The Dog Killer of Utica Read online

  The studio opens at 6:30, but his trainer arrives at 5:45 for his own daily workout and Conte comes eagerly fifteen minutes in advance of his 6:30 appointment to watch Kyle Torvald in the last jaw-dropping phase of his routine: fifty strict pull-ups and a fifty-first at the top of which Kyle actually muscles himself up and over the bar—this morning bellowing “Con-TEEEEEE”—dropping to the floor, palms up: “In the dog house? Where’s our fair lady? Where is Detective Catherine Cruuuuuz?”

  In this place of violent manly exertion, Conte finds a curious tranquility, as if he’d entered the enclosing warmth of an unfailingly supportive home. No pangs, here, of physical inadequacy, not a trace of macho thrust and parry, except in parodic mockery, never a hint of the bloody male imperative, except once, at the first interview, when Kyle—ex-paratrooper with a problematic back—in response to Conte’s question, “What’s a reasonable fitness goal for a guy my age?” replies with a wink, “When you take off your shirt, big guy, you look like you might, and likely will, sooner or later, kill somebody.” Kyle Torvald stands 5’10” at 160 pounds, a fair blond of Scandinavian descent and delicately chiseled handsomeness, beside Eliot Conte’s 6’3”, 220, and all southern Italian shadow.

  Kyle says (with glee), “Addicted to breathing? I can fix that. Get on the rower and give me two thousand meters, all out, and vomit! Vomit your guts!—quick, down on the floor, forty push-ups, crack your spine!—quick! Quick! Bench two hundred pounds to muscle failure—die slowly!—burst your clotted chest!—give me one hundred squats in one hundred seconds—no resting, Conte!—pull that five-hundred-pound sled back and forth the length of the floor and stop making those noises! Did I see you eye-fuck the clock? Would you like the Suicide Stairs? Hurry! Hurry! Slam that thirty-pound medicine ball, not on the floor but through it, twenty times, penetrate that floor, Conte, rape it hard and explode your evil heart and balls.”

  “Good work,” Kyle says, the only compliment he ever gives, and that not often, as he extends his hand to help his spent trainee off the floor, while startling him with an offer (a first) to go to breakfast “on me.”

  Conte, on his feet, barely, manages, “You’re free?”

  “Congressman Kingwood canceled his 7:00, Anthony Senzalma his 7:30. Why, you may ask? Because these right-wing homophobes decided to suck each other off. I have nothing at 8:00. Let’s go, big fella. Or do you need an ambulance?”

  Kohler’s For Breakfast (since 1947), in the ex-Polish enclave on the West Side, a memory of the Utica that was. Front room of a one-family house. Five tables, worn carpeted floor, actual flowers in all seasons, pictures of old-time political bosses. Mama cooks. Papa waits: soft-boiled eggs, cream of wheat and sliced banana, coffee and pastries—Kyle insists on the sweets “because if you don’t once in a while, the craving pushes you into a zone of violence.” Conte, who needs no excuse, replies, “Let’s order the Napoleons for the road and save the violence for another day.”

  “Which day?”

  (Pause.)

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Now that you teach at the college, ever miss your private dick work?”

  “No.”

  “Not even a little?”

  “No.”

  “Good guy bad guy thrill of the hunt?”

  “Good guy? What’s that?”

  “You, Eliot.”

  “Coming on to me, Kyle?”

  “I’m contemplating coming on to Catherine.”

  “You’re gay—have you forgotten?”

  “Skin deep, Prof, just skin deep.”

  (Conte thinks of her skin, the feel of it. He smiles weakly.) “Out of curiosity, Conte, do you and Catherine, in your spare time, hunt the guy who did the damage to your body? When you came to see me two weeks after it happened, you still looked pretty ugly. How did she handle it? I’m her, I want to kill the guy.”

  Eliot nods.

  “You know who did it, don’t you?”

  Eliot nods.

  “And why.”

  Eliot nods.

  “Has to do with your kids who were …”

  Eliot nods.

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  Eliot stares.

  Kyle waves over George Kohler, orders two Napoleons to go, then says, “Me? I’m merely a man of physical culture who can’t go toe-to-toe at your psychological level. Aside from the incomparable Catherine, who can?”

