Three More Dogs in a Row

by Neil Plakcy

  The items in the collection weren’t limited to Judaica, though. There were gold patens and chalices from various Catholic churches, a Greek Orthodox censer, and a Persian Quran, ornately decorated with ink, watercolor, lapis lazuli, and gold, which was said to have been rescued by an American soldier. The same soldier was said to have also listed several other items of non-religious significance from the same area; details upon request.

  The last item on the list was a reliquary said to contain the thumb of St. Roch, patron saint of dogs. I zoomed in on the picture. It was a lot clearer than the one we had seen at St. Mary Martyr, and in color. Someone had placed a ruler in the shot to show the scale of the box. “This item, long in the possession of a Benedictine abbey in Pennsylvania, has recently come onto the market,” the description read. “Made of Spanish silver in approximately the early 17th century, it was part of the royal treasures of the Spanish crown, looted by Joseph Napoleon and presented to the abbey during his residency in New Jersey. The box is locked, and there is no key, so its contents remain a mystery. Does it include the saint’s thumb? If you buy this item you can determine for yourself!”

  Somebody had done his homework, I thought. Or at least embellished the story told by Brother Anselm.

  There were a few more descriptive details, and photos of the reliquary from several different angles—front, side, back, top and bottom.

  But that was it—no indication of who to contact to purchase the item, or how much it would cost.

  There was no domain name for the website as part of the URL, only an IP address-- a 32-bit numeric address written as four numbers separated by periods. This one was a dynamic URL—one that was created in response to a query to a database. That meant in addition to the IP address there was a question mark at the end followed by a series of numbers and digits.

  The IP address in this case was 10.140.205.60. I opened a new window for whois.com to see if I could find where the site was registered. Only a post office box was listed, though, which I copied down, and there was no administrative contact.

  Then I sat back and tried to work out a time line. DeAndre hung around the drop-in center and spoke to Brother Anselm, who thought that the reliquary might be hidden at the abbey. Ka’Tar had told me that DeAndre knew Striker through the drop-in center, and Striker had been in Afghanistan with Owen Keely. I’d seen the Pinterest picture showing Brother Anselm, DeAndre and Owen at Friar Lake.

  Once the monks had left for western Pennsylvania, DeAndre, Owen and Striker could have searched the property without fear of being discovered. Something happened, though, and DeAndre ended up dead. Had Striker or Owen killed him?

  At some point the reliquary had been found. I guessed that it had finally come to light during the most recent break-in; otherwise, why keep looking? Then someone had photographed the reliquary, written the description, and posted it online. Presumably there was a clientele out there for discreet purchases of religious objects without concern for provenance.

  Striker had emailed that website address to Owen. Striker had been a soldier in Afghanistan, and so I was willing to make the leap that he was the soldier who had supplied the Persian Quran and the other artifacts – or at least, that he knew that soldier.

  I called Rick Stemper. “You home? I want to come over.”

  “Sure. But I’m out of beer.”

  “Don’t worry, I have a six-pack in my fridge I can bring over.”

  I typed up the IP address, the user name and the password, and then printed it out. I found a rubber glove in the kitchen and used it to pull the paper out of the printer and fold it up. Then I slipped it into a plastic bag. Then I returned Caroline’s laptop to the attic.

  I grabbed the beer and put a leash on Rochester, then piled him into the BMW. It was almost nine o’clock, late for an excursion, but I wanted to pass this information on as soon as I could.

  “What’s up?” Rick asked when he opened his front door to me and Rochester. The dog bowled right past us and began chasing Rascal around the living room.

  “Can you check out a website?” I asked.

  “Sure, but the computer’s in the spare bedroom.”

  I left the beer on the kitchen table and followed him.

  “What’s there?” he asked.

  “The reliquary from Friar Lake.”

  “How did you find that?”

  “Inquisitive fingers.”

  “In other words I don’t want to know.”

