I glanced at Adele, then nodded. She took a manila envelope from her bag and passed it over. The envelope contained David Lodge’s personal effects, but I didn’t open it right away. Instead, I held it in my lap as I continued to address Ellen.
‘You know what I keep thinking?’
‘No, what?’
‘I keep thinking that if your husband believed he was innocent, a conversation with Tony Szarek would have been prominent on his to-do list. Definitely.’ I paused long enough to laugh and shake my head. ‘Imagine a guy like David Lodge confronting a miserable drunk like Tony Szarek. How long before the Broom rolled over? An hour? A minute? A second?’
Ellen Lodge folded her arms across her chest. ‘What’s this have to do with me?’
‘Probably nothing,’ I admitted, ‘but did you know your husband was friendly with the prison psychiatrist?’
Ellen ran the fingers of her right hand through her short hair, her eyes closing momentarily as she reviewed her options.
‘No,’ she finally said, ‘I didn’t.’
‘Funny your husband never mentioned it in his letters, because David used to work in the shrink’s office and they were pretty tight. Anyway, the shrink’s name is Vencel Nagy and he claims that your husband left prison fully intending to prove his innocence. And not only didn’t he fear revenge, he never even mentioned DuWayne Spott’s name.’
I stood up and approached Ellen Lodge again, only this time I remained standing. At six-three, I towered over her.
‘You put yourself out front when you lied to me and my partner,’ I told her matter-of-factly. ‘And when you lied to the New York Times. Now, maybe everything’ll go smoothly; maybe the nightmare will just fade away. But if it doesn’t, if there are a few potholes down the road, you gotta figure someone’s gonna come lookin’ for Ellen Lodge the way they came lookin’ for the Broom.’
I took a business card from my shirt pocket and dropped it in her lap. ‘My cell phone number’s on the card.’
By this time Adele was standing in the doorway. I took a step toward her, then turned around.
‘Oh, yes, I almost forgot. We just came by to return your husband’s personal effects.’ I reached into the manila envelope, took out David Lodge’s wallet and placed it on a table to Ellen’s left. ‘One wallet.’ Then I dipped into the envelope again. ‘One Department of Correctional Services photo ID.’ Then again. ‘One appointment card with a parole officer named Paris Blake.’ Then again. ‘Twenty-two dollars in bills.’ Then again. ‘One treasured photograph.’
I placed the photograph in her hand, forcing her to look at herself, posed on a strip of sand in her blue bikini, her youthful sexuality as innocent and unaffected as her smile. That her husband had kept that photo with him throughout his prison years was as inescapable as the fact that she was no longer the girl in the picture. She was smaller now, and frightened, a middle-aged woman who’d taken so many wrong turns she no longer believed there was a right one out there.
Ellen Lodge continued to stare down at herself and I continued to stand in front of her. Maybe she was waiting for me to go away. I can’t be sure. But eventually, though she didn’t speak, she looked up at me through gray eyes that seemed drained of emotion.
‘Any hour of the day or night,’ I reminded her. ‘I’ll be there for you. All you have to do is dial my number.’
THIRTEEN
‘ I’m sorry, Corbin,’ Adele told me as the door to Ellen Lodge’s house closed behind us and we descended to the street, ‘for what I said about you wanting to be rid of the case.’
I didn’t respond and Adele, apparently, decided that I was still angry. But I hadn’t been angry in the first place. As I’ve already said, Adele had a sharp tongue and I’d learned to live with it. No, what had captured my complete and undivided attention was the ankle-deep snow beneath which my shoes had disappeared. I’d had these loafers for years, had polished and conditioned the leather until the shine appeared to come from within. More to the point, having long ago molded themselves to my feet and toes, they were far and away the most comfortable shoes in my closet.
I don’t like to think of myself as a fuck-up, a label applied to me often enough in the past. But this was beyond fuck-up. This was actually subhuman.
‘You were very good in there,’ Adele continued. ‘The widow didn’t know whether she was coming or going.’
I responded by opening the trunk of the Caprice and searching through our evidence kit until I found a handful of sterile gauze pads. Then I tossed the keys to Adele.
‘If I don’t dry these shoes,’ I explained, ‘I’m gonna end up throwin’ ’em away.’
Though it took her a moment to shift gears, Adele didn’t argue. She slid behind the wheel, then unlocked the passenger’s door. Inside, I wasted no time. I took off my shoes and began to work the gauze into the leather. For all my good intentions, I succeeded only in transferring brown polish from the leather to the gauze pads to my fingers. The shoes remained as damp as ever, as did my socks and feet.
I was still holding my shoes a few minutes later when the cell phone in my jacket pocket began to ring.
‘Do you want me to get that?’ Adele asked.
Ignoring my partner’s sarcasm, I jammed my damp feet into my damp shoes and answered.
‘Corbin here.’
They’re gonna roll your boy tonight, Harry. Unless you find him first.
The phone went dead while I was still fumbling for a response. I put it back in my pocket, then repeated the message to Adele, doing my best to imitate my anonymous informant’s gravelly whisper.
‘The plot thickens, partner,’ she said. ‘Must be all that excrement pouring off the fan blades.’
It was still snowing hard enough to dot the windshield between swings of the wipers. Ahead of us, the rear end of a mini-van swung out as the vehicle tried to negotiate a right turn on the hard-packed snow. We were headed for the adjoining precinct, little more than a mile away, which was fortunate. City-wide, traffic would be a nightmare.
Adele finally broke the silence. ‘Can we assume,’ she asked, ‘that the “boy” we need to find is DuWayne Spott?’
I shoved my feet under the heater, consigning my loafers to their fate. Somehow, dry was looking better and better. ‘Either that or some devious miscreant wants to throw us off the track. But here’s a problem we need to deal with right now. Sarney told us to go ahead with the interview, but not to get in Russo’s face. What exactly did he mean by that?’
‘What do you think he meant?’
I replied without hesitation. ‘You ask a question. You accept the answer that you’re given.’
‘Corbin, are you suggesting that I’m argumentative?’
‘Perish the thought, partner.’
We met Dante Russo in the office assigned to the precinct’s Community Affairs Officer. Russo was alone and sitting behind a desk near the center of the room when we arrived. He motioned us to a pair of small armchairs, explaining that the CAO, Justin Moore, was over at Bushwick High School, delivering an anti-drug lecture to the freshman class.
‘Ya know what I’m sayin’, right? This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. Meanwhile, the little humps know more about dope than he’ll ever know.’
As I sat down, I slid my chair toward the end of the desk, separating myself from Adele. The first thing I noticed, before Adele fired off a single question, was that Russo’s warm and friendly voice didn’t match his expression. He sat with his jaw thrust forward, staring down at us along the length of his long nose. The net effect was disdain, an impression reinforced by his full lips which were noticeably compressed.
‘So,’ he said, ‘what can I do ya for?’
