This Dog for Hire (9 page)

Of course, I'd also have some news for Dennis, something other than that his friend was doing the outdoor version of being a toilet queen when he bought the farm. But I didn't think that the fact that I had looked for Billy Pittsburgh and failed to find him would make Dennis release balloons.

We spent about an hour walking around looking carefully at what seemed to be piles of garbage but which actually, sometimes, were someone's attempt to keep warm. I spoke to two other men. One began to rant and rave, making no sense at all. I think he was afraid of Dash, but I doubt he made sense when he wasn't frightened. The other guy, a much younger man than you usually see on the street, talked nonstop. He asked for money, for a job, for coffee. He told me how he lost his job and couldn't pay his rent. He said he got beaten up at the men's shelter and that it was worse than the street. He told me three places where he could get meals, but none of them were open on the weekend. He said he had never met a black man called Billy, but there was a black woman called Billie who slept in a loading area on Greenwich Street, near Charles. I thanked him, gave him a couple of dollars, and headed for Charles Street.

We found Billie asleep under a pile of filthy blankets and newspapers. I put Dash on a sit-stay off to the side so that she wouldn't wake up, see him, and get frightened. I called her name four or five times before she stirred. Slowly, a hand wrapped in rags pushed up a corner of the blanket, and I could barely see a face deep under the covers looking out at me.

“Are you Billie?” I asked.

There was no answer.

“I'm looking for the Billie who found a man lying on the pier a few weeks ago, the Billie who told the cops there was someone on the pier. Was that you?”

Still no answer. But the cover stayed up.

“You're not in any trouble. I can use your help if you know anything or if you know another Billy who might help me. It's worth a nice meal, if you can help.”

The cover dropped.

By now I was freezing. I didn't know how these people survived outside in such cold weather. Of course, not all of them did.

I tucked a couple of bucks under the blanket, then stood there like an idiot waiting for a response.

Chilled and frustrated, Dash and I headed home, stopping to pick up the photos I'd taken at the pier and at Cliff's loft on the way.

Why didn't homeless people flock together, like birds? Or sleep together for warmth? Then maybe someone would know Billy Pittsburgh's whereabouts. I felt stupid spending my time looking for him; I even began to wonder if Mary Perry really knew Billy.

Sometimes the homeless talk like the Alzheimer patients I worked with at the nursing home, stringing things together that they hear and talking about them as if they were real, adding parts of TV stories and overheard conversations to their own experiences.

I felt as if I were in a fog, too. So when I got home, I went straight up to my office, where I have an oversize blackboard I picked up at the flea market on Greenwich Avenue. I began to list the people in Clifford's life and to think about what each stood to gain from his death.

Dennis Mark Keaton, aka Dennis Mark Rosenberg.

Gain: one champion basenji, Magritte. Will he do anything Clifford didn't do, e.g., hire him out at stud? How much could you make doing that anyway? Find out. Loss: one best friend with whom he was possibly (hopelessly?) in love.

Louis Lane, aka Leonard Polski.

Inherits a previously worthless, now valuable art collection. Could there have been a long-term plan at work here? After all, Louis had hooked Cliff up with Veronica. Were there hard feelings, oops, between the lovers? A desire for revenge? A need for money? Loss: the love of his life? Or not.

Veronica Cahill.

Lots of SoHo galleries had closed and lots of others were in financial difficulties, so … Did Louis and Veronica, old buddies, team up? If yes, how could this connect with where the murder took place? If they planned to kill Cliff together, then use the murder to increase the value of his work, how did they know he'd be on the pier that night?

Why was I doing this? The man was killed at four in the morning on the Christopher Street pier, where he had gone with his dog to get lucky. Boy, did he not get lucky! The best I could hope for was a witness—talk about getting lucky—and one who was sane and sober enough to have gotten the license plate number. Fat fucking chance, as my grandmother would have said if there had been a Yiddish equivalent. Like on top of everything else, the guy would have had to have a pencil and paper.

