The Dog Killer of Utica (7 page)

“I’m going for Barack’s BlackBerry.”

“You do know his BlackBerry was specially made with encryption beyond hacking?”

“Jefe?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t make me laugh.”

“Even if you succeed, they trace it back to you.”

“No problem, señor.”

“Why not?”

“I’m thirteen, señor.”

“I’ve got tomato pie. Hungry?”

“O’Scugnizzo’s or Napoli’s?”

“Napoli’s.”

“Forget it, man.”

“Would you like to earn two hundred dollars, Angel?”

“Like I said, Jefe, I don’t feature pedo—”

“Hold your tongue!”

“Hold my
tongue
? What’s that, man? Some new perversion maneuver?”

Conte leaves the kitchen and returns with a computer: “How long would it take you to hack into the e-mail?”

“Two hours.”

“Two hundred dollars?”

“Cool.”

“What if I could give you the owner’s name?”

“One hour.”

“Cash, Angel, two hundred.”

“You be requesting an illegal act, Jefe.”

“Three hundred.”

“Yeah.”

“Mirko Ivanovic.”

“Say what?”

“The owner’s name.”

“I don’t have no hard feelings for no Bosnians.”

“Four hundred.”

“Yeah. By the way, Jefe, you look unkept.”

“You mean
unkempt
, Angel.”

“Angel knows what he means: for sure you be
unkempt
, totally, without sayin’. But you also be
unkept
. She gone?”

“Out of curiosity, amigo—”

“Don’t sweat it, Jefe.”

“Do you talk this way to your parents?”

“Get serious, Jefe.”

“To friends at school?”

“Jefe?”

“Talk to me, amigo.”

“Angel don’t feature friendship.”

“Just me?”

“Plus my Norwegian associates. Jefe?”

“Yes.”

“You look bad, man.”

The phone. The answering machine. 8:45: “Eliot, Mark. We need to chat very soon about a matter of security. I’ll be by at 10:30. It’s worth your while to be there, if at all possible. Strictly unofficial, at this point.”

Angel, feet up on kitchen table: “Would that be Mark Martello of the regional office?”

“It would.”

“Heavy.”

“I need to get showered and changed, and you need to work on that computer. It stays here. The computer doesn’t leave.”

“No problem, señor.”

As Eliot leaves the room, Angel says, “Four bills is too totally generous. Angel hacks Martello’s ass for you while he’s at it, free of charge.”

Eliot turns and says, with a grin, “Yeah.”

“One more thing, Jefe. I’m sayin’ don’t come out of that shower naked and hard.”

Thirty minutes later, Conte appears in the front room freshly dressed, shaved and showered, to find his friend lounging on the couch with a second cup of cappuccino, watching the Nature Channel’s show on the primitive wolf.

“Don’t have something better to do, Angel?”

“Than gaze on my father?” (Pointing to television.)

“You have a job. It’s urgent.”

“Formerly.”

“Formerly?”

“It’s all good.”

“Speak normal English, Angel.”

“Nineteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds. Candy from a baby, Jefe. The Bosnian machine is open for you over there to what you need. As far as Martello, he’s interested in the Bosnian, but doesn’t have squat. He’s obsessing about this new Imam I can’t pronounce his name at the new Muslim synagogue. The word Sunday is big. A major act on Sunday is my belief. This Mirko you can read yourself. Shall we discuss the payoff, Jefe?”

“I can have it for you no later than tomorrow, when I presume I’ll be able to get out of the driveway and to the bank.”

“I’ll take one hundred in twenties then twenty per week for fifteen weeks.”

“I’m happy to give it to you all at once.”

“Can’t asept four hundred cold.”

“Why not?”

“You suffering memory dementia, Jefe? I’m
thirteen
, man.”

Eliot asks what he’ll do with his day off from school and Angel replies, “Barack’s BlackBerry, while I dream of The Land of the Midnight Sun.”

“You have quite a thing for Norway, Angel.”

“Vice versa, Jefe.”

Angel’s out the door when it occurs to Conte: How did he manage to make a second cappuccino while he was in the shower? He calls out: “How did you know how to work the cappuccino machine?”

“A new associate of mine, Jefe. In Palermo.”

