This Dog for Hire Read online

  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.

  I nodded.

  “I didn’t see the tattoo right off,” Henri said as I sat at the little table. “And there was no collar, so no tag. But I figured that if I was so taken with this little boy, someone else must be heartbroken. I never thought anyone had throw him away, but that he got lost somehow. So I begin to take him with me every day. I never got such good tips,” he said, shaking his head. “No, sir.

  “I put some signs up, near the garage in the West Village. But no one call me. On the third day I have him, I was not going to drive the cab, so I decided to give Jimmy here a bath. I been calling him Jimmy, and he likes the name very much, don’t you, Jimmy?”

  Magritte looked up when Henri addressed him. Then he went back to bringing all his toys to Dashiell. There were quite a number of them, considering how short a time the dog had lived here.

  “So, that’s when I found the tattoo, and I wonder why someone would tattoo numbers on the inside right thigh of a dog, so from then on, whoever I pick up in the taxi, I ask them. I figure someone will know, and then I will know.

  “The day I called it in, Rachel, my fare says to me I should pull over, and he looks at the tattoo and he says, ‘Nine digits, it’s a social security number. You have to call the National Dog Registry in Woodstock. They’ll have the name and address of the owner.’ So I am so happy to get my question answered and to learn something new. And I am so sad that I will lose my friend Jimmy here. He’s been good company for me.

  “He even know the number, this man, l-800-NDR-DOGS. His German shepherd, he say, is tattooed also. So I call it. And so here you are.”

  He sipped his tea, I ate most of the cookies he had placed on the table, and then we sat in silence for a while, watching Magritte wrestle with Dash.

  “You wouldn’t think that big one would be so gentle,” Henri said. “Not even a growl when little Jimmy jumps all over him.”

  I nodded, my mouth too full of Pepperidge Farm Chessmen for me to speak. One of the reasons people are so afraid of pit bulls is that they usually don’t growl, even when they have ample reason to do so. If there’s anything scarier than a dog making a racket, it’s a silent one, especially if he’s not making a fuss because it’s clear he knows he doesn’t have to in order to get the respect he’s after.

  “Listen, Henri,” I said when there was nothing left to eat, “I’d like to offer you a reward. My client is going to be so thrilled. I just can’t tell you what this will mean to him.”

  I reached into my coat pocket for my wallet. There was a fifty tucked away behind the picture of Dash, for emergencies.

  “I don’t want your money, Rachel.” He shook his head back and forth and reached his hand out to pat my other hand. “It’s been a privilege to have little Jimmy here with me.”

  “It’s not my money, Henri. As I told you, I’m not Magritte’s owner. That young man was killed, and I work for the new owner. And he, my client, would be happy for me to give you something.” Of course, I hadn’t told Dennis what I had discovered yet. I wanted to have the dog before I got his hopes up, to see for myself that he was okay. And even though the call had come through NDR, I wasn’t about to send him out to retrieve the dog when its disappearance might have been connected to a murder. Somehow, when I heard Henri’s voice on the phone—I pay a lot of attention to the sound of people’s voices—I lost most, but not all, of my caution.

  “No, no, I couldn’t take it,” Henri said. “It would give Jimmy here the wrong message.” At the sound of his name, Magritte, aka Jimmy Plaisir, jumped as sprightly as any cat and landed on Henri’s lap. Henri began to scratch the dog’s chest very gently, stroking him again and again, and I noticed how still Magritte stood on his friend’s lap and how he closed his eyes to concentrate on the pleasure.

  “How about expenses?” I asked. “That’s certainly fair.”

  “Well, he did chew up some shoes for me,” Henri said. He began to laugh. “I didn’t tell you that part, did I? Oh, he can be a devil, this one.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” I said. “I used to train dogs for a living. We call these ‘brat dogs.’”

  “I like that,” he said.

  I lifted the saltshaker and placed the fifty and my business card under it.

  “If you should hear anything that might relate to the murder, Henri, you can call me anytime. I should be getting him home now. I can’t thank you enough. Who knows what would have happened to this dog without you?”

  It was nearly eleven when I was ready to leave Henri’s apartment with Magritte. Henri kept one toy, a bug-eyed green frog, “for memories,” he said, “and in case he come back sometime to visit his friend Henri.” He insisted I take the rest of the toys, as well as half a bag of Science Diet and two cans of Kal Kan chopped beef. Then he decided he had better drive me to SoHo, because how else was I going to get there with a bag of food and toys and two dogs? and anyway, he said, it would give him a chance to give Jimmy one more ride in the cab.

  We rode downtown in silence. Henri and Magritte were in the front. Dashiell and I rode in the back. Of course, the meter was off, so every few blocks someone stepped out into the street and tried to flag us down. Henri had asked where I live, and when I told him I lived in the Village, he insisted on waiting for me and driving me and Dash home. It took a bit of work, but I finally convinced him that Dashiell needed one more walk anyway, that I’d be perfectly safe walking anywhere with a pit bull, and that, if worse came to worst, I no longer had enough in my wallet to worry about. At that he laughed and finally agreed to let me off at the loft.

