The Dog Who Knew Too Much Read online

  18

  Follow That Cab

  I was nearly dry by the time I arrived at the Club. Paul wasn’t out front, but as I got out of the car to go get him, he appeared in the doorway. I winced. He was wearing a black T-shirt, a black jacket, and black slacks. As soon as the car began to move again, it would be aswirl with white fur. Dashiell, who was sitting behind the driver’s seat, was shedding.

  Without saying a word, I walked around to the passenger side, and Paul got in on the driver’s side. Some things are easy to arrange with men. You never have to ask them to hold the remote either.

  He got in, fastened his seat belt, then checked to make sure I’d fastened mine. “I thought we’d be alone,” he said, looking toward the backseat, “so we could talk.”

  “You can talk in front of him. He’s tight-lipped.”

  “Where to?” he asked.

  “Forty-fourth, between Fifth and Sixth.”

  He gave me a funny look and began to drive. I looked out the side window to avoid obsessing about his strong, beautiful hands.

  When we got to Forty-fourth, I told him where to pull over.

  “We can’t park here,” he said. “Not unless you want to get towed.”

  “We’re not parking,” I told him. “We’re waiting.”

  “For another couple?” he asked, looking disappointed.

  “Sort of.”

  He nodded, watching me as I slid down a little in my seat, my eyes glued to the door of 17 West Forty-fourth. Perhaps it was the expression on my face that kept Paul Wilcox waiting in silence. As we sat there, I had murder on my mind.

  He wasn’t even there yet, but already I could almost feel my hands around his throat, choking the life out of him.

  I could push my gun into his chest, tell him why, make him beg, then pull the trigger anyway.

  Or I could poison him, slowly, painfully, with something impossible to detect.

  Fuck it, I thought. As soon as he steps out the door, I’ll have the driver gun the engine and run him down. My sister looks stunning in black. Come to think of it, who doesn’t?

  When he finally appeared, she was hanging on to his arm, smiling up at his face. He had lost weight. Even scrunched down in the seat, looking past Paul, I could see he was thinner. And wasn’t that a new sport coat the bastard had on?

  He leaned over and kissed the blond on the mouth, then his arm went up, and a cab pulled over to the curb for them.

  “Follow that cab,” I told my driver. But he did nothing. Unless you call staring something. “Follow that cab,” I repeated. “And don’t spare the horses.”

  “Ah, so,” he said, nodding. He pulled out and caught up to the cab, which was waiting at the corner for the light to change.

  “Good job,” I told him.

  Dashiell’s tail beat against the backseat.

  “I’m quite experienced at covert pursuits,” he said.

  “Is that right?”

  “Exactly. My grandmother is dying to know where her neighbor, Mrs. Chiang, buys fish. She always finds the freshest fish for the least money, but she refuses to tell my grandmother where.”

  “How frustrating,” I said as the light changed. We followed the cab onto Fifth Avenue and began weaving in and out of traffic to stay behind it as it turned east, then south, heading downtown. “So you and your grandmother follow Mrs. Chiang’s cab?”

  I thought we were going to lose Ted and the blond when their cab went through a changing light, but Paul zipped right after it, risking a ticket.

  “Not exactly,” he said.

  “Meaning?”

  “We follow her rickshaw.”

  “Ah, so,” I said as we careened toward the Manhattan Bridge. And me without my passport, I thought, but the cab kept heading downtown, turning a few blocks later into Chinatown. After an impossible final few minutes trailing behind the cab through the crowded, twisty, narrow, one-way streets, it stopped at 63 Mott Street, outside of Hong Fat. I ducked way down as the cab door opened.

  “You can get up. They’re inside now,” my driver said.

  He was a fast study.

  “Thanks,” I said, as casually as if, instead of going through a red light and driving like a maniac, he’d just held a door for me or lit my cigarette.

  “Do you have anything to tell me?” he said, turning sideways to face me, an inscrutable expression on his face.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Pull in as much as you can and cut the engine.”

