The Dog Who Knew Too Much (22 page)

“It's no big thing, Howie.”

“But it is. You're being so k-kind to me, and I
lied
to you,” he said, picking up his napkin and starting to shred it.

“About forgetting the appointment? Forget it, Howie. It's no big thing.” I took a bite of my hamburger and salted my fries. Like an Akita, I knew how to pay attention without seeming to do so.

“No. About Lisa. About, you know, us n-not having a relationship.” He opened one of the sodas and drank as if he were at the twenty-mile marker of a marathon.

“You had a relationship?” I asked, incredulous, but using the same neutral look I'd used as a dog trainer when someone told me about the “little game” they played with their dog that had “gone wrong.” “You were lovers?” I asked, as if it were the only obvious conclusion an intelligent observer could draw, as if I'd known it all along.

“No. N-not l-l-like that,” he said, his neck all red and splotchy, color flaring in his cheeks and chin. “We were friends.”

“Friends? Your mother said Lisa was going to
fire
you.”

Howie looked down at his shoes.

“Talk to me, Howie. The bitch was going to fire you. That's what your mother told me. So you tell me, Howie, what kind of a person fires a friend?”

“That's not what happened,” he said, looking sadly at his hamburger, as if he thought I'd take it away once he spoke.

“That's what your mother said happened. Why did she tell me that, Howie? What's going on here?”

“Sh-she was m-misinformed,” he said.

“Yeah? By whom?”

“She saw me,” he wiped at his eyes with his hand, “crying,” he said, almost inaudibly. “I mean, she heard me, pushed into my room, the way she always d-does, put on the light, almost blinding me, stood there making f-fun of me, why was I crying, what the hell was wrong with me, like she always does. I couldn't tell her the truth, so I told her, you know, what she told you, that L-Lisa said she'd fire me.”

“You must have been pretty mad at Lisa to say that, Howie.”

“No, I—”

“I guess, given the circumstances, anyone would be upset. Here you thought you had a true friend, and she was going to desert you, wasn't she?”

Howie shrugged.

“You told Lisa everything, Howie, didn't you? Then you can talk to me, Howie. I'm her cousin. Howie?”

“I guess,” he said. Four years old.

“So you were crying because Lisa was going away?”

Howie nodded.

“And when your mother got after you, you gave her a good reason for the tears, one that would shut her up.”

He nodded again. “She didn't know about Lisa and me being friends. She wouldn't have much liked it, so I never told her.”

“What would her objection have been?”

“She says I don't do enough for
her
,” he said. “She doesn't want me wasting my time on other people when my own mother is sitting alone all day, rotting out, as if she didn't have a son to take care of her in her old age. She's not even that
old
,” he said. “People still work, they live alone, at her age.”

“Oh, Howie. No son could do more than you do.”

He looked surprised, then pleased. “You look so much like her,” he said, “it's almost like she's s-sitting here with me.”

“Lisa?”

He nodded.

“I used to talk to her here, just like this.” Howie ate some fries, then picked up his hamburger and just held it in his hand.

“When no one else was around?”

He nodded.

“Yeah. Lisa worked late a lot. Sometimes I'd come over and help her out, and then she'd let me”—he stopped and looked around—“unload. That's what she used to say to me, Rachel. Howie, you're carrying a building on your shoulders, you need to unload. Sit here and tell me your troubles.” The tears began in earnest, but Howie didn't seem to notice. “When I'd talk to Lisa about my mother, it wouldn't seem so b-bad. She'd tell me, like you did, how good I was to take care of her, and I'd feel better, feel I could d-do it. But now, now with Lisa gone, sometimes I can't stand it, and I don't know what to do. There's no one else to d-do it but me. What choice do I have? And I do it, I do the best I can, but nothing s-satisfies her. The b-b-bitch won't let me breathe, she's on me day and night.”

“How'd you get stuck with her, Howie? What happened to your father? Where's he?”

Howie stood so quickly, the couch moved back and hit the wall with a thud. His eyes were burning holes in me, his face a tapestry of rage.

