Robert Tanenbaum - Falsely Accused

“Ahh, not… not good,” said Sills, his eyes rolling in his head. The bloody dead muzzle of his dog was pressed up against his cheek.

“No, I bet you’re not,” said Marlene. “It’s no fun to be attacked by a big dog. Do you understand how Vickie felt when you got your dog to chase her? She felt just like you do now. Look, you pissed on yourself. You must be very frightened. Aren’t you frightened, Mr. Sills?”

“Wha-whadyou want?”

“I’m giving you an experience, Mr. Sills, the same experience you’ve been giving your family. You’re being attacked by a big animal, and your pet has been torn apart in front of your eyes, just like you did to your daughter’s little kitten. How do you like it so far?”

There was no answer. Marlene said, “Sweety, piu strettamente !” The dog’s jaws clamped tighter, and Sills jerked and made noises.

“You have to answer me, Mr. Sills. How do you like it?”

“Don’t. Don’t like it. Jesus, make it let go.”

“Sweety, non tanto ! That’s good, Mr. Sills. You don’t like it, and your family didn’t like it when you did it to them. Now, I don’t know what you’re thinking right now, Mr. Sills, because I don’t know you. Maybe you’re thinking that you’re going to get back at me, or your family, and that somehow you’re going to be able to continue doing like you’ve been doing. Maybe you’re the kind of person who’s completely out of control. I sure hope not, for your sake, Mr. Sills. Because things have changed. And I hope that this experience-I mean, lying here in your own piss with your dead dog squashed against your face-will have a good effect. You remember when you barged in here, I said that if you did, you would be in trouble, and here you are, in trouble. Is this enough trouble for you? Answer me!”

The tone of Marlene’s voice was enough to make Sweety utter a diesel-ish growl. “Yeah, yeah, enough …” yelped Sills.

“Fine. Now, look: I’m not forcing you to do anything bad; I’m just trying to get you to do the right thing. You’ve got a problem dealing with anger, you have a little drinking problem, you can find programs to help you out. I hope you do. But meanwhile, you have to be nice to your kids; support them; be polite to your ex-wife. You know, be a man! I think you can do that, don’t you?”

“Yeah … sure,” said Sills.

“I’m delighted to hear it,” said Marlene cheerfully. “And I’m going to let you up in a second, and I’m not even going to call the cops and report that you violated your protective order, because I don’t want you to go to jail, maybe lose your job. Here’s the thing, though, Mr. Sills: if I hear you’re giving Vickie a hard time, I will find you. I know where you live and where you work. And we’ll share another experience, only this time the dog will eat your face right off your skull-nose, eyes, ears, the works. Look into my eye, Mr. Sills, and tell me that you believe me. And make me believe you!”

“And then?” asked Maggie Duran over the phone.

“Nothing much,” answered Marlene. “I gave Sweety ‘ Lasciane ’ and he backed off and Sills got up and ran out of there without a word. Burned rubber too.”

“Hot damn, girl! You’ve made my month!”

“Glad to hear it,” said Marlene a little sharply. “It was extremely unpleasant. I had to use a kitchen knife to cut the fucking dead dog’s jaws off of Sweety, and then Vickie went hysterical when she saw the mess. The place’ll need to be repainted, and then I had to stop by the animal emergency room on First Avenue to get my dog stitched up.”

“Send me the bill.”

“I intend to,” said Marlene, and shortly thereafter she closed the conversation.

It was nearly one in the morning, and Marlene had stripped and showered and taken a hot soak in her converted electroplating tank and thrown her clothes into the machine before calling Mattie Duran with her report. Now she was lounging in her office, in her kimono, feeling faintly nauseated from the aftereffects of violence and wondering whether the stress was hurting the baby, and cursing yet again the scientists who had condemned cigarettes and alcohol for the pregnant.

She saw that the message light on her machine was on, and so she punched the button and listened to messages from her mother, Ariadne Stupenagel, and Denny Maher. The last was the only one who was likely, nay, certain, to be up and talkative at one a.m. and so, consulting her Rolodex, she dialed the morgue and asked for the extension of the lab room that Maher used as a home away from home.

“Peg o’ my heart!” said Maher when he heard her voice.

“Did you get it?”

“It?”

“Oh, Denny, don’t tell me you forgot!”

“Oh, now, wait a minute, it’s coming, it’s coming … ah, sure, and how could I forget a promise to the likes of yourself? You’ll be interested to know that something is definitely amiss in regards to the three young Ibero-Americans, late of this city. Someone has snatched the autopsy reports, and the lads’re being cremated-”

“Oh, crap! We’re screwed, then, right?”

“Would have been, absent the wiles of the cunning Maher. Little did the villain know that the photo lab keeps the negatives of all the autopsy shots and the reports are microfilmed. I looked them up and had some glossies made for you. I could have them framed. Something for the den …?”

“What do they show?”

“A pair of poor hanged boys and one without a mark on him.”

“The two were definitely hanged?”

“Oh, yes, if the marks on their necks aren’t just painted on. The position of the ligature marks, you see, the classic invert V, up and past their ears. Very different from garotting, where they run right around like a slice in a sausage, or manual strangulation, where you see the thumb marks. And they’re deep as well: these boys hung by their own weight, for certain, my sweet.”

“Crap!”

“Oh? And did you want them not to be hanged?”

“Yes. I mean, no. I mean … Christ, I don’t know what I mean anymore. It’s one-thirty in the morning, and I’m totally wiped, and my dog just ate another dog-no, don’t say it, I know, it’s a dog-eat-dog world-and I’m too frazzled to think straight right now. Look, Denny, can you courier those pictures and copies of the actual reports over to me tomorrow-I mean, later today? Maybe I can make something of them. And Denny? Try to find out who might have lifted those original shots, or if the morgue people recall anybody asking questions about those three autopsies.”

Angelo Fuerza made a good appearance on the witness stand. He wore a gray pinstripe and a benign expression, looking like a decent professional man, a family doctor. His thick, heavy-framed black horn-rims and his neat, dark rectangular mustache gave his face a defining horizontality, like an equals sign escaped from a math text. His movements were small and precise; you would take your kid to him for the flu and do what he told you to do.

Dr. Fuerza was, in fact, a family doctor. Some fifteen years previously, he had settled in the Morrisania section of the Bronx, in the first wave of Puerto Rican migration, and started a pediatric clinic catering to Hispanic families, and had stuck it out through the growing blight. Early on he had learned how to corral public money, and his organization, El Centro de la Salud de los Ninos, had become a key principality in the City’s multibillion-dollar health empire. Money and politics being inextricably linked in the City, as elsewhere, Dr. Fuerza had become a politician too, a man who might be depended upon to deliver votes in return for largesse at budget time. He had survived several investigations, and it was inevitable that, when the time came to appoint the first Hispanic health commissioner, Dr. Fuerza would get the prize.