The Dog Killer of Utica (19 page)

“We’re taking a walk around the block—that’s why we need it.”

She’s back in his bed after a three-night absence and for the first time in years Conte sleeps the sleep of an innocent youth—nine unbroken hours. He awakes to find Catherine gone. A note on the kitchen table.

Get some exercise. Talk to your paesan Melville. Just a few ordinary, a few lighthearted words—that’s all it takes to quell the rising anxiety about her absence. Catherine of Troy, as he likes to call her, is not—on this morning—among his troubles.

After his cappuccino and favorite toast—a slab of crusty Italian bread slathered with mango-ginger chutney—he calls Kyle Torvald to ask how he and Mark are holding up. Kyle tells him that Mark is in D.C.

“They’re grateful, they’re going to take care of him.”

“You two moving back to D.C.?”

“Inside the Beltway, Eliot, politics—they eat it, they drink it, they defecate it, then they eat that. They slurp it up. He’s moving back. I’m not.”

“You’re breaking up with Mark?”

“It’ll be a commuting relationship, but I’m not commuting. Utica for me.”

“You’re really calling it quits?”

“I am, but Mark isn’t. He’ll come up every weekend. After awhile, every other. Then once a month. Eventually he’ll realize there’s no point. You missed your Wednesday workout. Want to make it up? I’m free at noon.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Uh, Eliot, that call you made the other night? They’re shooting dogs and their owners? Et cetera?”

“It’s true.”

“It’s true?”

“Yes.”

“Uh, Eliot, a lot of people in this town have dogs. Why me? Explain that.”

“Because you’re a friend of mine.”

“Buddy, you need the cure, and I’m going to administer it.”

“What’s that, Kyle?”

“The Enhanced Suicide Stairs. Which I’ll do with you in case you require mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Will you accept, needs be, mouth-to-mouth from a nonflaming gay man? Noon.”

“Seven flights?”

“No. To the top.”

“Ten flights?”

“You heard me.”

“I doubt I can handle that.”

“Save your whining for Catherine.”

After cappuccino #2, he switches to a double-shot espresso, thinking about all those double shots he used to spike with anisette—the anisette progressing, at his worst, to half the volume. Calls Antonio Robinson at the office:

“Robby.”

“Don’t Robby me.”

“Listen—”

“You want something from me?”

“No. From us. Our friendship as it used to be.”

“It’s over. Think I don’t know what you were implying on the phone call you made? Supposedly concerning Milly? You think I shot my dog and accidentally wounded my wife? You motherfucker.”

“I don’t think you were the shooter.”

“When I told you she went to Florida for the fuckin’ holidays? It was bullshit.”

“I know.”

“You knew when you called?”

“Yes.”

“Bastard.”

“Yes.”

“You want information on our friend? Is that why you called?”

“What’s his behavior like?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Eventually I’ll get to that.”

“Get to it now or this conversation is over.”

“He’s done them all. He’s the shooter.”

“Including JFK?”

“In Troy and Utica. Including your dog. He’s the shooter.”

“Last night, at dinnertime, Molly Barnes, who brings the trays to assorted scumbags for twenty-three years, who takes communion every morning, when she gets to his cell she finds your shooter buck naked. He proposes marriage. He’s nuts for a year at home, he’s nuts all over town, he’s nuts here.”

“It’s an act. Utica public theater.”

“You don’t sound like you’ve been drinking again.”

“It’s a diabolical cover.”

“You’re not slurring or have you just lost your mind like the naked man who wants to spend the rest of his life with Molly Barnes?”

“He’s the one.”

“You have evidence, brother asshole?”

“Nothing now that’ll hold up, but I have confidence that Catherine—she’s going to come back with a name, Robby. Because you obviously can’t rent a car without showing a license and proof of insurance.”

“She comes back with a name, sure, we’re almost home.”

“How long can you hold him?”

“Forty-eight hours. She doesn’t come back with the goods, he’s out tomorrow night.”

“Six acts of violence in four days, Robby. Yesterday, Billy Santoro. You’ll see nothing today and nothing tomorrow while he’s still locked up. Mark my words.”

