Bodies in Winter hc-1 Read online

  ‘Please.’

  ‘The point is that the shit’s hit the fan, and I intend to maintain a low profile until I see if it’s aimed in my direction.’

  ‘This isn’t like you, Corbin.’

  ‘I don’t care. Everything goes across the lieutenant’s desk, every move we make. That way, the bosses can’t protect themselves without protecting us. Remember, it’s not just us. Sarney’s also at risk here.’

  ‘Yes,’ Adele finally admitted, ‘I could hear it in his voice.’

  EIGHT

  I know what I expected as I approached the Attica Correctional Facility in my rented Plymouth: soot-stained granite walls, ancient and forbidding, topped by coil upon coil of gleaming razor wire. But Attica’s walls weren’t soot-stained, or topped by wire, or made of granite. They were poured concrete and they appeared, from a distance on that day, as white as the fields of snow surrounding them. The effect was more Camelot than Tower of London, an illusion compounded by octagonal guard towers set into the walls like rooks at the corners of a chess board. Imposing in themselves, the towers were large enough to accommodate fully enclosed rooms behind their battlements, rooms to which the guards undoubtedly retreated on frigid winter days. These rooms were topped by funnel-shaped roofs covered with festive orange tiles.

  From inside the Plymouth, with the heater running on high, it was a beautiful day. The sun at my back fired the edges of the undulating dunes with a wavering line of pure silver. The sky ahead was intensely blue and seemed to grow directly from the prison walls. Even the few sunlit clouds, though clearly in motion, could have been details in a painted backdrop.

  But I wasn’t going to be able to stay inside the car, enjoying the picture-postcard scenery, a fact of life that became painfully obvious when I finally turned into a parking lot surrounded by snow banks higher than my head. The temperature outside was minus six degrees, the sun no warmer than an uncooked egg yolk, the winds strong enough to stir up mini-tornados of snow. I was wearing a really nice wool coat, a coat suitable for a Broadway show or an uptown dinner. But when I stepped from the car — bravely, I thought — my coat afforded me all the protection of a terrycloth robe.

  By then, thanks to a long delay while airport security cleared my weapon, I knew a lot more about David Lodge. The wait had left me plenty of time to read New York’s three daily papers, each of which had uncovered a different piece of the investigation Adele and I were conducting.

  A Times reporter named Gruber had somehow wangled an interview with Ellen Lodge. Her husband, she’d told Gruber, had claimed, on more than one occasion, to fear a revenge-motivated attack. According to Ellen, ‘He was wired when he left the house. I could see that.’

  Eva Hinckle made an appearance in the Daily News where she described Lodge’s murderers as ‘black males’. According to the reporter covering the story, Carl Gonzalez, Eva was certain because (as she only now remembered) the ski mask worn by one of Lodge’s assailants had slipped as he got into the red car, exposing the back of his neck.

  The New York Post hadn’t gotten to any of the witnesses. Instead, a ‘highly placed source within the NYPD’ had told a reporter named Ted Loranzo about the location of the abandoned Toyota and the TEC-9’s recovery. The main focus of Loranzo’s story was the relationship between the TEC-9 (which Loranzo described as a ‘machine pistol’) and gangster rap. Profusely illustrated with photos culled from album covers depicting black men holding TEC-9s, the text made no effort at subtlety. The police, Loranzo told his readers, were concentrating their efforts on friends and associates of Clarence Spott.

  So, the cat was out of the bag. All those blatant clues were never meant to fool the investigators unfortunate enough to catch the case. They were there because reporters need blatant clues in order to write slanted stories. Stories that somehow failed to mention Ellen Lodge’s evasiveness, or Otto Hinckle’s observations, or the convenient placement of the Toyota. Had Loranzo asked himself why Lodge’s killers didn’t park the car legally? If they had, the car might not have been discovered for weeks and would almost certainly have been stripped of anything as valuable as a TEC-9 by the time it was.

  Accompanied by a corrections officer in a parka suitable for Antarctic exploration, I proceeded from the main gate to the administration building along a path bordered by snow banks even higher than the ones in the parking lot. The guard’s name was Bardow and he hesitated when we finally reached the door.

