The Dog Who Knew Too Much (6 page)

Lisa's hair was very much like mine, darker, but about the same length and also curly. In the photo she wore a little braid on one side. I put the picture back on the shelf and, taking a small strand of hair on the left side, braided it as Lisa had done; then, holding the end of the braid, I went into the kitchen, where I had seen some lavender string on top of the refrigerator. I secured the end of the braid, then looked for scissors to cut off the piece of string.

I ran upstairs and opened the closet door, zeroing in on a sheer black silk shirt, black velvet leggings, the Chinese-style quilted jacket, and those fabulous pink high-tops. Leaving my own things in the closet, I put on Lisa's clothes and shoes. Everything fit, so I took some soft black pants and a black T-shirt for t'ai chi as well, folding them carefully and putting them in a nylon mesh tote bag I found in Lisa's closet. Halfway down the stairs, I turned back. I needed a bathing suit, didn't I? Before leaving, I also borrowed some jewelry to go with my new clothes, a jasper heart necklace from Tiffany's and a pair of silver earrings that sounded like small bells when they moved. I left my small gold hoops in their place.

I dropped the clothes off at home, and once again Dashiell and I headed toward the heart of the Village, Washington Square Park. Radiating out from the fountain at its center were paths that led north, east, south, and west, to the hanging tree, an old elm once used for executions, to playgrounds, to enclaves of the down-and-out asleep or sitting up and smoking on the benches that were the closest things they had to home, and to the dog run. Dashiell began a hip-hop ballet with a broken-coated Jack Russell terrier, and I took myself to the southwest corner of the run and, listening to the crunching sounds of the dogs playing on the pea gravel, faced north, eyes on the horizon, and became meditation in motion in Lisa Jacobs's beautiful, expensive clothes.

Near the dog run, a mounted policeman was putting his horse through its paces. A nurse was pushing an old man in a wheelchair, a plaid blanket over his legs. A nanny pushing a baby carriage walked by, a handsome young man was headed in the direction of the NYU law library, people sat on the grass reading. No one was imitating Bob Dylan or Janis Joplin, and it was a bit early for the drug dealers. Later in the day, if I asked Dashiell to “find the grass,” he'd go nuts.

It was quiet, so I stayed for a long time, watching Dashiell play and thinking about Lisa Jacobs. At six I stopped at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame for a burger, then headed over to school.

I took the stairs. Avi had said it would help me do the form. Lisa, he'd said, always took the stairs, never the elevator.

Avram looked startled when he opened the door, but said nothing. I slipped off Lisa's jacket, put on her black cotton shoes, and followed Avi into the studio. Dashiell had already taken his usual spot in the sitting area, his big white paws just touching the wooden floor where we worked.

As is tradition, we did the form without speaking. Then Avram began again, and I followed him. This time, as I continued, he came near me to make corrections, gently moving an arm or a hand or readjusting a foot by placing his next to where mine should have been and leaving it there until I'd lifted mine and placed it next to his.

Most of the form is done with knees bent, as if you were in a low-ceilinged room. Avi helped me to sink lower, until my legs felt as if they were on fire. He had explained that the burning meant that the blood was seeking new pathways, and so my legs were getting stronger. Unfortunately, so was the pain.

Suddenly I was flushed with heat. All I wanted to do was hang out the window and get some air, but Avi kept on working.

“Did you ever notice how clumsy people can be?” he asked, leaving me with all my weight on my right leg.

“When your step is empty, no weight at all in it,” he said, taking the same posture he had left me in sometime back in the Iron Age, “you are steady
before
shifting your weight.”

He flexed his knee, lifting his left foot off the ground. Then he placed his foot back down, heel, toe, and shifted his weight forward, as slowly as honey oozing off a spoon.

“Remember that t'ai chi is a martial art, Rachel. You must always be connected to the earth, both figuratively and literally. You do not want your opponent to be able to push you over.”

