The Dog Killer of Utica Read online

  “Vic.”

  “Just between us, assume the black or P.R. element, you can’t go wrong.”

  “Who’s the lead detective?”

  “Super Spic.”

  “Who would that be?”

  “Holier-than-thou Men-fucking-doza.” (Not a whisper.)

  “Tino Mendoza?”

  “I’ve already crossed the line.”

  “What happened?”

  “No comment, they’ll put my ass in a sling.”

  “You and Crouse first responders?”

  “No comment, my ass et cetera.”

  “Give me a morsel, Vic.”

  “Massive blood.”

  “Freddy?”

  “Does the bear shit in the woods? What brings you here anyway?”

  “I was looking forward to a fifth of Johnnie Walker Black.”

  “Weird, Eliot.”

  “Weird how?”

  “When me and Ronny enter, what do we find shattered on the floor, bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. Ronny runs out, the pussy, because he can’t take the sight of Freddy. Me, after what you showed me the pictures of what my wife was doing, that cunt, I can take anything. So we right away get the call that this bastard Mendoza is coming to take over. So I see something on the floor that will interest Mendoza. So I take it, which he definitely could use in his investigation, because fuck him after the way he treats the uniforms.”

  “Johnnie Walker Black.”

  “Yeah. Now shake my hand.”

  Conte feels a small metal object on his palm. He pockets it.

  “We all know you’re in retirement as a P.I. That might induce a dramatic comeback in the bottom of the ninth.”

  “One more thing, Vic.”

  “My ass in a sling.”

  First a bowl of his homemade minestrone. Then a cup of hot chocolate, which he carries to the bathroom and places on the tub ledge alongside his cell and the casing of a spent bullet. He’s hoping she’ll give him an update from Troy. Almost asleep in the hot bath when it rings. Not her. Robinson:

  “El. Serious news on the Ivanovic family. One of my uniform’s cruising Bleecker this afternoon. He turns up Nichols where he spots a man and a woman escorted out of 608, where your Mirko lives, as you know. Three guys he never saw before with sunglasses. The man and the woman are cuffed.”

  “Mirko’s parents you’re saying?”

  “We assume.”

  “My cruiser stops. My two uniforms get out. One of the sunglasses shows an I.D. My guys drive away.”

  “Martello’s people, Robby?”

  “The Imam is with Martello, Mirko is missing, and now Martello has the parents.”

  “What can you do about it, Robby?”

  “Cocksuckers are a law unto themselves. They take them to a planet worse than Guantánamo.”

  “Christ.”

  “They don’t give a shit what He fuckin’ thinks, either.”

  (Long pause.)

  “You still there, El?”

  “Mirko.”

  “What about him?”

  (Pause.)

  “El, you still there?”

  “I saw something today on South Street.”

  “Freddy Barbone, you referring to?”

  “I am.”

  “Freddy was slaughtered, I mean slaughtered, El. One to the brain, which blows out the back of his head, and that’s not the end of it. Then they almost severed off his head—it’s attached by the skin at the back of his neck. Cash register is open and emptied out and a single bottle of scotch busted on the floor. A strange fact, but not according to Tino, who’s got a theory.”

  “Are you free to tell me?”

  “Tino’s partner sees the open register and concludes a robbery motive, but Tino is a brilliant motherfucker. He notices Freddy’s watch was apparently smashed in the event. Stopped at 9:17 last night. Freddy closes religiously at 8:15. Tino notices a key in the door.”

  “The robbery motive doesn’t hold water, Robby. Somebody he knew. He’s closed but opens up for a long-standing customer. Is that Tino’s theory?”

  “Welcome back, Detective Conte.”

  “Other bottles broken and strewn around?”

  “Nope.”

  “So what we have here is a faked robbery motive by someone he lets in after hours, who shoots him and almost cuts off his head.”

  “A good old-time customer and a kind of friend, El, if we can imagine anyone befriending that asshole racist, for whom I fuckin’ weep not, believe me.”

  “The savagery of the assault suggests—”

  “Yeah. Total rage murder. They wanted to insult the corpse. What about the bottle of Johnnie Walker Black? What’s your theory, El?”

  “You son of a bitch. At the time I was at 608 Nichols Street. With Novak Ivanovic.”

  “Who the feds will not let give testimony, of course.”

  Conte says nothing.

  “Curious, though, don’t you think, El? Johnnie Walker Black. Like an obvious clue for those who knew your well-known drinking preference? This is a small town. Son of a well-known father. Booze bag, so on. You were Freddy’s good customer at one time, as was his killer.”

  “A heavy-handed attempt at a setup. No one can take that seriously.”

  “But maybe someone wanting to point the finger at you and not so out of his mind that he forgets to pick up the shell casing.”

  “Forensically that would have been important, wouldn’t it, Robby?”

  “Shell casing or not, I have total faith in Tino.”

  “One thing we know for sure, Robby. Freddy would never let a black or a Puerto Rican in after hours. That’s where he drew the line on his greed.”

  “Tino already came to that conclusion.”

  “Goodnight, Chief.”

