The Dog Killer of Utica Read online

  She, pointing to the bag, “That’s the store on Mohawk and South, northeast corner. Correct?”

  Bobby’s gone—she’s avoiding breaking the news: “What’s the difference where I bought it?”

  “My partner and I stop in there once in a while to warn Freddy not to sell to minors. Don Belmonte, you know Don, he says he’s almost willing to pay to have Freddy burned down. Don was close to your father, he tells me.”

  (They back away from each other to opposite ends of the kitchen.)

  “Catherine.”

  “Yes?”

  “Stop this game.”

  “Going to drink, Eliot?”

  “I earned it, same way you earned that cigarette.”

  “Meaning?”

  Conte does not reply.

  “That stuff sends you deeper into depression.”

  “Doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Why?”

  “Enough.”

  He takes the bottle out of the bag: “Go ahead, light up again while I pour myself a big one.”

  “I bought the pack. I threw away nineteen and kept the one you saw. That’s it.”

  “Let’s figure this out in fairness to both of our sad sides. I pour out one shot—like this. I dump the rest down the sink—like this. Going going gone. I knock back this shot but not before you go fetch the butt, light up, and inhale deeply. Then we get down on our knees and pray for the repose of his eternal soul.”

  She walks over. Puts her arms around him. He’s aroused. She puts her hand on his crotch: “Bobby is alive and so is this thing in my hand. Listen: I’m weaker than you. You find that hard to believe, I know. I smoked. You don’t have to match me with that shot glass.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Catherine.”

  “In tough shape, El, but he’ll pull through, with what consequences we don’t yet know. He’s alive. You can visit in a few days. You will see him again. You two will talk about pirated Pavarotti gems.”

  “Bobby didn’t die?”

  “Bobby didn’t die.”

  He pours the shot into the sink. Sits, heavily, suddenly exhausted, wanting to go to bed for a week: “At least he didn’t die.”

  (Long pause.)

  “At least, El?”

  No response.

  “At least? I don’t get that.”

  “I’m hungry. Tell you after we eat.”

  “Tell me now. At least? I don’t get that.”

  “After we eat. Tell me about Bobby’s situation while I tear into this.”

  (Long pause. Conte is eating. Fast. She doesn’t eat.)

  “The shoulder wound. The bullet passed through. He’ll likely have permanent trouble with range of motion with that arm, but—”

  Conte with a mouthful: “Since he isn’t a big league pitcher, who cares?”

  “Yeah, El.”

  “Sweetheart, this isn’t pizza as you always call it. It’s tomato pie. Say tomato pie.”

  “The neck wound was superficial despite the heavy bleeding and—”

  “According to a local historian and writer who knows everything, you know Gene? Tomato pie is a Utica invention. 1914. O’Scugnizzo Pizzeria. The owner was the Neapolitan inventor of tomato pie in this country. Some claim an earlier, Trenton, New Jersey origin, but Gene disputes the Jersey pretender’s claim. Eugeno—”

  “Eliot.”

  “Eugeno Burlino was the original owner of O’Scugnizzo Pizzeria.”

  (Extended silence while he eats.)

  “El. Where are you? Come back.”

  “The meaning of O’Scugnizzo is embedded in nineteenth-century dialect and the culture of the poor. It means—”

  “Okay. I’ll play. O’Scugnizzo on Bleecker. Don and I go there for a slice once in a while, midafternoon.”

  “You and Don Belmonte, that beautiful mountain of a man, pushing seventy, or I’d be jealous. Continue, please. The fucking medical report.”

  “The lung shot. That’s the problem. Caused something according to my source inside Saint Jude which he called a tension pneumothorax. Don’t ask. It’s dramatic is all I know. The wounded lung fills up with too much air like a big balloon. It keeps inflating and inflating. Putting pressure on all the structures around the lung. Blood vessels get compressed. The trachea gets shoved to the side. The heart gets shoved to the side. Blood can’t flow normally.” (Conte continues eating.) “Bobby goes into shock. Without emergency treatment, intubation, surgery, he dies in an hour or so.” (Conte wipes his mouth. Takes another piece.) “They open him up and they save him. He’ll live but he almost—”

  “There’s twenty-five pieces in this box. I’ve scarfed four to your zero. More Diet Coke?”

