Abnormal Occurrences: Short Stories

  “Close that door,” said the other. If he carried a gun, he did not produce it. He seemed to be scratching himself. “Here’s what I want you to do: forget about killing Kim.”

  “You know her name?” Dick was getting over the scare. They were in a public place in broad daylight. He left the car door open.

  Ignoring the question, the man went on. “The husband is always the prime suspect. Motive? You’re having an affair with Stephanie Wechsler.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Everybody knows that.”

  “Then you should also know it’s only genital.”

  “Let me tell you something: such distinctions don’t hold water in a court of law.”

  Dick deliberated for a moment. Then he said, “All I actually have against Kim is she gets on my nerves with those diet fads, and I hate to go to the movies with her, because afterwards she wants to discuss what we saw when it’s self-evident, and—”

  “Not much to kill somebody for?”

  “You may be right...” Dick’s smile was quizzical. “But what I don’t get is why you approached me, if you were only going to talk me out of hiring you.”

  The killer assumed a dreamy look, eyes floating. “I’m thinking about getting out of the profession. It takes its toll over the years. I thought maybe the time has come to give something back, like the show folk say at fund-raisers.”

  Dick’s feelings were a mix of wonderment and relief. “It takes all kinds, I guess.” They shook hands. “You saved me from making a big mistake that I probably would have regretted the rest of my life. Thanks, uh—”

  “Name’s Ralph,” said the former hitman, who had previously, after an afternoon of strenuous sex, also persuaded Kim to abandon her murderous plans.

  Of course Ralph never disclosed to either of them that the other had been ready to contract for spousal murder, thus at the end of the year they were able to get divorced without rancor.

  As to Ralph himself, he went into the witness protection program, moving to a suburb of Omaha, Nebraska, changing his name, and setting up shop as a marriage counselor, a profession he practiced successfully until the day he was killed, in a parking lot, by a shot to the base of the skull at close range, on the orders of the Mob family for which he had formerly worked. Actually, this was personal and not just business, for he had been like a son to the boss.

  Tales Of The Animal Crime Squad

  The Pimp with Paws

  IF I’VE LEARNED ANYTHING in the years I’ve worn a shield, it’s that there are two things that have an irresistible attraction for animals. One is any kind of fad, the sillier the better. The other is breaking the law. I’m Sergeant Vinnie DiFalco of the Animal Crime Squad, NYPD. My partner is a goodnatured slob named Fogarty.

  I’d say the average citizen is totally unaware of our job, and those who have heard of us assume we enforce the various city ordinances that have to do with pets. Nothing could be further from the truth. We couldn’t care less about expired licenses, pooper scoopers, and cats that scream all night on the fire escape. We’re out to get the big fellows, like—But let me tell you about a typical case. You might learn something.

  Now, at first, some people thought it was cute that a fox terrier would run a telephone-answering service, and in a few short weeks after this animal started his business, he had more subscribers than he could handle. So what did he offer that was so special? He answered the phone with a bark. That was it, and that was all. For the rest of it, he switched on the machine and recorded the message, if you were leaving one. Or, if you were picking up the messages that came in when you were out, he played them back for you. I mean, he wouldn’t say a word, now, would he? But you know how people are—fact is, you might say they love fads as much as any animal.

  So all well and good at the beginning, but another trait of an up-and-coming critter is a tendency to go too far. Before long we began to get complaints that this fresh pooch was doing nothing but barking; in other words, didn’t bother to record the calls! Now, his ads continued to run in metro-area papers and he even started to buy radio and cable-TV spots. If he was taking money for a service he failed to provide, he was breaking the law. Speaking for myself, from the first moment I heard of this dog’s business, I figured it was only a matter of time before I’d be called in. Call me prejudiced, but I never saw a fox terrier who could keep his nose clean for long.

  My plan was simplicity itself: to bust into his office by surprise and take the animal into custody with a minimum of fuss. We have one advantage that is not enjoyed by the rest of the force, and that is that a search warrant is not needed to enter premises occupied by a nonhuman tenant. In recent years PETA has lobbied for a change in the law, but it hasn’t happened yet.

  The weakness of my plan was soon revealed: I could not discover the dog’s exact whereabouts. It ought to have been a simple matter to get the address from the telephone company, but I’m afraid Verizon decided at this juncture to pose as a defender of animal rights, and I was told in no uncertain terms to come up with a court order or I might as well go home and practice the harmonica.

  But that experience did put me on my mettle. How to find one mutt in a city overpopulated with the fourfooted? I did have going for me the fact that mighty few dogs operated an answering service. Yet even so, it would take a pretty piece of investigatory work to corner this perpetrator. It might be tedious, but eventually had to prove effective if I went from door to door, street by street, until at some point I crossed the animal’s trail. Or again, I could save shoe leather by remaining at my desk at headquarters, dialing random phone numbers and asking the answerer if he happened to know of such a dog. Having taken on a bit of weight in recent years, I decided on the second of those tactics, but before I had begun to put it into effect, Fogarty came into the squad room, chewing on the inevitable unlighted cheroot. He had black circles around his eyes. His beefy face was haggard.

