The Dog Killer of Utica Read online

  “No problem, señor.”

  As Eliot leaves the room, Angel says, “Four bills is too totally generous. Angel hacks Martello’s ass for you while he’s at it, free of charge.”

  Eliot turns and says, with a grin, “Yeah.”

  “One more thing, Jefe. I’m sayin’ don’t come out of that shower naked and hard.”

  Thirty minutes later, Conte appears in the front room freshly dressed, shaved and showered, to find his friend lounging on the couch with a second cup of cappuccino, watching the Nature Channel’s show on the primitive wolf.

  “Don’t have something better to do, Angel?”

  “Than gaze on my father?” (Pointing to television.)

  “You have a job. It’s urgent.”

  “Formerly.”

  “Formerly?”

  “It’s all good.”

  “Speak normal English, Angel.”

  “Nineteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds. Candy from a baby, Jefe. The Bosnian machine is open for you over there to what you need. As far as Martello, he’s interested in the Bosnian, but doesn’t have squat. He’s obsessing about this new Imam I can’t pronounce his name at the new Muslim synagogue. The word Sunday is big. A major act on Sunday is my belief. This Mirko you can read yourself. Shall we discuss the payoff, Jefe?”

  “I can have it for you no later than tomorrow, when I presume I’ll be able to get out of the driveway and to the bank.”

  “I’ll take one hundred in twenties then twenty per week for fifteen weeks.”

  “I’m happy to give it to you all at once.”

  “Can’t asept four hundred cold.”

  “Why not?”

  “You suffering memory dementia, Jefe? I’m thirteen, man.”

  Eliot asks what he’ll do with his day off from school and Angel replies, “Barack’s BlackBerry, while I dream of The Land of the Midnight Sun.”

  “You have quite a thing for Norway, Angel.”

  “Vice versa, Jefe.”

  Angel’s out the door when it occurs to Conte: How did he manage to make a second cappuccino while he was in the shower? He calls out: “How did you know how to work the cappuccino machine?”

  “A new associate of mine, Jefe. In Palermo.”

  Conte searches Mirko’s sent file back several weeks—nothing to the Imam. Inbox dominated by messages from Delores Delgado, who he believes must be the beauty of the hidden photo. Obstacles to young lovers. Two different worlds. Mirko’s reference to Romeo and Juliet. Delores’s puzzlement. Mirko explaining Shakespeare by reference to West Side Story. Muslim boy, Catholic girl. Star-crossed. She didn’t want him to use the word tragic, although she could be persuaded. There was a time and a place for them. Hold my hand. She said, “Please.” A long trail of messages. Love makes the world go away. She said, “I’ll take you there.” Conte is convinced that Mirko and Delores have eloped. As of late yesterday afternoon, no longer in Utica. Mirko and terrorism? Joke. Angel was right. They don’t have squat on Mirko. Conte suffers a pang of doubt. But who is this new Imam? Who, really, is Mirko Ivanovic outside the classroom?

  Forty-five minutes to kill before Mark Martello arrives and Conte doesn’t know what to do with himself. No appetite for breakfast—the call from Catherine—how cold she was.

  Catherine maybe lost, who said she’d never leave him. He paces. Stops at the front window to stare out at Mary and Wetmore—Wetmore ascending from Utica’s lowest point at Broad—crossing Catherine, crossing Bleecker—rising always to Mary, to end T-stopping directly before his house, 1318 Mary.

  There again on the street—soccer ball replaced by a beat-up sled. Angel standing at the T-stop, looking down Wetmore—Conte looking at Angel looking down Wetmore. Should he warn him off the temptation? Wetmore zooming down to Bleecker, as the Lo Bianco boy zoomed down, who had not been warned, decades ago. His father told the story. Did Angel’s parents know the story? Had the Italians of Mary Street passed on the story to the newcomers of Mary Street? Fear for your children on the hills of lower East Utica. The Lo Bianco boy, 1941, had not been feared for—zooming down Wetmore fearlessly—braking hard at Bleecker, where he hits a patch of wet leaves on a brilliant day in autumn and skids through the wet leaves hard and fast onto dry sidewalk and the bike flips and little Lo Bianco flies over the handle bars onto Bleecker on his belly as an eastbound bus rolls slowing toward the corner of Bleecker and Wetmore—rolling fatally to a stop—exactly onto the Lo Bianco boy’s exploding head.

