The Dog Killer of Utica Read online

  “I do and I will.”

  “You do and we’re through.”

  “You mean that.”

  “I do.”

  “What can I do to change your mind?”

  “Go to meetings regularly. At least once a week. For starters.”

  “What else?”

  “Get therapy on a regular basis.”

  “What else?”

  “Accompany me to 424 Sunlit Terrace, because we’re going to have a talk with Nikki Ryan.”

  “Why? To what end?”

  “I don’t trust her.”

  “Shall we eat now, Catherine? Or shall we make love in lovers’ lane?”

  The overcast is blown out by a stiff north wind, the sky is pure, the city below is all ice and barren black boughs—the gleaming gold dome of the Utica Savings Bank brilliant in high relief. They set their box of food and coffee on the floor of the backseat. She straddles him.

  After, he says, “We’re not really through, are we, if I insist on my plan?”

  “Yes, we are, and in spite of what we just did. Don’t kid yourself.”

  Back at Toma’s, one of the Gang of Six, seventy-five-year-old Billy Santoro, says, “I’m not right. I’m going home.” He’s offered a ride, but refuses, saying, “The exercise helps, especially mentally.” Billy Santoro lives on Humbert Ave., a short two block street off Mohawk near South. He must cross Mohawk to reach Humbert and does so easily through brisk traffic. At seventy-five, Billy is still nimble. At Mohawk and Humbert he walks east to the second block of Humbert to reach his house, but must cross Humbert because on this day of dreams of Catherine Cruz, Billy had walked on the wrong side of his street.

  Humbert Ave. is quiet on this Thursday afternoon. The street itself has been plowed and salted. Tire traction is perfect. No traffic, there rarely is much, no kids out playing, no strollers out for the bracing air. Billy steps out between two parked cars to reach his house, still dreaming of Catherine Cruz and hard of hearing, when a car parked twenty yards away pulls out. The driver floors the gas pedal, strikes Billy, and comes to a sudden halt. The driver looks in the rearview mirror. Sees Billy, somehow not dead, raise his head. The driver backs up at full speed and runs him over, back and forth. Twice. There are no witnesses.

  Mohawk and Humbert Ave.

  In North Utica, where many East Side Italians and West Side Poles had moved on up, Eliot and Catherine turn left off Herkimer Road onto Sunlit Terrace, into a development built in the late fifties and early sixties, where working-class families who saved their pennies were able to purchase, for around $15,000, small but tasteful white bungalows with ample backyards and space along the sides ensuring privacy. The builder had generously planted two red maples in each of the front yards and now, fifty years later, full-grown and stately, they lend the street a look associated with upscale sections of town. The exteriors of the houses and the yards are fastidiously maintained, mostly by their proud second-generation owners who would not, unlike their immigrant parents, ever hear the epithet “dirty Wop” or “dumb Polack.”

  At 424, home of Nikki Ryan’s parents, the two maples had been cut down and the stumps uprooted, three years ago, when the Ryans moved in, because Denis Ryan did not like the mess of fallen leaves in autumn.

  Cruz and Conte at the front door, Denis Ryan answers in a short-sleeve golf shirt, fifth drink in hand. Cruz holds up her badge. Ryan wants to know who he is—Conte shows him his card—and what they want. Doesn’t invite them in.

  Cruz says, “We’d like to speak to your daughter, who we have reason to believe is here.”

  “She’s not.”

  “Can you tell us, sir, where we might find her?”

  “You gotta research warrant?”

  “We’re not here to search your house, sir.”

  Conte: “We’re concerned about her well-being.”

  “She sure the hell is not.”

  Conte: “We’re very concerned, Mr. Ryan.”

  “Where do Utica people like to go on their honeymoons, and you got your answer where she is.”

  Cruz: “She’s gotten married?”

  “Don’t know if they tied the knot yet, but that’s what they said.”

  Conte: “To whom?”

  “Jonathan Figgins. He comes to the door. They talk in whispers so I can’t hear. She cries. They embrace. She packs a suitcase. They go.”

  Cruz: “When?”

