Dog Have Mercy

by Neil S. Plakcy

  How long would I stay at Friar Lake? Would I get bored with organizing programs and running the center? Would some external force derail my career again? Suppose Lili was offered a terrific job somewhere and asked me to move with her?

  My reveries were disrupted when Tamsen arrived shortly after two, and Rochester rushed downstairs. I followed and opened the door to her, holding on to Rochester’s collar so he couldn’t tackle her.

  “You would not believe how much trouble an eight-year-old can get into when your back is turned,” she said, as she shrugged off her wool-lined trenchcoat.

  “I would believe it,” I said. “We had an eight-month-old puppy visiting for a week, and he was a handful.”

  I took her coat and she unwound her long, multi-colored scarf. “I know I should cherish every moment with him, because someday, if I’m lucky, he’ll grow up and go to college. But some days I can’t wait for that day to arrive.”

  “I think all parents feel that way,” I said. “I can imagine mine were glad to send me off to Eastern.”

  Lili joined us, and then she and Tamsen went upstairs to look for party outfits. I was getting into a book when my phone rang. “Hey, Rick,” I said. “You’ll never guess who’s here right now?”

  “I hope it’s Felix Logato,” he said.

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” I said. “Tamsen’s here helping Lili find an outfit for that New Year’s Eve party. Remember, you’re dog-sitting Rochester. Why are you looking for Felix?”

  “I need to talk to him, and it looks like he skipped town after he got fired. You went over to Logato’s house last week, right? While you were there, did he say anything about leaving?”

  I thought back to my conversation with Felix. “He was going to Philly Wednesday to help a friend,” I said. “Then to his mother’s for Christmas. Why do you need to talk to him? I thought Dr. Horz wasn’t going to make a big deal out of that theft.”

  “The chief takes his dog to Animal House and he’s friendly with Dr. Horz. He got on my case this morning about following up on that potassium theft, so I started tracking down the staff from the vet’s office. Felix was number one on my list. I went over to his house, and his roommates said he got fired, and left Wednesday morning and hasn’t been back since. Looks like he might have done a runner.”

  “I’m sure he’ll turn up. Rochester really likes him and I trust my dog’s instincts.”

  “The dog doesn’t know everything, Steve,” Rick said. “If Felix gets in touch with you, will you let me know?”

  “Of course. I emailed him earlier today to set up a meeting and go over his writing.”

  When Rick hung up, I turned to Rochester. I liked Felix, and I hoped he wasn’t in trouble. Had I been wrong about him? We had a couple of shared connections – we had both served time, we both loved dogs. But I had been ignoring the vast differences in our backgrounds, and how the way he’d grown up had formed him, just as my own upbringing had done for me.

  “What do you think, boy? You think Felix ran off?”

  He didn’t have an opinion, just wanted to play. As I tugged one end of his rope, I thought about my last conversation with Felix. What was name of the friend he’d mentioned? Maybe he might know where Felix had gone.

  Since Lili and Tamsen were busy upstairs, I sat at the dining room table and turned my laptop on. Rochester sprawled beside me in one of his standard positions, his front paws outstretched and his body at a forty-five degree angle, like the top of a Z.

  Z, I thought. Zero. Zeno. Junior Zeno. No, Yunior Zeno. That was the name Felix had mentioned. I went online to see if I could find an address or phone number for him.

  Yunior Zeno, whoever he was, kept a pretty low online profile. I quickly found that article from the Inquirer about the grow house bust where his name had been mentioned, but there was no follow-up about the incident.

  The only useful thing I could find was a brief mention in an online blog of Yunior as an up and coming businessman in North Philly. His company was called Z Man Group. But there was no indication of what Z Man Group did, or where it was located.

  I flexed my fingers. I loved a good computer-based challenge. Just then, Lili appeared at the top of the staircase and began to descend. “How do I look?” she asked.

  She was wearing a slinky black dress that opened up to a swirl just above her knees. It was sleeveless, with a scooped neck, and she’d pulled her hair up into a knot and added a string of pearls. “Ravishing,” I said. “Why don’t you send Tamsen home so I can ravish you?”

  She laughed and went back upstairs. I took a deep breath and remembered the promise I’d made to Lili and to Rick not to hack. I had to use my brain instead of my hacking tools.

  I tried a bunch of different searches until I found a corporate registration for Z Man Group, Yunior Zeno, president and chief executive officer. The address of record was a post office box in Philadelphia. Another dead end, though I felt like I was closing in.

  I tried a bunch of different public databases, and finally hit pay dirt with the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Property Assessment. Yunior Zeno didn’t own any property in his own name, but Z Man Group did. A lot.

  There was no website for the company, which I found suspicious. If Z Man rented apartments, for example, how would prospective tenants find them, or investigate them? I knew from my own experience, and that of the students I’d taught at Eastern, that most people looked on line for information first, whether from a computer or a smart phone.

  I made a list of all the addresses, then opened a new window for Google Maps, where I plotted them out. They were all in North Philadelphia, around the area where Felix had said he’d grown up. Yunior owned houses on Ruffner, Sydenham, Birch, and Rowan Streets. From a street view, the neighborhood didn’t look too bad; there were lots of trees, a park and a stadium nearby. But I was sure the view was deceiving.

  I wasn’t sure what else I could do, so I started putting those addresses into Google, and I was stunned when I got a hit from the Philadelphia Inquirer from Christmas day. A drug-related shootout had occurred at 404 W. Birch Street on Wednesday afternoon, Christmas Eve; there were four unidentified victims.

  It seemed like too much of a coincidence to be anything but true. I called Rick. “Listen, there was a shooting in Philly on Christmas Eve,” I said. I gave him the details. “Can you call the Philly cops and see if Felix Logato was one of the victims?”

  “Where’d you get this from?” he asked.

  “Too complicated to explain over the phone,” I said. “Can you just check?”

  “Fine. But I want to hear it.”

  “If it’s him, I’ll tell you all the details. Don’t worry, I found everything legally. Oh, and check to see of one of the other victims was named Yunior Zeno.”

  “It sounds like you know a lot more than you’re letting on. I’ll talk to the Philly cops and then get back to you if there’s a positive ID.”

  After Rick hung up, I paced around the downstairs, too edgy to focus on anything. Rochester sensed my mood and kept following me. I felt like I had failed Felix in some way. Could I have done anything more? I took the dogs out for a long walk in the cold, but my mind was still on Felix. Was he one of those unidentified victims? Would that explain why he’d left home and hadn’t come back?

  What if Yunior was a drug dealer, and he’d found a way to use the veterinarian’s potassium to create that street drug, Cat or Charlie or whatever it was. Say he’d recruited Felix to steal those vials. It wasn’t a long-term method of supply; Dr. Horz had already noticed them missing and alerted the police, and since Felix had been fired he wouldn’t have any further access. But what if this was just an experiment? Could this be another example of Philly drug gangs infiltrating the suburbs?

  I was still edgy when Tamsen and Lili came downstairs. “We’ve been invited to Tamsen’s for dinner on New Year’s Day,” Lili said.

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “And you have to bring Rochester,” Tam
sen said. “Rick’s bringing Rascal. Nathaniel keeps bugging my sister for a dog, and I want him and Justin to both see how much trouble having a dog is.”

  “So are you telling me you want my dog to misbehave?” I said, in mock surprise.

  “He doesn’t have to misbehave, he just has to be himself,” Lili said. “Eighty pounds of big happy dog. Maybe he can knock the boys over a couple of times.”

  “I don’t know that we’d go that far,” Tamsen said. “I’ve already done the holiday-emergency-room drill with Justin and I don’t want to repeat it.”

  We all hugged and kissed, and Tamsen left. When she was out the door, Lili turned to me. “What’s the matter? You look like something’s wrong. You don’t want to go to Tamsen’s for dinner?”

  “It’s not that. Felix Logato has disappeared, and I’m afraid he’s dead.”

  “Really? How do you know?”

  She sat with me at the table, and Rochester came over to nuzzle my hand as I explained what I’d done. “Do you think I could have done anything more to help him?”

  Lili shook her head. “If he was shot in some drug deal, then his problems were a lot worse than not being able to write well,” she said.

  “But I knew what he was going through. I could have tried more. Been his friend. Gotten him to open up more about his problems.”

  Lili reached over and took my hand. “I know you could relate to him, and I’m sure you feel bad that he might have gotten himself killed. But it wasn’t up to you to save him.”

  “Then who?” I asked.

  17 – A Nose for Clues

  “I know what you need,” Lili said. “Follow me.”

  We went upstairs together. “That black dress I showed you is pretty form-fitting,” she said. “I’m not sure what to wear underneath it. Think you could help me decide?”

  “I’d be delighted to assist.” I sat back against the pillows on the bed, ready for a show. Before she started, Lili sat beside me and we kissed.

  Then suddenly Rochester jumped up and skittered down the stairs, barking madly.

  “Crap,” I said. “That’s probably Rick. Can we table this process for a little while?”

  “The Hardy Boys are on another case,” she said. “Far be it from me to stand in their way.” She kissed me again. “That’s so you remember what you’re missing out on.”

  Like I needed the reminder.

  I went downstairs and let Rick in. “It was Logato,” Rick said. “They matched his prints.”

  Maybe it was the news, or the cold air that had rushed in the house when I let Rick in, but I was chilled. I went into the kitchen and started boiling water. “Hot chocolate?” I asked Rick. “Or tea or coffee?”

  “I could do with something warm. Hot chocolate.”

  While the water boiled, I asked, “Was Yunior Zeno with him?”

  “The guy I spoke to said Zeno wasn’t one of the dead, but he wasn’t the investigating detective. That guy, Holland, is supposed to call me back.”

  I started preparing the hot chocolate. I stirred in powder, and then a dollop of Godiva chocolate liqueur. “Not for me. I’m still on duty,” Rick said when I showed him the bottle.

  I topped the mugs with whipped cream, chocolate syrup and chocolate flakes. “You’re killing me here,” Rick grumbled. “This is at least an extra hour at the gym.”

  We both sipped from our mugs, which had different pictures of golden retrievers on them. Finally I sighed, and I began to tell Rick what I knew. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time,” I said. “He told me he had one friend who’d stood by him while he was in prison. This guy, Yunior Zeno. When you told me that Felix was missing, I went looking for information on Zeno, hoping he might be able to tell you where Felix was. That’s when I found the information on that shooting.”

  “Did Felix look like he was using any kind of drugs?” Rick asked.

  “I’m no expert,” I said. “But his eyes weren’t red, he wasn’t jittery or anything. He spoke clearly, he played with Rochester. Did you talk to his roommates?”

  “Yeah, they both said that he was clean, that he was trying to turn his life around. They were surprised that he’d booked.”

  His phone rang then. “This must be the detective from Philly.” He introduced himself, then listened for a moment. “Yeah, that’s the name I was given, Yunior Zeno.”

  He shifted the phone so I could hear. “He’s a slippery one,” Holland said. “Never been able to pin anything on him. He wasn’t one of the victims but it’s possible he was there. What makes you ask about him?”

  “My source told me that Zeno owns the property where the shooting happened,” Rick said. “Through a company called Z Man Group.”

  “You’ve got a pretty knowledgeable source. He or she know anything else?”

  “Just that Felix Logato was a friend of Zeno’s and was supposed to see him Christmas Eve.”

  I grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled “potassium?” on it.

  “This may be completely irrelevant,” Rick said. “But is there any trade in stolen potassium by you?”

  “Potassium? Like in bananas?”

  “Yeah. Some vials of liquid potassium were stolen from the veterinary office where Logato worked. That’s how he came to my attention in the first place.”

  I wrote “methcathinone” on the paper as Holland said, “Haven’t heard of anything like that. What do you do with them? Inject them?”

