"But," I argued, "it's good money and I don't have to deal with people, which we all know I'm not so good at."
"You're fine with people," James waved off my suggestion with a half-eaten mushroom cap. Hugh gave him a look.
"I've got an envelope that tells me what to do."
"An envelope?" James raised an eyebrow.
"Yes, an envelope that has all the information and keys I need." I pulled it out of my bag. "So I start tomorrow."
"You can't argue with that." Hugh admitted, refilling James's glass.
My First Day
If Joanne Sanders passed me on the street, she would not recognize me as the person who had eaten seven of her cheddar-flavored Goldfish. Ms. Sander's wouldn't know that her Pomeranian, Snowball, welcomed me into their home by showing me exactly where she liked to pee under the kitchen table. Joanne Sanders would not know that I worked for her because Joanne Sanders had never met me.
Snowball, a ten-pound white puff ball with dark, almond-shaped eyes, was crated in a black cage with a leopard-print cover when I walked into apartment G5 on my first day as a dog-walker. Snowball looked like the recently imprisoned queen of a very small, safe jungle. Her subjects, in the shape of stuffed lions, tigers, and elephants littered the living room carpet.
Joanne Sanders, a broad woman in her forties, posed with friends, family, and Snowball in photographs displayed on the mantel of the fake fireplace. She had shoulder-length brown hair and bangs teased high above her brow. I could picture her behind ten inches of bulletproof glass sneering at me with gloss-encased lips for filling out my deposit slip incorrectly.
I fed Snowball half a cup of kibble and a spoonful of wet food as my envelope of information directed. She ate it quickly while making funny little squeaking noises. Once she had licked her bowl to a bright sheen, we headed out for my first walk as a dog-walker.
I steered us off of East End Avenue and onto the esplanade that runs along the river. The water reflected the sun in bright silver glints. I smelled oil and brine. We reached Carl Schurz Park and turned into the dog run for small dogs. The gate leading into the run reached only to my knees, as did the rest of the fence designed to keep small dogs in and big ones out. A sign on the gate read, "Dogs over 25 pounds not permitted." Ten dogs under 25 pounds, and one who was probably a little over, played together in the pen. Their owners, in groups of three or four, sat on worn wooden benches and talked about dogs. Snowball ran to join a poodle growling at a puppy. They intimidated it behind its owner's calves. Then the poodle, a miniature gray curly thing with long ears, mounted Snowball. I turned to the river and watched a giant barge inch by.
"Hi." A woman wearing a fanny pack, pleated khaki shorts that started at her belly button and ended at her knees, black socks (pulled up), and clogs stood above me.
"Hi." I said back, raising my hand to shield my eyes from the sun.
"You're new." She wasn't asking a question.
"That's right."
"Taking over Charlene's route."
"Right again."
She sat next to me. "How long have you been walking dogs?"
"Not long."
"I didn't think so." I spotted two women on a bench on the other side of the run watching us. "You see, usually, when a dog you're responsible for is being a bully…" She raised her eyebrows at me, and I realized I was being lectured. "…You should intervene." I sat in silence, looking at her as she looked at me.
"OK," I finally said. I looked over to where Snowball and the poodle were playing happily. "Not now?" I asked.
"No, not now, now is too late. I'm talking about what they did to that puppy."
"So this is for my future reference."
She smiled, pleased with my grasp of the situation. "Exactly."
"Okay."
"I'm Marcia." She held her hand out. I put mine in it. We shook. Her hand was rough and her grip strong.
"Joy."
"Nice to meet you, Joy."
"You're a dog-walker." I wanted to see if her trick of stating facts worked both ways.
"Sure am." She didn't seem to notice. "And that's Elaine and Fiona." She motioned toward the bench down the yard. They waved. I waved back.
"You're all dog-walkers."
"That's right."
"You like it?" I asked.
She smiled. "Love it. I've been doing this for most my life."
"You know I didn't even realize it was a profession until recently." Marcia looked dumbfounded. "You know, I'd just never thought about it," I said, trying to make up for my obvious blunder. That made two in about as many minutes. Snowball jumped up onto the bench next to me, panting. I used it as an excuse to leave. "It was nice meeting you," I told Marcia as I stood.
