen more than she'd received in the prior six and a half years, it had naturally caught Adele's attention.

Once again, Ellen began with a series of qualifiers, but this time Adele stopped her in her tracks. ‘Sixteen times,' she said, ‘between October fourteenth and January fourteenth. Does that refresh your memory?'

Ellen shrugged. ‘I didn't keep track.'

‘Sixteen times in three months. Tell me, did you speak to your husband that frequently throughout his incarceration?'

‘I don't remember exactly.'

‘Then let me refresh your memory again. For the first seventy-eight months of the eighty-four months your husband spent in prison, you spoke to him exactly twice.'

‘I don't recall exactly.'

Adele exploded. ‘Don't lie in my face. You spent a total of more than four hours talking directly to your husband in the last three months. I want you to tell me what those calls were about. In detail.'

But Ellen Lodge had no choice, not at that point, and she continued to equivocate, as Adele continued to browbeat, asking exactly the same questions she'd asked about the letters and visits, until I finally stepped in. By that time, we'd been at it for three hours.

I intervened because good guy was my role and because Ellen Lodge asked to use the bathroom. Whether she knew it or not, she'd acknowledged her subservience with the request, as she would have with any request.

Adele and I exchanged smiles, but said nothing in the few moments we spent alone. Instead, we slipped into a little kitchen to have a drink of water, to splash water on our faces. By the time Ellen emerged from the bathroom, we were back in place.

‘Are we almost done?' she asked as she sat down. ‘Because I have a dentist's appointment later this afternoon.'

As before, Adele ignored the question. ‘Tell me about Greenpoint Carton Supply.'

Ellen began by announcing that (so far as she knew, of course) Greenpoint Carton was ‘wholly owned' by Tony Szarek, Dante Russo and Pete Jarazelsky. That brought a smile to my lips. According to Szarek's sister, Trina Zito, Szarek's shares had reverted to the corporation upon his death. If Russo was crab food, as Adele believed, Pete Jarazelsky would be the last man standing. Pete, of course, had the ultimate alibi.

I made a mental note to call Attica and speak to Deputy Warden Frank Beauchamp, the mighty hunter. To ask a question I might have asked a lot earlier.

‘They took me in,' Ellen said after a moment, ‘because they knew I got a raw deal and they wanted to look out for me. I get paid two thousand dollars a month. I'm the secretary-treasurer, but I got no interest in the business. I'm not a partner.'

‘Tell us what you do for the two thousand,' Adele asked. ‘What are your duties?'

‘I don't have any.'

‘They pay you two thousand dollars a month for nothing?'

‘I sign papers once in a while. That's it.'

Adele shifted forward on the seat. ‘When did you become secretary-treasurer?'

‘I was there from the beginning.'

‘When was that?'

‘About six months after Davy killed the pimp.'

‘Was Greenpoint Carton in existence at that time? Or did they start it from scratch?'

‘They bought the business.'

‘Who from?'

‘I don't know.'

‘How much did they pay for it?'

‘That wasn't my business. Anyway, the deal was done before I was offered my . . . position.'

‘And who offered you that position?'

‘Dante.'

‘Not Tony Szarek or Pete Jarazelsky.'

‘I barely knew Tony and Pete.'

‘You didn't visit Jarazelsky when you went up to Attica? Or exchange letters with him?'

‘Never.'

‘But you knew Dante Russo?'

‘We were lovers.'

THIRTY-SIX

‘
G
ive me a fucking break,' Adele snarled. ‘You weren't Dante Russo's lover. You were his whore.'

Finally energized, Ellen Lodge came halfway out of her chair. ‘You bitch!' she shouted back. ‘What right do you have to judge me?'

‘Cut the crap. You're knocking down twenty-four grand a year for a no-show job given to you by a man who rings your bell in the middle of the night. And, yeah, we already knew about your sugar daddy. But you probably figured that out, being as you're a girl who takes care of number one.'

They both stood at that point, facing off across the hassock that held the tape recorder, their bodies now three feet apart.

‘Funny thing, Ellen, but you don't look like you're grieving, not for your husband or for Dante Russo. You look like you're worried. But don't be. If you're a good girl, if you accept Russo's death the way you accepted your husband's, I'm sure that you'll be well rewarded. Oh, by the way, Russo didn't spend last Friday night in your bed, did he? You didn't make one of those six-second phone calls just after he left? You didn't set up Dante the way you set up your husband?'

Ellen Lodge was sucking on her cheeks, narrowing an already narrow face, and her lips were moving rapidly. I think she would eventually have spoken if I hadn't stepped in for the second time.

‘Partner,' I said, rising to my feet, ‘do you think I could speak to you for a minute?'

In the hallway, out of Ellen Lodge's sight, Adele shrugged her shoulders. ‘How'd I do?'

I answered by leaning down and kissing her (very gently, of course) on the lips. She touched a finger to her lips, her expression quizzical, then reached out to lay her hand on my chest before turning abruptly. I watched her trip down the stairs and out the door, realizing that there might, in fact, be something I wanted more than to break this case. As I walked back into the sitting room, I found myself imagining ten days with Adele in Hawaii, a sort of honeymoon in the course of which neither sand nor surf would even be glimpsed.

Ellen was standing by the window. She'd pulled a curtain aside to look down at the street. I assumed she was watching Adele get into the Nissan.

‘So,' she said without turning, ‘I take it that you're the good cop.'

The tape recorder clicked off at that point and I replaced the cassette before answering. ‘You'll have to excuse my partner. She's a bit on the self-righteous side.'

I sat on the couch, in Adele's place, and invited Ellen to resume her seat. She looked at me for a moment, her expression hard. I endured the glare.

‘Please, Ellen, bear with me for another few moments.'

But she wasn't ready, not yet. ‘You think I don't know how this works? For Christ's sake, I was a cop's wife. First, the bitch pounds on my brain for hours, then you ride to the rescue. Excuse me if I say that you don't look like anybody's white knight.'

‘And what do I look like?'

‘You look like a hard-ass cop who'd cut off his grandfather's balls to get a confession.' Satisfied, she finally sat down, then lit a cigarette. ‘Hope you don't mind if I smoke.'