The Rescue at Dead Dog Beach (23 page)

I talked with Pam about the meeting that night.

“Steve, you know how you get, especially about these dogs.”

“Are you saying that I won't be able to hide my real feelings about the mayor?” I said, only half joking.

“Remember, it's about the dogs. If this meeting can help them, it's a good thing.”

In the end, I agreed. I would feel even worse if I said something I regretted and the dogs paid the price.

“Why don't you come with me to Rhode Island next week?” Pam was traveling there on business. “It'll get you off the island just in case you have trouble resisting the urge to show up at that meeting.”

“And I could hand-deliver my portfolio to RISD,” I said. “Good idea.” I had been hesitant to entrust my original artwork to the post office or UPS.

On the day of departure, the airport was busy, as always. After standing with our bags for a while, we finally snagged two seats in the waiting area by the gate. I'd put my artwork in an architectural drafting tube to protect it and slid the tube in the top of my backpack. I wasn't going to let it out of my sight.

While Pam went off to get us something to eat, I noticed a guy hovering nearby. I'd seen him earlier when we passed through security. I figured I was being paranoid, which wasn't surprising given what I'd experienced since arriving on the island.

When Pam returned with the sandwiches, I slid my pack to the ground next to my seat while we ate. When it was time to board, I grabbed my pack and off we went. On the plane, I stowed my bag in the overhead compartment and took my seat. Pam and I did our usual people-watching thing, waiting for the other passengers to stow their bags and get settled.

“My artwork! It's not here!” I had a flash of memory of putting my bag up top and realized the tube wasn't there. I jumped up and checked the compartment. “No! No! No!”

Pam saw the panic in my eyes. The flight attendant announced they were getting ready to shut the doors. I sat back down, defeated. All those hours and days of work to make my portfolio perfect, gone.

Pam wasn't ready to give up so easily. She called the flight attendant to our seats and explained the problem.

“I'm sorry, ma'am, but there's nothing we can do.”

Another attendant overheard and came over. “Sit tight for a second,” she said and walked toward the cockpit. A minute later, she returned down the aisle to our seats. “The captain agreed to hold the plane if you'd like to go back to the gate and look for your missing items.”

I bolted out of my seat.

“Hurry! You have five minutes!” she called out after me.

I ran out of the plane and made a beeline for where we'd been sitting. There was nothing there. I ran back to security. Nothing there either. I felt sick. I returned to the plane and took my seat next to Pam. I said nothing, just pulled my sunglasses down over my eyes to hide my tears. I had no desire to be on this plane anymore, no reason to go to Rhode Island.

Pam wasn't giving up. She knew how much this meant to me. She got out of her seat and asked the flight attendant if she could go out and have a look around too. She did, but came back empty-handed.

“I'm sorry, sir, but we do have to shut the door and push back now,” the flight attendant said.

“Could I have a strong drink?” I said.

The attendant smiled at me. “Of course, sweetie. I'm sorry you didn't find your package. Can it be replaced?”

Pam answered for me: “No.”

I was speechless. I felt the plane push back. My drink arrived. I was about to down it and order another when I felt the plane stop, then move slowly back toward the gate. The staff opened the hatch. The airline employee who had helped me look around a few minutes earlier stepped on board. He was holding the tube!

Apparently he'd kept searching, checking all the garbage cans in the terminal. The last place he looked was the waste bin in the men's bathroom, and that's where he found my artwork.

Two days later, while the rescuers were meeting with the mayor in Yabucoa, I delivered my portfolio to the school. My relief was boundless.

That evening, Melanie and Nancy called. It sounded like they had been celebrating.

“The mayor came through! He's giving us a thousand dollars toward a shelter for the dogs.”

“Wow, really?” I was amazed and excited.

“He also promised that he'd call one of us if there were any problems with the dogs at the beach instead of hiring some outside agency to euthanize them.”

I was stunned.

“His only condition was that the shelter be located in Yabucoa.”

I hung up full of hope that this was the beginning of something really wonderful.

As soon as we got back to Puerto Rico, I began looking for a place we could set up as a shelter in the area. I spent hours each day looking around the local communities with a real estate agent for a rental home with property that would accommodate a shelter. I harbored hope that Sandra and her husband, Angel, would live there and act as caregivers to the dogs. They had both been unemployed since I'd met them, each living with his or her respective parents. Pam and I thought this would be a great way for them to live together as an independent couple again.

None of the properties exactly fit the bill, but a few were close, and we made offers, hoping that with a little creativity we could make it work. The agent was friends with some of the owners and assured us that they were animal lovers—a few of the properties had previously kept horses, and we thought we could convert the old stables to kennels—but the deals kept falling apart with no explanation. “The owner changed his mind,” the agent said.

On top of that, Sandra and Angel weren't that thrilled with the idea when we presented it to them. I think they were concerned about attracting attention to themselves from the people who hated the work we were doing with the dogs at the beach—they were always asking me to keep quiet, like so many others had. And to be fair, they would have been left alone caring full time for the dogs in the middle of the jungle. It wasn't that appealing an offer.

So even if we found the perfect location, we couldn't have a shelter without caretakers.

One afternoon, Martha called from Florida to weigh in. She hadn't been around much lately, but Melanie and Nancy had been keeping her in the loop.

“Maybe you and Pam could live at the shelter.”

“We have a contract on our house, Martha, we can't just pick up and move. And before you say anything, I don't see any of you volunteering to relocate either.”

While the shelter effort stalled, things continued to go downhill at the beach. In March I came upon a bunch of guys dragging a horse behind a pickup truck. I was still some distance away when I saw the horse fall down and try frantically to get up, kicking the pickup a few times in the process. It appeared the men inside were not amused. They got out with baseball bats and proceeded to beat her until she stopped struggling, tied her feet together with rope, and resumed dragging her. When they saw me, one of the men got out and cut her loose. The truck took off.

