Bodies in Winter

FORTY

It was eleven o’clock before CSU cleared my vehicle, and another twenty minutes before Adele and I were able to clear the snow around it. I remained patient throughout the process. Not so Adele, who strode back and forth, her hands folded across her chest, watching the crime scene cops as if she believed they were aware of our plans and willfully delaying us.

I discovered the reason for her agitation only as we pulled away from the curb. ‘We have another stop to make,’ she told me. ‘At Sparkle’s.’

‘Are you talking about Linus Potter?’

‘Yes.’

Though I steered the Nissan toward the requested destination, I didn’t reply for a moment. I’d been speculating on the identity of our anonymous informant from the beginning. Certainly, I’d suspected Linus Potter. I’d even called him by name in the course of our phone conversations, casting a bait to which he hadn’t risen. But my suspicions were no more than a hunch based on our face-to-face talks. There was no evidence to connect him to any of the known co-conspirators.

I looked at Adele. She was staring out through the windshield, her expression set, a woman who knew exactly what she had to do and why she had to do it. There could be only one reason for her determination.

‘It was Potter who attacked you,’ I finally said, my tone more final than accusing.

‘His face was covered, Corbin. But the tiny head, the shoulders, the gorilla chest — there’s no doubt in my mind.’

‘So, why didn’t you tell me? Better yet, why did you say that you had no memory of what happened to you?’

Adele drew a breath, then turned far enough to look into my face. ‘That night, when you came into my room in the hospital, I didn’t know exactly where you stood. Later, after we made love, I was afraid that you’d go after him if I told you what really happened. There was other work to do first.’

The explanation only provoked another burst of resentment, even though I knew she was right. Our methodical, step-by-step investigation had sealed the fate of all the conspirators, including Linus Potter. There was no escape for any of them. If I’d started with Linus, on the other hand, we might have lost everyone.

‘That night,’ Adele continued, ‘I saw Potter as he came out from behind a parked SUV. He was carrying an aluminum baseball bat, holding it above his right shoulder with both hands. Somehow, I managed to raise an arm as I tried to duck into his body. I didn’t get clear, of course, that’s obvious. But I was able to move close enough to avoid the heavy part of the bat. Potter hit me with the thin part, the handle, which is the only reason I’m talking to you right now.’

I watched her eyes fill as she re-lived her attack, as the fear returned, and I had to wonder how many times the memories had swarmed, like bats from a cave, to invade her consciousness. In many ways, my own life had been an attempt to avoid the various terrors that propelled me through early adolescence, an attempt never entirely successful. Sure, I can hold them at bay, vampires before a cross, while I’m awake. But at night, in my dreams, they often come out to play.

‘I know I’m not an easy person to live with,’ Adele continued. ‘I think that’s why I stayed with Mel, even after I knew we were finished. A warm body on the other side of the bed? Better than nothing, right?’

‘Are you saying that I’m just another warm body?’

‘I’m saying that I love you, and I’m not used to that, either.’

Again, as when she asked me to bandage her wounds, I had the sense that Adele was opening herself up for my inspection. She was offering me a secret and the cost was obvious, in the tilt of her head, in the resigned tone. She held my gaze for a moment, then seemed to flinch as she fell back in the seat.

‘Tell me what you want to do?’ I asked. ‘With Linus?’

‘I need to pay him back, Corbin. Personally.’

‘You need to be a lot more specific here, partner, because that part I already figured out.’

Adele smiled then. We were now thinking alike and my only fear, as we began to discuss strategy, was that Linus Potter, deterred by the weather, wouldn’t be in Sparkle’s when we got there.

I needn’t have worried. When Adele and I stepped through the door a few minutes after midnight, Potter was sitting at his usual table, his back to the room, staring into an empty mug. Otherwise, the bar was deserted except for the boss, Mike Blair. Blair was standing in front of a small sink, washing and drying glasses. He looked up as we came through the door, then tossed the dish rag into the sink and pulled a bottle of Dewar’s off the shelf. By the time I reached the bar, he’d poured me a double.

‘You still drinkin’ through a straw?’ he asked Adele.

‘I’d like a glass of whatever white wine you have in the refrigerator.’

Blair shuddered, perhaps recalling a day when cops had simpler tastes, then ducked under the bar to fetch a half-empty bottle of Chardonnay. It even came with a cork.

I waited until Adele’s wine was poured, then turned to Sparkle and raised my glass. ‘To the job,’ I said. For some reason, my ex-partner failed to echo the toast.