  “About two hours ago.”

  Conte: “Are you aware, Mr. Ryan, that Figgins has abused her in the past and has recently threatened her with severe bodily harm?”

  “She packs a suitcase. They go. This conversation is over unless you got some beef with me. Yeah, I’m aware he abuses her.” Denis Ryan knocks back his drink.

  On the way back to Toma’s, where Conte will pick up his car, he’s unable to speak. She respects his silence. In the parking lot she says, “El, you know what I know about people? I know nothing. How about you, El?”

  He does not respond.

  “But there are times,” she says, “when I’m almost sure that I know you.”

  A blast of icy wind rocks the car.

  He says, “Nikki Ryan. Who is she?”

  She’s turned to him. He stares ahead. Only ahead.

  “I think you know, Eliot.”

  Something flits across his face: terror.

  “She made a fool of me.”

  “No.”

  “I made a fool of myself. That your point?”

  “No.”

  “Be blunt—I don’t have time to dance.”

  “You’re afraid, El.”

  “Of what?”

  “How old do you suppose Nikki is?”

  “Late twenties, early thirties.”

  “How old were your daughters?”

  “Be brutal, Dr. Cruz.”

  “She’s your fantasy daughter—at some level you know this. She’s the fantasy who the heroic daddy swoops in at the last minute to save, who couldn’t save his own daughters. Whoever she is, the real Nikki can’t be saved. Your daughters are dead. I’ve never heard you say the word. Can you say it? You’re alive on a half-time basis, dead the other half.”

  “My kids were doomed.”

  “You weren’t there for them. Why? Because you made a choice. You want brutal?”

  “Why spare me now when you never have before?”

  “The cruel truth is that you have to find a way—by yourself, I can’t help you on this—to accept some responsibility for what happened in California. You left your kids. That was your choice.”

  “I never chose to put them in danger.”

  “Unintended consequence of your decision to leave.”

  (Long silence.)

  “I want to cry, but can’t.”

  “It’s a natural thing, El, a spontaneous thing to weep. You don’t will it. Are you afraid to be sad? Hiding from your sadness in your rage? Stop hiding. Can you embrace the sadness? Dive down to the bottom of it? Then rise and find a path into the present, where we are? We’re here. We’re now.”

  “When we made love at The Eagle, that was my total present. At The Eagle, I was alive full-time.”

  “Me too. But now we have a serial killer at large. Nikki Ryan was a distraction from that too. Can you let her go?”

  “My kids are dead.”

  CHAPTER 13

  He’s about to get out of the car when a text from Don Belmonte grabs her attention: “urgent be back on duty urgent mohawk humbert.” No thought, not even a glimmer of a thought, precedes what Conte says, as the words tumble out of him with a will of their own: “There’s something wrong with me.”

  Gesturing with cell, “I’m sorry—Don needs me now—I’m very sorry.”

  “I need you more.”

  “I’ll come by after I”—gesturing with cell—“I have to deal with this.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll come by later. Count on it.”

  He does not respond. Looks away.

  �
��You can count on me, Eliot.”

  No response. Looking away.

  Concealing her doubt, hand on his shoulder, “Look at me. We’ll get through it. You’ll change.”

  Looking away, “I’ve never changed.”

  “You’ll see. Look at me. Please.” (He doesn’t.)

  On the way home from Toma’s, he stops at Hannaford’s Market and buys two six-packs of Excalibur, a nonalcoholic beer with the taste of poor-quality actual beer—tastes like piss, the saying goes—the label of which, in small print, lists among its ingredients a tiny percentage of alcohol. In the car out loud, with scorn, “I’m not having a drink,” twisting off the cap, swigging deep, “just as Bill Clinton did not have sex with that woman.” Finishes off the bottle, heads to Mary Street.

  Home at midafternoon, pacing, half wanting to resist bottle #2, thinking he’s as crazy in his own way as Michael Coca in his. What he did, in the snow, unforgivably, to that man. Only a crazy man. The contract that he wanted to put on his ex and her husband. Only a crazy man. Senzalma’s words echo in his head, “You have love and you want to order murder?”

