Dog Tags

CHAPTER 6

FOR THE LAST THREE WEEKS, I HAVE BEEN LIVING A NIGHTMARE.

Charlie’s, the greatest sports bar in the history of the civilized world, has been undergoing renovations. They chose to do it now because it’s July, and except for baseball there isn’t much going on in the sports world. Apparently they ignored the fact that in the heat of summer there is plenty going on in the beer world.

Vince, Pete, and I generally spend at least three evenings a week at Charlie’s. It used to be five, until Laurie moved back here from Wisconsin, where she briefly lived for a miserable year. It’s not that she objects to my being out with my friends; it’s just that I’d rather spend time with her than them. Of course, I would never tell them that.

Sports, lubricated by beer, is the glue that holds us together. But I sometimes wonder if they would be my friends, if I would have any male friends, without sports. It represents at least 70 percent of what we talk about.

My attitude toward sports has evolved as I’ve grown older. For years I wanted to play professionally, though down deep I knew that was never going to be a realistic possibility. Then I got to the point where I lived vicariously through modern athletes, and that was reasonably satisfying.

Now, approaching forty and fading fast, I think I’m embarking on a new phase. I’m going to start living vicariously through someone who is already living vicariously through an athlete. It should be far less exhausting. All I have to do is find someone to fill the role; I think this is why men have sons.

The renovation is scheduled to last for six weeks, although I have no idea why they would be doing it at all. Charlie’s is perfect, and in my experience perfection is generally a tough thing to improve upon.

So we have been spending our time at The Sports Shack, an upscale restaurant-bar located on Route 4 in Teaneck. It has a ski-lodge-impersonation motif, and it operates under the assumption that if you have enough TVs, and a gimmicky enough decor, everything else will take care of itself. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The hamburgers aren’t thick enough, the french fries aren’t crisp enough, and unless you tell them otherwise every single time, they serve the beer in a glass. Clusters of TVs sometimes all show the same baseball game, when there are plenty of others to choose from, and the other night one of the TVs was tuned to a Best of the X Games retrospective.

Best of the X Games? Now, there’s a show that should run all of ten seconds. In any event, what is it doing in a sports bar? What is happening to the country I love?

But here we sit, drinking our beer, eating our food, and watching our games, thereby trying to restore a sense of order out of this chaos.

Tonight Pete is late in arriving, and Vince is in a bad mood because the Mets are losing. He would also be in a bad mood if the Mets were winning, or if they were not playing, or if there were no such thing as the Mets.

He stares in the direction of the bar. “Do you see that?” he asks, then shakes his head. “Unbelievable.”

I look over there but don’t see anything that would be considered difficult to believe. “What are you talking about?”

“That guy is in a three-piece suit. With a tie.”

“So?”

“So?” he sneers. “So it’s supposed to be a sports bar. What’s next, flowers on the tables? That smelly stuff in a pot?”

“You mean potpourri?”

He looks at me like a bug he found in his soup. “Yes, Mr. Foo-Foo. That’s exactly what I mean.”

Pete arrives, and not a moment too soon. Vince is harder to handle one-on-one than LeBron James. Pete doesn’t say hello; for some reason greetings have never been a part of the relationship among the three of us. We don’t say good-bye, either. Or How was your day?

“I need a favor” is the first thing Pete says to me.

“Dream on,” I say, though we both know that I will do whatever he asks. Since I am a criminal defense attorney, Pete’s job as a police lieutenant makes him a valuable source of information for me, and I call upon him all the time. He grumbles, but he always comes through.

Even if that weren’t the case, I would do whatever Pete needs. Doing favors fits squarely within our definition of friendship, and to refuse one would be highly unusual. But pretending to resist is a necessary part of the process.

“Actually, I’m doing you a favor,” he says. “I’ve got you a client.”

“Just what I need,” I say. I am independently wealthy, a result of inheritance and a few major victorious cases. Since hard work in general, and hard legal work in particular, is not my idea of a good time, I rarely take on new clients.

“You read about the murder in Edgewater last night?” Pete asks.

“Was it on the sports page?”

Vince chimes in with “You’re an asshole.” I can’t decide if he says that because it was on the front page of his newspaper and he’s annoyed that I didn’t see it, or because he just thinks I’m an asshole and thought this was a good time to remind me. Probably both.

“I read about it,” I say.

“The guy they arrested for it is Billy Zimmerman. We graduated from the academy together, and we were even partners for a while.”

“An ex-cop?” I ask, and immediately regret the question.

“Wow, you figured that out all by yourself?” Pete asks. “Just from what I said about him going to the academy and being my partner? You are really sharp.”

“Get to the favor part,” I say.

“All in good time. Anyway, Billy was also in the National Guard, and he volunteered to go to Iraq. He was there less than a year and got his leg blown off. So he comes back and gets screwed by everybody. Medical care is bad; it was like they were doing him a favor by treating him. And all he could do on the force was get a desk job, which is not for Billy. So he told them to shove it.”

“What did he want?”

“He wanted his old job back, working the streets.”

“With one leg?”

“He has a prosthetic; it works fine,” Pete says. “He could outrun you.”

“So can my grandmother,” Vince says.

“Both your grandmothers are dead,” I say.

He nods. “Either one of them could still spot you ten yards in the hundred and wipe the track with you.”

I’m not going to get anywhere by talking to Vince, so I turn my attention back to Pete. “So he wants me to represent him?” I ask, cringing.

“Maybe. We didn’t talk about it,” Pete says. “But that’s down the road.”

The answer surprises me. “What’s up the road?”

“His dog.”

“He wants me to take his dog?” I ask, my relief probably showing through. Willie and I have already placed hundreds of dogs through our foundation, and adding one is no hardship at all.

“No. He wants you to defend his dog.”

“From what?”

“The government.”