‘I heard you had some trouble tonight.’ Always nimble, always suspicious, Blair’s eyes flicked from me to Adele. ‘I heard you had a close call.’

I think Blair was searching for that line in the sand, the one you have to draw for yourself. True, Adele and I had brought disgrace on the job. But did that merit assassination? Perhaps there was some sort of technical exception that allowed the blue wall of silence to be momentarily breached. Or, perhaps, any hole in the dike would bring on a catastrophic flood.

‘They were Paco Luna’s men,’ I said.

‘You sure?’

‘I’d be willing to bet my next six pay checks on it.’

‘And you say there were cops involved in this?’

Adele finally spoke up. ‘We were investigating cops and ex-cops, not Paco Luna. If Luna came after us, they sent him.’

That wasn’t entirely true because I’d talked up Luna to my snitches, then again to Nina Francisco. But I didn’t correct my partner. Instead, I picked up my drink, took a sip, then carried it to Linus Potter’s table.

I sat down without asking, on the far side of the table with my back to the wall. Potter’s eyes opened, but he didn’t look up. Myself, I was in no hurry. I simply allowed the clock to run for several minutes as I carefully centered myself. Under no circumstances would I show Potter the rage boiling just beneath the surface. Under no circumstances would I let him know just how much I wanted to kill him. This was especially important because I’d already passed my back-up Smith amp; Wesson to Adele. My job was to provoke. The honor of killing him, if it came to that, was hers.

Finally, I asked, ‘Back when you were still in uniform? What was your rep?’

Potter laughed, his eyes blinking rapidly. ‘On the street, they called me Robocop. Tell ya the truth, Harry, I was flattered.’ He hesitated for several seconds, his eyes still fixed on the mug resting between his fingers. ‘What about you?’

‘I was a “necessary force” kind of cop. It took a lot to get me pissed off.’

‘But I somehow managed to accomplish the trick? I gotta say, Harry, I find that flattering, too.’

It was after twelve and detectives just coming off the four-to-midnight tour would ordinarily be stopping by to wet their whistles. But not tonight. Through a window in the front of the bar, I could see dark lines of snow silhouetted against a street light on Knickerbocker Avenue. If anything, Mike Blair was looking to close up and head home.

Potter broke the silence a few minutes later. ‘You wired, Harry?’

‘No need, Linus.’

Potter considered my response for a moment, then nodded. ‘I knew you wouldn’t stop. I knew you’d keep coming. I knew it from the first time you spoke to me. Dante thought you’d quit, but I knew you’d keep coming.’

‘That’s why you sent me Russo’s photo. It’s why you told me to connect Russo, Jarazelsky and Szarek. It’s…’ I paused when something flickered through Potter’s eyes. He caught my hesitation and smiled, but chose not to speak. Perhaps I’d made one too many assumptions, a technical error, but we were both professionals. We knew that it wouldn’t matter, in the short or the long run. Still, I changed the subject.

‘Can I assume you’re not connected to Greenpoint Carton?’

‘Yeah, you can.’

I gave it a few beats, then shifted gears again, putting more distance between our conversation and my gaffe. ‘We got a problem here. You want to know why and I want to know what. You can see how this creates a certain dilemma.’

‘When,’ Potter replied.

‘When?’

‘I want to know when, too.’

‘When did I know for sure?’ I asked.

‘Yeah.’

Though I hadn’t been certain of Potter’s involvement until Adele identified him as her attacker, I straightened in my seat and assumed a positive tone as I got to work.

‘Last Sunday, when I met Tony Szarek’s girlfriend, that’s when I knew. What was it you said about Tony? Something about traveling from a rented room to a bar stool all the days of his miserable life? That was very poetic, Linus, but it was complete bullshit. By all accounts, the Broom was a happy man. Now I admit, in and of itself, that wouldn’t mean a whole lot. Maybe you and Tony were hardly acquainted, maybe you were just telling a good story. But you knew where Tony was buried. You said it right out, “Mount Olivet Cemetery.” That indicates a closer relationship.’

Potter looked down at his mug for a moment, then carried it over to the bar. His jacket was unbuttoned far enough for me to catch a glimpse of the weapon snugged behind his hip as he got to his feet. But Potter’s intent was not on mayhem, not at that moment. He waited patiently for his mug to be filled, then came back to the table without once looking at Adele.

‘My mother,’ he said as he sat down, ‘was a very religious woman. One of the things she used to tell me was that I should live every day as if it was my last. Now I drink every beer as if it was my last. You think that’s what she meant?’

