Sarney grinned. ‘A couple of hours from now, just in time for the eleven o’clock news, an Inspector named Rita Meyers will make two announcements at a press conference. First, she’ll tell the reporters that the Ballistics Unit has matched the TEC-9 found in the Toyota with fourteen shell casings discovered at the Lodge crime scene. Then she’ll announce that a man named DuWayne Spott, whereabouts unknown, has been named as a person of interest. You understand, Harry, this is the first time a boss has appeared in connection with the case.’
I’d asked Sarney for a heads-up and he’d complied. I had no beef here. ‘So where does that leave me and my partner, Bill? Do we continue to investigate?’
‘Harry, you can color to your heart’s content, as long as you stay between the lines. Now, there’s one more thing. I’m not stupid. I know you can’t control your partner’s urge to self-destruct. But what I’d like you to do is keep an eye on her. If she jumps the tracks again, I wanna be the first to know.’
‘It’s not that easy, Bill. You’re asking me to spy on my partner.’
There was an edge to my voice, and I’m sure Sarney heard it. But he wasn’t intimidated. He leaned forward in his chair and lowered his chin until he was looking at me through his eyebrows. ‘Sometimes in life,’ he explained, not unkindly, ‘you gotta watch out for your own ass. If your partner understood that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’
ELEVEN
It was almost nine before we finally sat down to a meal, this one in a diner several blocks from the precinct. By then, Adele and I were observing a somewhat uneasy truce. Nothing had been resolved, of course, but there was no way, between Dr Nagy and Tony Szarek, we could sit across from each other and not discuss the case. We were cops, after all.
So we began with something easy: trashing Detective Winnman’s reputation. According to Adele, not only hadn’t he read the lab reports, he’d failed to speak to Szarek’s family and friends, or to conduct a routine canvas of the building. From Winnman, we moved to the Broom, eventually conceding that suicide could not be ruled out, not absolutely, by the ME’s findings. Not that it mattered all that much. For the time being, our hands were tied. Sarney had already told Adele that if the Szarek case was reopened, she and I would not be the investigators.
Gregorio, our waiter, showed up at that moment with a pair of Heinekens, which he set on the table. Though Gregorio also brought two glasses, Adele and I quickly pushed them to the side. They were still warm from the dishwasher, one of the hazards of ordering beer in a diner.
‘According to Sarney,’ I began, ‘there’s gonna be a press conference tonight, at which a boss named Meyers will tell the world that DuWayne is a person of interest, and that some of the shell casings recovered at the Lodge scene were fired by the TEC-9 found in the Toyota.’
I watched Adele’s cheeks flame. ‘Ellen Lodge and Jarazelsky are both lying,’ she declared, her tone bitter and contemptuous, ‘and the job is buying into their lies. I went to OCCB this morning and spoke to Sgt Merkovich. DuWayne Spott isn’t a ghetto don, not even close. He’s a pimp and a low-level cocaine dealer. According to Merkovich’s snitches, there are only four men in his entire crew, most of them relatives or kids he grew up with. He couldn’t have known when Lodge was going to be released, much less where Lodge was headed. It’s simply impossible.’
I broke a salted roll in half and buttered one end. ‘What was Sarney’s reaction when you told him about Lodge’s file being… How did that jerk from Archives put it?’
‘Unable to locate at this time.’
‘So, what’d Sarney have to say when you told him Lodge’s file was temporarily unlocatable?’
‘He said he’d make a formal request to the DA’s office for their copy, plus he’d contact CSU and the crime lab to see what they had in their own files.’
‘He offer a time-frame?’
‘Nope. But there’s good news, too. We’ll have Ellen Lodge’s phone records tomorrow morning.’
Our dinners arrived a few minutes later: meat, gravy, potatoes and a few broccoli spears that’d been stewing for the better part of the day. As I ate, I allowed myself to fall into the minds of the conspirators, a practice I commonly follow prior to interrogations. From their point of view, the news coming from Jarazelsky must have been devastating. Lodge’s recovered memory would be meaningless in a court of law. The only way he could prove his innocence was by persuading somebody else to confess.
By this time I knew quite a bit about David Lodge, and not only from Nagy and Beauchamp. The newspaper stories had included extensive accounts of the events leading up to Lodge’s guilty plea seven years earlier. One item in particular had caught my attention. According to the ME, Clarence Spott had been severely beaten prior to being struck with the blackjack. That beating had occurred outside the precinct and had been delivered by David Lodge, who’d already been the subject of a dozen civilian complaints alleging police brutality.
What would I do if I was one of the co-conspirators, say the man at the top of the pyramid, and I learned that Lodge was coming after me? What would I do to protect myself? What risks would I take? What level of fear would Lodge inspire, this large violent man who spent his days in Attica’s weight yards?
The death of the Broom was one answer to those questions. Ellen Lodge and Pete Jarazelsky provided two more answers. Like Szarek, they were weak links, points at which a good detective places the splitting wedge before driving it home. Nobody would rely on them unless they were desperate.
‘Eva Hinckle called this morning,’ Adele said, ‘to report her newly surfaced memory. She was very definite. The ski cap rode up and she saw the back of the driver’s neck. He was black.’
‘Which proves what? Even if she’s right?’
‘Don’t you read the newspapers, Corbin? It proves that DuWayne Spott and his army of ghetto gangsters killed David Lodge.’
Lieutenant Bill Sarney was a compulsive organizer and the walls of his office were dominated by a series of cork boards. As Adele and I sat before his desk the following morning, I found myself caught up in the notes and departmental notices pinned to the boards. What struck me was that the paperwork was absolutely square to the frame and the colored pins holding them had been placed at uniform heights.
‘Alright, guys,’ Sarney declared once we were seated. ‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing you don’t already know, lou,’ I replied. ‘Our day’s just gettin’ started.’
Sarney’s tone was supremely casual, and his face gave nothing away. ‘Ah, but that’s the point, Harry. I want to know what you’re going to do with your day. That’s why I asked you to stop in.’
Adele handed Sarney a printed document, Ellen Lodge’s phone records, which Adele had taken off the computer a few minutes before Sarney called us into his office. Two days ago, she pointed out, at 9:01 a.m., an incoming call from a pay phone was taken by someone at the Lodge residence. That didn’t surprise me; as a cop’s wife, Ellen Lodge would expect us to check her records. But a second, outgoing call did catch me off-guard. It was made to a cell phone at 9:06 and lasted a mere nine seconds.
‘My partner and I think,’ Adele told Sarney, ‘that we should begin with another visit to Ellen Lodge. We can ask her about the second call and return her husband’s personal effects at the same time.’
‘Fine,’ Sarney replied without hesitation. ‘What else?’
‘Dante Russo. He was Lodge’s partner on the night Spott was killed. We think he should be interviewed.’
‘You know who Russo is?’ When neither of us jumped to reply, Sarney nodded once, then continued. ‘Russo is the PBA’s Trustee for Brooklyn North. He knows everybody. So, please, unless you have enough evidence to secure an arrest warrant, don’t get in his face.’
The Patrolman’s Benevolent Association represents every uniformed cop in New York City below the rank of sergeant, some 27,000 in all. That they have clout — in city and state government as well as with the job — goes without saying. Dante Russo was a Trustee, one of only twelve. This gave him clout within the PBA.
Under ordinary circumstances, I would’ve made a call to an old partner now working in the personnel bureau and asked him for a peek at Russo’s service file. But that wasn’t going to happen here. We were going to play by the rules and that was all she wrote.
