by F. P. Lione
“Because I know too much!” the woman said, exasperated. “Aren’t you listening? They killed my neighbor, and they know that I know about it! Why won’t anyone believe me?” she yelled.
Joe put his hand up. “It’s not—”
“Oh, forget it!” she said and walked over to the bench and picked up her bags in quick, jerky motions and went out the front door.
Joe surprised me by following her out there. He called her and she turned around, and I saw him talking to her with his hands out.
Rooney came out from the back by the cells and said, “Lou, our perp is puking, saying his head hurts. Maybe he’s got a concussion, he’s got a nice knot on his head.”
He got on the radio and told Central to have a bus respond to the South.
“What’s the condition?” Central asked.
“I have a prisoner with a possible concussion,” Rooney said.
“10-4,” Central said, probably thinking we were playing piñata with the prisoner and cracked his head open.
I was exhausted from getting only a couple hours sleep, so I let Rooney take the collar.
I left Rooney with the paperwork for the arrest and went back out. The blonde was gone, and I saw Joe across the street heading into the deli.
I crossed the street and went in. Geri was there, yelling on the phone to someone.
“You’re a nice guy, Bill, but you suck as a mechanic,” she said as she closed her eyes and shook her head. “Don’t touch anything. I appreciate it, but I’ll get someone else to look at it.” She hung up.
“Everything okay?” Joe asked her.
“No, it’s not. This is what happens when your car dies and you let your neighbor work on it, then he makes it worse. I woulda been better off letting them rip me off at the gas station,” she said. “He takes the car this afternoon, and it takes him until two o’clock in the morning to tell me, ‘I don’t know what you did, but it’s bad.’ No kidding.” She waved her hand and started ringing us up. “I don’t even wanna think about it.”
“Where do you live?” Joe asked.
“Bay Ridge.”
“Why do you work here?” Joe asked.
I didn’t get it either. Why come into the city in the middle of the night if you don’t have to.
“My brother-in-law owns the store and my sister’s too lazy to work, so I help him out,” she said.
“I didn’t realize you were related to the owner,” I said. “You two don’t even get along.”
“It’s like a sexless marriage, Tony. We hate each other, we’re just together for the money,” she said, sounding like she meant it.
“I hope everything works out with your car, Ger,” Joe said.
“Yeah, thanks,” she said, sounding disgusted. “Have a good one.”
Joe and I took our coffee and walked back to the RMP to drink it. The coffee was from the bottom of the pot and had that bitter, burnt taste to it. I drank about half of it and was pouring the rest of it out the window when we got a call from Central.
“South David.”
“South David,” Fiore answered.
“We got a call for a possible DOA on 39th Street between 8th and 9th in front of 331 West 39th.”
“Oh, good,” I said. “We went back out just in time for this.”
“Central, is there a callback number?” Joe asked.
“No callback.”
“10-4,” Fiore said as I put the car in gear and drove down 9th Avenue.
9
I flew up 9th Avenue to 39th Street, whooping at the lights to get us over there. I was picturing a dead skell or a drunk not moving. I was looking in doorways on our way down from 8th Avenue, looking for feet sticking out. A guy was waving to us as we got about halfway down the block, and when we pulled up there was a dead dog lying on the sidewalk next to him.
“Easy, Tony,” Joe said as I got out of the car.
“Did you call us?” I snapped at the guy standing with the dog.
“Yeah, I called,” he said, all attitude.
“So where’s the dead body?” I half yelled, pushing my shoulders up with my arms extended out.
“Right here,” he said and looked down and pointed at the dog.
“It’s a dead dog,” I said, not looking at it.
The man just glared at me.
“South David to Central,” I said into my radio.
“Go ahead, South David.”
“Slow it down here, Central. There’s no DOA,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s a dead dog.”
I probably shouldn’t have mentioned the dog, because now the radio was assaulted with barks and howling, someone was singing the theme from Old Yeller, and I heard Rooney say, “Zoinks, Shaggy, I’m dead. Scooby Doooooo.”
