A Hell of a Dog (14 page)

“Leave it,” I told him, getting up almost as slowly as Jimmy's old man and walking over to where he was. I hadn't eaten, and it was catching up with me. Maybe there'd be something for me in the trash as well. And indeed there was.

Under the morning's paper and a wad of tissues, I found what Dashiell had been sniffing. I took a plastic Baggie out of my pocket and slipped it over my hand, the way I do when I have to pick up after Dashiell outside. Then I carried the wastebasket over to the window seat, where there was the most light. Reaching in, I picked up what my dog had discovered—two used condoms, one of them broken.

I walked back into Rick's bathroom and rechecked those towels. Three of them were pretty damp, as if they had been used after a shower—or two. One was dry, but the middle of it felt as if it had been starched. According to the Young Detective's Handbook, that meant it had probably been spread out under someone's cute little
tochis
in order to keep the sheets clean.

I wondered who his companion had been; someone, I hoped, who used birth control pills; someone, it seemed, who didn't find Rick's fastidiousness as big a turnoff as I did.

“So you're perfect?” my mother used to say. “Life is about compromise,” she'd say if she were here.

My grandmother Sonya, made practical by a childhood of poverty, would have had a comment, too.
Nifter, shmifter, a leben macht er?
she might have added. What difference does it make as long as he makes a living?

No matter the cost, my family only wanted me to be married, to have someone to take care of me, as if I were not a woman but an invalid. I wondered if Mrs. Shelbert's family had felt the same way.

Then I stood in Rick Shelbert's bathroom, thinking about Freud. Not the man, the dog. What an odd thing it was for such a tidy person to have chosen a slobbering heavy shedder for a pet. It hadn't been an accident, a dog he'd purchased on impulse at the pet shop in the mall. He worked with dogs for a living. He had to know what it would be like to live with a Saint Bernard. Was his choice simply a testimony to how bonded we humans are to the canine species, that what we would never consider allowing in another person's behavior, we patiently accept from our dogs, and have been doing so, according to the latest study, for approximately 135,000 years? Even if dogs were slow learners and not the clever opportunists I thought them to be, that was sufficient time to practice not only helping in the hunt, warming the sleeping area, and protecting the cave, but manipulative skills as well. Speaking of which, I heard Dashiell summoning me from the bedroom.

I went quickly to see if he had made another find. He had. There he was, my hero, sitting in the closet, barking at a twenty-pound sack of kibble.

14

IT WAS HIS HEART

Leaving Rick's room, I went on to frisk Cathy's, then caught the very end of her talk. After two and a half hours, the puppies she was working with could have earned their livings doing TV commercials. In fact, one of the things I'd learned was that Sky was the Huffy T-shirt border collie. Cathy had five of the shirts with her, though I hadn't seen her wearing any so far. On them Sky was airborne catching a Frisbee; sailing over a fence; staring down a huddled mass of sheep; carrying a tennis ball in his mouth; and on the last one, doing agility weave poles. He certainly was a clever border collie.

I also discovered, through perspicacious detective work, that Sky had a dozen tennis balls, all mint scented—and those were just the ones that had been packed for the trip—that he shed as profusely as a Samoyed in spring, or fall, come to think of it; that he ate organic dog food; and that his mistress wore underpants made from undyed, bleach-free organic cotton, not a pair of skimpy silk bikinis in sight, leopard or otherwise. “You're going to believe what you're told?” Frank used to say. “Find another way to earn a living.”

Two people from a New Jersey shelter and six breeders were retrieving their now-well-mannered puppies up on the stage, and Cathy was standing at the edge of the apron answering questions. I walked up onstage, petted a few of the puppies, and handed Cathy her room key. She slipped it into her jacket pocket as she kept answering questions and handing out her business card, too absorbed in her adoring fans to take any notice.

As I walked off the stage and back to where I'd left Dashiell on a down-stay, I noticed Chip and Woody talking to trainers in the rear of the auditorium. Beryl was on her way out the door with Cecilia when I got there.

“It's off to the park, dear. Do you and your boy want to join me?”

“No lunch?”

