The Dog Killer of Utica (13 page)

“Two bodyguards, Tony. A security system in that vast farmhouse on Smith Hill that would win bin Laden’s admiration. The fifteen-foot electrified fence encircling the ten acres. The state-of-the-art studio and transmitter behind the house. The armored limo with bulletproof glass. You go nowhere. You see only me. We eat in this cramped office with bodyguards because you fear, for good reasons, that people want to harm you. Kill you. Senz, the Devil is the most isolated being ever invented by the great writers. That’s his punishment for being the Devil. The Devil says, ‘Myself am Hell.’ ”

“That’s certainly true and very nicely put. Myself am Hell. Which I am, in all honesty. By the way, Eliot, you’re not exactly Mr. Social. Are you in Hell?”

“I live with someone.”

“Hope to God you’re not giving Catherine hell.”

“I’m giving her head.”

Senzalma blushes.

Geraldine snorts.

“As your friend, I’m asking a favor. I need contact info for Carlo Senzalma.”

“I’m no expert on friendship, Eliot, but I don’t believe a friend asks his friend to do a favor because of the friendship. What you want indicates what Geraldine sensed from day one is true. You need assistance.”

“He’s mental, Mr. A. He’s a nutter.”

“Arrange a contract, Eliot? Let’s say the awful words: Arrange premeditated double murder.”

Eliot does not respond.

“Are you and Catherine happy?”

“We’re going through something now, but yes.”

“You’re happy with Catherine, vice versa, but you wish to order murder?”

“If you won’t help me to contact Carlo—”

“Who will not deal with a person he would call a civilian.”

“Then I’ll—”

“Who will think you’re FBI undercover.”

“Then I’ll—”

“Who will arrange a meeting with you in a little restaurant in South Philly, where you’ll be assassinated.”

“Then I’ll offer the job to Geraldine for 100 grand.”

Geraldine, in subfreezing tone: “Half now, other half on completion?”

“Yes.”

“Fifty thousand up front?”

“What I said.”

“Give me the up front in Proctor Park tomorrow after dark, then I’ll dispose of your body in the trunk of your car. Mr. A, end this relationship.”

“Eliot, if you pursue this sickness you will dishonor your relationship with Catherine. You will destroy it.”

Geraldine: “Conte?”

“Yes?”

“Go home and get laid.”

“She moved out this evening.”

“In this weather?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“Yes.”

“Go there and get laid.”

“My dear Eliot, you have love and you want to order murder. How shall we make sense of that?”

No response.

“Kill two people who were never charged?”

No response.

“Kill them both, cover the possibilities?”

One by one, with deliberation, Conte overturns all the plates. Then the carafe of water. At the door, quietly: “Vengeance on behalf of my children. Yes.” Conte slams the door. The temperature has plunged to twenty-seven degrees. Puddles and slush frozen over hard.

Dragan Kovac says, “If you’re going, I’m going in. It’s unhealthy out here the way I’m dressed.”

“Take shelter.”

Conte on the way to the car in socks—slips, slides, crashes to the pavement, banging his nose bloody.

“Mr. Conte! Your shoes!”

From the pavement, wiping his nose on his sleeve: “What about them?”

“You forgot your shoes.”

“Fuck ’em.”

Dragan Kovac watches Conte pull away. Removes his surgical mask and tosses it into the dumpster. He’s about to go in when a car pulls alongside. The driver rolls down the window. Operatic vocal music. The driver shouts over the music,
“Sir, may I ask you a question? Sorry to bother you.” Dragan Kovac needs desperately to pee. Nevertheless, hugging himself against the knifing wind, he walks over to the driver, who turns up the volume.

Shoeless, with the caution and appearance of a bent-over old man, Conte is inching along the icy path near the steps leading to his front door when he slips and crashes onto the second step, hitting his head hard over the left eyebrow. He does not yell out in pain. Not even a moan, as he crawls up the remaining steps to the door. The bathroom mirror tells him who he is: an overmatched boxer in the late rounds of a losing fight. Blood-streaked face. Cut and swelling over his left eye. Matching cut and swelling at the right side of his nose. What shall it be? He’d heard the answer at his first AA meeting. The nuthouse, the cemetery, or jail?