I added the next name.

Morgan Gilmore, Magritte's handler.

Gil and Cliff argued about whether or not to breed Magritte, but what could Gil gain from Cliff's death?
He
didn't inherit M. Did he think he would? Is there more to this picture? Would Dennis keep up M's career, or was Gil now out of a job?

Adrienne Wynton Cole, Cliff's mother.

She gets the dough. But it was probably hers in the first place, and she probably has a ton more. Mothers don't usually murder their children by running them over. They do it slowly, using guilt and disappointment. Even if she didn't accept her son or really know him (what else is new?), she lost her
son
.

Peter David Cole, Cliff's brother.

He would have gotten the dough if Adrienne had kicked off first. If Cliff was in his early thirties, his mother was probably somewhere in her fifties or sixties. Even if she would now leave everything
she
had to Peter, he'd have a pretty long wait. Not a terrific investment, killing your brother and waiting twenty-plus years for the payoff, unless she prefers a charity of some sort, other than her own son. That probably depends whether she approves of Peter David. Have to meet him. Maybe at the opening? Loss: his brother.

I began to think about Lillian and all the times I felt like strangling her. But I'd never actually
do
it. Even though you probably get angrier at your family than at anyone else, they're your history, too, the people who know every stupid story about you since day one.

Okay. Check out the lover. And the gallery owner. Hey, what they do is exploit artists, isn't it? Maybe murder comes under the heading of exploitation, furthering his career. After all, his stuff wasn't worth much when he was alive, was it? Check prices.

I tacked the photos onto the wall, lonely shots of the pier, Cliff's art, even his unmade bed, images to haunt me as I tried to make sense of what appeared to be a senseless crime.

I decided to check the main house before getting ready for the opening. Not bothering with a coat, I grabbed the keys off a hook in the kitchen and ran across the snow-covered garden, Dashiell leading the way straight to the Siegals' back door.

I unlocked both locks, stomped the snow off my boots, pulled the door open, and followed Dashiell inside. Once indoors, I signaled Dashiell to sit and watch me, then gave him the hand signal for go find, a flat, open hand first touching my right eye, then sweeping out forward as far as I could reach.

Dashiell headed for the front room. We always started downstairs and worked our way up. I followed along behind, making sure the doors were still locked, no windows had been broken, no gas was leaking, no pipes had burst. Dash made sure no one else was in the house.

Downstairs was where a burglar would be most likely to break in, even though some preferred access from above, coming from the roof of another building. In some places in the city, you could travel an entire block by running across the roofs.

In New York City, most accessible windows had bars on them. But Norma wouldn't hear of it. “They're ugly,” she'd said when I suggested that window guards would help safeguard the house. “I will not live in a jail. That's why you're here.” I was in no position to argue.

I followed Dashiell, telling him he was a good boy, checking to make sure the shutters were closed in the front of the house and open to let light in in the rear, those windows that faced the cottage. The thermostat was set at sixty so that the old house wouldn't take too bad a beating contracting and expanding as the weather changed.

We finished at the top without finding a single thief hiding under any of the beds or in the closets, double-checked the front door, shut off the lights, and let ourselves out the back.

Once, the first winter I was here, Dashiell had started to pace and whine, going to the living-room window that faced the main house and coming back to poke me with his muzzle and look into my eyes. I had taken my gun from the shoe box in the bedroom closet, and we had gone across the snowy garden in silence, my heart pounding as I opened the back door. Five minutes later we were face-to-face with the intruder, a homeless woman who had broken one of the front windows to get in from the cold. She was nestled under three blankets in the spare bedroom, trying to get warm.

This time, everything was as it should have been. By the time we got back to the cottage, stopping briefly to race around the big oak, it was time to get ready for the opening. I had planned to soak in the tub until I was as wrinkled as a shar-pei, but I couldn't. I was too excited about the thought of possibly meeting the killer in an hour or so and the question of whether or not I'd know him—or her—when I did.