  ‘Are you here about the Lodge murder?’ he asked.

  With the sun in his face, Bardow’s pale irises retreated into near invisibility. I focused on a spot where I thought they might be and said, in the most sincere voice at my command, ‘Do you think we could talk about this inside?’ By that time, even my balls were numb.

  ‘Oh, right.’

  With the door safely closed behind us, I admitted that I was, indeed, investigating the murder of David Lodge. Then I asked, ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘Sure. Lodge was an ex-cop. Up here, that makes him a celebrity.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘Big — way over six feet. He lifted weights almost every day.’

  ‘So, he wasn’t somebody you’d mess with?’

  ‘This is Attica. Anybody can be shanked. But Lodge wasn’t a guy you’d go out of your way to antagonize, that’s for sure. Not that he gave us any trouble. Mostly, he kept to himself.’

  Though I would have liked to extend the conversation, we’d already reached the reception desk and I had time for just one more question.

  ‘What about an inmate named Jarazelsky, another ex-cop?’

  ‘Pete Jarazelsky was a horse of a different color. He took protective custody around six months ago.’

  Deputy Warden Frank Beauchamp’s businesslike smile was firmly in place when I walked into his neat office. His grip, when he offered his hand, was equally businesslike. ‘So, you’re here to interview Pete Jarazelsky,’ he said as he pointed me to a chair and resumed his own seat.

  ‘Actually, I’m here to learn anything I can about David Lodge.. What do I call you? Dep? Deputy Warden?’

  ‘Frank’ll do.’

  ‘OK, then I’m Harry.’ I paused long enough to offer a manly nod which he returned. ‘One thing strikes me as a bit strange, Frank, about Lodge. He was an ex-cop and I thought ex-cops went someplace where they could do easy time. Not places like Attica.’

  Beauchamp wagged a finger in my direction. ‘Well, you’re partly right, Harry, and partly wrong. The system does maintain a minimum-security facility out on Long Island, a kind of honor farm. Celebrity prisoners, including cops and politicians, usually get sent there. But Lodge was never eligible because he was a violent felon.’

  ‘And that’s why he came to Attica?’

  Beauchamp shook his head. ‘Lodge started out at the Cayuga Correctional Facility, in Moravia. That’s medium security. He went into their protective custody unit and stayed for almost two years.’

  ‘I can understand why he went into protective custody, given that he was cop,’ I said, ‘but not why he came out.’

  ‘Protective custody is nothing more than segregation. You stay in your cell twenty-three hours a day, you get an hour for exercise, you get two showers a week. After a while, even the yard looks better.’ Beauchamp picked up a chunk of quartz crystal lying on top of a stack of papers and stared at it for a moment. ‘When your lieutenant called me yesterday, I went through Lodge’s file, lookin’ for an answer to your question about how Lodge got to Attica. Turns out, he was transferred from Cayuga more than four years ago, but his file don’t say why. So what I did was call over to Cayuga, ask a lieutenant I know, a huntin’ buddy, for a heads-up.’

  I leaned forward and laid my elbows on the desk. ‘Now why,’ I asked, ‘do I think this is gonna be good?’

  Beauchamp’s brown eyes were sparkling and his smile was back. We were two cops exchanging stories now, which is exactly what I wanted.

  ‘Seems like a month after Lodge came out
of segregation, a man named Jimmy Fox, a white supremacist from Syracuse, was killed with a shank. A month after that, Lodge was on his way to Attica.’

  ‘You’re saying Lodge killed Fox?’

  ‘The administration’s snitches kept naming him, but he was never charged because there was no evidence.’

  ‘Then why the transfer out of medium security?’

  Beauchamp sneered. ‘Let’s just say, in the correctional system, we have ways to punish offenders without putting the state to the expense of a trial.’ He returned the crystal to his desk and leaned back in his chair. ‘Now I expect you’re gonna ask me about the motive. Why would Lodge kill Fox?’

  ‘It was right on the tip of my tongue.’

  ‘Well, it goes like this. When you first come into the system, no matter who you are, somebody’s gonna test you, see if maybe you wouldn’t mind becoming a victim. That’s just the way of it.’

  ‘And David Lodge, he passed the test?’