  “I never got a wink all night,” he complained. “The phone kept ringing, and when I picked it up, it was a wrong number—but always a different wrong number, and the voice was different. If it was somebody out for revenge, he was a master at disguising his voice or went to the trouble of organizing coupla dozen friends. Didn’t wanna unplug, case it was finally you.”

  “Huh,” I said, mostly for myself, “could there be a connection...?” To Fogarty, “You didn’t run across the bark of a dog anywhere?”

  He glared at me. “You know, Vinnie, your idea of humor—”

  “I’m serious, Fogarty. I’m working on that squeal about the dog who runs an answering service.”

  “If you want,” Fogarty offered, “I’ll ask around.”

  By this he meant among his regular informants, a motley crew of lowlifes, addicts of various kinds, and a good many phonies, perfectly respectable people who get off on being thought by the police to be petty criminals. I expected little genuine assistance from this quarter. But what harm could it do?

  He sat down at his own desk and began to work the telephone, speaking to various persons, invariably greeting each with another obvious alias and a ludicrously outdated one at that. Who nowadays is known as Butch or Gertie or Slick? No matter: it was during his fifth or sixth such call that he gestured violently toward me. I raised my eyebrows. He took the phone away from his mouth for a moment and covered the instrument with a meaty fist.

  “Pay dirt?” he asked, his lips forming the letter Q, of which the tip of his tongue made a little tail. “Maybe.”

  “And maybe not,” I said. I didn’t want to encourage Fogarty in his sense of drama, which is always likely to turn maudlin.

  “Say, Blackie,” he said into the mouthpiece, while winking significantly at me, “do you know this for a fact? ...Hey, no offense, man. It was simply a question... Yes... sure... no... well...” He began violently writing in the notebook before him.

  “Gimme,” I said, with outstretched hand.

  Fogarty slammed the phone down, tore the page fro
m his book, and shoved it at me.

  I ripped the paper from his hand and read silently, “Blonde at First and Seventy-second.”

  “It might not be much,” Fogarty said, “but it’s a start.”

  I sighed. “I know you’re just trying to help, Fogarty, but there must be thousands of blondes on the sidewalk at any given time in this town. Why would this one know anything about a dog that operated an answering service?”

  He began to pout. Fogarty can sometimes be oversensitive.

  “Okay, what do I have to lose?” I said, with more cockiness than I felt, and I got up, put my belt on a tighter notch, and headed uptown.

  I work in an unmarked car that has seen better days, but it’s an effective cover. I expected the trip to be completely futile, but wonder of wonders, when I reached the designated corner the blonde was still there. I must say she looked too garish to be a streetwalker; it occurred to me she might well be a decoy cop, a male officer padded in the right places and dressed in women’s clothes, with a purpose to attract a robbery or rape attempt.

  I left the car and sidled near her/him, displayed my shield in a cupped hand, and said, “DiFalco, Animal Crimes.”

  “Get lost,” said the blonde, “and if you don’t, I’ll call a cop.”

  “What do you think I am?”

  “Some creep with a fake badge to shake people down with.”

  “Take a look at my photo ID.” I put it under her button nose, and she squinted at it.

  “Okay,” she said stoically. “So you expect a freebie.”

  “You wouldn’t know of a dog who operates an answering service?”

  “What if I do?” She reared back and put her hand on her hip.

  “Don’t get cute with me, baby. There’s a loitering law in this town.”

  “I might know of such a party,” said she. “You want to sign up for this service, is that it?”

  “I’ll say this, Blondie, you’ve got as much chutzpah as anyone I ever met.”

  “Listen, you got to survive.”

  I gave her a bill that was tightly rolled into a cylinder the size of a cigarette. “Pick your teeth on that,” I said, hoping to give the impression it was a larger denomination than the fiver it was.

  “Okay, buster,” said she. “You bought yourself some information. I don’t know the dog personally, but I’ve left a message or two with him—on his machine, that is. He never says a word.”

  “It may be misrepresentation,” I said sternly. “What about you, miss: think he handles the business properly, or do you think subscribers might be getting scammed?”

  She leered at me. “For God’s sake, can’t you find something better to do? There are vicious criminals all around town and you spend your time harassing businessdogs?”

  Her attack drew blood. “All we’re trying to do is protect the public, young lady. It might be nice if we got some cooperation and not this incessant criticism.”

  She turned contrite. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, officer. You can find that pooch in apartment fifteen twenty-six, in that building right over there, with the striped canopy.” She pointed down the block.

  I lost no time in going there. I took the elevator to the 15th floor, found the door marked 1526, backed up and prepared to run at it with the battering ram of my shoulder but prudently changed my mind and instead tried the knob, which turned easily. An unlocked door in Manhattan? I didn’t like the bravado it implied, but I went on in anyhow.

  I found myself in the typical entrance hall of a contemporary apartment. A mirror hung on one wall and underneath it stood a little table on which a week’s junk mail had accumulated. I drew my service weapon and stealthily approached the closed door at the end of a characterless hallway, passing on my right a living room full of what looked like Ikea furniture arranged around a bright-blue rug in an Oriental figure. It smacked of a dog’s taste.

