Bodies in Winter

NINETEEN

Rakowitz kept us going for another fifteen minutes, although it was clear from the beginning — when Jack demanded that he name these cops, when he failed to do so — that we were being treated to a street rumor so common it had risen to the level of myth. The cops, so the story went, were always bent, the man at the top always protected. I’d heard the same tale from Dominicans in Washington Heights and Rastafarians on Eastern Parkway, usually as I was closing a pair of handcuffs around their wrists. Why, they wanted to know, did we snatch the little guys who were only dealing to stay high when the big dogs went their way unmolested?

As I remember it, my usual response was a slap on the head and a demand that the offender ‘Shut the fuck up.’

Still, Rakowitz was impressive. He told his tale forcefully, saving the best for last. ‘OK, you know that Luna has a house on Decatur Street near Central Avenue, right?’

In fact, we didn’t. Decatur and Central intersected in Bushwick, not our jurisdiction.

‘Yeah, fine,’ Jack said. ‘So what?’

‘So, I’m acquainted with a dude who was on a roof gettin’ off when he seen cops go into that building. They marched in like they owned the fuckin’ place.’ Rakowitz gave it a couple of beats before delivering the punch line. ‘And this guy, he says he seen these cops before.’

‘Your acquaintance, he got a name?’

‘Bucky.’

‘Bucky?’

‘Yeah, on account of his teeth.’

‘So, where can we find Bucky?’

‘I don’t know. I ain’t seen him in a while. But everybody knows him. He grew up in the neighborhood.’

‘Where?’

‘I ain’t sure.’

‘How ’bout his real name? You know that?’

When Rakowitz leaned forward, beads of sweat dripped from his hair to splatter on the table top. ‘I don’t,’ he admitted, ‘but I could find him.’

At that point, Jack approached the prisoner, drew him to his feet and quick-marched him into a cage. ‘The only thing you need to find,’ he explained as he turned the key in the door, ‘is a boyfriend. Before you become public property.’

By the time I walked into Sparkle’s at nine-thirty, the joint was jumping. I took a moment to absorb the noise and the commingled odors of beer, tobacco and bodies huddled together after a long day’s work, then crossed to the bar where Mike had a Dewar’s waiting. Home sweet home.

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.’