Hellhound (8 page)

Leonhardt looked from Trey to Becca and back again. She’d bested him, as if knowing nary a judge in New York would give him a warrant to seize or search that computer. He sighed and pulled out a card, scribbling his email address on the back.

“We’re just trying to figure out who did this.”

“And I told you,” Becca said, matter-of-factly. “It was the dog.”

•  •  •

Ken hadn’t intended to walk Bones very far, but it had been awhile since he’d walked anywhere. It just felt like a good way to clear his troubled mind. He’d headed towards the water, crossing Harlem River Drive, where he turned north. The RFK bridge was only a few blocks away, so he led the shepherd to the pedestrian walkway.

“There are a bunch of parks on the Randall’s Island side,” he told the dog.

As they crossed the bridge, Bones seemed thrilled to be away from the cramped buildings and out in the sunshine. He cantered along, nose in the air, taking in the smells of the East River.

“There’s a lot of bad shit down there,” Ken joked. “Be careful what you’re inhaling.”

When they got to the other side, they followed something Ken saw labeled as the Harlem River Pathway. Now they were directly opposite the neighborhood, though Ken couldn’t see his own building.

“Good-looking dog,” someone said.

Ken glanced over and saw a woman in a tight jogging outfit nodding at Bones.

“Yeah, but he works out like crazy, only eats organic. You know the type.”

The woman laughed and sidled up to Ken. “You live over there?”

“Yeah, just off Jefferson Park,” Ken replied, giving a thought to lying, but not caring enough to do so.

“Oh, Jeez,” she replied. “Were you around for the shooting last night?”

“Nah, that was a couple of buildings over,” Ken lied, not looking for pity.

“That’s crazy. All those cops.”

“Yeah, I know. Everybody in the neighborhood is freaked out,” Ken replied while looking for a way to change the subject. “Where do you live?”

“Sunnyside, but I work here on the island. I use my lunch to do some running.”

“Cool, where do you work?”

She shot a thumb over her shoulder. “Psych Hospital. I swear I’m not an escapee.”

Ken laughed. “Well, maybe we’ll get lucky and send you a couple of patients after all this sorts itself out from last night.”

“Good thing you’ve got that dog.”

“Good thing. I’m Ken. Dog’s name is Bones.”

“Catherine. Well, Cathy. Nice to meet you.”

“You, too. If I see any lunatics on the trail, I’ll be sure to send them your way.”

“Do that,” Cathy laughed. “You know how you can tell which are the crazies?”

“How?”

“They just say they work at the Psych Hospital and swear they’re not escapees.”

Ken laughed and gave her a little wave as she continued on her jog. It felt good to flirt, a reminder that, some day, he just might put his hands on a woman again. His life hadn’t allowed for much socializing of late.

“Good boy, Bones,” he said, scratching between the dog’s ears.

That’s when he heard the distant sirens carrying across the river.

“Hah, can’t have more mayhem back home, can we?”

But the shepherd just looked up him confusedly, as if giving voice to skepticism.

“Shit, you’re right,” Ken sighed. “Way things are going, probably means the whole building’s on fire.”

U
pon encountering the police still conducting interviews on the Lester case in front of the building, Ken led Bones around the block. He came up to Building 7 from the rear, taking the back stairs up to his apartment.

“Where’d you go?” Trey asked, sprawled out on the sofa next to Becca, watching television.

“Randall’s Island,” Ken replied. “Felt good to get out.”

He went straight to his bedroom and, a moment later, Trey and Becca could hear him on the phone.

“It’d just be for a couple of nights,” Ken was saying. “You have to understand how bad things are up here.”

“Shit,” groaned Trey. “Bet he called Aunt Marta.”

Becca held her breath. Their “Aunt Marta” was really “Great Aunt Marta” down in East Orange. Their mother’s aunt, they’d only met her a few times. That entire side of the family had functionally abandoned them years ago, down to the absence of Christmas cards, which took a couple of years to be noticed.

