This Dog for Hire (2 page)

I nodded. Anyone who'd worked as a dog trainer would know basenjis, one of the two quintessential brat dog breeds. Until rottweilers got so popular, basenjis and fox terriers were two of the mainstays of the industry.

“I've been at the loft, of course. We had each other's keys since Magritte was a puppy. I had him a lot of the time. You couldn't leave him alone for more than an hour or two. He'd get really destructive, and he'd make an awful racket.”

Tell me about it, I thought. But I let him keep on talking.

“Louie couldn't stand him. So Cliff never took him to Louie's. And Louie never stayed at the loft. He was so pissed when Cliff began talking about getting a dog, and it only got worse. I think he was jealous. So Magritte stayed with me whenever Cliff stayed over at Louie's. He's always been sort of my dog, too. Anyway, it was only natural, when the police came—they spoke to everyone in the building—to go upstairs and get Magritte. That's when I saw he was gone, and his collar and leash weren't hanging on the hook where Cliff and I always put them. I thought maybe Cliff had taken him with him. Maybe he ran away after Cliff was hit. Maybe he was stolen. He's an immensely valuable dog, a champion and a son of the top-winning basenji in the country.”

I nodded, careful not to interrupt.

“It was never an issue for Cliff, the money, I mean. He kept turning down requests to use the dog at stud. He always talked about it ruining his temperament, you know, making him aggressive with other males. But honestly, I think he just didn't want the dog to love anyone but him. He got a gigantic kick about Magritte winning in the ring, so he'd let Gil handle him at the shows. Morgan Gilmore, he's the handler who's always shown Magritte, he's fabulous with the breed. But that was it. I mean, I don't think he thought about the dog loving
me
, because he had to have
someone
to take care of him when he couldn't. So I think he just accepted that. But no one else could get in there, could get between them. God, he just loved that little dog to death.”

He began to talk faster, as if he needed to relieve himself of the burden of carrying this information all by himself.

“He didn't care about making money hiring him out at stud. He used to fight with his handler about it all the time, because he, Gil, said he'd take care of it, and Cliff wouldn't have to mess with it or worry about it. He said it wouldn't change him, Magritte, that he'd be the same. But Cliff was adamant. What I'm trying to say is that if someone stole the dog on purpose, like if
that
were the point, that would mean whoever killed Cliff knew about Magritte. Gay bashing, you live in this neighborhood, you know a lot about gay bashing, it's random. The event may be planned—after all, you have to remember to put the baseball bats in the car before you leave Jersey—but the victim isn't preselected. Anyway, if the dog were with Cliff, wouldn't he have been hit, too?”

“You mean beaten to death?”

“I'm sorry. I'm doing this ass backwards. I didn't tell you one of the most important things. Clifford wasn't beaten. This was vehicular homicide.”

“He was run over?”

“Hit at high speed from behind about two-thirds of the way out onto the pier. At least, that's where he was found.”

“Do the police think he was actually hit there or that the body was dumped there?”

“Oh, no, they found enough evidence, they said, at the scene to be sure it happened there.”

“Well, I guess we can rule out your garden-variety hit-and-run. Cars aren't allowed on the pier or, for that matter, except for official vehicles, in that whole waterfront area. Did he have any enemies, that you know of? More apropos, do you know of anyone who might stand to gain from his death?”

“I don't know of any specific enemies, not someone who'd want to kill him. Are we talking sane or crazy here? As for money, he plain didn't have much, not that I know of. His art was barely selling. He would trade pieces sometimes, you know, with artist friends. But he didn't actually sell much, and when he did, the prices were really low, a thousand or fifteen hundred at most. Ironically, his first break was about to happen. I guess you'd have to say,
maybe
about to happen. He had just signed his first contract with a gallery weeks before, not a great contract, but still a contract. He was getting his work ready to be in his first group show when he was killed. As far as I know, the loft is mortgaged to the hilt. It's not as if he owned anything worth
killing
for. Except Magritte, I guess. But now he's gone, too.”

