The Dog Killer of Utica (14 page)

“I’ll fail sincerely to pray for you, Mark.”

“You’re good at wordplay, Eliot. It helps you get through. Sophisticated escape, that’s all it is, but it won’t help you or me when you hear what I must tell you now. Last night … last night at the Center. Last night in the detention cell, Novak and Nadija Ivanovic—they were found dead. They’d neglected to
take his belt. He hanged her from the bar across the window. Laid her body aside, then did himself. They were found when a cleaning lady—NO!”

Martello (5’10”, 165) is sitting in his chair. But chair and Martello are suddenly, violently high up against the kitchen wall at 6’3”, 220 Conte’s eye level. Eye to eye. A few inches apart. Hold. Five seconds. Hold. Ten seconds. Conte takes a quick, giant step back. The chair crashes to the floor, snapping off its legs. Martello is still sitting in it. Martello does not attempt to rise. Conte goes down on all fours. Again eye to eye, speaking now in a tone that Mark has never before heard.

“Are you proud of yourself? Do not avert your eyes.”

“No.”

“Those people are not terrorists.”

Martello drops his head.

“Do not drop your head.”

Martello raises his head, “They were innocent. I know that now. They were pawns.”

“Mark, do not use the past tense.”

“I’m sorry. They are innocent. Forever innocent.”

“Forever dead. Their son, Mirko, my best student, eloped with a Catholic girl because he thought his parents wouldn’t approve. That’s why he disappeared.”

“Not a terrorist either.”

“This new Imam. You have him too. Has he hanged himself yet?”

“I released him.”

“So that he can hang himself at home?”

Martello does not respond.

“The shoe is on the other foot now.”

Conte rises. Says, “I’m making you a cup of coffee.”

“No, thank you.”

“The shoe is on the other foot now. Did you kill Novak and Nadija Ivanovic?”

Martello cannot respond.

“Your turn to say ‘not exactly.’ ”

“I am responsible for their deaths.”

“How would you like your coffee?”

Mark does not respond.

“I’m talking to you.”

“I don’t really—black.”

“Sugar?”

“No, thank you.”

“One or two spoonsful?”

“Do you mind if I get up and sit at the table?”

“Who recommended that you sit on the floor?”

He sits at the table. Conte prowls the room during what follows:

“Eliot. If it is your intention—”

“I don’t have intentions. I’m just talking. I’m suggesting that you haven’t earned your coffee.”

“Are you going to hurt me?”

“Life is hard, Mark.”

“I want to tell you what I’m going to reveal at the news conference. Please let me tell you.”

“I like good stories. Yours good?”

“I’ll tell you facts. During the Bush administration, seven years ago, Kyle and I were living in a D.C. suburb. I was a promising young Republican at the Pentagon in a midlevel post. Kyle was a freelance personal trainer.”

“I already know this. This is not a good story.”

“But you don’t know this. One of his trainees was this district’s congressman and your Hamilton College classmate, Rick Kingwood, married, three children, family-values champion.”

“With the hots for Kyle.”

“How did you know?”

“Married, three kids, family-values champion. Did Kyle return his affection?”

“No.”

“I can’t imagine Kyle sleeping with that prick.”

“You don’t have to. We had dinner at his home fairly regularly. Kingwood in the final months of Bush uses his friendship with Vice President Cheney to get a center located here, a ridiculous idea, lampooned in the
Times
, but embraced by his party, which was still at the height of its fearmongering powers. The unprotected heartland of small-town America et cetera. He gets me appointed director and we move to Utica.”

“He comes home weekends, as usual, to press the flesh of his constituents, and Kyle’s in particular.”

“When the Republicans took back the House, Kingwood becomes chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security. He makes it his agenda to investigate American Muslims as potential safe-house providers for terrorist sleeper cells. He believes in himself as the next junior senator from New York. Small-town America’s savior. He will run for the Senate. Has ambitions beyond the Senate.”

“I know all that, Mark. Better tell me something new. Quick.”

“This: A few months ago he tells me he has a high-level
mole inside Janet Napolitano’s staff, a holdover from the Bush years who’s feeding him information that would embarrass the President, but never gives me details. The President is soft on Muslims. It’s in his Kenyan blood et cetera. Then a month ago he tells me he may have something very big, which might make America take notice of me. Open up all kinds of opportunities in and out of government, if only I’m the guy who can connect the dots. Six days ago, he hits me with the new Imam and his connections with radical Imams in Yemen and London, and a date. The Ivanovic family is implicated.”

