Radiomen (22 page)

I hadn’t realized that there was someone else in the van, but my rescuers must have seen him. Immediately, whoever it was gunned the engine and the van took off down the street, quickly disappearing into the darkness. In the silence that followed, I could hear the sound of water lapping against the rocks at the edge of the marshy shore just yards away, beyond the chain-link fence.

It was suddenly quiet; the dog had stopped yowling. Then he turned, ran a few steps and leaped into my arms. He was a small dog but still too big, really, to hold like that, and surprisingly heavy. And he was covered with blood—his, the attackers, I didn’t know. He was panting like he couldn’t catch his breath.

I couldn’t hold him, so I had to put him down. Immediately, he went into his characteristic stance of leaning against my leg. The truckers, who had waited in the road for a few moments, watching after the fleeing van, now walked back toward me. They were grinning, as if the minifight they’d just engaged in had turned out to be an unexpected pleasure.

One of them looked over at me and said, “You’re the bartender, aren’t you?”

I nodded. “I work at the airport,” I said.

He nodded. “Don’t we all?” he replied, which brought a loud guffaw from his companion. I decided to treat the remark as philosophy; I couldn’t imagine it would do any of us any good if I could suddenly place my rescuers, put them in a uniform and picture them working some late-night shift on one of Kennedy’s back lots, loading and unloading crates of valuable goods that sometimes got misplaced.

Still chuckling over his friend’s joke, the second man said, “So, bartender, are you okay?”

“Yes,” I lied. And it was a lie, a big one. The shock of what had just happened was really beginning to hit me now. I was shaking inside, feeling wave after wave of fear, anger—and worry about how badly hurt the dog might be.

“You know, if you’d ever like to sell that dog, I might be interested,” the first of my two new friends said. “Did someone train him to fight like that?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, looking down at Digitaria, who continued to lean against my leg. “But maybe.”

I thanked the men, and they good-naturedly waved at me as they walked away. It was when their backs were turned toward me that I saw another van come around the corner—but this one posed no danger. It was a black vehicle commonly called a dollar van. These illegal, low-cost vans and black cars regularly prowled the outer borough neighborhoods where regular taxis were never to be found. I flagged it down and climbed in, hauling my dog with me.

The van already had three other passengers who all just shoved over on the bench seats to make room for me and the dog. I told the driver where I wanted to go and sat back, clutching the dog’s leash. No one said a word about the fact that the dog was covered in blood. I assumed that I probably had his blood all over my clothes now, too.

The van weaved its way through the local streets, letting passengers off in front of different houses, all with unlit windows and the look of structures somehow sagging beneath the dark weight of the night. I recognized these places—they were, in a way, the modern-day equivalent of the Sunlite Apartments—rooming houses for immigrant families, where a lot of people lived together in a few small rooms. At some point in the journey, I realized that the van driver had the radio on. He was listening to a talk radio program being broadcast in Spanish. I couldn’t understand what was being said but I could make out two distinctly different voices, one edged with sarcasm, the other sounding incredulous, like neither believed what the other was saying. It was the kind of radio Jack and I had been talking about earlier—could it be that was just hours ago? Late night radio—radio for the workers, the up-all-nighters, the sleepless and the strange.

I was the last to be dropped off. That was how it worked with these black vans: the last one in was the last one out. It probably wouldn’t have mattered if I had a knife stuck in my side; I had to wait my turn. When it finally came, I gave the driver a few dollars and then led the dog into the vet’s office I had taken him to some weeks back. I remembered seeing a sign in the window saying they offered twenty-four-hour emergency service, and even though it was now past midnight, they were indeed open. I wasn’t sure how badly the dog had been hurt but I had brought him here because I didn’t want to take any chances.

Through the glass door, I could see a young woman sitting at the desk, leafing through a magazine. I buzzed to be let in and led Digitaria into the quiet office.

Seeing the dog striped with blood, the girl became instantly concerned. “Poor doggie,” she said. “What happened to you?”

