Three More Dogs in a Row

by Neil Plakcy

  “He spoke about you,” Yesenia said. “He was so grateful for your help.” She pulled a tissue from the sleeve of her dress and reached up to dab at her eye. “Not that it mattered in the end.”

  “I believe Felix was a good person. I know he was trying to turn his life around.”

  Senora Logato spoke again. I managed to catch the named Yunior in there. Yesenia turned to her mother and spoke to her in a low, soothing voice.

  “Is he here?” I asked Yesenia. “Yunior Zeno?”

  Felix’s mother’s eyes blazed and she said what I assumed were derogatory things about Felix’s friend.

  “He’s not here,” Yesenia said. “My mother believes that Felix’s death is Yunior’s fault. Felix was trying to be good, but Yunior wouldn’t let him.”

  “I spoke to Felix a few days before he died,” I said. “He told me he was going to see Yunior on Christmas Eve.”

  “I knew it!” Yesenia said. “I knew Yunior had to be connected with Felix’s murder. He never would have gone to a place like that on his own.” She turned to her mother and translated in rapid-fire Spanish.

  There were others in line behind us, so Dr. Horz and I moved on. We sat several rows back and I looked at the crowd—only a few were Felix’s age, more young women than men, and I wondered if the young men of his community were dead or in prison.

  One of the women looked familiar. She had black hair piled up on her head in an elaborate beehive, like the late Amy Winehouse, with heavy black eye shadow and black lipstick. She wore a very low-cut white blouse which showed off her ample breasts, and black hip-huggers that left a line of flesh visible around her hips. Black stilettos and a gaudy black-and-silver belt completed her outfit.

  I tried to place her. She was too tough-looking to have been an Eastern College student. Her makeup and accessories said South Philly much more than Stewart’s Crossing. Who was she, and how did I know her?

  The funeral service was in Spanish, so I didn’t understand much beyond the obvious grief of Felix’s family, and I kept glancing over at the young woman. It took a few minutes to make the connection, from the young woman’s South Philly look to Jimmy Blackbridge to the woman in the Facebook photo with him.

  Discreetly, I pulled out my phone and accessed Facebook, then searched for that picture again. Yes, that was her. Merlys.

  I looked back to Jimmy’s picture. Was he there at the funeral, too? That would take brass balls, I thought. But no one in the sparsely populated chapel matched his look.

  What was Merlys doing there? Had Jimmy sent her to spy? See who showed up to mourn the man he’d killed?

  I took a deep breath. Once again, I was letting my imagination run away with me. Felix’s family appeared to believe that Yunior was responsible for Felix’s death. The police thought a rival drug gang had carried out the murders. I couldn’t assume anything. But I could talk to Merlys. Maybe she’d provide a clue I could pass on to Rick.

  When the service ended, Dr. Horz and I stood. “I’d like to say something to Felix’s mother,” she said.

  “I’ll meet you in the lobby,” I said, and I followed Merlys out. She didn’t appear to have come with anyone else, and just before the exit door she stopped to put on a black leatherette trenchcoat.

  “Can I help you with that?” I asked.

  She turned to look at me. I hadn’t had a woman size me up that way, so overtly sexual, in years, and I could see I fell short. “Sure,” she said, and it sounded like shoo-ah.

  “Were you a friend of Felix’s?” I asked as she slipped her arms in the sleeves.

  “I knew him,” she said. “You?”

  “He worked at the vet’s office where I take my dog,” I said. “The vet asked me to drive her here.”

  “Good Samaritan,” she said. She pushed the door open, and I followed her.

  I couldn’t let her walk away without trying to learn something. “Do you know Jimmy Blackbridge?” I asked.

  She stopped just outside the door. Mourners moved around us as she stared at me. “How do you know Jimmy?”

  I shrugged. “Felix talked about him.”

  She fished in the pocket of her trenchcoat and pulled out a pack of unfiltered Camels. She expertly knocked one into her hand. “Like what?”

  “He said they had a beef when they were both inside,” I said. My breath was coming out in misty clouds. I knew I was on delicate ground but I pushed forward. “Said if he ever saw Jimmy again he’d make sure he was fucked up good.”