She patted her stomach. “Too many lunches, I'm afraid. I made an awful pig of myself at breakfast as well. At my age, the metabolism doesn't do what it used to. It hardly seems to do anything at all.

“Throughout my twenties,” she said as we walked through the lobby, “I could drink a milk shake if I was thirsty and not gain an ounce. Now”—she rolled her eyes—“well, you can see what happens now. I'll probably gain a pound skipping lunch and walking Cecilia in the park.”

We crossed at the corner and walked uptown along the outside of the park until we reached an entrance. Then we turned east and headed for a grassy area where we could keep watch for the park patrol and let our dogs play off leash.

“My Carl liked big dogs,” she said. “Bullmastiffs. I prefer the little ones, border terriers. I like their energy, the way they fling themselves into life with such enthusiasm over the least little thing.”

We stood and watched Cecilia run, with Dashiell following behind her.

“Although I did quite fancy Charles.”

“Charles?”

“The bullmastiff, dear.”

“Oh.”

“Then, so very suddenly, Carl was gone, and by the time I sold his practice, Charles was gone too.”

“How did it happen?”

“Bloat,” she said.

“I meant Carl.”

“Oh, I see, yes, of course you did, dear. It was his heart.”

“So it was quick?”

“A complete surprise. And afterward, I took our little one and went home. But you already know that part, don't you, love?”

I nodded. “Was that when you became a dog trainer?”

“Oh, no, Rachel. I've always been a dog trainer. My mother used to say that my teething ring was a feed pan. My father was a veterinarian too, and my mother bred Irish terriers, wild things they were, so full of the devil. I adored them.

“As far back as I can recall, I was teaching the dogs, manners and commands, tricks, tracking, anything I could. I had one, Hubert, who I taught to ride a three-wheeler, clever thing. The dogs were my companions, my dearest friends. And when you learn on terriers, well, dear, you can train anything, anything at all, so while I was still quite young, eleven or twelve, neighbors began to ask me to straighten out their pets for them and paying me to do so. It was, I think, a perfect childhood.”

“Time for leashes.” I pointed out the green truck of the park rangers, visible as it passed on the other side of the trees that grew at the edge of the grassy hill where the dogs were playing. We called them to us, hooked on the leashes, and headed for the path.

“Hello, there.” The voice was breathless. Someone had been running. “I see I'm not the only one skipping lunch,” she said, the little pug puffing along behind her. “It's too much food, isn't it?”

“Yes, dear. I was just saying that very thing to Rachel. Walking is a lot better for the waistline. Besides, no doubt Samantha has another feast set for this evening.”

Dashiell stopped to sniff Magic's rear and genitals, and then stood motionless, not even his tail moving, as she sniffed his, the traditional doggy handshake. When we turned onto an isolated dirt path, we let the dogs off leash again.

“I can't believe what's been happening here,” Audrey said. She picked up her hank of thick, dark hair and twisted it around in her hands nervously. “These accidents.”

But before Beryl or I could respond, we saw Tracy up ahead with Jeff.

“It seems we left Samantha and Cathy with all those good-looking men,” Beryl said.

“What's left of them,” Audrey said. “I don't know if I can—”

“Of course you can, Audrey. If you don't speak, the rest of us will have to carry an even bigger load.”

Jeff spotted the dogs and came running, his tail wagging. Tracy turned and waved, heading our way.

“She's perfectly right, dear,” Beryl said. “Grace under pressure is the mark of a true professional. ‘Chin up, dear girl.' That's what my mother used to tell me. ‘Soldier on,' she'd say, ‘no one wants to hear you snivel, so just get over it.' She'd say that no matter what it was. And I believe she was correct. It's the best thing for you, to plunge ahead, do what's expected of you; it's absolutely therapeutic.”

Audrey took a big breath. “I know you're right. I'll tell Sam I'll speak tomorrow afternoon.”

“Brilliant. You're exactly what we need, too. Meditation. Good for the soul.”

“Are you talking about Audrey's talk?” Tracy asked. “Oh, please say you're doing it. You're one of the reasons I came.”

