The Dog Killer of Utica (8 page)

Mary Street’s latest
o’scugnizzo
, and the son that Eliot never had.

While Big Don Belmonte waits in the Wrangler, she tells Conte “I’m here now”—striding through the door toward the bedroom—“only to change into my favorite outfit and to propose that you and I meet to put our heads together as an investigating team and not necessarily for any other reason.” It flashes through Conte’s desperate mind that she could have proposed that they meet at The Florentine or The Chesterfield, they didn’t have to meet here, unless … so why would she need to meet here in order to team up with me? …

“Even though,” she says, “we have no evidence, we assume with confidence,” following her into the bedroom, “that the shooter who tried to kill Bobby and the one who killed the dog are one and the same person.”

In the bedroom, tight quarters, watching her take off her clothes, he says, “Your theory of the case”—panties and bra, God let her change those too—athletically fit, beautiful by anyone’s definition—“sure, it’s a good theory, Catherine, of course it is, probably it’ll turn out to be the correct theory, I’d bet on it, sure, please take your panties off now.”

“No.”

From behind her, slips his hand inside the front of her panties. She freezes. She leans back into him.

“Nevertheless, Catherine, where’s the hard evidence, putting this aside,” touching his crotch.

She removes his moistened hand.

“Don is driving me down to Troy to talk to the lead detective on the case and—”

“Don off today?”

“No, but the all-too-kind Chief tells him he sympathizes how our feelings for Bobby—”

“All-too-kind.”

“He tells Don do whatever to help.”

Conte asks her in what sense they’re a team, because what can he do, really, aside from “taking photos of cheating spouses in flagrante? A guy going down on his wife’s best friend. For example.”

Pulling on her form-fitting black leather pants, smoothing, stroking the wrinkles on her thigh, she says, “Let me elaborate the theory you’re so high on.”

“Hard on.”

“Forget it, Eliot. The shootings. In Troy. They’re tied to the murder of the Mafia hitter you described yesterday. I don’t know how they’re tied, but when I return tonight we’re going over your story with a fine-tooth comb because—”

“Go over my story? My
story
? As if I’m a suspect of some kind?”

“As if you’re a suspect of some kind. Yes.”

“How nice, Catherine. In the meanwhile, Don is out there waiting and we could—”

Her blouse yet unbuttoned, small firm breasts big enough to (not quite) fit in your mouth, she says, “No. I’d like to, more than you might guess. No.”

At the door, he stops her with, “What did you mean by ‘not necessarily’?”

“Huh? What?”

“You said, ‘not necessarily for any other reason.’ Not necessarily means something else is not out of the question, doesn’t it?”

“Forget the words, Eliot. You think too much about words. Because this is not about reading Melville. Even less about us having sex. This is about grooves and striations on bullets. This is about latent prints and indentations on shell casings. Think about a partial plate I.D. that places the vehicle in question maybe in Utica. These are the necessary things. Not us. Maybe never us.”

He watches her go down the steps to the Wrangler, get in, do a fist bump with Belmonte, as Angel Moreno comes into view carrying a shovel to Conte’s driveway. The crews had been at it all night and all day. The streets are in decent shape, the temperature at midafternoon has risen to the midforties and the worst December storm in fifty years is in retreat. The forecast for tomorrow: low sixties. Soon, the worst slush in fifty years. The promise of springlike weather triggers Conte’s desire for his vegetable garden, buried under twenty-seven inches of snow.

Cruz and Belmont drive off down Wetmore. She doesn’t look back—not even a wave. Conte goes out to Angel who tells him he’ll dig out his car, because “Jefe needs wheels in his loneliness” and Conte replies, “If you wish, Angel, but I won’t need my car. I’m taking a long walk alone. Alone is not the same as lonely, little man.” Angel says, “Cool, big man,” and begins to shovel out the driveway as if demonically possessed.
When he looks up, he catches sight of Conte half a block away and shouts, “Jefe, Angel don’t asept a penny of the four hundred because you be like my uncle.”

Walking west on Mary to the Bacon cross street and brooding on his destination. No hat, no boots. Prefers the punishment. Left at Bacon and two blocks south, rising to once-arrogant Rutger, where he turns right and west again—west to his destiny, but not all the way west to Rutger Park, near the city’s center, where in the mid-nineteenth century Utica’s original elite built ten-thousand-square-foot stone mansions, and then the less than rich, but rich enough, built stately five-thousand-square-footers of mere wood, somewhat east of Rutger Park in the early twentieth century, in the direction of the newly developed far East Side—newly saturated with immigrants from the south of Italy. He’s muttering, he’s scaring an African-American teenage girl carrying an infant, as he passes her, brushing elbows on the snow-narrowed sidewalk.

