was never directly answered. Instead, as I swam my way through high school, then through a long tour in Berlin, I not only became less angry, I began to like my life, as it was and as I hoped it would be. I wasn’t asking for much. I had no grand ambitions. I just wanted an ordinary life, as free from the chaos of my childhood as possible.
And so I continued to believe as I walked out of the locker room and stood by the edge of an empty pool fourteen hours after the murder of David Lodge. The air around me, cool enough to produce goose bumps, was saturated with humidity and the odor of chlorine. Though it’d been years since I’d loosened up before a workout, I hesitated long enough to draw a few deep breaths, gradually expanding my lungs. Then I dove into the water and began to swim.
For the first few laps, as the muscles of my shoulders and back gradually stretched out, I didn’t think about much of anything. The water flowed over my face and body, holding me in an embrace at once tender and distinctly sexual. The sensations were luxurious, as always, and I basked in them, knowing they came with no strings attached. This was purely for me, purely about me. This was mine.
Still, I knew where my thoughts were headed once I settled into a steady grind. In the army, I’d learned to smell trouble coming, to avoid it. No confrontations, especially with officers, that was the name of the game. And that meant no black-market bullshit, no cigarettes smuggled off the base, no drunken brawls, no pregnant frauleins.
When I became a cop, it was more of the same. Be where you’re supposed to be and don’t jam up the sergeant. Write your traffic tickets, twenty-five parkers and five movers, every month without fail. Make certain that your monthly activity reports are complete and current.
Bottom line: not being a pain in the ass to my superiors on the chain of command worked for me. I pretty much had the ordinary life I wanted. Maybe it was a bachelor’s life, untrusting and sometimes lonely, but half the kids I hung with in my adolescence had been to prison, and not a few of them were dead. So if my glass was a few inches short of full, I wasn’t complaining.
The red stripe beneath me never shifted when I got down to business. The pull of the right and left sides of my body remained in sync even as I admitted that a new element had entered my ordinary life. I needed to examine that element and I decided that I would. As soon as I figured out what it was.
But I was sure about one thing. Lodge’s face had been plastered all over the evening news and wasn’t likely to disappear anytime soon. The press would be watching the investigation; the bosses, too. When it comes to protecting the job, the big dogs at the Puzzle Palace are all white knights. And all willing to sacrifice a peasant or two, if that’s what it takes.
I rechecked my position as I kicked out of a turn. By then, I was at the peak of my strength, in a swimmer’s high, my body running on full automatic. When my hands cut the water, I felt as if I was about to yank the other side of the pool toward me. An illusion, naturally, like the powerful sense that I could go on forever. I’d get tired soon enough, at which point the far end of the pool would shift into full retreat, growing more distant with every turn.
Methodically, I reviewed the day’s events, evoking a series of images beginning with the body of David Lodge sprawled on the frozen ground and finishing with Detective Linus Potter’s nasty smile when he told me that Tony Szarek, the Broom, was dead. It was all so convenient: the ski masks, the river of brass, the carefully aimed coup de grace, the double-parked Toyota, the forbidding TEC-9, the widow’s evasive answers. Every element led toward DuWayne Spott.
I’d come up against staged murder scenes a few times in the past. In each of those cases, the staging was an afterthought, a coda to a rage-motivated attack. The Lodge scene was a lot more elaborate. Clearly the scenario had been planned in advance. Just as clearly, it hadn’t been planned by DuWayne Spott. The purpose of staging is to lead investigators away from the guilty party or parties, not toward them.
So what did all this mean to me? I was climbing out of the pool, a half-hour later, when I finally decided that I couldn’t answer the question. I just didn’t have enough information. Meanwhile, there were cold winds blowing out there. Sailing into them made no sense at all.
I went to my locker for a towel and found the light on in Conrad Stehle’s small office. I wasn’t surprised. Conrad had been subject to periods of insomnia ever since his wife, Helen, died two years before. Typically, he refused to toss and turn between the sheets, opting to stroll the few blocks from his house to his office at the Y. Sometimes he swam laps in an effort to wear himself out, but usually he settled for doing a little paperwork in the hope that one of his buddies would happen along. As I included myself in that group, I stuck my head in the door.
‘Evening, Conrad.’
‘Ah, I thought that was you I heard thrashing around in the pool.’
Conrad Stehle was closing in on seventy, a tall stocky man with the barrel chest of a true swimmer. He’d been a champion in high school, winning statewide tournaments six different times in three different categories. At one point, the now-defunct New York Herald Tribune had pronounced Conrad ‘a future Olympian’. Those dreams had come crashing down when he returned from the Korean War with a purple heart and lungs too weak to support active competition.
I peeled off my goggles and cap, then fished out my ear plugs. ‘I caught the David Lodge case. Did you hear about it?’
Conrad’s green eyes widened slightly and he tilted his chin in the air. A bit of a cop buff, he liked nothing more than to discuss an investigation, and I sometimes used him as a sounding board. Lodge’s celebrity, of course, only sweetened the mix.
‘Just let me dry off,’ I continued, ‘and I’ll be right back.’
Fifteen minutes later, when I returned, Conrad had a bottle of Cointreau sitting on his desk, along with two plastic cups. He poured an inch of the liquor into each cup, then passed one to me. ‘To crime and punishment,’ he said.
‘Amen to that, brother.’
I clinked plastic, drained the cup, then drew an outline of the investigation thus far, including my numerous misgivings. Though I’d meant to be brief, I found myself explaining my reaction to Adele’s maneuver with the Lodge file, my pending transfer to Homicide, and my equally pending promotion.
‘The reassignment and the promotion, Conrad, they’re both at the absolute discretion of the bosses.’
‘And that’s what you wish to protect?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t care all that much about the promotion, although I could definitely use the money. But Homicide? Even as far back as the Academy, and we’re talking fifteen years here, I wanted to be a homicide detective. Now I’m only a few months away.’
Ordinarily, Conrad had the listening skills of a psychiatrist, but my whiny complaints, on that night, evoked no more than a slight toss of the head as he removed a stubby cigar from his shirt pocket and ran it beneath his nose. He’d stopped smoking on the day Helen, a chain smoker since adolescence, died of lung cancer.
‘I don’t think you’re worried about this file. I think you’re worried that you can’t control your partner.’
‘Yeah, there’s that, too. But I’m sure of one thing: if I play it by the numbers, I can’t get hurt.’
‘And those numbers include keeping Lieutenant Sarney informed?’
‘At all times, Conrad. At all times.’
I left Conrad’s office with a happy heart, and carried my good mood back to my apartment where I called Adele. It was a quarter to twelve and I knew she’d be watching the first half-hour of the Letterman show. Letterman was better, she’d told me, than a sleeping pill.
‘Adele,’ I said when she picked up the phone, ‘the Broom is dead.’
‘The broom?’
‘Patrol Officer Anthony Szarek, retired.’ I detailed my conversation with Linus Potter, laying heavy emphasis on the timing of Szarek’s suicide, just two weeks before Lodge’s scheduled release, and Szarek’s devotion to alcohol.
‘So what does this mean to us, Corbin?’ Adele asked when I finished.
‘According to Potter, Tony Szarek holds the case against Lodge together by putting Lodge alone with the victim. But who speaks for Tony Szarek?’
‘Nobody,’ Adele replied without hesitation, ‘and now he can’t speak for himself. But I’m still asking the same question. What does this mean to us?’
‘Szarek was a drunk. He was the weak link.’
