The Dog Killer of Utica (2 page)

He’s pulled up in panic from the world of a recurring nightmare—at 5:00
A.M
. Eliot Conte lurches heavily to the other side of the bed—where she is not—where he inhales, thinks he inhales, her fragrance—brooding now on this day of their six-month anniversary—six months to the day that Catherine Cruz had resigned her position as detective in the Troy, New York, Police Department and moved to Utica to assume the same post under Chief of Police Antonio Robinson, Conte’s all-but-in-blood African-American brother—six months since that night when she moved into the house at 1318 Mary Street, in Utica’s former East Side Italian-American fortress, and whispered in his bed thrilling words he’d never before heard—and yet, and yet, absurdly, deep into that first night and weekly thereafter (he fears forever thereafter), nightmares of unrequitable longing (his) for unreachable remoteness (hers), in a landscape whose sole promise of redemption is death.

5:30, sipping a second double-shot espresso in the kitchen, when he hears the clock radio awaken to the swollen bass-baritone of Anthony V. Senzalma, intoning his daily dark forewarnings of “creeping Sharia law,” “the radical homosexual agenda,” and the “Kenyan socialist usurping the White
House.” Conte strides to the bedroom, turns off the radio, sheds his pajama top and bottoms, and crawls under the covers on her side of the bed—seeking the embrace of her absent presence as he reaches for his fading rationality, as he reminds himself that she’d gone yesterday to Troy only for a quick trip, that’s all it was, and would return later today, possibly tomorrow morning—no later than that. To Troy to attend to the most recent of the self-inflicted crises of her twenty-three-year-old daughter, which she’ll resolve, quickly, by writing a check. That’s all it was. While there, if she had time, she’d stop in to see her former partner, their mutual pal, Detective Robert Rintrona.

“Give Bobby my regards if you see him,” he’d said, as she, looking her blazing best, got into the car.

“Any special message for Bobby?”

“Tell him not to be concerned about a thing.”

She looks sharply at him, “Concerned? What could Bobby possibly be concerned about? Unless it’s the latest inadequate replacement for the King of the High Cs?”

He puts his guard back up with a smile. He touches her shoulder and withholds the truth he’d withheld from her for a year: “That’s it exactly, Ms. Cruz. The latest Pavarotti imposter. That’s all I had in mind.”

On that bitter mid-December Sunday morning, in this town on life support, which calls itself The Gateway to the Adirondacks, she replies, “One of these days, Mr. Conte, you’ll tell me the secret. Or else—pow! pow!—you’re dead,” as she mimes shooting him, then speeds off to the Thruway exit in North Utica for the eighty-mile ride down to Troy.

6:15, he’s shoving open with unnecessary force the glass
door to POWER UP!, the studio for personal training adjacent to the northern edge of Utica College’s campus, where he’s been a regular, three times per week, for the last nine months, beginning a month after he’d suffered a severe beating at the hands of an “unknown assailant” (as it was phrased in the
Observer-Dispatch
), whose identity Conte was certain of. (It was Ralph, who’d come east after Nancy had received Eliot’s letter accusing Ralph of sexually abusing his girls.) He had revealed the assailant’s identity only to Antonio Robinson, who promised to keep “this thing between ourselves, as our good father taught us, may his soul rest in peace.” Robinson then added, coldly, “Eventually you make the long-delayed journey to the West Coast and deliver life-changing gifts to your ex and this cunt Ralph Norwald, who abused your kids. Deliver them, soon, El, from life to the other side, where they sent your daughters.” Conte replies softly, without affect, “Emily and Rosalind.”

The studio opens at 6:30, but his trainer arrives at 5:45 for his own daily workout and Conte comes eagerly fifteen minutes in advance of his 6:30 appointment to watch Kyle Torvald in the last jaw-dropping phase of his routine: fifty strict pull-ups and a fifty-first at the top of which Kyle actually muscles himself up and over the bar—this morning bellowing “Con-TEEEEEE”—dropping to the floor, palms up: “In the dog house? Where’s our fair lady? Where is Detective Catherine Cruuuuuz?”

In this place of violent manly exertion, Conte finds a curious tranquility, as if he’d entered the enclosing warmth of an unfailingly supportive home. No pangs, here, of physical inadequacy, not a trace of macho thrust and parry, except
in parodic mockery, never a hint of the bloody male imperative, except once, at the first interview, when Kyle—ex-paratrooper with a problematic back—in response to Conte’s question, “What’s a reasonable fitness goal for a guy my age?” replies with a wink, “When you take off your shirt, big guy, you look like you might, and likely will, sooner or later, kill somebody.” Kyle Torvald stands 5’10” at 160 pounds, a fair blond of Scandinavian descent and delicately chiseled handsomeness, beside Eliot Conte’s 6’3”, 220, and all southern Italian shadow.