  I put my ear against the door. Not a sound came from within. I turned the knob and hurled myself into the room.

  There he was: a white fox terrier with one black patch across his face and another as back saddle. His beady eyes flickered negligently over me for a second, and then he turned back to his work.

  The animal wore a headset. The left earphone was slightly askew, but the other was well seated, a pointed ear rising above it. A recording device sat on the desk before him. Even as I watched, the phone rang, the machine kicked in, and the dog barked sharply into the little mike that a U-shaped wire brought alongside but not quite to the end of his pointed snout.

  I had to admit that this quick inspection found nothing that was not kosher. What could I do if I couldn’t name any obvious violations?

  “Okay, bud,” I told the animal, “you might look clean as a whistle right now, but just remember we got our eye on you. We get any more complaints and—” Had I not gotten a bright idea at that point, this character might have escaped being brought to justice for years.

  On an impulse, more curiosity than suspicion, I decided to listen to the kind of messages people left with the dog. I moved him aside to get access to the machine and hit the playback button. It wasn’t long before I went for the two pair of pawcuffs looped over my belt in the small of my back. These manacles permit a prisoner to walk slowly, at a mincing gait, but of course not to run.

  I took the fox terrier downtown and booked him on a charge of procuring. So why did Blondie finger him? Here’s my theory: either she had switched to a rival pimp or, as I first suspected, she was working undercover for another law-enforcement agency and wanted to get rid of me before she was compromised. I suppose it doesn’t matter.

  As for the dog, he was subsequently sentenced to six months in the animal correctional facility in the borough of Richmond, the other name only bureaucrats use for Staten Island. On appeal, that was reduced to three months of community service, with him wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet on his left rear foot. A slap on the paw! Don’t kid yourself, by now that pooch is back at work. But I have no regrets about doing my job. And I owe one to Fogarty.

  The Pelican Felonies

  SOME CITIZENS CONFUSE US with the ASPCA or a veterinary service, or even with the Department of Sanitation. Fogarty shows a short fuse to people who call complaining about horse droppings in their block. “Put ’em in your window boxes!” he shouts, and hurls the phone down.

  We also get complaints about dog bites, bee stings, and anything connected with pigeons. And of course if somebody’s pet alligator is missing, it is routine for us to get the squeal.

  But as it happens none of these things are our affair.

  “Then just what is it that you do?” peevishly inquired the old lady to whom I had just tried to explain that we could not look for her missing parakeet—unless, of course, there was good reason to believe it had broken the law.

  “You see, ma’am,” I said, “a lot of folks are reluctant to admit that crimes committed by animals are on the rise, while human crime rates are falling, and our squad is first to take any budget cuts. But the problem isn’t likely to go away by itself.”

  The old lady blurted an obscene remark and hung up violently. Across the desk, Fogarty smirked in sympathy.

  He moaned, “Oh, if they only understood!”

  “That’s asking for the moon, Fogarty,” I barked. “Meanwhile we can’t lollygag around here; there’s work to be done.” I stood up, propelling my swivel chair backward with a thrust of my calves, went downstairs, and hit the street.

  Prevention is, or should be, part of our job, and I try to get out there where it’s happening before it happens. By golly, I had hardly gone three blocks when I spotted him, between the cleaner’s and the deli, in the doorway of electronics shop that had just opened under a going-out-of-business banner: a big French poodle, recently clipped by the look of him, and wearing a trench coat with the belt tied, not buckled. I admit I have a bias against any animal who affects that style, even if he doesn’t accompany it with the usual wide-brimmed fedora.


  I felt certain it was only a matter of moments before he made his move, and sure enough, a nice-looking, well-dressed woman, say in her early forties, came out of the cleaner’s, glanced at the dog for an instant, and then quickly averted her face. Frenchy had whipped open his coat, and you guessed it: he wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

  I closed in on him, but the wily devil saw me coming, and his legs proved a lot more nimble than mine. Suffice it to say he was gone before I reached his doorway. But I’ll know him when I see him next time.

  Well, a day that had started off so briskly then settled down to three-four hours of inconsequence. I left a lot of shoe leather on city sidewalks. I ate a frank, hold the sauerkraut, coffee with everything. The acid in the last-named got to me, or maybe the milk was sour, and I went into a discount drugstore to look for relief. Having to make a choice among the various antacids made my indigestion worse. While I was studying the shelves, along came a big husky pelican, who apparently suffered from the same complaint as mine, for he too began to examine the medications for heartburn.

  But from that point on, our styles showed a wide divergence. While I continued to deliberate, the bird opened his deep-pouched beak and began to fill it with an example of each pill or potion offered for sale. These products are far from inexpensive; he was obviously a well-to-do fowl. I’ll admit to feeling some bitterness. I have to watch my pennies, while some damned bird can waddle in and buy anything he wants!

  I had enough of this and started to leave. But he stepped back, as if to get a wider perspective on the shelves, and in an effort to avoid running into him, I swerved and, losing my balance, took a tumble. I’ll say this for him: he was decent enough about offering to help me up. He extended a wing tip, but I declined with thanks and, thoroughly embarrassed by then, got out of that store as quickly as I could.