Bodies in Winter

NINE

If it had been up to me, I would’ve interviewed Nagy first, leaving Pete Jarazelsky to simmer. But Jarazelsky had been brought to the administration building all the way from C Block as a courtesy when I might have had to interview him in the bowels of the prison. The least I could do was accommodate Beauchamp’s schedule.

The starkly functional room Beauchamp had chosen for the interview had been designed for small conferences. A sound-dampening ceiling and two banks of fluorescent lights above, a long table surrounded by upholstered office chairs on wheels, a polished tile floor. Two flags, of the United States and the State of New York, stood against a cinder block wall.

When I came through the door, Jarazelsky’s dark eyes jumped to mine. I returned his gaze, hoping for a peek into his heart before he composed himself. No such luck. His eyes immediately dropped to the table, leaving me to make the first move. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit and his wrists were cuffed to a leather belt at his waist. For a moment, I considered the grand gesture, asking the guard to unlock the cuffs, but decided against it. This wasn’t an interrogation and I wasn’t going to get hours and hours to wear him down.

I finally introduced myself as Detective Corbin, then took a seat across the table and stated my business. I was here to investigate the murder of David Lodge. I deeply appreciated his voluntary cooperation. I looked forward to any assistance he might offer.

‘Hey,’ Jarazelsky said when I ground to a halt, ‘me and Davy, we were tight. I’m talkin’ about on the street, back in the Eight-Three, and up here, too. So, any way I can help, I’m happy to do it.’

Jarazelsky was a short, unimposing man with jug ears and a drooping nose that fell to within an inch of his upper lip. His dark eyes were large and slightly bulging, his mouth slightly open as he watched me intently. He’d now made point number one, confirming Ellen Lodge’s claim that Jarazelsky and her husband were prison allies.

‘When was the last time you saw Lodge?’ I asked.

‘A couple months ago.’

‘Months?’

‘Well, see, I got into a beef with some niggers and hadda take segregation. It’s only temporary, though.’ He leaned across the table, his voice dropping in tone and volume. ‘I know Davy woulda looked out for me, but I didn’t have the heart to jam him up after he got his release date.’

‘Right.’ I rolled my chair back a few inches and crossed my legs, but made no further comment. I wanted to see what Jarazelsky would volunteer.

‘Anyway,’ he said after a moment, ‘I knew Davy was goin’ to his old lady’s house. He told me he was gonna stay there while he looked for a job.’

‘Do you know where he planned on looking for this job? Did he contact anyone before he left Attica, maybe some of his old buddies at the Eight-Three?’

Jarazelsky shrugged. ‘I can’t say for certain. He could’ve.’

I opened a notebook and wrote my own name three times, then looked back up. Between the bulging eyes and the jug ears, Jarazelsky’s face had a bat-like quality, especially when he tilted his head down. Although his appearance also had a menacing aspect, I sensed the wariness of a small mammal caught in a trap. Whenever he shifted his weight, the chains that bound his wrists and ankles rattled softly.

‘Tell me what David Lodge was like,’ I said. ‘What did he do with his time? Did he have any hobbies? Like to write letters? Play basketball? What’d he talk about when you were alone?’

‘He lifted weights,’ Jarazelsky said after a moment.

‘That’s it?’

‘What can I say? Davy was pretty quiet. And he was never my cellie. We mostly got together in the yard. But you could take this to the bank: Davy was nervous about his release. The guy he clipped, Clarence Spott? Well, Spott’s brother, DuWayne, took over the crew after his brother’s passing. I was still at the Precinct when this happened, so I know what I’m sayin’. DuWayne put the word out that he wasn’t gonna sit for his brother gettin’ murdered by no honkey pig.’

This time, Jarazelsky’s eyes gave him away. He was searching my face, gauging my reaction. Having confirmed (without prompting) the second element of the widow’s statement, he wanted to know if I was buying his story.

‘Are you telling me that Lodge was directly threatened by DuWayne Spott?’

‘Like I said, Davy was real quiet. It wasn’t always like that. Back at the Eight-Three, when he was still drinkin’, he was pretty much out of control.’

Jarazelsky hadn’t answered the question, but I let it go. I wasn’t all that interested in his tale because it didn’t address the point Adele had raised in Sarney’s office. How would DuWayne Spott know that David Lodge was going to his wife’s house upon release?

But I still had a choice to make. I could leave Jarazelsky’s story unchallenged or I could send a message.

‘Do you have a release date, Pete?’

Jarazelsky tried for a smile, but didn’t quite make it. ‘Six months.’

‘You get out in six months?’

‘Yeah.’ He tried to bring his hand to his face, but the cuffs held him back. ‘Ya know,’ he told me, ‘Davy was over at Cayuga for a couple of years.’

‘And then got transferred to Attica?’

‘Right.’

‘How’d that happen?’