"See you around," she said.
My next charge, Snaffles, a Jack Russell terrier owned by Mr. and Mrs. Saperstein, ran up and down the length of the kitchen, which was blocked off from the rest of the apartment by a child safety gate. He inhaled the three-fourths-of-a-cup of kibble I measured into his bowl and then continued his bounding and running while I tried to get the leash on him. Once the leash was attached, he stopped running and concentrated on killing it. Snaffles shook the leash with the gusto a wolf might use when taking out a bunny.
On the street he pissed on the trees, the parking meters, the trash bags, and when he ran out of pee, he kept raising his leg nonetheless. It took us the full 45 minutes just to get around the block. I returned him to his kitchen at two exactly, and, as I left, I heard the clicking of his claws while he raced back and forth and back and forth.
I left the Sapersteins' building and walked two doors down to walk the Maxims' golden retriever who, according to my notes, was named Toby. I nodded at the doorman. He was wearing a hunter-green jacket with puffed riding jodhpurs and knee-high boots. At the front desk, I was directed to a bank of elevators. A key from my envelope allowed me to push the button for the penthouse. When the golden doors of the elevator opened, I was standing in an ornate foyer. An elaborate flower arrangement stood on a pier table next to a large, imposing, dark, wooden door.
His whole body wagging, Toby welcomed me into the house. A wall of windows, with a view of the glittering river below and Queens in the distance, flooded the two-story room with light. It reflected off the polished wood floor and bathed three teal couches--one of which had the imprint of Toby's body in it--in bright, white sunlight. To the left, a spiral staircase curled up through the ceiling. Toby waited patiently, apparently used to the awe that the room inspired.
I found the kitchen when I walked through a door on the right side of the living room. The kitchen had floor-to-ceiling windows with the same view as the living room. Inside the enormous Subzero refrigerator, I found a Tupperware container labeled "Toby's lunch."
After he'd finished his mix of specialty frozen meats topped with several different powdered supplements, Toby pulled me through the lobby and out onto the street. He turned downtown, and I followed, hurrying to keep up. Toby pulled against the leash, tightening his collar and choking himself in the process. He coughed and made awful gagging noises until we reached a smell interesting enough to pause for. Toby sniffed intently for several seconds and then shot out to the end of the leash, hit it, and started the whole process all over again. My cell phone rang. I followed Toby to a fire hydrant, then answered it. It was James. "Hey," I said, then lost my balance as Toby lunged down the street. I landed on my right hip with a thud. The leash flew out of my hand and my cell phone bounced against a parked car and smashed onto the sidewalk. Toby tore down an alley ten yards away.
I jumped up ignoring my throbbing hip, grabbed my phone and its disconnected battery, then gave chase. Toby's golden butt stuck out from behind a pair of dirty green Dumpsters. "Toby!" He ignored me, intent on whatever was hiding in the deep shade of the narrow alley. I picked my way through the littered dead end. After the relentless heat and bright sunshine of the street, the alley felt almost cold.
Tob
y poked his head out from behind the Dumpster. There was something hairy and black in his mouth. Oh Jesus, I thought, please don't let it be a rat. I stood in my tracks and called to him again. "Toby!" I yelled in a high-pitched, happy tone. He stood his ground and began shaking the hairy thing. A breeze blew through the alley and I smelled the putrid sweetness of garbage in June mixed with the rotten stench of decay. Toby looked at me, his eyes reflecting a shiny green in the darkness. I shivered in my thin T-shirt and wondered, for just a moment, if I could leave him here, go back to Brooklyn, take a nap, and pretend like none of this had ever happened.
Instead, I pulled my collar over my mouth and nose and took a tentative step toward him. He backed away. "Toby come." I took another step. He took another step away from me, holding the hairy, black mess tightly in his jaws. His leash--long, red, and nylon--curled off his choke collar onto the ground. With a swift move, I stomped it. Toby couldn't get away.
