The Dog Killer of Utica (4 page)

The answering machine. Robinson: “I’ll be over at eight sharp and I hope to Christ you can keep your famous rage in check.”

“The famous rage he refers to was displayed on the train. On the body of the abusive father.”

“How?”

“I pick him up off the seat by the throat. I’m choking him. He loses control of his bowels. He’s about to leave the planet when I drop him back onto the seat. No more abuse. In Utica, they get off. I follow and take down his plate.”

“Tell me you’re making this up. What’s this got to do with Bobby? You almost killed a man on the train? Tell me you’re making this up. Have you ever done anything like that before—what you did on the train? Get to the part about Bobby’s involvement.”

“Bobby talks to his FBI contact and tells me the abuser, a man named Jed Kinter, has Mafia background as a hit man, who came to Utica one month before the famous triple hit here back in the nineties.”

“The abuser turns out to be the hitter?”

“Yes.”

“What’s this have to do with Bobby?”

“Main target, one of the bosses of the Five Families who’s in Utica for the funeral of his godmother. The other two killed were Freddy Barbone’s Mafia father and uncle. My father wanted the Barbones dead because they were putting the squeeze on him for city contracts.”

“That’s public knowledge except for the identity of the hitter and my God! The role of your father. You keep leaving out the role of you and Bobby.”

“We pick up the hitter, Bobby and I. We take him to a deserted place. Bobby and I. Antonio comes at my request. Antonio executes the hitter in our presence.”

“My chief did murder? He did murder? You and Bobby are witnesses? Accomplices? Which is it? Witnesses or accomplices?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what? Witnesses or accomplices? Why not just arrest him? This Mafia hitter?”

“ ‘The evidence,’ Antonio says before he blows the hitter’s brains out. Four in the head, Catherine. Four. A rage murder. ‘The evidence is obvious to normal people,’ Antonio says, ‘but will not hold up in court.’ Antonio makes the body disappear. None of this ever comes out.”

“The Chief knew who Bobby was? His name? Where he came from?”

“Never laid eyes on him until that night. There were no introductions. Bobby was just an unknown face.”

“Somehow he found out?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“He arranged to hit Bobby? Eliminate a witness?”

“Yes. I think so. But it might as well have been me who arranged it. I brought Bobby in. I’m as responsible as Antonio.”

“Why not you too? Why wouldn’t he come for you too?”

“Antonio is not a monster.”

“The hell he isn’t.”

“He won’t come for me.” (He’s faking it well.) “But I worry he’ll go for Bobby again, who can finger Antonio.”

“And now that we’re together?”

“He might assume that I’ve told you all.”

“So you arrange to put me in witness protection in North Dakota?”

“I’ve got a problem.”

“
We
have a problem, Eliot.”

“Maybe Antonio had nothing to do with the attempt on Bobby’s life. That’s my hope, but this is what we need to nail down, one way or the other. You’re staying here tonight.”

(He picks up another piece of tomato pie. Puts it back.)

“The hell I am! You just told Antonio I’d be out.”

“Stay. We’ll talk in the living room. You hide quiet as a mouse behind the door in the spare room.”

She’s speechless.

“There’s more to the story, but we don’t have time. He’ll be here in ten minutes. The conversation will interest you.”

The phone. The answering machine: “My deepest apologies, Professor Conte. I am Novak Ivanovic, father of Mirko. Please come to our home. I beg you. Something terrible is happening. 608 Nichols Street. Directly across from Saint Stanislaus.”

Eliot goes to the front window, squinting through the driving snow. Barely makes out Antonio’s Mercedes as it pulls up.

She’s already slipped into the spare room, closed the door, .38 in hand. Because she knew why he wanted her to stay. He didn’t have to spell it out. Robinson sits for several endless minutes in the car, doing God knows what. Conte moves quickly to the master bedroom, behind the kitchen. Removes his loaded .357 Magnum from his bedside table. Moves quickly back to the living room, where he places it under a cushion on the couch. Then retreats to the kitchen.

As usual, he enters without knocking. Eliot comes to greet him, as Robinson, without removing it, shakes his snow encrusted, long black Italian overcoat the way a Labrador retriever shakes itself off emerging drenched from a cold pond in November, with a dead duck held softly in its mouth. For all their size and formidable deep voices, Labs are gentle, Eliot thinks, but maybe I’m Antonio’s soon-to-be dead duck.
What I only deserve, he thinks, for what I made happen to Robert Rintrona.