  ‘That’s the word I got.’

  We were interrupted at that moment by a uniformed officer who told us that Pete Jarazelsky was waiting in an interview room down the hall. Beauchamp waved him off, then asked, ‘Anything else I can do for you, Harry?’

  ‘Yeah, Jarazelsky. An officer told me he’s in protective custody. Was somebody after him?’

  Beauchamp laughed. ‘Old Pete, he’s a work of art. He snitched out so many inmates, the whole prison wanted a piece of his ass. Now I don’t know who finally caught up with him, but he took a serious beating right before he went back into protective custody.’

  I nodded. ‘Seems like a good reason to spend twenty-three hours a day behind bars. But let me ask you this: Jarazelsky was sent up for burglary. How’d he end up in Attica with David Lodge?’

  ‘No mystery there, Harry. It was the luck of the draw, simple as that. Pete asked for protective custody right out of the box, just like David Lodge, only instead of being assigned to Cayuga’s unit, he was assigned to ours. The way the state sees it, if you’re in protective custody it doesn’t matter what prison you’re sent to. If you’re protected, you’re safe.’

  ‘Until you ask to come out.’

  That brought another laugh, then an explanation. ‘When Jarazelsky couldn’t take being alone with himself all day, he asked to go into population. It was his bad luck that the population in question was the population of Attica.’ Beauchamp rose from his chair and stepped around his desk. ‘But there is one other person you need to see after you finish with Jarazelsky. Lodge was a trustee his last year with us. He did office work for our psychiatrist, Dr Nagy. From what Nagy told me, they got pretty close.’

  When Beauchamp offered his hand, I knew my time was up. I had no complaints. Inspired no doubt by Lodge’s celebrity, Beauchamp had definitely gone the extra mile. Still, I made one further request before I left his office. I asked if he’d assign one of his subordinates to compile a list of David Lodge’s visitors over the past two years and fax it to me.

  NINE

  If it had been up to me, I would’ve interviewed Nagy first, leaving Pete Jarazelsky to simmer. But Jarazelsky had been brought to the administration building all the way from C Block as a courtesy when I might have had to interview him in the bowels of the prison. The least I could do was accommodate Beauchamp’s schedule.

  The starkly functional room Beauchamp had chosen for the interview had been designed for small conferences. A sound-dampening ceiling and two banks of fluorescent lights above, a long table surrounded by upholstered office chairs on wheels, a polished tile floor. Two flags, of the United States and the State of New York, stood against a cinder block wall.

  When I came through the door, Jarazelsky’s dark eyes jumped to mine. I returned his gaze, hoping for a peek into his heart before he composed himself. No such luck. His eyes immediately dropped to the table, leaving me to make the first move. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit and his wrists were cuffed to a leather belt at his waist. For a moment, I considered the grand gesture, asking the guard to unlock the cuffs, but decided against it. This wasn’t an interrogation and I wasn’t going to get hours and hours to wear him down.

  I finally introduced myself as Detective Corbin, then took a seat across the table and stated my business. I was here to investigate the murder of David Lodge. I deeply appreciated his voluntary cooperation. I looked forward to any assistance he might offer.

  ‘Hey,’ Jarazelsky said when I ground to a halt, ‘me and Davy, we were tight. I’m talkin’ about on the street, back in the Eight-Three, and up here, too. So, any way I can help, I’m happy to do it.’

  Jarazelsky was a short, unimposing man with jug ears and a drooping nose that fell to within an inch of his upper lip. His dark eyes were large and slightly bulging, his mouth slightly open as he watched me intently. He’d now made point number one, confirming Ellen Lodge’s claim that Jarazelsky and her husband were prison allies.

  ‘When was the last time you saw Lodge?’ I asked.

  ‘A couple months ago.’

  ‘Months?’

  ‘Well, see, I got into a beef with some niggers and hadda take segregation. It’s only temporary, though.’ He leaned across the table, his voice dropping in tone and volume. ‘I know Davy woulda looked out for me, but I didn’t have the heart to jam him up after he got his release date.’

  ‘Right.’ I rolled my chair back a few inches and crossed my legs, but made no further comment. I wanted to see what Jarazelsky would volunteer.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said after a moment, ‘I knew Davy was goin’ to his old lady’s house. He told me he was gonna stay there while he looked for a job.’

