Dog Tags

CHAPTER 85

I MAKE MYSELF A FROZEN PIZZA, THEN THROW TENNIS BALLS TO MILO AND TARA. It’s not exactly mentally taxing, which is fine with me at the moment. It feels good, though it would feel better if Laurie were here.

Laurie’s told me not to expect her until ten o’clock, since their dinner reservation was at six thirty. I hope she likes her friends, because if I had to have a three-and-a-half-hour dinner with Vince and Pete at a restaurant without televisions, I would go into the kitchen and stick my head in the oven.

Actually, I should have asked her if her friends were female. For all I know, she could be with some old boyfriend. She’s off wining and dining some guy, and I’m sitting here with a frozen pizza.

I go upstairs, lie on the bed, and turn on the Mets game. It’s in the fifth inning when Hike calls. “Turn on the television,” he says.

“I’m watching television.”

“Turn on CNN.”

I do so and immediately see his point. The graphic across the bottom of the screen says, “Financier’s Body Found.” Then, “Alan Landon Is Murder Victim.”

Within five minutes I’ve gotten as much of the story as the media has. Landon was found by a jogger in a Connecticut park with three bullets in his chest. He’s believed to have been dead for approximately twenty-four hours, though it is thought that the body was killed elsewhere and then dumped.

It’s amazing how many bodies seem to be found by joggers. If I were a detective looking for a missing person, I would recruit marathon runners and deputize them.

According to reports, the jogger called in local police, who then brought in federal authorities.

Now I know what Benson is doing “in the field.”

It’s about nine thirty when I think I hear Laurie downstairs, but then I realize it’s only the television, which I left on when I was in the kitchen. I go down to turn it off, mainly because it will give me an excuse to be near the refrigerator again. I’m a growing boy; one frozen pizza apparently doesn’t do it for me.

I fill a dish with chocolate ice cream. It’s nonfat and sugar-free, so the dish that I have probably is no more than two thousand calories. I head back out of the kitchen through the den, on the way to the stairs.

I hear a noise off to my left, and suddenly the front door comes crashing open. Bursting in behind it is a large man with a gun. He falls to the floor from the impact, and I drop the ice cream and run back toward the kitchen.

It was the only place I could go, but it does little to improve my thin chance of survival. I hide behind the stone island in the middle of the kitchen, but there is no escape from there. The man with the gun, whom I think is M, merely has to follow me in, walk around the island, and shoot me.

I’m also not near a phone, and to get to one would expose myself to the intruder. That would not be an answer anyway; unless the emergency officers are hiding in my living room and waiting for my call, they couldn’t get here in time to save me.

“Nowhere to run, Carpenter. Nowhere to hide.” Then, “This I’m going to enjoy.”

I can hear him enter the kitchen, and I expect that he will walk around the island. I try to sense which side he’ll come from, so that I can move the other way and make a break for it out of the room. But he must be walking quietly, because I can barely hear him, and there’s as much chance that I’ll guess right as wrong.

If I guess wrong, I’ll walk right into him. Guess right, and he’ll shoot me in the back.

I’m so busy guessing that I don’t realize he’s already found me. When I look up, he’s standing there, pointing the gun at me and smiling. It is M, and he is the person that is going to kill me. The feeling of panic is overwhelming.

“I should have done this a long time ago,” he says, and he raises his gun. I brace myself for the impact, though I know that bullet bracing is not a terribly effective defense.

But there is no bullet. Instead something flies across the room and knocks the gun out of M’s hand, shoving M down in the process. It is the amazing Milo, doing what Milo does.

Except this time Milo takes it a step farther. He jumps on M and starts to bite at him around the face, and M is screaming in pain. I’ve been frozen watching this, but I finally force myself to move, and I pick up the gun, which is lying only a few feet away from me.

Once I have it in my shaking hand, I yell, “That’s enough Milo! Milo! That’s enough!”

Milo actually listens and moves away, and I can see that M is bleeding from his scalp, forehead, and cheek. I point the gun at M and scream, “Get up! Get up!” though I’m not sure why. I was probably better off with him lying on his back.

He slowly gets to his feet, dripping blood. I notice Tara has ambled into the room, probably assuming that with all the commotion, there are treats to be had. I briefly fear that she’ll walk near M and he’ll grab her, but she seems content to watch from afar.

“Don’t move,” I say to M. “Stand there.” All the while I’m pointing the gun, and my arm is getting a little tired. I reach over with my left hand, pick up the cordless phone, and dial 911. When they answer I quickly tell them my name and address, as well as the situation. “Please hurry” is how I end the call.

M hasn’t made a move, but I’m worried that he could have another gun, maybe strapped to something like an ankle or his back, like Bruce Willis in Die Hard. I don’t say anything else, I just keep pointing the gun and praying that the cops will hurry the hell up.

“Give me the fucking gun,” he says.

“Shut up” is my witty response.

“You don’t have the guts to shoot me,” he says, and he takes a step toward me.

“You’re about to find out,” I say.

M laughs, and takes another step forward, as if taunting me. He thinks I’m scared, which makes him 100 percent correct.

“One more step and you are a dead man,” I say, without having any confidence whatsoever that I could actually shoot him.

He seems to quickly look behind me, and then does more than take a step; he rushes me, taking me by surprise. The bullet hits him square in the forehead and for one sickening instant reminds me of the scene in The Godfather where Michael shoots Sollozzo and the police captain in the restaurant.

I must have acted on instinct, evidence of a reflexive, almost primitive defense mechanism that I didn’t know I had, because I don’t remember deciding to shoot, or even shooting.

That’s because I didn’t.

Laurie is standing in the doorway, dropping her gun to her side. I hadn’t even seen her come in, but perhaps M had, and made his move because of it.

“How was your evening?” I say.

“Are you okay, Andy?”

I try and come up with a witty response, but I’m out of them. The impact of what just happened is hitting me, and it’s all I can do to keep myself together. I walk over and hug Laurie, and then Tara, and then Milo. I hug Milo twice.

By the time I’m finished hugging, the police are arriving.