Three More Dogs in a Row

by Neil Plakcy

  Lili’s manner told me she expected me and Rochester to stay downstairs. I sat down on the sofa, and Rochester clambered up beside me. What if the tension that had been building between Lili and me the previous week wasn’t about the puppy at all, but about some deeper rift in our relationship? What if we both had become so accustomed to living on our own that we couldn’t live together without rancor developing?

  What if her dinner with Van the night before hadn’t been about homelessness so much as Lili considering changing her home?

  I took a deep breath. I was letting my imagination run away, as I often did when Rochester and I were investigating something that intrigued us, whether it was a death or a theft or something more mundane, like where squirrels went at night. Did they have nests, or just sleep on tree branches? How did they stay on the branches if they fell asleep?

  I focused on my dog, stroking his silky fur and telling him how happy I was that he had come into my life. We stayed in the living room until it was time for his eleven o’clock walk, and by the time I got upstairs Lili had already gone to sleep. I undressed quietly and slid in bed beside her, and Rochester curled up on the floor. I knew that I would have him with me, by my side or in my heart, forever.

  16 – Hats

  Monday morning Lili’s sunny disposition had returned. “I have to decide what to wear to the party on Wednesday night,” she said. “I called Tamsen for advice because she’s always so beautifully dressed. She’s coming over this afternoon to look through the closet with me.”

  Again, I felt that implied message that I wasn’t welcome, which worried me. But I smiled and said, “I think you’ll look amazing no matter what you choose.”

  “Good answer,” she said, standing up from the table. A few minutes later she called to me, and I climbed the stairs to the bedroom, Rochester right on my heels.

  Lili stood in front of the closet with her hands on her hips. “I want to clean up the closet so that Tamsen doesn’t think we live like pigs. When I moved in, I threw a lot of stuff up on those high shelves because I didn’t have time to sort it. I want to organize it now.”

  “I’ll get the stepladder from the garage,” I said. Rochester was right on my heels, as if he was afraid that if I got out of his sight I’d let that puppy back in.

  When I returned with the stepladder, I saw that Lili had already begun tossing the items she could reach onto the bed. Rochester settled in the bedroom doorway and watched everything we did intently. “Don’t worry, boy, there’s no puppy hiding up there,” I said.

  I began handing down a collection of crazy hats, starting with a sombrero, a Viking helmet, a French beret and a pointy-topped straw hat that looked like it was from the Philippines. “These hats are great,” I said. “Why don’t I put up some hooks on the wall in the office, and you can hang them there.”

  “You think it won’t look too dorky?”

  “Who cares? It’s our house.”

  I liked the sound of that – “our house.” Lili’s, mine, and Rochester’s. We worked together for a while, getting everything down and then organizing it. We began mugging for selfies with various hats, trying the smaller ones on Rochester and getting him to pose.

  Then I found a package of decorative hooks in the kitchen and hung the hats on the office wall, while Lili began to come up with potential outfits for New Year’s Eve.

  It struck me that I’d worn a lot of hats in my life – from son to student to teacher, from husband to hacker to convict. My engineer father had worked at the same job, most of the time for the same company. I hadn’t been able to stick with anything that long. Even if I hadn’t had my career path jolted by my stint as a guest of the California penal system, I probably wouldn’t have stuck with my tech writing job forever. Mary would have pressed me to get a better job, a higher-paying one. I might have had to go back to school to refresh my tech abilities.

  What kind of hat could Felix find, I wondered? He had gone from kid to drug lookout and dealer, from homeless to convict to kennel tech. He was great with dogs, but that wasn’t going to be enough to create a whole career. He needed more education and a few more good opportunities. I was happy to be part of that.

  It had been nearly a week since I’d been to his house with the dogs, and I hadn’t heard from him since then. I figured he was busy with the holidays, and frankly I’d been busy myself so I hadn’t followed up with him.

  I sat down at the desk and sent Felix an email reminder. I hoped that being back home over Christmas hadn’t hurt his resolve, but I tried to be non-judgmental in the message, offering to see him as soon as he could make it so we could keep moving forward.