  Merlys laughed harshly. “Shows you what a dipshit he was,” she said, as she lit the cigarette. “Felix broke Jimmy’s arm so Jimmy had to drop out of that damn dog program, and Jimmy was pissed as shit. For a tough guy, he has a real soft spot for dogs.” She took a drag on her cancer stick. “Anybody gets fucked up, it was gonna be Felix. And see what happened.”

  She leaned forward, and her cigarette breath floated in front of me. “Take it from me, Mr. Good Samaritan. You don’t want to get on Jimmy’s bad side.” She turned sharply on one stiletto heel and stalked away.

  Dr. Horz joined me as I watched Merlys leave. “Friend of yours?” she asked.

  “Nope. Just sharing memories of Felix.”

  We chose not to follow the family to the cemetery. Neither of us spoke much on the drive back to Stewart’s Crossing. It was two thirty by the time I dropped Dr. Horz at her office. After I backed out of the parking lot, I called Rick to give him a report on the funeral.

  As I drove down Main Street past the police station, I told him about finding the photo of Jimmy Blackbridge, then recognizing Merlys among the mourners.

  “Tell me you didn’t talk to her,” Rick said. “This woman you think might be a killer’s girlfriend.”

  “It’s not like I gave her my name or anything,” I said. “I wanted to find out if Jimmy Blackbridge was carrying a grudge against Felix the way the guy from Paws Up said. And Merlys said he was.”

  Rick exhaled deeply. “Why don’t you apply to the police academy, Steve? If you’re so damned determined to be a detective.”

  “I couldn’t pass the physical. I was thinking of going private. Rochester and Steve, Dog Detectives.”

  “Don’t joke about this, Steve. This is serious.”

  “She was a South Philly girl with big hair and stiletto heels,” I said.

  “And she probably had a .32 in her pocket, or a switchblade. Wake up and live in the real world, Levitan.”

  “You forget,” I said. “I spent a year behind bars. I know how to deal with criminals. I am one.”

  “I keep forgetting that,” Rick said. And then he hung up.

  24 – Social Justice

  “It was nice of you to go to Felix’s funeral,” Lili said that evening, after I had admired the French manicure on her fingernails. “That impulse is one of the things I love about you. The way you care so much about people, and about social justice.”

  “I wouldn’t say that I’m more interested in social justice than the next guy,” I said.

  “Yeah, and that’s why you spend so much time investigating crimes,” she said. “Tell me another.”

  “To me, caring about other people is wrapped up in being Jewish,” I said. “Like Rabbi Hillel said, when he was challenged to define the essence of Judaism while standing on one foot. Love thy neighbor as thyself. My attitudes were formed by all those years in Sunday School, Hebrew school and synagogue. Wasn’t it the same for you?”

  “We didn’t belong to a synagogue in Cuba or in Mexico,” Lili said. “So all I learned about being Jewish was from my grandparents. It wasn’t until moved to Kansas City and it was time for Fedi to start studying for his bar mitzvah that my parents joined a temple. I remember my mother was mortified that we were a charity case because we were so poor. And there were all these things that we didn’t understand, so Fedi and I kept to ourselves.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, I remember we studied this unit on Jewish last names,” she said. “And how many of them
were derived from common German words. Weinstock is easy—it means grapevine. The teacher listed a bunch of others, with their English equivalents, and ended with Schwartz, with no definition. So I raised my hand and asked, ‘What is a Schwartz?’”

  I laughed.

  “That’s what the class did, too. My teacher asked me if I knew what a shvartze was, and I said no. She explained that it was a term Jewish people used for black people, and I said something like ‘not negrito?’ which was what my parents said. She went into this whole diatribe about using bad names for people – things I’d never heard, words for Italians and Poles and blacks. How Jews were called all kinds of names like kike, and that we shouldn’t perpetuate those stereotypes. When we got home that day and told our parents what had happened, they were horrified. My mother said that anything she said in the house shouldn’t be repeated, that people would think badly of us.”

