Brooklyn Noir Part 20

"What boy?"

Russo pauses long enough to make his annoyance clear. "That there car belongs to Mr. Clarence Spott."

"Who?"

"Spott's picture is hangin' in the muster room. He's one of the bad guys." Dante's mouth expands into a humorless smile. "Whatta ya say we bust his b.a.l.l.s a little?"

"Fine by me."

When Russo momentarily lights up the roof rack and the BMW pulls to the curb, both cops immediately leave their car. They are on Metropolitan Avenue, a main commercial street in the northside section of Greenpoint. The small retail stores lining both sides of the avenue are long closed, their gates down and padlocked, but several men stand in front of an after-hours club across the street. David Lodge stares at the men till they turn away, then he joins Russo who stands a few feet from the BMW's open window. Lodge knows he should approach the vehicle from the pa.s.senger side, that his job here is to cover his partner on the driver's side. But David Lodge has never been a by-the-book officer, far from it, and knowing his partner won't object, he settles down to enjoy the show.

"Why you stoppin' me, man?" Clarence Spott's full mouth is twisted into a pained grimace. "I ain't done nothin'."

"Step outa the car," Russo orders. "And that's officer officer, not man." man."

"I ain't goin' no place till I find out why you stopped me. This here is racial profilin'. It's unconst.i.tutional."

Russo slaps his nightstick against the palm of his hand. "Clarence, you don't come out, and I mean right this f.u.c.kin' minute, I'm gonna crack your windshield."

The door opens and Spott emerges. A short, heavily muscled black man, his expression-eyes wide, brows raised, big mouth already moving-reeks of outrage. Lodge can smell the stink from where he stands. And it's not as if Spott, who keeps his hands in view at all times, isn't familiar with the rules of the game. There's just something in him that doesn't know when to shut up.

"Ah'm still axin' the same question. Why you pull me over when I'm drivin' down a public street, mindin' my own d.a.m.n business?"

Russo ignores the inquiry. "I want you to put your hands on top of the vehicle and spread your legs. I want you to do it right now."

Spott finally crosses the line, as Lodge knew he would, by adding the word pig pig to his next sentence. Lodge slaps him in the face, a mild reprimand from Lodge's point of view, but Spott sees it differently. His eyes close for a moment as he draws a long breath through his nose. Then he uncoils, quick as a snake, and drives his fist into the left side of David Lodge's face. to his next sentence. Lodge slaps him in the face, a mild reprimand from Lodge's point of view, but Spott sees it differently. His eyes close for a moment as he draws a long breath through his nose. Then he uncoils, quick as a snake, and drives his fist into the left side of David Lodge's face.

Taken by surprise, Lodge staggers backward, leaving Spott to Dante Russo, who a.s.sumes a two-handed grip on his nightstick before cracking it into Spott's unprotected shins. When Spott drops to his knees on the pavement, Russo slides the nightstick beneath his throat and pulls back, choking off a howl of pain.

"How you wanna do this, Clarence? Easy or hard?"

As Spott cannot speak, he indicates compliance by going limp and crossing his hands behind his back.

Russo eases up slightly, then pushes Spott forward onto his chest. "You all right?" he asks his partner.

"Never better."

David Lodge brings his hand to the blood running from a deep cut along his cheekbone. Suddenly, he feels sharp, even purposeful. As he watches his partner cuff and search the prisoner before loading him into the backseat, he thinks, Okay, this is where it gets good. Okay, this is where it gets good. His hand goes almost of itself to the soda bottle stuffed beneath the seat when he enters the vehicle. He barely tastes the vodka as it slides down his throat. His hand goes almost of itself to the soda bottle stuffed beneath the seat when he enters the vehicle. He barely tastes the vodka as it slides down his throat.

"You got any particular place in mind?" his partner asks as he shifts the patrol car into gear.

"Not as long as it's private. One thing I hate, it's bein' interrupted when I'm on a roll."

