New York Echoes (17 page)

By establishing
Harry's work patterns, he was able to determine when Harry popped out briefly
to order a sandwich for lunch, a matter of a few short minutes, but just enough
time for him to filch the key to the Martinez apartment, open it, then bring
the key back to its proper place in the cupboard. Of course, everything had to
work like clockwork. He had to get his car out of the nearby garage, find a
parking spot away from where it could be seen from the building, execute the
key theft, remove the dog, and achieve his getaway.

This required numerous
dry runs. Of course there were still risks. Above all, Vickie had to be quiet
when he passed through the lobby with his small rolling suitcase in which she
would be sequestered. He had to take other precautions as well like wearing
rubber gloves to prevent any fingerprints on the door or interior of the Martinez apartment.

He was, he knew,
breaking and entering, perpetrating a burglary and kidnapping a dog, or
dog-napping as he referred to the action in his own mind. He was, he knew,
committing an illegal act and, if caught, would require prosecution. Weighing
all the risk factors, he decided that it was a question of his sanity and his
career. To him, this was the most serious crisis in his life. He felt that he
had no choice.

When he was certain
that he had laid the groundwork, he picked the date for his action. He had done
his research well, finding an animal shelter in Westchester County and “casing” it carefully. To further disguise his identity, he bought a wig, glasses,
and false moustache from a magic shop in Greenwich Village.  His plan was to
get to the animal shelter, drop the unidentified dog off at the shelter, and
quickly disappear.

It turned out that the
numerous fictional plots he had concocted as a mystery writer was remarkably
prescient. On the chosen day, at exactly noon, he took the elevator to the
lobby. Harry had ducked out to get sandwiches. Quickly, he found the key on the
hook labeled by the number of the Martinez apartment. He dashed back to the
elevator, which he had switched to stop, went up to the fifteenth floor, opened
the door to the Martinez apartment which he kept open by a wooden stopper he
had prepared, then went down again and quickly replaced the key. He had also
taken the precaution of wearing rubber gloves to hide any fingerprints.

In the Martinez apartment, he found little Vickie in her own room, paper spread on the floor on
which she had peed and defecated her tiny leavings. He was able, in a split
second's observation, to see how beautifully Mrs. Martinez had decorated the
room, all in pink with a pink little bed, a pink food-and-water bowl, and low
pink upholstered furniture for Vickie to lounge on. The pink bed was located
exactly on the opposite side of his wall, no more than, at the most, less than
a foot away.

Seeing him enter her
room, she stopped whining immediately, wagging her tail excitedly, and staring
at him with her large coal black eyes. She was surprisingly light and cuddled
caressingly against his arm as he carried her out of the apartment. Then he carefully
locked the door to the Martinez apartment, placed Vickie in his rolling small
suitcase in which he had wrapped the wig, moustache and sunglasses in a plastic
case, and proceeded down the elevator.

Moving quickly, he
waved to Harry who was eating his sandwich, and rolled his suitcase into the
pleasant sunny spring day elated with the brilliance of his well prepared
exercise in dog-napping. Once in the car, he took Vickie out of the suitcase
and sat her beside him. As he drove toward the West Side Highway, she cuddled
close and, despite the hatred he had harbored for her all those months, he
found himself caressing the soft fur of her shoulder.

Do not waver, he urged
himself. Show no sentiment. If you want your career back keep going. By then,
he convinced himself that Vickie was sure to find a new owner who would
lovingly care for her. After all, she was an expensive breed, beautifully
groomed and, at the very least, paper trained, and would make an excellent pet
for anyone who appreciated beautiful animals. He was tempted to attach a note
to her that might read:
Do not leave alone.

He parked his car a
few blocks from the animal shelter, then donning his disguise, he waited for
just the right moment to drop the dog off at the shelter.  He felt certain he
had not been observed, and this method of dog disposal without comment was
probably a common occurrence, given the guilt and shame that might be
associated with such abandonment.

