Bodies in Winter

TWENTY-THREE

The Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint is similar to the neighborhoods of Ridgewood and Bushwick in many ways. Established in the middle of the nineteenth century, Greenpoint, too, was created to serve the needs of manufacturers fleeing overcrowded Manhattan. The Civil War ironclad, Monitor, was built in Greenpoint, at the Continental Iron Works, and one of the first kerosene refineries in New York, Astral Oil, opened for business in 1867.

Both Continental Iron Works and Astral Oil were long gone by the time I drove into Greenpoint on that Sunday morning, replaced, along with most of the community’s manufacturing base, by warehouses offering service-sector jobs at appropriately lower wages. But Greenpoint was still vibrant, having undergone several major population shifts in the past fifty years. The first had begun after WWII, when a half-million Puerto Ricans poured into Manhattan’s two great barrios, East Harlem and the Lower East Side. By the early Sixties, the barrios were full and the Puerto Ricans began to move to neighborhoods in the outer boroughs. One of those neighborhoods was Greenpoint, where they came to dominate a section on the community’s northeastern edge.

The second change came forty years later, after the fall of the Soviet Union. Free to emigrate for the first time in fifty years, Poles flooded Greenpoint’s already sizable Polish-American community. So many, in fact, that a good number of the Latinos, now a mix of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Mexicans, had been forced out by rising rents.

I hadn’t come to Greenpoint, however, in search of pierogies or stuffed cabbage, or even the peppered vodka. The material I took from Adele’s apartment had included the case files of David Lodge and Tony Szarek, as well as Dante Russo’s personnel file and Adele’s notebook. I’d read the notebook first, but the only salient fact I uncovered was that Pete Jarazelsky had resided in Greenpoint until his conviction for burglary. As Adele had circled the address several times, it naturally caught my attention.

Tying Jarazelsky to the Broom involved no great detecting skills either: Tony Szarek was living in Greenpoint at the time of his death. But the last connection eluded me for several hours.

Because there was no entry in Adele’s notebook to guide me, I got to Dante Russo’s personnel file last. Russo was a sixteen-year NYPD veteran. His file included all of his evaluations, along with records of the tours he’d worked, the overtime he’d piled up, and his PBA Trustee status. If there’d been any civilian complaints against Russo, they would also have been included, as would commendations or departmental disciplines. But there were none.

I found Russo’s evaluations to be universally bland. Dante Russo is an experienced officer who continues to exhibit good judgment in the field. This was true even in the year Clarence Spott was murdered. Russo’s eager cooperation (along, no doubt, with his PBA connections) had apparently resulted in a complete whitewash. His yearly evaluation made no mention of either Clarence Spott or David Lodge.

It was all very interesting, this portrait of a careful, calculating cop, a cop who took as few risks as possible, a cop who should have gone out of his way to avoid partnering with a rummy like David Lodge. But it was also useless, and I was finally left with a PA-15, Russo’s original application for employment with the NYPD.

Sitting there, I vividly recalled working on my own application. The PA15 required you to list every job you’d ever held, every school you’d attended, any contact with the police, the names and addresses of your parents and siblings, the names and addresses of third parties willing to recommend you, the address of every house or apartment in which you’d lived.

I’d fretted over my application for weeks, running from place to place, making sure I had each date and address exactly right. At the time, I was afraid that I’d be rejected if I messed up on a single detail. Russo, apparently, had approached his own application with equal care. His PA15 was typed and there were no white-outs.

Curious, I shifted to Russo’s personal recommendations. There were six in all, half from PBA board members — Russo had obviously been pointed toward a career with the union from the very beginning — and half from neighbors who claimed to have known Russo from his infancy. The neighbors were uniform in their praise of Dante’s virtues, his honesty and reliability, his love of God and country. They could make this claim because they’d once lived within two blocks of him in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint.

I got my first surprise of the day when I pulled over to the curb on Milton Street off Manhattan Avenue. For the most part, the housing in Greenpoint reflects the neighborhood’s working-class character, a necessity because Greenpoint was developed before the mass transit era. Factory employees had to live within walking distances of the factories they manned — not just the workers on the floor, but the professionals as well, the engineers, the accountants, the corporate executives. I’d seen the same phenomenon operating in Bushwick and Ridgewood, upper-middle-class enclaves shoehorned into working-class communities.

Milton Street, from where I sat, was a prime example. Both sides of the block were lined with sturdy brick town houses fronted by trees whose branches swept over the road. Without doubt, the town houses had been constructed in the second half of the nineteenth century, their cost well above the lifetime salaries of ordinary factory workers.