  “If you want to give somebody a heart attack, you do,” Rick sad. “Apparently there may also be a way to use potassium in manufacturing a street drug called methcathinone. You know anything about that?”

  “Just heard rumors. Supposedly it’s a Russian drug that gangs are trying to figure out how to manufacture here. You think there’s a connection?”

  “I was wondering if maybe Logato stole the potassium vials for his friend, if he was handing them off on Wednesday.”

  “From what we can tell, this shootout was about cocaine, not potassium,” Holland said. “But stranger things have happened in the Badlands.”

  Rick thanked him and promised to pass on any other information he found, and Holland said that he’d look into the ownership of the building and see if he could bring Zeno in for questioning.

  Rick left, and my bad mood remained. I kept wondering if there was something more I could have done for Felix Logato. Rochester stayed close to me, nuzzling me and licking my hand, and I felt blessed for the opportunities I’d had, that Felix hadn’t.

  “Steve?” Lili called from upstairs. “Are you just going to ignore me?”

  That was certainly not my plan. I hurried up the stairs, Rochester on my heels, and found Lili lounging on the bed wearing some very sexy lingerie. We spent the rest of the afternoon together, though first I helped her remove the bra and panties.

  Tuesday morning I still felt haunted by Felix Logato’s death, and I decided that rather than sit around and obsess, I’d take Rochester back to Crossing Manor, see if we could cheer up some of the patients who didn’t have a lot of family to visit.

  “You go,” Lili said. “I want to make rum balls for Tamsen’s party and they need to steep in the rum for a few days.”

  Rochester was happy to jump into the car with me. I think he missed going to up to Friar Lake, all those construction workers saying hi to him and petting him.

  The snow around the Crossing Manor parking lot had been piled into dirty clumps, though the lot itself had been salted and was pretty clean. I was careful walking Rochester up to the door; I didn’t want to end up like Edith, in the Manor as a patient.

  The lobby was deserted when we walked in. The receptionist’s desk was empty, and there were no patients sitting in the big chairs. “Hello?” I called.

  No answer. I was debating what to do when Marilyn Joiner appeared, in her white coat, wearing the same intricate gold chain around her neck. “Sorry, we’re short-handed today,” she said. “A couple of staffers are out sick, and we’re trying to cop
e.”

  “If this is a bad time, we can come back,” I said.

  “No, it would be a real help if you could sit with the patients in the lounge,” she said. “We need to clean the rooms and I don’t have enough staff to keep them company there.”

  Rochester and I walked back to the lounge, where we found Mr. MacRae and Mrs. Vinci engaged in an argument. “I tell you, there was nothing wrong with that lady,” Mrs. Vinci insisted. She waved an arthritic finger.

  “We all got stuff wrong with us,” Mr. MacRae said. “Me, I got a bad heart. You can’t see that from the outside.” He saw us in the doorway. “Here come my favorite doggie. How are you, boy?”

  “You feeling all right, Mrs. Vinci?” I asked as I let the dog go toward Mr. MacRae’s outstretched hand. She was wearing a yellow sweater dotted with fake pearls over a polyester blouse in a pink and yellow floral print, with dark blue sweat pants and white terrycloth slippers. At least her clothes were cheerful.

  “Malavath died,” she said. “My roommate.”

  “Yeah, I saw that in the paper. I’m sorry.”

  “Something fishy is going on here,” she said. “She wasn’t hardly sick at all, just that her family needed a place to park her. Her son married a white lady, you know, and didn’t want some old woman in a sari around her house.”

  I sat in the chair beside her, as Mr. MacRae petted Rochester. “What happened to her?” I asked.

  “They say it was a heart attack,” Mrs. Vinci said. “But she didn’t have no problems with her heart. She was here for the rheumatism.”

  I remembered my great-aunt used that term for arthritis. She always used to ask for her “rheumatiz medicine.”

  “Well, like Mr. MacRae said, we all have stuff wrong with us, and sometimes you can’t see that from the outside. I used to have high blood pressure, before I got Rochester and had to go for walks all the time.”