  “Hold on, brother. I have something on the lighter side. Milly comes home today, she tells me she sees Michael in the butcher shop at Hannaford’s.”

  “Your former beloved assistant chief?”

  “Yep. Michael Coca himself with a piece of frozen meat in his hand. He’s staring at it. She buys lamb chops and when she leaves twenty minutes later, she passes the butcher shop again. He hasn’t moved. He’s still staring at the piece of meat in his hand. Milly says he always seems to be there when she shops on Tuesdays. The cashiers tell her Michael never buys meat and when he checks out it’s with a single mushroom. They tell him a single mushroom is too light to register on the scale. He only says, ‘I will pay top dollar.’ Goodnight, El.”

  Knocks back half the hot chocolate. Resists, for the second time in two days, the temptation to call Catherine. Finishes off the hot chocolate—savoring in his imagination the rich aftertaste of a spiked drink. The shell casing in his palm. The language of indentations, for which Melville provides no help.

  Runs water hot and long in the cooling bath. Slouches far down until his head, like a severed head, is afloat on the bubbled surface.

  CHAPTER 7

  He steps into the kitchen dripping from his bath, nude and spent. No word from Catherine of Troy. Peanut butter and crackers. Jelly sandwich—he cannot finish it. Twenty-ounce bottle of Coke—three sips. Handful of pistachio nuts and six spicy olives (alla Siciliana), followed by two antacid tablets, chewed slowly and savored.

  Eliot Conte, solitary diner, had been an accomplished gourmet cook of Italian fare for Antonio Robinson as they listened, over the years, to Saturday afternoon broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera, and an even more accomplished chef for Catherine Cruz since she’d moved in with him six months ago. But not for Robinson for the last six months, when they’d drifted apart, neither understanding why—neither willing to broach the subject of their quiet alienation following the settlement of his father’s shockingly lucrative estate. Seventy-five percent to Conte, the son who’d been at odds with the father until the last two days of his life—several million plus the father’s house on Catherine Street. Twenty-five percent to Robinson—was he harboring? was that it?—who promptly sold
his modest house in shabby middle-class Deerfield Hills in North Utica, then purchased on the southern highlands of the Mohawk Valley, off Valley View Road, a $700,000 contemporary home on twenty acres, with a glass wall and a sweeping view of Utica below. Did he enjoy the view, Eliot wondered, while nursing a grudge over the division of the inheritance?

  Conte in pajamas. Nothing to do but wait for Catherine’s return from Troy, while working to distract himself from the waiting and the feeling inside the waiting that he is himself nothing, choked now by the fear that he would lose his new life as Catherine Cruz’s housekeeper, cook, and proud gardener—lose Catherine herself and be dragged back to the Eliot Conte whose life before Catherine could not be called living. Flees the kitchen table to the couch, obsessively checking his watch, but time refuses to pass when she’s gone. To the desk—fifteen seconds. Places watch in desk drawer. Stands in the middle of the room, floor gazing. Bedroom—her side of the bed—recalling the story of the ex-assistant chief Coca at the supermarket trying to buy a single mushroom and the report from the Unimpeachable Remo Martinelli of Coca on Bleecker, whacking the side of his nose with a popsicle stick, rhythmically and relentlessly whacking his nose bloody—a spectacle of irreversible insanity.

  The couch again—reclining and retrieving the single positive of the last three terrible days: Angel Moreno … he and Angel and Angel’s parents in Cooperstown, two summers past … Baseball Hall of Fame … picnic, Otsego Lake … on a perfect day in mid-July. Angel … the unqualified good … He awakes at 7:30 A.M. to find himself covered with an afghan, his head pillowed … bracing odor of brewing coffee … kneeling beside him, Catherine Cruz, who says:

  “Hey.”

  “When did you get back?”

  “You were asleep.”

  On his right side, elbow supported, he says: “Dressed to kill this early?”

  “Coffee?”

  “You see Bobby?”

  “He’s closing in on his old salty self.”

  “In other words, Catherine, he tells you to tell me to go fuck myself. In a loving manner.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you tell him I told you the story?”

  “No.”

  “He already assumed it?”

  “Yes. Bacon and eggs?”

  “Not hungry, Ms. Cruz.”

  “Me neither.”

  At the kitchen table, over coffee, he returns to her attire: “Going somewhere special this morning?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “El, the apartment above Tom Castellano’s is for rent. Rutger and Culver.”

  “I know where it is. That’s where the Mafia hitter lived. Going weird on me?”

  “Tom told me because of what you did for him twenty years back, he’s offering me the apartment at half the usual rent. ‘On behalf of Eliot,’ he says, ‘who saved me from my cheating wife.’ You’ll have to tell me the story sometime. Rutger and Culver is no more than a ten minute walk—a two minute drive.”

  “We’ll have physical proximity there?”

  “Let’s change this dangerous subject, Eliot.”

  “Spell out the details of dangerous. Slowly.”

  “Stop.”

  “Bobby know about his dog?”

  “Not yet.”

  “The way he talked about that dog, Detective Cruz, you’d think—”

  “It’ll devastate him when Maureen tells him.”