  She reaches across, takes his hand. Says, quietly, “He’ll be okay. Will you?”

  “Anything is possible.”

  “They think in surgery they may have damaged something called the laryngeal something-or-other nerve. It will cause significant hoarseness. Nerves are tricky. It might never fully heal.”

  “Which makes him an even more colorful guy. The routine obscenities sound even dirtier.”

  (They relax, a little.)

  “Eat, Catherine.”

  She nibbles. She says, “I’ve listened to perp talk for too long. At least he’s alive? I’m going to take a big leap here. You knew for some time that Bobby was in danger. This was not some pissed off guy he once helped put away in Troy. This is a guy hired to do assassination. A Utica plate, presumably. You knew this was coming, didn’t you? Which is why you said they killed him. ‘Tell Eddie or Ellie that it finally,’ is what Patrolman Dominguez heard.”

  He won’t look at her. Pushes his plate aside. Says, “What Bobby was trying to say was tell Eliot that what he feared for a year has finally happened. I didn’t know it was coming—I feared it was.”

  The phone rings in the front room. The answering machine: “El, it’s me. Call me back soon. Very soon.”

  She says, “Sounds like Chief Robinson.”

  “I’m ready to tell you the story.”

  “Let’s sit on the couch. I want to be close.”

  “Right here,” he says.

  The answering machine again: “I know you’re jumping to conclusions about what happened to your pal down there.”

  Conte walks slowly to the phone. Begins to call. Hangs up. Picks up the receiver, hesitates, then calls: “Come over later. Let’s say at eight. Have you lost common sense? This is a conversation that can’t be had on the phone. Catherine will be out for a couple of hours.” Hangs up.

  “Where do I go for a couple of hours?”

  “Call your partner and suggest a drink. At Grimaldi’s. Tell him we had an argument and you need to talk, but watch your tone. Anybody who sits in close proximity to you on a daily basis, as he does, will have thoughts.”

  “Tell me the story.”

  “It begins a year ago, when I got into a situation in Troy and you and Bobby picked me up and brought me in for questioning.”

  “Situation? You were destroying a pay phone with your bare hands.”

  “You remember when Bobby promised me if I ever needed anything, ‘within so-called legal limits’? Because he knew who my father was and wanted to get on my good side? After I leave you two, I take the train home and sit opposite an abusive father who slapped his crying baby hard, less than a year old, black-and-blue marks from abusive episodes are visible. The wife, too, he’s after.”

  The answering machine. Robinson: “I’ll be over at eight sharp and I hope to Christ you can keep your famous rage in check.”

  “The famous rage he refers to was displayed on the train. On the body of the abusive father.”

  “How?”

  “I pick him up off the seat by the throat. I’m choking him. He loses control of his bowels. He’s about to leave the planet when I drop him back onto the seat. No more abuse. In Utica, they get off. I follow and take down his plate.”

  “Tell me you’re making this up. What’s this got to do with Bo
bby? You almost killed a man on the train? Tell me you’re making this up. Have you ever done anything like that before—what you did on the train? Get to the part about Bobby’s involvement.”

  “Bobby talks to his FBI contact and tells me the abuser, a man named Jed Kinter, has Mafia background as a hit man, who came to Utica one month before the famous triple hit here back in the nineties.”

  “The abuser turns out to be the hitter?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s this have to do with Bobby?”

  “Main target, one of the bosses of the Five Families who’s in Utica for the funeral of his godmother. The other two killed were Freddy Barbone’s Mafia father and uncle. My father wanted the Barbones dead because they were putting the squeeze on him for city contracts.”

  “That’s public knowledge except for the identity of the hitter and my God! The role of your father. You keep leaving out the role of you and Bobby.”

