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.

Inside, the first officer I saw told me I couldn’t bring the dog into the station. When I explained what I was there for and that there was no way I was going to leave the dog tied up outside, he finally sent me to another floor to talk to someone. I had to wait for a while, sitting on a hard bench while Digitaria slept at my feet. When a detective led me to his desk half an hour later—a big, beefy man with an unmistakable Jersey accent—he listened to me with considerable attention, but I knew that the more I talked, the crazier my story sounded. It even sounded that way to me: stolen radios, African dogs, the possibility that the Blue Awareness was targeting me for a reason I wasn’t sure I understood anymore. (Could this, really, now all be about a radio antenna? Seriously?) I didn’t think that even the fact that there was a report on file about what I insisted was the related break-in at my apartment made me sound any more credible. I also told the detective about the phone call from Raymond Gilmartin, and though that seemed to pique his interest just a little after I explained who Gilmartin was, I didn’t think even that was going to get me very far. I left the police station half an hour later with what sounded like a half-hearted promise that the attack would be investigated and a copy of yet another police report. Outside, I started looking for another roaming dollar van to take me home.

When I finally walked back into my apartment, it was almost dawn. I stripped off my clothes and more or less fell into bed. The dog jumped up after me and despite everything he’d been through, took up his usual post at the end of the bed, facing the front door. Digitaria was still on duty.

When I woke up a few hours later, there was a moment when I couldn’t recall whether I had to go to work or not. I felt exhausted and groggy, and was greatly relieved to finally remember that this was one of my days off this week.