Richard Montanari: Kiss Of Evil

“A fine specimen of dog,” Paris says. “Beautiful boy, Declan.” The Jack Russell terrier responds to Paris’s encomium, its muscular haunches propelling him from the ground up to Paris’s chest with one supple leap. “Is he a good ratter?”

“Oh yeah,” Mercedes replies. “He’s terrorized every squirrel for five blocks in every direction from my house. You’d think they’d have a contract out on him by now.”

They are standing under a red cedar gazebo, waiting out a drizzle that has slightly delayed this year’s Terrier Time Trials in Middlefield, a rural community near Cleveland. The time trials are a yearly event in which terriers of all types are tested in a wide variety of ways. The most popular, certainly among the dogs themselves, are the go-to-ground events, where a tunnel is buried in the ground, with a rat in a cage at the end, and the dogs are timed for how long it takes them to find and work their quarry. Dachshunds, Cairns, Westies, Dandie Dinmonts, and the undisputed king of the ratters, the Jack Russell, take part.

Manfred is a two-time champion.

Mercedes Cruz’s article for Mondo Latino has turned into a feature for Vanity Fair, where it is currently slated for August publication. She had spent twenty-four hours or so in the trunk of her car, parked on East Eighty-fifth Street, surviving on Girl Scout cookies and a frozen bottle of Evian water she had found in her gym bag. Aside from having to be restrained by no fewer than three bailiffs on the day Christian del Blanco was arraigned, she seems to be over it.

The good news is that she has promised Paris a steak dinner at Morton’s when the Vanity Fair check arrives. Manny and Declan have been promised the bones.

“Come on, Dad!” Melissa shouts. “They’re starting.”

Melissa stands at the edge of the split rail-fenced training field. Next to her stands her grandmother. Both are dressed in jeans and hooded parkas. Both are wearing rubber boots already caked with cold Ohio late-winter mud.

“Yeah, let’s go,” Gabriella says, echoing her granddaughter’s plea. “Come on, Jackie. Bring your friend.”

“Jackie?” Mercedes asks. She had lost a few pounds since her ordeal, had confessed to joining a karate class. Her braces are off, her hair is pony-tailed for the day. She looks fit and agile and lithely sexy.

Before heading off to the trial field, Paris turns his attention to the two dogs before him.

Manny and Declan sit at his feet, considering each other carefully, nose to nose, brothers at heart, competitors for the moment. Manny looks up at Paris, knowing it is time to go, surely wondering if, in Declan Cruz, he may have finally met his match.

Paris glances at Mercedes, catches her smiling at him.

And begins to wonder the same thing.

The dark-haired girl in seat 18A of the Greyhound bus heading west on Route 70 is making slow work of her Famous Amos chocolate chip cookie. Her mother, in 18B, holds an issue of Vogue in her hands, but isn’t reading. Instead, she stares out the window at the flat Indiana landscape.

At the Indianapolis stop, the woman and the little girl exit the bus. They both freshen up in the ladies’ room, buy a few more snacks, some tissues.

When they reboard and settle into their seats, the little girl’s mother thinks about their future. They have just over two thousand dollars. They have nowhere to live. There are no job prospects. And yet, she thinks as she looks out the window to see the sun suddenly peer from behind a cloud, ever since that registered letter arrived, so crazily out of the blue, they suddenly have everything.

They have each other.

As the bus begins to pull out of the Indianapolis station, she glances up from her magazine to see a man of about thirty-five making his way to the back of the bus, a small duffel bag over his shoulder, a cute boy of six in tow. The only seats open are 18C and 18D.

The man smiles, stashes his bag in the overhead. Before sitting down, he ruffles the young boy’s hair, then looks at the woman. “Hi,” the man says. He has kind, blue-gray eyes, sandy hair. His son looks just like him.

“Hi,” the woman answers.

“This is Andrew,” the man says. “And my name is Paul. What’s yours?”

The woman in 18B looks at the man, then at the boy, waiting for what she figures to be the proper amount of time. For a single mom. She reaches over and takes her daughter’s gloriously sticky little hand in her own.

“Mary,” she says. “My name is Mary.”

The woman at the USAir counter at Hopkins International Airport looks five years younger than the last time he had seen her.

The cop walking up behind her looks as fresh as yesterday’s chili.

“Hey there,” the cop says.

The woman spins around, as if expecting something… what? Terrible? For a moment, her expression is unreadable, then it fashions a smile, quickly and genuinely. “Jack,” she says. “How sweet of you to come. How did you-”

“I’m a detective,” Paris says. “It’s a gift.”

Dolores Ryan finishes her business at the counter, then turns back to Paris. “Is this an official city of Cleveland send off?” she asks.

Paris smiles. “Yeah. Something like that.”

The two of them step away from the counter. Dolores glances around the huge ticket lobby at the flurry of travelers. Her eyes find a familiar place; her heart, it seems, a secluded memory. “I remember, one time, I met Michael here when he was flying in from some cop seminar. Forensics, or ordnance, or something like that.”

“Indianapolis.”

“Right. He went twice a year. You were at those, too?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Ever learn anything?”

“Well, I can tell you that it’s precisely twenty steps from the bar to the men’s room at the airport Ramada.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Paris looks heavenward. “Sorry, Mikey.”

“Anyway, Michael’s flight was really late that time. Maybe two in the morning. And all I had on was this black plastic raincoat and spike heels.”

Paris’s eyebrows arch in unison. “Nothing else?”

“Not a stitch.”

“I see.”

“So, we’re down in baggage claim, and it’s deserted, and I give him this quick flash, right? Michael goes five shades of Irish red. Doesn’t know what to do with himself.” Dolores covers her mouth, keeping the laugh inside. “Do you remember that crooked smile he had when he was embarrassed?”

“I remember it well,” Paris says. “Although, as I recall, it wasn’t all that easy to embarrass Mike Ryan.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Let’s get back to the black plastic raincoat,” Paris says.

Dolores smiles, takes a moment, giving the remembrance its due. “We made love in the parking lot, Jack. Slow, sweet, married love. It wasn’t all hot and crazy like you might imagine when a wife who thinks her looks are going south tries a stunt like that. I don’t think Michael took his eyes from mine the whole time we walked from the baggage claim out to the parking lot. He was like a little kid in a toy store and the most sophisticated man in the world at the same time.”

Dolores glances at the steward standing by the entrance ramp. Carrie Ryan, sitting in front of the man, looks at Paris, smiles, lifts a thin arm to wave. The little girl’s smile squeezes Paris’s heart, and, if there had been any doubt-and there had been many-he now knows he is doing the right thing.

Paris turns his attention back to Dolores. He reaches out, takes her hands in his, searching for the right words. He had rehearsed them for a day and a half, but that didn’t seem to matter at the moment. Finally, he says: “Look… Dolores, I… I just wanted you to know that it’s over. All of it. That’s what’s important. You’re going to have a whole new life in Florida. All of this is behind you now. Everything. Do you know what I mean?”