This Dog for Hire (7 page)

I wondered if Clifford had gotten depressed about his inability to sell his “works.” He had probably been elated the day he signed the contract. That had been November 16, which would mean he had been working on things for his show since then. There had been no date set, no promise of how soon it would be or how many of his works would be included. Most shows were up for a three-week period, during which there would be an opening, often stacked with the artist's friends and sometimes, like the invitations, paid for by the artist. But then you had the chance to hope, and who could put a price tag on what that was worth? There might be a sale, a visit by a critic, a positive line in the press. You might, after all, have a chance.

Peter Cole did not live in Fort Lee, but Woodcliff Lake. I found Morgan Gilmore's number, too. He lived in Greensboro, North Carolina. I marked it with the highlighter, then put it on the nightstand with the rest of the papers.

In the morning, I'd try to reach Louis Lane. After that, I'd start looking for Billy Pittsburgh, who, I suspected, was using a name other than the one he had been given as a child.

What did it all mean, all this name changing? I had even done it myself.

When I took Jack's name, I had thrown away my own. I had detached myself from my past and my family. When we split, I chose to keep his name, not my own, even though I had used it for less than a year. I had set myself adrift. I had even rejected my profession, taking a job with the Petrie Detective Agency on lower Broadway, run by two brothers, Bruce and Frank.

I didn't actually meet the older Petrie, Bruce, until I had been working at the agency for two and a half months. He was obsessed with electronic equipment for both surveillance and criminal activities. Every few months or so he'd surface from his windowless back office and show us the specs on the latest eavesdropping equipment, voice-changing telephone, letter bomb scanner, or microcamera in a key chain.

It was Frank who had hired me to work as a junior undercover agent trainee, meaning I would do the same work as the regular agents but for much less money, because, as he so wisely explained, what if you're following a guy and he goes into the men's room and there's another way out? And when I presented the same scenario with a woman being followed, he had shoved some papers around on his desk and said he couldn't sit around all day and waste his valuable time arguing with me, there was work to be done, and did I want the job or not? I said I did. When I got home, I called Lili.

Why do you want to put yourself on the outside looking in? she asked, one of her usual rhetorical questions. No, she said, changing her mind, for you, that would be an improvement. You won't have time to press your nose against the glass. You'll be too busy looking inside other people's garbage cans to even wonder about how normal people live. You don't really belong in the family, she said.

Family
, Dennis had said,
oh, you know
.

Frank Petrie had put a tail on me right after he'd hired me, a real geek.

Hey, you never know, the Pinkertons could have sent me to find out all his secrets.

The tail was so ugly, you couldn't miss him from a mile away. It did not require a genius to figure out what was going on. I called Frank.

“Next time,” I told him, “send someone less memorable.”

“Good work, kid,” he said. “You might not be a total loss after all.”

Now, why couldn't anyone in my own family ever say anything that supportive!

9

You Can Never Be Too Paranoid

I woke up to the sound of my own voice coming from the office. I hadn't remembered to turn down the volume on the answering machine, which I leave on high during the day so that I can monitor calls from anywhere in the house. Living in this city, you can never be too paranoid. At least that's what my shrink always used to say.

The next thing I heard was Dennis.

“Rachel, it's Dennis Keaton. Please call me. I have something important to tell you.”

I picked up the phone. “Hey.”

“Have you seen the
Times
?”

“Not yet, Dennis. I was asleep.”

“Oh. Sorry. I forget other people do that,” he said.

Great. My mother had been reincarnated as a gay guy.

“Can you hang on?” I asked.

“The C section,” he said. “Page nineteen. I'll hold.”

I went downstairs, opened the front door, and sent Dashiell for the
Times
.

To most people, a C section is a cesarean. If you live in New York City, it's the arts section of the
Times
, the part your husband the dentist hands you while he reads the international, national, and local news and checks the value of his holdings in the business section. I found the article on page nineteen and picked up the cordless extension in the living room.