I got out and walked slowly over to her. She was still alive, but barely. Her skin had come off from where she'd made contact with the road. She tried to raise her head to sniff me. I petted her face and talked gently to her until she died. And then I fell apart.

A horse was too big for me to move or bury. I thought about burning her right there, but in the end left her corpse to rot, knowing that its stench might keep the thugs who killed my dogs away. But when the corpse was still there after several days, I couldn't sit by anymore. It was time for another visit to the mayor's office.

I spoke to the receptionist at the front desk and asked to see the mayor.

“He is not here.”

I explained the reason for my visit.

“I can send someone down to the beach to speak with you later today.”

They wouldn't talk to me here, but they'd go out of their way to come to the beach? That didn't make any sense. Until it did.

The mayor's assistant, Jose Abril, showed up with a couple of other guys later that day. He was a smart dresser and spoke great English. I was hopeful he'd be sympathetic.

But it quickly became obvious that he was just pretending to care. As he prattled on with small talk, I had a feeling he'd made the trip to put a pacifier in my mouth. I was having trouble being polite.

“I appreciate you coming all the way out here, but what I really want is for the mayor to do something about the constant slaughter of my dogs. And these other mutilated animals are turning up now—the manatees, the horse. He's got to find out who's behind all of this.”

Jose took a step toward me and put a hand on my shoulder. His smile disappeared. “Steve, you seem like a nice guy. But you need to stop coming to the beach and talking to the media. Do I make myself clear?”

In the calmest voice I could muster, I said, “Jose, take your hand off my shoulder unless you want to lose it.”

He removed his hand, but he wasn't backing down. “You're making a mistake. I don't think you understand me.”

His two cronies stepped forward.

I put my hand on my hip and pulled open the Velcro flap that held the Taser to my belt. “Back the fuck up. You may think you're intimidating, but you're not.”

Jose maintained eye contact with me but put his hand up. The men stopped.

“Look, Steve, I'm about your only friend here,” he said.

I laughed, which seemed to surprise him.

“You have managed to piss off a lot of people in powerful positions. If you don't stop, they'll shut you up.”

“Jose, did you just threaten me?”

“Walk away, Steve, and don't look back. Don't talk to people. Just enjoy the island and all of its beauty.”

“You've got to be kidding me,” I said, laughing at the outrageousness of what he'd just said.

Even though my brain was begging me to be reasonable, I couldn't shut up. “Jose, again I ask, are you threatening me?”

“Steve, I think we're on the same page here,” he said, skirting the question. I guess he thought I would simply comply with his request.

“You guys must feel so tough. But you're all a bunch of pussies. Three against one? Oh boy!”

Feeling threatened, I reached for my Taser again, but the thought of rotting in a Puerto Rican jail for frying the mayor's assistant stopped me. I turned and walked away before I changed my mind.

Moments later, sitting in my truck, trying to fit the key in the ignition, I realized how badly I was shaking. My instincts told me this wasn't over, not by a long shot.

I
stewed over Jose Abril's threats for several days. I wanted to get the media involved; someone needed to tell the world what had happened to the horse. I tried to reach Susan Saltaro at Univision, without success. Other media outlets told me they already knew who I was, and that I wasn't news. Finally, I managed to contact someone at Channel 4 news in San Juan, who agreed to send a reporter to the beach the following morning.

The woman who showed up was dressed to the nines—six-inch heels and a miniskirt that left little to the imagination. She was beautiful. I'm sure she had a loyal viewership. But she spoke nearly no English, and she was clearly uncomfortable with fifty or more dogs sniffing at her legs and jamming their noses up her skirt. She and the cameraman were both disturbed by the sight of the decomposing horse, its legs still tied. It was brutal, but I wanted them to see that I wasn't making up the story.

Fortunately, the cameraman spoke pretty good English and offered to be our interpreter. In the end, the interview went pretty well. I told her, with his help, about the horse, and the story aired that evening.

The following morning, more than a dozen dogs were missing. I grabbed my weapons from the truck and raced along the path. There they were: garbage bags.

A few days later, Martha called. “Hey, Steve. Sandra told me about the horse, so I called the mayor's office. I need you to go meet with a guy named Jose.”

“Hell, no!”

“Can I ask why?”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“Steve, the mayor is really angry with you for going to the media. He's insisting you apologize.”

“He can kiss my ass, Martha.”

“You should have gone to him first, Steve. Let him handle it.”

“Hey, Martha? When you talked to Jose, did he happen to tell you that we already met about the horse?”

She said nothing.

“I didn't think so. I asked for their help. Jose threatened me, Martha. I called the media because he did nothing to help. I had to bury a dozen of my dogs the day after the story ran.”

“I'm sorry, Steve. I know it's hard. But you need to look at the big picture—”

“How many dogs have
you
buried, Martha?”

She started to cry. I didn't care.

“Forget the mayor and his apology.”

That evening when I got home, I e-mailed Martha photos I'd taken of the horse and the mutilated dogs in garbage bags.

In the morning, I swung by the mayor's office. The receptionist at the front desk looked nervous when I walked in. She recognized me. Before I said anything, she said, “His Honor isn't in the office today. Would you like to leave a message?”

I saw Jose in the back hallway, close enough to hear what I was saying.

“Yes, actually, I would. Please tell the mayor, ‘Fuck you. You don't scare me.'”

I turned and walked away. My knees nearly buckled from fear. I wondered if I'd be arrested for threatening a public official.

Martha called that afternoon in tears. She'd looked at the photos I'd sent.

“I had no idea, Steve.” It was hard to make out what she was saying between sobs. “Melanie and I are really worried you're going to turn up missing one of these days.”