  I hit “send” and pushed back my chair. I had known a lot of restless people in my career, and I admitted that I was one of them. Many of the guys I’d worked with in Silicon Valley had tried the start-up route. A few had begun their own businesses, and more had joined nascent ventures. Most of them had either crashed and burned, or settled into a perennial scramble for funds or a chase for the newest, best tech.

  How long would I stay at Friar Lake? Would I get bored with organizing programs and running the center? Would some external force derail my career again? Suppose Lili was offered a terrific job somewhere and asked me to move with her?

  My reveries were disrupted when Tamsen arrived shortly after two, and Rochester rushed downstairs. I followed and opened the door to her, holding on to Rochester’s collar so he couldn’t tackle her.

  “You would not believe how much trouble an eight-year-old can get into when your back is turned,” she said, as she shrugged off her wool-lined trenchcoat.

  “I would believe it,” I said. “We had an eight-month-old puppy visiting for a week, and he was a handful.”

  I took her coat and she unwound her long, multi-colored scarf. “I know I should cherish every moment with him, because someday, if I’m lucky, he’ll grow up and go to college. But some days I can’t wait for that day to arrive.”

  “I think all parents feel that way,” I said. “I can imagine mine were glad to send me off to Eastern.”

  Lili joined us, and then she and Tamsen went upstairs to look for party outfits. I was getting into a book when my phone rang. “Hey, Rick,” I said. “You’ll never guess who’s here right now?”

  “I hope it’s Felix Logato,” he said.

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” I said. “Tamsen’s here helping Lili find an outfit for that New Year’s Eve party. Remember, you’re dog-sitting Rochester. Why are you looking for Felix?”

  “I need to talk to him, and it looks like he skipped town after he got fired. You went over to Logato’s house last week, right? While you were there, did he say anything about leaving?”

  I thought back to my conversation with Felix. “He was going to Philly Wednesday to help a friend,” I said. “Then to his mother’s for Christmas. Why do you need to talk to him? I thought Dr. Horz wasn’t going to make a big deal out of that theft.”

  “The chief takes his dog to Animal House and he’s friendly with Dr. Horz. He got on my case this morning about following up on that potassium theft, so I started tracking down the staff from the vet’s office. Felix was number one on my list. I went over to his house, and his roommates said he got fired, and left Wednesday morning and hasn’t been back since. Looks like he might have done a runner.”

  “I’m sure he’ll turn up. Rochester really likes him and I trust my dog’s instincts.”

  “The dog doesn’t know everything, Steve,” Rick said. “If Felix gets in touch with you, will you let me know?”

  “Of course. I emailed him earlier today to set up a meeting and go over his writing.”

  When Rick hung up, I turned to Rochester. I liked Felix, and I hoped he wasn’t in trouble. Had I been wrong about him? We had a couple of shared connections – we had both served time, we both loved dogs. But I had been ignoring the vast differences in our backgrounds, and how the way he’d grown up had formed him, just as my own upbringing had done
for me.

  “What do you think, boy? You think Felix ran off?”

  He didn’t have an opinion, just wanted to play. As I tugged one end of his rope, I thought about my last conversation with Felix. What was name of the friend he’d mentioned? Maybe he might know where Felix had gone.

  Since Lili and Tamsen were busy upstairs, I sat at the dining room table and turned my laptop on. Rochester sprawled beside me in one of his standard positions, his front paws outstretched and his body at a forty-five degree angle, like the top of a Z.

  Z, I thought. Zero. Zeno. Junior Zeno. No, Yunior Zeno. That was the name Felix had mentioned. I went online to see if I could find an address or phone number for him.

  Yunior Zeno, whoever he was, kept a pretty low online profile. I quickly found that article from the Inquirer about the grow house bust where his name had been mentioned, but there was no follow-up about the incident.

  The only useful thing I could find was a brief mention in an online blog of Yunior as an up and coming businessman in North Philly. His company was called Z Man Group. But there was no indication of what Z Man Group did, or where it was located.

