The Dog Killer of Utica Read online

  “Then you are in danger too. You are complicitous.”

  “There are many ways to do the right thing, Mirko. This is my way.”

  “Like Mr. Melville’s Ahab, we both hate evil.”

  “Mirko, Ahab was insane.”

  “Professor Conte, have we gone insane?”

  “Without question. This is our bond.”

  SIX MONTHS LATER

  Not once had the boy spoken since that night in December when his parents were shot to death as he sat between them on the couch in Conte’s living room. The psychiatrist who’d secured him a leave for the second semester of his freshman year at Proctor High thought it a major step forward when, after three months of futile therapy, three sessions per week, she’d gotten him to write responses on a notepad. Mainly one word. Occasionally whole phrases. Finally, a week ago, a question: What will become of me? When she reminded him that Eliot Conte and Catherine Cruz were in the process of formally adopting him, he wrote: But what will become of me?

  As Catherine grew big with child, she, Conte, and the boy lived in the first-floor apartment of the Morenos, amid the personal effects of the deceased—an unhealthy comfort for the boy, Conte knew, whom he’d witnessed too many times standing before the large front window of 1318 Mary, the scene of the crime, staring at the drawn blinds. Conte’s old house, empty for six months, was on the market because he believed that he needed to move his new family, soon to be enhanced by a daughter in early August, out of lower East Utica, his heart’s neighborhood, to where, exactly, he could not say and did not wish to contemplate. The guys at Toma’s, of course, made many suggestions. Anthony Senzalma offered as a gift his fortress on Smith Hill, but Conte was not tempted by the isolation and silence up there and graciously refused, and Senzalma had responded, “I agree. No one should live like that. I, myself, can’t anymore, which is why I shall move to the Presidential suite at Hotel Utica to brood upon my uncertain arrangements.”

  Conte had little time for brooding. His focus was on the boy and how to bring him, if possible, back to normal. He thought it might not be possible. So he took the boy with him to the class he was teaching for the spring semester on classic American fiction. The boy seemed disconnected until one evening he saw him open The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. At two in the morning Conte awoke with the boy on his mind and saw the light still on in his room. And again at 4:30. At breakfast, the boy did not appear. When Conte checked on him, he saw that he was near the end of Twain’s novel, where Huck says he’s had it with civilization and will “light out for the territory.” Was this Angel’s desire too?

  So he took the boy with him to Toma’s on Tuesday mornings, without fail. In the beginning, the gang was intimidated by the boy’s tragic presence and there was little of the old comic banter, but after a while the guys got their groove back and the talk of bodily ills resumed, in the usual witty style. After several of those Tuesdays at Toma’s, Conte received a call from Gene who told him that he saw a quick, faint smile—it disappeared as soon as it appeared—as Angel listened attentively while Remo told the grievous tale of McLaine, whom he did not hesitate, though the man was long dead, to call, in the boy’s presence, a cocksucker.

  And Kyle Torvald saw the boy twice a week at POWER UP!, where he introduced him to what he called “the severe and only way to work out.” The boy was skinny, Kyle said, but strong, pound for pound exceptionally strong. The boy threw himself with such scary abandon into the exercises that Kyle was worried.

  And Antonio Robinson took him to spring training in Tampa to watch the Yankees. And Anthony Senzalma bought him an expensive laptop, in the $6,000 range, a hacker’s delight, which Conte believed, but could not be certain, that Angel was beginning to use in recent weeks, in the middle of the night.

  June 6, a perfect afternoon of late spring. They sit in the backyard at a round picnic table. The guests: Anthony Senzalma, Antonio Robinson, Kyle Torvald. Catherine has just returned from The Florentine with the extraordinary cake. She’s decided against candles. It is Angel’s fourteenth birthday. From the garage, Eliot hauls a potted sapling. Three feet tall. The day before, as Angel watched from his bedroom window, Conte dug the hole on the property line separating the Moreno yard from his. They sing Happy Birthday, softly. Conte takes the boy’s hand and the guests follow him to the hole, Kyle carrying the potted sapling. Catherine lingers at the table.