He whined through his stuffed mouth as I reached down to pick up the lead. It was in a puddle that I quickly realized I was standing in. The liquid was all over the leash, and when I looked at Toby, I saw that it covered his paws and dripped off the prize in his mouth.
"What the--" "Fuck" caught in my throat as I looked at the dark, thick, red fluid. I turned my head ever so slowly and looked at where Toby had found that black mass of wet hair. A hand--gray, limp, and lifeless--lay inches from my left foot.
Blood rushed in my ears. The hand was attached to a wrist that disappeared into a blue tracksuit jacket. Turning my head just the slightest bit more, I saw what had once been a face but was now a gaping red hole.
The top of the man's head had survived with its few pathetic strands of black hair. But his eyes, nose, mouth, chin--they were all gone. In their place was a mass of bloody pulp. The head lay in a pool of dark, clotted blood; I stood in that puddle and screamed.
The Dispatched Units
The only other blood and gore I'd seen in real life was on the road. Animals, disemboweled, splayed on the cement, their blood ground into the pavement by a thousand tons of cars driving through it. Flies hovering above the carrion, buzzing away when a car came too close, but always resettling and continuing their work, turning the corpse into a nursery for their young.
When I first got my license, I would drive around because it was the only thing to do. I would smoke cigarettes and blast loud, angry music. Those carcasses on the side of the road in all states of decomposition, some fresh and red, others brown and sunken, would make my insides quiver.
As I sat there, with Toby at my feet, waiting for the police, all I could think about was this one decapitated cat whose insides were spread across the whole road, and there was nothing I could do but run over his fucking intestines. The doorman from the nearest building who'd responded to my screaming was chattering at me. There was blood on my hand, drying in the creases of my palm. And I just kept thinking about that poor cat.
The sound of clopping hooves preceded two mounted police officers rounding the corner. Toby shifted nervously and the doorman waved them over, desperately pointing to the alley. They stopped in front of us. Squinting against the sun, I looked up at the one closer to me. The light bounced off his helmet and badge.
"Hello," I said.
"Hi," he said back and removed his sunglasses. His eyes looked like the ocean in those ads on the subway for tropical vacations. His partner was talking to the doorman, who was shaking his head in a grotesque imitation of Toby's show with the mess of black hair. It turned out to be a toupee. I felt bile rise up in my throat. "I'm Officer O'Conner and that's my partner, Officer Doyle. Can you tell me what the problem is?" he asked.
"There's a dead body in the alley," I said, nodding toward the body. As Officer O'Conner climbed off his horse, the smell of leather wafted toward me. He entered the alley.
Officer Doyle dismounted and came over to where I stood. He asked me if I was alright. Doyle looked to be about 30. He had dark brown eyes and a nose that angled left. I nodded.
Officer O'Conner motioned from the mouth of the alley, and Doyle headed over to him. I examined the cracked brown tracks on my thigh. I thought about the dripping hair in Toby's mouth. The memory of that thing touching my leg as I pulled Toby out of the alley and back to the sanity of the street lurched up at me.
Sirens wailed and two patrol cars pulled up next to the horses. Officer Doyle explained that he would need a statement and to collect some evidence from me. I nodded. He went away and came back with a woman who was holding a camera and yelling at a young guy with glasses and adolescent acne to hurry up. She started snapping pictures of me and pulled my hands toward her. "Stay still," she commanded. Her assistant, his hands in tight latex gloves, scraped some of the dried blood from my legs into a plastic bag. Then the woman took Toby's leash from me.
"Hey," I said, but she ignored me. Her assistant smiled apologetically. His bone-white hands started on Toby's fur, trying to get the congealed blood into a bag while his boss's camera clicked away. He took off Toby's leash and collar. Doyle brought him a piece of rope, and they tied it around Toby's neck.
"OK, we're done here." The woman strode away, and her assistant hurried after her.
"Why don't you come with me?" Doyle said as I watched the photographer turn into the ally. Doyle pointed toward the end of the block. The light from a camera flash shot out of the alley as Doyle lead me away. I gripped the rope attached to Toby. The officer showed me around the corner and into the lobby of an apartment building.