Becca remembered being in Aunt Marta’s house only once. It was large and filled with grandkids when they were there, but what Becca remembered most was being made to feel like a stranger. She’d gone off to explore the upstairs, only to be corralled by an older cousin or uncle who chewed her out for going in whichever mothball-smelling guest room she’d made her way to. To make things worse, when he’d brought her downstairs, he made a big deal out of implying that he’d caught her about to steal something. That this wasn’t true in the slightest did little to assuage either Becca’s guilt or her mother’s humiliation.

“I would not be calling if this wasn’t a life or death emergency,” Ken said. He was silent for a moment, but when he spoke again, his exasperation was on the rise. “Turn on your fucking television! It’s all over it! Whole team shot up. That was outside our front fucking door! Yeah, I’m mad! You…”

Trey and Becca could hear the other line clicking off from across the room. Ken walked into the living room and threw the cordless phone at the front door.

“You trying to ship Becca to Aunt Marta’s?” Trey asked.

“Trying to ship both of you,” Ken replied. “You hear the press conference earlier? They had the goddamn mayor, all these cops and borough presidents, all talking about what a great tragedy it was and how our police are all heroes. But they were talking about it as if it was this one isolated thing, this crime that happened, but is over. Mr. Lester today? Nothing to do with it. Devaris the other night? Same thing. Totally unrelated.”

“So, you believe me about this dog now, huh?” Becca said.

“I didn’t say that, but it’s something. Mrs. Fowler, Mr. Lester, Devaris, Mr. Preston, and that dog. We know it’s connected. They just think it’s a crazy man on drugs, an old lady who got confused, a kid who got high, and a drunk who accidentally burned out his throat with acid. And that’s all that matters to them. The easy answer.”

Becca looked over at Bones who was sunning himself by the window. As Ken went to get something from the fridge to abate his anger, she sat next to the shepherd and began stroking his fur.

“Where’s the other dog, Bones?” Becca whispered. “That’s what we’ve got to know. Where’s the other dog?”

The shepherd, now awake, eyed Becca curiously as she spoke, but then flopped back down to enjoy his tummy rub.

•  •  •

The afternoon passed into evening and eventually, the police and other first-responders left Neville Houses. Becca watched from her bedroom window, thinking she might spy Detective Leonhardt, but coming up empty. Bones had come in to sit with her. Despite having slept most of the afternoon, he promptly fell asleep in her room as well.

Ken had come by to check on her a couple of times but didn’t say anything. She’d heard him leave around six and watched him walk across the street to grab food from the corner grocery. He’d said he was going to stay home that night from work, but the phone had rung just as he was coming back. Even through the closed door, Becca knew it was his shift foreman.

“I just can’t,” Ken said. “You know those guys are just out drinking or whoring. I have a real reason.”

When Ken hung up a few minutes later after not saying much, Becca expected the knock on her door.

“Hey,” said Ken, trying to sound nonchalant.

“I understand if you have to go in,” Becca said. “I’ll keep the doors locked and the police dog close.”

“Nobody knows what’s happening here. I need to know that I can trust you to stay in here and not go out. Trey’s going to do what Trey’s going to do, but it’s you I’m worried about.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ll stay right here.”

Ken looked hard at her, unsure whether to believe her. “Did you really tell a teacher to ‘fuck off’ today?”

“You heard, huh?”

“You can’t really do that and get away with it,” Ken said. “Adults are already going to know you’re smarter than them, which is strike one. Strike two is when you let them know that
you
know. Doing what you did is strike three, rubbing their face in it.”

Becca smiled, knowing a compliment when she heard it.

“I’ll be better.”

“Okay, good. I bought some different kinds of dog food when I picked up supper. See what he likes.”

“Okay.”

Ten minutes later, the front door closed as Ken headed out. Becca waited another ten before exiting her room to make sure Trey was gone. She found a bag of dry dog food and a couple of cans and opened all of it, pouring the mess into a large sauce pan for Bones.

“Eat up, boy. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

•  •  •

“What was your name again?”

“Trey, sir. I’m a friend of your daughter’s.”

Janice’s dad stared at Trey with something resembling suspicion, though he was obviously too new to Harlem to recognize that Trey’s intentions were absolutely one-hundred-percent counter to what he might want for his daughter. Seventy-five-percent, maybe. Possibly as high as eighty-five-percent. But there seemed to be a part of him willing to give Trey the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe it was the “sir.”

