The Dog Killer of Utica by Frank Lentricchia Read Free Book Online Page A

Conte’s head as he passes the Nichols cross street where he must turn right toward Bleecker—thinking of the gift he’ll spring on her—first-class airline tickets and choice seats at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm, where the concert will be reprised. Would she go now? Will she leave him now? She said she wouldn’t, but if she should leave? She said she … but if she does? What then? What does he do about it? The same thing he did about his children’s murders. Nothing. On his gravestone:
Eliot the Impotent. Herein lies a man who could not act when it truly mattered
.
    Lost in the narrow space of himself and long past Nichols when the illuminated tower of Saint Agnes breaks through his reverie and snaps him back into the physical world—bootless shoes in seven inches of heavy, wet snow—hatless head and shoulders wearing a thick white cape—Conte backtracking quickly now toward Nichols when a darkened figure of substantial size comes running hard straight at him. Conte gives no ground. The man abruptly swerves, almost falling, into the front yard of an ill-maintained two-family house. The man drops his pants. The man squats. The man commences to defecate massively—pants down at his ankles still—squattingstill—grunting and moaning and shitting. Conte roars “not in my neighborhood.” And in a sudden burst he’s upon him and flipping him over and mashing the man’s face into the steaming heap with his knees ground into the man’s upper back—220 pounds of Conte—Conte whispering, “In my neighborhood?” The man inhaling shit and snow. The man suffocating. Conte rises. The man gagging, coughing, vomiting. Without daring to look up at his assailant, the man says, “Why?” Conte whispers, “This is East Utica.” Pulls off the man’s pants, walks to the sewer at the corner of Mary and Nichols, stuffs them in. The bare-assed man races off bare-assed into the night.
    Two more minutes to the Ivanovic house. He’s on his way—having acted when it truly did not matter.
    608 Nichols: imitation Victorian elegance, common on the East Side of town. Narrow across the front, very deep and high, with a full-windowed attic lending it the aspect of a stately three-storey structure. (Worth about thirty-five grand in a buyer’s market.) Recently painted dead white, Conte sees it shimmer through the screen of the wind-slanted snow like a haunted house in a grade-B Hollywood horror film. All windows are dark except one on the first floor, where Novak Ivanovic has been standing for an hour—peering intently out from behind barely parted heavy drapes, awaiting Conte’s arrival. What he sees ascending the steps, into the pool of uncertain light cast by the flickering porch fixture, is a big man with a reassuring demeanor. (Ivanovic needs reassurance.) The big man slicks off the snow from his head. This big man, thinksIvanovic, this very picture of professorial composure, who presses the nonfunctional doorbell—this must be Eliot Conte.
    They sit in the parlor, as it is called in East Utica, on chairs of hostile design—no arms, ass-bruising seats. Ivanovic has convinced a reluctant Conte to remove his drenched shoes and socks and to accept a pair of his heavy woolens. Conte’s shoes amaze Ivanovic. (Ivanovic knows shoes.) Never has he seen anything like them in Utica or Syracuse stores. He’s curious where they can be found, but suppresses the urge to ask and feels deeply ashamed to have let such thoughts into his mind in the context of his family crisis. (Beautiful, these Bruno Magli shoes.) Conte accepts a towel for his soaked head. Ivanovic will speak when he’s finished toweling off. Conte drops the towel to the floor. Ivanovic opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.
    “Talk to me, Mr. Ivanovic.”
    “Professor Conte—”
    “Call me Eliot.”
    “Thank you. I am Novak. Please help me. Please.”
    (Silence: mutual discomfort rising.)
    “Talk to me. Where’s Mirko?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Your