Conte sits in the kitchen, pressing ice cubes wrapped in a cloth napkin to his wounded face, staring at a bowl of Frosted Flakes. Five minutes later, he gives up on the untouched cereal, the improvised icepack, and returns to the bathroom mirror. The bruises now deep purple—the swellings, like eggs—the cuts, still oozing. The face of a man who walks on ice in his socks because he doesn’t care if he hurts himself. Maybe wants to. The face of a man for whom the nuthouse looms. Who scorns the God God God rhetoric of the AA twelve-step method. Who has never reached out to his sponsor, until now:

“Kyle?”

“Eliot?”

“Sorry. I meant to call Mark’s cell.”

“Mark just got summoned to the Center on an emergency. Not even a hug goodbye and pale as a ghost.”

“Was that a car I just heard? Are you on the street, Kyle?”

“Yeah. Walking Handsome.”

“Walk him in the backyard.”

“Huh?”

“Why not walk him in the backyard?”

“Because he won’t do anything in the backyard. What kind of question is that? Because he regards the backyard as an extension of his domestic space, which he never violates—unlike some people who pee in their backyards. Even crap. This is not Handsome. This has never been Handsome.”

“I advise you to walk him in the back.”

“You’re
advising
?”

“Out of range, in the backyard.”

“You on some wild drug?”

“Go to the back immediately.”

“Mind telling me why you’re talking like a lunatic?”

“They’re shooting dogs, Kyle.”

“You need to work out more.”

“They’re shooting dogs.”

“A lot more.”

“Dogs of my friends are getting gunned down in the street.”

“Eliot.”

“If I knew why, I’d know who, maybe.”

“Come over and we’ll talk.”

“I know what you’re thinking. I’m not crazy.”

“We can talk.”

“Tell Mark I need to see him in the morning. Was that another car?”

“I’ll come over to Mary Street and bring Handsome. He’ll calm you down.”

“Tell Mark.”

“I certainly will.”

“Don’t forget.”

“I certainly won’t.”

“I’m depending on you, Kyle.”

“Because he’s your sponsor, and you’re in some kind of deep shit. Is that it?”

“You’re not supposed to know I’m in The Program.”

“I understand, but I do.”

“It was wrong of Mark to tell you.”

“He didn’t. Something he let slip.”

“I need to talk to Mark first thing.”

“In the meanwhile, consider having someone like Handsome in your life.”

“Listen to me, goddamn it! Get off the street!”

“I’m going to step out on a limb, Eliot. Because I sense it sometimes at our workouts. The thing I saw in Mark, ten years ago, before he went into The Program, I see it in you. It nearly destroyed us. The rage, the resentment, the paranoid tendency. You and Catherine, are you in trouble?”

(Silence.)

“Eliot, you still there?”

He’s not. Conte shuts down his cell. Turns off the ringer on his landline. Unplugs the clock radio in the bedroom. Takes three ibuprofen and a double dose of a sleeping medication. At 5:45
A.M.
, he stumbles, hungover, legs like lead, to the kitchen for a mug of coffee, black, much sugar, and three glazed doughnuts. Checks the bathroom mirror. Could it be worse? Takes a second mug, black, much sugar, to his desk, where the message light on the phone blinks 5: The first is from the kind and pretty bartender at The Gay Martini, his guardian angel!, who identifies herself as Nikki Ryan and says she needs “to redeem the rain check you gave me right away” because her boyfriend has threatened in an e-mail, which she’s
forwarding, to “break every bone in my body.” The second from Catherine Cruz, who says, “Pick up, Eliot, please pick up if you can hear me.” The third from Detective Don Belmonte, who says he’ll need to talk with him in the morning “around 9:30.” Expects full cooperation and promises “very serious consequences” should Conte not be forthcoming. The fourth from Anthony Senzalma, who tells him that he will admit himself in the morning to Saint Elizabeth’s for “extreme exhaustion on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” and “by now, you know why.” The fifth, from Mark Martello, 5:04
A.M.
, who only says that he’ll appear at Conte’s front door at 7:00
A.M
. on matters of grave importance to the both of them.

He forwards Nikki Ryan’s e-mail to Angel Moreno and asks him to hack into her account and the ex-boyfriend’s and to let him know what he finds of interest by no later than noon. E-mails Nikki, requests the ex-boyfriend’s physical address, place of work, where he might be located this evening. Urges her to go to a relative’s or a friend’s for the rest of the day and guarantees that her problem will disappear by day’s end. He’s about to shower and change for Martello’s arrival at 7:00, who instead knocks at 6:35.

