Bodies in Winter

TWENTY-FOUR

‘ Yeah,’ Trina Zito told me twenty minutes later, ‘Tony drank pretty much all day, every day. But he wasn’t unhappy and he went to work in the morning, so who am I to judge?’

‘Your brother sees it differently,’ I suggested.

Trina’s husband, Fred, took that moment to put in his two cents. We were in the front room, seated on matching love seats. Though no more than a half-mile from Tony Szarek’s town house, the Zitos’ apartment was far more humble, five rooms in a frame tenement sided with textured yellow vinyl.

‘You don’t wanna pay too much attention to Mike,’ Zito told me. ‘He’s worried about his inheritance. The guy was on the balls of his ass when Tony died. Him, his wife and his three kids. If we hadn’t agreed to let ’em stay in Tony’s house until it’s sold, they’d be on the street.’

‘Tony died without a will,’ Trina explained. ‘Mike and me, we’re his closest relatives.’

‘Is the estate in probate court?’

‘Yeah,’ Fred declared, ‘and it’s taking forever as it is. If Tony was murdered, we’ll most likely never see a dime.’

‘You’ve discussed this possibility?’

Trina Zito cleared her throat. ‘When the cops said it was suicide, I figured they must know. I mean, there was an autopsy and everything. But I’m not surprised that you turned up, either. See, my brother had his pension, plus he made a lotta money in business and he was pretty healthy, so he had no reason to kill himself.’

‘How big is his estate?’

To her credit, Trina answered the question without hesitation. ‘What with the equity on the house and the bank accounts, we’re probably lookin’ at six hundred thousand.’

‘You said Tony was in business?’

‘Right, he was a partner in Greenpoint Carton Supply, on India Street.’

I leaned back and crossed my legs. Trina’s tone was becoming more conversational and I wanted to put her at ease. ‘One thing I don’t get. If your brother drank from morning till night, how’d he run a business?’

‘That I couldn’t tell you, detective. We used to have Tony over to dinner every couple of months and he occasionally took us out to a restaurant, but he never talked about his work. I don’t even know the names of his partners.’

‘Do you know for certain that he actually had partners?’

‘He must’ve, because we don’t inherit his shares in the business. They revert to the corporation. That wouldn’t make a lot of sense if he didn’t have partners.’

I nodded thoughtfully, then took Dante Russo’s photo from my shirt pocket. ‘You ever see this guy with Tony?’

Even as she shook her head, Trina Szarek echoed her brother, Mike. ‘Me and Tony,’ she declared, ‘we weren’t that close.’

‘What about a man named Pete Jarazelsky?’

Fred Zito popped to attention, running his fingertips back and forth over the dense stubble on his chin. ‘Don’t talk to me about Jarazelsky,’ he declared. ‘I own an auto parts store in Williamsburg and I once hired Pete to work for me on Saturdays. The scumbag robbed me blind. Every time my back was turned, something else went out the door. And the guy was a cop, for Christ’s sake.’

I nodded agreement, then asked the same question I’d put to Mike Szarek. ‘If you and Tony weren’t close, who should I speak with? He must have been close to someone.’

Fred and Trina looked at each other for a moment, then shrugged in unison. ‘Yeah,’ Trina admitted, ‘there’s someone alright.’

‘And who might that be?’

‘Ewa Gierek, his live-in lover. Ewa’s suing for half the estate.’

‘You know where she lives?’

‘In Flushing, with her brother.’

Ewa Gierek was the whitest white woman I’d ever seen. Her porcelain skin was nearly translucent, her blue eyes pale and prominent, her hair so light that her lashes and brows were virtually invisible. A wintry landscape, to be sure, broken only by the scarlet lipstick on her small, Cupid’s-bow mouth and the blush worked into her cheeks.

The image of Tony Szarek I’d been carrying up till then, of the pitiful Broom mopping his way through the last years of a stumble-bum career, vanished forever. Szarek was a few months short of his fifty-eighth birthday when he died. Ewa Gierek was no more than forty and might have been a good deal younger.

‘If I could just come in for a moment,’ I said. ‘I want to talk to you about Tony Szarek.’

She nodded once and led me to a living room choked with oversized furniture: a leather sofa with rolled arms, two matching recliners, a pair of leather hassocks, a glass coffee table, a projection TV jammed into a corner. The wall opposite the sofa held four rows of glass shelves on which baseball memorabilia, mostly playing cards in lucite holders, had been arranged.