Doyle spoke to a woman behind a large marble block that served as the front desk of the building. She turned and looked at me. Her eyes were a deep, warm brown and she'd painted her lashes thick with mascara. She clucked a couple of times and then took my arm. I handed Doyle Toby's rope and followed the woman into a small bathroom.
She turned on the tap. "Come on dear," she said, and gently pulled my hands toward the sink. The water spiraling down the drain turned from pink to clear. The woman wet a paper towel with warm water and handed it to me. I turned to my reflection.
I hardly recognized myself. Who was that thin, haggard woman in the mirror? When did I become this person? Did I ever brush my hair? Tears started down my cheeks, and I watched them as if the mirror was a TV screen--a big reflection of someone else's fantasy.
"Sweetheart?" it was Eyelashes looking at me with dilated pupils. This was the story she was going to tell for the rest of her life. I was her traumatic tale. The sweet blond who found a dead body and went comatose in the bathroom while under my care.
I cleaned my face, rubbing my cheeks and then digging into my eye sockets. I cleaned the blood off my legs. My reflection now showed a face scrubbed clean, hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, and gray eyes rimmed with red.
Officer Doyle waited for me on a paisley-patterned couch, Toby sitting next to him, his face and paws washed. I sat down with them.
"Are you feeling OK?" Officer Doyle asked.
"I think so." I leaned back for a moment and closed my eyes, but the gaping hole that had been a face was waiting for me behind my eyelids. I snapped my head back up.
"I spoke with the doorman briefly, and he said that your dog found the body?"
"No," I said. "He is not my dog."
"So how did you end up in the alley?"
I stared at him for a moment. "Oh, yes, Toby ran down there, but no, he is not my dog. He is a client's."
"You're a dog-walker?" Doyle asked, a small smile crossing his lips.
"Yes."
"If you give me his owner's contact information, I'll be happy to explain about the leash."
"OK." I found the Maxims' phone number in my purse and gave it to Doyle.
He looked down at the information for a moment. He pressed his lips together into a tight line. Then he looked up at me, smiled, and said: "I just need to ask you a couple of questions-- nothing big, just some basic stuff. It shouldn't take long. Do you feel up to it?"
"OK."
"Joy Humbolt."
"Occupation: dog-walker." He wrote it down as he said it. He got my address and all my contact information. "Now, please tell me in your own words what happened--how you came upon the victim?"
I told him about my falling down and Toby running into the alley. I told him how I thought he was killing a rat down there and how I had called to him but he hadn't come. I told him about how I had ventured down the alley, and then I started to get choked up.
"Take your time."
I started sobbing. Officer Doyle put a hand on my shoulder, and I grabbed on to him as if he were a floatation device, and I was in the middle of a big motherfucking storm. He sat there, letting me hold onto him without saying a word or moving a muscle.
"I'm sorry," I said, when I realized, quite suddenly, what an ass I was being. I backed away from him and lowered my eyes. He coughed something out about it being okay and reaching into one of his uniform's many pockets pulled out a tissue. I used it to wipe my eyes and face.
"Thanks," I said weakly.
"I know this is hard, but if you could just finish telling me what happened, I can let you go home."
I took a deep breath. "When I realized that there was a dead body, I started screaming." Doyle nodded. I sniffled. "Um, the doorman came, and when he saw the body, he threw up. I realized I had to get out of there. Toby fought me, but I managed to pull him out of the alley. He dropped the thing I thought was a rat, and it brushed against my legs." I looked down at my legs. They were clean.
"Go on."
"When he dropped it, that's when I saw it was a toupee." I looked up at Doyle. He nodded for me to keep going. "So I dragged Toby to the lobby where the doorman worked and used his phone to call the police. And then I went outside and waited for you guys to show up."
"OK," Doyle said. "I just want to double-check a couple of things." I nodded. "So you didn't touch anything in the alley besides the toupee touching your leg?"
"I might have put my hand on the Dumpster; I'm not sure. But the doorman--I know he touched the wall when he was throwing up. That's all I can think of."
Unleashed (Sydney Rye Series #1) Page 3