“So—‘
Not
the Death of Art. Murdered artist Clifford Cole's works will be on display in his first one-man show this weekend at the Cahill Gallery in SoHo, a posthumous installation of the artist's paintings, drawings and sculpture,'” I said, reading from the article that Dennis could probably recite by heart. “I guess Veronica Cahill finally figured out what installation is going to follow Dots.”

“What are you
talking
about, Rachel?”

“I stopped by the gallery yesterday, just to take a look, and they had this installation called Dots, the most god-awful stuff you ever saw. Well, no, I guess we've both seen worse. Anyway, I told the salesperson I sort of collected dog art, I had Dashiell there, and she failed to sell me a Clifford Cole. She said she didn't know what the next show would be. But apparently Veronica Cahill figured out a good way to get some mileage out of the contract she signed with Cliff. The way it's put here,” I said, referring to the article, “well, the notoriety will at least bring people in, maybe even critics. Death makes good copy, or so they say.”

“Do you believe this?” Dennis said. “‘An up and coming star of the downtown art world, cut down by human hatred just as his career was taking off.' Where do they get this garbage? She never even guaranteed him she'd put
one
of his pieces in a group show. Now she's his fucking
patron
. Excuse me while I go get a bag to throw up in.”

There was nothing but silence on the line for a long moment.

“Listen, Dennis, this is good, isn't it? I mean, wouldn't it be worse if no one ever saw Cliff's paintings? They're quite wonderful.”

He didn't respond.

“Dennis?”

“You're right, I know it, it's just that …”

“I know. He didn't get the support when he was alive, and he won't get to hear the applause, right?”

“Right,” he said, “and someone else will get the money.”

“Louis.”

“Louis?”

“Louis.”

“I thought his family …”

“Louis.”

“Now I'm really going to be sick. Rachel, I bet Louis is behind all this publicity, this exploitation. I bet he engineered it!”

“It's possible. It should certainly increase the value of his inheritance. Let's keep our mouths shut and our ears open.” That's the second law of investigative work. But I sometimes have trouble with the mouth shut part. I thought Dennis would, too.

“Dennis, don't tell anyone you hired me or what I do.”

“Oh, God.”

“What? Or should I say
who
?”

“I told Louis.”

“Shit. Anyone else?”

“No. I
swear
.”

“Okay. Let's keep it that way. I have to lie sometimes. Do you understand?”

“I never thought about it. I'm not exactly experienced in this sort of thing. Sorry. I'll watch my mouth. I promise.”

“It's my fault, Dennis. I fucked up. I should have told you. It just means Louis will be, well, more guarded with me.”

“You're not thinking that
Louis
—”

“It's possible. He did gain from Clifford's death.”

“Not nearly what he lost.”

Now it was my turn to be silent.

“You'll be there, at the opening?” he asked.

“Definitely. I wouldn't miss it for the world. Would you?”

“Clifford would kill me if I did, no matter what it took. Sorry I woke you, Rachel, but you said I could call anytime, and, shit, it's ten-thirty.”

“No problem. I was up late reading Clifford's address book. His brother Peter lives in Woodcliff Lake, by the way, not Fort Lee.”

“Same difference. It's all Jersey,” he said.

“Dennis, while I've got you on the phone, I need to ask you something. You said Magritte's collar and leash were missing, right?”

“Yes. They weren't on the hook, and I didn't see them anywhere else.”

“What did they look like?”

“Red leather, thin, buckle collar, not a slip, four-foot leash. Oh, and Cliff had hung a little bell on the collar. He liked the way it sounded when Magritte walked. Why?”

“Dashiell found them, on the pier. The leash was tied to the back fence, way low, buried in the snow. So he
was
there. Dennis, I'm sorry, but it looks as if Clifford took Magritte and went out to meet someone. Why else would he be on the pier at that hour?”