The sight of Conte makes it nearly impossible for Martello to know how to begin. With the tragic news from the Center? Which has been, and will be, withheld from the public for as long as possible, but which he feels compelled to relate to Conte? Or with Kyle’s disturbing report of Conte’s phone call, now dramatically enhanced by the battered face, the bloodshot eyes, the bedhead hair spiked out in several directions, and the pajamas that look as if they’d been worn for too many nights. The sight of Conte gives him an excuse
for keeping the news to himself, at least for a while, of what had happened at the Center—the event that had devastated Martello and will do the same to this wreck standing before him. Conte, looking across the threshold at Martello, senses something much more painful than a battered face. The elegant, ironic Mark Martello, always with a twinkle in his eye, where has he gone?

After three seconds of mutual shock and silence, Conte motions him in. Offers coffee. Martello refuses. At the kitchen table, Conte, “I called last night because I’m in an extreme place.”

“Eliot. Your face.”

Conte explains, Martello replies, “You wish to hurt yourself?”

Conte digs into his cuticles, drawing blood, a compulsion since his teenage years, “The end of my rope, Mark.”

“Yes. You are. Reason I came so early, I’m due at the Center at 8:00 for a press conference. Network feed, Eliot. I’m asleep on my feet and afraid.”

“You don’t look good yourself, Mark.”

“Never mind me. I don’t know if I can help you. I don’t know if you can help yourself. The prayer of Saint Francis that’s always quoted at meetings? Read it, memorize it. Better to comfort than to be comforted. Think about it. It works in hopeless situations. Like yours—and mine.”

“Can I make you some breakfast, Mark?”

“Good. That’s the idea. Very good. Thanks, but no. Have you tried comforting others lately? I mean, aside from offering me breakfast?”

Conte thinks he’s comforted Catherine, though usually
it’s the other way around. For some reason, he doesn’t think of his long nurturing relationship with Angel Moreno and Angel’s parents. He replies, “Yes, I’m giving comfort to Nikki Ryan,” and when Martello says, “Who?” Conte explains.

“Are you serious? Saint Francis is appalled. Do you really intend to do violence? Or you’re just going to scare him verbally? Right? Tell me the latter.”

“The verbal method doesn’t work with men who physically abuse women.”

“Therefore?”

“Therefore.”

“And you called last night because—”

“Nikki Ryan is in trouble and I’m going to help her. Why do you speak of Saint Francis in the present tense as if he—”

“You called last night because
you
are in trouble. Kyle says you were talking crazy. Have you done violence in the past?”

“Yes.”

(Pause.)

“This must end. You can’t do it tonight for this girl’s sake, or for anyone’s sake. Ever. Advise her to see your friends in the police who—”

“When they get around to it, next year, they talk to the guy, who if he hasn’t already damaged her will take it out on her. That’s how law enforcement works.”

“Vigilante justice? You’ve done that before?”

“Yes. But never to nice people.”

“I can’t help you—you need a priest, a shrink. Both. You pervert Saint Francis. Okay. Okay.” (Pause.) “You once told me that the only one of the twelve steps that made any sense was step 9, which doesn’t require you to say God, but requires
you to make amends. But we have to take the steps in order. You can’t just jump to step 9. You need full preparation, but maybe in your case—maybe we have to be unorthodox in order to save the drunk and those he does violence to. You’re not afraid to take the full consequences of your past acts of violence? Responsibility for the well-being of those you’ve hurt? And make amends to these victims? Is that right?”

“I love the beautiful spirit of step 9, but I can’t do it. Because I’m not willing to bring serious harm to myself. One of those I’ve hurt is anyway permanently beyond my amends.”

“This person has passed away?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“Are you implying?”

“Yes.”

“You killed somebody?”

“Not exactly.”

“Not
exactly
?! Ask God to intervene even though you don’t believe. Pray to God in the face of your atheism.”

“I don’t know how to pray.”

“Nobody does. Trying is good enough.”

“Trying is good enough, Mark? That true? Our Father who art not in heaven, hollow be thy name.”

“Stop with the fucking wordplay, Eliot. Prayer is the failed, but sincere, attempt to pray.”