“This maniac, let’s say it’s who you think, why does he
switch to first degree vehicular homicide? Tell me why. Tell me what you have that will stand up in court. Tell me something besides your finger up your ass.”

“Revenge on me for what I did to him.”

“So he kills my dog? Why didn’t I think of that?”

“I can explain it all.”

“Right now I have something major on my agenda.”

“What’s that?”

“My morning crap.”

At noon, after two cappuccinos and three double-shot espressos, Conte enters POWER UP! and hugs Kyle—he’s not done that before—and Kyle responds, “Out of sympathy for my situation you’ve decided to come out of the closet? What happened to your face? The first time I saw you you’d just been taken apart by someone you know, but won’t reveal. Who did it this time? Same guy?”

“I did it to myself.”

“I don’t know what to say, Eliot—except you scare me.”

“It was an accident.”

“What did you do to make Catherine so angry?”

“Come over tonight and I’ll cook you a fine dinner. Bring the dog.”

Kyle shakes his head, sadly, puts on his hard-ass personal trainer mask, orders Conte to the rower, five hundred meters, “but don’t go all out, or you’ll be sorry.” After a few gentle stretching exercises, leads him to the airless interior stairwell where he says, “On second thought, for this challenge, I’m not going to join you. You need to face your fate alone.”

The Suicide Stairs is a timed exercise consisting of running as fast as one can, two steps at a time, if one can manage that, to floor #7 (in past iterations), then down as fast as one can, to floor #1. Then back up to #6, then #5 et cetera. A somewhat merciful descending ladder—the hardest ascents coming at the beginning. “To assuage pussies,” Kyle says.

“This time,” Kyle smiles, “ten flights in ascending order, up to two, down, up to three, down, so forth because it pleases me to reserve the hardest ascents for the end. When you start up on the final ascent, ten, death speaks as you reach landing five, and I won’t be there to distract you. At landing six, you welcome actual death alone. Ready? Wait. At each landing, five push-ups.”

When he’s done, he collapses at Kyle’s feet, who says, “Twelve minutes, thirty-one seconds. Not bad for a paranoid pussy. What are you cooking tonight?”

“This is sick, that I pay for this.”

“Here, at POWER UP!, Mr. Conte, we become sick in order to become well.”

His workout over, he calls Rintrona, tells him he’s coming down to Troy, “right now,” and will meet him at the Melville Diner. Rintrona informs him that Loretta and Big Paulie sold the business to members of the Twitter generation, who’ve renamed the diner Café Troy. He hasn’t brought a change of clothes to POWER UP! He could shower there, but he’s in a hurry to see his wounded friend and give him the news of the breakthrough.

At a wrought-iron corner table with a glass top, Rintrona
sits beneath a luxuriant ficus. Conte says, “How are you feeling, Bobby?”

Rintrona answers, “What happened to your face?”

Conte says, “Your voice sounds almost normal. Feeling better?”

“Better? What I’m on for pain? No wonder they become addicts. What happened to your personal hygiene? What happened to your face?”

“Irrelevant. I have news you’ve been waiting for,” and proceeds to tell him about the several events of Utica violence, the forensic link between the Troy and Utica weapons, his certainty that Michael Coca is the doer in all instances.

The waiter, tattooed, beringed, asks if they’d like to order, taking a step back from Conte’s odiferous presence. Rintrona says, “What’s a salad sandwich, kid?”

“Lettuce, tomato, cucumber, mayonnaise on wheat.”

Rintrona says, “Guess what, son? I can read the menu description. But what the fuck
is
it?”

“An Irish import, sir.”

“From the famine days?”

“Sir, there are other choices.”

“I choose the famine special in honor of my Irish wife.”

“Me too,” says Conte.

“Something to drink?”

“Water.”

“Bottled?”

“The tap free?”

“Yes.”

“And you, sir?”

“Tap for me.”