  ‘Do you know where he planned on looking for this job? Did he contact anyone before he left Attica, maybe some of his old buddies at the Eight-Three?’

  Jarazelsky shrugged. ‘I can’t say for certain. He could’ve.’

  I opened a notebook and wrote my own name three times, then looked back up. Between the bulging eyes and the jug ears, Jarazelsky’s face had a bat-like quality, especially when he tilted his head down. Although his appearance also had a menacing aspect, I sensed the wariness of a small mammal caught in a trap. Whenever he shifted his weight, the chains that bound his wrists and ankles rattled softly.

  ‘Tell me what David Lodge was like,’ I said. ‘What did he do with his time? Did he have any hobbies? Like to write letters? Play basketball? What’d he talk about when you were alone?’

  ‘He lifted weights,’ Jarazelsky said after a moment.

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘What can I say? Davy was pretty quiet. And he was never my cellie. We mostly got together in the yard. But you could take this to the bank: Davy was nervous about his release. The guy he clipped, Clarence Spott? Well, Spott’s brother, DuWayne, took over the crew after his brother’s passing. I was still at the Precinct when this happened, so I know what I’m sayin’. DuWayne put the word out that he wasn’t gonna sit for his brother gettin’ murdered by no honkey pig.’

  This time, Jarazelsky’s eyes gave him away. He was searching my face, gauging my reaction. Having confirmed (without prompting) the second element of the widow’s statement, he wanted to know if I was buying his story.

  ‘Are you telling me that Lodge was directly threatened by DuWayne Spott?’

  ‘Like I said, Davy was real quiet. It wasn’t always like that. Back at the Eight-Three, when he was still drinkin’, he was pretty much out of control.’

  Jarazelsky hadn’t answered the question, but I let it go. I wasn’t all that interested in his tale because it didn’t address the point Adele had raised in Sarney’s office. How would DuWayne Spott know that David Lodge was going to his wife’s house upon release?

  But I still had a choice to make. I could leave Jarazelsky’s story unchallenged or I could send a message.

  ‘Do you have a release date, Pete?’

  Jarazelsky tried for a smile, but didn’t quite make it. ‘Six months.’

  ‘You get out in six month
s?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He tried to bring his hand to his face, but the cuffs held him back. ‘Ya know,’ he told me, ‘Davy was over at Cayuga for a couple of years.’

  ‘And then got transferred to Attica?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘How’d that happen?’

  Again, Jarazelsky lowered his voice and leaned across the table. ‘Davy told me that he ran into a problem with another con at Cayuga. He didn’t name no names or nothin’, so don’t get ya hopes up, but he did say the beef came from outside the joint. Like, he was bein’ set up.’

  ‘So, what did he do about it?’

  ‘He did what he had to do.’

  For me, it was attack or retreat time. There was nothing to be gained by prolonging the interview, not unless I wanted to shake him up by pointing out that a black gangster from Brooklyn was highly unlikely to hire a white supremacist from Syracuse to pull off a hit.

  Instead, I backed off. First, there was that fan thing I’d mentioned to my partner. As far as I could tell, it was still on high, still spewing excrement. And then there was the distinct possibility that Jarazelsky could be turned. In just six months, he was scheduled to leave Attica, to go from a place where his life was always in danger to a place of moment-to-moment safety. If I was somehow able to put his release date in jeopardy, he’d most likely roll over. He was, after all, a snitch by nature.

  But I had no way to threaten Pete Jarazelsky, not then, and I wrapped up the interview a few minutes later. Jarazelsky continued to watch me, as he’d been watching me all along, with the look of a man immersed in a poker game. Would I call his bluff? Would I concede the pot? There was a lot at stake here for Pete Jarazelsky and he would have been wise to keep his anxiety to himself.

  I fished a business card out of my wallet and laid it on the table. Jarazelsky wasn’t a large man and the jumpsuit made him appear even smaller. ‘Any time you wanna call me, Pete,’ I told him, ‘I’m open for business. And I appreciate your talkin’ to me when you didn’t have to. I owe you one.’