Shoes soaked through—uncomfortable but unconcerned because he’s thinking about a drink. Why shouldn’t he suffer? In the year since his children’s murder on the West Coast and his father’s death, he’d inherited a great sum that would permit him to purchase with ease several of the most expensive of the new homes high up on Valley View Road, at Utica’s southern border—free of the sirens, the arsonists, the muggers desperate for a fix—he needs a drink very soon—this self-lacerating Conte is digging his fingernails into his long-ravaged cuticles, even now causing them to bleed as he pushes on toward Mohawk Street. He had refused the temptation to move
on up. Believes he never felt the temptation. 1318 Mary would be home until the end—pushing hard now along Rutger, toes and ears numb, thinking in happy bitterness of the elite center at Rutger Park and its environs—all those condescending mansions now rundown, abandoned, or transformed to house the welfare class, the mentally cracked, and their good neighbors in the business of crime—brooding in a cold sweat with dry mouth—Rutger and Mohawk at last where his destiny yanks him up Mohawk toward South Street and the promised end: Barbone’s Booze.

He sees them come pouring—they’re pouring out of their homes and businesses—they’re running toward South and the seven or eight police cruisers with their roof lights lit and spinning—they’re gathering two blocks ahead at South, where uniformed men with billy clubs will keep them well back from the scene at the northeast corner of Mohawk and South. Barbone’s Booze is cordoned off by the yellow barricade of crime scene tape. He’s moving at a half jog, he falls twice on the ice, he’s entering the crowd, the chatter, they killed, they robbed, who’s safe anymore, these black animals, a matter of time, he have kids? Freddy? don’t push me buddy, as Conte forces his way to the front, to the blank-faced officers Frick and Frack, lanky Ronald Crouse, who he doesn’t know, and squat Victor Cazzamano, whose livelihood he’d saved several years ago in a nasty divorce case with interesting photos of his wife. They converse in whispers:

“Vic.”

“Just between us, assume the black or P.R. element, you can’t go wrong.”

“Who’s the lead detective?”

“Super Spic.”

“Who would that be?”

“Holier-than-thou Men-fucking-doza.” (Not a whisper.)

“Tino Mendoza?”

“I’ve already crossed the line.”

“What happened?”

“No comment, they’ll put my ass in a sling.”

“You and Crouse first responders?”

“No comment, my ass et cetera.”

“Give me a morsel, Vic.”

“Massive blood.”

“Freddy?”

“Does the bear shit in the woods? What brings you here anyway?”

“I was looking forward to a fifth of Johnnie Walker Black.”

“Weird, Eliot.”

“Weird how?”

“When me and Ronny enter, what do we find shattered on the floor, bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. Ronny runs out, the pussy, because he can’t take the sight of Freddy. Me, after what you showed me the pictures of what my wife was doing, that cunt, I can take anything. So we right away get the call that this bastard Mendoza is coming to take over. So I see something on the floor that will interest Mendoza. So I take it, which he definitely could use in his investigation, because fuck him after the way he treats the uniforms.”

“Johnnie Walker Black.”

“Yeah. Now shake my hand.”

Conte feels a small metal object on his palm. He pockets it.

“We all know you’re in retirement as a P.I. That might induce a dramatic comeback in the bottom of the ninth.”

“One more thing, Vic.”

“My ass in a sling.”

First a bowl of his homemade minestrone. Then a cup of hot chocolate, which he carries to the bathroom and places on the tub ledge alongside his cell and the casing of a spent bullet. He’s hoping she’ll give him an update from Troy. Almost asleep in the hot bath when it rings. Not her. Robinson:

“El. Serious news on the Ivanovic family. One of my uniform’s cruising Bleecker this afternoon. He turns up Nichols where he spots a man and a woman escorted out of 608, where your Mirko lives, as you know. Three guys he never saw before with sunglasses. The man and the woman are cuffed.”

“Mirko’s parents you’re saying?”

“We assume.”

“My cruiser stops. My two uniforms get out. One of the sunglasses shows an I.D. My guys drive away.”

“Martello’s people, Robby?”

“The Imam is with Martello, Mirko is missing, and now Martello has the parents.”

“What can you do about it, Robby?”

“Cocksuckers are a law unto themselves. They take them to a planet worse than Guantánamo.”

“Christ.”

“They don’t give a shit what He fuckin’ thinks, either.”

(Long pause.)

“You still there, El?”

“Mirko.”

“What about him?”

(Pause.)

“El, you still there?”

“I saw something today on South Street.”

