Bodies in Winter Page 13

  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?’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Like any other athlete, even a pseudo-athlete, I sometimes pause to check myself out in the mirror. I’m not obsessed, not like body builders where narcissism is the whole point. Just occasionally, late at night coming from the pool, I pause before a full-length mirror in the locker room to make a quick evaluation. And why not? No one can say I haven’t worked for my body, that I haven’t put in the hours.

  A single glance is usually enough to assure me that I’m holding it together as I enter my forty-first year on the planet. Only occasionally am I dissatisfied; only occasionally do I suspect that my body has tipped over the edge, that the inevitable diminishing has begun.

  My features undergo a similar shift at such times, rugged somehow becoming goofy. I have the good hair, as I’ve already said, but my eyes, always narrow, have been narrowed further by fanning crows’ feet and a slight puffiness that no amount of sleep can erase. They are at different heights, as well, with the right a bit lower than the left, producing a cock-eyed look made worse by a mouth with a pronounced bias to the right and a noticeably off-center chin.

  Not even in my most charitable moments would I call the face in the mirror handsome. My features are too unbalanced for that. But rugged is a tradable commodity for a middle-aged bachelor in New York, whereas goofy doesn’t work at all. I knew because that crooked smile I flashed across a crowded room sometimes produced a quick frown, shortly followed by an exaggerated rolling of the eyes. God, why do I keep attracting the losers?

  I relate to my apartment – which I finally re-entered some two hours later – much as I do to my body. Mostly, I feel comfortable when I lock the door behind me. I feel at home. But there are definitely times when the place seems more like a bad joke. From the roughly finished dining table and the captain’s chairs, to the wall-to-wall Berber carpeting, to the green sectional couch and the bookcases framing the television, to the posters on the walls. Artificial is the first word that comes to mind, followed shortly by phony, then pathetic.

  When I flicked on the lights that afternoon, I felt as if I’d been the unwitting victim of an apprentice decorator at a failing discount department store. Case in point, the posters on the living room walls were of extremely obscure, extremely bad movies, the kind that played rural Mississippi drive-ins in the 1950s. Captive Wild Woman (starring Acquanetta as the Gorilla Girl); Juke Joint (The Joint is Jumpin! The Jive is Jivin! The Jam is Jammin!); Girl With An Itch (Have Negligee, Will Travel!). I’d thought them clever enough when I’d accumulated them over a period of nine months, but now they seemed as superficial as the movies they were created to publicize.

  Compounding the felony, I’d paid way too much for the posters, as a recent visit to a series of websites offering the same ones attested. But then I’d sunk more than I could afford into my furniture as well. My bedroom set had come from Stickley, the couch and bookcases from Ethan Allen, the oak dining table from a cabinet maker in Williamsburg who saw customers by appointment only. Which is not to suggest that my furnishings were top of the line by New York standards. Not even close. But they were definitely beyond the legitimate aspirations of a cop living on a single paycheck. Most cops I knew shopped at department stores on sale days.

  I hung my coat in the closet, then went from room to room, turning on lights. When I got to my bedroom, I spent a few moments staring at a pair of low bookcases against the far wall. The bookcases were made of walnut and too expensive, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. There were more than a hundred books on the shelves, mixed fiction and non-fiction, all hard covers. With very few exceptions, these books were about New York.

  Why did I have them? To show them off? To show myself off? Most of the women I dated were far better educated than I was and had far more prestigious jobs. Slipping an obscure fact into the conversation, or so I believed, made me appear sophisticated enough to be safe. Maybe I was a cop with a high school diploma, but I most likely wouldn’t bite.

  I continued to move through the apartment. Wherever I looked, I found not just the pitiful efforts of a dull mind, but evidence of pure desperation. Everything would be alright as long as I kept pretending that everything was alright. My apartment would be the home I’d never had. The job would be the family I’d never known. Even the women in my life had a place in the facade, a burden to endure. Their job was to stick around just long enough to convince me that I had the capacity to love. If only I found the right lover.

  When the apartment was fully lit, I retreated to my tiny kitchen, to the wall phone next to the refrigerator. I stared at the phone for a moment, Adele’s number a series of mad little beeps that repeated themselves as if somebody had pressed my REDIAL button. Then I dialed her number and put the phone to my ear. My reward was Adele’s answering machine, where I left a simple request that she call me back.

  That done, that line crossed, I made a second call, to a Chinese restaurant on First Avenue called Mee. My dinner ordered, I began to set the table. I felt pretty good about things, comforted as I was by a battlefield maxim declaring that any decision, even a bad decision, is better than no decision. Then my phone began to ring and I walked back into the kitchen, expecting to hear Adele’s voice.

  ‘Hey, Harry, how’s it going?’ Bill Sarney asked.

  ‘It’s goin’ alright, Bill. How’s by you?’

  ‘Me, I got a headache.’

  ‘And its name is Adele Bentibi.’

  ‘How’d you guess?’

  Sarney was using that hearty, cheerleader voice he generally deployed before asking a favor. It was a voice I’d responded to in the past, as I’d responded to the occasional dinner we shared, or being invited to his home. We were friends and allies, Bill Sarney and Harry Corbin, and I had no reason to doubt his sincerity at that moment. But sincerity was no longer a relevant concept, for either one of us. Sarney had long ago decided that his interests and the interests of the job would never be at odds. That was his line, his personal line, an
d I’d stepped across it when I phoned Adele. I had no choice now, except to play him. Nailing Lodge’s killers would be hard enough without telegraphing my intentions.

  ‘So what’s that bad girl done now?’ I asked.

  ‘We know she’s the one leaking to the Times.’

  ‘Know?’

  ‘Yeah, we’re sure.’

  It was my turn to chuckle manfully. ‘I could ask if you maybe tapped her phones, Bill, or somehow got your hands on her phone records, but I think I’m just gonna leave that dog lie. In the meantime, I haven’t spoken to Adele in a week.’

  That was at least technically true. Though I’d called her only a few minutes before, we hadn’t actually conversed.

  ‘Harry, look, we think it would be a good idea if you contacted her.’ Sarney’s tone dropped a half-octave as he shifted to that gossipy tone he used when he was passing on insider secrets. ‘Let me level with you here. The bosses think those stories in the Times are not gonna be a problem. They’re worried about what your partner—’

  ‘Former partner,’ I corrected. ‘With the emphasis on the former.’

  ‘Yeah, your former partner. The bosses wanna know what she’s gonna do next. Like, specifically, if she’s gonna go public. You can’t blame them, Harry. They’re scared because she doesn’t give a shit about her badge or her reputation. They got nothin’ to hold over her head.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  Initially, I refused Bill Sarney outright. If I remember correctly, I was pretty indignant. He was talking about my partner, after all. Turning my back on her was one thing. Loyalty didn’t require me to go down with the ship, not when the captain had drilled a hole in the hull. But cops didn’t spy on their partners, not in the cop world I inhabited, not in any cop world I could imagine. If word got out, I explained to my boss, I’d be branded a fink. And I’d deserve it, too.