Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog

looked as if he’d touched a live wire, the gangly, dangling arms, the too long legs, the smile that worked on one side of his face but not the other, saying he had a dog, maybe they remembered her, a mixed breed named Margaret. Or perhaps Judy.
    But the guy shook his head and pointed at the door I’d just come in through.
    “We don’t allow dogs in the store,” he said. “It’s against the law. If you want to shop here, you’ll have to tie him up outside.”
    “Oh, this one’s okay,” I told him, but not explaining, picking up some gum, a candy bar, and a small packet of Kleenex instead, thinking that spending a little money might make him friendlier. “Maybe you saw the guy without the dog.”
    But all he could think about was that I was spending fess than two bucks and if someone from the Department of Health waltzed in to check the premises, he’d be the proud possessor of a three-hundred-dollar fine.
    So once again, he shook his head and pointed. “I tol’ you, lady. I never seen no one like that. Now”—he pointed to Dashiell—“you get me in trouble, lady, I lose my job.”
    So I paid for the tissues, candy, and gum and left, turning right onto Gansevoort, trying the gallery where I’d gone to meet another client, some weeks back, describing Mel again, mentioning that he had a dog, waiting and hoping. I tried the new restaurant on the comer, Le Gans, though I couldn’t picture Mel sitting in such an upscale restaurant, white tablecloths, flowers on the tables. So I crossed the street and tried Florent, because anyone might show up at Florent, a movie star, or a skinny guy whose arms and legs flailed around like a marionette’s. But no one knew a Mel Sugarman and no one remembered a dog named Margaret or Judy, a dog who might be waiting for her master even now, thirsty, hungry, and in need of a walk.
    I even stopped a couple of people on the street, a young girl carrying a painting wrapped in brown paper and a short heavyset man in a bloody white apron heading back to one of the wholesale markets with his take-out coffee. A lot of people shook their heads when I asked about Mel. Maybe he hadn’t lived here. Maybe there was more time than I remembered between when he left me on the corner of Horatio and when he seemed to disappear on Gansevoort. The truth was, I still didn’t know anything. He could have lived anywhere.
    I went back into Florent and checked the phone book, but somehow I didn’t expect to find a Mel Sugarman and I didn’t. Why would anything in this peculiar case be that easy?
    But I wasn’t giving up yet. I stuck my hand into my jacket pocket and pulled out that enormous key ring. A man who’d worried he’d leave someone else’s dog without a walk if he lost his keys might also worry about his own dog. You lose your work keys, you might lose your house keys as well. Was that why he’d kept the key to his rented box separate from the rest of his keys?
    I started at the east end of the block I was on, figuring check the names on the bells, then try every key on the ring on the downstairs door, see if any of them worked. But halfway around the ring, I noticed something odd. A mail key. That meant that the set of keys on either side of that , key could be Mel’s, and if so, that I’d been right about one thing, that he’d left a duplicate of his own house keys at the Mailbox, just in case.
    I tried the keys to the left and to the right of the mail key, but they didn’t work. And neither did any of the names—McSweeney, Zeichner, Polsky. Someone was coming out. I watched him check his mailbox. It was Zeichner. He stopped there, in the tiny hallway, eyeing me while he snipped off the end of a cigar and lit it. The smell of smoke filled the small area. Dashiell sneezed.
    “Can I help you?”
    “Maybe. I know this is going to sound stupid, but I’m supposed to walk a dog who lives on this block.” I lifted the set of keys, to prove I wasn’t lying. “But it’s my first time here, and I’m not exactly sure of the address.”
    “You don’t know the address?”
    “The owner’s name is Sugarman. I know it’s not here, on the bells, but if he lives with someone else, I thought maybe the key would fit..
    He took another puff on that cigar and smoothed his scalp. “Her name’s Judy, the dog. She’s a mix. Or Margaret,” I added, feeling like a fool.
    “You don’t know the dog’s name?”
    I lifted the key ring again. “I have a lot of clients. And