Bodies in Winter

TWENTY-NINE

Short, plump and submissive, Melissa Aubregon was her cousin’s polar opposite. She let me into her apartment and answered the few questions I asked without hesitation, and without raising her voice. Only once did she demur, when I spotted a photo of Dante Russo on an end table. Even there, she compromised. Melissa was sitting on Dante’s lap in the photo, staring up at him, her left arm draped around his neck.

‘I need that photograph,’ I told her. ‘I want you to give it to me.’

‘Dante will kill me.’

‘Don’t tell him.’

‘He’ll notice.’

‘Say it got knocked over and the glass broke.’

Melissa shifted the baby she was cradling, from her right to her left arm, as she tried to come to a decision. Finally, she said, ‘Would smaller be alright?’

The photo was an enlargement and Melissa still had the original snapshot. That was the compromise, a way to please me and please Dante at the same time. Melissa liked to please. When the baby began to fuss as she showed me to the door, she lifted him until his face was a few inches from hers and whispered, ‘No, no, no, no, no. It’s gonna be alright. Don’t worry.’

When I got home, Adele had a surprise for me. New York State corporations, even privately held corporations, are required to file documents identifying their officers. That information is public knowledge and can be accessed through a number of online services that maintain databases of public information. Adele had used the largest of these to retrieve Greenpoint Carton Supply’s filing. Three items stuck out. Greenpoint Carton had changed hands six months after the death of Clarence Spott. Anthony Szarek was the new president. Ellen Lodge was the new secretary-treasurer.

‘Ellen, you fool,’ I muttered.

‘You feeling sorry for the widow, Corbin?’

Adele’s question wasn’t only sarcastic, though there was sarcasm aplenty in her tone. The whole business of interrogation requires that your emotions be put to one side. Though your approach may vary from threatening to soothing to consoling, the focus is always on manipulation. The little wedges are driven in wherever there’s a chink in the armor; the emotions you project at any given moment are simply the right hammer applied to the right wedge. Later on, if you’re successful and your subject is particularly odious, you experience an intense satisfaction. But that’s for later on, when you’re in the bar, when you’ve had a couple, when the bad guy is resting quietly in a cell. The feast comes after the hunt.

After recounting my activities that morning (including my encounter with the rat, to which my partner barely reacted), I produced the photo I’d taken from Marissa and passed it to Adele.

‘What are you thinking, Corbin? That Ellen was in love with Russo?’

‘Ellen Lodge had to find her way to the party somehow,’ I finally replied. ‘Why not love?’

‘Are you going to ask that question when we visit her this afternoon?’

‘No. Tomorrow, maybe, after I soften her up.’ I looked at my watch. It was almost one and I had work to do. ‘I need to use the computer, Adele.’

She got up and brushed by me. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to make a record of everything we’ve accomplished so far and email it to Conrad Stehle. Just in case something happens to us.’

Adele nodded once. I’d mentioned Conrad many times in the course of the endless conversation that flows between partners. ‘I’ve destroyed all the files: Russo’s, Lodge’s, Szarek’s,’ she announced, ‘to protect my sources.’

‘Good. We couldn’t use them anyway.’

I turned to the computer, expecting Adele to go about her business, which in this case involved ordering lunch from a Chinese restaurant near Gramercy Park. But she lingered at the door long enough for me to look from the monitor into her eyes.

‘I’m not going back to Mel,’ she told me. ‘Never again. I can’t believe I’ve lived with him this long.’

‘You wanna hang out here until you get your head straight, it’s alright.’

She reached out to stroke my face with the fingertips of her right hand. ‘I was betting you wouldn’t come back, that you’d choose the job. I was wrong and I’m sorry.’

I suppose I should have taken her in my arms at that point. Even if the signals she was sending weren’t amorous, a comforting hug was certainly in order. But I lacked the courage to touch her, though I wanted her as badly as I’d ever wanted any woman, and I finally deflected the conversation with a pitiful attempt at humor.

‘Tell ’em to make that Hunan pork extra spicy. If you don’t mind.’

We got to Ellen Lodge’s home at four o’clock, but I didn’t approach the door immediately. First I loaded the four bags of garbage Ellen had left at the curb into my trunk while Adele remained in the Nissan. I was just closing the trunk when Ellen Lodge came through the door at a dead run.