‘My brother, Ryszard,’ Ewa explained when I glanced at the display, ‘he is dealer of these baseball things.’ Her accent was heavy and she spoke slowly, pronouncing the words with care. ‘Even in Warsaw he is following Yankees. Crazy, yes? But he has made living from baseballs. This is good.’

‘Is your brother home?’

‘He is at convention in Chicago.’

I was about to launch into my usual pitch, the one about reopening the case, taking another look at the facts, but decided against it. Instead, I took out Dante Russo’s photo and tossed it on the coffee table between us. ‘Do you know this man?’

One thing about pale white skin, it’s a definite impediment to successful lying. Even as Ewa shook her head, her cheeks flared as though someone had lit a candle inside her mouth. Under other circumstances, where time wasn’t a factor, I might have let her falsehood stand. As it was, I pounced on her.

‘Listen, Ewa, and listen closely. I’m here because I think person or persons unknown, motivated by money, put a gun to Anthony Szarek’s temple and pulled the trigger. Can you hear me now? You’re suing for half of an estate worth six hundred thousand dollars. As the Feds like to say, that makes you a person of interest. Of course, there are other persons of interest, who also stand to benefit from Tony’s death, but they didn’t start out by lying. See, I already know that you and this gentleman are acquainted, so maybe you wanna take a closer look before I leave with the wrong impression.’

By the time I finished, my voice had risen in volume and my tone was self-righteous, despite the little fabrication at the end. The display was meant to be intimidating, but Ewa’s eyes never left mine as she worked things out.

‘I know him,’ she finally admitted.

‘Why didn’t you tell me that right away?’

‘Tony has always said to not talk about his business.’

‘Tony’s dead and buried, Ewa. It’s time to save yourself, and just maybe your inheritance, too. Now tell me his name, the man in the photograph.’

‘Dante… Dante something.’

‘And how well were Tony and Dante acquainted?’

Once she got into the flow, Ewa was forthcoming, at least as far as I could tell. Although she was routinely ordered to make herself scarce whenever Russo visited the Milton Street house, she believed Russo and Szarek to be partners in Greenpoint Carton. She’d seen them at the warehouse, conferring with the man who handled the company’s day-to-day affairs. That man’s name was Justin Whitlock.

I have an excellent memory, as do most good detectives, but it took me a minute to locate the name. Lieutenant Justin Whitlock had been the desk officer at the precinct on the night Clarence Spott was killed. Just as the Broom had placed David Lodge alone with the victim, Whitlock had provided Dante Russo with an alibi. Predictably, the job had made a scapegoat of Whitlock, forcing him into retirement.

‘Justin Whitlock,’ I asked, ‘is he a partner?’

Ewa shrugged. ‘I know only that when I am calling Tony at job, Justin is usually one to pick up telephone. When I am at job, Justin gives orders to workers.’

‘Alright, I believe you. Tell me, did Tony ever mention a man named David Lodge?’

‘I don’t remember this name.’

‘Did he seem worried about anything, say in the three months before he died?’

‘Tony was party animal. Always out with friends. He worried about nothing.’ She stared at me for a moment, her head cocked to one side, her Cupid’s-bow lips so pursed they might have been found on the face of a doll. ‘Why you are not asking about the loving brother?’

‘Mike Szarek?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve already spoken to him.’

I stood at that point, intending to express my gratitude for her cooperation and be on my way to the hospital. But Ewa had other ideas. She placed herself between me and the door, backing up until the knob was pressing into her back. All the while, she attacked Mike Szarek’s reputation. According to Ewa, he was a brute who’d been arrested twice for spousal battery. Moreover, he was a hypocrite of a Christian who hated and envied his successful, happy-go-lucky brother, even while receiving holy communion.

‘Every Sunday I am seeing his face at ten o’clock mass at St. Anthony’s. Never he is even looking in my direction. Always he walks out with nose in the air.’

I endured the diatribe for several minutes, hoping some unrevealed tidbit would slip out, but it was just more of the same.

‘Ms. Gierek, I have to leave,’ I finally told her. ‘But don’t worry, I’ll be talking to Mike Szarek again.’

Ewa turned far enough to unlock the door, then swung back to me. As I suspected, she had her exit lines ready.

‘You Americans,’ she said, pulling the door open, ‘you are narrow peoples, all the time lying flat, like a ruler. Only one sin do you see, sin of sex. There are seven deadly sins but you only think about lust. How many times do I see big fat man on television screen telling world about sin of sodomy? What about sin of gluttony? What about sin of greed? Of envy? Of hatred? To these, you Americans are blind.’

I flashed a smile at that point as I slid by her into the hallway, thinking, Lady, when you’re right, you’re right.