  Denise’s lovely face and form now vivid in his mind, what a big and blazing torch for Denise Coca he’d carried for several years before meeting Catherine. Did Michael know that Denise was drawn to him? Denise telling Milly Robinson, who told Antonio, who told him—who in Utica hadn’t heard the sad rumors?—that she had decided to leave Michael after trying so hard not to. He’d been doing many strange things after his sudden retirement, a year ago, and his self-admission for six weeks to a psychiatric ward. Sleeping on the bedroom floor, moaning and rocking at meals, going on about the toxicity of Utica’s water supply. She was putting up with it. She could take it—believed with all her heart until death do us part because she was a devout Catholic, but when she found him standing on the coffee table, giggling, pants down at his ankles, masturbating on the living room rug, she’d gone to see Father DeFazio, who told her that the Church would understand if she needed to leave him and that she’d not be denied the sacraments, or a request for annulment. “Michael is lost, Father,” who replied, “But you are not.”

  Bottle #2. Down in one long swig. About to open #3 when it hits him—he knows suddenly against all reason—absurd to think what he thinks but is certain, nevertheless, that he’s cracked the case. They would laugh him out of the D.A.’s office. Catherine would think he’d finally snapped beyond repair. They’d say, “You say ‘somehow’ this, ‘somehow’ that because you know nothing. Go home and work on your unreadable Melville manuscript.”

  Chops off several chunks from a one-pound block of hard provolone and eats them with stale crackers. Opens #3, but does not drink. Goes to his desk and begins to read the latest draft of his Melville manuscript. Smiles. Nods. He likes it. Forgetting himself for a while. Chops off several more chunks of provolone, puts them in his leather jacket, pours #3 down the sink. Leans over the sink and inhales the fumes. No buzz. Puts his .357 Magnum in his jacket. Who’s next? Mark? Kyle? Their dog? Tom Castellano? His dog? Catherine, Angel, Angel’s parents, Senzalma? (But not him, never him, and now he knows why.) How shall he convince them to be sufficiently frightened to—to do what, exactly? Lock themselves and their pets in their houses? And then? Leave town? Until?

  Conte knocks at the Morenos’. Angel answers. Home alone. His parents are working late.

  “Are you sure about that, Angel?”

  “Your mind be leaving the good planet Earth, Jefe?”

  “I wish to pay you for your work on Figgins and Ryan. You must accept this time.”

  “Nah, we straight.”

  “I’m afraid I need another favor.”

  “Don’t be afraid, Jefe, because Angel already hacktivated Mirko and Delores in anticipation. Jefe, the love birds, they gone dark.”

  “Can you say where they might be? Might they be coming back to Utica?”

  “Angel don’t have spy machines circulating the third rock from the sun. Jefe?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can we assume you delivered rough justice to that motherfucker Figgins?”

  “They got married.”

  “The female race, Jef, what can I say?”

  “Keep the door locked until your parents return and tell them to lock it and not answer to strangers. This is the favor I need from you.”

  “When the fox returns, big man, all will be copafuckinsetic. You become like rational again.”

  Conte hands him six cellophane-wrapped chunks of provolone. “This is for you, Angel. Hope you like it.”

  “Kiss me, I’m Italian. Yeah.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Big man, Angel’s got gourmet Mexican dessert.”

  (Conte hesitates at the threshold.)

  “Jefe, I can’t totally scarf it solo.”

  (Conte still at the threshold.)

  “Jef, you be a total hound for sweets, it’s like known up and down the Mohawk Valley.”

  Conte enters saying, “What gourmet Mexican treats do you offer, Angel, aside from your incomparable dialogue?”

  “Chocolate chip cookies à la McDonald’s, plus glazed doughnuts from the fuckin’ Dunkin’ franchise.”

  Through the short vestibule, gaily carpeted, they go—through the living room, to the kitchen where they sit, and Angel puts out the sweets and two cold glasses of milk.

  “Full fat, Jef, because fuck the heart attacks, that other shit is tasteless.”

  “It is, Angel, but your parents, on the other hand, have exquisite taste, always have.”