  “Exactly.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Steve. If you got this information illegally then I can’t use it because that would make me an accessory to whatever crime you committed to get it. Oh, and by the way, if you’re still hacking, then you’ve violated your parole, and as an officer of the law I’m required to report that information to Santiago Santos.”

  “When did you become such a boy scout?” I asked. “You’ve been willing to use information I found for you in the past.”

  “And I was wrong. I admit that. I see what’s happening to you, Steve. You keep giving in to whatever addiction you’ve got to this hacking business. As your friend, and as a cop, I can’t keep ignoring that.”

  “I haven’t killed anybody. I haven’t stolen a 17th century religious artifact and put it up for sale on a website along with a whole lot of other stolen goods. So I broke in to Owen’s email account. Big deal. You’re not interested in this? No problem. I’ll find a way to get it to Tony Rinaldi so he won’t be able to connect it with me. And since he isn’t my friend he shouldn’t have a problem with it.”

  I turned to walk out but Rick said, “Steve. Wait.”

  “What?” I looked back at him.

  He sat down at his desktop computer, on a wooden door placed on two short file cabinets. “Where do I go?”

  I opened the plastic bag and dumped the paper out next to him, then put the bag back in my pocket.

  “Even if your fingerprints aren’t on this paper, I still know it came from you.”

  “Your word against mine,” I said.

  He sighed, then unfolded the paper and typed in the address. When the log-in window appeared, he entered the ID and “owen” as the password.

  The list of items popped up, and he said, “Shit. You weren’t kidding.”

  “Check out the last item on the bottom line,” I said, pointing.

  He scanned through the site and then looked at me. “This is big, Steve. Way bigger than Stewart’s Crossing or Leighville.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  We were staring at the screen when a chat window popped up.

  “Shit,” Rick said. “Are we busted?”

  u looking at something the message read.

  I leaned over Rick’s shoulder and typed, yeah, showing customer.

  “Steve…” Rick said.

  b careful im watching, our mystery fence replied.

  I typed, ok signing off, and then closed the window and the website.

  “I can’t just sit on this,” Rick said. He turned away from the computer. I sat on the edge of his spare bed, across from him. “I’ve got to notify somebody. But how am I supposed to say I got this information?”

  “Didn’t you say you searched Owen Keely’s room?”

  “Yeah. But I didn’t find anything.”

  I kept my mouth shut—I know, something new and different for me.

  “Steve. I can’t manufacture evidence.” He stood up. “I need a beer.”

  We went back out to the kitchen and we each opened a beer. The dogs were lying next to each other on the living room floor.

  “You know you could go back to prison for this,” he said.

  “But I’m not, unless you – or somebody else – finds evidence that I did something to violate my parole. You’re not going to find that.”

  “You can’t keep doing this, Steve. I’m telling you this as your friend. One of these days you’re going to screw up and get caught. And the consequences aren’t going to be pretty.”


  I finished my beer. “I know. Believe me, I do. I wish I could just stop. I keep telling myself I have to. But I can’t.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. “I hear those kind of excuses from every criminal I pull in.”

  The criminal tag stung, but that’s because it was true. Was I any better than Owen Keely, DeAndre Dawson or the mysterious Striker?

  Well, yeah, because I hadn’t killed anybody or stolen anything that didn’t belong to me.

  I stood up. “Rochester, let’s go.”

  He scrambled up and rushed over to me.

  “Talk to you later,” I said to Rick. “Don’t worry, I can let myself out.”

  29 – Catch You Later

  As I drove back home from Rick’s, I kept coming back to what he’d said—that he heard the same kind of justifications I spouted from every criminal he arrested.

  “Am I a bad person, Rochester?” I asked, reaching over to stroke the soft fur on the top of his head. “I don’t think so. I’m trying to do good things.”

  He didn’t answer. But then, there wasn’t anything else to say, was there?