I almost started to tell her, but the story was just too complicated and much too long. Instead, I said that I had been mugged, adding. “The dog jumped at the two guys who came at us and I think they may have cut him.” I saw her reaching for forms that I knew she was going to hand me, so I stopped her. “We were here just a few weeks ago. Perzin,” I told her, spelling my name. “We must be in your system.”

She turned to her computer, found Digitaria in her records, and then led us into an examining room. There were no other patients in the office tonight, she said, so the doctor would be with us in just a minute.

As we waited, Digitaria leaned against my leg again. I looked down at him and saw that his eyes were closed. It was possible that he was even asleep.

The vet did come in very shortly. He was a different doctor than the one I’d seen when I was here before but similar in manner and appearance: young, efficient, sympathetic. I told him a more detailed version of what had happened, and he lifted the dog onto a metal examining table.

“He’s got a bad cut on his leg,” the vet said. “I think that’s where most of the blood came from. I’m going to have to put in a few stitches, but I think he’ll be fine.”

“He kind of went crazy,” I said. “It was pretty amazing.”

The vet patted the dog on the head. “You’re a very good boy,” he said to Digitaria. “I’ll bet the other guys are in much worse shape.”

As he began to work on the dog, the vet asked me if I’d called the police. I hadn’t even thought of that; everything had happened very quickly, and once the attackers had been chased off, my main thought was about getting help for Digitaria.

“I guess I should do that,” I said.

The vet told me I could sit outside while he stitched up the dog, so I left the examining room. The girl stayed with them, so I was alone in the front room. It was nearly one
A.M.
now, and very quiet. The phones weren’t ringing and even the traffic outside had slowed down. The only sound that interrupted the peace was the ticking of a wall clock shaped like a black cat wearing a rhinestone-studded collar. Its long plastic tail swished back and forth with the beats of the second hand.

I got out my cell phone, thinking about how I was about to tell the police another crazy story, but before I could dial a number, it rang. The sound was startling because it was so unexpected. I almost dropped the phone as I fumbled to flip it open. I thought that maybe it was Jack—as if he somehow could have learned what had happened to me—but the number displayed on the phone was one I didn’t know.

“Hello?” I said.

A man’s voice responded. The tone was smooth, but slightly urgent. “I hope you’re all right,” the voice said to me.

“Who is this?” I asked.

The reply was without hesitation. “Raymond Gilmartin.”

I had to take a moment to process that information.
Raymond Gilmartin?
Really? For whatever reason, what came into my mind at that moment was the title he had been referred to by in the threatening letter I’d received about the Blue Box:
Chairman of the Board of the Religious Technology Center of the Blue Awareness
. Well, I had a pretty good idea of what the Chairman wanted to talk about. And I wanted to talk about it, too. In fact, just as I was in the middle of more or less accusing him of attempted murder, he cut me off.

“Laurie,” he said, using my name in a way that implied a familiarity I immediately resented, “please let me assure you that no one I know tried to hurt you.” His voice was smooth, his tone measured, supremely confident.

“Okay, so we’re going to play a word game. They tried to hurt my dog.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“You tell me,” I said.

My question was met with silence. This was another game, one of control. He wasn’t going to respond to me unless he felt like it.

I probably should have hung up the phone, but at the moment, my self-control wasn’t any match for his. I was too upset. “Why are you calling me?” I demanded.

As it turned out, that question he did have an answer for. “I’d like to meet you,” Gilmartin said.

I glanced at my watch. “It’s nearly one o’clock in the morning and you’re calling me because you’d like to meet me? Seriously?”

“I’m often up late. I hear that you are, too.”

“Well, right now I’m up late because I’m in the vet’s office where my dog is getting stitches because we were attacked by a pair of lunatics wearing ski goggles. Sound like anyone you know?”

Gilmartin didn’t miss a beat; he just added a note of concern to his voice. “I hope the dog is all right,” he said. “Why don’t you bring him with you when you come by?”

“Come by where?” I replied. “And who says I’m agreeing to meet you, anyway?”