In the Village, if your sweats are clean, you're dressed up. SoHo is another story. Not wanting to stick out like a bulldog at a field trial, I put on my long black coatdress with matching pants, wound my hair up, and clipped it at the back of my head. Then I stood by helplessly as most of it worked its way out of the barrette. Looking as if I'd just been Marlene Dietrich's stand-in in
Morocco
, I called my dog, and together we headed downtown to see if anyone smelled like a killer.

12

He Raised His Lovely Eyebrows

The big black dot was nowhere in sight, and the floor of the Cahill Gallery had been painted iridescent chartreuse. The walls, still white, were hung with Clifford Cole's paintings, which gave me the same kind of pang I got when I thought about my father not living long enough to see his grandchildren. Then again, who ever said life was fair.

Despite the fact that this was a posthumous show, the mood was festive. Artists turned out in great numbers, as they always do for openings—and the free food and booze—and there were an unusual number of collectors, especially for the shrinking art market of the nineties. There was press, too, so there would be, it seemed, even more articles in the papers and magazines about the young artist who died so tragically just as his tremendous talent was about to come to light.

God, did schmaltz sell. Then again, lurid sex crimes also sold. It was just a matter of time before the rest of the story came out, which would drive the prices even higher than the schmaltz had already done. Louis Lane was going to end up a rich man.

Dennis was in the back, with Magritte.

“Honey,
you
look sen-sa-tional!”

“Yeah. Yeah.” I leaned in as if to kiss his cheek. “What have you learned?” I whispered.

He leaned closer. “Well, apparently blue eye shadow is back!”

“Dog people,” I explained.

He rolled his eyes. “And
Lois
is here.” He indicated the location with a tilt of his head, and I turned to get a look at the new owner of the collection, prepared to loathe him on sight.

“She's doing an interview,” he sang. “Does anyone ask
me
—” he began, but I cut him off.

“I'll see you in a bit,” I said, leaving quickly and pushing through the crowd with Dashiell at my side.

Leonard Polski was a few feet away from where I had been standing with Dennis, talking to someone who was taking notes. I squeezed in close enough to hear some of the bull he was tossing around, sure I'd be hearing about his always having had faith in Cliff's ability, about how he encouraged him to try his last series of grayish, oversize paintings where images took several canvases to be completed, and, richest of all, how pleased he was that Magritte was found and how much he loved the little dog.

What I heard surprised me. Even allowing for the distortion of the tape recording, this was clearly the same voice that left the warm and funny messages for Clifford that I had heard last night. That was as I had guessed. The rest was not.

Louis Lane was speaking softly about the rise of hate crimes, the resurgence of Nazism in the new/old unified Germany, the racial cleansing in Bosnia, and the rise in gay bashing here at home. Then he began to talk about Clifford, his painting as a kind of journal writing on canvas, the curiosity that drove him into his own psyche to troll for powerful material, his feeling that if he touched upon the things he felt deeply about, his paintings would touch others in some powerful way even though each person's history was unique and even though Clifford's own story was not fully expressed, just alluded to mysteriously. That, he said, the mysterious quality of Clifford's work, was what he, Louis, loved best.

“It was his way of expressing not only his own alienation and the alienation all gay men feel, but a far larger issue, the alienation of the nineties, the understanding that we never really know each other, and the question of whether or not many of us care for each other.”

Of course, this made me wonder how well Louis Lane knew Clifford Cole, or why he thought this was a nineties concept. From the beginning of time, no one has ever known anyone. I mean, did Adam know Eve? I mean,
really
know her, beyond the biblical sense?

“He was very emotional,” he continued, “yet in the translation to canvas, a kind of artistic flatness took over. I think without that, he couldn't have gone where he needed to go. The pain would have been too great. And in that, he was a strong voice for what is going on in the post-Bush era, the disappointment people feel resonating with the pain of childhood, as if Bush the father betrayed us just as our own fathers did.”