Dog Have Mercy

by Neil S. Plakcy

  I shook my head. “I called Rick and gave him the information. I’m not chasing ex-cons all over Philadelphia.”

  “Well, that’s progress,” she said. She leaned over and kissed me. “I’ve got some more photo manipulation to do. I’ll be upstairs.”

  I went into the kitchen to get a bottle of water. There were three mason jars of chocolate balls on the top shelf, and I opened a jar and pulled one rum ball out. The rum smell was strong, the texture crumbly, with sprinkles of white sugar against the dark chocolate. I popped it in my mouth and the flavors exploded. The rum brought out the richness of the chocolate.

  “Those rum balls are for the party!” Lili called from upstairs. “And they need to steep before they’re ready to eat.”

  “I only had one and it tasted fine to me,” I hollered back. I grabbed a bottle of cold water and poured some for Rochester, then opened my laptop on the kitchen table. My fingers were itching to do something about Felix’s death and I knew that if I didn’t change gears I’d get myself in trouble. So I logged on to my support group to see what everyone else was up to.

  In addition to the message boards, there was a chat room that wasn’t often populated, but that afternoon MamaHack was there, chatting with another hacker whose ID was Fizzy_Water. I logged in and typed, hey.

  We chatted about the weather and the holidays for a few lines, and then I typed, do either of you hack just because you’re curious?

  You mean nosy? Fizzy responded.

  I guess.

  Mama wrote, my shrink sez she thinks I hack for power & control. Hubster makes the cash, kids dictate the schedule w/school, sports, dance, etc. When my fingers itch it’s so I can be in charge.

  She and Fizzy got into a debate about kids and whether they should be reined in to do what their parents told them, and I sat back and thought. Back in Silicon Valley, I had been a technical writer for a big catalog sales company. One of my jobs was to create manuals for all company procedures, including any new software we instituted. The company had discovered a hole in its merchandise tracking operations, and bought a packaged program to fill that need.

  The shipping department staffers needed instructions on how the system operated, so I was given a log-in ID and password, and I learned how to operate it. Then I started writing my instructions, but I needed some additional documentation that apparently existed on the company’s website, but was behind a firewall. I had emailed and called the company for access, but the company had recently been bought out and most of the staff let go, and no one I spoke to was able to help me.

  I was expressing my frustration to one of my co-workers, a heavy-duty programmer named Bruce, and he said, “I can help you out.”

  This was back before the days of jump drives and elaborate security precautions at companies and in the online world. Bruce slipped a floppy disk into the drive of my PC and walked me through what was on it.

  It was a door to a whole new world. The program sniffed out an open port on a computer at the software company’s office and let me log in as an administrator. I downloaded the files I needed and logged off.

  My pulse was racing. I’d broken into a protected site and stolen information. Well, it wasn’t theft, exactly, because it was material that my company had purchased and couldn’t get hold of. All afternoon I kept expecting some law enforcement guy to walk into our cube farm and come up to my desk with a pair of handcuffs.

  That didn’t happen. Bruce took his disk back, but the files had been copied to my hard drive. I copied them to another floppy of my own and took them home, and that night, while Mary was watching TV, I installed them on my computer and began playing around.

  I became obsessed. I surfed the Internet looking for additional tools, learning how to use them, becoming conversant with terms like IP address, honey pot, and sniffer. I broke into a genealogy site and researched my family. I got into one of those reunion sites and looked up information on classmates and old friends.

  I mentioned something in passing to Bruce about what I’d been doing, and he said, in a low voice, “You can’t go around talking about that stuff, dude. That is seriously illegal.”

  “But you gave me those tools.”

  “Yeah, and I don’t want your big mouth to land me in jail. So keep it quiet.”

  I felt chastened, and didn’t say anything more until Bruce came to me a few weeks later. “I’ve got a friend,” he said. “Needs some information. I can’t handle it because I’m going out of town. You want to pick up a few extra bucks?”