Central came over the air, saying, “No unauthorized transmissions over the air, please.”
“You guys are sick,” the guy said with contempt.
I turned to him. “We’re sick? Hey, I don’t need cops getting hurt because they’re rushing here thinking someone’s dead and it’s actually a dead dog!” I yelled at him.
“I knew you wouldn’t come for a dog!” he yelled. “I hear them on the radio, they think this is funny!”
Joe and I both lowered the volume on the radio so no one else was quoted in the Post tomorrow.
“Yes, we would have come for the dog,” Joe cut in. “But we wouldn’t have come flying over here thinking it’s a person.”
“It’s just another dead dog to you,” he said. “You don’t care what happened to it.”
“What am I, the ASPCA? You act like I killed the dog,” I said, getting angrier by the minute.
I didn’t like him already. He was young, maybe midtwenties, with a five o’clock shadow it probably took him three days to grow. His hair was messy, but you could tell he meant to make it look that way. He was wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt with an MTV logo and had a backpack hooked over his shoulders. He had that punk, antiestablishment attitude that probably only comes from money and privilege.
I could smell the burnt hair and flesh from the dog. It was about two feet from a light post that had the screws off and the plate missing on the bottom. A lot of times skells open up the bottom of the light post and hook up a stolen TV or a boom box. Frayed wires were sticking out the bottom of it, so I knew the dog had been electrocuted. He probably lifted his leg to take a leak and got blasted when he got too close to the live wires. The dog had a handmade rope collar and a leash made from an old clothesline. It was a black mutt, bony and matted, probably belonged to a skell.
Joe took out his cell phone and dialed the precinct. “Terr, this is Joe.” I saw him close his eyes and shake his head. “Listen, we got a dead dog here. Who takes care of picking up the . . . uh, who handles this kind of thing?” He paused. “Okay, good. We also got some exposed wires. I have to get in touch with Con Ed—” He stopped and listened. “Yeah, actually they’re working up on 8th Avenue. Thanks, Terr, I appreciate it,” he said and hung up.
I didn’t think we’d need Animal Control, since the dog was dead. We use them and Emergency Service when some schmuck drug dealer that has too much money buys himself a tiger pup that grows up and mauls him and he winds up calling us from a locked room half bleeding to death. They come for rabid rats and dogs, and one time a couple of years ago there was a coyote loose in Central Park that the cops and park rangers wound up bagging with a tranquilizer gun.
“Okay,” Joe said. “Terri’s gonna notify Con Ed, but she said it might be quicker to flag them down if they’re working in the area. We saw them up on 8th Avenue, so either you or I could go over and let them know. She’ll also call Sanitation to pick up the dog.” He turned to the kid and said, “Thanks for calling, we’ll take it from here.”
“I’m not leaving,” the kid said, shaking his head. “Forget it. You think I don’t know the minute I leave you’ll toss him in the garbage pail.”
“We wouldn’t throw him in a garbage pail,” Joe said, taken aback. �
��Why would you say that?”
“Sure you would, that’s how you guys are.”
You can’t argue with these people, they’re thickheaded.
“What’s your problem?” I snapped, staring at him.
“I hate cops,” he sneered.
“So leave, no one’s keeping you here,” I said with a shrug and a scowl.
“I’m staying for the dog. I could tell he was starving. He suffered enough already.”
“And this is my problem?” I said, my voice rising. “If you were so concerned about the dog, why didn’t you feed it?”
“Why do you hate cops so much?” Joe asked, always the diplomat. He should work for the UN.
“Who cares?” I said. “He’s lucky I don’t lock him up for falsely reporting an incident.”
Joe gave me a “Tony, please” look. I waved him away and lit a cigarette. I was cranky and tired and in no mood for a bitter do-gooder who thought the cops were everyone’s problem. These yo-yos think they know everything; let them try to run the city without us.