Conte searches Mirko’s sent file back several weeks—nothing to the Imam. Inbox dominated by messages from Delores Delgado, who he believes must be the beauty of the hidden photo. Obstacles to young lovers. Two different worlds. Mirko’s reference to
Romeo and Juliet
. Delores’s puzzlement. Mirko explaining Shakespeare by reference to
West Side Story
. Muslim boy, Catholic girl. Star-crossed. She didn’t want him to use the word
tragic
, although she could be persuaded. There was a time and a place for them. Hold my hand. She said, “Please.” A long trail of messages. Love makes the world go away. She said, “I’ll take you there.” Conte is convinced that Mirko and Delores have eloped. As of late yesterday afternoon, no longer in Utica. Mirko and terrorism? Joke. Angel was right. They don’t have squat on Mirko. Conte suffers a pang of doubt. But who is this new Imam? Who, really, is Mirko Ivanovic outside the classroom?

Forty-five minutes to kill before Mark Martello arrives and Conte doesn’t know what to do with himself. No appetite for breakfast—the call from Catherine—how cold she was.

Catherine maybe lost, who said she’d never leave him. He paces. Stops at the front window to stare out at Mary and Wetmore—Wetmore ascending from Utica’s lowest point at Broad—crossing Catherine, crossing Bleecker—rising always to Mary, to end T-stopping directly before his house, 1318 Mary.

There again on the street—soccer ball replaced by a beat-up sled. Angel standing at the T-stop, looking down Wetmore—Conte looking at Angel looking down Wetmore. Should he warn him off the temptation? Wetmore zooming
down to Bleecker, as the Lo Bianco boy zoomed down, who had not been warned, decades ago. His father told the story. Did Angel’s parents know the story? Had the Italians of Mary Street passed on the story to the newcomers of Mary Street? Fear for your children on the hills of lower East Utica. The Lo Bianco boy, 1941, had not been feared for—zooming down Wetmore fearlessly—braking hard at Bleecker, where he hits a patch of wet leaves on a brilliant day in autumn and skids through the wet leaves hard and fast onto dry sidewalk and the bike flips and little Lo Bianco flies over the handle bars onto Bleecker on his belly as an eastbound bus rolls slowing toward the corner of Bleecker and Wetmore—rolling fatally to a stop—exactly onto the Lo Bianco boy’s exploding head.

Angel turns from the temptation of Wetmore and sleds west along Mary. Out of sight. Where? To Mary and Bacon? Yet another temptation, as are all parallel north-south cross streets that rise to Mary and beyond and keep on rising until lower East Utica becomes upper East Utica. A rise once signifying elevation of real estate values—not, as now, elevated risks of arson, assault, drugs—as the relentless Anthony V. Senzalma never tires of reporting twice daily on syndicated talk radio.

Conte stashes Mirko’s computer behind a bookshelf.

The silence of snowbound Mary is broken by the house-shaking rumbling roar of a military Humvee that stops at 1318. From the passenger’s side, a tall, wiry, dashing man emerges, dressed in a pin-striped suit without overcoat, hat, or boots. An expensive Tuscan shoulder bag. Reaches into the Humvee.
Emerges with a brown bag. The Humvee will wait, throbbing at the curb. The dashing man enters with his offering:

“From my Italophilic companion. Lunch.”

“Hello, Mark.”

“El.”

“Coffee?”

“No.”

“This need refrigeration?”

“Sausage and peppers, El. Significant sandwiches for significant eaters.”

“So this is only about friends on a lunch date?”

“Let’s hope so, El.”

“Ten thirty is early for sandwiches of this heft.”

“Let’s sit in the kitchen, El, where we have easy access to Kyle’s kindness. Or have you lost your legendary appetite since Catherine walked?”

“How do you—”

“Accommodations at Best Western are gracious. Complimentary breakfast. Walking distance to Del Monico’s Steak House. Kyle and I will try to talk her out of returning to Troy.”

“So you’ve somehow tracked her—”

“Of course.”

“Bastard.”

“We leave no stone unturned.”

“Bastard.”

“I need your assistance, El. We have time. Not like tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“Today is Tuesday, Mark, and I’m about to tell you that you need to leave because unless you wish to officially detain—”

“Whoa! Big guy! This is about a friend helping a friend who may be dealing with a situation.”

“Your concern originates from D.C.?”

“No comment.”

“Janet Napolitano sending her squad of superpatriots?”

