Bodies in Winter (29 page)

‘Alright, now you said you thought “they” were going to confront Davy. Tell me who “they” are?'

But, alas, other than Tony Szarek, who was dead, and Pete Jarazelsky, who was incarcerated, Ellen didn't know the names of Dante's associates, any more than she knew her lover's fate. Dante, it seemed, like Davy Lodge, was a man who kept his own counsel.

‘Ya know, he didn't even use my telephone. He made calls on his cell. I guess that should've told me something right there.'

I turned off the tape recorder and got on my own cell phone at that point, phoning down to Adele, summoning her back to the fray. When she was standing beside me, I compressed the bad news into a single sentence: ‘Dante did it.'

‘All by himself?'

‘In the company of persons still to be named.'

‘But not by Ellen Lodge?'

‘Apparently not.'

We still had a couple of choices open to us. Adele might have taken another shot at playing the bad cop or I might have again appealed to Ellen's survival instincts by pointing out that the game was growing ever more dangerous. But it was nearly three o'clock and time was running short.

‘You wanna hook her up?' Adele asked.

‘Fine, but I'm leaving the frisk to you.'

‘What's going on here?' Ellen demanded.

‘We're placing you under arrest for conspiracy in the first degree.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘It means that you conspired to commit an A-One felony: the murder of your husband.'

‘But I didn't. I didn't know what was going to happen.' When I failed to respond, she half-shouted, ‘Yesterday, you said you were gonna protect me.'

Ellen's gaze dropped to the tape recorder and its unmoving spools. There was a record now and she would have to live with it. I watched her reactions carefully, hoping against hope that she'd revise her strategy. Instead, her eyes narrowed as she rose to her feet and placed her hands behind her back. ‘Would it be alright,' she asked, ‘if I brought along a little make-up? I wanna look my best when we do the perp walk.'

THIRTY-EIGHT

D
espite the snow, I came up the block on foot, the closest parking space I could find two blocks away. It was much colder now and the wind was on the rise, pushing the heavy flakes in my direction, coating my head and shoulders before I covered fifteen feet. The snow screened me from view, so that I was almost on top of the One-Sixteen before the half-dozen cops huddled on the small porch fronting the entrance were aware of my presence. It was 3:45 p.m., a busy time in every precinct. The eight-to-four shift was coming in from the field, the four-to-midnight preparing to go out.

I was walking with Ellen Lodge to my left, holding onto her elbow. Though Ellen's coat was draped over her shoulders, hiding her cuffed wrists from view, I doubt that anybody was fooled into thinking she was a casual visitor. The chatter stopped dead when I was finally recognized, leaving only the soft wet sound of our footsteps in the slush and the steady moan of the wind.

Inside, the reception area was crowded with cops, male and female, waiting to be mustered out. They were beginning their night's toil and relatively energized, making small talk, joking, laughing. I'd worked hard to establish a good working relationship with these folks, knew most of them by sight and four or five by name. In their collective eyes I now found the sort of forlorn shock I associated with news footage of ordinary citizens informed that the guy down the block is a serial killer.

And he seemed like such a nice man
.

The desk officer, a lieutenant named Draper, found his voice as we approached the stairs leading to the squad room.

‘Whatta ya got there, Harry?'

I led Ellen up a few steps before replying. All eyes were turned to me, which was what I'd hoped for and why I'd sought an elevated position in the first place.

‘I've got Ellen Lodge,' I said evenly, ‘under arrest for conspiring to murder her husband. His name is David Lodge, in case you haven't heard.'

‘Hey, I don't need the sarcasm.' Draper turned to a patrol sergeant standing at his elbow. ‘What a jerk,' he declared with a nod in my direction. ‘He don't know who his friends are.'

But we were already moving up the stairs and into the squad room where we found Jack Petro and Bill Sarney, along with a trio of four-to-midnight tour detectives gathered around a bag of donuts. Petro was sitting behind his desk with his mouth open. Sarney was on the other side of the desk, his coat draped over his arm, his customary fedora already jammed over his naked scalp.