  In a voice no longer layered with the argot and tones of the boy that was, a voice painfully rough with disuse and not able to ascend above a whisper, Angel Moreno says, “The story you told me when I was six.”

  Conte says, “Yes.”

  Angel says, “It’s a cherry tree?”

  Conte says, “Yes,” and removes the sapling from the pot, places it in the hole and offers the boy a shovel, who refuses it, goes down on his hands and knees and slowly pushes the dirt into the hole, patting and smoothing the last handfuls. Angel rises, wipes his hands on his jeans and shirt, wipes his hands on his face and says to Conte, “Thank you, sir.” Catherine walks over. Angel puts his hand on her abdomen. He smiles, not big, but big enough, waiting for the kick within.

  TURNS OUT, SOMETIMES YOU CAN BE TOO CONNECTED …

  “Entertainment of a high order—funny, fast-moving, and hot-blooded. It’s also the kind of novel that will appeal to readers who like their fiction to carry depth and range.”

  —DON DELILLO

  “Gripping, complex … Can’t wait for the next one—and the cable-TV series.”

  —THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

  $14.95 U.S./Can.

  Paperback: 978-1-61219-171-3

  Ebook: 978-1-61219-172-0

  MELVILLE INTERNATIONAL CRIME

  Happy Birthday, Turk!

  Jakob Arjouni

  978-1-935554-20-2

  More Beer

  Jakob Arjouni

  978-1-935554-43-1

  One Man, One Murder

  Jakob Arjouni

  978-1-935554-54-7

  Kismet

  Jakob Arjouni

  978-1-935554-23-3

  Brother Kemal

  Jakob Arjouni

  978-1-61219-275-8

  The Craigslist Murders

  Brenda Cullerton

  978-1-61219-019-8

  Death and the Penguin

  Andrey Kurkov

  978-1-935554-55-4

  Penguin Lost

  Andrey Kurkov

  978-1-935554-56-1

  The Case of the General’s Thumb

  Andrey Kurkov

  978-1-61219-060-0

  Nairobi Heat

  Mukoma wa Ngugi

  978-1-935554-64-6

  Black Star Nairobi

  Mukoma wa Ngugi

  978-1-61219-210-9

  Cut Throat Dog

  Joshua Sobol

  978-1-935554-21-9

  Brenner and God

  Wolf Haas

  978-1-61219-113-3

  The Bone Man

  Wolf Haas

  978-1-61219-169-0

  Resurrection

  Wolf Haas

  978-1-61219-270-3

  Come, Sweet Death!

  Wolf Haas

  978-1-61219-339-7

  Murder in Memoriam

  Didier Daeninckx

  978-1-61219-146-1

  A Very Profitable War

  Didier Daeninckx

  978-1-61219-184-3

  Nazis in the Metro

  Didier Daeninckx

  978-1-61219-296-3

  He Died with His Eyes Open

  Derek Raymond

  978-1-935554-57-8

  The Devil’s Home on Leave

  Derek Raymond

  978-1-935554-58-5

  How the Dead Live

  Derek Raymond

  978-1-935554-59-2

  I Was Dora Suarez

  Derek Raymond

  978-1-935554-60-8

  Dead Man Upright

  Derek Raymond

  978-1-61219-062-4


  The Angst-Ridden Executive

  Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  978-1-61219-038-9

  Murder in the Central Committee

  Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  978-1-61219-036-5

  The Buenos Aires Quintet

  Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  978-1-61219-034-1

  Off Side

  Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  978-1-61219-115-7

  Southern Seas

  Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  978-1-61219-117-1

  Tattoo

  Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  978-1-61219-208-6

  Death in Breslau

  Marek Krajewski

  978-1-61219-164-5

  The End of the World

  in Breslau

  Marek Krajewski

  978-1-61219-274-1

  Phantoms of Breslau

  Marek Krajewski

  978-1-61219-272-7

  The Minotaur’s Head

  Marek Krajewski

  978-1-61219-342-7

  The Accidental Pallbearer

  Frank Lentricchia

  978-1-61219-171-3

  The Dog Killer of Utica

  Frank Lentricchia

  978-1-61219-337-3