It was long past dark, but neither of us stopped to put on the lights. Lit by the bright light of the moon shining in through the big windows, reflecting in the mirrors, and shining on our faces, we continued to practice, mostly in silence.

“Okay, shake out your legs,” Avi finally said.

We stood quietly for a moment, neither of us speaking. Something was bothering me, jabbing away at the edge of my consciousness. I turned and looked at the windows. Then I looked into Avram's face.

“Which one?” I asked.

“The second from the left,” he said. He turned and walked back to his office, leaving me alone.

I walked over, unlatched the window, and pushed it out, letting the cold, damp night air hit me in the face.

The street looked very far away, and just looking down made my knees turn to water.

The door had been locked, I thought, but the chain hadn't been latched.

I felt a wave of nausea as I pictured Lisa looking down, just as I was doing, then climbing onto the sill and falling into nothing.

I thought about the second curious thing in Lisa's calendar. All those appointments. All those plans. The days after her death were filled with things to do.

No handprint on her back, Marty had said.

Most jumpers were men, I thought, looking down. Female suicides usually used carbon monoxide or some other form of poison, not something that would disfigure them, like a gunshot wound. Or defenestration. Vanity at play, right up to the very end.

I thought about all Lisa's pretty things, about those roses, dozens of bouquets, hanging upside down from her ceiling.

I thought about her pretty face.

I thought, No
way
did Lisa Jacobs jump out of this window.

There was a reason none of this made sense. Lisa Jacobs hadn't killed herself. Someone had done it for her.

I leaned out and looked down.

Then, quickly, I straightened up and stepped back, bumping into Avram. He leaned past me, pulled the window shut, and latched it.

In those black cotton shoes, he had been so silent I hadn't heard him approach me.

I began to shiver. I had stood in front of an open window in a dark room in the middle of the night with a stranger behind me, a man strong enough to lift me and toss me out the window as if I were a sack of trash he was tossing into a Dumpster.

His hands were trembling.

So were mine.

When he moved, I felt myself jump.

He reached into the pocket of his soft cotton pants.

“Will you lock up after you change your shoes? I must go now.”

“Of course.”

He handed me a set of keys.

“Tomorrow, five o'clock?”

I nodded.

“Good,” he said. “I'll have a surprise for you.”

My heart was pounding so hard I thought I might have a surprise for him too, another of his protégées dead in the middle of the night, this one right in the studio, of a fear-induced heart attack.

But he never noticed anything.

He grabbed his jacket from a hook near the door, and in a moment he was gone.

I was going to leave, too. In fact, I couldn't wait to get out of there. But then I noticed the door to the office. It was ajar.

I walked inside and sat in Avi's chair, putting the keys he'd given me down and placing my hands on the smooth surface of his ruddy teak desk. The computer was to my left, the files to my right. The bookcase behind me covered the entire wall. On the wall to my left, in a simple oak frame, was a photo of Lisa frozen in the middle of doing Cloud Hands. I hesitated for only the briefest moment before turning on the computer.

“Insatiable curiosity,” Frank Petrie used to say, “it's what makes you broads so damn good at the job.”

I slid the chair closer, preparing to work. So many secrets, I thought, so little time. But then I looked back at the keys. I already had these. Lisa's mother had given them to me.

No one had taken Lisa's keys to lock up after the murder.

Whoever killed her already had a set.

9

Forever, She Said

The last time in her life a woman feels really comfortable about being seen in a bathing suit is when she's six, and God knows, I hadn't seen six in a dog's age. Nonetheless, there I was in the doorway of the ladies' locker room at the Club, wishing I had a dog to hide behind. Unfortunately, I'd left him at home.

At least it wasn't rush hour at the pool. There were only three people in the water. One of them was the coach.

I stood watching him do laps for a long time. He seemed tireless, cutting through the water the way Avi cut through the air when he did the form, as smooth as a thread of silk being teased from a cocoon. When he reached the deep end, he curled around underwater and shot out in the opposite direction, not coming up for air until he was nearly halfway to the other side. A fish. But what kind of fish? I wondered.

