The heartbeat again. I thought I detected a slight mitral valve prolapse.
"Oh, heavenly days, I seem to have only another-"
"Forget the penny," the young woman said.
"Oh, thank you. Thank you so much."
"Have a nice night."
"Yes. You too."
She came into view again, the picnic basket over her right arm, a grocery bag clutched in her right fist. Her left hand grasped the handle of a small portable television set.
Dot quickly placed the TV set in the back seat of her car, then went and stood by the phone again. She said, "Do any of you have a hundred dollars? What if they count it?"
Bowman froze, but Dot made no move away from the phone.
A minute went by.
"Where the hell are they?" Bowman rasped. "What kind of crazy goddamn treasure-hunt-of-a-stunt are they pulling this time?"
The phone rang, startling all of us.
"Hello?"
Then another voice on the police radio: "Phone company's got it, Lieutenant. We're patching."
"Do it."
"— and go home. And take all those fuckin' cops with you!
"But there are no policemen with me. As you can see- Can you see me? I'm alone. I wouldn't let them come."
"You just do like I said, missus!"
"Is Fenton nearby? Are you releasing him now?"
"Just do what I said."
"All right. I'm doing it now." Dot hugged the receiver between her neck and shoulder so that both hands were free. She bent down, took the package of meat out of the grocery bag and seemed to unwrap it. "I'm placing the meat in the basket," she said. "And now I'm putting the basket down on the pavement by the phone."
Bowman and I both said it at once-"A dog!" — as the form shot out of the woods on the eastern edge of the parking lot, snatched up the basket handle between its teeth, and hurtled back across the tarmac and into the deep woods.
"Oh, my stars!" we heard Dot shout. "Get back here with that! Get back here, you damnable mutt!"
She was exclaiming only to herself and to us. The phone line had gone dead.
"Salazar, around the block! Boyce, you follow me! There's a street on the other side of those woods!"
We sped down Western a third of a mile, then hooked sharply left onto a side residential street that paralleled the woods the dog had run into. The street dead-ended after a block, and the woods spread out to the left and right. We couldn't see the end of them in any direction.
We leaped from the car and stood listening. We heard peepers.
While Bowman and the eight or ten other patrol cars that suddenly materialized rushed pell-mell up and down the streets and back roads of Guilderland, I jogged back to the Price Chopper parking lot. Dot was seated in the driver's seat of her car, the radio on, tuned to WAMC. The midnight jazz show was on, with Art Tatum playing "Sweet Lorraine."
I climbed into the car and we sat and listened for a few minutes. Neither of us spoke. When the song ended, we exchanged seats and I drove us back to Dot's house. Edith was waiting in the kitchen, and we all had a sandwich and a beer.
No one said much. Dot and Edith were exhausted, defeated. I was watching the clock, and waiting. end user
22
At one-twenty the patrolman guarding the Fisher farmhouse received a call from Bowman inquiring whether Dot had gotten home safely. He was informed that she had. Bowman reported that no trace of the kidnappers, the dog, or the basketful of meat and money had been found, but that the woods and streets in a six-square-mile area were being combed. As the patrolman passed this information on to me, I heard a helicopter roar overhead.
At 1:25 A.M., with the temperature at 80 degrees, Dot and Edith went out for a dip in the pond.
They wore bathing suits this time.
At exactly one-thirty I dialed Newell Bankhead's number. The line was busy. I got hold of the operator and informed her that Mr. Bankhead's grandmother had been killed when the bus she'd been riding in plunged over a cliff on the outskirts of Katmandu, and would the operator please interrupt Bankhead's conversation? She grilled me according to phone company protocol, duly 95 noted my lies, was gone for a few seconds, and then put Bankhead on the line.
"Newell, I'm sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but your grandmother Ruby Gentry was killed when the bus she'd been riding in plunged over a cliff on the outskirts of Katmandu."
He chuckled. "My, my. Sorry to hear it."
"I thought you'd want to know. So, what did you find out?"
"Six people hung up on me, and several others hung up on some friends of mine who called around. But I've got a list that's pretty complete, I think. There are fifty-eight names. Do you want to write them down?"
"I'm set. All these people work in pathology or in ER, and they're all gay?"
"These are the ones we're sure of. I've got another list of eighteen deep closet cases we can't be certain about but would be willing to bet money on."
"I'll take them all, cat owners first."
"We came up with sixteen of those. There are sure to be more, but these are the ones we know about."
"Shoot."
Bankhead dictated the list and I copied it down in my notebook, filling five pages. Several of the names I recognized from the earlier list he'd given me at his apartment.
When he'd finished, I said, "I know I didn't ask you this before, Newell, but on the off chance you can help me out, what about dogs?"
He chortled lewdly. "Eight or ten of them are absolute dogs, honey, but I thought you wanted this list for a kidnapping case."
"Ha, ha. Dog owners, Newell. As with the cats."
"I really don't know a lot of these people, but hold on a sec." He hummed the theme from A Summer Place while he perused his list.
"Here's one," he said. "Martin Fiori has dogs and cats. I've been out to his place, and it's an absolute menagerie. "
"Oh, really? What kind of dogs? Are they trained?"
"Yes, I happen to know that they do do tricks. There are two poodles who can jump through a hoop, and a Pekinese who faints on command. Martin'll say, 'Have the vapors, Patsy,' and the little pooch will roll right over and faint dead away. I'll tell you, it's an absolute scream."
"Martin doesn't sound promising. Who else have you got?"
"Let's see. Oh, here's one. Buddy Strunk has a dog. Some kind of mongrel, I remember. Real friendly. The sniffy type. Visitors to Buddy's apartment sit all evening with their legs locked together. But I don't think Buddy has a cat. No, no cat at Buddy's."
"Keep going."
"Dr. Vincent has a dog. And a cat."
"Who's he?"
"Dr. Charles Vincent. He's on the ER staff at Albany Med. He has a big bash once a year out at his place in Latham that I've gone to."
"What kind of dog? Do you remember his dog? A German shepherd maybe, or something else in the smart, mean department?"
"Gosh, I don't think so. I'd remember a big, ugly beast like that. I think Charles's dog is reddish.
An Irish setter probably."
"Yeah, okay. I'll check that one. Who else?"
"Unn. I think that's about it, I'm afraid. There are probably lots of others. But you didn't ask 96 about dogs. Just cats. So I didn't inquire."
"Crap. Okay. Well, this is something anyway."
"Oh, here's one more who doesn't have a dog or a cat that I know of, though he might. But his brother does. His brother trains dogs."
"Who's that? Tell me all about him."
"He's Duane Andrus, an aide in the Albany Med ER. His dad was a vet and used to run the Andrus Kennels out on Karner Road in Guilderland. The old man drank himself to death years ago, and then the brother-Glen, I think his name is-he's a security guard at Albany Med-"
"A security guard who wears a uniform?"
"Yes, he would."
"Go on. Tell me more."
"Well, Glen kept the kennels open for boarding after the old man died, until the place was shut down after the SPCA complained about bad treatment of the animals. The place was a real hellhole, from what I read. Filth, starvation, beatings. That was just last month, I think. Or late June maybe. It was in the papers. The only animal that came out of that place healthy was Glen's dog, the one he trains. Duane helped out out there, I know. Which doesn't surprise me. He's the type."