“Freddy Barbone, you referring to?”

“I am.”

“Freddy was slaughtered, I mean slaughtered, El. One to the brain, which blows out the back of his head, and that’s not the end of it. Then they almost severed off his head—it’s attached by the skin at the back of his neck. Cash register is open and emptied out and a single bottle of scotch busted on the floor. A strange fact, but not according to Tino, who’s got a theory.”

“Are you free to tell me?”

“Tino’s partner sees the open register and concludes a robbery motive, but Tino is a brilliant motherfucker. He notices Freddy’s watch was apparently smashed in the event. Stopped at 9:17 last night. Freddy closes religiously at 8:15. Tino notices a key in the door.”

“The robbery motive doesn’t hold water, Robby. Somebody he knew. He’s closed but opens up for a long-standing customer. Is that Tino’s theory?”

“Welcome back, Detective Conte.”

“Other bottles broken and strewn around?”

“Nope.”

“So what we have here is a faked robbery motive by someone he lets in after hours, who shoots him and almost cuts off his head.”

“A good old-time customer and a kind of friend, El, if we can imagine anyone befriending that asshole racist, for whom I fuckin’ weep not, believe me.”

“The savagery of the assault suggests—”

“Yeah. Total rage murder. They wanted to insult the corpse. What about the bottle of Johnnie Walker Black? What’s your theory, El?”

“You son of a bitch. At the time I was at 608 Nichols Street. With Novak Ivanovic.”

“Who the feds will not let give testimony, of course.”

Conte says nothing.

“Curious, though, don’t you think, El? Johnnie Walker Black. Like an obvious clue for those who knew your well-known drinking preference? This is a small town. Son of a well-known father. Booze bag, so on. You were Freddy’s good customer at one time, as was his killer.”

“A heavy-handed attempt at a setup. No one can take that seriously.”

“But maybe someone wanting to point the finger at you and not so out of his mind that he forgets to pick up the shell casing.”

“Forensically that would have been important, wouldn’t it, Robby?”

“Shell casing or not, I have total faith in Tino.”

“One thing we know for sure, Robby. Freddy would never let a black or a Puerto Rican in after hours. That’s where he drew the line on his greed.”

“Tino already came to that conclusion.”

“Goodnight, Chief.”

“Hold on, brother. I have something on the lighter side.
Milly comes home today, she tells me she sees Michael in the butcher shop at Hannaford’s.”

“Your former beloved assistant chief?”

“Yep. Michael Coca himself with a piece of frozen meat in his hand. He’s staring at it. She buys lamb chops and when she leaves twenty minutes later, she passes the butcher shop again. He hasn’t moved. He’s still staring at the piece of meat in his hand. Milly says he always seems to be there when she shops on Tuesdays. The cashiers tell her Michael never buys meat and when he checks out it’s with a single mushroom. They tell him a single mushroom is too light to register on the scale. He only says, ‘I will pay top dollar.’ Goodnight, El.”

Knocks back half the hot chocolate. Resists, for the second time in two days, the temptation to call Catherine. Finishes off the hot chocolate—savoring in his imagination the rich aftertaste of a spiked drink. The shell casing in his palm. The language of indentations, for which Melville provides no help.

Runs water hot and long in the cooling bath. Slouches far down until his head, like a severed head, is afloat on the bubbled surface.

He steps into the kitchen dripping from his bath, nude and spent. No word from Catherine of Troy. Peanut butter and crackers. Jelly sandwich—he cannot finish it. Twenty-ounce bottle of Coke—three sips. Handful of pistachio nuts and six spicy olives (
alla Siciliana
), followed by two antacid tablets, chewed slowly and savored.

Eliot Conte, solitary diner, had been an accomplished gourmet cook of Italian fare for Antonio Robinson as they listened, over the years, to Saturday afternoon broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera, and an even more accomplished chef for Catherine Cruz since she’d moved in with him six months ago. But not for Robinson for the last six months, when they’d drifted apart, neither understanding why—neither willing to broach the subject of their quiet alienation following the settlement of his father’s shockingly lucrative estate. Seventy-five percent to Conte, the son who’d been at odds with the father until the last two days of his life—several million plus the father’s house on Catherine Street. Twenty-five percent to Robinson—was he harboring? was that it?—who promptly sold his modest house in shabby middle-class Deerfield Hills in North Utica, then purchased on the southern highlands of the Mohawk Valley, off Valley View Road, a $700,000 contemporary home on twenty acres, with a glass wall and a sweeping view of Utica below. Did he enjoy the
view, Eliot wondered, while nursing a grudge over the division of the inheritance?