  Of course I did. No matter how much money Mary and I made, it was never enough to support the big mortgage, the car payments, the credit card bills. Over the next year or two Bruce slipped me a job now and then, and I began to build up my own clients. I never stole anything dramatic – a company wanted to see what a competitor was doing, a divorce attorney wanted to know about hidden assets.

  It wasn’t about the money; it was about the thrill of the chase, of gathering this information, of knowing something I wasn’t supposed to. I had always been a curious kid, the kind who was constantly asking questions and snooping around. Discovering the world of computers opened new doors for me, new places to look for information. I was always Googling people that I met, looking at maps and photo albums. Then Mary miscarried for the second time, and my world fell apart.

  Back then, like MamaHack, I had felt powerless, almost emasculated. Mary was the driving force in our marriage. We had followed her career to California, and she made all the major decisions, including choosing when to start making a baby. I was a low-level functionary at work, well-paid but under-utilized. I was bored a lot of the time but didn’t have the authority to create new projects for myself that would be more challenging.

  Prison, for me, was the ultimate loss of control. The schedule governed when I ate, when I slept, when I worked. I did manage to exert a bit of power, because as I had told Felix, I could help other prisoners with their appeals, and they protected and rewarded me.

  When I came back to Stewart’s Crossing I was rudderless. I simply didn’t remember how to manage my own time, my own life. It had taken Rochester, and my jobs at Eastern, to bring me back to life. It was important to me that I recognize all I had regained in the last couple of years, and how easily I could lose it if I made a mistake.

  Rochester nuzzled me and I realized that I’d been ignoring him all the time I’d been online. I signed off the computer and played tug-a-rope with him for a while, then took him for a long walk.

  Rick called after dinner. “That Blackbridge guy has quite a record,” he said. “Holland looked him up and verified that he’d been at Graterford at the same time Felix was. He used that information you gave me to log into Felix’s email account, and he saw the spoofing. That gives him enough to pull Blackbridge in for questioning, even though Holland still thinks that Felix died during a drug deal.”

  “Thanks, Rick,” I said. “I appreciate your following up with Holland, and with me. I’d like to see some justice for Felix.”

  “The only real justice is the final one,” Rick said. “If God believes in Felix, then he’ll be okay.”

  I remembered that Rick had been brought up as a Roman Catholic, and was a bit surprised that he still believed, after years as a cop. But all I said was, “I hope so.”

  20 – Very Agatha Christie

  The next morning, after I had fed and walked Rochester, I couldn’t resist the impulse to go online and look for information on Jimmy Blackbridge. I wasn’t going to confront him. I just wanted to see what he looked like, know what kind of guy he was.

  I did a couple of general searches, and one of the sites that I pulled up listed other people who might be connected to the person I was searching for. A couple of the names there were Negroponte. That reassured me that I was on the right track.

  Jimmy didn’t have a Facebook account, but he was tagged in a photo of a group of twenty-somethings celebrating a birthday. He was slim and wiry, with dark hair combed
back from his forehead. He had a square jaw and a chipped front tooth.

  He was wearing what I’d grown up calling a wife-beater, a form-fitting white T-shirt without sleeves. His right arm showed off impressive biceps, and a tattoo of a lion’s head, mouth open in mid-roar, with the words “Take the Lion’s Share” in script beneath it.

  He had his left arm around a big-busted, big-hipped girl named Merlys, and when I zoomed in on the photo I saw his fingers had been tattooed with the word G A M E in a Gothic script. I recognized that; a guy I’d known in prison had that on one hand, and the word O V E R on the other.

  I repressed a shiver. Was he the guy who had killed Felix Logato? Was the tattoo on that fist the last thing Felix ever saw?

  I shut down the computer. I had to get that image out of my head. So I did what I often do when something bothers me; I played with my dog. I tossed a tennis ball and he retrieved it, though after two runs he refused to give it back to me. We played tug-a-rope and then I scratched his belly.