I watched Sarney's face redden, his hands tighten into fists, his neck swell, his eyes bulge. Far from intimidated, it was all I could do to maintain a neutral expression as I repeated the message I'd offered to the desk officer: Ellen Lodge, wife of David Lodge, was under arrest for conspiring to murder her husband. Then I led Ellen Lodge to an interrogation room, removed her handcuffs, and told her to make herself comfortable. As I made my exit, she favored me with a string of curses, concluding her tirade with a demand that she be allowed to call her lawyer.

‘You betrayed me.' Sarney's small dark eyes were glittery with rage, his forehead a mass of wrinkles all the way to the center of his scalp. We were alone now, in his office. ‘You were on your way from nowhere to nowhere, running out the string on a nothing career, a step away from being a hairbag. I gave you homicide, Harry, and I got you promoted. Me, and nobody else. You hear what I'm sayin'? In your whole career, I'm the only one who recognized you for what you were. How is it that you can turn on me, now, when I really need you? For Christ's sake, you were at my kid's christening.'

I started to speak, but Sarney waved me off. ‘And the worst part,' he told me, ‘is that I personally vouched for you. I told Borough Command that you'd do the right thing. I took fucking responsibility. What am I supposed to say now?'

‘Tell them what you just told me,' I suggested before he could go on. ‘Tell them you gave it a hundred per cent, but I played you anyway. I'm sure our conversations were recorded, just like Adele's phones were tapped, so you should come off believable.'

That brought him to a halt and he dropped down in his chair. ‘You fucked me,' he warned, ‘and I'm not gonna forget it. Sooner or later, I'll pay you back.'

I might have responded directly, but my mind was on other things. The case against Ellen Lodge, which I was going to have to justify, was flimsy. There was Ellen's recorded statement, complete with Miranda warning, and there was a documented call that might have been placed to anyone. Beyond that . . . nothing.

‘Do you think,' I asked, ‘that we can get down to business? Because it's gonna be a long night, even without the lecture.'

Sarney's mouth twisted into a bitter smile. ‘Yeah,' he said, ‘by all means. And this better be good.'

But it wasn't good enough, that was obvious, and by the time I wound it up, Sarney's relief was apparent. ‘This is garbage,' he finally declared. ‘Lemme see that tape.'

‘We're talking about tapes, boss, as in more than one. But I don't have them anyway. My partner has them.'

‘You're sayin' you can't trust me with evidence, that maybe I'd flush those tapes down the toilet?' He might have come after me at that point, if he was just a little bigger, a little younger. As it was, he settled for pounding the side of his fist into the blotter on top of his desk. Then he did it again.

‘If that's your only comment, Boss, I've got paperwork to do.'

‘You got nothin'. I'm cutting her loose.'

‘Why?'

‘Show me one piece of physical evidence tying Dante Russo to the murder of David Lodge. Bring me an eyewitness. Better yet, prove that Ellen Lodge isn't telling the truth when she says she didn't know what was gonna happen to her husband.'

I countered with my best argument. ‘Lodge admits she called Russo and she claims that Russo copped to the murder. Plus, she has a dual motive for wanting her husband dead. First, there was the money from Greenpoint Carton, which doesn't sound like a lot until you see how she was living. Second, there was the simple fact that she absolutely hated her husband. Ya know, Ellen was pretty much in control for the whole six hours. She only flipped out when she spoke about Davy. Believe me when I tell you, lieutenant, that the widow did not hold anything back.'

I sat down on the chair fronting his desk before continuing. ‘And don't forget the lies. We did four interviews with Ellen Lodge. In the last interview she admits that every essential element of the first three interviews was untrue. So, why would a jury believe she's telling the truth about the one little item that exonerates her?'

When Sarney leaned forward to place his elbows on the desk, his swivel chair emitted a double screech that reminded me of a braying donkey. ‘Take this to the bank, Corbin: a good defense attorney is gonna get this case dismissed before it goes to trial, even if a grand jury indicts her. And those lies she told don't mean shit. Everybody lies to the cops.'