Kyle says (with glee), “Addicted to breathing? I can fix that. Get on the rower and give me two thousand meters, all out, and vomit! Vomit your guts!—quick, down on the floor, forty push-ups, crack your spine!—quick! Quick! Bench two hundred pounds to muscle failure—die slowly!—burst your clotted chest!—give me one hundred squats in one hundred seconds—no resting, Conte!—pull that five-hundred-pound sled back and forth the length of the floor and stop making those noises! Did I see you eye-fuck the clock? Would you like the Suicide Stairs? Hurry! Hurry! Slam that thirty-pound medicine ball, not on the floor but through it, twenty times, penetrate that floor, Conte, rape it hard and explode your evil heart and balls.”

“Good work,” Kyle says, the only compliment he ever gives, and that not often, as he extends his hand to help his spent trainee off the floor, while startling him with an offer (a first) to go to breakfast “on me.”

Conte, on his feet, barely, manages, “You’re free?”

“Congressman Kingwood canceled his 7:00, Anthony Senzalma his 7:30. Why, you may ask? Because these right-wing
homophobes decided to suck each other off. I have nothing at 8:00. Let’s go, big fella. Or do you need an ambulance?”

Kohler’s For Breakfast (since 1947), in the ex-Polish enclave on the West Side, a memory of the Utica that was. Front room of a one-family house. Five tables, worn carpeted floor, actual flowers in all seasons, pictures of old-time political bosses. Mama cooks. Papa waits: soft-boiled eggs, cream of wheat and sliced banana, coffee and pastries—Kyle insists on the sweets “because if you don’t once in a while, the craving pushes you into a zone of violence.” Conte, who needs no excuse, replies, “Let’s order the Napoleons for the road and save the violence for another day.”

“Which day?”

(Pause.)

“Tomorrow.”

“Now that you teach at the college, ever miss your private dick work?”

“No.”

“Not even a little?”

“No.”

“Good guy bad guy thrill of the hunt?”

“Good guy? What’s that?”

“You, Eliot.”

“Coming on to me, Kyle?”

“I’m contemplating coming on to Catherine.”

“You’re gay—have you forgotten?”

“Skin deep, Prof, just skin deep.”

(Conte thinks of her skin, the feel of it. He smiles weakly.) “Out of curiosity, Conte, do you and Catherine, in your spare time, hunt the guy who did the damage to your body?
When you came to see me two weeks after it happened, you still looked pretty ugly. How did she handle it? I’m her, I want to kill the guy.”

Eliot nods.

“You know who did it, don’t you?”

Eliot nods.

“And why.”

Eliot nods.

“Has to do with your kids who were …”

Eliot nods.

“What are you going to do about it?”

Eliot stares.

Kyle waves over George Kohler, orders two Napoleons to go, then says, “Me? I’m merely a man of physical culture who can’t go toe-to-toe at your psychological level. Aside from the incomparable Catherine, who can?”

“Kyle?”

“I’m here, Eliot.”

“Neither can I.”

Catherine Cruz in Troy the previous day had done what Conte imagined she’d do. Hugged her daughter, took her to dinner, picked up the clothes-strewn apartment, washed and put away the sink-clogging, days-old dirty dishes, wiped down every dust-laden surface while Miranda sat in observance, in sullen stupor, waiting for her mother to perform the ultimate act of commiseration by writing a more-than-generous check. That night, Catherine sleeps badly on Miranda’s couch.

Next morning, while Conte is put through his brutalizing
paces, Catherine awakes in time to hear the apartment door close and her daughter slink out to score whatever it was that made her minimal life possible. Catherine falls in despair immediately back to a trouble-free sleep of escape, to be startled awake two hours later by an unnaturally exuberant “Good morning!
Mi madre!
” Against all reason she’s washed over by memories of Miranda’s childhood innocence, magically resuscitated by this transparently sweet apparition who walks back into the apartment. Catherine Cruz is torn asunder by the conspiring parties of joy, guilt, and sadness without bottom.

