Dog's Green Earth

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “Have you complained to the association?”

  “Are you kidding? The secretary makes excuses for the manager, and when he’s there on his own he duddnt even answer his phone.” She leaned toward me. “And I don’t want to go see him because he’s already sent me two of those letters about my flowerpots.”

  She motioned behind her to two huge clay pots, at least three feet in diameter, filled with a cascade of pink daises with red centers. “I don’t want to get rid of them, but I’m afraid of the fines. You know if you accrue a high enough fine balance, they can take you to collections and even confiscate your house.”

  “Can they do really do that?”

  “Under Pennsylvania law? They sure can. A friend of mine in a condo in Philly had it happen to her. She was getting confused and forgot to pay her maintenance for a year, and they sued her. Only when her son got an attorney for her did they back off.”

  I thought back to the woman Lili had mentioned, whose house was in danger of foreclosure. Obviously this threat was a lot greater than just some irritation about a sign. I couldn’t imagine what would happen if I lost the house that Lili, Rochester and I called home.

  2: A Big Wind

  A big wind swept through that evening, shaking some of the dying leaves from the trees and coating the green lawns of River Bend with a crinkly carpet of red, orange, yellow and brown. The same was true all along the River Road, which led up along the Delaware River from Stewart’s Crossing to my job at Friar Lake, a conference center owned and operated by Eastern College, where I was the property manager.

  An order of Catholic monks had built the complex of buildings, then known as Our Lady of the Waters, over a hundred years before, of local gray stone. When I started at the property, I supervised the renovation of the monks’ dormitory into high-tech guest rooms, the conversion of the arched-roof chapel into a reception space, and the expansion of several of the outbuildings into classrooms.

  My office was in the former gatehouse, and I pulled up in front of it and let Rochester out. As in River Bend, the lawns were littered with a panorama of fallen leaves. The cobblestone sidewalks and the paved driveway were all covered. Though it looked pretty, it was a trip-and-fall hazard because the leaves masked the steps to the chapel and the delineation between sidewalk and lawn.

  I was irritated, because usually the maintenance crew was out early in the morning cleaning up, but I didn’t see anyone on the property. I didn’t want Friar Lake to end up in the same lousy condition as River Bend.

  In our community, it was the responsibility of the landscape company, hired by the board, to cut the lawns and sweep the leaves, to trim the hedges and remove downed tree branches. The board had to hire contractors to repair the sidewalks and repave the streets, especially those areas where tree roots pushed upwards, creating cracks and uneven pavement.

  At Friar Lake, I handled the operation of the center, booking conferences and organizing executive education programs. Joey Capodilupo managed the physical plant. He was a skilled jack-of-all-trades handyman who had managed the construction crew that renovated the property. His father was the associate vice president of facilities for Eastern, and after the project was complete Joe Senior had hired his son to keep it going.

  Joey had two workmen under him, both Salvadoran immigrants. Where were they? Why weren’t they doing their jobs?

  Rochester followed me as I headed along a winding path, careful not to slip on leaves slick with morning dew. A square stone building ahead of me housed Joey’s office and the maintenance equipment. His truck wasn’t parked there, but our laborers, Juan and Rigoberto, were lounging beside an ancient Nissan coupe.

  Both wore khaki work pants and Eastern T-shirts. It was a good thing I’d figured out that the name Rigoberto had more letters than Juan and made the connection that the human Rigoberto was bigger than his co-worker, or I’d still be having trouble remembering which was which.

  “Sorry, jefe, but we no have key to get machines,” Rigoberto said. He was the stockier of the two; both had sleek black hair and deeply tanned skin.

  After I opened the door for them to get the leaf blowers out of the back, I called Joey’s cell phone. Maybe he’d stopped off at the main campus for something and forgotten that Juan and Rigoberto couldn’t get into the office.

  “Uh, yeah?” Joey said, when he answered.

  “Joey, it’s Steve. What’s up?”

  “Oh. Steve. Yeah, right. Um. It’s my dad. He had a heart attack last night.”