I dropped the towel onto a bench, then stood next to it, trying to keep my balance as I wiggled the elastic band that held the key to my locker onto my ankle. Suddenly I saw feet, so close I could have reached out and touched them.

“Ah, the cousin.”

I straightened up.

“I didn't expect to see you again.”

“Out of my way. I'm trying to get a tan.”

He smiled.

“So what are you doing here?”

He was staring.

Perhaps it was Lisa's black bikini bathing suit, which barely covered the stuff my mother said no one but my husband or a doctor should ever see.

Or maybe it was Lisa's jasper heart necklace dangling just below my modest but attractive cleavage. Or was it the cleavage itself? since that's where he seemed to be looking.

“If I want to compete in the next Olympics, it's practice, practice. Anyway, I'm here. So, hey.”

“Hey, yourself,” he said, finally bothering to look at my face. “So, let's see that stroke you're so famous for.”

I turned and walked to the deep end and, one heart hanging around my neck, another in my throat, dove into the now-deserted pool. I began swimming laps, and just when I was really getting into it, I noticed that Paul was back in the water, hanging on to one side at the deep end. I swam over to hang out with him. After all, this was work. I wasn't here for my health.

“Hey.”

He reached out and picked up the jasper heart, holding on to it for a moment before dropping it.

“Lisa had one just like this.”

“No kidding?”

“If memory serves,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “sometimes it plays tricks on one. Instead of serving.”

“You have similar taste to Lisa. It's interesting.”

“It's a family thing,” I said.

“Take that suit, for example.”

I did, I thought.

“Lisa had a similar one. Not exactly the same. But very similar.”

“Yeah? How are they different?”

“Hers had more cleavage,” he answered.

Rule number whatever of private investigation is, Never take the job personally.

Yeah, right.

I pushed off the wall to swim away, but something stopped me. It was the coach's hand. He had hooked it into the back of the bottom of my bathing suit, what there was of it.

“You don't leave a person much dignity,” I said, flailing around until I could turn and get a grip on the side of the pool again.

“How much do you need?” he asked.

“I thought saving face was a big deal with Orientals.”

“I'm nowhere near your face,” he said, finally letting go of my bathing suit bottom.

Clinging to the edge of the pool, chlorine wafting up at me and stinging my eyes, I wondered what Lisa had seen in this guy. Sure, he could swim. I'd give him that. But so could a fucking sturgeon.

Maybe it was the t'ai chi. Maybe they had that in common, too. “Did you meet Lisa through t'ai chi?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “What are you up to, Dog Paddle?” he said. “Why are you here?”

“I told you, Paul. I'm trying to help Lisa's parents. My aunt and uncle.”

“Okay,” he said, “let's talk.”

“Here?”

I started to tremble. If my mother were here, she'd probably tell me my lips were turning blue.

“I'd rather we had more clothes on,” he said, looking at me as if I were a pastrami sandwich and he were a starving Jew.

“What about—” I said, feeling as if someone else were speaking through my mouth. It was probably the echo from all the tile.

“What about this evening?” he said.

“I'm busy.”

“Me, too. I have to take my grandmother shopping. But I could meet you afterward, at ten, say.”

Apparently Paul Born in the USA Wilcox was no banana, the Asian equivalent of an Oreo.

“Should I come up or wait for you downstairs?” he asked.

“Downstairs?”

“Bank and West, isn't it? Two buildings in from the corner, south side of the—”

“Oh,
that
downstairs.”

“That
is
where you'll be, isn't it?”

I nodded.

“I'm coming prepared to talk. Et tu, Dog Paddle?”

I could feel his breath on my face.

“I'll be prepared to listen,” I said.

“That's a start,” he said.

He put his hands on the edge of the pool and hoisted himself up and out of the water. I put my hands on the edge, too, but before I could propel myself out of the pool, Paul Wilcox did it for me. He had taken my wrists, and then there I was, standing too close to him, rivulets of chlorinated water running down my thighs and onto the wet tile beneath my bare feet.