The town house to my right, the one in which Anthony Szarek had been living at the time of his death, was in perfect condition, its yellow brick free of soot, every sill in place and level. On the second floor, despite the cold, a lace curtain fluttered behind a tall window. Somebody was home.

I got out of the car and buttoned my coat, grateful for the windless day, and for a gossamer-thin layer of gathering cloud. The weather was going to change and the way I figured, it could only get warmer. We were already at absolute zero and had been for more days than I cared to count.

I rang the bell and waited patiently before a set of oak double doors. My informant had invited me to connect Szarek, Russo and Jarazelsky, a task Adele had already performed. But connection isn’t conspiracy, and my aim was simply to draw the ties that bind a little tighter.

The man who opened the doors was tall and barrel-chested, wearing a dark suit and a red tie over a snow-white shirt. I flashed my shield and ID, then asked him to identify himself.

He hesitated, his lips compressing slightly as he folded his arms across his chest. Finally, he said, ‘Mike Szarek.’

Mike Szarek was Tony Szarek’s brother. He’d been interviewed by Detective Mark Winnman. Winnman had found Mike’s name in the deceased’s address book, then killed two birds with one stone by notifying the family and conducting his one and only interview at the same time.

‘You’re Anthony Szarek’s brother?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Can we go inside?’

‘I’m on my way to church, me and the whole family. You should come back later.’

I put my hand out to prevent his closing the door. ‘This’ll only take a few minutes. We could do it right here if you want.’ When he didn’t respond, I told him that the circumstances surrounding his brother’s death were being re-examined, then asked him to describe his brother’s state of mind in the days leading up to his death.

No human head is truly round, but Mike Szarek’s came close, an effect enhanced by a short, thick neck made even shorter when he hunched his shoulders. ‘The cops have already been here. Some detective whose name I don’t remember.’

‘Winnman.’

‘Yeah, Winnman.’

I slid my hand in my pockets and smiled the most ingratiating smile in my repertoire. ‘Like I said, we’re taking another look at your brother’s death, going back over the details.’

‘You think it wasn’t suicide?’

‘We’re taking another look,’ I stubbornly repeated. ‘Nobody’s drawing any conclusions.’

After a moment, Szarek’s shoulders relaxed and he again met my gaze, an indication that he’d decided to tell the truth, at least as he saw it. ‘What could I say? Like I told the other detective, me and Tony wasn’t all that tight. Not that we were enemies or anything. It’s just that I’m very active in the church. Tony, he never went to church, didn’t believe in it.’

Szarek paused long enough to gesture at a Roman Catholic church on the far side of Manhattan Avenue, then continued. ‘And when Tony killed himself, he rejected God altogether. Now Tony coulda gone to Father Willenski, who’s also a psychologist, instead of committing suicide. That’s a mortal sin, suicide, and there’s no way to tell the Lord that you’re sorry once you pull the trigger.’

‘Mr Szarek, believe me, I didn’t come here to stir up bad memories. I just need to know if there were any specific events that led you to believe your brother was suicidal. Was he generally unhappy? Did he talk of killing himself? Did he make a suicide attempt in the past?’

‘Like I said, me and him, we weren’t so close.’

‘Who could help me then? Who knew him well enough to answer those questions?’

Szarek frowned as it suddenly dawned on him that he’d walked into a trap. I needed the name of somebody close to the Broom. Mike would now have to furnish that name or be seen to deliberately obstruct my investigation. Myself, I didn’t figure the man had the heart to confront me. He was a good citizen at bottom. Going one-on-one with cops was not on his agenda.

‘You could talk to my sister, Trina Zito. Her and Tony got together once in a while.’ Mike Szarek smiled for the first time. ‘What could I say?’ he asked. ‘Trina’s the family disgrace. She married a wop.’

I clapped him on the shoulder, one kidder to another. ‘It might’ve been a lot worse, Mike. You gotta look on the bright side. She could’ve married a Jew.’ I gave it a couple of beats, enduring Szarek’s quick frown. ‘Say, do you by any chance know a cop named Pete Jarazelsky?’

Szarek’s head jerked back as though he’d been poked in the eye. He was pissed now, and probably freezing cold, even standing back in the doorway. ‘Jarazelsky’s in jail.’

‘I know that, Mr Szarek. I spoke to him recently. What I’m asking is if you knew him.’

‘Pete grew up in the neighborhood, like all of us, but he was a lot younger than me so I can’t say we were actually friends. But if we saw each other on the street, we’d nod hello.’

‘What about your brother? Did your brother know Jarazelsky well?’

‘They were both cops in the same precinct, so I guess they had to know each other.’