  “Oh my God. Is he okay?”

  “He’s in the hospital now, knocked out and hooked up to a million wires. Doctors said he and my mom did all the right things—he told her as soon as he started feeling bad, she called 911 right away. It looks like he’s going to need some bypass surgery, but you know him, he’s a tough old bird.”

  “He is. Listen, I opened the door so the guys can get started blowing the leaves that fell last night. Anything else I can do for you?”

  In the background I heard the leaf blowers firing up, and I walked inside Joey’s office to get away from the noise.

  “Holy crap, I completely lost track of time,” Joey said. “My brothers and my mom and I have been here all night. My mom has been trying to shoo my brothers away, it’s not like this is a wake or anything. And they’ve got kids and jobs. She wants me to stay, though.”

  I looked around Joey’s office. His desk was cluttered with filled with piles of paper. A trestle table along one wall had parts of broken equipment in various stages of repair, and the smell of oil and glue hung in the air.

  “Call me later when you get a chance to think about anything I can do for you,” I said.

  He thanked me and hung up, still sounding very distracted. I couldn’t blame him, though. I had many regrets over my behavior when I was in California, and one of the biggest was that my incarceration prevented me from spending my dad’s last days with him. I couldn’t even go to his funeral.

  Rigoberto and Juan were blowing leaves off the sidewalk, so I had to detour around them as I walked back to my office in the gatehouse. Rochester kept stopping to sniff the leaves and I had to call him repeatedly. “Don’t make me put that leash on you!” I threatened.

  He gave me a big doggy grin and romped on ahead of me. I had a lot on my plate at the moment—I had a whole schedule of executive and alumni education programs planned for the fall season, and I needed to stay on top of promotion and registration. I worked with a graphics specialist on the campus who took the information I gave her and prepared a flyer for each event. I had to send in the same information to the web team, who would put it up on a rotating banner on Eastern’s home page.

  There were endless forms to fill out, for use of the facility (silly, because I was the facility manager, but it had to be done) and for contracts with vendors to provide food for participants. I’d placed an ad for the whole slate of programs in the alumni magazine’s September issue, so every day I received several emails or phone calls requesting further information.

  Every hour or two I noted the rumble of the leaf blowers as Juan and Rigoberto moved around the property. Shortly before noon a plumber’s truck showed up and I had to call Joey once more to see where the problem was, then hang around while the plumber cleared a stopped line in one of the dormitory restrooms.

  In between, I needed lunch, and Rochester needed a run around the property. As we sat on one of the picnic benches a chilly breeze swept through, reminding me that winter was coming. I knew there was a long list of things Joey did to get the property prepared for the cold season and hoped he’d be able to manage it. Friar Lake was run so much better than River Bend, and I didn’t want to see that change.

  It was a busy day, and I realized how much I had come to depend on Joey to keep the physical plant operational. I worried that if he was out with his father for too long, small problems would crop up that I wouldn’t notice, which could then cascade into much bigger ones.

  I called him late i
n the afternoon to check on his dad. “They scheduled the bypass surgery for Friday. I’ll probably be out the rest of the week with him and my mom.”

  “Make sure you take care of yourself,” I said. “Get some sleep. You won’t be much good for your parents if you wear yourself out.”

  He agreed he would, and I hung up. I had kept the property going a couple of times when Joey went on vacation, but he’d always left me detailed instructions and schedules. I’d have to wing things this week, and I didn’t want to bother him too much.

  By the time I piled Rochester in the car for our ride home, I was exhausted, but he still needed his dinner and a walk. We took our regular route, a couple of turns along leafy streets to a dead-end with a dog-waste receptacle at the end. Rochester obligingly did his business within a few feet of the bin, shaped like a doghouse with a gaping hole in the center for deposit of bags.

  We were on our way home when a man about ten or fifteen years older than I was approached walking a tan and white corgi like the ones Queen Elizabeth favored. Though I didn’t recognize the man, Rochester knew the dog immediately, and went down on his front paws in the play position.