“So why do you hate cops?” Joe asked again.
“I think they’re an infringement on people’s basic human rights,” he said angrily.
“Oh please with this crap,” I said as I walked over to the RMP. “I’m going over to notify Con Ed.”
I drove around the block and stopped where a Con Ed worker was feeding a hose into an open manhole. A compressor was going, so he couldn’t hear me. He was looking down into the hole with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and his Yankees hard hat turned backwards.
“Hey, buddy,” I yelled over the noise.
“Hey, what’s up?” he yelled.
“We got some exposed wires around the block, electrocuted a dog. You think you guys can take care of it?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? Take a number, get in line. We got hot spots all over the city. There’s a number you call to report it. They’ll send someone out eventually,” he said, already looking back down into the manhole.
If we were uptown or in the Village, the press would be out here already and Con Ed would respond quick enough. Otherwise, all you’d see on the news was people crying while walking their mutts, saying what a tragedy it was.
When I got back, Joe was still standing there making nice with the liberal. I stood, leaning back against the RMP away from them while we waited for Sanitation. Since Sanitation was right over by the West Side Highway it shouldn’t take too long, and sure enough, ten minutes later the truck came rumbling down 39th Street.
The Sanitation truck pulled up in front of the RMP, and an overweight guy about fifty years old came out in his regulation greens and an orange and green Department of Sanitation T-shirt. He had on thick gloves and old work boots and was friendly enough.
“Hey, guys, what’s going on?” he asked, pulling his right glove off to shake my and Joe’s hands.
“Hey, San Man, sorry we had to call you out here. We got a dead dog.” I pointed to the ground. “It must have hit the wires in the utility box of the light post and got shocked.”
“Yeah, we see this with the dogs more in the winter. The salt and the snow corrodes the wires,” he said, nodding toward the dog. “A lot of times it’s the dog owners. The dogs seem to sense the electric current, and when they back away from it the owner pulls them on the leash and they wind up getting jolted. They should pay more attention when the dog is pulling away.”
We went into it about the hot spots around the city. I’ve heard of sidewalk grates and manholes being electrified. In fact, I remember reading in the paper about someone rollerblading who fell on a live manhole cover and wound up getting the metal imprint of the cover seared into his skin.
San Man was telling us about a kid uptown that got electrocuted crossing the street by walking on the metal plates the city uses to cover the road while they’re doing construction.
“Was there something live under there?” Joe asked.
“No, it was road construction,” San Man said. “They call it stray voltage. It can be anywhere, not connected to anything. I guess it just latches on to the metal and zaps the next thing it hits.”
Yeah, another thing to kill you in this city.
“So does the city do anything about it, or do they just let Con Ed murder all the dogs?” This from our cop-hating loudmouth.
“What’s his problem?” San Man asked, pointing at him with his thumb.
“Please, we’ve been listening to this for twenty minutes,” I said, waving him away. “He’s gonna run for mayor and straighten us all out.”
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals,” the bigmouth recited.
“And this is my problem how?” I raised my eyebrows and put my hands out. “Now I’m responsible for all the dogs in America?”
“It’s Mahatma Gandhi,” he said. “You could learn a lot from him.”
“Really, so could you. Maybe you should go on a hunger strike or something, get the city to do something about the way the poor dogs are treated,” I said.
The truth is, I like dogs, and although it’s not very often we see them running around Midtown Manhattan, we always help them when we do. I wouldn’t tell this clown, but whenever I’ve seen one I’ve put the lights on and stopped traffic so the dog wouldn’t get hit by a car. If the dog has a tag, we find the owner; if it doesn’t, we take it back to the precinct to see if someone will take it. A lot of times a cop will take the dog home, and we only bring them to the ASPCA as a last resort, because we know they put the dogs to sleep.
San Man was rolling his eyes and shook our hands again, saying, “Alright, have a good one, guys.” He shot the bigmouth a hard look and put one of his gloves on. He looked down at the dog and up at the bigmouth from the corner of his eye as he put the other glove on.
