This Dog for Hire (3 page)

Dennis turned on some lamps and went to put up the kettle for tea. We had come in frozen from that long walk in the snow. While he waited for the water to boil, he sat down to write me a check. I thanked him, slipped it into my wallet, and took out my notepad.

He hadn't said what sort of artist he was, and oddly, I thought, there was no clear sign in the studio area except that there were drawing boards and stools, three of them, rather than easels. The art hanging on the pale peach-colored walls was obviously done by many artists, and of those where I could see a signature, none were his.

“Was Clifford close to his family?”

“Well, his dad is dead. His mom lives in Maryland, in Frederick. That's where Cliffie grew up. You should've heard his drawl when he did Barbara Fritchie.” He smiled to himself at the memory. “I never used to think of Maryland as the South, you know,” he said, “but Cliffie always said it was. He said it surely was.”

I had no problem with that. To me, the South started below Canal Street.

“His mother's only been here once,” Dennis said. “It was a couple of years ago. Cliff de-gayed the loft and brought everything down here. So I wouldn't say they were too close, no.”

“Has she been here since his death?”

“No, only his brother has. He called the next night to ask when I could let him in. He was very quiet, you know, polite, and apologetic about bothering me. It ended up that I left the keys at Haber's for him because I wasn't going to be home when he could come by.”

“You never met him?”

“No—never.”

“And he didn't have a key?”

“I offered to make him a set, but he said not to bother, he'd just be there a short while and leave the keys back at Haber's. He kept saying that I shouldn't trouble myself. I said anything he wanted was fine with me, wouldn't be any trouble. Shit, the man had just lost his only brother. I didn't mind helping him out, but he said he didn't want to take up any more of my time and that I'd been too kind already. I guess he just wanted to be alone.”

“What about the service? Did he say anything about that?”

“He said the service would probably be in Frederick because it was difficult for his mother to travel.”

I made some notes, then noticed the silence.

“The truth is, I don't think they want to have any of
us
there. Peter didn't say exactly when it would be, and he certainly didn't ask if I'd come. As far as I know, he never even called Louis at all, not even to say he was sorry. Perhaps he was afraid if his mother met her son's friends, she'd finally have to wake up and hear the Judy Garland records playing. Some people would rather live in denial than know what's going on in their own family. Well, my dear, what would the neighbors say!”

“But Peter knew about his brother, didn't he?”

“How could he not know? He'd have to be blind. Mothers and fathers, especially fathers, that's different. I mean, you could show up for Thanksgiving dinner in
drag
and your parents could miss it. But not a brother. Even if they didn't talk about it, he must have known.”

“But you don't know for sure? Clifford didn't talk about Peter, like after he'd seen him? He never mentioned anything they talked about?”

“No. But I didn't find that unusual. I never talk about my family to my friends. Just having to
see
them is more than enough.”

Tell me about it, I thought.

“Families, oh, you know. I mean, they're the ones who ought to be in the closet. They're so em
barr
assing.”

The kettle had been boiling for a while. He got up and went to the kitchen.

“Dennis, had Peter come up from Frederick?” I asked when he returned with two mugs of tea.

“No, he lives in Jersey,” he said, “the
Garden
State.” He rolled his eyes. “Fort Lee, I think. He's a teacher, married, two kids, boys. You know, a normal life. That's all I know. I mean, do
your
friends know your family?”

I took a sip of tea.

“Cliff used to meet Peter uptown, for dinner, once in a while, just the two of them. But not seeing your family too often isn't so unusual. You don't have to be gay to find family relationships stressful.”

“This is true,” I said. “Dennis, can you give me addresses and phone numbers for Cliff's family and friends?”

“Cliff's address book is upstairs, on his desk.”

“And Louis, his lover? Where does he live, in the area?”

“Mmmm, Louie. Louis Lane, believe it or not. He lives on West Fourth Street, near Washington Square Park.”

“Is Lane his real name?”

“Is Alexander yours?”

“It is now.”

