The Dog Killer of Utica Read Free Page A

failure—die slowly!—burst your clotted chest!—give me one hundred squats in one hundred seconds—no resting, Conte!—pull that five-hundred-pound sled back and forth the length of the floor and stop making those noises! Did I see you eye-fuck the clock? Would you like the Suicide Stairs? Hurry! Hurry! Slam that thirty-pound medicine ball, not on the floor but through it, twenty times, penetrate that floor, Conte, rape it hard and explode your evil heart and balls.”
    “Good work,” Kyle says, the only compliment he ever gives, and that not often, as he extends his hand to help his spent trainee off the floor, while startling him with an offer (a first) to go to breakfast “on me.”
    Conte, on his feet, barely, manages, “You’re free?”
    “Congressman Kingwood canceled his 7:00, Anthony Senzalma his 7:30. Why, you may ask? Because these right-winghomophobes decided to suck each other off. I have nothing at 8:00. Let’s go, big fella. Or do you need an ambulance?”
    Kohler’s For Breakfast (since 1947), in the ex-Polish enclave on the West Side, a memory of the Utica that was. Front room of a one-family house. Five tables, worn carpeted floor, actual flowers in all seasons, pictures of old-time political bosses. Mama cooks. Papa waits: soft-boiled eggs, cream of wheat and sliced banana, coffee and pastries—Kyle insists on the sweets “because if you don’t once in a while, the craving pushes you into a zone of violence.” Conte, who needs no excuse, replies, “Let’s order the Napoleons for the road and save the violence for another day.”
    “Which day?”
    (Pause.)
    “Tomorrow.”
    “Now that you teach at the college, ever miss your private dick work?”
    “No.”
    “Not even a little?”
    “No.”
    “Good guy bad guy thrill of the hunt?”
    “Good guy? What’s that?”
    “You, Eliot.”
    “Coming on to me, Kyle?”
    “I’m contemplating coming on to Catherine.”
    “You’re gay—have you forgotten?”
    “Skin deep, Prof, just skin deep.”
    (Conte thinks of her skin, the feel of it. He smiles weakly.) “Out of curiosity, Conte, do you and Catherine, in your spare time, hunt the guy who did the damage to your body?When you came to see me two weeks after it happened, you still looked pretty ugly. How did she handle it? I’m her, I want to kill the guy.”
    Eliot nods.
    “You know who did it, don’t you?”
    Eliot nods.
    “And why.”
    Eliot nods.
    “Has to do with your kids who were …”
    Eliot nods.
    “What are you going to do about it?”
    Eliot stares.
    Kyle waves over George Kohler, orders two Napoleons to go, then says, “Me? I’m merely a man of physical culture who can’t go toe-to-toe at your psychological level. Aside from the incomparable Catherine, who can?”
    “Kyle?”
    “I’m here, Eliot.”
    “Neither can I.”
    Catherine Cruz in Troy the previous day had done what Conte imagined she’d do. Hugged her daughter, took her to dinner, picked up the clothes-strewn apartment, washed and put away the sink-clogging, days-old dirty dishes, wiped down every dust-laden surface while Miranda sat in observance, in sullen stupor, waiting for her mother to perform the ultimate act of commiseration by writing a more-than-generous check. That night, Catherine sleeps badly on Miranda’s couch.
    Next morning, while Conte is put through his brutalizingpaces, Catherine awakes in time to hear the apartment door close and her daughter slink out to score whatever it was that made her minimal life possible. Catherine falls in despair immediately back to a trouble-free sleep of escape, to be startled awake two hours later by an unnaturally exuberant “Good morning!
Mi madre!
” Against all reason she’s washed over by memories of Miranda’s childhood innocence, magically resuscitated by this transparently sweet apparition who walks back into the apartment. Catherine Cruz is torn asunder by the conspiring parties of joy, guilt, and sadness without bottom.
    Late that