Again, Jarazelsky lowered his voice and leaned across the table. ‘Davy told me that he ran into a problem with another con at Cayuga. He didn’t name no names or nothin’, so don’t get ya hopes up, but he did say the beef came from outside the joint. Like, he was bein’ set up.’

‘So, what did he do about it?’

‘He did what he had to do.’

For me, it was attack or retreat time. There was nothing to be gained by prolonging the interview, not unless I wanted to shake him up by pointing out that a black gangster from Brooklyn was highly unlikely to hire a white supremacist from Syracuse to pull off a hit.

Instead, I backed off. First, there was that fan thing I’d mentioned to my partner. As far as I could tell, it was still on high, still spewing excrement. And then there was the distinct possibility that Jarazelsky could be turned. In just six months, he was scheduled to leave Attica, to go from a place where his life was always in danger to a place of moment-to-moment safety. If I was somehow able to put his release date in jeopardy, he’d most likely roll over. He was, after all, a snitch by nature.

But I had no way to threaten Pete Jarazelsky, not then, and I wrapped up the interview a few minutes later. Jarazelsky continued to watch me, as he’d been watching me all along, with the look of a man immersed in a poker game. Would I call his bluff? Would I concede the pot? There was a lot at stake here for Pete Jarazelsky and he would have been wise to keep his anxiety to himself.

I fished a business card out of my wallet and laid it on the table. Jarazelsky wasn’t a large man and the jumpsuit made him appear even smaller. ‘Any time you wanna call me, Pete,’ I told him, ‘I’m open for business. And I appreciate your talkin’ to me when you didn’t have to. I owe you one.’

Dr Vencel Nagy’s interview room was neat as a pin. The tiled floor gleamed, the small wooden table and the chairs to either side had been polished to a frenzy; a bank of vertical filing cabinets against the far wall might have been resting on a showroom floor. The individual responsible stepped to one side when I entered the room, in deference to the uniformed guard escorting me. A small black man, he clutched a spray can of furniture polish and a soiled gray cloth to the breast of his orange jumpsuit as if fearing a robbery. But my escort never even glanced at the prisoner as he led me through a door to our right and into Nagy’s windowless office.

The contrast between Nagy’s office and his immaculate interview room could not have been greater. Not only did mismatched bookcases, crammed to capacity, stand against every wall, but the spaces between the bookcases were filled with dusty books stacked on top of each other. Towers of books sprouted from a threadbare Persian rug, as they did from Nagy’s desk where he’d created a wall of books. If I sat down, I’d no longer be able to see him, which might have been all to the good. Dr Vencel Nagy’s hands were jumping from his mouth to his ears to the fringe of snow-white hair along his scalp like cockroaches in search of a crevice. When he finally jammed them beneath his armpits, I was distinctly relieved.

‘Please, sit down,’ Nagy said after I introduced myself. In his sixties, his powder-white skin was criss-crossed by hundreds of fine wrinkles.

‘Do you think I might remove some of these books first?’ I shifted one of the stacks to the floor before he could answer, then stepped around another pile and dropped into a metal chair. I could see Nagy from this position, although it was like peering through a window.

‘So, tell me what you are traveling all this way to find?’ Nagy had a pronounced eastern-European accent. His vowels were thick, his consonants hard. His tone was that of a man used to having his questions answered.

‘To find out who killed David Lodge,’ I replied without hesitation.

Nagy turned to his left, his gaze drifting to the ceiling, and laughed, a heh-heh-heh devoid of amusement. ‘With this I cannot help you,’ he eventually admitted. ‘David wasn’t the sort of convict who made enemies. He was very quiet, very self-contained.’ Suddenly, Nagy’s hands were on the move again, bouncing over his chest and shoulders before settling at his waist. ‘You don’t know how much I miss David. This idiot they have sent me? You’ve seen him?’

‘I have,’ I admitted.

‘David, for me, wrote up the charts, kept the files, answered the phones. This lunatic, he’s all day with the vacuum cleaner and the rags and the bucket. From a medication chart, he knows nothing. From filing, he can’t tell A from Z.’ Nagy paused long enough to slide his hands beneath his thighs. ‘So, other than identify Lodge’s killers, how can I help you?’

‘How close were you to Lodge? Was he open with you?’

‘We spoke together often. David was very smart, but somewhat obsessed.’

‘Obsessed with what?’

‘With his innocence.’

Bang, a wild card, face up on the table. I saw it hit the top of Nagy’s desk, watched it quiver for a moment before settling down. ‘Were you Lodge’s therapist?’ I asked.

Nagy’s head made another left turn and he again laughed at the ceiling. ‘Therapy is not what I do here, detective. Here I treat.. ’ He shook his head. ‘No, no, no. Treat is too grand. What I do is control a population of psychotics with various medications.’ He smiled, his nearly lashless eyes narrowing slightly. ‘Left to their own devices, you see, my patients tend to disrupt the prison routine.’