  We went for a long walk, and Rochester sniffed a lot of trees and bushes. He peed and chased a squirrel. Business as usual for him.

  I had a lot of trouble falling asleep. I kept squirming around in bed, my brain full of conflicting thoughts. How could I justify continuing to hack into websites and email servers when it was against the law? But didn’t I have a moral obligation to do whatever I could to bring a criminal to justice?

  Who was I, though, to make those decisions? I wasn’t a cop. I wasn’t a private eye or an insurance investigator or anything like that. How could I justify my actions when I was just an ordinary guy? And how could I stop when I got such a high from doing what I did?

  There were no answers to those big questions, and I finally drifted off to sleep in the middle of the night, only to be woken at seven by a big dog sniffing and licking my face.

  I yawned and struggled out of bed. I was still troubled by my conversation with Rick the night before. What if he called Santiago Santos and reported his suspicions? I could wipe out the hard drive on Caroline’s laptop, then take it apart and discard the pieces in a dozen different trash cans. Without evidence, Santos couldn’t send me back to prison.

  The laptop wasn’t the problem. If I had to, I could walk into any computer store and pay cash for a new machine, then go on line and reload all the tools I needed. But that would be a final acknowledgement that I couldn’t stop hacking. I was scared to see where that path would lead me.

  I’d rather take my chances with Santos. The worst he could do would be to crack down on me, forcing me to report in more frequently, subjecting me to an endless series of lectures about my behavior. Maybe even make me go to some kind of addiction counseling.

  Did I need that? It wasn’t like I was pulling out my secret laptop every night and hacking random websites, or even doing the kind of thing that had gotten me in trouble in the first place, breaking into credit bureaus and changing records. I could not name a single innocent person harmed by anything I’d done. Except myself – and I wasn’t innocent.

  Rochester was not interested in philosophical discussions. He just wanted to go out for his walk like usual, poop and pee and sniff and socialize, then come back home for his breakfast.

  We were halfway down Sarajevo Court when my cell phone rang.

  “I’m not lying for you,” Rick said. “Even if what you did helps catch whoever killed DeAndre Dawson, it was still wrong.”

  “Good morning to you, too.”

  “Don’t get smart with me, asshole. I was up half the night trying to figure out what to do. Hell, the murder isn’t even my case. All I’m supposed to be doing is looking for Owen Keely to ask about the stuff he stole from Mark Figueroa.”

  I took a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry if I put you in a bad position. But I stand by what I did. Whoever killed DeAndre needs to be caught, and punished. We owe that to Shenetta and Jamarcus and Ka’Tar.”

  “Save me the moralizing. You provided some valuable information, and I need to deal with that. After this is over, you and I are going to have a long talk and come up with an action plan.”

  I wanted to tease him about appropriating corporate double-speak—but for once I kept my mouth shut.

  “For now,” he said, “I know a guy with the FBI in Philly, Hank Quillian. I worked on a case with him once. I’m going to give him a call and pass on this website information. See what he has to say.”

  “Why don’t you just call Tony Rinaldi? The murder is his case.”

  “And he’ll know just where the information came from. Hank, on the other hand, has never heard of you or your itchy fingers. I’ll let him know that the website is connected to DeAndre’s murder and he can contact Tony himself.”

  Rochester spotted a squirrel and took off, dragging me along behind him. “Sounds good,” I said.

  “I want you to do something before I do, though. Go see Mark and show him the website, and see if anything that was stolen from him shows up there.”

  “Why me?”

  “I don’t know. I’m flying with my gut here, and I want to know everything I can before I call Hank. But I don’t think I want it on the record that I spoke to Mark before I passed the info to the FBI.”

  “All right. I’ll go over there on my way to work.”

  When I got back home, I called Mark. “Hey, it’s Steve Levitan. Can I come over and show you a website?”

  “Something good or something bad?” he asked.

  “Let’s call it neutral for now,” I said.