  “That’s it?” He waited patiently, his eyebrows raised.

  “We’re eating Chinese,” I told him.

  “Let me guess. At Hong Fat?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, unzipping my teddy bear backpack and pulling out my cell phone. “We’d be towed in a nanosecond if we parked here.” I called information for the number of Hong Fat and, before dialing it, smiled at Paul and in my sweetest voice asked him what he’d like for dinner. He laughed so hard tears came to his eyes.

  “Surprise me,” he said when he’d regained his composure.

  “No problem.”

  I dialed Hong Fat.

  “I’d like an order to go, please. No, delivery. Well, it’s not exactly an address. I’m parked across the street in a black Ford Taurus. T as in to go, A as in appetizer. Taurus. A car. Car. C as in chow mein. Yes. An order of steamed dumplings with oyster sauce. Do you want soup?” I asked Paul. He shook his head. “We’ll skip the soup tonight. One order of kung po chicken and one crab with ginger and scallions. White rice or brown?” I asked Paul, but he just waved his hand at me. “White rice,” I said into the phone. “And chopsticks, please. Thank you.”

  “Chopsticks okay?” I asked him.

  He merely stared at me.

  “How about a drink before dinner?”

  I didn’t wait for a response. I reached back to the floor behind his seat and pulled out a plastic shopping bag. I handed him a bottle of merlot and a corkscrew, and I held the two plastic glasses.

  As if he ate dinner in a car every night of his life, he anchored the bottle between his legs, peeled off the foil that surrounded the cork, and began to twist the corkscrew carefully into the center of the cork, which a moment later came out with a satisfying pop.

  He filled the glasses and took one for himself.

  “To you, Dog Paddle,” he said, touching his plastic glass to mine.

  We sat back and sipped our wine. I thought about music, but Dashiell was asleep and I didn’t want to drown out the sounds of his snoring. I had thought about candlelight, too, but there really wasn’t anyplace safe to put candles. I’d checked it out.

  When the confused-looking little man in the white jacket came out of Hong Fat and looked around, Paul rolled down his window and motioned him over to the Taurus. I leaned over with the money, but Paul brushed my hand away, taking some folded bills from his pants pocket and paying for the food himself. The waiter said something I couldn’t understand, and then Paul nodded and laughed. He pulled the bag in through the open window and turned back to me. “So, how do you want to do this?” he asked.

  “One course at a time, starting with the appetizer,” I said, opening the bag and pulling out the dumplings and the little clear plastic container of dipping sauce.

  “Would you like to tell me what this is all about?”

  My mouth was full of dumpling. I shook my head no. “I thought we were going to talk about Lisa,” I said around the dumpling. “You promised.”

  He took a bite of dumpling. “You want to talk about your cousin?”

  “I do.”

  “This is delicious. How did you find this place?”

  “It was recommended, so to speak, by someone I thought I knew.”

  He refilled our wineglasses.

  “Seriously, Paul, I—”

  “She wanted to marry,” he said, leaning back and gazing out the windshield. “She said it was time to formalize our commitment to each other. I told her I wasn’t ready.” He turned toward the food, hoistin
g the final dumpling with his chopsticks. Then, chopsticks poised, as if he were about to conduct an orchestra, he looked at me. “Okay?” he asked. There was a flash of white between us. I could hear Dashiell swallowing the dumpling behind me.

  “You said okay. It’s his release word.”

  “The chicken next?” he asked, as if nothing untoward had happened.

  “But you loved her, didn’t you?” I asked, thinking about the jasper heart necklace and the heart bracelet, thinking about all those roses.

  Paul turned away from me and looked out the side window. Sitting on the sidewalk, to the right of Hong Fat, there was an unshaven, disheveled-looking man leaning against the wall, a cigarette dangling from his crusty lips. He wore a purple sweater that was too big for him and was frayed at the bottom, stained, wide-legged brown pants, shoes without laces. In one hand he held a live crab.

  He put the crab down on the sidewalk.