Rintrona says, “Your theory, my gut says you’re right, which is why he came for me first. My gut says, let’s take him off the street when he’s out tomorrow night. My gut says, let’s ensure he’s had his last birthday. But as a law enforcement officer, I have to agree with Catherine and Robinson that you have nothing of legal significance. You want us to believe he played the role of a nut job for a whole fuckin’ year in order to—no way, Eliot, because that idea is evidence that Eliot Conte has lost it. You’ve given me nothing. Consider psychological counseling.”

“I promised Maureen I wouldn’t tell you what she told me. The shooter who killed your dog, who killed Aida—”

“Don’t say Aida’s name.”

“Maureen said he was playing operatic music at high volume when he drove up. See where I’m going with this?”

Rintrona stares, but does not respond.

“Maureen says she thought it was Verdi because this is what you mainly play. A lot of Verdi at home and in the car.”

Rintrona says, “How long does it take to make a salad sandwich?”

“Maureen recalls nothing but a few notes, which she can’t get out of her head.” Eliot sings them, not softly enough. The cashier glances over.

“The last few days, Eliot, she’s been going through my Verdi collection from his first opera through his middle period. I’m thinking something’s screwy with my wife. Last night until two in the morning and this morning starting at seven it’s the middle period. I’m worried. This is not Maureen who can take or leave opera. She’s gone off her rocker, thanks to what happened to us. I told her this morning she should
get away from it all. Go to her sister’s in Minnesota. She says, ‘Don’t bother me, Bobby, I’m trying to concentrate.’ Then she puts on—”

“Listen, Bobby, the shooter who did Dragan Kovac also blasted operatic music. We know this from a witness.”

Rintrona rises, goes to the waiter, returns, muttering “Café my ass. ‘We’re working on it, sir.’ Okay, Eliot. We blasted it when we tortured Coca. This is your evidence, right? Which no one in the legal arena—they’ll lock you up in the fuckin’ mental ward if you tell them this. We know, okay?
We
know. This morning, Maureen was concentrating on the final-act trios of the middle period. She starts this morning with
Luisa Miller
. I say to her, ‘You know, Maureen,
Luisa Miller
is not considered middle Verdi. It’s
Rigoletto, Trovatore, Traviata.’
She says, she completely shocks me, she says,
‘Luisa Miller
is the transition, Robert, between early and middle.’ She says, ‘Verdi became himself as this opera progressed to its final scenes.’ Eliot, I’m speechless. She says, ‘You dragged me to a lot of operas, I have to listen to it at home constantly. You think I didn’t absorb, Robert? I know more than you think, have a little respect for your wife’s musical understanding.’ When she calls me Robert, I fear my wife.”

“What I’m thinking, Bobby, she’s trying to identify what the shooter was playing. She thinks it’ll help me in the investigation. But we know, don’t we? We
already
know. He was no doubt playing the famous tenor number from
Trovatore
, which we played full blast when we did the job on Coca. The shooter is Coca. Can you doubt it?”

“Who shot me three times and murdered my dog. Miserable cocksucker.”

“Yes.”

“Who will never be brought to justice, Eliot.”

“Unless Catherine puts him in the car you gave a solid I.D. to.”

“If she does, we don’t have to do what we have to do. She doesn’t, we pick him up tomorrow night. You watch as I ice this miserable cocksucker.”

“But we wait on Catherine’s report because—”

“It’s better to go the legal route? Bullshit. It’s better if I do him privately—first I’ll cut off his balls and make him eat them—then I’ll—”

“She comes up empty, I’m with you all the way, Bobby. We do the job on him. Tomorrow night, she comes up empty, he’s dead. And I won’t be just watching, believe me.”

“In the son-of-a-bitchin’ meanwhile?”

“Tomorrow afternoon, you know what’s playing at The Galaxy? Live from the Met? Anna Netrebko, Jonas Kaufmann, Erwin Schrott.”

“
Trovatore
. The cast gives me a hard-on.”

“The four of us at The Galaxy. You feeling well enough to do it?”

“For a smart guy, Eliot, you just asked me a stupid question.”

The sandwiches arrive. Rintrona bends his fork in half, says, “I’m not hungry.” Eliot puts a twenty on the table, eats his sandwich on the way out.

In the parking lot of Café Troy, Conte checks e-mail. Two messages: