This Dog for Hire (27 page)

“I guess. I guess you're right.”

So that was the Cliff and Bert Show.

I shut off the set and walked out of the little red room into the huge, hollow, empty studio in the front of the loft.

The light coming into the windows was from streetlamps, now, and when I walked over to the windows and looked out, I could see that it was raining.

It was raining inside, too. All around me, overhead, in every room, in the closets full of expensive clothes, in the kitchen hung with polished copper-bottomed pots, it was raining sadness. I had seen him now, heard him, felt him, listened as the secret of childhood abuse had bubbled up in therapy, but nothing I or anyone else could do would bring him back to paint in his studio, to wear his expensive clothes, to cook in those copper-bottomed pots, to walk his dog, to love his handsome boyfriend.

All I could do was make it as likely as possible that the person who killed him would be punished. I still had much to do.

32

Dashiell Was Ready

It was after seven and I was starving, so I went poking through the kitchen drawers for what every New Yorker has, menus. While I waited for my miso soup and tekka maki to arrive, I fed the dogs the last of Magritte's food and set up the slide projector in the studio, where I would be able to look at the slides on those huge, bare white walls.

When the delivery man buzzed, I salivated like Pavlov's dogs, buzzed him in, and waited hungrily for him to climb the stairs. I had the money ready. My dogs were ready, too. Dashiell was ready to lay down his life for me, or at least place his bulk in front of mine. Magritte, being a basenji, never wanting to be where he was supposed to be, was ready to escape.

I reached for the bag, handed the deliveryman the money, and felt something warm and quick brush by my left leg.

The deliveryman headed down.

Magritte headed up.

I figured, what the hell, the dog has a CD. So instead of chasing him up the stairs while my soup got cold, I called him. And he came.

The food was wonderful, and I ate most of it. Ex-dog trainer or not, there was no way I was going to disappoint my companions. Even if my newest law of private investigation is Never put anything into your mouth that was meant for a dog, there's no law that says you can't do it the other way around.

I turned on the slide projector, and the first slide appeared on the wall.

Uncle Miltie. The stocky guy in the housedress and cheap wig. His back turned. The cigar burning.

Click.

The second panel. Ash accumulating.

Click.

The third panel. Ash dropping to the carpet.

(Stomach tightens.)

Click.

The fourth and missing panel. Otherwise known as the truth, as rendered by Clifford Cole.

The subject of the work, in a dress, a wig, and the kind of orthopedic stockings my grandmother Sonya wore, had turned around.

He was grinning.

He was wearing lipstick.

Lots
of lipstick.

A garish amount, in my opinion. Especially with
that
outfit.

Genderfuck is done with wit. This portrait was done with malice. Be that as it may, once again we were face-to-face.

I had seen him first at the opening, even though he'd told Dennis he couldn't be there. He had been so impressed with the price of the basenji sculpture, he had whistled in amazement.

I had seen him next at Westminster, where he had wondered out loud how anyone could tell the basenjis apart. Where he had made dead sure he knew whose harmless bait to exchange for the tainted bait he'd meant for Magritte.

And when he'd heard on the news, no doubt, that a handler had died instead of a dog, that his clever ploy had failed to work, because after all he was not a dog person, didn't know the practices of the conformation ring, he had come back.

To try again.

Gotta do it.

He had followed me into the ladies' room. He had whistled then, too, whistled for Magritte, witness to murder.

My, I thought, studying his portrait, what
big
feet you've got.

Feet I'd know anywhere.

That is to say, feet whose
size
I'd know anywhere.

To the right of those big feet, there was even a title, neatly printed:
big shit-eating sissy
.

For once, without his head torn off.

33

Dead Ahead

I knew that Peter
could have been
at the opening before I learned that he
had been
there. I had learned that during one of yesterday's many phone calls.

“Mrs. Cole?” I had said when a woman answered.

“Yes. To whom am I speaking, please?” A voice like a dried magnolia petal, brittle yet still fragrant.

“This is Elaine Boynton, Clifford's friend. I was so sad to hear about Clifford.”

“Well, of course you were, my dear. It was such shocking news, such tragic news.”

“Yes.”

“Were you close with my son?”

“Yes. And so I feel just terrible that I missed the memorial service.”

“There was no service, Elaine.”

“Really?”

“Why, yes. Clifford's brother, Peter, said he thought Clifford wouldn't want any sort of a fuss, wouldn't want to make his friends drag all the way down to Virginia. He said it wasn't necessary.”

“He said that?”

“Well, it
was
basketball season, Elaine. His weekends belonged to the team. Don't even
call
me, Mother, he said to me. I'll call you when I get the chance. Both my sons are busy, busy men.”

My bet was she didn't know Peter had moved out, had no number
to
call him at.

“Do you call your mother, Elaine?”

“She's, uh, gone,” I said.

“I am so sorry, my dear. Was there a service for her?”

“Yes. A small, private one.”

“I see. Well, I do feel that family and friends need the closure of a service. Don't you agree, my dear?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Don't you think Clifford's friends would come to Virginia for a small service, once the weather gets a little kinder?”

“I'm sure they would.”

“I'm so pleased to hear that, Elaine. I would like to meet my son's friends.”

“I understand. I was wondering where I could send a donation in Clifford's name. Does the family have a preference?”

“Well, now, of course Clifford hadn't voiced such a preference. He was so very young.” There was silence for a moment. “I'm sure any charity you pick would be just fine.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Thank
you
, my dear. Thank you for your affection for my son.”

Ma son, she'd said. Delicate as a tank. I wondered if degaying the loft had more to do with Cliff's problems than his mother's.

More to the point, Peter had lied to Dennis about the service and had come to the opening to make bloody sure he hadn't missed anything when he removed the offensive canvases from the loft. He had taken
les and mor
and tossed the empty stretcher in back of the closet. Perhaps he'd taken another painting out, an older one, and hung it on the empty nail. He'd taken the significant panel of
big shit-eating sissy
. And he'd taken a portrait of himself, a portrait where his mouth was twisted and cruel, his eyes cold, his cheeks even more red and doughy than they looked under the unflattering lights of Madison Square Garden. That last one I'd seen when I watched the rest of the slides I had retrieved from B & H. It was called
helen
, the name gay men use for an old queen. It turns out it wasn't only his sons that Peter had gone back to rescue. It was himself.

My guess was that the only record of these paintings would be the slides that Clifford meticulously took and filed of all his work. I was so grateful he had done that. The slides of the missing paintings were enough by themselves to make me
suspect
Peter.

And my day on the telephone had all but eliminated everyone else.

I'd found out from Louis that like so many other SoHo galleries, the Cahill Gallery had come close to folding when the art-buying frenzy of the eighties had ended so abruptly, but because Veronica has the scruples of a scorpion—
his
words—she'd managed, mostly with manufactured hype, to keep afloat. Now they were just making as much as they could out of what Louis had inherited.

“Can you blame us, Rachel?” he'd asked me.

Marjorie Gilmore had clued me in on Doc. He was Herbert Hanover, Ph. D., founder and owner of Hanover Cryogenics. Frozen semen. He not only stood to lose a lot with Gil gone, he and Gil were both at the Illinois State Veterinary Conference when Clifford was killed. So Gil was already dead when I found out he had a perfect alibi.

I had ruled out Michael Neary, the dog walker. He was only seventeen. And Addie and Poppy; had they tried to off Gil or Magritte with tainted liver, they would have jeopardized Orion. Anyway, they're dog people. They might have gone after Gil, but never Magritte.

In my back-to-basics mode of yesterday, I had even called information to see if Clifford's number was listed.

“I don't have a listing for a Clifford,” the operator had said, “but under new listings, there's a
Peter
Cole.”

That
was interesting.

I called and heard his raspy voice on his answering machine, one of those no-name, covert messages—you know: “You have reached 989-2486. Please leave a message after the tone and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.”

As if there were a person alive on the planet who didn't know to wait for the tone by now.

Next I called poor, shapeless Linda Cole, in Woodcliff Lake. Of course she didn't tell me he'd moved out. Why should she have? Who was I that she should tell me her sad story?

Whether or not he actually was abusing his boys would be her problem. And theirs, of course.

My problem was that I needed proof.

He had been
so
clever.

He had asked Dennis for a key, when in fact he co-owned the loft with his brother. I had discovered this by dropping in at the real estate office around the corner and checking the
Real Estate Directory of Manhattan
, volume two, which listed the owners of the loft as Cole, C., and Cole, P. D. Banks prefer steady income to lump sums of money, which, as anyone knows, can disappear. In fact, they are sometimes “placed” in the buyer's bank account by a rich, understanding relative and, subsequent to approval, “re-placed” back in the owner's account. A secure job always has more weight with the bank.

He had removed, and probably destroyed, the paintings Clifford made to shame him. I remembered that when I had looked at Cliffs will, the codicils had been out of order. Peter must have checked the will to see where Cliff's paintings were going. He'd need to know that. But he couldn't have taken them that night. He had to return the key to Haber's, and even rolled up, the painting would have been noticed. No matter. That is, until he learned about the show. Then he had to act fast.

But he didn't know that Clifford kept a meticulous record of all his paintings by taking color transparencies of them.

Neither did he know that Clifford's therapy sessions had all been taped.

I was sitting on the floor in the big, bare, empty studio, hugging my dog now, Magritte curled and asleep at my side.

He knew when Clifford went to therapy, when he wouldn't be home, when he could use his key, whistle for Magritte, take him away to use as bait to get his brother out onto the pier, to make it look like the sort of crime no one would bust his ass to solve.

Peter had evidently used a voice-changing telephone, ninety bucks from Sharper Image. Probably bought it, used it, and tossed it. Made his voice sound higher, like a woman's voice, to disguise his identity and maybe even to make it all sound less threatening to his brother.

But only a person who had never lost his heart to a dog could think that any scenario that put that relationship in jeopardy could sound less threatening. Less threatening than what—nuclear holocaust?

“I have Magritte.” Three little words.

Sticks and stones will break your bones, they chanted in the schoolyard when I was a kid, but words will never harm you. Another of the lies I grew up on.

What did Clifford do while he waited? What did he think?

When did he write and hide the letter?

Why had he hidden the tape? Had he planned that
after
he got Magritte back he would take it to the police?

Did he get the message in time to get to the bank before it closed? Of course, with Select Checking, he could have gotten the thousand from the ATM by making two withdrawals of five hundred each. He had noted the amount he had taken out, not how it had been retrieved.

I laid my face on Dashiell's neck, breathing in the comforting smell of dog, and closed my eyes.

Frantic. He must have been frantic, wandering from room to room—everywhere he looked, Magritte wasn't there.

Finally, it was time to go. He felt the money, a small lump, in his pocket. Not as much as it would be for a person. After all, Magritte was only a dog. That's what the police would have said. Louis would have said that, too.

He crossed West Street, the wind going through his clothes, and finally he heard him, heard Magritte, and his heart lifted like a piece of paper caught in a gust, swirling and joyous. He never saw the car, sitting there, motor off, he only heard Magritte. He began to run.

Peter sat across the seat waiting, watching out the back window of the rented car.

I had even found out where yesterday, by calling all the rental places as Mrs. Peter Cole, complaining I was over-charged. Thrifty Auto Rental, West Ninety-fifth Street, walking distance from his new apartment, assured me the bill was correct.

“We have the AMEX receipt, Mrs. Cole,” they told me. “Shall I send you a copy?”