‘What do you think you’re doing? I have neighbors, for Christ’s sake.’

I said nothing for a moment. We were in the first day of New York’s traditional January thaw. Though night had already fallen, the temperature was in the fifties, warm enough for me to brave the elements without an overcoat.

‘When you put out your trash, Ellen, it ceases to be your property.’

‘I’m not talkin’ about callin’ a lawyer. I’m talkin’ about my neighbors. I been livin’ here fifteen years.’

Adele chose that moment to emerge from the Nissan, making a spectacular entrance that brought Ellen Lodge’s hand to her mouth.

‘What happened to you?’ she naturally asked.

‘What happened to my partner,’ I said, ‘is that she got off lucky. Everybody else who crossed Dante Russo has ended up dead.’ I gave it a few beats, my heart bursting with gratitude. All along, I’d been figuring Ellen for a dupe and her shock at Adele’s appearance confirmed that suspicion. She wasn’t there when the attack was planned and nobody had told her about it afterwards. ‘Why don’t we go inside and have this conversation in private?’

After a quick look up and down the block, she led us into the interior of the house, then up the stairs to the small sitting room where I’d conducted the last interview. Again, I was struck by the plush upholstery and vivid colors. The roses and peonies embroidered on the fabric covering the couch and chair were open and voluptuous, in stark contrast to the very guarded woman who’d chosen the pattern and who now took a seat across from me.

‘My husband’s killer is dead,’ she declared, ‘so I don’t really see what you’re doin’ here stealin’ my garbage.’

‘There was a second man, Ellen, if you remember; a second assassin.’

‘And you’re lookin’ for him in my trash?’

‘I look for him everywhere, hoping to find him somewhere.’

‘Spare me, please.’ When I didn’t respond, Ellen crossed her legs and leaned away from me. ‘Fine, let’s get it over with. What do you want?’

‘We were wondering,’ I said, ‘if you’ve recovered any stray memories in the last week.’ I watched her light a cigarette with a disposable lighter. As she drew the smoke down into her lungs, her eyes closed and I got the distinct feeling that she didn’t want to open them. ‘Something Davy might have said when you visited, or wrote in his letters.’

‘As a matter of fact, I have. Davy told me that he worked in the prison shrink’s office. He told me the shrink was crazy, that he was completely unreliable.’

Credit where credit is due. When I’d asked her about Nagy in our last interview, she’d denied all knowledge of his existence. Now she’d covered her ass.

‘Was that something Davy said to you?’

‘It was in his letters.’

‘Anything else you can remember?’

The window behind Ellen was raised a few inches and a pair of red curtains fluttered in the draft, reaching to within a foot of her close-cropped hair. ‘Why do you keep asking me these questions about Davy? If I remember right, he was the victim.’

The fact that she didn’t claim victimhood for herself was encouraging. Not that I intended to respond to her questions. The subject never controls the interview.

‘Do you remember I asked you about Tony Szarek last time I was here? The man they called the Broom?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘Well, you told me that you recognized the name, but that you’d never met him. I wonder if you want to reconsider that statement, if maybe some new memory has surfaced.’

Ellen Lodge’s eyes flicked over to Adele. ‘This ain’t right,’ she said.

If Ellen was looking for help from Adele, she’d come to the wrong source. Adele’s gaze was absolutely ferocious, the gaze of someone who’s been hit in the face with a bat and holds the individual before her responsible.

‘I asked you a simple question, Ellen,’ I said. ‘You can always refuse to answer.’

‘Alright, I could’ve run into him once or twice at Christmas parties in the precinct. Or at some other party. But I didn’t actually know him.’

‘Have you been in contact with him since he retired?’

‘Do I need a lawyer here?’

‘What you need to do is answer the very simple question I asked you.’

‘I think I need a lawyer.’

I shook my head. Legal representation was not a place to which we could return over and over again.

‘Face it, Ellen, this isn’t Law and Order and you’re not getting an attorney. And we’re not leaving, either, not until we get some answers.’ I kept my tone as non-confrontational as I could, allowing the words to speak for themselves. ‘You were married to David Lodge, so you already know how it works. We’re here to stay.