Late that morning, she pulls away from the curb, her radio tuned to FM Albany. When nearing the Thruway entrance, a crushing bulletin: “
This just in. Longtime Troy favorite, respected detective, and Christmas Day Parade Santa Claus, Robert Rintrona, is reported to be in grave condition at Saint Jude’s Hospital after suffering three gunshot wounds in the driveway of his west Troy home, early this morning. Details and updates at the top of the hour. And now back to our regularly scheduled program, and Act Two of Verdi’s
Un Ballo in Maschera,
a great love of the detective’s, as we are told
.”

She turns back, racing over the speed limit toward Saint Jude—the hospital and the Saint himself.

The heavy workout and even heavier breakfast make it difficult for Conte to stay awake as he drives across town to Mary Street, where he takes a long, hot shower, somehow resists the urge to try Catherine on her cell, then curls up on the couch and sleeps for an hour. Awake, reviews his notes for
his last presentation of the semester, metaphysical nihilism in
Moby-Dick
, when he’s rescued from Melville’s terror by the desk phone.

“Eliot.”

“Where are you? Almost home?”

“On the Thruway.”

“When will you be home?”

“About an hour.”

“Drive safely.”

“I always drive safely.”

“Miss me, Catherine?”

“Yes.”

“Watch out for bad drivers. They’re the ones who—”

“I’ll try.”

“Really watch out.”

“I’ll try.”

“No need to rush.”

“No.”

“Kyle asked after you. He has a thing for you, even though he’s gay. He says he’s only gay at the surface.”

“Eliot, are you sitting or standing?”

“What’s that supposed to—?”

“Eliot. Sitting or standing?”

“Standing. Christ, Catherine.”

“You should sit.”

“What happened? Are you—?”

“Nothing. I’m fine.”

“Miranda?”

“No.”

“Bobby Rintro—?”

“Bobby was shot.”

“They killed Bobby?” (Coldly.)

“He’s still alive. Why did you say ‘they’?”

“How bad?” (Coldly.)

“Bad.”

“Where? When?”

“Walking his dog this morning in his pajamas and robe and Santa hat. In front of the house. Maureen was still asleep. Three times.”

“Not the head. Don’t tell me—”

(Conte breaks down. She thinks it’ll never end.)

“Shoulder. Neck. Missed the artery. Chest … They have grave concern … Lung damage. The trauma surgeon says a decent recovery is possible.”

“What is decent supposed to mean? Fifty-fifty chance of dying?”

“He never lost consciousness until they put him under.”

(Silence.)

“Are you there, Eliot?”

“Did you see Maureen?”

“No.”

“Did you talk to the responding officers?”

“Patrolmen Joe Dominguez and Neal Brady.”

“Bobby could still talk?”

“He said an upstate plate. Likely Utica.”

“He’ll survive?”

“Bobby was coughing blood. Brady said drowning in his own—”

“Don’t say it. I’ll drive down.”

“No point. No one outside Maureen and the kids for
several days. Dominguez thinks he said something about Eddie or Ellie or something. He couldn’t quite get it. ‘Tell Eddie or Ellie that it finally—’ ”

“Finally? Finally what?”

“ ‘Tell Eddie or Ellie that it finally—’ That’s all they got. ‘That it finally—’ ”

(Long silence.)

“Eliot, are you still there?”

“You shouldn’t be talking and driving.”

“I’ll be home soon.”

“I’ll be at class when you—I’ll cancel.”

“Don’t. We’ll talk after.”

“Which hospital?”

“Saint Jude. Albany.”

“Patron saint of lost causes.”

“Yes, Eliot.”

One call from Troy and Conte’s dragged back into the past. Can he keep the truth from her? If he can’t, he’s sure he’ll lose her. And if he can—what then? He’s certain beyond a reasonable doubt that Bobby Rintrona’s assailant was Antonio Robinson, and that he’s next on the hit list.

Can’t prepare—head aswim—will stick closely to his notes. State what he believes to be the book’s master theme: the pull of the earth’s enchanting surfaces, the engrossing beauty of surfaces and the opposing pull, the self-annihilating dive beneath to find the meaning of ultimate things, where there are no things, and Melville’s obsessive key words for what lies beneath the surface. He’ll just list the words. He’ll repeat them slowly, that’s what he’ll do.

He’ll linger on
unimaginable
. Ask them to take it literally. You can’t make an image of it. Stay home at the enchanting surface. The spouse. The child. The backyard garden. Squeeze the hands of all brothers and sisters—never forgetting those with whom we do not share blood. The rest is insufferable. He guessed he had at best twenty minutes’ worth in him.