I heard another noise, coming from the direction of Avi's office.

Then Howie began to come around the table toward me.

Ch'an came slowly toward us, her head down, her small, triangular ears alert, staring at Howie.

“Sit down, Howie,” I whispered. “
Now
.”

Howie sat trembling on the couch, unable to take his eyes off the Akita.

“N-never l-liked me,” he said.

Did he mean Ch'an? Or his father?

Ch'an lifted her nose in the air, then headed straight for the hamburger in Howie's hand.

“Tell me about it,” I said, breaking off a piece of my burger, taking a bite, and offering the rest to Ch'an. For a moment, my whole hand disappeared into her mouth, but she took the food gently, releasing my hand unharmed. “Come on, Howie, talk to me. You know you want to.”

He took a wad of tissues out of his pocket and wiped his eyes. “He left when I was s-seven. Just w-walked out.”

“And you never saw him again?”

Howie flushed.

“Did you ever see him again after that, Howie?”

“Once,” he said. “He came b-back a year later, just showed up at the d-door. ‘Tell your m-mother I'm here, son,' he said. So I left him there, in the doorway, and went to tell my m-mother. She said, ‘You go tell that b-bum we're not interested. Tell him to go away and this time, don't come b-back.'”

“And what did you do?”

“What she said. I always do what sh-she says,” he shouted at me. “You met her!”

“So you did what she said?”

“I d-did. I told him to go away. And not come b-back. Only now,” he said, tears falling from his basset hound eyes, “now she says to me, ‘Who's to take care of me but you, Howie? You're all I've got, son. Thanks to you!'”

I was going to ask why his sister wasn't sharing the responsibility of taking care of Dora. But hadn't I been too busy with work when my own mother had needed care? Doesn't the burden of a sick or aging parent often, for one reason or another, fall to one person instead of being shared?

“Then yesterday,” Howie shouted, before I had the chance to ask him anything, “I couldn't take it anymore. It was too much pressure. I ran out of the house. I didn't even take my jacket. I walked all the way up to Forty-eighth Street before I noticed where I was. I went into some bar, a real dive, McCann's or McKay's, and sat there drinking beer until it was dark out. Then I felt so bad, I walked over to the Winter Garden and got tickets to
Cats
. She loves that show, my mother. She's seen it three t-times already. No, that's another lie. I got the tickets not to please her, but so that I could get into my own fucking apartment without her savaging me all night. I got the tickets to
shut her up
, and now I have to see fucking
Cats
again.” He reached into his back pocket, took out his wallet, and held out the tickets for me to see. Two balcony tickets for
Cats
. “The old b-bat won't walk a step outside alone, even though the doctor says there's no reason on earth for her to stay inside the way she does. She says she's afraid, unless I'm with her. I bought her a d-damn walker, to steady her. But does she ever use it? No, she d-doesn't. She waits for me. I'm not a nice person, Rachel, you can see that. She's right about that. Only Lisa, she didn't care about the horrible stuff I said. She l-liked me anyway. I used to c-confide in her, tell her things I couldn't tell anyone else. I n-never had a f-friend like L-Lisa. I probably n-never will again.”

“Of course you will,” I said, reaching over and stroking his hand. “Anyone would be lucky to have you for a friend, Howie.”

“Do you really think so?” he asked. Looking at nothing in particular, he began ferrying pickle chips and cold fries into his mouth, one after the other. I doubt he would have noticed if the place caught on fire. I watched his big, strong hands, delicately lifting each morsel and moving slowly and steadily between the paper plate and his mouth, as if he were performing a religious ritual.

“Howie,” I said, after he'd finished the last of his food, “what did you make of the note Lisa left? The suicide note?”

“At first I thought she'd written it to me, because of the way I cried when she told me she was leaving.” Howie took the wet tissues and blew his red nose. “But I know that's stupid.” He ran his finger across his empty plate and licked it off. “It couldn't have been to me,” he said softly.

“Why not?”

“Because I'm not that important to anyone,” he said. He took a swig of soda and just looked down into his lap for a moment. “Except, of course, my mother.”