  “What she should tell him, Catherine, somehow the dog got loose and was hit by a car. Let’s call now and tell her that.”

  “What can you possibly be thinking, Eliot? The Rintrona family is in grave danger. She has to tell him. My former chief assigned a cruiser to the house 24/7.”

  “For how long? Forever?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Then what, Catherine?”

  “We need to find the shooter. We have two weeks. Or shooters.”

  “Shooters? What d’ya mean? I’m driving down to see him after I get ready for the day.”

  “Go after lunch. He’s got therapy this morning.”

  “Hear about Freddy Barbone?”

  “Did we ever. Don got the call when we were talking to the top crime lab technician in Albany. Don struggled to hold back his pleasure.”

  “Freddy was an asshole.”

  “Our theory, El, a single gunman who did both Troy shootings?”

  “An obvious true theory. I need more coffee.”

  “You’re not crippled.”

  He fetches another cup. She refuses a refill.

  She says, “The theory needs revisiting.”

  “You look like the cat that ate the canary.”

  “The crime lab in Albany compared shell casings recovered from both shootings. Different guns. Bullet fragments recovered: same story. Different guns. No question.”

  “So what? The shooter is a smart psycho. The theory is still good.”

  “The vehicles described by Bobby and Maureen—not even close to being similar.”

  “A very smart psycho.”

  “Who shoots the dog, El?”

  “An extremely smart psycho, a diabolical bastard. He knows where the terror button is. Kill their dog and they’ll crawl under the bed and never come out.”

  “He? When questioned, Bobby said he couldn’t tell gender or race. Maureen says ditto except she adds that for some reason she leans toward female.”

  “Female so-called intuition?”

  “I’m saying in a loving manner, El, go fuck yourself.”

  “I’d rather—”

  “You’ve heard of the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network?”

  “Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms?”

  “Yes. A database of over two million digital images of hard ballistic information gathered from crime scenes since the midnineties. The way it works, you digitally enter new crime scene ballistics into the system and in a matter of an hour or two you may get a hit. Meaning, what you entered seems to match ballistics derived from a prior crime scene, someplace else. The Albany lab got a hit, El. The guns identified were a Smith & Wesson M&P 9 millimeter and a Sig Sauer 1911 .45.”

  “Let me guess. These guns were used some time ago in crimes committed in Utica.”

  “Yes. And these guns were confiscated by Utica PD.”

  “But don’t police departments destroy those guns?”

  “Don says sometimes they’re destroyed, sometimes they’re auctioned off. But not immediately. An important fact. They’re stored in the department basement until they have enough to auction or go through the trouble of sending them to a steel plant where they’re melted.”

  “So there’s a window of opportunity for someone inside to grab a gun or two. Who would have access to the storage unit?”

  “Don is checking this morning on the two weapons linked to Utica. If they’re still there.”

  “They can’t be.”

  “Which means for sure, El, someone inside.”

  “Unless a cleaning—”

  “Only high-level UPD personnel have keys to that area. According to Don.”

  “Definitively, then, Catherine. Someone inside. Has to be Antonio.”

  “You’re leaping over a chasm now.”

  “Has to be, Catherine.”

  “Your female intuition, Professor Conte?”

  “Of course. What else do we know?”

  “Remember I said the database hit confirmed what seemed to be a match? To be certain the actual physical shell casings from the Troy shootings have to be compared under a microscope with the actual casings recovered from the Utica crimes. We have the Troy casings for a limited period. Don is thorough. He’ll check if the guns in question are still there, and then he’ll do the job that no one pays him for, which he’s been doing on weekends for twelve years, since his wife died. Describing and logging all ballistic info from Utica crime scenes.”

  “There must be hundreds of shell casings he’d have to comb through be
fore he finds the match.”

  “Don has a log and the patience of Job. It may take him a while, but he’ll find the matching casings and then we’ll know definitively.”

  Her cell. Don Belmonte, who tells her the weapons in question, according to the records clerk, were neither auctioned nor sent off for destruction. “And—ready for this? They’re still there. In storage. I’m still working on the shell casings, Cath. Sometime this afternoon, the guns go to Syracuse for tests that determine if they’ve been recently fired, which we’re confident they have. Hope to have the casings match tied up by noon.”

  Conte says, “This is beyond me,” when she relays Belmonte’s message. “This makes no sense on any level. Someone on the force contracts with someone to do these shootings? This someone on the force had some time ago pilfered the guns from storage for some possible, he knows not what, future action? This someone on the force hires an assassin to hit Bobby, or does it himself?”

  “And then this engineer of violence, El, tells the would-be assassin to return the guns to him so that he can return them to storage where they’ve not been for several years. You said that the shooter was a smart psycho—”

  “Extremely smart.”

  “You said he, she, whatever, was a diabolical bastard. Most criminals are fatally stupid, at the end of the day.”

  “Not this one, Catherine. This one is playing a game that I—I have no idea what game this one is playing.”

  “Bobby, Monday morning—the dog, Tuesday morning. Who else is in danger—it can’t be the work of Antonio because if Antonio—it’s obviously not Antonio. Because why would he put the guns back in storage?”