‘And the warden wouldn’t like that?’

‘No, she wouldn’t. But medications were not for David. He was under control.’ Nagy’s hands fluttered up to pat the sides of his face when he paused. ‘Do you know about the blackout? David’s blackout? Do I have to explain it?’

‘Are you talking about his claim that he didn’t remember killing Spott? I always figured that was so much propaganda.’

‘There you are wrong, detective. David could not remember.’ Nagy leaned forward. ‘Think of how this would be for you. Not remembering the event that turned your life on its head. Are you guilty? Are you innocent? How can you know? And how can you accept your punishment when you are not knowing?’

I nodded, wanting nothing more, at this point, than for Nagy to continue. But the only things I encouraged were Nagy’s hands which did a ten-second dance, graceful as an aerial ballet, before he shoved them into his pockets.

‘For David,’ he finally continued, ‘the issue settled on the murder weapon, the blackjack. The blackjack belonged to him, true, but it had been sitting in his locker for months. Now, did he go to his locker that night, retrieve the weapon, then return to Spott’s cell? This is the question David asks.’

‘And what was his answer?’

‘First, David considered motive. Why did he want to kill Spott? Because Spott hit him? If this is the case, then killing is motivated by rage. But this is also very strange because if David was enraged, he could have killed Spott much earlier. David was not only having his gun and his nightstick with him, he is big enough to kill with his bare hands.’

I smiled and leaned back. ‘I see what you’re getting at. Lodge murdering Spott in a moment of rage is inconsistent with his going to his locker for a specific weapon. Inconsistent, but not impossible.’

‘And there you are seeing David’s dilemma. Logic can never bring certainty.’

‘No, it can’t. But tell me, doctor, did anybody else at the precinct know about the blackjack?’

Nagy’s lower jaw was large enough to produce a pronounced underbite. He thrust that jaw at me and raised a remarkably still finger. ‘This blackjack, it was a Kluugmann. It was collectible.’

‘Say that again?’

‘Kluugmann was a company that manufactured very high quality blackjacks and saps. They went out of business many decades ago and their products are collected. You can buy them at auction.’

‘So, Lodge showed his Kluugmann to all his buddies, then stuck it in his locker and forgot he even had it.’ Which was just what I would have done.

‘Now you are getting the deal. Would he even have remembered the weapon’s existence in the midst of a towering rage? A killing rage? This is what it boils down to with David.’

I shifted to Lodge’s stay in Cayuga at that point, but the good doctor professed ignorance, again insisting that Lodge was generally reticent except when discussing the Spott murder. And Nagy merely shrugged when I told him that Lodge was a suspect in a prison homicide.

‘This does not surprise me. In here, they are saying you must learn to walk the yard like a man. This is the first task, to walk through the yard without projecting fear. David was able to do this.’

‘And that makes him a killer?’

‘I am only saying, detective, that I am not surprised by what you are telling me.’

Nagy didn’t like being challenged, that was obvious. His head again turned to the left as his hands went into their little dance, touching, patting, pulling. By now it had become clear, even to me, that Nagy was suffering from an illness. Whether physical or psychological in nature was still up in the air.

‘Tell me,’ I finally said, ‘about Lodge’s thinking right before his release. Did he have specific plans? What was he looking forward to?’

‘Sometime in the last few months of his incarceration, David finally recovered a memory of the night Spott was killed. That was when he became convinced of his innocence.’

‘Did he say what it was that he remembered?’

‘No, only that it was a fragment, a piece of the puzzle. But this I will tell you. If he had other concerns, he did not discuss them with me.’

‘He never mentioned a man named DuWayne Spott?’

‘Never.’

‘What about a job, his wife, his old friends?’

Nagy’s face twisted to the right, then the left, both motions so exaggerated it took me a moment to realize he was merely shaking his head. ‘David was an obsessive type. You can see this in his body-building. Six days every week, never missing a day. It was how his mind worked.’

As I waited for Nagy to slow down, I played with the facts as I now understood them. A cold and sober David Lodge emerged, a Lodge obsessed with his innocence, a Lodge capable of murder. Without doubt, if Lodge was truly innocent, he’d present a formidable challenge to those who’d framed him. Killing Lodge was a rational response to that challenge, despite the risks.

Suddenly, Nagy jumped to his feet and pointed a trembling finger at the door behind me. I was startled enough to reach for my weapon (which I’d surrendered in the reception area), but when I turned it was only Nagy’s assistant. He was standing motionless in the doorway, still clutching his can of polish and his rag.

‘I have told you twenty times already to stay out my office,’ Nagy shouted. ‘Never you are to come in here. Are you hearing me? Never.’ Nagy’s donkey jaw had risen almost to his nose and his glittery blue eyes were circles of indignation. ‘If you were not my patient, I would hit you with a chair.’