  “We pick up the hitter, Bobby and I. We take him to a deserted place. Bobby and I. Antonio comes at my request. Antonio executes the hitter in our presence.”

  “My chief did murder? He did murder? You and Bobby are witnesses? Accomplices? Which is it? Witnesses or accomplices?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes what? Witnesses or accomplices? Why not just arrest him? This Mafia hitter?”

  “ ‘The evidence,’ Antonio says before he blows the hitter’s brains out. Four in the head, Catherine. Four. A rage murder. ‘The evidence is obvious to normal people,’ Antonio says, ‘but will not hold up in court.’ Antonio makes the body disappear. None of this ever comes out.”

  “The Chief knew who Bobby was? His name? Where he came from?”

  “Never laid eyes on him until that night. There were no introductions. Bobby was just an unknown face.”

  “Somehow he found out?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “He arranged to hit Bobby? Eliminate a witness?”

  “Yes. I think so. But it might as well have been me who arranged it. I brought Bobby in. I’m as responsible as Antonio.”

  “Why not you too? Why wouldn’t he come for you too?”

  “Antonio is not a monster.”

  “The hell he isn’t.”

  “He won’t come for me.” (He’s faking it well.) “But I worry he’ll go for Bobby again, who can finger Antonio.”

  “And now that we’re together?”

  “He might assume that I’ve told you all.”

  “So you arrange to put me in witness protection in North Dakota?”

  “I’ve got a problem.”

  “We have a problem, Eliot.”

  “Maybe Antonio had nothing to do with the attempt on Bobby’s life. That’s my hope, but this is what we need to nail down, one way or the other. You’re staying here tonight.”

  (He picks up another piece of tomato pie. Puts it back.)

  “The hell I am! You just told Antonio I’d be out.”

  “Stay. We’ll talk in the living room. You hide quiet as a mouse behind the door in the spare room.”

  She’s speechless.

  “There’s more to the story, but we don’t have time. He’ll be here in ten minutes. The conversation will interest you.”

  The phone. The answering machine: “My deepest apologies, Professor Conte. I am Novak Ivanovic, father of Mirko. Please come to our home. I beg you. Something terrible is happening. 608 Nichols Street. Directly across from Saint Stanislaus.”

  Eliot goes to the front window, squinting through the driving snow. Barely makes out Antonio’s Mercedes as it pulls up.

  She’s already slipped into the spare room, closed the door, .38 in hand. Because she knew why he wanted her to stay. He didn’t have to spell it out. Robinson sits for several endless minutes in the car, doing God knows what. Conte moves quickly to the master bedroom, behind the kitchen. Removes his loaded .357 Magnum from his bedside table. Moves quickly back to the living room, where he places it under a cushion on the couch. Then retreats to the kitchen.

  As usual, he enters without knocking. Eliot comes to greet him, as Robinson, without removing it, shakes his snow encrusted, long black Italian overcoat the way a Labrador retriever shakes itself off emerging drenched from a cold pond in November, with a dead duck held softly in its mouth. For all their size and formidable deep voices, Labs are gentle, Eliot thinks, but maybe I’m Antonio’s soon-to-be dead duck. What I only deserve, he thinks, for what I made happen to Robert Rintrona.

  They embrace.

  Antonio says, “When I pull up I get a pain in the ass call from Homeland Security. You’ll be interested. They seek a person of concern who’s close to you.”

  Eliot speaks slowly and quietly:

  “A beautiful coat like that, Chief, deserves a proper hanging.” (Pause.) “As does its handsome owner.”

  “Fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

  CHAPTER 3

  Still buttoned to the throat, collar turned up, Robinson sits at the desk that faces the big window giving onto the street—Mary Street disappearing in a blizzard. He turns the swivel chair around to face the couch, where Conte sits thinking that his best friend appears somehow profoundly relaxed and hyperalert and about to spring all at the same time.

  “Fuckin’ shivers all day, El.” (He’s lying.)