  Angel turns from the temptation of Wetmore and sleds west along Mary. Out of sight. Where? To Mary and Bacon? Yet another temptation, as are all parallel north-south cross streets that rise to Mary and beyond and keep on rising until lower East Utica becomes upper East Utica. A rise once signifying elevation of real estate values—not, as now, elevated risks of arson, assault, drugs—as the relentless Anthony V. Senzalma never tires of reporting twice daily on syndicated talk radio.

  Conte stashes Mirko’s computer behind a bookshelf.

  The silence of snowbound Mary is broken by the house-shaking rumbling roar of a military Humvee that stops at 1318. From the passenger’s side, a tall, wiry, dashing man emerges, dressed in a pin-striped suit without overcoat, hat, or boots. An expensive Tuscan shoulder bag. Reaches into the Humvee. Emerges with a brown bag. The Humvee will wait, throbbing at the curb. The dashing man enters with his offering:

  “From my Italophilic companion. Lunch.”

  “Hello, Mark.”

  “El.”

  “Coffee?”

  “No.”

  “This need refrigeration?”

  “Sausage and peppers, El. Significant sandwiches for significant eaters.”

  “So this is only about friends on a lunch date?”

  “Let’s hope so, El.”

  “Ten thirty is early for sandwiches of this heft.”

  “Let’s sit in the kitchen, El, where we have easy access to Kyle’s kindness. Or have you lost your legendary appetite since Catherine walked?”

  “How do you—”

  “Accommodations at Best Western are gracious. Complimentary breakfast. Walking distance to Del Monico’s Steak House. Kyle and I will try to talk her out of returning to Troy.”

  “So you’ve somehow tracked her—”

  “Of course.”

  “Bastard.”

  “We leave no stone unturned.”

  “Bastard.”

  “I need your assistance, El. We have time. Not like tomorrow’s Sunday.”

  “Today is Tuesday, Mark, and I’m about to tell you that you need to leave because unless you wish to officially detain—”

  “Whoa! Big guy! This is about a friend helping a friend who may be dealing with a situation.”

  “Your concern originates from D.C.?”

  “No comment.”

  “Janet Napolitano sending her squad of superpatriots?”

  “No comment.”

  “Totally your initiative?”

  “Yes. I don’t intend to get burned.”

  “Your job that boring? Terrorism in Utica? Come on.”

  “Yep, boring. We have the sudden departure of Catherine Cruz. We have you visiting 608 Nichols Street last night, where Novak Ivanovic gave you something, which you carried home in a shopping bag.”

  “Somehow I don’t see or hear a dear friend sitting across from me. Not to mention my AA sponsor.”

  “Did Novak tell you he chaired the committee that recruited the new Imam, who’s in regular contact with radical clerics in Yemen and London? Sorry. I’ll take a cup of your famous cappuccino. Let’s dial this back, El. On second thought, how about a macchiato?”

  Conte makes two macchiatos, which they take in silence. Martello thinks about the sandwiches. Conte breaks the silence.

  “The hammer. You came here to act out the meaning of your surname. Mark the Hammer. Not in friendship. Mark the fucking Hammer.”

  “We’re just talking, El. I need your help. If you have it, please turn it over. I leav
e, no consequences, end of story.”

  “Have it?”

  “We believe you may have Mirko’s computer.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Don’t force me to order a search of the premises. Within an hour this place is in shambles.”

  “Fuck it.”

  “Fuck it?”

  “You people have already hacked into Mirko’s computer, the Imam’s computer.”

  “Robinson better not have told you this, Eliot.”

  “No comment.”

  “We’re all over those computers. Sure. Problem is a forensic exam is necessary because everything dumped into the trash can itself be trashed, deleted, and only a forensic search into the hard drive can retrieve what the user is trying to hide. El, I need that computer.”

  “Mirko is conducting a clandestine romance, Mark. That’s all it is.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “No comment.”

  “El. Recall the bombing of the Fraunces Tavern near Wall Street, late seventies? Radical Puerto Rican nationalists?”

  “No. That would be before you were born, Mark.”

  “We know all about Delores Delgado, do you?”

  “Make your point, Mark.”

  “Her grandfather and great-uncle were the designers and executioners of the Fraunces Tavern bombing. Wall Street area. People died.”

  “You’re losing it, Mark.”

  “Possibly. But if I’m not? You ready to take the consequences because you were blasé about connecting the dots?”