I took the notepad out of my pocket and began to write down the things he was telling me. When I finished writing, I looked up at the dogs. Dashiell was humping a little Jack Russell who kept turning around and snarling at him. It wasn't a pretty picture.

“Look,” Dennis finally said, “the case is open, but I'm as sure as I can be that nothing much is being done, because of the location of the crime, the hour, and the sexual orientation of the victim. But this just doesn't fit the pattern of a bias crime. Well, perhaps there was bias involved—when isn't there?—but I can't accept the conclusion that it was a random crime. Even the money in his pocket was peculiar. A thousand dollars, separate from the rest of his money. And left on the body. Not taken. The bottom line is, I need to know who did this. And I need to find Magritte,” he said.

He looked away. Maybe to watch the Jack Russell trying to get even.

I waited.

“The longer he's missing, the less chance there is we'll find
him
alive.”

“Hadn't we better get moving?”

He turned around, looking like a deer caught in the headlights.

“You'll take the case?”

I nodded.

“Oh, shit. I didn't ask what you charge.”

“It's five hundred a day plus expenses for me and a straight fifty for the dog.”

“Fifty a day extra for finding Magritte?”

“No. Fifty a day extra for Dashiell. And I absorb his expenses.”

A line appeared between Dennis's gray eyes.

“You mean if I hire you without the dog it's only five, plus expenses, of course?”

“Right. But I don't work without him. It's a jungle out there, and I need to know at least one of the animals is on my side. Do you know what I mean?”

“I do,” he said, making a sound with his nose that would have gotten a tsk-tsk from my mother, the late but, if possible, still perfect Beatrice Markowitz Kaminsky. “Precisely. Okay—let's do this. When do we begin?”

“How about now?” I slipped off a glove, put two fingers in my mouth, and blew hard, making the sound of air coming out of a balloon.

“Needs work,” he said. He whistled loud enough to wake the dead.

It must be a sex-linked trait. And, Lord knows, I haven't had any of that in a while.

“Thanks. Anyway, I'll need access to Cliff's studio, if possible. I'd like to spend some time there with Dashiell. I have lots more to ask you, but we can do that on the way.”

“Does Dashiell actually …
do
things, I mean, besides protecting you?”

I looked down at my dog. The top of his head had been slimed by one of the other dogs. His big meaty mouth was agape and panting, a loop of drool draped delicately over his worm colored lower lip. And he was covered with dirt.

“You thought he was just a pretty face?”

Dennis Keaton's smile was nervous and lopsided, the left side of his mouth moving up at the corner, the right side staying where it was. I got a good close-up view of those crooked teeth.

“Let's go,” he said, pushing off the chain-link fence. “We can stop at my place for the keys, and I guess you'll be wanting an advance, or do I see too many movies?”

“I have no idea how many movies you see, but I see too many bills. I require a thousand-dollar advance.”

Now
he
nodded.

He seemed like an admirable fellow, my new client, taking on responsibility in a world where most people prefer to shirk it. It appeared he wanted to do right by his friend, a friend whose murderer he wanted found at any cost. And in the midst of his grief, he was even worried about a little basenji.

I wondered what the real story was.

“Suppose we find Magritte, what then?” I asked while opening the loop of Dashiell's nylon slip collar. “Who would he belong to now that Clifford is gone?”

“Why, me, of course. I thought I made it clear that he's always been sort of my dog, too.”

“I see,” I said.

So it wasn't quite as noble as it appeared, I thought. Then again, it hardly ever is.

I slipped the collar onto Dash, and when I looked up, Dennis was holding the gate for me. What next, I thought, is he going to place his hand in the center of my back and steer me across the street? How does anyone know how to behave nowadays!

It began to snow. Huge white flakes were falling on and around us as slowly as if we were in a dream, and suddenly all the sounds were muted. Even the Hudson Street traffic sounded far away.

I wondered if it had been snowing the night Clifford Cole had died.

“Can we make a detour?” I asked.

“Where to?”

“I need you to show me where Clifford's body was found.”