  “Come here, Donny,” he said in his gravelly voice.

  The crab didn’t budge.

  “Goddamn you to hell, Donny,” he shouted at the crab. “I said come. When the fuck’re you gonna learn to mind me?”

  He took the cigarette from his mouth and, holding it between two stained fingers, touched it to the rear end of the crab. I grabbed Paul’s arm and squeezed it.

  “Tha’s a good boy, Donny,” he said as the crab moved forward. “See,” he said, leaning down into the crab’s face, “it ain’t so hard to be a good boy.”

  He picked up Donny by one claw and quickly dumped him into a paper bag that he had anchored under his legs, struggled to his feet, and holding the bag out in front of him, staggered down the block.

  I didn’t feel hungry anymore, and apparently neither did Paul, because neither of us picked up the bag to take out any more of the food.

  “What did she say?” I asked. “My cousin Lisa?”

  “That she had wanted to bring me into her family, to have my children, for us to grow old together.”

  “And when you told her you weren’t ready, she didn’t want to see you anymore?”

  “No,” he said, looking straight ahead again, as if he were driving instead of parked. “I didn’t want to see her after that.”

  “Why not?”

  “It had all been spoiled,” he said. He looked back toward the street, but the little man with the crab was gone.

  “But you still loved her,” I insisted.

  “Yes,” he said. “She was …” He looked down, into his lap, the chopsticks still in his right hand. “I had hoped …”

  He took off his glasses, placing them on the dashboard, and put his fingertips over his eyes. I don’t know what got into me then. Maybe it was all the walking in Lisa’s shoes. Once again, I reached over and slid my arms around his neck. But this time, it was different. When he moved his hands away and looked at me with those hurt, dark eyes, I leaned closer and kissed him. My lips gently brushed one cheek, then the other. When I kissed his eyes, I tasted the salt of a tear. Then I felt his chopsticks against my back as he embraced me, his other hand on my neck, his long fingers reaching into my hair. I felt a familiar heat starting and spreading quickly, as if someone had dropped a match in straw. Live in the now, Avi had said. So I did. I sank into it and let it happen.

  That’s when something caught my eye. Over Paul’s shoulder, I could see them as they came out of Hong Fat and stood just across from where we were parked, kissing. They talked quietly for a moment, then Teddy’s arm went up, for a taxi.

  I pulled away from Paul and ducked.

  He put his glasses on and turned.

  “Why do I get the nagging feeling you’re using me?”

  “Because I am.”

  “I thought as much. Follow that cab?” he said.

  “Wait until they get one,” I told him.

  You had to give him this. The man was a good sport.

  Men like this don’t grow on trees, my mother would have said.

  But only if he were Jewish and a professional man.

  A cab stopped. We took off after it. Ten minutes later, I knew where the blond lived. Had I been alone, I could have rushed in and told the concierge she’d dropped her pen on the street and gotten her name. Or I could have waited in the car for my brother-in-law to emerge.

  And then what?

  “Rachel?”

  He touched my cheek with the back of one hand.

  I had gone to Sea Gate to ask about my sister’s situation, to find out if Ceil thought I should say something, or do something, to see if between us we could think up a way to prevent the shattering of my sister’s marriage, of her life. Interfering, after all, was my family’s stock-in-trade.

  Leave them alone, Ceil would have said.

  But, I would have said, in my usual articulate fashion.

  Exactly, darling, she probably would have told me. Butt out. It’s not your life. It’s not your problem. Let it go.

  What on earth had I been thinking?

  “Let’s go home,” I said.

  “And where is that?” Paul asked, his voice as soft as the fur between Dashiell’s round brown eyes.

  “I’ve been staying at my cousin’s,” I said.

  “I thought so.”

  “You did?”

  “You don’t have anything on that didn’t belong to Lisa. All finished here?”

  I nodded.

  Paul drove to Lisa’s and found a spot that was good for the next day. On our way across the street to Jimmy Walker Park, we pitched the Chinese food into a corner trash basket. Let some poor homeless person who didn’t know Donny eat the crab. I certainly couldn’t.