  He said he’d be home until he opened the store at eleven. “There’s an outside stair behind the store, that leads right up to my apartment,” he said. “Come around that way. I’ve got a fenced yard back there, if you want to bring your dog.”

  “Cool. See you in an hour or so.”

  I cut up some fresh strawberries into a container of Greek yogurt and wolfed it down while I scanned the morning paper. There was an article about the spate of robberies in Crossing Estates, and I knew that wasn’t good for Rick. But the reporter hadn’t connected them to the ones in Leighville, or to Owen Keely.

  After a quick shower, I got dressed and loaded Rochester into the car. I drove down Main Street, passing Bethea, our local crazy lady, on the way. She had a habit of crossing the street very slowly, over and over again, tying up traffic. Most people just accepted her as local color—unless they were in a hurry.

  I wasn’t.

  I turned down Ferry Street and parked in the driveway beside Mark’s store, behind his van. I opened the gate that led into the fenced yard behind the building, and then let Rochester off his leash to run around.

  Mark had the second-floor door open as I climbed the stairs. “Is this about Owen?”

  “Yeah. You heard anything from him lately?”

  He shook his head, and stepped back to let me into his kitchen. He had his laptop open on the table. “The things that you think Owen stole from your store,” I said, as I sat down. “Any of them have any religious significance?”

  He thought as I opened a web browser and typed in the IP address for the list of stolen items. “Just one,” he said. “A Russian icon—a painting on wood, about the size of a three by five card. A saint in a red cloak, with a halo over his head.”

  “I found this website online, with a whole list of religious artifacts for sale. The reliquary from Friar Lake is there. And I think I saw that icon there, too.”

  When the ID and password window popped up, I entered the information I had used before.

  The small window disappeared—but instead of seeing the list of items I got a message that the password I had entered was invalid. “Crap,” I said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Striker must have figured out someone else had Owen’s password, and he changed it.”

  Mark was confused, and as I started to explain to him, I called
Rick. “Better get your FBI guy on that site right away,” I said. “Striker changed the password.”

  “Can’t you find the new one?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “If I’m going to tell Hank anything I have to give him the right information.”

  I looked over at Mark. I didn’t want to say anything too explicit. “You know what you’re asking me, don’t you?” I said to Rick. “I’m sure the FBI can do what I can do. And they’ll do it legally.”

  “But if they can’t see the website, they won’t have enough to get a warrant to investigate further.” He took a deep breath. “Where are you now?”

  “At Mark’s.”

  “I’ll meet you at your house in fifteen minutes.”

  “No, Rick. I’ll get you what you want. But you don’t have to get your hands dirty.”

  “That’s not the way I roll, pal.” He hung up.

  “What’s going on?” Mark asked.

  “I’ll have to fill you in later,” I said. “Trust me, you don’t want to know anything right now.”

  I hurried down the outside staircase, and Rochester came bounding over to me. We got back in the car and drove back home. Rick’s truck was already parked there.

  “I’ve been turning my back on you and your little adventures for long enough,” Rick said as I walked up to him. “I want to see what you do first-hand.”

  “Can you turn on the espresso machine?” I asked, unlocking the front door. “I’ll be right back down, but we’re going to need some coffee.”

  Rochester followed Rick into the kitchen as I went upstairs to retrieve Caroline’s laptop. By the time I got back downstairs the machine was beginning its brew cycle.

  “You have a special computer?” Rick asked, as I set it up on the kitchen table in the breakfast nook.

  “Used to be Caroline’s,” I said. “Santos doesn’t know I have it.”

  He just shook his head.

  The machine started to whistle, and Rick got up to make the coffee while I set up the password generating software. I left it running and joined him in the kitchen. “You want a mocha?” I asked.

  “I’ll stick to the cappuccino.” He foamed the milk while I got out the chocolate syrup for myself. We made our drinks in silence and then walked back to the breakfast nook. The password software was busy running through combinations and permutations.