“You mean, he took Magritte out to help him hit on someone and then tied him up while he was having sex? That's so cheap.”

“It's done all the time, Dennis. Let's get real here. Well, it may not be done all that often with a dog in tow, but guys are out there fucking in all kinds of weather and at just about any hour after dark. Am I right?”

“Okay, okay, I hear you. You're right. The police are right. So he had Magritte with him, and Magritte carried on while Clifford had sex. Magritte wouldn't have taken this lying down, you know. He had this thing about not being stopped from what he was doing. So if you took him out to walk, you better keep walking, not tie him up and fuck. That wouldn't have been part of his agenda.”

“Dennis, I didn't say Magritte was
happy
to be tied up on the pier. And I know you're not happy to hear this.”

“Never mind that. We're after the truth, aren't we? So, the way I figure it, why take the dog? He only would have made a racket. He'd have sounded like
he
was being murdered. That's just the way he was when he was thwarted. People think these dogs are quiet because they don't bark. Trust me, they're not quiet.”

“Dennis, I can't say for sure why Cliff took Magritte with him, but you have to admit, a dog is a great icebreaker. No pun intended.”

“Okay, okay, I understand, but what about the money, the thousand dollars?”

“Clifford wasn't quite as poor as you thought he was, Dennis. There's apparently money in the family.”

“And the thousand?”

“Maybe he was just careless about money, since he never had to worry about it. Or maybe, like a lot of guys, he liked to carry a lot of cash. I read once that women will walk around with twenty bucks on them and feel fine, but that a majority of men don't feel right unless they've got at least a hundred bucks in their pockets. Maybe he needed the money for something the next day and forgot it was in his pocket. He left cash in lots of his jacket pockets, Dennis, not a thousand dollars, but cash. There was a fifty in his jean jacket. He seems to have been careless with money. Not irresponsible, but careless. Again, maybe because it wasn't in short supply when he was growing up.”

“None of this makes any sense.”

“It will. Give it time.”

“But we know Magritte was there. That's definite. And that he was left there. We know that, too,” he said, trying to take comfort in the fact that we had learned something about the night Cliff was killed.

“Apparently. The money was left. The dog was left. Maybe something went wrong. Who knows? We don't know the point of this, do we? But it's my guess that Magritte was there at the time of the murder. From the looks of the leash, he jumped around and couldn't break it, but finally backed out of the collar. What if, let's say, Cliff had had a row with Louis, a big one, and maybe he went out to find someone for spite. It happens.”

“Rachel, I—”

“Dennis, you know how people driving by always stare at the pier when they're waiting for the light to change. They hate what they're going to see, but they're compelled to look, like when you pass a car accident. Okay, suppose some nut job was driving by on West Street, no one's around, and he sees a couple of guys in flagrante on the pier and loses it. He turns his car around, shoots back uptown, drives onto the waterfront area and back to the pier. Maybe by then, the other guy has left. Cliff is on the way to untie Magritte, and this poor excuse for a human being drives onto the pier and runs him down. He wouldn't take the chance of getting out of the vehicle and checking his pockets. He wouldn't expect to find so much money. Money isn't the point, is it? He probably got the hell away as fast as he could. He probably never even saw Magritte tied up at the far end or heard him over the car's engine.”

For the second time he made that sound with his nose that would have caused Beatrice, the perfect one, to hand him a clean, ironed handkerchief.

“I'm not ready to give up yet,” he said. “Are you?”

“Of course not. I mean, even if it turns out to be that it is what it looks like now, maybe we can catch the bastard. Maybe I can find a witness. The opening is tomorrow night. Let's see what we learn there, okay? By the way, has the gallery been in touch with you about getting the paintings?”

“No. They're probably working with Louis. He's known Veronica for years. That's how Cliffie got past the manila envelope and slides stage. Louis introduced them. Anyway, the art is his now, isn't it?”

“Yes. And he can get it? He has keys?”