They embrace.

Antonio says, “When I pull up I get a pain in the ass call from Homeland Security. You’ll be interested. They seek a person of concern who’s close to you.”

Eliot speaks slowly and quietly:

“A beautiful coat like that, Chief, deserves a proper hanging.” (Pause.) “As does its handsome owner.”

“Fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

Still buttoned to the throat, collar turned up, Robinson sits at the desk that faces the big window giving onto the street—Mary Street disappearing in a blizzard. He turns the swivel chair around to face the couch, where Conte sits thinking that his best friend appears somehow profoundly relaxed and hyperalert and about to spring all at the same time.

“Fuckin’ shivers all day, El.” (He’s lying.)

“Fever?”

Conte rises, approaches. Robinson stiffens. Palm on Robinson’s forehead: “I’ll get you a couple of aspirin.”

Conte goes to the bathroom cabinet. Robinson quickly checks beneath his coat, left side, chest level. Rebuttons. His breathing shallow. Heart racing. Conte returns with two aspirin and a glass of water. Before he takes the aspirin, Robinson says, “Something smells good. Pizza?”

“No.”

“Tomato pie?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me O’Scugnizzo, El.”

“Napoli’s, Robby.”

“Shit.”

“Napoli’s is good.”

“Since when do you patronize, El?”

“Catherine.”

(Pause.)

“Where’s the foxy lady?”

“Out.”

(Pause.)

“I haven’t eaten supper, El.” (He’s lying.)

“I’ll get you a couple of pieces.”

“More than a couple, El.”

When Conte goes to the kitchen, Robinson checks beneath the coat again. Conte returns with a plate of four pieces. As Robinson annihilates the first in under twenty seconds, Conte says, “Homeland Security?”

Robinson with a mouthful, “Mirko Ivanovic.”

“Ridiculous.”

“This new Imam at the new mosque on Mary and Albany? Can’t pronounce his name—who can except these Arab types?”

“They’re Bosnians.”

“They’re Muslims, El. This new Imam? He does online interaction with radical clerics in London and Yemen and this Mirko who you praise in my company? He’s questionably in contact with the new Imam.”

“Questionable how?”

“No idea. All I know, concerns are being explored concerning the interfaith gathering on Sunday.”

“And?”

Robinson takes another huge bite.

“Put that fucking piece down for a minute.”

“They won’t give me details, arrogant federal cocksuckers,
no offense to your gay friends. They talked to the Imam a few hours ago. In custody, El. They seek your Mirko, who can’t be located. I get this from the executive coordinator of Oneida County Homeland Security himself, Mark Martello, whose boyfriend or lover or whatever the word is—did they tie the knot yet? The boyfriend is—”

“My personal trainer, Kyle. So what?”

“He’ll be calling you in the morning for background on Mirko. Martello says he has deep concern. He said deep more than once. They have a working theory about the interfaith gathering on Sunday afternoon which includes Utica’s toughest Jews. Martello tells me your name is on the guest list.” (How could it be? He’d accepted the invitation only late this afternoon, and he was on a list already accessed by Homeland Security?) “Martello tells me the mayor is on the list. My theory is Martello theorizes a bomb on Sunday afternoon. Al Qaeda. We have something international in our midst, El, and your boy—”

“You channel anti-Muslim crap? Since when?”

“I’m you, El, I don’t show on Sunday afternoon. Our asshole mayor, on the other hand—”

“I know Mark Martello. The four of us have dinner occasionally. He’s normal, reasonable, with an understated sense of humor. Not paranoid.”

“All well and good. His homosexuality is not a factor here.”

“Who said it was?”

“El, live and fuckin’ let live is my philosophy. But keep in mind, however so-called normal this three-dollar bill Martello is, the sophisticated monitoring goes on way above Marky
boy’s pretty head. They pick up the chatter of the jihadists. Via Montana, D. C., Langley, via outer fuckin’ space, wherever they have surveillance devices of enormous power they look right up our—my guess? They think you might be closely guarding information as to the whereabouts of Mirko Ivanovic, if they’re not thinking you’re harboring the little raghead. They likely don’t rule out criminal complicity on your part, El. In my opinion.”

“Don’t make me laugh.”

“Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Complicitous?”

