David Rosenfelt - Dog Tags

But Jerry realized that sometimes events beyond his control got in the way, and that’s what had just happened. First there was that dog, and then that other lunatic who attacked him. It seemed like they had been waiting to make their move, though he had no idea who they were or why they were there.

So when it was time to report back to his employer exactly what had transpired, he felt some regret that he couldn’t claim total success. It wasn’t a complete failure, the target was effectively eliminated. But the point of the operation, securing the envelope, simply did not happen.

Jerry sat in his car at three in the morning behind a strip mall in Hackensack, the meeting place that had been designated last week, when he had been hired. At that time he had been given one hundred thousand dollars, in cash, with the promise of another hundred to follow the successful completion of the job.

The second hundred, Jerry understood, would now be the subject of a negotiation.

A Lexus pulled up alongside him, and his employer got out. It irked Jerry that he did not even know the man’s name, or what his interest was in all of this.

Jerry had mentally nicknamed him Smooth, since he conveyed a calm, unruffled demeanor. He wore expensive clothes and jewelry, with a watch that probably cost more than Jerry’s car. “Smooth” was obviously used to getting what he wanted, but that wasn’t going to happen this time.

It might be unpleasant, but Jerry would handle it. He’d handled a lot tougher situations before.

Smooth entered the car and sat in the passenger seat without saying a word. His real name was Marvin Emerson, called M by the few people who knew him well. Not even Marvin himself really remembered if that started because it was his first initial, or the sound at the beginning of “Em-erson”. In any event, he had never given his name or nickname to Jerry, and saw no reason to do so now.

“Hey, how ya doin’?” said Jerry.

“Please report on the evening’s events.”

“Well, we had a bit of a problem. It’s going to sound nuts, but right after the guy gave me the envelope, I put a bullet in him, but then this dog comes out of nowhere and grabs the envelope and runs off with it.”

“A dog…,” M said. It was a way to prompt Jerry to finish the story, although M already knew everything that happened. He’d had a person in place, hidden across the street, who saw the entire thing.

“Yeah, and then some guy comes charging at me as I was trying to shoot the dog. He grabbed the gun, and I got the hell out of there.” Jerry decided to leave out the part about getting kneed in the groin; it was humiliating and would cast him in a bad light.

“That’s quite a story,” M said. “Did you know this man?”

Jerry shakes his head. “Never saw him before. But the guy who gave me the envelope won’t ever bother you again.”

“The envelope is what was important. I thought I conveyed that to you.”

“Hey come on, I did the best I could. How could I know that dog would do that? For all I know, you set it up.”

“You’ll get the remainder of the money when I get the envelope,” M said.

Jerry was now annoyed. “That’s bullshit. How the hell am I going to get the envelope now? I don’t know where the damn dog went. You tell me where it is, and I’ll go get it.”

By now M was convinced that Jerry was telling the truth—that he really had no more knowledge of the dog or the other man than he said.

So he reached into his pocket, and in one remarkably swift motion took out a gun and shot Jerry in the right temple.

It didn’t give him pleasure, or make him feel better. Jerry was a loose end that had to be removed, no more, no less. But killing him did not solve M’s problem; only finding the envelope would do that.

M got out of the car and signaled across the street to two men who would come over and do the cleanup, getting rid of the body and car so that they would never be found.

M then got into his own car and drove away, already focusing on the next step, which had to be getting his hands on that dog, and the guy who owned it.

CHAPTER 6

FOR THE LAST THREE WEEKS, I HAVE BEEN LIVING A NIGHTMARE.

Charlie’s, the greatest sports bar in the history of the civilized world, has been undergoing renovations. They chose to do it now because it’s July, and except for baseball there isn’t much going on in the sports world. Apparently they ignored the fact that in the heat of summer there is plenty going on in the beer world.

Vince, Pete, and I generally spend at least three evenings a week at Charlie’s. It used to be five, until Laurie moved back here from Wisconsin, where she briefly lived for a miserable year. It’s not that she objects to my being out with my friends; it’s just that I’d rather spend time with her than them. Of course, I would never tell them that.

Sports, lubricated by beer, is the glue that holds us together. But I sometimes wonder if they would be my friends, if I would have any male friends, without sports. It represents at least 70 percent of what we talk about.

My attitude toward sports has evolved as I’ve grown older. For years I wanted to play professionally, though down deep I knew that was never going to be a realistic possibility. Then I got to the point where I lived vicariously through modern athletes, and that was reasonably satisfying.

Now, approaching forty and fading fast, I think I’m embarking on a new phase. I’m going to start living vicariously through someone who is already living vicariously through an athlete. It should be far less exhausting. All I have to do is find someone to fill the role; I think this is why men have sons.

The renovation is scheduled to last for six weeks, although I have no idea why they would be doing it at all. Charlie’s is perfect, and in my experience perfection is generally a tough thing to improve upon.

So we have been spending our time at The Sports Shack, an upscale restaurant-bar located on Route 4 in Teaneck. It has a ski-lodge-impersonation motif, and it operates under the assumption that if you have enough TVs, and a gimmicky enough decor, everything else will take care of itself. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The hamburgers aren’t thick enough, the french fries aren’t crisp enough, and unless you tell them otherwise every single time, they serve the beer in a glass. Clusters of TVs sometimes all show the same baseball game, when there are plenty of others to choose from, and the other night one of the TVs was tuned to a Best of the X Games retrospective.

Best of the X Games ? Now, there’s a show that should run all of ten seconds. In any event, what is it doing in a sports bar? What is happening to the country I love?

But here we sit, drinking our beer, eating our food, and watching our games, thereby trying to restore a sense of order out of this chaos.

Tonight Pete is late in arriving, and Vince is in a bad mood because the Mets are losing. He would also be in a bad mood if the Mets were winning, or if they were not playing, or if there were no such thing as the Mets.

He stares in the direction of the bar. “Do you see that?” he asks, then shakes his head. “Unbelievable.”

I look over there but don’t see anything that would be considered difficult to believe. “What are you talking about?”

“That guy is in a three-piece suit. With a tie.”

“So?”

“So?” he sneers. “So it’s supposed to be a sports bar. What’s next, flowers on the tables? That smelly stuff in a pot?”

“You mean potpourri?”

He looks at me like a bug he found in his soup. “Yes, Mr. Foo-Foo. That’s exactly what I mean.”

Pete arrives, and not a moment too soon. Vince is harder to handle one-on-one than LeBron James. Pete doesn’t say hello; for some reason greetings have never been a part of the relationship among the three of us. We don’t say good-bye, either. Or How was your day?