Lieutenant Justin Whitlock sets the precinct log aside when David Lodge and Dante Russo lead Clarence Spott into the nine-four. Both sides of Spott's face are bruised and he leans to the left with his arm pressed to his ribs. His right eye, already crusting, is swollen shut.

Whitlock is seated at a desk behind a wooden railing that runs across the nine-four's reception area. He glances from the prisoner to Russo, then notices the blood on David Lodge's face and Lodge's blood-soaked collar.

"That your blood, Lodge?"

"Yeah. The mutt caught me a good one and we hadda subdue him."

Whitlock nods twice. The injury is something he can work with.

"I want you to go over to the emergency room at Wyckoff Heights and have that wound sewn up. Count the st.i.tches and make sure you obtain a copy of the medical report. Better yet, insist that a micro-surgeon do the job. Tell 'em you don't wanna spoil your good looks."

"What about the paperwork on the arrest, loo? Shouldn't I get started?"

"No, secure the prisoner, then get your a.s.s over to Wyckoff. Your partner will handle the paperwork." Whitlock's expression softens as he turns to Russo. "How 'bout you, Dante? You hurt?"

Russo flicks out a left jab. "Not me, loo, I'm too quick."

Whitlock glances at the prisoner. "I see." When Russo fails to respond, he continues. "Did the mutt use a weapon?"

"Yeah, loo, that ring. That's what cut Dave's cheek." Russo lifts Spott's right hand to display a pinkie ring with a single large diamond at its center. "You know what woulda happened if Dave had gotten hit in the eye?"

"He'd be out on the street with a cane." Whitlock's smile broadens. He and Russo are on the same track. "Charge the hump with aggravated a.s.sault on a police officer. That should keep the a.s.shole busy. And make sure you take that ring. That ring is evidence."

Spott finally speaks up. "I wanna call my lawyer," he mumbles through swollen lips.

"What'd he say?" Whitlock asks.

"I think he said something about your mother, lieutenant," Russo declares. "And it wasn't complimentary."

Russo leads Spott through a gate in the railing, then shoves him toward the cells at the rear of the building. "Hi ho, hi ho," he sings, "it's off to jail we go."

Smiling at his partner's cop humor, David Lodge trails behind.

Five minutes later, Dante Russo emerges to announce, "The prisoner is secure and Officer Lodge is off to the hospital."

"You think he's sober enough to find his way?"

Russo starts to defend his partner, then suddenly changes tack with a shrug of his shoulders. "Dave's out of control," he admits. "If I wasn't there tonight, who knows what would've happened. I mean, I been tryin' to straighten the guy out, but he just won't listen."

"I coulda told you that when you took him on as your partner."

"What was I supposed to do? When I was told that n.o.body wanted to work with him? I'm the PBA delegate, remember? Helping cops in trouble is part of my job."

From David Lodge, the conversation drifts for a bit, finally settling on the precinct commander, Captain Joe Hagerty. Crime is up in the precinct for the second straight year and Hagerty is on the way out. Though his replacement has yet to be named, the veterans fear a wholesale shake-up. Dante Russo, of course, at age twenty-five, is far from a veteran. But he's definitely a rising star within the cop union, the Patrolman's Benevolent a.s.sociation, a rising star with serious connections. Dante's uncle is the trustee for Brooklyn North and sits on the PBA's Board of Directors.

They are still at it thirty minutes later when Officers Daryl Johnson and Hector Arias waltz an adolescent prisoner into the building. Dwarfed by the two cops, the boy is weeping.

"He done the crime," Arias observes, "but he don't wanna do the time."

"Found him comin' out a window of the Sung Ri ware-house on Gratton Street," Daryl Johnson adds. "He had this TV in his arms, the thing was bigger than he was." Johnson gives his prisoner an affectionate cuff on the back of the head. "What were ya gonna do, jerk, carry it all the way back to the projects?"