  I flexed my fingers. I loved a good computer-based challenge. Just then, Lili appeared at the top of the staircase and began to descend. “How do I look?” she asked.

  She was wearing a slinky black dress that opened up to a swirl just above her knees. It was sleeveless, with a scooped neck, and she’d pulled her hair up into a knot and added a string of pearls. “Ravishing,” I said. “Why don’t you send Tamsen home so I can ravish you?”

  She laughed and went back upstairs. I took a deep breath and remembered the promise I’d made to Lili and to Rick not to hack. I had to use my brain instead of my hacking tools.

  I tried a bunch of different searches until I found a corporate registration for Z Man Group, Yunior Zeno, president and chief executive officer. The address of record was a post office box in Philadelphia. Another dead end, though I felt like I was closing in.

  I tried a bunch of different public databases, and finally hit pay dirt with the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Property Assessment. Yunior Zeno didn’t own any property in his own name, but Z Man Group did. A lot.

  There was no website for the company, which I found suspicious. If Z Man rented apartments, for example, how would prospective tenants find them, or investigate them? I knew from my own experience, and that of the students I’d taught at Eastern, that most people looked on line for information first, whether from a computer or a smart phone.

  I made a list of all the addresses, then opened a new window for Google Maps, where I plotted them out. They were all in North Philadelphia, around the area where Felix had said he’d grown up. Yunior owned houses on Ruffner, Sydenham, Birch, and Rowan Streets. From a street view, the neighborhood didn’t look too bad; there were lots of trees, a park and a stadium nearby. But I was sure the view was deceiving.

  I wasn’t sure what else I could do, so I started putting those addresses into Google, and I was stunned when I got a hit from the Philadelphia Inquirer from Christmas day. A drug-related shootout had occurred at 404 W. Birch Street on Wednesday afternoon, Christmas Eve; there were four unidentified victims.

  It seemed like too much of a coincidence to be anything but true. I called Rick. “Listen, there was a shooting in Philly on Christmas Eve,” I said. I gave him the details. “Can you call the Philly cops and see if Felix Logato was one of the victims?”

  “Where’d you get this from?” he asked.

  “Too complicated to explain over the phone,” I said. “Can you just check?”

  “Fine. But I want to hear it.”

  “If it’s him, I’ll tell you all the details. Don’t worry, I found everything legally. Oh, and check to see of one of the other victims was named Yunior Zeno.”

  “It sounds like you know a lot more than you’re letting on. I’ll talk to the Philly cops and then get back to you if there’s a positive ID.”

  After Rick hung up, I paced around the downstairs, too edgy to focus on anything. Rochester sensed my mood and kept following me. I felt like I had failed Felix in some way. Could I have done anything more? I took the dogs out for a long walk in the cold, but my mind was still on Felix. Was he one of those unidentified victims? Would that explain why he’d left home and hadn’t come back?

  What if Yunior was a drug dealer, and he’d found a way to use the veterinarian’s potassium to create that street drug, Cat or Charlie or whatever it was. Say he’d recruited Felix to steal those vials. It wasn’t a long-term method of supply; Dr. Horz had already noticed them missing and alerted the police, and since Felix had been fired he wouldn’t have any further access. But what if this was just an experiment? Could this be another example of Philly drug gangs infiltrating the suburbs?

  I was still edgy when Tamsen and Lili came downstairs. “We’ve been invited to Tamsen’s for dinner on New Year’s Day,” Lili said.

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “And you have to bring Rochester,” Tamsen said. “Rick’s bringing Rascal. Nathaniel keeps bugging my sister for a dog, and I want him and Justin to both see how much trouble having a dog is.”

  “So are you telling me you want my dog to misbehave?” I said, in mock surprise.

  “He doesn’t have to misbehave, he just has to be himself,” Lili said. “Eighty pounds of big happy dog. Maybe he can knock the boys over a couple of times.”