He raised one eyebrow.

“I got it the old-fashioned way—I married it. How did Louis Lane get his?”

“Made it up, for all I know.” He suddenly looked uncomfortable.

“Perhaps he wanted something more memorable than his family name.”

“Or less ethnic.”

“You don't approve?”

He looked away for a moment.

“It was Polski, not that it's any of my business. At least that's what Clifford once told me, but that was after a major row, so maybe Cliffie was just being a bitch.”

“I take it you're not terribly fond of Louis Lane.”

“Miss Thing? Talk to me after you meet her,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I wouldn't want to color your opinion.”

Yeah, yeah, I thought.

“What about the handler, that was Morgan Gilmore, right?”

He put his hand up to his forehead and leaned his head into it. “God, I have to call him. He doesn't know about Magritte. And it's what”—he looked at his watch—“the second, less than a week until Westminster. Magritte is entered. I hope he's okay, wherever he is, I just hope he's okay.”

I made a mental note to walk around the waterfront area and look over the barricades the next day, but the idea of finding the basenji that way didn't thrill me.

“Who found the body, Dennis? Did the police say?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, the officers who interviewed me said it was a homeless man who hangs out on West Street.”

He proceeded to tell me about the derelict, Billy Pittsburgh, who occasionally earns five or ten dollars and a cup of coffee by wandering into the Sixth Precinct, just across Tenth Street and up the block from where I live, and giving them the location of a wrecked car, a broken store window, or, in this case, a body.

There was a lot more I wanted to know from Dennis, but it was time to see Clifford's loft. I closed my notepad, stood up, and picked up my coat.

“I better get going on this. We don't have any time to waste.”

Dennis picked up a set of keys from the top of the bookshelf and handed them to me.

“The round one is for the downstairs door, and the square one is for the loft.”

“Can I hang on to these?” I asked. “I'll need to come back here, and I don't want to have to bother you. I sometimes get obsessed with things in the middle of the night and have to check them out, and where I have to check might be Clifford's loft.”

“This might help, too,” he said, and he took out his wallet and pulled out a worn-looking photograph of Magritte.

I looked at it, nodded, and put it carefully into my wallet.

“By the way, Dennis, when was the last time
you
checked the loft?”

“Three or four days ago. You can't imagine … Well, anyway, I had those keys made for you. I figured you'd want to spend time there alone. Too many movies?”

“Probably not enough. Life's too depressing to deal with reality every minute of the day. Sometimes I hate reality.”

“Me, too. That's probably why I do what I do. Wait up.”

He went to the back of the loft and returned with a book in his hand.

“Here,” he said, “for the next time you need an escape from reality.”

It was called
Too Big
, and it was written and illustrated by Dennis Mark Keaton. The huge dog on the cover, an Am Staff, looked a lot like Dash.

“Thank you.”

“So—how will I know what's happening?” he asked as I headed for the door.

“I'll send you a report, once a week. What's your fax number?”

“Believe it or not, I don't have a fax. I use a messenger service.”

“Don't sweat it. I don't have a fax either,” I said. “And I hate to write reports. It makes me feel I'm back in school.”

I turned the book over and looked at the back cover. A little girl with straight brown hair and round glasses was hugging the big dog, and they both looked deliriously happy.

“Not to worry. I'll call you. Or I'll just draw you a picture from time to time.”

I stepped out into the hallway.

“And Dennis, don't hesitate to call me—anytime—if you learn anything new, anything at all, or if you just need to talk. That's okay, too.”

I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a business card and some lint.

“Okay. Good,” he said, looking at the card.

It was pretty stark as cards go. It said, “Alexander and Dash, Research Assistance,” and the phone number.

“Research assistance?”

“Right. You need some information. We're going to do the necessary research for you.”

“I thought you were a PI.”

“Maybe you
do
see too many movies,” I told him.

I turned to go upstairs, and Dashiell bounded on ahead.

“Rachel,” he called after me. “Ditto about calling me. Anytime is okay, day or night. I can't sleep anyway.”