  “Kyle?”

  “I’m here, Eliot.”

  “Neither can I.”

  Catherine Cruz in Troy the previous day had done what Conte imagined she’d do. Hugged her daughter, took her to dinner, picked up the clothes-strewn apartment, washed and put away the sink-clogging, days-old dirty dishes, wiped down every dust-laden surface while Miranda sat in observance, in sullen stupor, waiting for her mother to perform the ultimate act of commiseration by writing a more-than-generous check. That night, Catherine sleeps badly on Miranda’s couch.

  Next morning, while Conte is put through his brutalizing paces, Catherine awakes in time to hear the apartment door close and her daughter slink out to score whatever it was that made her minimal life possible. Catherine falls in despair immediately back to a trouble-free sleep of escape, to be startled awake two hours later by an unnaturally exuberant “Good morning! Mi madre!” Against all reason she’s washed over by memories of Miranda’s childhood innocence, magically resuscitated by this transparently sweet apparition who walks back into the apartment. Catherine Cruz is torn asunder by the conspiring parties of joy, guilt, and sadness without bottom.

  Late that morning, she pulls away from the curb, her radio tuned to FM Albany. When nearing the Thruway entrance, a crushing bulletin: “This just in. Longtime Troy favorite, respected detective, and Christmas Day Parade Santa Claus, Robert Rintrona, is reported to be in grave condition at Saint Jude’s Hospital after suffering three gunshot wounds in the driveway of his west Troy home, early this morning. Details and updates at the top of the hour. And now back to our regularly scheduled program, and Act Two of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera, a great love of the detective’s, as we are told.”

  She turns back, racing over the speed limit toward Saint Jude—the hospital and the Saint himself.

  The heavy workout and even heavier breakfast make it difficult for Conte to stay awake as he drives across town to Mary Street, where he takes a long, hot shower, somehow resists the urge to try Catherine on her cell, then curls up on the couch and sleeps for an hour. Awake, reviews his notes for his last presentation of the semester, metaphysical nihilism in Moby-Dick, when he’s rescued from Melville’s terror by the desk phone.

  “Eliot.”

  “Where are you? Almost home?”

  “On the Thruway.”

  “When will you be home?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Drive safely.”

  “I always drive safely.”

  “Miss me, Catherine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Watch out for bad drivers. They’re the ones who—”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Really watch out.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “No need to rush.”

  “No.”

  “Kyle asked after you. He has a thing for you, even though he’s gay. He says he’s only gay at the surface.”

  “Eliot, are you sitting or standing?”

  “What’s that supposed to—?”

  “Eliot. Sitting or standing?”

  “Standing. Christ, Catherine.”

  “You should sit.”

  “What happened? Are you—?”

  “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  “Miranda?”

  “No.”

  “Bobby Rintro—?”

  “Bobby was shot.”

  “They killed Bobby?” (Coldly.)

  “He’s still alive. Why did you say ‘they’?”

  “How bad?” (Coldly.)

  “Bad.”

  “Where? When?”

  “Walking his
dog this morning in his pajamas and robe and Santa hat. In front of the house. Maureen was still asleep. Three times.”

  “Not the head. Don’t tell me—”

  (Conte breaks down. She thinks it’ll never end.)

  “Shoulder. Neck. Missed the artery. Chest … They have grave concern … Lung damage. The trauma surgeon says a decent recovery is possible.”

  “What is decent supposed to mean? Fifty-fifty chance of dying?”

  “He never lost consciousness until they put him under.”

  (Silence.)

  “Are you there, Eliot?”

  “Did you see Maureen?”

  “No.”

  “Did you talk to the responding officers?”

  “Patrolmen Joe Dominguez and Neal Brady.”

  “Bobby could still talk?”

  “He said an upstate plate. Likely Utica.”

  “He’ll survive?”

  “Bobby was coughing blood. Brady said drowning in his own—”

  “Don’t say it. I’ll drive down.”

  “No point. No one outside Maureen and the kids for several days. Dominguez thinks he said something about Eddie or Ellie or something. He couldn’t quite get it. ‘Tell Eddie or Ellie that it finally—’ ”

  “Finally? Finally what?”

