This Dog for Hire (6 page)

Dashiell and I had been welcomed by a short young blond with the proportions of a twelve-year-old, no hips, no tits, dressed all in black but, happily, without a dot on her outfit. He was offered a dog biscuit, and I was told about how fabulously well this young artist was doing, asked if I knew “Tess,” if I had been at the opening, which was fabulous, if I was a collector, and then followed around as I looked at paintings, as if I might, if not watched carefully, slip one into my pocket.

The more I looked, the more I began to wonder if the red dots signifying sales were all real or if perhaps the gallery put out a few to make people think their current installation was hot and start a buying frenzy.

“This is nice,” I said, trying to look sincere, “but what I really love are paintings of dogs. I sort of, you know, collect them.”

I gave her the perfect opportunity to hard sell me a Clifford Cole painting. She fumbled the dot, but made a slight recovery.

“I don't know what's going to be in the next show. But would you like to be on our mailing list?”

I signed a false name in the book, thanked the young woman profusely, turned down a second Snausage for Dashiell, and headed back to the Christopher Street pier.

7

I Began to Dig Carefully

I wanted Dashiell in a work mode, so I kept him on leash until we were on the pier. Then I pointed down the pier, told him, “Find it,” and let him go.

I pulled up my scarf so that it covered my nose and mouth and walked back to the Punk's Not Dead sign, the one closest to where Clifford had been struck. The sad face with spiked hair was still watching over the place where he had lain until the police came to zip him into a body bag and take him away.

The wind was cold and stinging. Loose snow swirled in circles, rose up momentarily, and fell back to the surface of the pier. On a summer weekend, dozens and dozens of gay men would come here to lie in the sun. In winter, it was a lonely place.

Dashiell was working the southern side of the pier. He would work the perimeter first, then quarter the pier and work each quadrant separately, in each case looking for something that didn't belong. That meant he would not alert if he found a condom. The pier was littered with them, both over and under the snow. Nor would he stand and bark for me, his front feet popping up off the ground with each woof, his ears flapping up and down in the wind he himself would create in his excitement, for beer cans, broken glass, cigarette butts, even underwear. These were all local weeds to him, things indigenous to the area.

Two types of things would get him to “call me.” He'd signal for anything out of place, like a button, a wallet, or, say, a gun. In this case, it was unlikely he'd find anything of value. It had been too long since the murder, and the pier was too open and too populated. But Dash would also be looking for anything that had a smell reminiscent of anything at the loft. He had nosed around Cliff's clothing and his shoes. I had even dumped the hamper for him, letting him smell crotches and arm holes, places where the scent would be the most powerful. He had picked up other scents as well, those he would find personally interesting.

I didn't really expect there'd be anything on the pier after all this time, but Dashiell had made some wonderful finds on previous cases, things too well hidden, intentionally or by accident, or too small for me to have discovered. After glancing back at him, now rounding the corner to work the far end of the barricade, I stood at the south fence and looked out over the Hudson.

I could see the Statue of Liberty, far to the south, and Jersey farther west. The water surrounding the pier where you first walk onto it was frozen, but out here the Hudson was flowing, the light giving it a lovely silver cast.

I began wondering about the money, all that money, and where it came from, and why Clifford's friend Dennis didn't know about it.

Well
, as my sister would say, hands on her hips, if your friend was busting his butt to make it, unable to have the freedom to paint, as you did, would you rub it in his face that you didn't have to be concerned about expenses?

When I heard Dash signal, I began to run. He had made a find. It was probably nothing of significance to the case, a cigarette lighter or an old shoe someone had left on the pier. But I needed to get to him quickly and to praise him to the sky. He couldn't discern what would be important and what wouldn't. Sometimes
I
couldn't at first. The only way to motivate him was to praise for every find, and hope like hell, if there was something there of significance, eventually he'd see that, too.

He was at the most westerly point of the pier he could reach, the last few feet blocked off by the chain-link fence. The sign there, this one official, warned of danger—Area Unsafe, Keep Off—but I could see where the fence was cut. This was New York, where warnings went unheeded.

Dashiell was sitting now, facing a snowdrift that had accumulated against the fence, just to the right of the warning sign on the other side. He always waited for me, never trying to bring me what he found. If he retrieved the item, were there prints, he'd blur them. In a different setting, a field or woods, if he brought me what he found, I'd never see the site to be able to look for other signs and clues. Most important, because I loved my dog, if I allowed him to pick up what he found on a search, he might get hurt. He could pick up—and drop—a gun, which might go off. He could find something toxic, something sharp, something that, when disturbed, would leave nothing in its wake but a huge hole and the smell of smoke.

When he saw me running toward him, he stopped barking. As soon as I reached him, he was on his feet, dancing excitedly as he looked from me into the snow piled against the fence and back, again and again.

I began to dig carefully, cracking through the crust, then brushing away the snow, a little at a time, with my gloved hands.

I felt it before I saw it, and the moment I touched it, I knew. As I lifted a piece of it carefully free of the snow, I could hear it, too, a faint, metallic tinkle. I cleared the rest of the snow more quickly, and there, tied to the very bottom of the fence, was a red leather leash, now wet, stretched, and twisted. Still attached to the leash clip was a red leather collar, complete with a small bell, fairly intact, and in my estimation, just about the perfect size to fit around the neck of a twenty-pound dog.

I knelt on the pier and opened my arms for Dashiell, folding him to my chest as he came for his hug. I slipped the Minox out of my pocket and photographed the leash and collar where it was before untying it and stuffing it into my pocket with the camera. Dashiell danced around for more praise, which he got as I checked the area as carefully as I could and then headed for home.

If the collar and leash Dashiell had found were Magritte's, then Clifford had definitely taken him along to the pier. But why? As a pickup aid? Lord knows, more people talk to me when I'm with Dashiell than when I'm alone. So was Magritte tied to the fence while Clifford had sex? If you took a rough count of the condoms that littered the pier, it was certain that, despite the weather, Clifford wouldn't have been the only one having sex out here.

I needed to talk to Louis Lane and see how they were getting along. Was it spite that brought him here, or hunger? And what about all that money? Why did he come out here with so much cash in his pocket? Did he simply have so much he was careless? The money in so many pockets back at the loft would lead me to think that might be the case.

Suddenly, I was famished. Craving a ham and melted brie on sourdough bread, I headed for Anglers and Writers, across from the ball field.

New York's laws prohibit animals on public transportation and in places where food is served, but since Dash, who schmoozes the old people at the Village Nursing Home when I am between cases, is a registered service dog, and perpetually in training, the restriction doesn't apply to him.

Being a detective is a lonely life, but at least I never have to eat out without a date.

8

You Don't Really Belong in This Family

Getting into bed with the copy of Clifford Cole's will, gallery contract, address book, and a yellow highlighter looked to be the most promising evening I'd had in a long time.

The original will, which dated back to when Clifford was in his mid-twenties, was mostly the legal jargon that makes what should be three or four sentences go on for pages. Most people that young don't write a will, especially if they don't have kids. Unless their money is family money, and part of the deal when they get it is that it stays in the family.

In the original document, Clifford left everything to his beloved mother, Adrienne Wynton Cole, and, should she predecease him, to his beloved brother, Peter David Cole. This could mean that his father had already died when the will was written or that the money came from his mother or her family in the first place. Of course, once he had the money, in whatever form he got it, lump sum, generous allowance, untouchable trust where he could draw a set amount of the interest, or whatever, no one could require him to leave it to a person of their choosing. So he was either young or very honorable, or both. Or perhaps no one he preferred to leave the money to had yet come along. Follow the money. It was the first law of investigation work.

I turned to the next document, one of two codicils, both much more recent than the original will. It left the little African basenji, Ceci N'Est Pas un Chien, who apparently was not yet a champion, to Dennis Mark Rosenberg, aka Dennis Mark Keaton.

People are usually most defensive, my shrink used to say, about things that hit too close to home. Now, Rachel, she'd say after an outburst of denial, what's
really
going on here?

Of course, Dennis could dislike Louis for any number of other reasons. It's not uncommon for people to be jealous of their best friend's lover. I wondered if Dennis and Cliff had been lovers before Louis came onto the scene. Or even afterward. I checked the date of the codicil, but it turned out the one I had just read was the second. Perhaps when I checked to make sure I had everything ready to be copied I had gotten them out of order. The first of the two codicils was two years old, and left Clifford's entire artistic estate to Leonard Polski, aka Louis Lane. The Magritte codicil was dated a year and a half ago, five and a half months later.

If Cliff wasn't accepted by his family, he still kept faith with them financially. He probably knew he had to anyway. His will would be contested if he didn't, that is, unless he had been leading one of those normal lives your well-meaning relatives always tell you about, a life with a spouse of the opposite sex and children.

Dennis thought Cliffs “problem” was a problem for his family. Had they told Cliff, the way families do, that he could change if he wanted to? Had they offered to pay for therapy?

Would they have wanted either Magritte or Clifford's paintings? I wondered if his mother or his brother would have come to his show, had he lived long enough for the gallery to actually install it.

I thought about the coolness in his paintings, perhaps because he felt apart from his natural family, felt Magritte, of
rising son
, and his other heirs, Louis and Dennis, were his real family. If he left the paintings to Louis, he must have felt good about the relationship, at least at the time the codicil was written.

I picked up the gallery contract. How much of the post-eighties art world bust of the pay-the-piper nineties was reflected in Clifford Cole's contract with the Cahill Gallery I didn't know. I had never read a gallery contract before. I knew that a lot of the SoHo galleries had closed, and the remaining ones were often empty, run by people as desperate as the woman who had followed me around the Dots installation at Cahill earlier in the day. I have always found it amusing when someone tries to talk you into buying a so-called piece of art that costs more than your yearly gross.

There were still some wonderful things to see in the downtown galleries, works like Clifford Cole's that would linger in memory, where the range and ability of the artist actually merited the space his work occupied. Unfortunately, much of what was on display for eighties prices made me want to call the bunko squad. But there's no such thing, other than for forgery, in the art world. It's not a crime to produce derivative, dull, or simply poor “works,” as the contract calls what the artist produces. It's simply a matter of taste.

Clifford's first contract was surprisingly short and simple, free of the jargon of wills, mortgages, and divorce documents. The gallery would determine the price, and the artist could not sell comparable works for less. The gallery would receive 50 percent not only of the price of works sold at the exhibition it would install but of any sales made by the artist from his studio that were a direct result of the representation and the exhibition at the Cahill Gallery, and even any nonrelated sales made out of the artist's studio for the duration of the agreement, which was one year. It was sort of the same deal real estate brokers love home owners to sign, stating that if the owner sells his home during the time of the broker's contract, even in cases where the broker has done nothing but sit on her ass and never advertised or shown the house, she will still receive 6 percent of the sale price. Nice work if you can get it.

The Cahill Gallery got first pick of all of Cliff's art, which meant that Cliff—now Louis—couldn't sell anything without giving the Cahill Gallery half the money, even if they never gave Clifford a show. I wondered what Leonard Polski would do with his inheritance. I hadn't seen most of the paintings. They were draped and standing in a huge storage closet opposite the den, and the light in the closet didn't work. Next time I'd bring a flashlight and look at the rest of Leonard's loot.

I flipped through Clifford's address book. There were lots of names of galleries, other places he had probably sent a padded manila envelope with his résumé, slides, SASE, and lots of hope. I liked his work a lot better than much of what I see in SoHo, but there was no way I could judge if it ever would have become hot enough to sell. Often that has as much to do with an artist's life or who he knows as it has to do with his ability or originality.