Two hours later,
relieved and exultant, he was back at his computer, luxuriating in the
retrieved silence as he attempted to pick up the threads of his mystery novel.
Expecting the impending storm when Mrs. Martinez returned from work to find
Vickie missing, he had trouble finding his creative muse as he lingered over
the scenario of what to expect and his own rehearsed reaction.

The hysterics arrived
on cue, and the activity on the landing picked up steam just as Barbara
returned to work.

“What's going on?”
Barbara asked as she entered the apartment. “There're two policemen on the
landing and Harry the doorman as well. I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Martinez. She
is totally deranged.”

“What could it be?” Milton asked innocently.

Not long after her
arrival, Barbara opened the door to the policemen, who demanded to see Milton. But before she could invite them in, Mrs. Martinez, hair askew, clothes in total
disarray, her expression belching fire, pushed her way into the apartment.

At that moment, Milton, hearing the racket and steeling himself for what he knew was coming, came out of
his now quiet writer's room wearing a contrived expression of confusion and
surprise.

“There he is, that
bastard,” Mrs. Martinez screamed. “What have you done with her? I'm sure he did
it. He is the one. I want him arrested and jailed. I'm sure he murdered her. He
hated her. You filthy murdering swine. You rat…” She continued in this vein
until she tried to push past the two burly policemen and physically attack Milton. One of the policemen grabbed her and dragged her out of the apartment, although
her screams did not abate.

“Her dog is missing,”
the remaining policeman shrugged. “She thinks you had something to do with it.”

“That is ridiculous,” Milton said, exchanging glances with his wife, who looked somewhat skeptical. She invited
the policeman into the kitchen where, seated around the kitchen table, the
policeman, a thin Hispanic looking man, took notes.

Milton calmly explained what
had transpired over the last few months, how he had complained about the
whining dog because it had interfered with his work. He was careful not to
leave out a single detail of his campaign.

“I lost the battle,”
he said finally. “I had to live with the annoyance and find ways to cope.”

To his credit, the
policeman probed deeply, taking notes. He was thorough and properly suspicious,
and Milton answered all his questions with, he thought, believable deniability.
He doubted, however, that he would have the skill to beat a lie detector.

Finally the policeman
slapped shut his notebook, shrugged and left the apartment.

“All this for a dog,” Milton sighed.

“To Mrs. Martinez she
was family, her child,” Barbara said.

“She probably couldn't
stand being left alone and beat it.”

“How could she
possibly do that?” Barbara said.

“Stranger things have
happened.”

Milton knew that the
investigation was far from over although he feigned disinterest, although
Barbara, he suspected, looked at him with suspicion. From Harry she learned
that the disappearance was indeed a mystery and that Mrs. Martinez had
apparently lapsed into a deep depression, which apparently required
hospitalization.

“Are you sure you had
nothing to do with this Milton?”

“Such a question is
demeaning,” was his response.

Nevertheless, as he
had expected, the investigation continued. He was interviewed by a plainclothes
detective the next day and had to confront questioning from the board at a
hastily convened meeting two days later.

“I am the logical
suspect,” he told them patiently fielding their questions. “I understand your
concerns.”

Racking his brains to
see if he had overlooked something, he did experience a trill of panic when he
realized that the rolling suitcase might have revealed some clue, like the
scent of a dog and some white doggy fur. He attended to that as soon as it
occurred to him, discovering that it would indeed have nailed him as the
culprit.

Nevertheless, despite
all his planning, all the emotional fences he had erected, he was discovering
that he could not quite avoid a pang of conscience, not for Mrs. Martinez,
despite her unfortunate reaction, but for Vickie. Hell, he had only been
exposed to her clever dog wiles for an hour or so, the time it took him to
drive to the animal shelter. Her fate began to trouble him. He grew anxious
and, once again, his work suffered. He could not concentrate.