We continued on for another few minutes, going back and forth, until I finally conceded that while the evidence against Ellen Lodge justified an arrest, a conviction might be difficult to obtain. The admission brought a faint smile from Sarney, but I quickly erased it when I said, ‘But that's only because of the cover-up.'

Sarney looked out over my head. His office was little more than a glass-walled cubicle and I'd spoken loud enough for my words to be clear to anyone still remaining in the squad room.

‘The evidence you're demanding is out there to be found,' I continued. ‘I would have found it on my own, if I hadn't been pulled off the case. For example, the crime scene where DuWayne Spott overdosed? I admit that I didn't get much of a look at it before I was relieved, but what I did see was discarded garbage, soiled utensils, blankets and mattresses. We both know this evidence went into storage when the job decided that Spott's death resulted from an accidental overdose. Likewise for the evidence collected at the David Lodge scene. DuWayne killed David Lodge? There isn't going to be a trial because DuWayne is conveniently dead? Time to conserve our limited resources by packing the physical evidence into a box, then shipping it to the property clerk's office.'

Sarney attempted to interrupt, but I was well into my act by then. ‘Now take Ellen Lodge's phone records. Given that we know there were two shooters present when her husband was killed, and that we suspect she's covering for somebody by throwing all the blame on Dante Russo, it would be nice to run back through her phone records for the last six months. Just on the off-chance that she made contact with an unknown co-conspirator. But, of course, being as it's not my case, I have no way to get those records.'

I went on for some time, mentioning, along the way, Clarence Spott's vehicle, somehow unaccounted for on the night he was killed, the sad lack of scrutiny paid to the Broom's sudden demise, the failure to capitalize on Jarazelsky's parole status, and Ted Savio, the lawyer shared by David Lodge, Justin Whitlock, Pete Jarazelsky and Ellen Lodge.

‘The finances,' I concluded, ‘are the key. Russo's, Jarazelsky's, Szarek's, Ellen Lodge's, and most of all Greenpoint Carton's. Once we start tracing the money, the house of cards is gonna come crashing down.'

Sarney raised a finger, as if he expected to win on a technicality. ‘Only a grand jury can subpoena financial records. And a grand jury can only be convened by the DA. You know that, right?'

‘That's why Ellen Lodge has to be arrested. Look, David Lodge became a celebrity on the day he was charged with killing Clarence Spott. That's why his murder drew media scrutiny in the first place. So, what do you think's gonna happen when the reporters find out his wife's been arrested for his murder?'

Sarney shuddered. ‘If that were to happen,' he said, ‘blood would flow.'

‘Not necessarily.' I waited until Sarney's eyes rose to meet mine. ‘If the job admits it made mistakes, then moves to clean house, the damage can be limited. There are bad apples in every barrel, right? On the other hand, if Ellen Lodge is released and some insider leaks it to the media after the fact? Think about it, lou. Think about what's gonna happen if Ellen Lodge is released on your authority. Think about what the job will do to protect itself. Think about what it feels like to be the official NYPD scapegoat.'

I expected Sarney to explode at that point, but he surprised me, perhaps because he'd already considered this outcome.

‘Wait in the squad room,' he ordered, ‘and see that Ellen Lodge gets to call her lawyer.'

Jack Petro and the four-to-midnight detectives were standing by the door when I came out. They fled at my appearance, which was fine by me. I knew they'd repeat the conversation they'd overheard to every cop they came across. That was all I wanted from them.

Ellen Lodge was considerably more subdued when I offered her my cell phone. She'd been contemplating her fate for an hour by this time.

‘You still have options,' I explained, ‘if you want to take them.'

She stared at the phone for a moment, her expression puzzled, as if she was having difficulty remembering what it was for. Then she said, ‘You think I could use the bathroom?'

I accompanied her, but, of course, had to remain outside, risking the chance that she'd escape through the window. She didn't, emerging instead with her face scrubbed. Again, I made an attempt to reach her.

‘Conspiracy in the first degree is an A-One felony,' I said. ‘It carries a maximum penalty of life without parole, which you are very likely to get. We're looking at five murders here.'

Ellen shook her head. ‘You're not supposed to talk to me without my lawyer present.'