  “I don’t know that we’d go that far,” Tamsen said. “I’ve already done the holiday-emergency-room drill with Justin and I don’t want to repeat it.”

  We all hugged and kissed, and Tamsen left. When she was out the door, Lili turned to me. “What’s the matter? You look like something’s wrong. You don’t want to go to Tamsen’s for dinner?”

  “It’s not that. Felix Logato has disappeared, and I’m afraid he’s dead.”

  “Really? How do you know?”

  She sat with me at the table, and Rochester came over to nuzzle my hand as I explained what I’d done. “Do you think I could have done anything more to help him?”

  Lili shook her head. “If he was shot in some drug deal, then his problems were a lot worse than not being able to write well,” she said.

  “But I knew what he was going through. I could have tried more. Been his friend. Gotten him to open up more about his problems.”

  Lili reached over and took my hand. “I know you could relate to him, and I’m sure you feel bad that he might have gotten himself killed. But it wasn’t up to you to save him.”

  “Then who?” I asked.

  17 – A Nose for Clues

  “I know what you need,” Lili said. “Follow me.”

  We went upstairs together. “That black dress I showed you is pretty form-fitting,” she said. “I’m not sure what to wear underneath it. Think you could help me decide?”

  “I’d be delighted to assist.” I sat back against the pillows on the bed, ready for a show. Before she started, Lili sat beside me and we kissed.

  Then suddenly Rochester jumped up and skittered down the stairs, barking madly.

  “Crap,” I said. “That’s probably Rick. Can we table this process for a little while?”

  “The Hardy Boys are on another case,” she said. “Far be it from me to stand in their way.” She kissed me again. “That’s so you remember what you’re missing out on.”

  Like I needed the reminder.

  I went downstairs and let Rick in. “It was Logato,” Rick said. “They matched his prints.”

  Maybe it was the news, or the cold air that had rushed in the house when I let Rick in, but I was chilled. I went into the kitchen and started boiling water. “Hot chocolate?” I asked Rick. “Or tea or coffee?”

  “I could do with something warm. Hot chocolate.”

  While the water boiled, I asked, “Was Yunior Zeno with him?”

  “The guy I spoke to said Zeno wasn’t one of the dead, but he wasn’t the investigating detective. That
guy, Holland, is supposed to call me back.”

  I started preparing the hot chocolate. I stirred in powder, and then a dollop of Godiva chocolate liqueur. “Not for me. I’m still on duty,” Rick said when I showed him the bottle.

  I topped the mugs with whipped cream, chocolate syrup and chocolate flakes. “You’re killing me here,” Rick grumbled. “This is at least an extra hour at the gym.”

  We both sipped from our mugs, which had different pictures of golden retrievers on them. Finally I sighed, and I began to tell Rick what I knew. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time,” I said. “He told me he had one friend who’d stood by him while he was in prison. This guy, Yunior Zeno. When you told me that Felix was missing, I went looking for information on Zeno, hoping he might be able to tell you where Felix was. That’s when I found the information on that shooting.”

  “Did Felix look like he was using any kind of drugs?” Rick asked.

  “I’m no expert,” I said. “But his eyes weren’t red, he wasn’t jittery or anything. He spoke clearly, he played with Rochester. Did you talk to his roommates?”

  “Yeah, they both said that he was clean, that he was trying to turn his life around. They were surprised that he’d booked.”

  His phone rang then. “This must be the detective from Philly.” He introduced himself, then listened for a moment. “Yeah, that’s the name I was given, Yunior Zeno.”

  He shifted the phone so I could hear. “He’s a slippery one,” Holland said. “Never been able to pin anything on him. He wasn’t one of the victims but it’s possible he was there. What makes you ask about him?”

  “My source told me that Zeno owns the property where the shooting happened,” Rick said. “Through a company called Z Man Group.”

  “You’ve got a pretty knowledgeable source. He or she know anything else?”

  “Just that Felix Logato was a friend of Zeno’s and was supposed to see him Christmas Eve.”

  I grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled “potassium?” on it.