  Leaning against the fence, watching as Dash left notes for the other neighborhood dogs, I was here, and here, and here, I wished I were still a dog trainer and that the man whose shoulder was touching mine were really a date and not part of a criminal investigation.

  I’m sorry. Lisa.

  When I’d told him about the note, he’d thought it had been written to him.

  But why would Lisa have been the one apologizing?

  Of course, if it had been the other way around, if he had done the asking and Lisa had been the one to refuse, then her note might have been an apology to Paul for turning him down.

  Why had she?

  She hadn’t brought him home. Had she been worried about Daddy’s disapproval? She was still dependent on him, still taking lots of his money so that she could live the way she wanted to.

  The Village, the Village, David had said, so he’d bought her a condo. But at what price?

  None of the ubiquitous concierges was at the desk, so I used my key to get into the lobby. I picked up Lisa’s mail. There were still bills coming in, postcards and letters from real estate brokers asking her to call them should she want to sell, coupons for a free car wash or half-priced lunch, and the usual pile of mail-order catalogs. Upstairs, I unlocked Lisa’s door and dumped the new pile of mail on the little blue table to the right of the door, right next to the old pile, which looked tall enough to topple over.

  Paul took off his shoes and put them against the wall, under the coat hooks on the wall to the left, then went to give Dashiell some dog biscuits and make us tea. I hung my jacket and backpack on one of the hooks.

  I could hear Dashiell crunching loudly, the hiss of the boiling water as it was poured into the teapot, water being poured into the sink. The first potful was to warm the pot. The second potful brewed the tea.

  “Honey?”

  “What?”

  He poked his head into the living room, smiling.

  “Honey in your tea?”

  “Oh. Sure,” I told him.

  I heard the spoon against one cup, then the other.

  We sat on the black couch in the dark living room, neither of us touching the tea he had made us.

  “Do you have a life of your own, Dog Paddle?”

  “Not lately,” I said.

  I heard Dashiell on the steps, then I heard the bed sigh as he climbed on
, circled, and lay down to sleep.

  “You look tired,” he said. “I should go.”

  I turned and looked at him, his eyes shining in the light that came in from the window. One thing about New York City, it never really gets dark.

  “I had fun tonight,” I told him.

  “Me, too. You’re”—he stopped and laughed—“you’re not like anyone I know.”

  “Not even … my cousin?”

  “Especially not your cousin.”

  “Well, we were—”

  “Distant cousins,” he said, finishing my sentence.

  He leaned in and kissed me, gently, on my lips.

  Okay, he was completely adorable, but no way was I going to bed with this man. I hardly knew him.

  “How are we different, me and Lisa?”

  “You have a sense of humor,” he said, removing the lavender string from the little braid and undoing the braid with his long fingers. “Warped, but clearly evident.”

  If I were truly walking in Lisa’s shoes, shouldn’t I reconsider?

  The trouble with sex was where it might lead.

  First I’d go to bed with him, next thing I knew, I’d be letting him touch the parts of my body that never got suntanned, then I might start necking with him in the car until all hours, I’d let him hold my hand in the movies, and who knows, one fine day after that, I might give him my phone number.

  What kind of a girl did he think I was?

  “Come on,” he said, pulling me up from the couch. He held my hand and walked me to the stairs. He led the way up and gently guided me to a spot near Dash. When he leaned down, my steely resolve took a powder. Even sitting, my knees felt weak. I closed my eyes. That funny brush fire had started up again and was spreading fast.

  He picked up the pillow and fluffed it and then stood straight again.

  “Shuijiao hao, Dog Paddle,” he whispered. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite. Stay put, xiao yue. I’ll see myself out.”

  “What did you say?” I asked him.

  “How would I know?”

  He grinned, letting me see those cute dimples again.

  “I better go,” he said.

  “See,” I said in the dark, “it ain’t so hard to be a good boy.”