“You’re working hard, Antonio, to divert from the real subject we’re here to discuss.”

“All these years you call me Robby—now it’s Antonio?”

“So what?”

“What do I know, El? This is my speculation. Martello is cagy. Homosexuals, in my extremely limited experience, can be very indirect about what’s really on their secret minds.”

“How much of this are you making up? Because you’re beginning to piss me off.”

“You teach fiction, I deal in harsh facts on a daily basis”—as he takes another piece. Eats. Requests a napkin. Conte goes to the kitchen. Robinson glances quick and hard at the closed door to the spare room. Touches his upper-left chest.

Conte returns with an elegant cloth napkin: “When I feel what you’re feeling now, I do what you’re doing.”

“What’s that, Professor?”

“Don’t play dumb. We binge eat when we have fear and anxiety. We eat and we divert and we avoid. Today we’re
binge-eating brothers. I don’t believe you missed your supper tonight. Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda in Iraq, Al Qaeda in East Africa, Al Qaeda in Yemen. And now you come here with a story. Al Qaeda in Utica, New York. Al Qaeda in a small, sad, economically destroyed town fading fast into the sub-cellar of American history. Utica, New York, the looming site of a major terrorist attack. Utica, New York, displaces Manhattan, D.C., Boston, Chicago, and L.A. as the focus of Al Qaeda’s desire to do mass murder to America’s innocent civilians. All GPS devices manufactured from here on out position and measure distances from the new global center: Utica, New York. Where the fuck is Islamabad? Nine thousand miles east southeast of Utica, New York. And my gentle student, whose goal is to teach literature in high school, is a key operative of terror.”

“Hey! El! Don’t think I didn’t voice skepticism along your lines, which is why I sat out there so long shivering in the car, talking to Mark Martello. Know what he said? He says, Chief, all due respect. The handful of big cities can be defended, maybe, but small town America has no chance. The people in small towns, he says, they think they’re beyond the reach and they’re secretly wishing the worst for the big cities of the immoral liberal elites. Martello says they believe—the small town types, the rural types—that on 9/11 New York got what it fuckin’ deserved and too bad all of Wall Street wasn’t destroyed, where they steal our money on a daily basis. Fuck the elites. Fuck Manhattan. This is what the real America thinks, Martello says. Now real America is about to take it hard up the ass, though because of his erotic persuasion Mark doesn’t quite put it that way. You forget, El, that
Muhammad Atta was a gentle-appearing little guy, a possible faggot, just like your Mirko? An intellectual, just like your little Mirko?”

“You’ve taken care of four pieces in no time and you want more, don’t you?”

“I do, El.”

“What happened in Troy this morning—this is the source of your binge.”

Robinson points to the closed door of the spare room: “I’ve been coming here weekly since you moved back, twenty years ago. Know what I notice tonight that I never once saw in twenty years? I notice that that son of a bitchin’ door, which has never been closed when I visit, is closed for the first time in twenty years. This is my fuckin’ observation.”

“Forget the spare room.”

“Mirko Ivanovic in there?”

“Anything is possible.”

“Catherine?”

“Anything is possible.”

Robinson undoes the top two buttons of his coat. Conte’s right hand slips between the cushion he’s sitting on and the cushion beneath which he’s hidden his .357 Magnum.

Conte says, “It’s possible that the real Osama bin Laden is hiding in there, his double having been killed, and it’s possible that you and I will do something foolish. You with what you’re packing under your coat and I with what I have under here, with the safe off—the safe is off, Robby, and I can get it out well before you get yours. I advise you to take your coat off. Carefully. Now.”

Robinson complies, revealing what Conte had suspected
was there from the beginning. Conte says, “Good,” and pulls out the .357 Magnum. Lays it on the cushion. Conte says, “Is the fear which we have for one another tonight well grounded? That’s the only question.”

Conte stands. He says, “I’m going to the kitchen to bring out the entire box from Napoli’s, so that we can both feed our anxiety. I’ll leave my revolver there on the couch while I go to the kitchen. I’ll be turning my back on you. Either we are who we’ve been for each other for fifty years or we’re done. I’m gone and your life is worthless and you’ll eat your gun sooner or later with your brains on the wall.” In the spare room, .38 at the ready, Catherine Cruz peers in vain between the door’s edge and the doorjamb. Conte turns his back.