Lieutenant Justin Whitlock sets the precinct log aside when David Lodge and Dante Russo lead Clarence Spott into the 83rd Precinct, universally called the ‘Eight-Three’ by those who toil within its walls. 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 the width of the Precinct reception area, serving to keep the public at a safe distance from their protectors. 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 stitches 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, lou? Shouldn’t I get started?’
‘No, secure the prisoner, then get your ass 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, lou, I’m too quick.’
‘I see.’ Whitlock glances at the prisoner. ‘Did the mutt use a weapon?’
‘Yeah, lou, 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 assault on a police officer. That should keep the asshole 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.
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 little joke, 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? I was told that nobody wanted to work with him. I’m the union delegate, remember? Helping cops in trouble is part of my job.’
The conversation drifts for a bit, away from David Lodge, 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 Association — 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 warehouse 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 Bushwick Projects?’
‘Put him in a cell,’ Whitlock says, ‘and notify the detectives. They’ll wanna talk to him in the morning.’
‘Ten-four, lou.’
Not more than two minutes later, 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 fucking 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 at a Rikers Island jail several months later. Ted Savio is Lodge’s attorney, provided gratis 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 an almost 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 passed out in the basement, the empty vodka bottle at your feet.’
‘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 fucking 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 Russo brought 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. ‘Fucking 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 aluminum 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.’