“Sometimes things get out of hand,” Gilmartin said. “Don’t you find that happens? I mean, as life goes on. But I think if we met and talked for a while, we could repair some of the damage.”

“The damage? Do you mean everything you did to me? The break-in, the blue paint, the attack tonight—did I leave anything out?”

Gilmartin completely ignored what I’d said. “The damage piles up,” he said, continuing his own train of thought. “You went to see one of our members, Ravenette, for help. She feels very badly that she couldn’t convince you to let her advance your state of Awareness. That’s why I’m calling. That’s why I’d like to see you.”

“Just about everything you just said is a lie, and you know it.”

“Come by tomorrow,” he said smoothly. “Seven o’clock.” Then he gave me an address on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. “Damage can be repaired,” he said. “It’s just a matter of understanding our true nature and doing some real work on ourselves.”

“What a revelation,” I said, but Raymond Gilmartin had already hung up the phone.

A few minutes later, the vet led Digitaria out to the waiting room. He had a bandage on his leg and looked a little scraped up, but as soon as he saw me, he began tugging on the new leash that the vet had attached to his collar. Dragging the vet with him, he pulled himself toward me and then, as if settling himself in for the night, leaned against my leg and closed his eyes.

“He certainly seems strong enough,” the vet said, handing the leash over to me. I handed over my credit card and started calculating how many overtime hours I was going to have to work to pay for this. The damages did indeed pile up, though maybe not the way Raymond Gilmartin had meant.

In fact, this whole thing was getting so complicated I thought it might be better if I tried to explain it to some cop in person, using my wounded dog as exhibit A. I left the vet’s office and flagged down another dollar van, asking to be taken to the local precinct. I thought the driver was going to refuse—there were already other passengers in the van and it was clear by the looks I got that none of them wanted go anywhere near the police station—but eventually, he dropped me off in the part of Queens where the court buildings were. This wasn’t exactly where I’d wanted to go, but I didn’t complain because I guess it served as a compromise. Here, at least, the driver could pick up more fares since it was the hour that night court was closing down and people who had to be there—thieves, burglars, drunks and assorted mischief makers, along with their relatives who came to bail them out—would be looking for rides.

The entrance to night court was around the side of the Queens Criminal Court building. The structure looked more imposing under the high summer moon than it did during the day when office workers and high school students on class trips ate their lunches on the wide flight of stone steps leading up to what otherwise seemed like just another hulking, boxlike building squatting on the dark bedrock of central Queens. Now, as the last of those who had business in the court climbed into the cruising dollar vans or simply walked off into the night, it was like being on a deserted movie set. Leading the dog, I walked past the complex of now-shuttered municipal buildings that included the court and a surrounding host of fortress-like brick edifices that housed lawyers and bail bondsmen. The police station was at the end of the block.

Inside, the first officer I saw told me I couldn’t bring the dog into the station. When I explained what I was there for and that there was no way I was going to leave the dog tied up outside, he finally sent me to another floor to talk to someone. I had to wait for a while, sitting on a hard bench while Digitaria slept at my feet. When a detective led me to his desk half an hour later—a big, beefy man with an unmistakable Jersey accent—he listened to me with considerable attention, but I knew that the more I talked, the crazier my story sounded. It even sounded that way to me: stolen radios, African dogs, the possibility that the Blue Awareness was targeting me for a reason I wasn’t sure I understood anymore. (Could this, really, now all be about a radio antenna? Seriously?) I didn’t think that even the fact that there was a report on file about what I insisted was the related break-in at my apartment made me sound any more credible. I also told the detective about the phone call from Raymond Gilmartin, and though that seemed to pique his interest just a little after I explained who Gilmartin was, I didn’t think even that was going to get me very far. I left the police station half an hour later with what sounded like a half-hearted promise that the attack would be investigated and a copy of yet another police report. Outside, I started looking for another roaming dollar van to take me home.

When I finally walked back into my apartment, it was almost dawn. I stripped off my clothes and more or less fell into bed. The dog jumped up after me and despite everything he’d been through, took up his usual post at the end of the bed, facing the front door. Digitaria was still on duty.