"Put him in a cell," Whitlock says, "and notify the detectives. They'll wanna talk to him in the morning."

"Ten-four, loo."

Within seconds, Daryl Johnson returns. Johnson is a short, overweight black man long renowned for his deadpan expression. This time, however, his heavy jowls are lifted by an extension of his lips unrelated to a smile. "That mope locked up back there? I mean, it's none of my business, but who does he belong to?"

"Me," Russo responds. "Why?"

"Because he's dead is why. Because somebody caved in his f.u.c.king skull."

The evidence implicating David Lodge in the death of Clarence Spott is compelling, as Ted Savio explains in the course of a fateful meeting on Rikers Island several months later. Ted Savio is Lodge's attorney, provided gratis gratis by the PBA. by the PBA.

Although Savio's advice is perfectly reasonable, Lodge is nevertheless reluctant to accept it. Lodge has been ninety days without a drink and the ordeal of cold turkey withdrawal has produced in him a nearly feral sense of caution. Alone in his cell day after day, he has become as untrusting as an animal caught in a snare. At times, especially at night, the urge to escape the inescapable pushes him to the brink of uncontrolled panic. At other times, he drops into a black hole of despair that leaves him barely able to respond to the demands of his keepers.

"You gotta face the facts here, Dave," Savio patiently explains, "which, I note, are lined up against you. You can't even account for your movements."

"I had a blackout. It wasn't the first time."

"You say that like you maybe lost your concentration for a minute. Meanwhile, they found you pa.s.sed out in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Holding a bottle in your hands."

"I knew that's where it was kept," Lodge admits. "But just because I was drunk doesn't mean I killed Spott."

"You had the victim's blood on your uniform and your blood was found on the victim."

"That could've happened when we subdued the mutt."

"We?"

"Me and my partner."

"Dave, your partner didn't have a drop of blood on him." Savio makes an unsuccessful attempt at eye contact with his client, then continues. "What you need to do here is see the big picture. Dante Russo told Lieutenant Whitlock that he had to pull you off Clarence Spott. He said this before the body was found, he repeated it to a Grand Jury, he'll testify to it in open court. That's enough to bury you all by itself, even without Officer Anthony Szarek's testimony.

"The Broom," Lodge moans. "I'm being done in by the f.u.c.king Broom."

"The Broom?"

"Szarek, he's a couple years short of a thirty-year pension and the job's carrying him. He spends most of his tour sweeping the precinct. That bottle they found me with? That was his."

"Well, Broom or not, Szarek's gonna say that he was present when you and Rus...o...b..ought Spott to the holding cells, that he heard Russo tell you to go to the hospital, that he watched Russo walk away ..."

"Stop sayin' his name." Lodge raises a fist to his shoulder as if about to deliver a punch. "f.u.c.king Dante Russo. If I could just get to him, just for a minute."

"What'd you think? That you and your partner would go down with the ship together? Maybe holding hands? Well, Dave, it's time for you to start using your head."

Lodge draws a deep breath, then glances around the room. Gray concrete floor, green cinder-block walls, a table bolted to the floor, plastic chairs on metal legs. And that's it. The room where he confers with his attorney is as barren as his cell, as barren as the message his attorney delivers.

"Face the facts, Dave. Take the plea. It's not gonna get any better and it could be withdrawn."

"Man-one?"

"That's right, first-degree manslaughter. You take the deal, you'll be out in seven years. On the other hand, you go to trial, find yourself convicted of second-degree murder, you could be lookin' at twenty-five to life. Right now you're thirty seven years old. You can do the seven years and still have a reason to live when you're released."

Though Lodge believes his lawyer, he still can't bring himself to accept Savio's counsel. At times over the past months, he's literally banged his head against the wall in an effort to jog his memory. Drunk or sober, he feels no guilt about the parts he can vaguely recall. Yeah, he tuned Spott up. He must have because he remembers Russo driving to a heavily industrial section of Greenpoint, north of Flushing Avenue, remembers turning onto Bogart Street where it dead-ends against the railroad tracks, remembers yanking Spott out of the backseat. Spott had resisted despite the cuffs.