  “It’s a Jewish thing,” I said. “My parents always taught me that I belonged to a minority that had been persecuted throughout the ages, from ancient Egypt to the Spanish Inquisition to the Holocaust. And everything that happened in the world had this kind of “is this good for the Jews” concept attached to it. Whenever somebody Jewish was arrested, or ran for office, or anything, they’d ask that.”

  “My parents said the same thing, only in Spanish,” Lili said. She stood up. “I’m going to catch up on emails. Call me when you’re ready for dinner.”

  Lili went upstairs and Rochester jumped up on the sofa beside me and settled his head against my lap. As I stroked his smooth golden coat I thought about what Lili had said. I’d always believed that my investigations came from my basic nosiness, the same inquisitive nature that had led me to prison. But what if there were some nobler motives buried inside me? Some concept of social justice that I had learned at the synagogue?

  Was that what I’d been doing all along? Or was that a rationalization? My musings were interrupted by the persistent drumbeat of the Hawaii Five-O theme.

  “Hey, Rick.”

  “I’m sorry I was rude to you before,” he said. “The truth is, you think outside the box, and sometimes I get irritated when you figure things out before I do.”

  “No worries,” I said. “We’re both on the same side, right?”

  “Truth, justice and the American way,” he said. “Listen, I got the autopsy results back on Mr. Fictura. Heart attack, caused by an overdose of potassium.”

  “Holy crap,” I said.

  “My feelings exactly. You mind if I come over and brainstorm with you?”

  “Not at all. Bring Rascal and come for dinner.”

  I hung up and hollered upstairs. “Rick’s on his way. What do we have to eat?”

  Lili appeared at the top of the stairs. “It would be nice if you asked me first before you invite company over. We don’t have anything prepared and the house is a mess.”

  “Rick isn’t company. How about if I order a pizza and have him pick it up, and then I do some cleaning?”

  “Make sure you vacuum,” she said, and I heard her go into the office and close the door.

  “How do I get myself into these situations, Rochester?” I asked. The dog stared at me balefully. I called to order the pizza, and then texted Rick to pick it up. Then I vacuumed the downstairs, put away the pile of towels from the dining room table, plumped up the sofa pillows and even dusted the bookshelves. I heard the shower upstairs, and when Rick arrived with the pizza and the garlic rolls, Lili came downstairs looking beautiful.

  Rascal and Rochester besieged Rick as he carried the food to the dining room table. “You’ll get yours, monsters,” he said. “Chill out. Hi, Lili. Thanks for letting me come over.”

  “Mi casa es su casa,” she said. “In other words, you’re always welcome here.”

  We sat down to eat. “I know you’re bursting to know what’s going on at Crossing Manor, Steve,” Rick said, between bites.

  “Hey, you’re the one who wanted to brainstorm,” I said. “But yeah, you’re right.”

  “You asked if Fictura had been on IVs before he died. I checked with the nurse on duty New Year’s Eve. She said he was throwing up earlier and she put him on IV fluids to keep him from getting dehydrated.”

  “How about Mrs. Tuttle and Mrs. Divaram?” I asked.

  “One step ahead of you, Brother Joe,” he said, making another Hardy Boys reference. “I checked with the nurse about them, too. Same pattern. Both of them had been vomiting earlier in the day, and were put on IV fluids.”

  “So that’s how the killer got the potassium into them. Adding it to their IV drips.”

  “But why?” Lili asked. “Why those particular patients? Did they have something in common?”

  She and I both looked at Rick. “I’m working on that, but I haven’t found anything yet. It doesn’t look like they knew each other before they ended up at Crossing Manor. Mrs. Tuttle lived in Stewart’s Crossing all her life and so did Mr. Pappas, but she was a lot older than he was, and lived in a different neighborhood. Mrs. Divaram was from Philadelphia, and her son picked out the facility for her. Mr. Fictura was from Levittown.”

  “Mrs. Tuttle was Edith’s roommate,” I said. “And Mrs. Divaram shared a room with Mrs. Vinci. Were the four of them in any therapy groups together or anything?”