He was certain that
one glance at Vickie and a potential pet seeker would adopt her immediately. 
Mrs. Martinez did not engage his compassion. She deserved her fate. She had, he
decided, cruelly abused Vickie, leaving her alone, cooped up in a room, forced
to perform her ablutions on paper. No wonder she whined. It was heartless. He
wished he could justify his action to Barbara, who normally would have provided
him with emotional sustenance. Unfortunately, it was impossible to confide in
her.

Worse, he was
discovering that it was getting increasingly difficult to justify his actions
to himself.

Vickie's fate began to
gnaw at him. He could not work, could not sleep. His appetite suffered.

“What is wrong, Milton?” Barbara asked. “You look like hell.”

“A cold coming on,” he
replied, growing more and more morose.

Finally, summoning up
his courage, and disguising his voice, he called the animal shelter in Westchester. Their response shocked him.

“We have not received
such a dog.”

“A little fluffy white
female, well cared for. Answers to the name of Vickie.”

“You knew this dog?”

“Not really.”

“Typical,” the voice
harrumphed. “Abandoner's remorse.”

He could not find the
words to respond.

“Shame on you,” the
voice said. “But the fact is that we have no record of such a dog. People like
you . . .”

Milton hung up, stung by the
rebuke. He could barely catch his breath. His heartbeat pounded. He broke into
a cold sweat.

“Am I dreaming this?”
he asked himself. He recalled the events of that day. He had come to the
shelter, brought the dog inside, then quickly exited. Perhaps someone had
stolen the dog. He was baffled. Worse, he felt sickened, nauseous, the initial
elation at his cleverness dissipated.

Mrs. Martinez returned
from the hospital. Through the peephole in his door, he saw her, a mere shadow
of her former self. She had lost weight. Her dark complexion looked like gray
clay and she seemed zombie-like, lifeless.

“Poor woman,” Harry
told him. “She really loved that dog.”

“People do get
attached to their pets,” he said.

The people on the
board whom he met on the elevator avoided his eyes. He was, he knew, persona
non grata in the building. Milton was certain that everyone in the building
suspected him of foul play concerning the missing dog. They had it right, of
course.

As the days passed, he
grew more and more remorseful. The absence of the dog did nothing to help his
work. In fact, he had gone dry, confronted with a mammoth writer's block. He
lost his appetite, paid little attention to his grooming, stopping shaving, and
could not bear to look at himself in the mirror.

“I'm finished,” he
complained to Barbara.

“I'm really worried
about you Milton. Maybe you should see a shrink.”

“Not a bad idea,” he
groaned, although he couldn't even consider such a possibility since he would
have to reveal what he had done.

Soon he could not bear
to walk into his writing room. There were too many reminders of what he had
done. The worst of it was the uncertainty, the inexplicable disappearance of
this innocent abused creature. He spent most of his days sitting on a park
bench in Central Park like some homeless person waiting out his time.

One day, about a month
after he had perpetrated his perfect crime, he heard something that made him
feel certain he was hallucinating.  For some reason he had felt compelled to
pay a visit to his writing room as if drawn by some mysterious emotional
magnet. What he heard froze all movement.

There it was, the
familiar whine. He was certain it was an illusion, an imagined oasis. I am
losing my mind, he told himself.

Nevertheless the whine
continued. He put his ear to the wall. He was not imagining the sound. There
was a dog on the other side of the wall, the sound unmistakable. The first
thought that came to mind was that Mrs. Martinez had bought another dog, a not uncommon
cure for a replacement of a loved pet. But the sound was so true to its
original owner that he could not believe that this was another dog. No question
about it. This was Vickie's whine.

For a moment, he was
tempted to employ the same subterfuge that he had used to gain access to the
spare key from the lobby. But it was long past noon. Instead he went down to
the lobby and confronted Harry, who was shaking his head the moment he saw him.

           “Damnedest thing, Mr. Preston. Damnedest
thing. Bout two in the morning Barney tells me, this little dog, a bit scraggly
and dirty, starts scratching on the lobby door. Barney said he looked more like
a rat than a dog. But there was no mistaking it.”