~XI~

“A pedophile?” I said to Jack. “That’s what they think you are? And they actually think they have some kind of evidence for this?”

“You don’t need evidence nowadays,” Jack said. “You just make accusations. And then you repeat them on some listener’s blog and before you know it—wham. Tried and convicted. Oh, yes—and did I tell you I might also be a drug dealer, a rapist and possibly the Antichrist? The Pope himself might issue an encyclical denouncing me because I promulgate degenerate theories about the sex life of the saints.”

“Well, you did have on that medium who claimed to be able to channel Joan of Arc and apparently she and one of her soldiers did not have a totally chaste relationship.”

Jack let out a long sigh. “Great,” he said. “That was one of the shows you tuned into.”

It was a warm Sunday night. In just a few days, the weather had shaken off its late spring chill and turned almost sultry. Jack and I were sitting at a table outside a restaurant on Seventh Avenue South, in the Village and he was telling me about his trip to Los Angeles, which clearly had not gone very well.

“But you told me they’ve been carrying your show for years. They know you. Why would they believe things like that?”

“Because there’s money involved. Blue Star Communications seems to have limitless amounts of it and they’re telling my bosses that they want to buy the company but won’t honor the contracts of anyone who’s morally unfit.”

“The Blue Awareness has an issue about morals? Maybe they can just hook you up to a Blue Box and cure you of your degenerate tendencies.”

Jack frowned at me. “Yeah, well. They didn’t offer me that remedy. All they’re going to do is buy out the rest of my contract, which just had a couple of months to run on it anyway, so they make out like bandits and I’m screwed.”

“But you’re going to sign on with World Air, right?” That’s what Jack had told me when he’d called me to arrange getting together tonight. Ostensibly, we were meeting so I could return his car to him, but I had also assumed that we were going to have a celebratory drink to toast the World Air deal. Now the situation seemed a lot less worthy of a celebration.

“I don’t have a choice,” Jack replied. “I have to say, though, I’m not as thrilled with what they’re offering as I thought I’d be. I mean, I thought they’d offer more. The deal on the table is two hours, from midnight to two A.M., five nights a week, on what they call their alternative talk channel. The problem is that my listeners aren’t exactly the kind of people who subscribe to satellite radio. There’s a big difference between what comes to you free, over the air, and something you have to not only pay an annual fee for but also have to go out and buy some special equipment to even get involved in listening. Would you do that?” he challenged me.

I thought about it for a minute. “I might,” I said.

“Yeah, you might. But then, you’re a radio freak.”

“Am I?”

Finally, Jack laughed. “You don’t know that? Boy, have you got your uncle’s disease. Same as I do. Everybody else is watching TV or surfing the web, but people like you and me . . . I don’t know. There’s something about turning on that little box and hearing voices come out of the air. It’s kind of tied up with nighttime, right? And for a lot of people, with working. People driving trucks and cabs, guys working night shifts . . .”

“Bartenders,” I added.

“Exactly. Night people. Strange, angry, weird, bored, curious, sure they’re being duped by the higher-ups who really control the levers of power . . .”

Now he had me laughing. “Well, we are, aren’t we?”

“Of course. Probably since the beginning of time. What’s scary, though, is people like Raymond Gilmartin having that kind of power. What is he but a rich guy who’s running a cult empire based on a bunch of science fiction books? Just my luck, they decided to diversify into media. And then picked me as a target.”

“Maybe you should be flattered,” I suggested. “They apparently think you have some influence.”

“I doubt it, really,” Jack replied. “I don’t think Raymond Gilmartin and his Blue Awareness disciples can distinguish between who’s just an irritation and who’s a real enemy. To them, everyone who isn’t with them is an enemy.”

Now he was sounding gloomy again; his few moments of lightheartedness had quickly fled. It was surprising to me to experience this side of him. Up until now, I had thought of Jack as a kind of unrepentant optimist. But even for him, apparently, there were a limited number of bright sides of life he could find a way to look on.

We parted around nine o’clock. He went to collect his car, which I had parked a block or so away, and I headed for the subway. When I got home, Digitaria, as usual, was waiting by the door. He was used to getting a walk at night, so I obliged him, putting on his leash and leading him downstairs.

Except for the one furtive truck lurking in an alley with its running lights on, the neighborhood was deserted, almost silent. I led the dog down to the end of the block, meaning to cross the street and walk him along the chain-link fence that bordered the marshy shore of the bay.

Just as I stepped off the curb, a van came careening down the block. I heard the sound off to my right and pulled the dog, who was a few steps ahead of me, back to the safety of the sidewalk. Holding tight to his leash, I moved back a couple of feet and waited for what I assumed was some kind of crazy drunken driver to pass by.

Only, that wasn’t what happened. The van came to an abrupt halt right in front of me, deliberately blocking my path. For a moment, I still thought that what I was confronting was just an impaired driver—until two men stepped out of the back of the van.

