I didn’t dare take my eyes off the road.
“Oh, don’t look like that.”
Billie told me to take the 116th Street exit off the FDR, and soon we found a parking space in front of the shelter annex. Billie got out first, came around to my side, and took me by the arm. I felt the gun in my ribs.
It was just before 11:00 p.m., and Billie knew that the garage entrance would still be unlocked for about another fifteen minutes before the last of the kennel staff left for the night. Sure enough, Jose was unloading one of the industrial dryers in the garage. He said, “Buenas noches,” and didn’t ask why we were there so late.
This was probably my last chance to enlist anyone’s help, but Jose had already turned his back on us and resumed his work. There would be no imploring glance on my part; on the other hand, I had not endangered an innocent man.
We slipped past him into the wing that housed the overflow of small-dog cages. The only light came from the occasional red EXIT signs. No one was swabbing a hallway or hosing down a last kennel. Billie had timed our arrival perfectly. We walked down the hallway past ward after ward.
“I never did anything to you,” I reminded Billie.
As we approached Medical, I started to shake. I thought surely she was going to euthanize me. I mean, what more fitting way to mock what mattered so much to me. But we didn’t stop.
I knew that the moment we opened a ward door, the preternatural silence would explode with barking and wailing. Billie had slipped behind me. She didn’t exactly tiptoe, but moved soundlessly, at the ready. As much of a performance as she’d given at the pool table, these movements were authentic. She was in her element, it seemed to me, and failure was not an option. It occurred to me that this rush was what she lived for. The moment she opened the ward door would be like the moment a skydiver jumps from the open door of a plane.
You could draw out that moment just before you jumped — or were pushed — but once you were in the air, it was out of your hands.
Billie opened the door of the ward that once held Cloud and George and motioned me inside with the gun.
I experienced the moment first as a visual. The single bulb was sparking like a strobe, so that each time Billie was illuminated, she was in a different pose. The dogs in their kennels were likewise lit like wild creatures in a lightning storm. I observed this before the wall of sound hit me. As expected, the noise was a visceral sensation; I felt my body vibrate with it. I could hear the different voices, different pitches. Some sounded baleful, others sounded frightened, still others frightening.
The next time Billie was visible, she held out a key ring. “Open these two.” She waited for me to unlock the kennels. When the light next sparked, I looked to see which dogs I was freeing. For a blink, I saw two large, white dogs, ghosts in the dark that followed. Eerily, they made no sound. I recognized them as the Dogos Argentinos in the kennels that formerly housed Cloud and George. The mirrorlike stances of these dogs had spooked me the first time I saw them. I felt no more comfortable with them now that I was releasing them.
Billie knelt in front of the dogs and began singing a kind of lullaby to them, but in German. The dogs sat at attention, their eyes on Billie. Still singing to the dogs, Billie produced two slipknot leads and told me to loop them around the dogs’ thick necks.
“Heidi and Gunther won’t do anything without my permission.”
“So these are your dogs.”
“I belong to them as much as they belong to me.”
“Sitz,” Billie commanded.
The dogs sat.
“Pass auf.”
The dogs growled low in their throats.
She put her gun in her purse.
The dogs were attack-trained. I knew enough German from school to know that the second command meant “guard.” I hoped they were not waiting for the command Reeh veer, “hunt.” If Bennett’s body were exhumed, I knew now that the bite marks would match the teeth of Billie’s dogs.
I raced through the methods I had learned to disarm an attacker. I was outnumbered, so I had only two options: try to humanize myself in Billie’s eyes, or run for safety if I could reach a safer place within five seconds. I had already failed at the first option. Before I could try the second, Billie ordered me to unlock a third kennel. I glanced at the kennel card above it and saw in the fractured light the red-inked word CAUTION — SEVERE.
“Morgan, meet Gotti,” Billie said conversationally. “He is three years old and on hold for biting. Gotti, Morgan is a thirty-year-old female who is here for not seeing what was right in front of her.”
A low growl came from Gotti. I was about to credit him for picking up on Billie’s vibe, but then the two Dogos moved into view. Billie had not issued a verbal command for them to approach, and she yelled, “Sitz.” One dog sat immediately, one walked behind Billie to assume the position on her other side. Gotti barked at the trio just outside his kennel door.
Billie told me to get inside. With a last rush of adrenaline, and everything to lose, I moved to the door of the cage, and just before slamming it behind me, I yanked Billie’s purse off her shoulder, breaking the leather strap.
I had the gun. I also had the key ring. I locked myself inside.
There was an odd lull — the other dogs in the ward stopped barking as though they sensed a shift in command.
The dog beside me was standing, taller than I was in my crouch. I had enough room to stand up and move a couple of feet back from the door. I said, “Good dog,” over and over, a mantra. Gotti was a large brindle pit bull. His ears had been cropped too close to his head and had a yeasty smell, evidence of infection.
I slipped my hand into Billie’s purse and closed it around the handle of the gun. But the dog did not attack. I reached for my cell phone and pressed 911.
“What is your emergency?” a woman’s voice asked.
“I need help. I’m at the animal shelter annex on 119th near the river.”
The phone went dead, but I didn’t know when — before or after I had given my location. But Billie didn’t know that.
“I’m in Ward Four,” I said to the dead phone. “A woman with attack dogs is holding me hostage.”
I had kept my eyes on Billie while I spoke. At this last, she rolled her eyes and said, “You locked yourself in.”
“Please hurry,” I said to the dead phone.
“I’m disappointed in you, Gotti. You didn’t keep up your end.” Billie acted as if I did not have a gun pointed at her.
“The police will be here any minute,” I bluffed.
“There’s no signal here. Nobody’s plan works in here.”
She sat down cross-legged in front of the cage, just as she had done when visiting my dogs. “We never had a chance to compare notes about Bennett,” she said brightly. “You’d been studying men who manipulate women, but the real fun starts when a woman manipulates a man to manipulate women.”
“What did you get out of it?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“What didn’t I get out of it? He entertained me. With all of you. You can’t imagine how thrilling that kind of intimacy is. It is allegiance of the first order, a singular exchange. We held nothing back. We did not judge each other. Well, until he went soft.”
The Dogos were spooking the pit bull. His hackles stood. He started snarling, though nobody had moved.
“I bet sleeping next to the wall isn’t looking so scary right now. Don’t blame Bennett for making you do that; it was my idea. That was getting to be his problem: no ideas. He was wasting his energy on you. When he stopped making fun of you and began to defend you, the fun went out of it. Sure, you take in foster dogs. But you get them killed.”