  “What is Kyle saying about this?”

  “We don’t discuss this level of my work.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I agree.”

  “Where does that leave us, Mark?”

  “Okay. I’m going. On the way to headquarters I’m making a call. Count on it. I’m advising you.”

  “Go ahead. Advise me.”

  “Proceed as I do.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Exercising caution and due diligence.”

  Noon, and Conte’s thoughts turn to sausage and peppers. He’s eaten nothing for eighteen hours, since the tomato pie binge of the night before. She said afternoon, to collect her things. He’ll sit at the desk, watch and wait. Conte has no appetite. Perhaps, maybe, a half sandwich at most. Or a quarter. Or none at all. He polishes off both sandwiches and a twelve-ounce bottle of Coke, and then the phone rings. She ignores his hello-with-a-mouthful. “Be there in an hour with Don Belmonte in his all-terrain vehicle. I have frightening news to report—tell you when I get there.”

  “Tell me now.”

  “Maureen Rintrona. Maureen. She’s walking the dog this morning at dawn. A car pulls alongside, blasting Verdi. She thinks it was Verdi. The driver fires once at the beagle. The light was weak. We have almost nothing to go on.”

  “The dog? Not Maureen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Killed the dog? They killed Aida?”

  “Yes.”

  He flosses and brushes. Checks his hair in the bathroom mirror. Okay. Face—nothing to be done. Fifty minutes to go. Dusts and vacuums. Pacing again. Staring out again at quiet Mary Street. There. Angel again. Soccer ball again. Maneuvering in the snow. Dribbling east, whipping about on a dime, dribbling west.

  Conte hadn’t defined o’scugnizzo for her. The orphan boy living on the streets of Naples, by his wits. Poor, homeless, raggedly clothed. A rascal, a rapscallion. A scamp and a Devil. Angel, who insisted on pronouncing his own name the way a clueless English speaker would, An-gell, had never commented on Conte’s proper Spanish rendition: An-hel. An-hell? Yes. Moreno the Anhellion. He must tell Catherine.

  Mary Street’s latest o’scugnizzo, and the son that Eliot never had.

  CHAPTER 6

  While Big Don Belmonte waits in the Wrangler, she tells Conte “I’m here now”—striding through the door toward the bedroom—“only to change into my favorite outfit and to propose that you and I meet to put our heads together as an investigating team and not necessarily for any other reason.” It flashes through Conte’s desperate mind that she could have proposed that they meet at The Florentine or The Chesterfield, they didn’t have to meet here, unless … so why would she need to meet here in order to team up with me? …

  “Even though,” she says, “we have no evidence, we assume with confidence,” following her into the bedroom, “that the shooter who tried to kill Bobby and the one who killed the dog are one and the same person.”

  In the bedroom, tight quarters, watching her take off her clothes, he says, “Your theory of the case”—panties and bra, God let her change those too—athletically fit, beautiful by anyone’s definition—“sure, it’s a good theory, Catherine, of course it is, probably it’ll turn out to be the correct theory, I’d bet on it, sure, please take your panties off now.”

  “No.”

  From behind her, slips his hand inside the front of her panties. She freezes. She leans back into him.

  “Nevertheless, Catherine, where’s the hard evidence, putting this aside,” touching his crotch.

  She removes his moistened hand.

  “Don is driving me down to Troy to talk to the lead detective on the case and—”

  “Don off today?”

  “No, but the all-too-kind Chief tells him he sympathizes how our feelings for Bobby—”

  “All-too-kind.”

  “He tells Don do whatever to help.”

  Conte asks her in what sense they’re a team, because what can he do, really, aside from “taking photos of cheating spouses in flagrante? A guy going down on his wife’s best friend. For example.”

  Pulling on her form-fitting black leather pants, smoothing, stroking the wrinkles on her thigh, she says, “Let me elaborate the theory you’re so high on.”

  “Hard on.”

  “Forget it, Eliot. The shootings. In Troy. They’re tied to the murder of the Mafia hitter you described yesterday. I don’t know how they’re tied, but when I return tonight we’re going over your story with a fine-tooth comb because—”

  “Go over my story? My story? As if I’m a suspect of some kind?”

  “As if you’re a suspect of some kind. Yes.”