  Rick shook his head. “Mrs. Tuttle had dementia so she stayed in bed. Mr. Fictura needed dialysis so his activity was limited. Mr. Pappas was limited by his Crohn’s, and Mrs. Divaram was depressed about her son, so she didn’t participate in anything.”

  “Have you looked into the staff?” I asked. “Anybody stick out?”

  “I’m working on it, but you’d be surprised at how many people work there, from the administrator and the director of nursing down to the cleaning staff. There has to be an RN on duty all the time, so there are three shifts as well as floaters who come in per diem. Then there are the certified nursing assistants – there are nearly twenty of them, as well as physical, occupational and speech therapists.”

  “Do you need any help looking at them?” I asked.

  “Thanks for the offer but I’ll manage,” Rick said. “Mr. Fictura’s death seems to wipe out Felix Logato as a suspect. Too bad he didn’t live to see that.”

  “I wonder if his being suspected of the theft drove him to go back to his old friends in Philly,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He might have gotten frustrated that people judged him because of his record.”

  “Do you feel that way?” Lili asked, and I saw Rick was interested in the answer, too.

  I didn’t have to think long. “Felix and I came from different circumstances,” I said. “People saw him, the way he looked, his tattoos, the way he talked, and they formed an impression of him. Add that to his record, and I’m sure people thought the worst of him—that he was a murderer or something. But I was a lot luckier than Felix. Usually when people find out I have a record they automatically assume it’s for white collar crime, and they don’t seem to be all that frightened of me.”

  Lili took my hand and squeezed, and Rick nodded. “Yeah, I can see that. I know a lot of cons get a rough deal when they get out of prison, which just pushes them back to their old friends and old habits.”

  We talked about the staff members Lili and I had met at Crossing Manor, and the three of us threw out a bunch of ideas, but nothing seemed to work. None of the nurses or CNAs had any disciplinary actions against them. Everyone who worked there had been investigated and bonded, even the receptionist.

  After Rick left, I opened my laptop and went back to the reports I had found on nursing home deaths. Was there any commonality to them, perhaps something we might have overlooked?

  I found one case that looked interesting. An elderly woman with no life-threatening issues had experienced convulsions, followed by a loss of consciousness and then death. The police had ordered an autopsy, and the ME found a recent puncture wound in her arm. Further investigation revealed that a larg
e bubble of air had lodged in one of the arteries to the brain, cutting off blood flow.

  The woman had no close relatives, and no one appeared to benefit from her death. The police investigation was stymied until the wife of a man with Alzheimer’s requested an exhumation of her husband’s body. He had died of a stroke at the same facility, and the autopsy revealed a similar puncture wound.

  The police then began going back over all the recent deaths and found four more patients who had died in the same way, by having an air bubble injected into a vein. The cases had nothing in common except the same nursing home. Just like ours in Stewart’s Crossing. Dogged police work had traced the cases back to the first incident, and charged a local man with the murder of his mother-in-law. He then admitted that he’d discovered he enjoyed killing people and had focused on those at the home no one would miss.

  I copied the URL for the article and pasted it into an email to Rick, then sat back to consider. Could the same thing be happening at Crossing Manor? How many more people would have to die before the killer was caught?

  Could there be a victim zero, and all the other deaths follow from that one? The first person I had met who died was Mrs. Tuttle. I realized that I didn’t even know her first name, and so searched the local obituaries by last name.

  Myrna Tuttle, I discovered, had been eighty-nine when she died. She was survived by two sons, Elliott and Everett, and a daughter, Eileen.

  When I was a kid, I knew several families who gave all their kids names that all began with the same letter. I used to daydream about having brothers and sisters—Sam, Sarah, Sally and so on.

  I looked back at the obituary. After Eileen’s name, Richard Jonas was in parenthesis. Why did that name ring a bell? I kept reading, and saw that one of Myrna Tuttle’s grandchildren was named Hugh.

  Of course, Hugh Jonas, the veterinary assistant at Animal House. Could Mrs. Tuttle be patient zero? Perhaps Hugh had stolen the potassium to put his grandmother out of her misery, and then discovered he loved the thrill of taking a life?