  I hadn’t done any of the work I had planned to do at Clifford’s loft, and I was too tired and much too hungry to start now. But as I hiked up the stairs with Dashiell and Magritte, I felt I had done well for my first day on the job. I hoped Dennis wouldn’t be spoiled and think the rest of the work would go this well or this quickly. And I hoped he wouldn’t catch on immediately that I hadn’t done anything at all to recover Magritte except listen to the messages on Clifford Cole’s answering machine, just as he would have done had he gone to the loft before me or even with me.

  What is detective work if not, at least in part, doing all the obvious things, looking at mail and listening to messages, talking to people who knew the victim, talking to people in the neighborhood and in the area of the crime scene in the hope that someone saw something, even if, at the time, they didn’t know if what they saw was significant, and just stabbing around in the dar
k, hoping to find something somewhere that will point you toward the light? Finding Magritte was wonderful and satisfying, but what, if anything, did he have to do with the murder? As for finding the answer to that and every other question, I hadn’t even begun.

  5

  You Don’t Know Me

  It was a cold walk home. I unlocked the wrought-iron gate and followed Dash down the narrow covered brick passageway between two town houses into the large, square garden, in the far left corner of which is the brick cottage Dash and I gratefully call home. Though it sounds grand, it isn’t. What is grand is the deal I got.

  Sheldon and Norma Siegal, who own the town house on the left and the cottage, are rarely around, so more than a tenant, they wanted a caretaker, someone to watch over the house whenever they’re away. In exchange for services rendered, the rent I pay is nominal. Which is exactly what I can afford.

  The cottage has two floors of living space and a basement for storage. There are two small bedrooms and a bathroom on the top floor, a living room with a fireplace and a small, open kitchen on the main floor, and one big room, with another bathroom, downstairs.

  Downstairs is where I keep all the things I still haven’t unpacked since I moved here four years ago. I simply haven’t found the need for good crystal in my current lifestyle.

  The house works well for us, storing all the books, files, and rawhide bones we need to keep us reasonably happy. But best of all is the garden, wonderful when it snows, because Dash gets to make the first paw prints, terrific in spring when the perennial herbs and flowers return as if by magic, amazingly cool in summer, especially in the evening and at night, and mysterious and sad in the fall when the cycle draws to an end in a blaze of beauty, all hidden from Tenth Street and the rest of the world.

  I unlocked the door, flicked on the light, fed Dashiell, and went straight up to bed. I had the tape from Clifford Cole’s answering machine in my coat pocket, where I had put it before leaving the loft, replacing it with a new tape I found in the drawer of the table the machine sat on. I had wanted to hear it again, but suddenly the day caught up to me and I could no longer think of anything but sleep.

  There were only three messages on the tape, anyway. The National Dog Registry, someone selling home delivery of the New York Times, and a squeaky-voiced lady who wanted to mate her bitch to Magritte, that adorable little stud.

  Dashiell was already asleep. I closed my eyes and thought about Dennis’s reunion with Magritte. I had knocked on the door and when he asked who was there I had said, It’s me, Rachel, I’m ready to draw you that first picture. When he opened the door, the basenji dog had squealed. Dennis had bent down, and the little dog had kissed him all over his face. I thought about the look in Dennis’s eyes, when he finally could take them off his dog.

  I also believed my dog to be the best thing since indoor plumbing. I had rescued Dashiell from some wrong headed, mean-spirited young entrepreneurs I had run into on a case, people who planned to make money fighting him when he grew up. I liberated him in such a fashion, let’s say, that I didn’t take the time to get his pedigree.

  Sometimes when the right dog finds you, he has papers. Sometimes he doesn’t. Hey, I have papers. My divorce document. It’s not much to curl up against on a cold night. A dog is much better suited for that job.

  Hugging Dashiell, I fell asleep happy, but I woke up in the middle of the night with a start. Was it a dream that woke me? I couldn’t remember. All I could remember was that sign at the pier.

  Don’t be caught alone.

  I almost always was, more and more of late. I was thirty-eight, suspicious, competitive, too independent on the surface for the taste of most of the men I met, and under the surface, much too frightened to suit my own.

  Even if I could have fallen asleep again, it wouldn’t have been worth lying there and rehashing my whole life before I finally got fed up enough to sleep. I got up and went into the spare bedroom, a little two-by-four job where I did my paperwork.

  Dennis’s book was on the desk where I had tossed it earlier. I took it onto the guest bed, slid under the blankets, and began to read about Antonia, who was five and who had always wanted a dog, ever since she was four and a half. When she finds Eliot, she is sure that he was meant to be hers.

  “I guess it wasn’t meant to be,” I told my sister, Lillian, after the divorce.