  By then, I had started to believe, against my heart, that Felix had stolen the potassium from Dr. Horz, and that he’d been planning to hand it over to Yunior in North Philly the day he died. I didn’t know the specifics, but I assumed that Yunior wanted to kill somebody and have it look natural, and that he’d forced Felix to steal the vials.

  By late afternoon I was still depressed and didn’t feel like going out to a party that night, but I’d promised Lili and I knew she was looking forward to it. I fed Rochester and drove him over to Rick’s, then returned home. Lili was already in her slinky black dress by then, though she was barefoot and hadn’t put up her hair yet. “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Only eight. We’ve got plenty of time.”

  “For you, maybe. It takes a lot of work to make me beautiful.”

  I took her hand. “My darling, you look beautiful to me all the time.”

  “That’s sweet,” she said. “But I still need to get ready.”

  It was close to ten by the time we left the house, carrying a platter of Lili’s homemade brownies as a hostess gift. The night was cold and clear, and there wasn’t much traffic as we drove to Crossing Estates, where Gracious Chigwe lived. As we approached the gate, though, we were stuck behind an RV with “Jesus is Lord of All” written in huge letters across the back.

  “Hard not to miss that message,” I said.

  We parked down the block from the house and walked up. It was a big split level, all lit up, and from the driveway we could hear the sound of classical music. I put on a smile and we walked inside.

  Gracious met us at the door, a pleasant woman with what Alexander McCall Smith would have called a “traditional build.” She took our coats and directed us to the refreshments in the living room. I got cups of punch for Lili and myself, and then she walked over to one of her colleagues to talk art.

  Across the room, I saw Jackie Conrad from the biology department. It was probably the first time I’d seen her in anything other than her white lab coat. For the party, she’d worn a maroon velvet dress with short sleeves. When I got close I noticed that her dangling earrings were shimmery silver lizards.

  “You didn’t wear your brain cells as earrings?” I asked her.

  “I figured I wouldn’t need them, since this is only a faculty gathering,” she said. “Most of our faculty are operating short a few brain cells anyway.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” I said, lifting my punch cup and clinking it against hers. We chatted for a few minutes about some of the others at the party, and then I remembered I had a question for her. “What do you know about potassium?”

  “That depends. You want to know its chemical function? Remember, I’m a biologist, not a chemist.”

  “Is there a difference between potassium in liquid form versus in a pill?”

  “Yes. When a doctor prescribes you a pill, it’s so that your potassium levels will rise gradually, compensating for a deficiency in diet, for example. If you add potassium to an IV for delivery, the level goes up very fast. You have to watch carefully or the patient could suffer cardiac arrest.”

  “If you had a vial of liquid potassium, how could you get it into someone’s IV?”

  She looked at me closely. “Every time you come to my office you ask the most intriguing questions. Are you investigating something else now?”

  I explained to her about the potassium theft from Dr. Horz’s office, and how I’d been looking into it.

  “You think someone stole the potassium in order to commit a murder?” she asked. “How very Agatha Christie.”

  “It’s a solid reason why someone would steal it,” I said. “So could you get it into someone’s IV easily?”

  “Very easily.” She looked around the room and spotted a pad and a pen beside the telephone. “Let me show you.” She drew two parallel lines. “This is your IV tube.” Then she drew a small circle along one side. “This is a port. Every IV has one. You insert the vial into the port and release the potassium into the fluids.”

  “So anybody could do it?” I asked. “You don’t need to be a nurse?”

  “You only need to be able to get close enough to the person,” Jackie said.

  I saw Lili across the room motioning to me, so I left Jackie and walked over to her. She was talking to Gracious. “Thank you for inviting us,” I said. “It’s a lovely party.”

  “I’m so glad you could come,” she said. “So many of our colleagues have taken off for the holidays. And I really want to get to know people better. What is it that you teach?”