  “Yeah, they like put in an order for the riveting presence they lacked in their humdrum lives prior to the coming of yours, in all sincerity, Angel Moreno.”

  “Angel, the gift from God.”

  “Yeah, man, I appeared from behind the burning bush.”

  “Actually, I was thinking of the tasteful interior decorating, you know? The furniture, such an elegant mix of contemporary and traditional, the colorful wall hangings and rugs, not to mention Florencio’s artistic wall painting with those subtle pastels that define his taste—or should I say, his sensibility.”

  “Yeah, his sensibility, man.”

  “Not to mention the level of cleanliness.”

  “Man, my mother is totally anal.”

  “I admire your parents, Angel, always have. How are they doing?”

  “I miss them, boss.”

  “You all live under the same roof. Children and parents together—that’s the way it should be. Nothing better than that.”

  “Same roof, boss, that’s only technical. My father works seven days a week and the little guy is exhausted 24/7. When he’s home he’s like falling into a stupor while eating, the food falls on his pants directly from his mouth. The little daddy is like here but not here and the mother not so bad, but bad enough. They come through the door, they don’t have the energy to say hello. This is America, Jefe, the fuckin’ Hispanic wave.”

  “They love you. That’s always been obvious. They do their best, I know this. One love under one roof.”

  “Totally agree, but neverthefuckinless, Jefe.”

  “You want more of them.”

  “You said it.”

  (Silence, as Conte’s mind flies thirty years back to California.)

  “Jefe.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Where did you go, Jefe?”

  “When you’re older, I promise, I’ll tell you.”

  “Jefe, you be like all of the sudden in the total dark.”

  “No, Angel, I’m in a place of light and goodness. Your house. And I’m thinking about your father and me planting the spring garden again.”

  “You into poetry shit?”

  “You’re a person of light and goodness for me, just wanted you to know.”

  “Going all wobbly on me, man?”

  “Got a problem with that, little guy?”

  “Nah. On occasion I dig the heartfelt thing. What I’m saying, I need involvement and propose you re
quire help.”

  “Help?”

  “Yeah. Don’t think I don’t know you’re in hot pursuit of the maniac.”

  “How do—you’ve been into my e-mail?”

  “Don’t hold it against me, Uncle. I propose a team. Me Tonto, the cool Indian, you the Lone Stranger.”

  “Forget about it.”

  “You need help, Mr. C.”

  “You deaf?”

  “But you do.”

  “So I’m told.”

  “Is that what the fox is sayin’?”

  “No comment.”

  “Listen to the fox and take me on!”

  “She wasn’t referring to that type of help.”

  “Total head case type help?”

  “No comment.”

  “Don’t feel bad, Jefe. Angel is a whack job too.”

  “This thing is no joke. Listen. Get serious. It’s dangerous, and I’m not letting you near it. Do you understand? End of discussion. Do you hear me? Finito.”

  “I’m here if you need me, Mr. C, including totally free psychological counselling.”

  Without another word they eat—all the cookies and all the doughnuts, gulping down the big cold glasses of milk in long, long drafts.

  Back home, nothing to do, three hours since she said she’d come by, and beside himself and considering taking a dose of his sleeping meds to get through the hours until she—the phone, his landline. Caller I.D. CCruz.

  “On my way.”

  “I’ll throw some dinner together.”

  “Don’t. I picked up Vietnamese.”

  She enters and first thing he says, “I have something important to tell you about the case.”

  “So do I. Let’s eat first in peace.”

  They do. In silence. Wolfing it.

  He says, “I’ll do the dishes and then—”

  “Let’s cut to the chase.”

  “About the case I—”

  “No. About what you have cold in the refrigerator.”

  “It’s nonalcoholic. Nonalcoholic.”

  “Nice. A trace of alcohol is in it, as if you don’t know what all drunks know. The gateway drink for people in The Program who can’t embrace The Program. Like you. The slippery slope. For people like you who can’t control their impulses. Who can’t keep their shit together.”

  Conte opens and empties the remaining nine bottles into the sink.