  The corgi yipped eagerly and tugged the man forward. “Is this Lilibet?” I asked.

  “You know her? Yeah, she’s my mom’s.” He motioned behind him. “Sylvia Greenbaum, lives over there on Trieste. She’s in the hospital and I’m staying at her house and taking care of the dog.”

  I could see a bit of resemblance to his mother in the sharp Roman nose, and though he was probably only in his fifties he had the same salt-and-pepper gray hair she did.

  Rochester and Lilibet sniffed each other, and the little dog rolled over on her back.

  “I hope it’s nothing serious,” I said.

  “She’s been losing her mind, bit by bit,” the man said. “She fell on a piece of broken sidewalk near the house the other day and broke her hip, so she’s going to be in rehab for a while. The apartment where I live doesn’t take dogs, so I figured I’d move in here for the time being.”

  “This is Rochester, and I’m Steve. Please send our love. She’s a sweet woman.”

  “I’m Drew, and obviously you already know Lilibet. You wouldn’t say that my mom was sweet if you knew her when she had all her marbles. She was whip smart and had a wicked tongue. Not the most popular gal on the block.”

  “Did you let the management office know that your mother fell? If the sidewalk is broken it’s their responsibility to get it fixed.”

  “The manager said they can’t afford to bring out a repair company for a single problem, but he’d put it on the list and when there were enough repairs to justify the service call, he’d make it.”

  “That doesn’t sound right. This is a safety issue and it ought to take priority.”

  “I won’t repeat the things my mother has said about the management here. Not my circus, not my monkeys. I just need to keep things together until I can get her out of rehab and settled somewhere.”

  Rochester and Lilibet played for a couple of minutes, and then she decided she was done, jumping up and nipping Rochester on the nose. He looked baffled and backed away. I told Drew I hoped his mom recovered quickly and headed home with Rochester.

  As we walked, I wondered what my mother would have been like had she reached her eighties. Like Sylvia Greenbaum, she was very smart, and didn’t tolerate fools gladly. She had been a bookkeeper and executive secretary and was quick to leave a job when she felt she wasn’t valued enough.

  Would she have sweetened up as she got older? Or maybe Sylvia Greenbaum had only gotten nicer as she lost more of her mind. At least my mother hadn’t had to suffer that.

  As Rochester and I walked up our driveway, I noticed the Levitan sign. It reminded me of my parents and the legacy they had left me. I had photos of the house taken soon after my father bought it, and the sign was there then, so it ought to be grandfathered in.

  The term grandfathered had other heavy connections to my father. When I had relayed the news of Mary’s first pregnancy to my father, he was so excited. “You did good, Steve,” he said. “I always told you I wanted to be a father-in-law before I became a grandfather, and you listened.” Too bad he’d never had the chance to be the grandfather he wanted to be.

  That sign over the garage was more than just a piece of wood with my name on it. It was one of my last connections to my father, and there was no way I was taking it down.

  3: Broken Windows

  When I got in, Lili was curled on the couch with her feet under her. “That sounds delicious,” she said to her caller. “And apples are in season now.”

  I liked the sound of “apples” and “delicious” together. While apples were far from my favorite fruit, I was happy to eat them in pies, breads and apple cakes.

  I unhooked Rochester’s leash and left it hanging from by the doorway on a hook surmounted by a carved golden’s head. One of the many golden retriever knickknacks that had invaded my house since Rochester and I met.

  “Hold on, he’s right here,” Lili said to her caller, and held the phone out to me. “It’s Tamsen. Or at least it was. Rick wants to talk to you.”

  Rick Stemper, Tamsen’s man-friend, and I had been acquaintances at Pennsbury High, sharing a chemistry course in twelfth grade, and then become friends when I returned to Stewart’s Crossing and we bonded over our divorces. He was a detective with the Stewart’s Crossing police, and Rochester and I had helped him out a couple of times with his cases.