  I explained that I adjuncted in the English department, but that my primary job was at Friar Lake. “Have any ideas for continuing education programs in your discipline?” I asked.

  “Gracious and I have been talking about homelessness,” Lili said. “Maybe you could put together a program on that.”

  “I’m not sure it would be a big seller,” I said. “I think it’s one of those problems people want to avoid.” I held up my hand before Lili could say anything. “It’s great that you’re approaching it in the classroom, because you can educate people. But I think we’d need a sexier topic in order to draw in older learners.”

  “I’d love to do something about Africa,” Gracious said. “Most Americans know almost nothing about the continent, and how diverse it is. Perhaps they long to go on a safari, but that’s about it.”

  “We’ll have to talk,” I said. Across the room I saw Minna Breznick, and I was surprised, but then I remembered that she and her cardiologist husband lived in the same neighborhood. “If you’ll excuse me, I see someone I need to talk to.”

  I walked over to her. “Steve Levitan,” I said. “I bring my golden in to Dr. Horz’s office.”

  “Oh, yes, I recognize you,” she said, in that sharp, guttural Israeli accent. Her blonde hair had been puffed up like a balloon, and she wore six gold chains around her neck.

  “I was there the other day and Dr. Horz had discovered some supplies stolen,” I said casually. “She ever figure out what happened?”

  Minna looked around, then leaned in conspiratorially. “A police detective came to my house on Monday to ask me questions. But I think it’s all resolved now.”

  “Really?”

  “You probably don’t know this, but Dr. Horz hired a kennel assistant who had been in prison for drug dealing. The rest of the staff didn’t know at first, and once we found out we had to talk to her and eventually she let him go.” She shook her head. “Dr. Horz is a sweet woman, but sometimes I think she’s too trusting. And now see what happened.”

  I wanted to defend Felix. I really believed he had been trying to turn his life around. But it was a party, and I wasn’t going to accuse Minna of being small-minded when she might very well be right. However, I was still curious to know if she understood the uses of potassium and had any motive herself for the theft.

  “What exactly was stolen?” I asked. “Not anything dangerous, I hope.”

  “Very dangerous, in
the wrong hands,” she said. “But then, any medical supplies can be used to hurt as well as to heal.”

  She had a gleam in her eye that was unsettling, but I pressed on. “What do you mean?”

  “All of the body must be in balance,” she said. “Not too much or too little of any vitamin or mineral. This potassium that was stolen, you inject it into someone and poof! Heart attack. I’m sure we all know people we would like to see go that way, huh?”

  Then she laughed. “But of course, we are not criminals.”

  I wanted to say, “Speak for yourself,” but I bit my tongue. It was a party, after all. Instead, I said, “I hope the new year brings good things for all of us.”

  Lili was still talking to someone, so I wandered over to the food and grabbed a couple of her brownies. I thought back to what Jackie Conrad had said, about the ability to stick a vial of potassium into an IV. Who might have Yunior wanted to kill? A rival drug dealer who was hospitalized, for example? I pulled out my wallet and scribbled a reminder to tell Rick what I had learned.

  When I looked up I saw Lili smiling at me, and I walked back to her. At midnight, we kissed to ring in the new year. I was so happy with the way my life had changed during the past year, and I made sure to tell Lili what a big part of that positive change had to do with her. Life was too fleeting not to say those things.

  21 – Active Imagination

  It was lovely to sleep in on New Year’s Day, without a big golden head breathing on me and demanding food, walk and attention. Lili and I lounged in bed together, then I made breakfast and brought it up to her on a tray.

  “What a treat,” she said, sitting up.

  “Happy New Year,” I said. We ate together and then while she sat back with my new iPad and played around, I drove over to Rick’s to pick up Rochester.

  “I was right,” I said to Rick. “According to one of the science professors at Eastern, you can use potassium to kill someone, especially if they have an IV.”