Bodies in Winter

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.

After a brief journey into the kitchen, where I opened and closed the refrigerator door for no good reason, I decided that I couldn’t decide. The only thing Adele would want to hear from me, assuming she wanted to hear anything at all, was that I was ready to join her crusade. And I wasn’t.

Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in the office of my high school mentor, Conrad Stehle, at the Y on Twenty-Third Street. It was Saturday afternoon, the pool full and Conrad busy. Nevertheless, when I knocked on his door and told him, ‘I’m fucked, Conrad,’ he waved me to a chair, then listened carefully while I reviewed the events following our last meeting. When I got to the punch line, the part about Adele’s open rebellion, he nodded and smiled.

‘For me,’ I concluded, ‘the whole business is about bad choices. It’s like the deal they used to give murderers in Utah: the gas chamber, the rope, or a firing squad.’

Conrad took his little cigar from his pocket and tapped it on the cover of Swimmer’s World magazine. His eyes closed for a moment, then opened again as he smiled. ‘This business about losing no matter what you do, I have a hard time with it.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, Conrad. But if there’s a clear win here, it’s somehow eluded me.’

‘What about David Lodge’s killers? Putting them in prison, which we both know is where they belong.’

‘The job’s going to punish Adele, no matter how this turns out. If I do anything to help her, I’ll be punished, too.’

‘That doesn’t answer the question.’

‘Conrad, removing bad people from the general populace is an activity that satisfies my deepest needs. That’s why I do it. But there’s a price to pay here and…’ I hesitated for a moment, sorting through the various conflicts, reducing them in scope until I finally got my thoughts around an idea that didn’t squirm out of reach. ‘I don’t want to be an asshole, a jerk,’ I explained. ‘Adele, she’s got delusions of grandeur. Her goal is to right every wrong. Me, I try not to confuse myself with cartoon superheroes. That’s because I know that when you leap off a roof, you don’t fly up into the clouds, you go splat on the concrete. Besides, I didn’t bury evidence, or look past witnesses, or try to dump the case in somebody else’s lap. I conducted an honorable investigation, committing every scrap of information to paper, until the day I was relieved. What happens next is not my business.’

Conrad looked at me for a moment, his eyes bright, his smile amused, then got up and walked over to where a small coffee maker rested on a filing cabinet. He slid a filter into the basket, added coffee, then filled the tank with water. A moment later, the coffee maker emitted a wet belch, shortly followed by a hiss, then the patter of coffee dropping into a carafe.

I sat through the process, giving Conrad plenty of time to challenge my argument. I knew we’d eventually come back to the business at hand, as I knew the timing was strictly at Conrad’s discretion. Sure enough, after serving the coffee and taking a quick sniff at the cigar in his pocket, he finally spoke.

‘Now tell me what calamity will befall Harry Corbin if he just walks away from this case. If he does nothing at all.’

‘You mean, if I desert my partner on the field of battle?’ I returned his smile. ‘That’s not too good for the old self-image.’

‘Could you live with it?’

‘You not gettin’ this, Conrad? The prize behind door number two is the same as the prize behind door number one. Yeah, I could walk away from Adele, and I wouldn’t fall apart, either. But I’d have to grow a beard.’

‘A beard? Why a beard?’

‘Because that way I won’t recognize myself when I look in the mirror.’

‘I understand,’ Conrad conceded after a moment, ‘how that might not work out.’ He filled the two mugs with coffee, then carried them over to his desk. Taken black, Conrad’s coffee was as bitter as boiled espresso.

‘The half-and-half?’ I pointed to an open container sitting next to the little computer on his desk. ‘You wouldn’t remember when you bought it, would you?’

‘Yesterday.’

I watched him lace his own coffee with two packets of sugar and a large dollop of half-and-half. When the half-and-half didn’t curdle, I took the plunge, filling my own mug to the brim. ‘There’s something else,’ I said, ‘another factor working against Adele. You spoke about punishing Lodge’s killers, about hauling the bad guys up to the bar of justice. Well, there’s no guarantee that Adele and I can close this case, not working on our own. Obvious moves, like obtaining phone records and financial documents, will be closed to us, along with access to ballistics and the crime lab. And Pete Jarazelsky, that ultimate soft target? If the job doesn’t back us, we have no way to put pressure on him, even if he’d agree to an interview.’

‘So, there’s the possibility of risking everything for nothing?’

‘I couldn’t have said it better myself. All the pain, none of the pleasure. The ultimate lose-lose situation.’ I leaned forward and cocked my head to the left. ‘In my personal experience, people who launch themselves into lose-lose situations fall into three categories. They’re either born losers, or psychotics, or both.’

‘Tell me,’ he demanded without turning around. ‘Into which category does Adele Bentibi fall? Is she the loser? Or is she the psychotic? Or is she the psychotic loser?’