  “ ‘Tell Eddie or Ellie that it finally—’ That’s all they got. ‘That it finally—’ ”

  (Long silence.)

  “Eliot, are you still there?”

  “You shouldn’t be talking and driving.”

  “I’ll be home soon.”

  “I’ll be at class when you—I’ll cancel.”

  “Don’t. We’ll talk after.”

  “Which hospital?”

  “Saint Jude. Albany.”

  “Patron saint of lost causes.”

  “Yes, Eliot.”

  One call from Troy and Conte’s dragged back into the past. Can he keep the truth from her? If he can’t, he’s sure he’ll lose her. And if he can—what then? He’s certain beyond a reasonable doubt that Bobby Rintrona’s assailant was Antonio Robinson, and that he’s next on the hit list.

  Can’t prepare—head aswim—will stick closely to his notes. State what he believes to be the book’s master theme: the pull of the earth’s enchanting surfaces, the engrossing beauty of surfaces and the opposing pull, the self-annihilating dive beneath to find the meaning of ultimate things, where there are no things, and Melville’s obsessive key words for what lies beneath the surface. He’ll just list the words. He’ll repeat them slowly, that’s what he’ll do.

  BLANK

  INDEFINITE

  IMMEASURABLE

  NAMELESS

  UNNAMEABLE

  PHANTOM

  UNDISCOVERABLE

  UNIMAGINABLE

  INCOMMUNICABLE

  INSUFFERABLE

  NOTHING

  He’ll linger on unimaginable. Ask them to take it literally. You can’t make an image of it. Stay home at the enchanting surface. The spouse. The child. The backyard garden. Squeeze the hands of all brothers and sisters—never forgetting those with whom we do not share blood. The rest is insufferable. He guessed he had at best twenty minutes’ worth in him.

  The class went the full two and a half hours. Conte lost in a book. Conte happy. Because he felt—as Saint Anthony says we feel in perfect prayer—that he did not exist at all.

  CHAPTER 2

  4:30, class out and Conte exists again—returned unhappily to himself—walking fast toward the parking lot accompanied by his strongest student, Mirko Ivanovic—apolitical son of Bosnian Muslims who had carried their child when he was three to America’s promised land (Utica!) only to see him grow up into a fanatical English major. Mirko’s parents would have preferred that he prepare himself for the sanctioned thievery of Big Business, but they were good parents, above all they were good, who would not impose their will, so they nursed their desires in silent prayer, and in secret stupefaction marveled that this exceptionally bright son of theirs could be enthralled by the books of a long-dead American, who in his lifetime achieved great commercial and critical disasters. With disturbing adulation, in his parents’ speechless presence, no less, the devilish Mirko routinely refers to the writer of difficult storybooks as Muhammad Melville.

  Diminutive Mirko jogs now to keep pace with his powerfully striding giant of a teacher, as he, Mirko, extends between quick breaths an invitation to attend an interfaith gathering on Sunday at the new mosque in East Utica—at Mary and Albany—a short walk from your house—professor—just a getting to know your—a getting to know your Muslim neighbors—kind of thing—special coffee—divine pastries baked by our ch-chaste—our chaste—mothers and sisters—Conte struggling all the while with a brutal image that has seized the center of his mind, of Robert Rintrona shot down in the street and drowning in his own blood. They reach the car. A sudden flurry of snow, cutting wind. The ever-polite Conte suppresses his impatience to get home, where Catherine Cruz will greet him with perhaps hopeful news. He accepts the invitation. Mirko says “Inshallah” with a curious trace of sadness, or is it fatality?

  It’s Monday, his and Catherine’s date night, their eat-out night, but Conte cannot imagine eating, in or out. What he imagines in vivid detail is a few triple Johnnie Walker Blacks, no ice. He needs to call his sponsor. Needs to go to a meeting. He’s driving along the Parkway—elevated terrain directly south of his home in lower East Utica. The Parkway, site of a number of Utica’s most expensive homes, now bordering dangerous territory. Conte’s vision of triple Johnnie Walkers is penetrated by the sirens of fire trucks, ambulances, police cruisers. The all too familiar sounds emanate from just below the Parkway, in the Cornhill section of white flight, which the Irish, the Germans, the Jews—three versions of middle-class pretension—fled long ago, to be replaced by honest working-class blacks and their cancerous parasites from the black criminal class—the drug dealers, the prostitutes, the pimps, and the arsonists who set fire to rundown two- and three-family houses, sometimes on behalf of slum lords, sometimes just for the hell of it. Conte thinks of the clamor of those sirens as the music of Utica’s inferno.