“Sunday.”

“Yes.”

“Help me to understand, Mark. The President of the United States, who put Osama bin Laden a thousand feet under the Indian Ocean, who decimates Al Qaeda leadership daily with these drone strikes, along with a few pain-in-the-ass innocent bystanders, this President has placed at the top of the Department of Homeland Security someone who looks the other way on a domestic disaster in the making? You bought that?”

“No. Napolitano didn’t know. Nobody knew. King-wood gives me the name of the mole. I check. She’s in fact a member of Napolitano’s inner circle. He gives me her cell. She asks me to give her the middle names and birth dates of Kingwood’s children, as well as his mother’s maiden name, all of which I knew because Kingwood told her she’d be getting a call from someone who claimed to be me and unless the caller could give her such information she mustn’t divulge anything. After I’d satisfied her, she said, ‘It’s in your hands
now. Do not fail our citizens. This cell is disabled after I hang up.’ Why would I think she might deliberately be feeding me false information?”

“Or that your Republican benefactor—the darling of the Right who got you appointed director—was an Islamophobic criminal?”

“Yes, Eliot.”

“You wanted to be a great American hero, Mark.”

“Doesn’t everybody, Eliot?”

“Small-town America saved by an openly gay patriot. A book deal, personal appearances, speeches in the high five figures. What a great fuckin’ country this is!”

“Last night I did the digging I should have done long ago. This new Imam was not conspiring with radical Yemeni clerics. He was not in touch with hotbeds of radical Islam anywhere else. This is what I know. He is no jihadi. This also I’m sure of: Mirko Ivanovic, like his parents, is innocent. At 4:30 this morning I was finally put through on a conference call to Napolitano and the President’s national security advisor.”

“You want me to believe that?”

“From 3 until 4:15 this morning I was threatening to go public with this embarrassment.”

Conte standing behind him. Hands on Martello’s shoulders, close to his throat: “Novak and Nadija Ivanovic are embarrassments? Is that how you think of them? You bastard.”

“Please, Eliot. Don’t hurt me. I mean politically, to the administration. You understand Napolitano knew nothing. The President is therefore in the dark. Only Kingwood knows. On Saturday before it’s supposed to go down, he will reveal to the major networks what’s to happen on Sunday, but thanks
to him—he’ll not name his sources of intelligence—the plot is foiled and Obama is exposed as incompetent to protect the homeland, as Cheney has been saying all along. Everything Kingwood has been selling about terrorist sleeper cells will now be endorsed by the so-called liberal media.”

“But the good Mark got to the truth and destroyed Kingwood’s ambitions, but only after pressuring two innocent people to their death.”

“They finally roust Napolitano. The call is arranged. Just before 5
A.M.
, I get another call from the President’s chief political strategist. I’ll be naming the Napolitano staffer and Kingwood. He’ll be finished by midday. His agenda is dead, along with his Senate ambitions. He’ll face criminal charges. The mole is already in custody.”

“And you?”

“I announce my resignation at the press conference.”

“That’s obvious. How are they going to take care of you, Mark? How will they show their gratitude?”

“I don’t have to answer that.”

Conte sits. Says with surprising gentleness:

“The God you believe in will put you in Hell.”

“I’m already there and grateful to Him for giving me your company, as we burn.”

“The event at the mosque on Sunday—it’s on?”

“If they want it.”

“Maybe you can be the guest of honor, Mark.”

Showered, dressed and looking his best, the face aside, he sits on the couch, Detective Don Belmonte on the desk chair. Big
Don asks about his face, Conte replies, “I don’t feel like explaining anymore.” Big Don says, “Good. I’m pressed for time. Hope to God this chair can handle my weight.”

“Where’s Catherine, Don? I assumed she’d be part of this conversation.”

“She’s up the ethical morass without a paddle. Conflict of interest, not to mention she put herself on leave. Not to mention she told you about the Chief’s dog, which I told her not to.”

“She asked you to determine the Chief’s whereabouts when the shooting of his dog went down. Did you?”

(Pause.)

“Not at home at the time.”

“Why does he want the shooting kept quiet?”