He raised the mug to his mouth and drained it, his neck so muscular his Adam’s apple was little more than a shadow moving beneath his skin. ‘Fire away,’ he said.

‘If you remember, you told me you worked on the Clarence Spott case.’

‘I was a fly on the wall.’

‘Then you should have known about the car. The one Clarence Spott was driving when Russo and Lodge pulled him over, the amazing vanishing car that was never heard about again.’ When he grinned at that, I continued. ‘Me, right from the first, I wanted to know what happened to that car. But you, Linus, you never even mentioned it.’

‘Is there a question here?’

‘I want to know what was in the car.’

‘Seed money. Or a commodity that could be turned into seed money.’

‘Seed money for what purpose?’

‘To buy Greenpoint Carton. The owner was an old man named Epstein. His kids didn’t want any part of the business and he was willing to sell cheap. It was an opportunity certain parties couldn’t resist.’

‘But not you?’

‘Not me.’

‘Glad to hear it. Now tell me what set off David Lodge. Tell me what he remembered. Being as you and Davy were such good friends, I’m sure he confided in you.’

‘He didn’t. The only story I got comes from Pete Jarazelsky, who I don’t consider a reliable source.’

‘Tell me anyway.’

‘According to Pete, what Davy remembered was spotting two cops sitting in a cruiser as he drove away from the first confrontation with Clarence Spott, the one that took place on Knickerbocker Avenue. These cops were double-parked a block away from the scene, in full view of the scuffle, but they didn’t back him up. He thought this was strange.’

‘I take it one of those cops was Pete Jarazelsky?’

‘Come to seize the loot, Harry, not rescue the drunk.’

‘And the other one? The other cop?’

‘If Davy even saw the other cop, he didn’t remember. Just as well.’

I sipped at my scotch, then twirled the glass on the table as I watched Mike fidget behind the bar. ‘I don’t want any trouble here,’ he declared.

Potter ignored the comment. ‘Your turn to confess,’ he said to me.

I looked up at Sparkle, at her pursed lips forever about to blow a kiss, and asked her for luck. What was apparent to me, by then, was that news of the grand jury investigation soon to begin had reached Linus Potter. He knew he was beaten, knew that it was only a matter of time before Pete Jarazelsky or Ellen Lodge gave him up.

‘Those phone calls you made, they helped the bad guys, not me and Adele. The first one had us looking for DuWayne Spott when we should have been sweating Ellen Lodge. We wasted the whole afternoon on that search. The second call directed us to Spott’s body, which of course, had to be found right away. The game plan called for the job to make a quick and easy decision. DuWayne Spott in close proximity to one of the TEC-9s that killed David Lodge? What could be simpler?’

‘And it worked, too.’

‘What can I say, Linus? You know your NYPD.’

Potter skillfully avoided the trap. ‘Not me, Harry. I didn’t say anything about me.’ He turned to Mike Blair and shouted, ‘Hey, you think I can get another Guinness here?’ When Blair’s only response was a narrowing of the eyes, Potter rose and did the job himself.

‘Did I ever tell you,’ he said, ‘that me and Davy, we both had a little problem with alcohol?’

‘Actually, you told me you kept him sober when you worked together.’

‘God, I’m such a fibber.’ He set down his mug, then raised his head. Potter’s blue eyes were slanted at the corners, though not as sharply as Adele’s. They’d appeared sad to me, the first time I’d looked into them, a quality now overshadowed by an unwavering stare that held whatever sorrow they revealed at a distance too great to be bridged. I saw anger, instead, and a trace of resignation. If he’d only been a little bit luckier. If only the first detectives to respond to David Lodge’s murder had been other than Harry Corbin and Adele Bentibi. If only, if only, if only.

‘If all you were after was the product in Clarence Spott’s car,’ I finally said, ‘why did you have to kill him?’

‘Excuse me, Harry, but you are once again employing the word you very freely. We’re still talkin’ theoretically here.’

‘Answer the question, Linus.’

He flinched at my tone, his eyes hardening for a moment. Then he smiled a smile that amounted to no more than a twitch of his upper lip. ‘Do you think weasels are happy bein’ weasels?’ he asked.

‘You talking about the little animals?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I figure they probably have a hard time imagining alternatives.’

‘Good point, but that’s not true for human weasels. Take Tony Szarek, for example. Now there’s a guy, a weasel to his bones, who should’ve never come on the job. All he ever thought about was how to get over. Me, I’d rather cut my balls off than be a weasel, but Tony..’ Potter shook his head, apparently in admiration. ‘But you were right about Tony. He was a happy man.’