28

I Tried to Imagine It

I could hear the music out on the street, the pounding beat that apparently helped people do enough reps to tear their muscle tissue so that, during the repair process, the muscle would grow larger. I could see Janet through the window, doing her own workout, her mouth twisted in agony as she hoisted her own weight with the strength of only one arm. I stopped at the desk and asked for her, and the guardian of the lobby, a budding bodybuilder who introduced himself as Skip, told me to wait while he went to find her. Perfect, I thought, because what I was after was not Janet. It was her appointment schedule.

As soon as the door to the gym closed, I leaned over the desk and did some hoisting of my own. I hoisted the trainers' schedules, kept in a three-ring binder, turning to yesterday and checking Janet's appointments between four and six. According to the book, Janet had been working when Paul was killed. I wrote down the names of her clients—Barb Lefrack at four, Sandy Stiller at five, Mike Farley at six. Each name had a phone number beneath it, in case the trainer needed to cancel or reschedule. I copied those down, too.

When I'd come for my session, Janet had been busy on the phone. That's how I'd led three lives for ten minutes, one as myself, Rachel Alexander, private investigator, a second as Lisa Jacobs's smart-mouthed cousin, and a third as Chippy the hamster, working out on the treadmill and hating it, thank you.

She could have easily disappeared while I was warming up, couldn't she? Suppose she'd had to answer a call of nature or run out and take care of some urgent business?

Paul had been killed only blocks away, and the murder itself probably took less than a minute, maybe a full minute if you left time for a quick “hi” before the deed got done and a hand slipping into his pocket to remove his cash afterward, so that the murder would look like a mugging that had gone too far.

Had the killer in fact approached from the front or the back? I couldn't recall Marty specifying that.

I tried to imagine it, a strong arm coming from behind, circling around the front, the other hand snapping the neck. I pictured his hands reaching up to pull the arm away, but it wouldn't have happened like that. There wouldn't have been time for Paul's face to register surprise. At least that was a merciful thought.

For a moment my mouth tasted sour, and I thought that one small piece of burger I'd eaten was coming back up my throat. Then young Skip returned to the desk, catching me with my nose in the appointment book.

“She's booked solid, huh?” I said, looking disappointed. “I was hoping she could squeeze me in.”

“She said if you could wait,” he said, turning the book around so that it faced him, “her six canceled. But what she wanted to know was if you wanted to go get something to eat maybe, instead of working out?”

I looked at the clock on the wall behind him. It was only four forty-five.

“Great idea. Tell her I'll wait for her at her desk,” I said, picking up a fitness magazine and looking toward the corner where Janet's desk sat, partly hidden behind a screen. From where I was standing, I could see Janet's chair, her jacket draped over the back.

“You got it,” he said, heading back into the gym.

“Thanks,” I said, hightailing it to the desk and picking Janet's jacket pocket before he could return to say, “She said, ‘Cool.'” A moment later, Janet's keys in my hot little hand, I was at the front door before Skip had skipped back to the front desk to notice I had changed my mind. But when I opened the door, the buzzer sounded, and I heard him behind me.

“Aren't you staying?” he asked. “I told her you'd wait.”

“I thought I'd take a walk. I'll be back by six.”

He nodded and started fiddling with the tape deck, probably turning up the volume; there were still two or three people in the gym who hadn't suffered significant hearing loss from the music yet.

Janet lived on Grove Street. On the way there, I was hoping she didn't have a roommate.

She was on the top floor of what had once been a glorious town house, and now, like so many others, had been divided into small apartments and treated with not so benign neglect, inside and out.

Janet's apartment was in the rear. Keys in my hand, I knocked first, just in case, then waited and listened. I thought I heard something inside. I knocked again. This time I waited longer but heard nothing. I slipped the key into the lock and gave it a turn. Then what I saw gave me a turn.

Standing a few feet in front of me, square in the middle of a pretty, colorful handwoven carpet her pretty, feminine head cocked to one side, her dark eyes curious and cautious, was a large white Akita.