  “How nice, Catherine. In the meanwhile, Don is out there waiting and we could—”

  Her blouse yet unbuttoned, small firm breasts big enough to (not quite) fit in your mouth, she says, “No. I’d like to, more than you might guess. No.”

  At the door, he stops her with, “What did you mean by ‘not necessarily’?”

  “Huh? What?”

  “You said, ‘not necessarily for any other reason.’ Not necessarily means something else is not out of the question, doesn’t it?”

  “Forget the words, Eliot. You think too much about words. Because this is not about reading Melville. Even less about us having sex. This is about grooves and striations on bullets. This is about latent prints and indentations on shell casings. Think about a partial plate I.D. that places the vehicle in question maybe in Utica. These are the necessary things. Not us. Maybe never us.”

  He watches her go down the steps to the Wrangler, get in, do a fist bump with Belmonte, as Angel Moreno comes into view carrying a shovel to Conte’s driveway. The crews had been at it all night and all day. The streets are in decent shape, the temperature at midafternoon has risen to the midforties and the worst December storm in fifty years is in retreat. The forecast for tomorrow: low sixties. Soon, the worst slush in fifty years. The promise of springlike weather triggers Conte’s desire for his vegetable garden, buried under twenty-seven inches of snow.

  Cruz and Belmont drive off down Wetmore. She doesn’t look back—not even a wave. Conte goes out to Angel who tells him he’ll dig out his car, because “Jefe needs wheels in his loneliness” and Conte replies, “If you wish, Angel, but I won’t need my car. I’m taking a long walk alone. Alone is not the same as lonely, little man.” Angel says, “Cool, big man,” and begins to shovel out the driveway as if demon
ically possessed. When he looks up, he catches sight of Conte half a block away and shouts, “Jefe, Angel don’t asept a penny of the four hundred because you be like my uncle.”

  Walking west on Mary to the Bacon cross street and brooding on his destination. No hat, no boots. Prefers the punishment. Left at Bacon and two blocks south, rising to once-arrogant Rutger, where he turns right and west again—west to his destiny, but not all the way west to Rutger Park, near the city’s center, where in the mid-nineteenth century Utica’s original elite built ten-thousand-square-foot stone mansions, and then the less than rich, but rich enough, built stately five-thousand-square-footers of mere wood, somewhat east of Rutger Park in the early twentieth century, in the direction of the newly developed far East Side—newly saturated with immigrants from the south of Italy. He’s muttering, he’s scaring an African-American teenage girl carrying an infant, as he passes her, brushing elbows on the snow-narrowed sidewalk.

  Shoes soaked through—uncomfortable but unconcerned because he’s thinking about a drink. Why shouldn’t he suffer? In the year since his children’s murder on the West Coast and his father’s death, he’d inherited a great sum that would permit him to purchase with ease several of the most expensive of the new homes high up on Valley View Road, at Utica’s southern border—free of the sirens, the arsonists, the muggers desperate for a fix—he needs a drink very soon—this self-lacerating Conte is digging his fingernails into his long-ravaged cuticles, even now causing them to bleed as he pushes on toward Mohawk Street. He had refused the temptation to move on up. Believes he never felt the temptation. 1318 Mary would be home until the end—pushing hard now along Rutger, toes and ears numb, thinking in happy bitterness of the elite center at Rutger Park and its environs—all those condescending mansions now rundown, abandoned, or transformed to house the welfare class, the mentally cracked, and their good neighbors in the business of crime—brooding in a cold sweat with dry mouth—Rutger and Mohawk at last where his destiny yanks him up Mohawk toward South Street and the promised end: Barbone’s Booze.

  He sees them come pouring—they’re pouring out of their homes and businesses—they’re running toward South and the seven or eight police cruisers with their roof lights lit and spinning—they’re gathering two blocks ahead at South, where uniformed men with billy clubs will keep them well back from the scene at the northeast corner of Mohawk and South. Barbone’s Booze is cordoned off by the yellow barricade of crime scene tape. He’s moving at a half jog, he falls twice on the ice, he’s entering the crowd, the chatter, they killed, they robbed, who’s safe anymore, these black animals, a matter of time, he have kids? Freddy? don’t push me buddy, as Conte forces his way to the front, to the blank-faced officers Frick and Frack, lanky Ronald Crouse, who he doesn’t know, and squat Victor Cazzamano, whose livelihood he’d saved several years ago in a nasty divorce case with interesting photos of his wife. They converse in whispers: