The Dog Killer of Utica (12 page)

That startling moment at Conte’s front door marked the unlikely resumption of an unlikely friendship, dating back to their freshman year at Proctor High, when the respected and feared son of Silvio Conte took pity on the slight and bespectacled Anthony, who in a school of working-class tough guys brought derision, shoves, and sharp elbows upon himself by insisting on carrying his books in a yellow briefcase. Conte’s friendship insured protection, and from the day that star halfback Antonio Robinson was seen eating lunch with his best friend Eliot and little Anthony, little Anthony became himself a person to be feared and catered to. Then it ended, their Proctor High idyll: Antonio won a scholarship to play football at Syracuse, Eliot went off to Hamilton College, little Anthony, more painfully alone than ever, enrolled at Utica College, never to leave his hometown—because no one ever
loved Utica more, or dreamed so grandly of restoring the city to its former glory.

Years later, at the peak of his notoriety, with lucrative offers to speak pouring in, Senzalma refused them all with a simple note, “I am rooted like the elegant Elms that once graced my sad city.” When the president of Yale’s Young Republicans replied with the reminder that Dutch Elm disease had killed off ninety-eight percent of America’s elms, “Wake up and smell the coffee, Guido,” Senzalma replied back, “You call yourself conservative?” Though stung by the implication that he was living in hopeless nostalgia, the condescending message from the Yalie inspired a dream that Senzalma knew he alone among Uticans could make real, if only he could enlist the help of Eliot Conte, whose discretion he could count on.

At their first dinner, Senzalma quickly disarmed the uneasy Giant of Mary Street. Sure, he said, he was earning $40 million a year and had recently signed a two-book contract with Knopf for an advance in seven figures. In the talk radio hierarchy, he drew a daily audience twice that of the former King of Talk Radio, the celebrity he referred to as Rushing Lintballs. As they shared an antipasto for two that would have fed four, with a forkful of prosciutto poised at his mouth Senzalma reached down into his briefcase and laid a stack of documents before Eliot to prove that his right-wing hate rhetoric was (“if I may say so, Eliot”) one of the great hoaxes in mass media history. Letters of gratitude, addressed to a famous lawyer in D.C., clipped to bank transfers, thanking the attorney for his anonymous client’s very substantial gifts to Planned Parenthood, the NAACP, Greenpeace, the National
Organization for Women, and the National Confederation of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgenders, and Secure Big Straight Males.

Conte had asked at that first dinner, “Why reveal this to me? Now? Why me?”

“Because deep friendship requires honesty. I have no friends.”

Conte then placed his hand on Senzalma’s and said, “What has changed? The sweet little guy I knew at Proctor is still a sweet little guy. Your public posture is an act, good, but your true politics is of no interest to me. Tony, you’re wealthy beyond all need and all eventualities. Why not just quit and come out of the left-wing closet?”

Senzalma replied with instant passion, leaning in, “Because there is no greater pleasure for me than to play the Devil. I steal from the Devil in order to give to the angels.”

The wind rattles the window. The building shakes. The big Bosnian enters and says, “Can I stay in tonight? It’s bad out.”

Senzalma replies like a disapproving parent, “Dragan, didn’t I tell you to wear your heavy coat—didn’t I tell you twice?” Dragan goes back out.

Eliot says, “Fuckin’ weather is out of its mind lately.”

“Utica, Eliot, just Utica.”

The willowy knockout Raymona enters, “The usual, boys?” They nod.

Senzalma watches her out the door. He’s in the room, but not in the room. Eliot says, “Come back, Tony, she’s gone.”

“Unfortunately.”

“What else is on your mind, Tony?”

“Tonight you called, Eliot, to arrange a last-minute dinner—you never call to initiate, not once. It’s taking over your mind again. Isn’t it? The tragedy of your children.”

“Let’s eat first.”

“What you wish to confide in me would spoil our meal?”

“Let’s change the subject, shall we?”

“Freddy Barbone! My Lord! The news made the
Times
. The details of what they did—granted he was not a lovable person. Nevertheless.”

“He was a pig.”

“He deserved mercy, Eliot.”

“No he didn’t.”

“Everyone deserves mercy.”

“Not in my book.”

“When you carry the name Barbone, you certainly do. Senzalma! Imagine being called Anthony without-a-soul. I’m still not over it.”

“Tony Senz, that’s what Robby and I called you. Sometimes Tony Terrific.”

“And a burden was lifted. I felt rebaptized.”

“Tony Senz. Tony Terrific.”

Senzalma grins.

“The speculation, Eliot, is that Freddy was connected and went the way of his father and uncle, but the details sound to me like an emotional extremist, not a professional of the underworld.”

“Your father’s brother in Philly, didn’t you tell me in our Proctor days he was a pro of that kind?”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Still alive?”

“Oh, yes, and still active, according to his daughter.”

“In touch with him?”

“Please.”

“Happen to know where he resides?”

“No. Sandra, of course, does.”

“How old is he?”

“Mid-eighties. Maybe more. Excuse me, Eliot, why all this curiosity about this awful person?”

“Want to move on to another topic, Senz?”

“As fast as possible.”

Raymona pokes her head in. “I forgot to ask about drinks. The usual?” They nod.

Senzalma watches her out again.

“Carlo. Isn’t that his name?”

“Yes, Eliot.”

“Sandra must have moved as far from Philly as possible.”

“She stayed. Never married and moved in with him after her mother passed. This is not a change of subject. What’s on your mind? I’m beginning to have a terrible inkling.”

“After we eat.”

Raymona enters with a carafe of ice water and two glasses. Says she’ll be back in a minute with the food. Senzalma says, “Thank you, dear.”

She smiles, warmly, genuinely, “You’re welcome, sweetie.” Leaves.

Conte says, “I know how much you love your glass of wine.”

“I do, but I wish to support your long journey of sobriety. For all you know, I have a drinking problem of my own up in my jail on Smith Hill.”

Raymona returns pulling a food cart: Big bowls of calamari and Utica Greens. A salad for two of tomatoes, cucumbers, cherry peppers, onions. Full orders of eggplant parmigiana, pasta fagioli and meatballs, veal saltimbocca, jumbo shrimp scampi, Utica Riggies. And a hot loaf of bread (made on the premises).

She says, “Be careful you guys don’t give yourselves an attack. I doubt our insurance covers it.”

“We’re nibblers, Ray,” Eliot says.

“Mona, we’re doing Italian dim sum,” Anthony says.

“You guys! I love you both.”

She exits. Senzalma says, “I really go for her, Eliot, I really do. Do you think she goes for me?”

“She’s married.”

“Relevance in our day and age?”

“Raymona and Michael are obviously happy.”

“You and Catherine happy?”

“Let’s enjoy this, Tony. Let’s eat and talk about something else.”

“I’m lonely, Eliot.”

“I know, Anthony.” Neither eats.

Senzalma takes a card from his jacket, slides it over to Conte and says, “This is the subject I had hoped would occupy us tonight.”

“This postcard? In sepia?”

“Taken in 1907. What do you see?”

“A street with big trees on either side.”

“Not any street. Rutger. The camera looking due east from Rutger Park. In those days, it was called Rutger Place.
Not any trees, either. Elms in the glory of their full maturity. Those big boughs—see how they arch up and over on both sides of the street! Up in the upper half they touch and intertwine like gentle lovers. These trunks and these boughs,” caressing the postcard, “sleek, they’re svelte, just like—”

“How can I help, Senz? Just say the word.”

“We’re looking east down a long, leafy elm tunnel. Way up, a hundred feet high, they make a—not a roof. What would you call it?”

“An arch.”

“Another word is on the tip of my tongue.”

“Canopy?”

“Yes! Sheltering and enclosing the humanity beneath.”

“The humanity? You’re referring to those pseudo-aristocrats who ruled this city in the nineteenth century from Rutger Park and showed no humanity to the new immigrants—to our people? They’re dead like all the elms that were wiped out by Dutch Elm disease. They had money, Senz. That’s all they had. Money.”

“They also had a way of life. Big houses. Big property. Sure. And big gardens. That’s the thing. Grapevines. Fruit trees. Apples, peaches, and plums all big and juicy. Vegetables galore. Rutger Place was an ethnic neighborhood of English-Dutch stock. Aside from the wealth, not much different from the East Utica way of life we grew up in and loved. Our culture.”

“Tony Terrific. (Pause.) You have gone insane.”

“Why did they call it Rutger
Place
? Do you know? Because it was a
place! This
place is not
that
place! That’s what a place is. A different thing—a little world. Those people you scorn rooted themselves there, and the place eventually owned
them as much as they owned the place. Visiting each other’s houses—going to the same churches—riding their bicycles built for two along Rutger in their bonnets with long colorful ribbons streaming behind them in the wind. What held them together as a neighborhood was an idea of the good life, which because they shared it, they never had to discuss and argue about it.”

“You’re barely alive in the present with your hidden life—you’re a hermit, Senz, thinking about the past and dreaming about Raymona who will not be in your future. You have a view of Utica, up there on the hill, but Utica has no view of you.”

“The East Side when we were young—we had the elms too. Don’t laugh! Your Mary Street had the elms. Sure, our houses and backyards were tiny in comparison, but we had the gardens—the vegetables and the grapevines and the fruit trees. There was a story about a man named Tomaso, who once lived at 1303 Mary. We all heard it growing up. He had a cherry tree the size nobody ever saw or heard of before or since.”

“You’re flying high, Senz. A controlled substance?”

“We walked around the block—we visited each other on our front porches in good weather—we talked on the corner—we dropped in for coffee. It was normal to drop in unannounced for coffee an’. We talked about nothing in particular on the porches, on the corner, over coffee an’. It was just the pleasure of the back and forth. The banter. Not about the big thing we shared. Because we all knew what we shared. It was the sound and rhythm of the voices. The quips and the laughs and who died—who has terminal you know
what—my teeth are giving me trouble—my piles—my kidney stones—my sugar. Those Rutger Place rich people talked the same way, just happy to hear one another’s voices. Just like those old-time Rutger Place people, we were connected in East Utica to something larger than ourselves.”

“People have to stay in the neighborhood, Senz, and not move around like nomads in the Sahara if they want to drop in for coffee an’. We became modern. We’re only our lonesome selves now. We’re connected to nothing larger, in which we lose ourselves.”

“You were a nomad, going off to California, but you came back. To re-root.”

“Those big elms converging over Rutger and Mary fifty years ago, and the cultures they sheltered—
were. Gone
. The
end
.”

“Togetherness in a place. A world in a place.”

“Whatever.”

“Stop with this negativity. You have planted a wonderful garden in your own backyard, have you not? I have a plan for Utica, but I need help. I must remain anonymous and trust only you. (Pause.) I’m going to purchase one thousand sapling elms, the Princeton Elm, which is ninety-five percent resistant to that damned disease. I’m going to hire a crew to plant and take care of them for five years, until they’re safely established. The entire length of Rutger and Mary and the rest here and there throughout the East Side, which has the cultures now of the Bosnians and the Hispanics. They are the hope. The Princeton Elm grows three to six feet a year. It withstands harsh climates and bad soil. Twenty to twenty-five years from now—”

“When we’re dead and—”

“One-hundred-foot elms canopy the East Side. A beginning. Can you see it?”

“And you need me for what?”

“Front the project for Anonymous so I can continue to steal the Devil’s money, because if my right-wing audience ever finds out I’m behind what they would believe is a homosexual project, they flee in droves. Will you help?”

“Join your insanity?”

“Please.”

“I have too much time on my hands.”

“You’ll do it?”

“What do I have to lose?”

“Yourself! Wouldn’t you like to lose it?”

Raymona enters: “We screwed up? You ate nothing.”

They don’t respond.

She says, “I can take a hint,” and leaves.

“What I truly want, El, they don’t have it tonight.”

“Mushroom stew, Senz?”

“That they have. The other mushroom stew.”

“
Utica
mushroom stew? Dunking the bread in?”

“Did you have to spell it out and break my heart?”

Senzalma goes to the restroom. Geraldine doesn’t move. She says, “You’re staying here, Conte. Don’t move whether you need to pee or not. His prostate’s bad. I don’t care if yours is.”

Senzalma returns and says, “I’m not stupid, Eliot. You wish to arrange through my terrible Uncle Carlo for a contract on your ex and her husband because you think it’ll get rid of the guilt and the grief, am I right? Vengeance for the kids?”

“You’re no angel in Devil’s disguise either—you
became
the Devil with those race-baiting editorials in the
Observer-Dispatch
.”

“Necessary camouflage, so I can continue to steal with impunity from the Devil.”