  “Fever?”

  Conte rises, approaches. Robinson stiffens. Palm on Robinson’s forehead: “I’ll get you a couple of aspirin.”

  Conte goes to the bathroom cabinet. Robinson quickly checks beneath his coat, left side, chest level. Rebuttons. His breathing shallow. Heart racing. Conte returns with two aspirin and a glass of water. Before he takes the aspirin, Robinson says, “Something smells good. Pizza?”

  “No.”

  “Tomato pie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me O’Scugnizzo, El.”

  “Napoli’s, Robby.”

  “Shit.”

  “Napoli’s is good.”

  “Since when do you patronize, El?”

  “Catherine.”

  (Pause.)

  “Where’s the foxy lady?”

  “Out.”

  (Pause.)

  “I haven’t eaten supper, El.” (He’s lying.)

  “I’ll get you a couple of pieces.”

  “More than a couple, El.”

  When Conte goes to the kitchen, Robinson checks beneath the coat again. Conte returns with a plate of four pieces. As Robinson annihilates the first in under twenty seconds, Conte says, “Homeland Security?”

  Robinson with a mouthful, “Mirko Ivanovic.”

  “Ridiculous.”

  “This new Imam at the new mosque on Mary and Albany? Can’t pronounce his name—who can except these Arab types?”

  “They’re Bosnians.”

  “They’re Muslims, El. This new Imam? He does online interaction with radical clerics in London and Yemen and this Mirko who you praise in my company? He’s questionably in contact with the new Imam.”

  “Questionable how?”

  “No idea. All I know, concerns are being explored concerning the interfaith gathering on Sunday.”

  “And?”

  Robinson takes another huge bite.

  “Put that fucking piece down for a minute.”

  “They won’t give me details, arrogant federal cocksuckers, no offense to your gay friends. They talked to the Imam a few hours ago. In custody, El. They seek your Mirko, who can’t be located. I get this from the executive coordinator of Oneida County Homeland Security himself, Mark Martello, whose boyfriend or lover or whatever the word is—did they tie the knot yet? The boyfriend is—”

  “My personal trainer, Kyle. So what?”

  “He’ll be calling you in the morning for background on Mirko. Martello says he has deep concern. He said deep more than once. They have a working theory about the interfaith gathering on Sunday afternoon which includes Utica’s toughest Jews. Martello tells me your name is on the guest list.” (How could it be? He’d
accepted the invitation only late this afternoon, and he was on a list already accessed by Homeland Security?) “Martello tells me the mayor is on the list. My theory is Martello theorizes a bomb on Sunday afternoon. Al Qaeda. We have something international in our midst, El, and your boy—”

  “You channel anti-Muslim crap? Since when?”

  “I’m you, El, I don’t show on Sunday afternoon. Our asshole mayor, on the other hand—”

  “I know Mark Martello. The four of us have dinner occasionally. He’s normal, reasonable, with an understated sense of humor. Not paranoid.”

  “All well and good. His homosexuality is not a factor here.”

  “Who said it was?”

  “El, live and fuckin’ let live is my philosophy. But keep in mind, however so-called normal this three-dollar bill Martello is, the sophisticated monitoring goes on way above Marky boy’s pretty head. They pick up the chatter of the jihadists. Via Montana, D. C., Langley, via outer fuckin’ space, wherever they have surveillance devices of enormous power they look right up our—my guess? They think you might be closely guarding information as to the whereabouts of Mirko Ivanovic, if they’re not thinking you’re harboring the little raghead. They likely don’t rule out criminal complicity on your part, El. In my opinion.”

  “Don’t make me laugh.”

  “Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Complicitous?”

  “You’re working hard, Antonio, to divert from the real subject we’re here to discuss.”

  “All these years you call me Robby—now it’s Antonio?”

  “So what?”

  “What do I know, El? This is my speculation. Martello is cagy. Homosexuals, in my extremely limited experience, can be very indirect about what’s really on their secret minds.”