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.