“He says it’ll become a racial thing, black-on-black violence, what do you expect of those black people et cetera. It brings him into racial question as the Chief, that’s his concern. Look. I came here to ask questions, not to be grilled. The thought that the Chief did this, as well as the dog in Troy, is unworthy of an intelligent person who”—gestures at the walls—“reads all these books, but who maybe is not attached to the real world. I don’t have all day, Eliot. That shell casing found at the scene of the Barbone murder matches one found at the Troy dog killing. As you must already know, thanks to my beautiful, indiscreet partner.”

“Would you like a cappuccino, Don?”

“Forget the niceties. That stuff goes right through me, it takes no prisoners. There are tremendous things swirling, and you are the eye of the hurricane. Where and how did you get that shell casing?”

“At the scene of the crime. It was given to me.”

“By who? Certainly not by lead Detective Mendoza, who by the way I intend to put in possession of the casing. Look, Eliot, Mendoza I can’t stand, but this is beyond personal. One of the responding uniforms is my thought. Cazzamano, no freakin’ doubt.”

“Irrelevant, Don. You were given it. You intend to pass it on.”

“Irrelevant? Oh, yeah?”

“Possibly it was given to me by the first civilian on the scene, who put in the call. A total stranger.”

“I’ll tell you why it matters. Sometimes these criminals who do these things can’t keep away from the crime scene investigation. They’re like freakin’ playwrights at the premiere watching the audience. They get off on the spectacle they created. I’ve encountered this.”

“Where, Don? On television? The movies?”

“If your father wasn’t my kindest friend and supporter, I’d take you in right now for obstruction of justice.”

“Don—”

“That loose cannon Cazzamano, right? He should go down for this.”

Conte says nothing.

“You were at the scene of the Barbone murder, Mohawk at South. True or false, Eliot?”

“True.”

“You were at Joey’s last night, Mohawk at Lansing, just a few blocks from the Barbone scene, eating dinner with Anthony Senzalma. True or false?”

“True.”

“You left by way of the back door of the office at around 9:45. True or false?”

“True.”

“You left in a rage without your shoes. True or false?”

“True.”

“You encountered Senzalma’s bodyguard on the way out, one” (checking notes) “Dragan Kovac. Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“See anything in the parking lot of interest, like a car with its lights on maybe?”

“I have no memory of that. Why all these questions about my dinner with Senzalma?”

“Your anger blinded you to your environment? Have conversation with Kovac?”

“He complained about standing out in the cold. I told him to go in. That was it.”

“This Rintrona and his wife. The Chief and his wife. All friends of yours?”

“Obviously.”

“Don’t get bitchy. Senzalma is a friend of yours, not so obviously.”

“He’s a friend. Which is nobody’s business.”

“You eat regularly in a hidden fashion with Senzalma in Joey’s office?”

“Yes. The direction of your questions—”

“This chair is making a sound which gives me freakin’ anxiety.” (He gets up.) “I should take off a few.”

“You’re big, Don, but you carry it beautifully.”

“Don’t try to get on my good side.”

“There’s plenty of room on the couch.”

“With my knees? I sink, I’ll never come out. On second thought, give me the cappuccino because what’s the difference at my stage of life?”

Conte in the kitchen attending to the coffee, Belmonte walking along the bookcases, reading the titles. He says, “I’m developing a theory about all of it. I’ll tell it with the coffee and then I have to run. This Melville, you have a lot of his stuff.”

Conte from the kitchen, “You know him?”

“I heard of him, but we never met.”

Conte and Belmonte standing in the front room, sipping their coffee, swaying a little on the balls of their feet.

“I’m going to tell you something, Eliot, that hasn’t been released to the public. In return, you’re going to answer one big question and I don’t mean who gave you the casing because it’s irrelevant, maybe, as you say. When the coroner removed Barbone’s clothes he found that his dick was cut off along with his balls. Nowhere to be found on the scene. The implications stagger me. Okay. So we got whoever killed your friend’s dog in Troy and whoever shot Freddy in the head and cut off his equipment as the same person ninety-nine point nine percent sure. Then we have whoever blew away the Chief’s dog and injured his wife, who we connect to the Troy dog and thanks to the casing also to Freddy’s murder. What is the likelihood we have two dog killers on the loose? Those three killings are done by the same person. You agree?”