But Spott deserved his punishment. He'd committed a crime familiar to every member of every police force in the world: Contempt of Cop. You didn't run from cops, you didn't disrespect them with your big mouth, and you never, under any circ.u.mstances, hit them. If you did, you paid a price.

That was it, though, the full extent as far as Lodge was concerned. To the best of his knowledge, he'd never beaten a prisoner with any weapon but his hands. Never.

"What if I'm innocent?" he finally asks his lawyer.

"What if there's a million black people residing in Brooklyn who already think you're guilty?"

One week later, suspended Police Officer David Lodge appears before Justice Harold Roth in Part 70 of the Criminal Term of Brooklyn Supreme Court. Lodge is the last piece of business on Roth's calendar late this Friday afternoon. It's a cameo shot, posed in front of the raised dais where Roth sits-Lodge, his lawyer Savio, and the deputy chief of the District Attorney's Homicide Bureau-n.o.body is in the audience in the cavernous courtroom.

Justice Roth is not one to smile unduly or waste words. "Well, counsellor?"

"Yes, your honor," Savio marshalls his words. "My client has authorized me to withdraw his previously entered plea of not guilty and now offers to plead guilty to manslaughter in the first degree, a cla.s.s-C violent felony, under the first count of the indictment, in satisfaction of the entire indictment." Savio stops then, but does not look at Lodge, who is three feet to his right, standing ram-rod straight, staring fixedly at the judge. Lodge heard not a word Savio said.

"Is that what you want to do, Mr. Lodge?" Roth asks, not unkindly.

Mister Lodge. The words rock him like a blow to the body. Yet he remains transfixed, mute. The words rock him like a blow to the body. Yet he remains transfixed, mute.

A full minute has pa.s.sed. Roth has had enough. "Come up."

The lawyers hasten up to the bench, huddling with Roth at the sidebar. Savio earnestly explains that his client is unable to admit guilt because he was in the throes of an alcoholic blackout when he allegedly bludgeoned the victim, and so has no memory of the event. After several minutes of back-and-forth, Roth ends the debate.

"He can have an Alford-Serrano. Alford-Serrano. Step back." Step back."

At Lodge's side, Savio explains their good fortune. In an Alford-Serrano Alford-Serrano plea-normally reserved for the insane-Roth will simply ask Lodge if he is pleading guilty because Lodge believes that the evidence is such that he will be found guilty at trial. Savio whispers urgently in Lodge's ear, an Iago to his Oth.e.l.lo. plea-normally reserved for the insane-Roth will simply ask Lodge if he is pleading guilty because Lodge believes that the evidence is such that he will be found guilty at trial. Savio whispers urgently in Lodge's ear, an Iago to his Oth.e.l.lo.

Suddenly, David Lodge's body goes slack, his gaze falters. Lodge has an epiphany. He sees the faces of all the skells he'd ever arrested who'd whined innocent, and for the only time in his life he's flooded with a compa.s.sion, till the fear takes hold-the fear of a small child upon awaking alone in the dark in an empty house.

PART IV.

Backwater Brooklyn

TRIPLE HARRISON.

BY M MAGGIE E ESTEP.

East New York She was wearing her t-shirt but she'd shed her jeans and her bleach-stained panties. She had me pinned down by the shoulders and her long dirty hair was tickling my cheeks as she hovered over me. I kept trying to look into her eyes but she had her face turned away. Even though her body was doing things to mine, she didn't want me seeing what her eyes thought about it.

"Stella." I said her name but she wouldn't look at me. She took one hand off my shoulder and started raking her fingernails down my chest a little too violently.

"Hey, that hurts, girl," I warned, trying to grab at her hand.