I knew immediately that this was a very bad situation, but was frozen in one of those moments where your eyes register what’s happening but your brain refuses to respond by initiating any kind of useful action. I saw the men walking—no, running—toward me, but did nothing. The dog, however, experienced no such hesitation. He reacted before I did.

I heard a sound come out of him that was bone-chilling—a growl that ended in yet another version of his strange, high-pitched yipping. This sound was clearly meant to be interpreted as both a warning and a challenge. I felt him stiffen at the end of the leash and then, in an instant, he pulled at the strap so hard that it ripped in half. The next thing I saw was Digitaria rushing at the two men.

He stopped just before he reached them, standing straight and still, with his tail coiled behind him like a hook. He bared his teeth and continued to emit his strange warning sounds. My thin shadow of a dog suddenly seemed deadly mean.

I hadn’t noticed it before—that frozen-brain blindness, I guess—but the two men had obscured their features by wearing yellow ski goggles, which gave them a bizarre appearance. Focusing on that for just a moment, whatever part of my mind was still logically processing information sent me a question: yellow goggles? Couldn’t they have found some that were blue?

But logical thinking was once again overcome by the kind of panic that takes away your sense, your breath and your voice. I watched them advance toward the dog, thinking they meant to walk past him to get to me. I knew I should at least start screaming, but I couldn’t seem to remember how.

Instead of moving toward me though, the men turned to the dog. One of them was holding a rope with a loop at the end. With a quick motion, he attempted to slip it over Digitaria’s head, but he never got the chance because, in an instant, the dog went into a frenzy.

Yowling like a mad thing, he leapt at the man with the rope and locked onto his arm. Then he let go and leapt at the other man, who had a box cutter in his hand. The sudden, terrifying notion that he might actually kill my dog brought back my voice. I started to scream for help.

That must have been what summoned another pair of men, who came running from behind the truck that was parked in the alley. One had a tire chain in his hand and the other was carrying an iron crowbar.

At this point, one of the two men in the yellow goggles had gotten hold of the torn piece of Digitaria’s leash that was still attached to his collar and was trying to drag the dog into the van, but each time they pulled at him, he spun around and sank his teeth into an arm, a leg, a hand . . .

My rescuers looked like the guys I see around the airport all the time—the ones out on the runway, or in the back lots, loading cargo or driving big, dented vehicles that haul things or move them or clear them away—tough, burly guys with scraped hands and meaty faces. But they moved quickly; in an instant, it seemed, they had positioned themselves between me and the men in the ski goggles.

The confrontation between the ski-goggle guys and the men from the truck was over almost before it started. As the truckers approached, one of the goggle men weakly waved his box cutter around, but all that got him was a solid whack with the tire chain that quickly brought him to his knees. The truckers soon had both attackers pinned against the side of their van, weapons raised as if they were going to lop off their opponents’ heads in some grisly, slasher-movie fashion, using the chain and crowbar. Instead, they dragged them around to the back of the van, ripped open the doors and tossed the two men inside. Then, after slamming the doors shut, the guy with the crowbar banged on the back of the truck so hard he left a visible dent.

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.

When I woke up a few hours later, there was a moment when I couldn’t recall whether I had to go to work or not. I felt exhausted and groggy, and was greatly relieved to finally remember that this was one of my days off this week.

I had breakfast, fed the dog and then took him for a walk. I had some qualms about leaving the apartment, but I had to get over my reluctance because the dog had to go out. He exhibited no such hesitation but patiently waited by the door for his collar and leash to be put on, as usual.

Outside, I noted that the truck that had been hiding in the alley last night was gone and so were the men who had helped me. In the light of day, everything that had happened seemed unreal. I wanted to go on feeling that way, to compartmentalize enough to not think about last night, but I wasn’t very successful. When I returned to my apartment, I finally tried going back to sleep for a while, doing my best to block out not only unwelcome thoughts but also the noise of a weekday morning in automobile alley. Today, in particular, it sounded like somebody was deliberately grinding the gears of a dozen rust buckets right outside my window, or crunching up cars in some evil car-killing machine.

I did feel a little better when I woke up again in the afternoon. I sat on the edge of the bed for a while, thinking about what I should do. Digitaria watched me, with his head tilted to the side.

Finally, I picked up the phone and called Jack. “So listen,” I said, “what are your plans for tonight?”

“The usual,” he said. “I have to go on the air later, so there’s stuff I need to go over. I’ve got an ex-navy fighter pilot who says he was tailed by UFOs a couple of times when he was doing bombing runs over North Vietnam.”

“Can you reschedule him? Play a tape or something?” I said. “I mean, what difference does it make? They’ve already fired you. You’ll be gone in a couple of weeks.”

On the other end of the phone, Jack was silent for a few minutes. Finally, he said, “Okay, Laurie. Why don’t you tell me what’s happened now?”

And so I did.