  He turns off the Parkway, cuts down to the Cornhill district on Seymour Ave.—the street where she once lived and where he would cruise in high school days in hopes of seeing her for whom he carried a torch—departed years ago to Las Vegas, married to a lout and womanizer. The house of her youth and beauty is ablaze. Another on Dudley Ave., also ablaze. Anthony V. Senzalma had called Cornhill the “Zone of Black Fire” on his talk show and in an Op-Ed he’d written for the Observer-Dispatch that brought him useful death threats. (Conte needs to go to a meeting.) He’s weaving his way around cordoned-off, smoke-filled streets of flashing lights and burly men at labor made more difficult, and dangerous, by a strong wind that jumps the fire to two other houses on Brinkerhoff. At last he reaches Freddy Barbone’s liquor store on Mohawk at South Street, where he hasn’t appeared for a year, since the day before he entered The Program in order to become, as they say, a friend of Bill Wilson.

  Freddy steps out from behind the cash register with a booming “Hey! Hey! Johnnie W! Mr. Johnnie Walker himself is back! For some Black!” Throwing his arms wide as he approaches Conte for a hug. Conte freezes, arms at his side, dead-faced. Freddy freezes too, with a look of fear, two feet away, his arms still out. (Rumors of Conte’s unpredictable explosions of volcanic rage have reached his ears.) A comic moment, not enjoyed by either actor.

  “Long time no see, Eliot,” embarrassed, retreating behind the cash register. “Ever get the Mass card I sent when your great father passed? Because I never heard from you.”

  “Because I never got it.”

  Because Freddy had not sent a Mass card. Because why would he? Because while it was always important to make gestures of respect to the powerful father when he was alive, once the old fuck was dead Freddy calculated the profit and the loss and concluded why waste the time and cash on this booze-bag loser of a son, this j
oke of a private dick who while the father was alive, they say, made money taking secret and bribe-worthy photos of extramarital blow jobs. Freddy’s contempt was only confirmed when he’d heard that Conte had retired his practice as a private investigator, was living easy off the inheritance and teaching part-time at the college in the English department. Literature teaching? Freddy cannot imagine anything resembling more the act of whacking off furiously in the doorless stall of a public toilet.

  Barbone had assumed for the last year that Conte had tried to kick the habit, but clearly he failed, this pathetic bastard, and now here he is and Freddy, though Conte has yet to make a request, is bagging a fifth of Eliot’s poison of choice and refusing payment.

  “Hey! No way, my friend!”

  Conte puts his credit card on the counter, saying not a word.

  Freddy, forcing a snort, says “What are you going to do, detective? If I don’t accept it? Shoot me? You can pay for the next one.”

  Conte says nothing.

  Freddy runs the credit card, Conte signs.

  Freddy, brightening, “I hope to see you again soon because the pleasure of your company is all mine. Know what I got under here, Eliot?” He points to the counter. “Fuckin’ niggers come here with their gasoline, they find out what I got under here. By the way, ever shoot anyone?”

  Eliot pulls up to 1318 Mary to find Catherine Cruz standing on the front porch, shivering in a lightweight sweater, smoking, who had quit in solidarity a year ago on the day she’d accompanied him to an open meeting where he qualified: “I’m Eliot. I’m an alcoholic.” He approaches carrying his Johnnie Walker in the brown bag with Barbone’s Booze emblazed on it in red. She flips the cigarette into the gathering snowstorm. They go in. Without a word. He’s convinced: Bobby is dead. She’d received a call from an ex-colleague in Troy with connections to the spokesman at Saint Jude. Then she’d bought a pack, and who would blame her, and now he’ll join her in resumed addiction and drink with impunity because Bobby is dead. She leads him into the kitchen where the table is set and the aroma from a pizza box from Napoli’s fills the room.