4

We Rode Downtown in Silence

At first, the blinking red light of the answering machine was the only thing I could see. After a moment, when I got used to the dark, I found a light switch and was startled to discover myself dwarfed by the immensity, power, and beauty of Clifford Cole's paintings, which were hanging and standing everywhere.

I rolled back the tape so that I could hear Cole's messages. There were only a few since Dennis had been here. The one from the National Dog Registry took an easy preference to the others. My heart began racing, even though the dog who had been recovered wasn't my own. In fact, I hadn't even seen him yet.

Or had I? He was the subject of some of the canvases that were wherever my eye went as I called the 800 number that had been left on the machine a day or two earlier.

I explained my relationship to Magritte and apparently said enough of the right things to be given the name and number of the man who claimed to have him. A few minutes later I had spoken with him, and Dashiell and I were on our way.

Henri Plaisir lived in a walk-up on West Nineteenth Street, in Chelsea. After buzzing us in, he and Magritte waited in the open doorway while Dash and I climbed the three flights trying hard not to breathe in too much of the musty smell of the old tenement stairwell. Henri extended his hand to shake mine. For a moment, Magritte stood still as a statue at his side. I had the photo of him Dennis had given me in my wallet and had seen several much-larger-than-life portraits of him at Clifford's loft, but none of this had prepared me for seeing him in the flesh.

He was immaculately clean, almost sparkling, a little foxy-faced boy with small rounded-at-the-top triangular ears and dark, alert eyes. He was a ruddy chestnut brown with white points on his face, chest, paws, and tail, handsome, elegant, and with an uncanny presence, especially considering he weighed not much more than twenty pounds. He was clearly the kind of dog judges say “asks to win,” the kind of creature you somehow find yourself drawn to look at, no matter how many other dogs are around. It was no surprise at all that he was so successful in the show ring.

Henri, as he had asked me to call him on the phone, swept us in with a broad gesture of his arm. Magritte came to life. He play-bowed to Dashiell, and all four of us stepped into Henri's one small, neat room, kitchenette on one wall, pull-down bed on another, two bookshelves, a small TV set on top of one of them, a round oak table with two matching chairs, and two doors, one presumably the closet and the other the john.

Late on January 20, Henri's story began, the evening of the day Clifford Cole was murdered and less than a dozen hours after his body was discovered by Billy Pittsburgh, Henri had stopped at Metrometer, the taxi garage on Charles Street, just east of Washington, to have his meter checked. It was there that he first saw the little brown-and-white dog who, cold, dirty, thirsty, hungry, and frightened, had ducked into the open garage.

Henri was from Haiti but had lived here since he was in his late thirties. He and his brother had saved for years to buy a taxi medallion, and now they shared the cab, each working a ten- or eleven-hour shift. That way they got the most use out of it and usually didn't even have the expense of a garage, he said. He had just parked the cab half an hour before I got there, and his brother would take it out at midnight.

He appeared to be in his mid-sixties, a little taller than me which meant he was five-seven or five-eight, about 165 pounds, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, rough-textured, clean-shaven, dark coffee-colored skin, and soft brown eyes. He was wearing a weimaraner-colored cardigan with pockets, the kind I remember from when I was a kid, like the one Mr. Werner who ran the candy store wore, and beige twill pants with a crease. He had just gotten home from parking the cab when I called from Clifford's loft.

“I wasn't looking for a roommate at the time. I just thought my meter was running awful slow, awful slow. But there he was, and the man, he say to me, what am I going to do with this little boy when I close? I don't want to put him out in the weather with his short fur and all this traffic. And I say to him, I only have another hour or two to drive. What harm can it do if he sit in the front with me? I bend down just so.” He knelt to show me. “And he just come right up to me. He make this funny sound. Not a bark. He never bark once in all the time I got him. Like a trill in his throat, he make. And I just lose my heart to him right there on the spot. Can I offer you a cup of tea, Rachel?” he asked.