By contrast, the four hundred block of Ingraham Street was absolutely deserted. Pale orange light fanned outward from the only functioning street lamp, collecting in the mist and the slushy puddles at the curb. That it failed to reach the warehouses on either side of the street goes without saying, but Adele and I had no trouble locating 483 Ingraham. Almost dead center on the south side of the block, a single abandoned tenement rose two stories above its industrial neighbors. The tenement’s brick had been painted white decades ago, and its paint had now cracked into thousands of tiny shards. The shards cast leaf-like shadows that danced in the flashlight beams Adele and I played over the tenement’s facade. From where we stood on the sidewalk, the building was in compliance with city code. The windows had been replaced with sheets of plywood and the door sealed with cinder blocks upon which some helpful city worker had painted the number 483 in red letters.
Followed by Adele, I walked to the eastern corner of the building, to a narrow alley. Though the alley was no more than five feet wide, the walls on either side were covered with graffiti, mostly tags, but with a few figures as well. A purple dragon holding a bleeding woman in its mouth; a pit bull with a goofy expression and the physique of a superhero, and a black Jesus hanging from the cross.
Adele unbuttoned her coat, removed her automatic and laid it across her body with the barrel pointing at the wall. She took a step, but I reached out to stop her. ‘We’re going to have a look around,’ I said, ‘but we are not going to remove any item of evidence. Under no circumstances, no matter what. We leave the scene the way we found it.’
Adele’s smile widened and her eyes narrowed slightly, as a cat’s eyes narrow with pleasure when its back is stroked. Driven by warming temperatures, the mist had thickened, beading on Adele’s hair and on her shoulders and her dark lashes.
I took out my own weapon, let it drop to my side. Adele was already in the alley.
SIXTEEN
We emerged, finally, into a back yard of packed earth dominated by an alianthus tree that rose to the tenement’s roof line. Moisture dripped steadily from the tree’s branches onto mounds of trash that virtually filled the yard. The trash appeared to be mostly industrial — bits of old machinery, crushed shipping pallets and cardboard boxes. Adele and I worked our way through puddles of filthy slush, toward the rear of the yard, until we could see the whole of the tenement’s back wall. In the center of the building, a narrow door had been closed off with cinder blocks, like the door in front, but some enterprising mutt had punched a hole in the cinder blocks large enough to slip through.
I went inside first, holding the flashlight well away from my body, shouting, ‘Police,’ as loud as I could. Abandoned tenements are haunted by the street’s ultimate bottom feeders, the terminally addicted and the truly insane, either of whom might pose a serious threat to life and limb. Especially if surprised.
But DuWayne Spott was one bottom feeder who would never again pose a serious threat to anyone. He was lying on his back, on a mattress, his coat beside him, the right sleeve of a Los Angeles Lakers sweatshirt pushed up almost to his shoulder. A thin belt, a tourniquet, circled his arm just above his elbow, while a disposable syringe rose from his forearm like an upraised finger. Though open, his unblinking eyes were fixed and dull, his chest neither rising nor falling.
Adele ran her flashlight over the stretch of concrete floor between herself and Spott, illuminating a dozen well-formed shoe impressions. Carefully avoiding them, she approached the mattress and squatted to verify the obvious. First, she placed her fingers to Spott’s throat, then laid her ear on his chest, finally nodded once. Then she began to manipulate Spott’s joints and muscles in an effort to measure rigor mortis. Typically patient and thorough, she worked his fingers, elbows and shoulders, his knees, hips and neck, his eyelids, mouth and jaw.
I remained on my feet. We were in a small room, no more than ten by twelve, with a door on the far wall that led to a corridor. While I managed to keep one eye on Adele, I never lost track of that door.
‘How long?’ I asked.
Adele lifted Spott’s arm to examine the flesh along the underside. Spott was relatively dark-skinned which made post-mortem lividity harder to identify, but after a moment she lowered his arm to the mattress. ‘Lividity is fairly well advanced, but there’s no sign of rigor yet. I’d put time of death somewhere between two and three hours ago.’
I crossed to the door and shined my flashlight into the corridor. Through a second door to my right, I saw another mattress and a pile of blankets. A portable electric heater, resting next to the blankets, was plugged into an extension cord which ran beneath the window and into the back yard. I walked up to the heater and switched it on. It cranked up without hesitation, emitting a loud hum as the coils began to glow.
When Adele joined me a moment later, I said, ‘You think it’d throw enough heat to keep Spott alive for a few days? It’s been cold as hell all week.’
Adele let the beam of her flashlight play across the floor until it met the red eyes of a large rat. One paw resting on an open can of Vienna sausages, the rat had raised itself up and was sniffing the air, its head swiveling from side to side. Unfazed, Adele continued, systematically exploring the room until she came upon a series of semi-liquid puddles that had the unmistakable shape, color and texture of human vomit. ‘Look there, Corbin,’ she said. ‘That tells the whole story.’
The sequence I imagined at that moment — of DuWayne carried to this building, of DuWayne’s cold-turkey withdrawal, of DuWayne begging for dope, of DuWayne vomiting in the corner — seemed flawless to me. When his captors finally offered him a taste, he hadn’t hesitated, not for a split second.
I walked back toward the body, letting my eyes take in the little touches, the open glassine envelope, the guttered candle, the disposable red lighter, the tiny ball of cotton lying in the bowl of a blackened tablespoon. As I approached, I tried to summon up a trace of pity for DuWayne Spott but came away empty. He was a player who got played. It happens all the time.
‘I’m gonna call in the troops,’ I finally said.
‘Better come in here and take a look first.’
When I complied, Adele, ever the impresario, yanked up a corner of the mattress to reveal the point of the charade, a TEC-9 semi-automatic handgun with an extended magazine that had to be a foot long.
Two uniforms by the Eight-Three’s arrived first, followed by the Eight-Five’s patrol sergeant, two detectives, a squad lieutenant named Burke and the Crime Scene Unit. This was all routine and I let Adele conduct the relevant briefings, only nodding agreement when absolutely necessary. But then Bill Sarney turned up in the company of the precinct commander, followed shortly by an inspector from borough command and a deputy chief from One PP. Sarney’s attitude as he approached the deputy chief was so deferential he might have been a house servant on a southern plantation.
I remember watching the network vans rolling up, a pair of cops refusing to let them turn onto Ingraham Street, frantic reporters behind a web of crime-scene tape, the unblinking eyes of a dozen video cameras. I kept thinking that maybe Adele was right, maybe the bad guys had played their last card, but that card was a beauty. The bosses were about to bet the house on DuWayne Spott. Never mind the fact that neither Mr Spott, nor any of his associates, could possibly have acquired the number of my cell phone. And never mind the faint ligature marks encircling Spott’s wrists, either. Those were details that could easily be put to the side. The important thing was that whatever doubt the voting public might have had about DuWayne Spott’s guilt would be wiped away by the recovery of the TEC-9. The job could now bury David Lodge, once and for all, simply by going along with the script.