Al huffed around Smitty’s front lawn, his porch, and settled on a bench where Smitty read. I gave him the “Go find!” command and he was off with his nose working the ground and the pavement like an Electrolux on overdrive. Al kept a steady pace, stopping and raising his nose in the air, pausing to think from time to time, and then getting back to the ground to do his work. He worked the trail for a couple of miles and he was more intense then I’d ever seen him. Trailing was clearly in his blood and it was what he was meant to do, at least in addition to eating and farting.
About a block from the Y, Al stopped, crapped, and then sprinted to the parking lot right to Smitty’s car. He was jumping all over Smitty’s Oldsmobile, happy as could be with me praising him when I heard voices a couple of rows behind me in the parking lot.
“That would be a fitting dog for you. A dog that looks as pathetic as your life.”
It was Harter, the karate guy. I looked up and he was standing there with Mitchell and, of all people, Dr. Abadon. They were standing in front of a shiny black Escalade with gold chrome all over it.
“Maybe floppy-ears would like to play with Seagal,” Mitchell said, and with his remote he lowered the driver’s-side window just a bit. The head of a pit bull emerged with its snarling mouth almost foaming and its teeth barred. Al got behind my legs and whimpered.
“Ha, just like his master!” Harter said. “Hey, nice job at your last fight… loser!”
I was taking it all in and feeling several of the veins in my neck twitch, but I didn’t want to subject Al to any more of this. The whole episode seemed so out of context, especially with Abadon joining these two, that I felt a little off, like something was wrong or something was about to be wrong.
Even though it would have been my nature to get into it with them, I walked away with Al without saying anything. Al’s jubilant mood from the trailing was gone and he looked a bit ashamed.
19
When I didn’t know what else to do with my time, I went to AJ’s. With very little going on in my life, but a lot of things racing through my head, I needed the group therapy that AJ’s offered.
“It’s all based on shittin’ the bed when you’re a kid,” Rocco was saying.
“I thought it was wetting the bed,” TC said.
“Why would shittin’ and pissin’ in the bed make you a serial killer?” Jerry Number One asked.
“How would you like to sleep in a shitty, wet, and uriney bed every night?” Jerry Number Two said.
“That would stink,” TC said. “Hey, doesn’t setting small animals on fire have something to do with it too?”
“It must be a big bed,” Jerry Number Two said.
“I don’t think they have to set the animals on fire. I think those are two separate categories,” Jerry Number One said.
“Separate from what?” TC said. “What if they sleep with an animal that wets the bed? Does it still count if they kill that animal? It could be justified, you know.”
“When I was a kid I had a hamster that slept with me,” Jerry Number Two said.
“So?” Rocco said.
“He caught fire accidentally,” Jerry Number Two said.
“In bed?” TC said.
“Yeah, there was pot involved. He survived though,” Jerry Number Two said.
“How?” Rocco said.
“I pissed all over him,” Jerry Number Two said.
“That’s disgusting,” Jerry Number One said.
“You’re telling me,” Jerry Number Two said. “You ever smell urine-soaked, burnt hamster?”
“That’s enough to put a guy on a killing spree,” Jerry Number One said.
Kelley was in his position watching a profile on NASCAR legend Richard Petty. Kelley would have watched sex tapes of Golda Meir if it meant drowning out Jerry’s drowning hamster story.
“So, are you picking up educational credits by listening in on the brain trust’s discussion on serial killer forensics?” I said.
“Yeah. But I’m going to need another few beers to rid my mind of the visual of Jerry in bed pissing on that poor, flaming hamster,” Kelley said.
“Has anyone heard from Howard?”
“Not that I know of.”
“You’re not going to like this, but I’m going to start looking into this.”
“You’re right. I don’t like it at all. Didn’t we have this talk?”
“Yeah, we did, and it didn’t sit right. Besides that, I ain’t got much going on these days and I’m kind of pissed off.”
“What you talking about?”
“I’m suspended from work and probably getting fired.”
“Isn’t that almost always happening?”
“Yeah, but I don’t like the way the so-called helping profession is throwing Howard in.”
“That’s why you’re pissed off?”
“Partly.”
“Wouldn’t have anything to do with anything else, would it?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Be careful,” Kelley said.
We went back to watching the TV in silence, at least silence between the two of us. The Foursome was still jawing.
“I guess you’d have to say that Manson was the best,” Jerry Number One said.
“The best? What makes him the best?” TC said.
“You know, for sheer terror and attention,” Jerry Number One said.
“You know he was in the Beach Boys,” Rocco said. “He started killing people because he got obsessed with that ‘Help Me Rhoda’ song. It made him nuts,” he said.
“He did hang out with Brian Wilson and he was definitely nuts,” Jerry Number Two said.
“Whatever happened to that crazy broad that tried to shoot Nixon? Stinky Fromage was her name,” Rocco said.
“Wasn’t she Squeaky Fromme?” TC said.
“I never heard her speak or knew where she was from,” Rocco said.
20
I figured I’d start out by trying to find out as much as I could about Howard’s life. Seeing as though he spent most of his life in prison, it made sense to find out what his time inside was like. I didn’t have many prison staff connections that would’ve known Howard when he was inside, but I sure had plenty of connections of clients who used to be inmates. It was just a matter of heading down to the Hill and seeing who was on the corner.
Jefferson Hill was the old Irish neighborhood where a lot of my family lived generations ago. Today, it was almost entirely black and Latino, with the exception of some old-timers who were too old or stubborn to move. The houses need painting, there was always litter being blown around, and the whole section just seemed dark, like even the sun didn’t want to come around anymore. Even though I’m a very white guy, I could hang on the Hill, partly because of my job but mostly because I was known from the gym. There was something about the fight game that brought down the barriers. I’m not saying boxing never had a racist element, but when baseball and football didn’t allow blacks or Latinos, boxing had champions of those persuasions. Sure, it was harder for them and they didn’t let a black guy fight for the heavyweight title for a long time, but it was still better than the other
