“Yeah, maybe. I’ll see what I can do,” he said, and he didn’t sound thrilled about it. The next morning Marino appeared while I was finishing work on a fourteen-year-old boy thrown out of the back of a pickup truck the afternoon before.
“That ain’t something you got on, I hope.”
Marino moved closer to the table and sniffing.
“He had a bottle of aftershave in a pocket of his pants. It broke when he hit the pavement, and that’s what you’re smelling.”
I nodded at clothing on a nearby gurney.
“Brut?”
He sniffed again.
“I believe so,” I replied absently.
“Doris used to buy me Brut. One year she got me Obsession, if you can believe that.”
“What did you find out?”
I continued to work.
“The dog’s name was Dammit, and I swear that’s the truth,” Marino said. “Belonged to some old geezer in West Point, a Mr. Joyce.”
“Did you find out why the dog came into this office?”
“No connection to any other cases. A favor, I think.”
“The state veterinarian must have been on vacation,” I replied, for this had happened before.
On the other side of my building was the Department of Animal Health, complete with a morgue where examinations were conducted on animals. Normally, the carcasses went to the state veterinarian. But there were exceptions. When asked, the forensic pathologists indulged the cops and pitched in when the veterinarian was unavailable. During my career I had autopsied tortured dogs, mutilated cats, a sexually assaulted mare, and a poisoned chicken left in a judge’s mailbox. People were just as cruel to animals as they were to each other.
“Mr. Joyce don’t got a phone, but a contact of mine says he’s still in the same crib,” Marino said. “Thought I might run-over there, check out his story. You want to come along?”
I snapped in a new scalpel blade as I thought about my cluttered desk, the cases awaiting my dictation, the telephone calls I had yet to return and the others I needed to initiate.
“Might as well,” I said hopelessly.
He hesitated, as if waiting for something.
When I looked up at him, I noticed. Marino had gotten his hair cut. He was wearing khaki trousers held up by suspenders and a tweed jacket that looked brand new. His tie was clean, so was his pale yellow shirt. Even his shoes were shined.
“You look downright handsome,” I said like a proud mother.
“Yeah.”
He grinned, his face turning red. “Rose whistled at me when I was getting on the elevator. It was kinda funny. Hadn’t had a woman whistle at me in years, except Sugar, and Sugar don’t exactly count.”
“Sugar?”
“Hangs out on the comer of Adam and Church. Oh yeah, found Sugar, also known as Mad Dog Mama, down in an alleyway, passed out drunk as a skunk, practically ran over her sorry ass. Made the mistake of bringing her to. Fought me like a damn cat and cussed me all the way to lockup. Every time I pass within a block of her, she yells, whistles, hitches up her skirt.”
“And you were worrying that you were no longer attractive to women,” 1 said.
11
Dammit’s origin was undetermined, though it was patently clear that every genetic marker he had picked up from every dog in his lineage was the worst of the lot.
“Raised him from a pup,” said Mr. Joyce as I returned to him a Polaroid photograph of the dog in question. “He was a stray, you know. Just appeared at the back door one morning and I felt sorry for him, threw him some scraps. Couldn’t get rid of him to save my life after that.”
We were sitting around Mr. Joyce’s kitchen table. Sunlight seeped wanly through a dusty window above a rust-stained porcelain sink, the faucet dripping. Ever since we had arrived fifteen minutes ago, Mr. Joyce had not had a kind word to offer about his slain dog, and yet I detected warmth in his old eyes, and the rough hands thoughtfully stroking the rim of his coffee mug looked capable of tender affection.
“How did he get his name?”
Marino wanted to know. “Never did give him a name, you see. But I was always hollering at him. ‘Dammit, shut up! Come here, dammit! Dammit, if you don’t stop yapping, I’m gonna wire your mouth shut.’ ” He smiled sheepishly. “Got to where he thought his name was Dammit. So that’s what I took to calling him.”