I knew Joe caught the look and knew what he was going to do. I saw Joe rub his forehead and mumble, “This guy’s gonna freak.”
“I know,” I said, running my hand over my face.
We watched as the San Man walked over to the dog and started whistling. He picked the dog up and tossed it into the back of the truck. I heard an empty-sounding gong when the dog hit the metal. We tried to look busy with our memo books not looking up, knowing loudmouth was gonna lose it.
The bigmouth lost it and shrieked. He turned on Joe and me, calling us every name in the book while he was holding his head.
The San Man got back in the truck, and the bigmouth started chasing the truck as it pulled away, cursing as he ran, ineffectively swinging his backpack at the back of the truck.
It bothered me when the San Man threw the dog in there like that, but that’s the way the city handles dogs they find on the street. I wasn’t being callous here, there was nothing I could do. Trust me, if I could I’d give the dog a decent burial, but I had no place to bury him.
“Why are you playing with this guy?” Joe said, looking disappointed with me.
“Me? Play with him?” I asked, incredulous. “He started in with us before we even got here.”
“He was upset about the dog,” Joe said, like I didn’t know.
“He was blaming us for the dog being dead,” I said to Joe’s blank face. “He made it seem like we did something to the dog, and the dog’s dying had nothing to do with us. He wasn’t bothering you with all his ‘I hate cops’ crap?”
“No,” Joe said.
“Well, we can’t all be you, Joe,” I said.
Sometimes it aggravates me that nothing bothers Joe. I’d love to see him lose it sometime so I can see what I look like. Then I’ll stay calm like him and he can see how annoying it is.
“What?” I said when he kept staring at me. “I don’t care if you think I’m wrong. It’s people like him that want to take ‘One nation under God’ out of our pledge of allegiance and the Ten Commandments out of our courthouses.”
“He doesn’t know any better, Tony, or he wouldn’t be doing that. And even though he’
s on the opposite side of things from God, God still loves him and wants him to know it,” Joe said. Joe wasn’t being pious or anything. He means this stuff.
“Those nearby. I get it,” I said. “But I’m not there yet.”
“You’ll get there,” he said, smirking.
“Shut up,” I said.
One night Joe was telling me about the parable of the Good Samaritan, and he was talking about loving our neighbor, and I guess like the guy asking in the Bible, I thought it meant the people that lived next door to you. He said neighbor means “nearby,” anyone that’s near you. I’m selective a lot of the time about who’s “nearby,” and like tonight, it’s only if I like them. It’s funny; I can feel sorry for a skell quicker than I can work up any sympathy for some big-mouth liberal.
Joe called Terri back and had her call Con Ed for us. We waited there until we went in for our meal at 5:00 and passed out on the benches until Fiore’s watch beeped at 5:55.
The rest of the night was quiet, and Joe and I signed out at 7:50. Since we were working a day tour tomorrow, I was driving out to Long Island to see Michele and Stevie, and I’d head home tonight so I wouldn’t have to battle rush-hour traffic from out east in the morning. Joe drove home with me instead of waiting for the train.
There was some crosstown traffic on 34th Street, and Joe fell asleep before we cleared the Queens Midtown Tunnel. The stretch of 495 coming out of the tunnel was lined with electronic screens and billboards, which I personally think slows traffic down for the first mile or so through Queens. The roads were clear on the Long Island Expressway once I got into Nassau County.
Joe woke up around exit 52 and asked, “What time should we be at your house on Saturday?”
“Whenever you get there,” I said. “Is your dad driving out with you?”
“Yeah, he’s psyched. He’s been trying to start the block party tradition since he moved out to the Island, but everyone feels it’s too much like Brooklyn,” Joe said.
“So what’s wrong with Brooklyn? That’s what I don’t get, all these people brag about how they’re from Brooklyn, but once they move out of Brooklyn, they forget where they came from,” I said.
