I called Rudy and had him meet me for lunch in the park. I sweetened the deal by promising him a Big Dom’s Double Special sub, which delivered on its ad-copy promise to “Bust any belly!” We met at a bench by a fenced-in area designated for dogs. I figured Al could use some quality time with his peers.
Just outside the gate of the dog run there was a very well-put-together woman who looked to be in her late thirties. She wore a pink velour sweatsuit, the kind that isn’t really designed for sweating, and her shiny shoulder-length black hair formed a nice contrast against the powder pink. She was on a mat in the grass doing some sort of yoga-Pilates-who-knows-what routine, and it didn’t really matter because she was lying on her back scissoring her legs wide open before closing them. I did my best not to stare.
“Excuse me,” I said in my softest nonthreatening-male voice. “Is it okay if my dog goes in with your dog?”
“Sure.” She gave me a halfhearted smile and about a millisecond of eye contact.
Her dog was a Corgi, one of those low, cute, and sissified dogs that are favored by British royalty and about the same height as a basset. She had a pink collar, the same color as the scissor kicker’s suit. I looked back over at her master who was now on all fours doing some sort of kickbacks, and I suddenly felt a little perverted at the imagery that popped onto my mental movie screen. The first reel was only slightly blurred by the glint bouncing off the ring on her finger that featured a stone bigger than any doorknob in the Moody Blue.
“What’s your dog’s name?” I asked.
“Matisse, after the artist,” she said, this time with zero eye contact.
“I love Matisse,” I said. This failed to get a response. I loved Matisse without knowing him, as I love all of mankind.
The dogs were done sniffing each other and Al had moved on in a different direction to do some olfactory forensic work on a pile of organic material left by a previous visitor. Thank God, that’s when Rudy showed up.
“All right, kid, what is it this time? You sprang for a Double Special, you must want something,” Rudy said while he manhandled the wrapping the sub came in with a force that might have gotten him charged with assault.
“What happens if a doctor is caught dealing drugs?” I said.
“He gets arrested and loses his license forever.”
“Why would a doctor making a zillion dollars take that kind of risk?”
“Well, first of all, your premise is off. Doctors don’t make that kind of money anymore.”
“Yeah sure…”
Rudy’s second bite got him into trouble. The oil dribbled on his chin and a spiral of an onion slapped up against it. It didn’t seem to bother Rudy at all, and I could tell he really loved his meal-his face was starting to sweat.
“Look, kid, we have a gazillion dollars in student loans to pay, we have a gazillion in liability to pay, we have to pay dues in every organization we’re in, and insurance companies do all they can to disallow payment. You add in an ex-wife, like in my case, and what you have to pay attorneys to defend you and your staff to support you and I’m not much better off than the guy who made this sub.”
The oil actually dripped off his chin and onto his shirt. Rudy shifted the sub into one hand and used the other hand to run through his hair. He now had kind of a Big-Dom’s-meets-Pat-Riley coif thing going on.
“So a doc might deal for the money?”
“Of course, but there’s something else. A lot of guys get into doctoring because of messiah complexes. They feel they deserve tons of money, and when they don’t get it, they get resentful and they start to take. With some it’s insurance fraud, with others it’s becoming an easy touch for prescription hounds.”
“But why illegal drugs?”
“I don’t know, they see how easy it is to become addicted and they see an easy market. They see how they can control people.”
I sat and thought or at least tried to think. Rudy was chewing with his mouth open and it reminded of the second-grade trip I took to the Bronx Zoo. I remember we got to the pen with the wildebeests right at feeding time and watched and listened to them devour a bunch of cabbages and apples.
“I think the shrink at work, Abadon, is dealing to the kids he’s counseling at McDonough. He hangs out with the steroid heads, and a dealer I was talking to said his supplier was a man of God or something.”
“Kid, slow down.” He wiped his face with the back of his hand and smeared oil over one cheek. “This is the guy you threw the cup of coffee at?”
“Yeah, he’s a self-righteous, born-again type.”
“Hey, I’m not crazy about the born-again crowd either, but-”
Rudy was interrupted by screaming from Scissor Legs.
“Get him off, get him off!” she screamed.
I jumped off the bench and saw Al furiously humping away at poor Matisse. He was lost in the moment and failed to respond to the shrieks from Lady Scissor Legs. She was traumatized, but I didn’t pick up trauma from Matisse. Actually, Matisse looked like she was having an okay time.
I bounded over the fence and ran toward Al who, for the first time, actually gave me a menacing growl. I grabbed him by the waist and pulled him off, but as I did it, Al’s head snapped around and nipped my little finger. I dropped him and he ran after Matisse, who by this time had been scooped up by her traumatized master.
“Matisse, Matisse!” was all that came out of her mouth. She was too traumatized to see Al running toward her.
Al muddied her pretty pink suit in an effort to get after his new true love, and as her master turned away to shield her, Al did the next best thing-he started to hump away at her leg. Hey, at least he had good taste.
I pulled Al off and apologized profusely. I got a teary “hrrmph” and the pair hurried away.
“Kid, you lead an interesting life,” Rudy said.
I had Al back on a leash but he wasn’t in a good mood. He sat and I had to pull him over to the bench.
“So how do I turn this doctor in?” I asked.
“Turn him in? It’s like any other criminal activity. You can’t just turn him in, the cops have to get proof. Usually, docs who get involved in this short of shit cover their tracks pretty well. They’re smarter than the average street jerk.”
“Ahh shit.”
Rudy thanked me for the sub and patted Al on the head as he got up to leave.
“Al, sometimes it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all,” he said as he headed to his car, oblivious to the oil spots that made an asymmetrical polka-dot pattern on his shirt.