As Janice’s dad stepped back to retrieve his daughter, Trey made a mental note to beat the head in of anyone who “sir”ed him when coming by to collect any little girl he might have in his future.

“Hey, Trey,” Janice said, coming to the door.

She wore the tightest orange T-shirt he’d ever seen, matched only by her jeans. He saw that her father was uncomfortable with this, but didn’t say a word. Then he got it. Janice was one of those daughters who could do no wrong in their daddy’s eyes. Girls always had daddy issues, but he knew that this brought on minefields all their own.

“’Sup, Janice? You ready to go?”

She nodded as Mr. Gaines stepped forward.

“Don’t be out too late.”

Oh, okay, Dad
, said Janice’s eye roll.

Trey smiled at her with understanding. He wondered how she planned to wrap him around her little finger as tightly as her dad.

•  •  •

After the fifth drink, Leonhardt’s head slid to the cushioned corner of the booth and stayed there. He knew he could move it if he wanted to, but it just felt like too much effort. Besides, his eyes were fixed on a fight poster from over a decade and a half prior—George Foreman versus Lou Savarese—with a Budweiser logo and the date of the bout under it. He didn’t know why the bar kept it up, but imagined it had been a freebie at some point and there weren’t any after it.

Staring at this meant he didn’t have to look at the other cops in the bar, all grim-faced with black bands over the badges, or the televisions showing the mayor and police chief’s press conferences from earlier in the day. No, he could simply stare at Foreman’s hard eyes and the soon-to-be-clocked-out gaze of Savarese looking back at him.

He actually remembered the fight. Before the first bell, the cabler who aired it had run a bunch of footage of each boxer to hype up the audience at home. They showed Foreman cutting down trees with an axe and pulling a Jeep up a hill, great chains around his chest. When they cut to Savarese, he was talking about being a vegetarian and writing poetry.

It was as if they were setting the Italian-American fighter who’d won a pair of Golden Gloves championships in New York up for a fall against returning heavyweight Foreman, the guy they knew everyone in the country was cheering for. The fight itself had been a straightforward affair. Savarese would land a few quick combinations on the lumbering forty-eight-year-old Foreman and would get a single punch in return. Unlike Savarese’s hits, which were seemingly absorbed without comment by Foreman’s thick frame, the shots from the older boxer caused the younger man’s head to jerk back with tremendous force, as if yanked by a cord. Leonhardt’s opinion of Savarese improved over the course of the fight as he kept coming back for more punishment.

Foreman won the decision, making the fight Savarese’s first professional loss. But it made Leonhardt a fan. He watched the fighter win a few over the next couple of years, including a knockout against Buster Douglas. But then a few losses, including a first-round knockout from Tyson, paved the way to a career-ending loss to Holyfield.

But Foreman would only fight one more time after Savarese. In a quirk of fate, another Golden Gloves champ from New York, Shannon Briggs, would defeat Foreman as if avenging his fellow New Yorker’s earlier loss.

Leonhardt stewed in these memories, getting lost in the names, the dates, and the faces. He didn’t want to think about anything, so he stayed with this. He’d been married then to Kara and they were already talking about the kids they’d have, a boy and a girl, to be named Micah and Anne-Marie. Amazingly, it worked out exactly as Kara planned, only her kids ended up coming by another man. She’d kept the names, though, as if that had been the idea all along and Leonhardt was a footnote.

He momentarily wondered what they were all doing tonight, but then scrubbed that thought from his mind to return to boxing.

“Hey, Phil, you know how much PCP they found in Lester’s stomach?” Detective Garza said, sliding onto the bench opposite his partner. “Thirty-five pills. I mean, holy shit, right? He would’ve been dead within the hour if he hadn’t hung himself out to dry.”

Leonhardt’s dull gaze traveled over to Garza as the younger detective’s facial expression turned from excitement in his news to disappointment in his comrade.

“You’re kidding me? A couple of bad days, and suddenly you’re every cop cliché in the book? Come on, man. Get yourself together.”

“They found the dog yet?”

“Really?” Garza asked. “That’s where your head’s at?”

“I know they didn’t find the gun,” Leonhardt drawled. He nodded in the direction of the televisions. “It’d be all over the news.”