I had a stack of bills waiting on my desk at home. A case was exactly what I needed, and now, thanks to Dennis Keaton, a case was what I had. If I had a normal occupation, I'd be happy. But I don't. And I wasn't. I'd have been a fool not to think that the homely man with the goofy smile walking quietly at my side might himself be the killer I was hired to find.

Hiring the PI to throw everyone off the track is not unheard-of, particularly when someone hires a woman in what's clearly a man's profession. Sometimes it's because they think a woman will fail, and failure is precisely what they're after, at any cost.

Whatever the truth would turn out to be, it would emerge as it always did, in frustratingly small pieces, progressing so slowly I'd want to scream, or give up, or get a job selling jelly beans in the five-and-dime. Instead, I'd keep picking away at things until the scab came loose and all the ugliness underneath finally showed itself.

My mother always told me not to pick at scabs because, if you did, you'd get a scar. I never listened then, and I never listen to the voice of reason now. I just have to find out what's under things, the secrets, the motives, the little twists and turns the human mind can take that make something repugnant seem plausible. And when I'm finished poking around where I don't belong, when the answer is finally visible, the crime solved, I think about Beatrice and what she told me, that the wound will never heal properly, that the scar will be permanent, and that chances are, I'll be even unhappier when I get where I'm going than I was before I began.

3

I'll Draw You a Picture

The Christopher Street pier sticks out stiff and straight into the Hudson River like an accusing finger pointing at New Jersey, the state with the worst drivers and the highest cancer rate in the country. I unhooked Dash's leash and let him run while Dennis walked me to the place on the pier where Clifford Cole met his killer and his maker on a cold winter night two weeks earlier.

“It must have been here. The officer I spoke to mentioned that,” he said. I followed his gloved finger to the spray-painted sign on the concrete barricade, a comical face with a sad expression, the mouth a wide
M
, the sparse, spiky hair like an off-center crown of thorns, and next to it, “Punk's Not Dead.”

I looked around the pier. Where was the dog? I wondered. Was he alive, or as dead as his master? If I looked over the barricade and into the river, would I see him floating there, bloated beyond recognition? I decided not to, not with Dennis there.

Dashiell was marking the pier. He was never one to ignore masculine responsibility. When I turned around to look at Dennis, I saw that he was looking up to avoid crying. I wondered how many times he had been told that big boys don't cry, that part of
his
masculine responsibility was to avoid showing any vulnerability, as if he weren't part of the human race, such as it is. I took the Minox out of my pocket and snapped a couple of quick shots of the pier.

“Let's get out of here,” I said. “I've seen enough for now.”

Just before we turned off the pier, I noticed another spray-painted sign.

Beware of Muggers. Don't Be Caught Alone.

“What a place to die,” Dennis said.

I didn't respond. I had seen too many worse places, places far from the fresh, fishy smell of the river and the sweeping, open views north and south, places that stunk of urine, feces, vomit, blood, places so dehumanizing and frightening they could have wiped out every decent vision the victim had ever seen, and perhaps the worst place of all to die a violent death, one's own bed, the place for the sort of sleep you wake up from.

I hooked on Dashiell's leash and we headed for SoHo.

One-sixty-three Greene Street was an AIR—Artist in Residence—loft, which meant that only qualified artists could live and work there and that the tax abatement would make the cost a little cheaper, but nothing in SoHo was what you could call cheap. A lovely five-story cast-iron building with Corinthian columns, it was painted white, unlike its drab neighbors. There was an art gallery, Haber's, on the street level and four floor-through artists' residences above. A fabric designer named KiKi Marr who Dennis said had been away since before Christmas was on two, Dennis had three, Clifford Cole's loft was on four, and a choreographer named Amy Aronson was on five.

We walked up to Dennis's loft, a deep, wide space, open in the front, facing east, where there would be wonderful morning light, and divided in the back for living.

Dennis's living room was separated from his studio area by a long, low bookshelf painted teal green and some hanging plants so that it would still get the light streaming in from the enormous windows facing the street. By now it was close to four, and the afternoon light was all but faded in the bedroom and kitchen areas.