Rachel Alexander 02 - The Dog who knew too much

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 comer 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 Mi's . 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.