“No comment.”

“Totally your initiative?”

“Yes. I don’t intend to get burned.”

“Your job that boring? Terrorism in Utica? Come on.”

“Yep, boring. We have the sudden departure of Catherine Cruz. We have you visiting 608 Nichols Street last night, where Novak Ivanovic gave you something, which you carried home in a shopping bag.”

“Somehow I don’t see or hear a dear friend sitting across from me. Not to mention my AA sponsor.”

“Did Novak tell you he chaired the committee that recruited the new Imam, who’s in regular contact with radical clerics in Yemen and London? Sorry. I’ll take a cup of your famous cappuccino. Let’s dial this back, El. On second thought, how about a macchiato?”

Conte makes two macchiatos, which they take in silence. Martello thinks about the sandwiches. Conte breaks the silence.

“The hammer. You came here to act out the meaning of your surname. Mark the Hammer. Not in friendship. Mark the fucking Hammer.”

“We’re just talking, El. I need your help. If you have it, please turn it over. I leave, no consequences, end of story.”

“Have it?”

“We believe you may have Mirko’s computer.”

“I don’t.”

“Don’t force me to order a search of the premises. Within an hour this place is in shambles.”

“Fuck it.”

“Fuck it?”

“You people have already hacked into Mirko’s computer, the Imam’s computer.”

“Robinson better not have told you this, Eliot.”

“No comment.”

“We’re all over those computers. Sure. Problem is a forensic exam is necessary because everything dumped into the trash can itself be trashed, deleted, and only a forensic search into the hard drive can retrieve what the user is trying to hide. El, I need that computer.”

“Mirko is conducting a clandestine romance, Mark. That’s all it is.”

“How do you know this?”

“No comment.”

“El. Recall the bombing of the Fraunces Tavern near Wall Street, late seventies? Radical Puerto Rican nationalists?”

“No. That would be before you were born, Mark.”

“We know all about Delores Delgado, do you?”

“Make your point, Mark.”

“Her grandfather and great-uncle were the designers and executioners of the Fraunces Tavern bombing. Wall Street area. People died.”

“You’re losing it, Mark.”

“Possibly. But if I’m not? You ready to take the consequences because you were blasé about connecting the dots?”

“What is Kyle saying about this?”

“We don’t discuss this level of my work.”

“Bullshit.”

“I agree.”

“Where does that leave us, Mark?”

“Okay. I’m going. On the way to headquarters I’m making a call. Count on it. I’m advising you.”

“Go ahead. Advise me.”

“Proceed as I do.”

“How’s that?”

“Exercising caution and due diligence.”

Noon, and Conte’s thoughts turn to sausage and peppers. He’s eaten nothing for eighteen hours, since the tomato pie binge of the night before. She said afternoon, to collect her things. He’ll sit at the desk, watch and wait. Conte has no appetite. Perhaps, maybe, a half sandwich at most. Or a quarter. Or none at all. He polishes off both sandwiches and a twelve-ounce bottle of Coke, and then the phone rings. She ignores his hello-with-a-mouthful. “Be there in an hour with Don Belmonte in his all-terrain vehicle. I have frightening news to report—tell you when I get there.”

“Tell me now.”

“Maureen Rintrona. Maureen. She’s walking the dog this morning at dawn. A car pulls alongside, blasting Verdi. She thinks it was Verdi. The driver fires once at the beagle. The light was weak. We have almost nothing to go on.”

“The dog? Not Maureen?”

“Yes.”

“Killed the dog? They killed Aida?”

“Yes.”

He flosses and brushes. Checks his hair in the bathroom mirror. Okay. Face—nothing to be done. Fifty minutes to go. Dusts and vacuums. Pacing again. Staring out again at quiet Mary Street. There. Angel again. Soccer ball again. Maneuvering in the snow. Dribbling east, whipping about on a dime, dribbling west.

Conte hadn’t defined
o’scugnizzo
for her. The orphan boy living on the streets of Naples, by his wits. Poor, homeless, raggedly clothed. A rascal, a rapscallion. A scamp and a Devil. Angel, who insisted on pronouncing his own name the way a clueless English speaker would,
An-gell
, had never commented on Conte’s proper Spanish rendition:
An-hel. An-hell?
Yes. Moreno the Anhellion. He must tell Catherine.