“We'd best head back, dears. It's getting to be that time.”

“Who's speaking this afternoon?” Tracy asked. “I forgot to look.”

“Boris Dashevski,” Beryl told her, and we all groaned.

“Audrey, would you do the walking chant on the way back? It'll make us all feel so good,” Tracy said. “Is that okay with you guys?” she asked me and Beryl.

“Certainly,” Beryl said.

“I'd love it,” I told them, hoping no one I knew was in the park. For a hard-boiled New Yorker, being seen chanting in Central Park would be almost as bad as being spotted waiting on line for the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building or catching a breeze on the ferry that went to Liberty Island.

Audrey Little Feather stopped, closed her eyes, and moved her arms in circles, the way old ladies do at the beach, splashing handfuls of water on their sunburned bosoms, chanting about what a blessing the coolness is with each splash.

After a moment Audrey's eyes opened, and her arms were still. Magic was sitting right in front of her, looking adoringly at her face. I thought about the way Dashiell always comes close when I practice t'ai chi, wanting to bathe in the sea of moving energy.

“Ah la,” Audrey sang, her voice as clear and poignant as the call of a bird looking for a mate. “Ah la.”

And so we walked back toward Central Park West, “ah la,” the dogs running ahead, lagging behind, chasing each other in circles around us. Audrey reached out her hands for ours. I took one, Tracy the other, and then Tracy reached for Beryl's hand. We couldn't fit four abreast on the narrow walk. Instead we moved in a wavy line, holding each other's hands and chanting as we worked our way back to the Ritz.

Something funny happened in the park. I began to feel a pleasant buzz, the mantra sweeping through me and leaving a feeling of serenity in its wake. I no longer felt silly about chanting in the park, no longer cared if someone I knew spotted me. I was starting to like these women too, even when that meant getting past a training method I didn't think much of. There was a generosity here, and camaraderie.

The fighting that had been going on since we got here was mostly among the men. Males were, after all, the major perpetrators of violent crimes. They were more prone to aggressive outbursts, less likely than women to talk things out. Or work things out. They were more competitive, too.

That was also the way it was in most other species of animals, certainly among any of the Canidae. For wolves, survival is based on competition. When there isn't enough food to go around, the fact that the stronger, smarter, and therefore higher-ranked animals eat first ensures the survival of the species.

Were we more like animals than we wanted to admit, sleeping in a heap with our dogs for the physical comfort of another warm body, putting up with nearly unbearable unhappiness rather than choosing to live alone, the way my sister was doing, the way Chip seemed to be doing? In the wild, a lone wolf would not survive, unless he was somehow able to get himself accepted by another pack. More often than not, he'd find no takers. Wasn't that true for us, too, especially as we grew older?

I'd been thinking these “accidents” might be the work of a black widow spider, one who wore leopard underwear, underwear I didn't believe belonged to my clever employer. But maybe she was right about one thing, that the mating practices of the species had nothing at all to do with the deaths.

So what was happening here? Were the “accidents” the results of one of the men killing off the competition in order to safeguard his own survival? Wasn't it exactly that fear that had inspired Sam to hire me? Perhaps one of the seemingly civilized wolves she'd brought together found himself unable to stop at scent-marking and posturing in order to assure himself that the territory was his, that he was top dog after all.

15

BORIS TELLS IT LIKE IT IS

“What could you have been thinking, pally, telling all those people that taking the dog away from the owner and correcting the hell out of it is the only way to begin a consultation?” Bucky was pointing a fat finger at Boris. “You're one of the reasons why this profession has a bad name,” he shouted.

“Boris is only one here who is honest.” He drained his third glass of merlot, stabbed his tofu steak with his fork, and then let go. The fork he'd been holding in his bandaged hand fell over sideways, taking the tofu with it and making a jarring sound as it hit the edge of the plate. “You like to put on kind face for owners, train with treats, handkerchiefs, toys. Boris tells it like it is.”

“You mean like it
was
,” Bucky said. “Yank 'em, spank 'em. Jesus. Hasn't anything that's happened in the last fifty years touched you?”