  “Well,” she said, meaning “bullshit,” meaning she thought I had fucked up again, “what are you going to do now?” meaning now that I had ruined my life, just as she always knew I would.

  “Move back to the city,” I said. “I never should have left. And get a dog!”

  “You’re not going back to dog training, are you? Why don’t you get a normal job, Rachel?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, thinking of how much I hated going backward.

  I had closed the school and moved to Westchester so Jack and I could have a “normal life,” whatever that was. What had I been thinking! But it was done, and now I’d have to go forward. But to what?

  “Look, maybe until you think of something else, Ted could—”

  Oh, God. I was filled with panic at the thought of working in the garment industry.

  “Well,” I said, wanting to make her as miserable as she had just made me, “I’ve always wanted to be a detective.”

  It was simply the most annoying thing I could think of on such short notice.

  “Rachel, have you completely lost your mind!”

  I had a strong suspicion it was a rhetorical question, so I didn’t bother to answer her.

  “You know, I can really see myself doing investigation work. Jack always said I was the nosiest bitch he ever met, or maybe that was just during the financial disclosure part of the divorce. Anyway, the hours would suit me, and I wouldn’t have to wear panty hose.”

  “A detective,” she bellowed, “so now that you’re finished being Clyde Beatty you’re going to become Dickless Tracy?”

  Just like that, for the first time in eight months I started to feel like myself again.

  “Oh my God, Rachel, tell me you’re not serious.”

  “I can’t. I am.”

  Of course I wasn’t. Not yet, anyway. I was just having some fun for a change.

  “Rachel!” She was fairly hysterical by now. “Rachel—you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t dare!”

  That’s when I knew it was bashert, meant to be. I never could resist a dare from Lillian.

  I looked at Dennis’s ink and watercolor wash drawing of Eliot, realizing as I did that the black stains on his pants and shoes had probably been made by india ink. I mean, was I a born detective, or what?

  And what was Lillian carrying on about? This was only my second stab at what she calls the dirt-bag professions. She needn’t worry about the other three. Selling insurance has never appealed to me. I’m more interested in who than how much. And on my worst day I’d never consider real estate or the used-car business. Sure, I follow people, eavesdrop, go through people’s garbage and read their mail, snoop, distort, deceive, and misrepresent. I even do a little B & E if it’s absolutely necessary. But, hey, I have my pride.

  I looked at Eliot again, a mountain of a dog, big, square head, thick and stolid, uncropped flying-buttress ears, large, meaty mouth, closed and serious for now. I studied every part of him, the massive chest, the strong, straight legs, the neat, large, rounded feet, so like Dashiell in every way except for coloring. Eliot was a brindle. Dashiell, except for the black patch on his right eye, is white.

  “Please may I keep him, Mommy, may I, Mommy, please?”

  “He’s too big for you to walk,” Antonia’s mother said, as sensible as my big sister, Lillian.

  “He’s too big for us to feed.”

  “And where will he sleep? He’s much too big to sleep in your bed.”

  But there they are, on the last page, in Antonia’s bed, and, see, they fit just fine.

  Bashert, my grandmother Sonya used to say.

  I c
losed Dennis’s book and dropped it onto the floor.

  “You don’t know me,” he had said when he called me.

  Was that just this afternoon?

  “I got your name from someone in the neighborhood, but you don’t know her. You did some work for her cousin about a year ago. Ellen Engel? And now I need your help. I need it badly.”

  Jack had said it, too, the first time he’d called.

  “You don’t know me.”

  There was a silence then, as we both waited.

  “I got your number from your brother-in-law. Ted.”

  “Oh,” I had said, my voice catching in my throat.

  I closed my eyes and thought about the last message on the tape from Clifford’s answering machine.

  “You don’t know me,” a woman’s voice had said, “but I have a beautiful basenji bitch, pointed, she just needs one more major, and I was interested in Magritte, you know, if you hire him out at stud.”

  Sex, it can fucking ruin you.

  6

  It Looked Like an Enormous Bowling Ball

  It was so cold when I got up, I could see my breath indoors. One disadvantage of living in the cottage is that I get to pay my own heat bill, and by necessity and nature I’m cheap. If Dashiell were a malamute, I could say I keep the place as cold as the inside of a refrigerator to prevent him from blowing his coat. But the truth is, if he were a malamute, he’d blow it anyway. You really can’t fool Mother Nature.

  I went downstairs and opened the front door for Dash. A moment later, he was back with the New York Times, which gets pitched over the locked gate in an electric blue plastic bag.

  It was going to be cold and windy with a chance of snow toward evening, the homeless were causing safety and sanitation problems at Penn Station, Tiffany’s was advertising a diamond bracelet for about the price of a one-bedroom apartment, and a man in Oregon had poisoned his wife, who, the Times reported, had survived to testify at his trial, in his defense.