  “I have something I want to run by you. You free to meet up tomorrow at the Chocolate Ear? Say, eight o’clock?”

  “Sure,” I said. “My partner in crime and I would be happy to consult with you.”

  “Crime detection, you mean,” Rick said with a laugh. He hung up, and I thought about all the times Rochester and I had helped Rick, and his brothers in blue in other jurisdictions, with clues that led to bringing bad guys to justice.

  The next morning, instead of having breakfast at home, I drove down into the center of Stewart’s Crossing with Rochester. My hometown was charming, the streets lined with Victorian-era homes decorated with lacy white gingerbread, most of them converted to restaurants, doctor’s offices or real estate operations. The Chocolate Ear was located in a small stone building on Main Street, with green and white awnings out front, along with a few Parisian-style wrought iron tables and chairs.

  I sat back and looked at the traffic moving along Main Street. Mercedes, BMWs and Jaguars, from low-slung sports cars to big SUVs, trailed each other like obedient elephants. The oaks and maples along the sidewalks were turning colors, though the town was doing a better job of picking up fallen leaves than the maintenance crew was doing at River Bend.

  A young woman in a sports bra and tight shorts jogged past us, and I was watching her departing figure when Rick slid into the chair across from me. “Enjoying the scenery?” he asked with a smile.

  “No harm in looking. Haven’t seen you much since we got back from the shore. What’s going on?”

  Rick, Tamsen and her son Justin had accompanied Lili and me down the shore in August, where we’d had a great week with the dogs.

  “Swamped with petty crimes,” Rick grumbled. “Broken windows at the florist’s greenhouse. Shoplifting at the IGA grocery. Cars at the shopping center broken into.”

  “Wow, a regular crime wave, here in Stewart’s Crossing.”

  “Don’t laugh. It’s serious. This is suburban policing, though my boss is taking things to the extreme.”

  “In what way?” I picked up my café mocha and drained the last few drops. I knew if I ordered a second I’d be wired all day—but maybe I would need that, to do both Joey’s job and mine.

  Before I could decide, Rick asked, “You ever hear of the broken windows theory of policing?”

  “Can’t say I have.”

  “A couple of social scientists came up with this theory back in the 1980s. That if a neighborhood has a lot of petty crime going on like v
andalism, litter and broken windows in abandoned buildings, it sends out crime-promoting signals.”

  I was immediately reminded of the maintenance problems at River Bend. Did that mean we were leaving ourselves open for a crime wave?

  “Sounds like what’s going on in my neighborhood.” I told him about the letter I had received from the association. “It’s ridiculous that they’re focusing on such tiny things when there are real problems like poor road maintenance and a broken sidewalk that caused an old lady to fall. It’s as if they can’t see the forest for the trees.”

  “We’re fortunate that all we have are trees in town, then,” Rick said. “As you can imagine, Jerry and I are both as busy as hungry dogs with a broken treat jar.”

  Jerry Vickers was the other detective on the SCPD; I’d met him once or twice.

  “Anyway, I wanted to ask you to keep an eye out for anything you see around town. I know you and Rochester are both pretty observant, and if I can get a jump on any problem before they are reported, the chief will be happy.”

  We talked for a few more minutes, and then Rick’s cell buzzed with a call he had to take, so he waved goodbye to me and Rochester and walked back in the direction of the police station.

  I looked across Main Street to the Stewart’s Crossing shopping center. It had been a thriving place when I was a kid, and I used to bike down there from my parents’ house. I’d buy greeting cards at the card store, stare through the window of the laundromat at the clothes swirling around, inhale the scent of pizza from the Italian restaurant.

  The tenants had all changed since then, replaced by a cell phone store, a karate dojo, and a tax office. The windows of the space at the end were covered with brown paper and a for rent sign. What looked like fresh graffiti had been spray-painted on the side window facing Main Street.

  Another situation for Rick to attack.

  It was clear that the problems in my neighborhood were greater than just some small irritations, and that there were larger issues at work. But what could I do about them?